Four weeks later, after going over a great mountain range, Benoni left the desert. It was almost like stepping from one room to another. On one side, sand and rocks and cacti. On the other, grass and trees.
He was in a country of great plains cut occasionally by creeks and, now and then, a small river. There were many trees along the waterways; not so many on the plains. Yet even here there were enough to make him think this land rich in wood. Here began the great herds of antelopes, deer, wild horses, longhorned cattle, and huge pigs. Here also were flocks of birds in such number they darkened the sky as they flew overhead. Here, naturally, were the packs of wild dogs, big wolfish creatures, and, not so naturally, here were lions. Benoni was surprised to find them, for he had always thought of the lion as a mountain beast. But these lions were not the slim animals he had seen. These were great cats weighing at least four hundred pounds, thick-limbed, and seven to eight feet from tip of nose to tip of tail. Aside from their size and more massive legs, they looked just like the cats at home, and he wondered if they were not descended from them. On the plains, they had changed into creatures large enough to stalk and kill the dangerous longhorns.
He gave them a wide berth. At night, though he did not like to attract human eyes, he built a ring of fire to keep the lions away.
However, it was the wild dogs who almost got him. One dawn they came sweeping silently over the horizon just as he was arising from sleep. He ran like a deer, and managed to get up a tree which was fortunately nearby. He stayed there for a day and night while the dogs howled and leaped vainly. In the morning, the dogs left. He came down.
The following evening, Benoni built a bed in the branches of a tree. And, before going to sleep, he considered what he was doing. Almost without thinking about it, he had pushed so far east that he might well be past the point of returning. Not that there was anything to keep him from going back. It was just that the lure of the distant grassy horizons was getting stronger with every mile. He had planned to stop short many scores of miles back and make a decision whether he should look for a new country or take his scalps back to Fiiniks. Day had succeeded day, and he had put off the final decision. Now, he wondered if the Great River he had heard his father and the preachers talk of was only a short distance away. No-one, as far as he knew, had ever come this far from the Valley of the Sun. This adventure alone would be enough to make him the talk of Fiiniks. He would be able to tell tales about it the rest of his life. And, perhaps, his children—and Debra’s—could some day travel the same path and even go on to the Great River.
Debra! Was she now pledged to marry Joel Vahndert because Benoni had not come back and she thought him dead?
He fell asleep wondering. In the morning, when he came down from the tree, he decided to put the choice of his path in the hands of Jehovah God. After washing himself thoroughly in a nearby creek, he got down on his knees and prayed. Then, he stood up, took his knife out of its scabbard, and flipped it high into the air. He stepped back and watched it turn over and over, flashing in the morning sun. If it came down point first to stick in the ground, he would continue east. If the butt of the knife struck first, he would turn back towards Fiiniks.
The knife whirled. And its butt hit the grass, and it bounced up to fall on its side.
Benoni put the knife back in its scabbard. Aloud, he said, “You have shown me what I should do, Jehovah! And I hope I am not doing wrong by changing my mind. But I intend to go straight ahead. I should not have asked You, because I knew in my heart secretly what I wanted to do:”
Uneasy because he had ignored the omen, he walked on. For several days, he expected something terrible to happen: an attack by one of the huge lions, a bite from a rattlesnake, an arrow from behind a bush. But nothing out of the way occurred. After a week, he lost the uneasiness.
During the next two months, he had many adventures. But he always escaped from death or injury. Many times he had to hide to evade human beings. Usually, these were Indians. Four times, however, the danger was white men. A pack of wild dogs chased him, and again he barely made it to a tree. Once, a lion walked out of the dense vegetation surrounding a waterhole, and Benoni prepared to fight to the death: his death, he supposed. But the lion merely belched and stood his ground, and Benoni walked on.
A few days later, Benoni was peering from behind a bush at the strangest habitation he had ever seen. It was huge, perhaps four-hundred feet long and forty-feet high, wide in the middle and tapering to a point at one end. The other end was covered with the dirt of a hill. Its curving sides rose from the ground in a manner suggesting that only the upper half could be seen and that another half was buried under the ground. It shone in the morning sun, reflecting like Navaho silver. It had no doors or windows that he could see, and he circled the entire structure to get a good look. If it had an entrance, he decided, it must be behind the high log walls and gate of a stockade butting against the curving sides of the south side. Another log stockade mounted the central portion of the top of the structure; this, obviously, had been built as a look-out.
He dared not come any closer, for people were coming out of the open log gates. Some of them were tall husky men armed with bows and arrows, spears, and short, broad bladed iron swords.
The inhabitants looked like Navahos except that their noses were flatter, almost bridge-less, and they had folds of skin over the inner corners of the eyes. These folds gave them a slant-eyed look. Moreover, when several got close enough for him to hear, they spoke a harsh sing song tongue no more like Navaho than Navaho was like Mek or Ingklich.
Benoni knew that the buried metal cone must contain many people. The narrow log enclosure by its side would not hold them if they stood on each other’s heads. Soon, the men, women, and children moved out to work the fall crops and became so numerous that he had to leave the vicinity.
He went eastward but not without puzzling for a long time over the weird metal building and its weird inhabitants.
Two months later, he had put the plains behind him and was deep into a heavily forested land of rolling hills with many water-filled washes and rivers that was noisy and bright with birds he had never seen before. He passed the ruins of a farmhouse that had only recently been burned, for the ashes were warm. The corpse of a man, two women, and three children lay outside the ruins. Benoni knew that he was in a country of different customs, for every body lacked its head.
An hour later, he picked up again the tracks of horses which had led away from the bodies but which he had lost. He told himself that he should go at right angles to the war party. But he was too curious; he could not resist following.
Just before dusk, Benoni saw the light of a fire ahead. He worked his way through the tall grass and brush very slowly. By nightfall, he was behind a tree only twenty yards away from the war party. He gasped, and he began shaking. Never before had he seen men with such black skins, such thick lips, such kinky hair. It was not just that he had not thought of such men. As a child he had heard, and believed, tales of black giants who dwelt far to the east near the Great River. These ate flesh, would eat him if he did not behave as a good child should.
These men were tall but not the twelve-foot giants his mother had told him about. They did look ferocious, however. They wore red and white warpaint and headdresses of long white feathers. They also wore human hands strung on a necklace. One man had a pole mounted with a human skull, and some of the bags on the ground looked just the right size to carry heads.
Benoni watched them for a long time. He crawled closer, unable to resist his curiosity about their speech. This sounded like his, yet not like it. Sometimes, he thought he could identify a word, but he could never be sure. They were laughing and drinking from quart jugs, which he supposed they had taken from the farmhouse. They did not seem to worry at all about pursuit.
The September moon rose, and the black men kept laughing and joking until the jugs were empty. They threw these into the weeds and lay down to sleep. One youth was appointed gu
ard; he stationed himself with spear and short sword a few yards outside the range of the fire, which had died down.
Benoni waited for an hour, then he made his way towards the sentinel. Easily, he crept up behind the nodding youth and chopped against the side of his neck with the edge of his palm. He caught the youth as he fell and eased him to the ground. Then, using the fellow’s shorts, he gagged him. Using his belt, he tied his hands behind him. A few minutes later, he silently saddled two horses. After he had hoisted the youth belly-down onto one of the animals, he cut the hobbles around the other. Two whinnied and shied away, and he froze, waiting for the sleeping blacks to awake. They slept the sleep of the half drunk.
When he was mounted, he shouted, screamed, and rode among the other horses to spook them. Then, he urged his animal out into the forest while he held the reins of the horse on which the unconscious youth sagged.
He rode as swiftly as he dared in the night while behind him shouts arose. After an hour, he settled for a canter; another hour, for a walk. Morning saw them far away from the scene of the thievery.
By then, the black youth was awake. Benoni took him off his horse, hobbled the animal, and removed the gag from his captive. It took some time to convince the youth that Benoni did not intend to kill him. After he had calmed down through signs, Benoni started the task of learning the stranger’s language. He interrupted the lessons twice to feed the youth. After eating, the youth seemed to be less reticent.
Benoni speeded up his learning when he found that part of the strangeness of the youth’s speech came from a vowel shift. Also, that Zhem’s tongue had unvoiced all word-final voiced phonemes. Where Benoni said dog, Zhem said dahk. For stown (stone), Zhem said stahn, and for leyt (late), liyt (as in seat). Kaw (cow) he pronounced ku. Thin, in Benoni’s tongue, was tin. There were other differences. Some words were unknown to Benoni; he could not find any in his vocabulary to match Zhem’s.
The following morning, Benoni tied Zhem’s hands in front of him and allowed him to take the reins of his horse. He warned Zhem that if he tried to escape, he would be shot. They rode slowly, while Benoni practiced talking to the black youth. That night, he told Zhem why he had kidnapped him instead of killing him.
“I need someone who can tell me about this country,” he said, “And especially about the Great River.”
“The Great River?” said Zhem. “You mean the Mzibi? Or, as the Kay wo say, the Siy?”
“I don’t know what it’s called. But it’s supposed to be the biggest in the world. Some say it circles the edge of the world. That if you go to its other side, you fall off.”
Zhem laughed and then said, “Ee de bikmo ribe iy de weh. It’s the biggest river in the world, yes. But there’s land on the other side. Tell me, white man. If I answer your questions, what you going to do with me?”
“I’ll let you go. Without a horse, of course. I don’t want you tracking me down and killing me.
“You’re not going to take my head home to show your folks, your woman?”
Benoni smiled and said, “No. I had thought of taking your scalp. It’d bring me much honor in Fiiniks because they’ve never seen one like that. But you’re not a Navaho; I’ve no reason to kill you. Maybe you’ll give me a reason.”
Zhem frowned and looked sad. “No,” he said, “if I did bring your head back with me, it wouldn’t do any good. I’m in disgrace because you captured me. No Mngumwa can never go home again if he is cowardly enough to be taken prisoner. When Mngumwa goes into battle, he either dies or wins the victory.”
“You mean your people won’t take you back? Why? It wasn’t your fault!”
Zhem shook his head and said, hollowly. “It makes no difference. If I tried to rejoin our war party or go home, I’d be stoned to death. They wouldn’t even dishonor their steel with my blood.”
“Perhaps you’d be better off dead,” said Benoni. “A man with no home is no man. And then your scalp . . . it’s so woolley.”
“I don’t want to die!” said Zhem. “Not as a captive, anyway with my hands tied. It’d be different in battle. And I feel sad because I’ll never make love to my wife again. But I want to live.”
“You might be a help to me,” said Benoni. “I don’t know the land. But why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t,” said Zhem. “I wouldn’t trust you either. But if we became blood-brothers . . .”
Benoni asked what blood-brothers meant, and Zhem explained. Benoni considered. He looked steadily at Zhem for a long time. Zhem fidgeted, frowned, smiled. Finally, Benoni said, “Very well. I don’t like the idea that I have to fight for you no matter what you do. I don’t know you. Maybe you’ll do things I won’t feel like defending you for . . .”
“You’ll be my older blood-brother,” said Zhem. “I will obey you in all things, unless you do something dishonorable.”
“O.K.” said Benoni. And he put out his arm for Zhem to cut and to apply his own wound to it . . . so their blood was red. He had thought it would be black; indeed, this thought had held him back from accepting Zhem’s offer. He had not liked the idea that he might become half-black.
But, now that he thought about it, Navahos were very dark, sometimes, and their blood was as red as his.
Zhem chanted some words so fast that Benoni could only understand several. Then, they applied clay to the cuts. And Benoni untied Zhem’s bonds. Until they were made blood-brothers, he had not trusted Zhem. He had watched him while he cut his, Benoni’s, arm for fear the youth would try to stab him. A hint of a wrong move would have sent Benoni’s knife plunging into the black skin. Zhem must have known this, for he had moved very slowly.
They mounted and rode on. Zhem explained that they were two days’ horse-travel from the Msibi. This country belonged to the Ekunsah, a white nation. To the northeast lay the great nation of Kaywo. Its capital city, Kaywo, was at the meeting place of the Msibi and Jo rivers. Or, as they were called in the Kaywo tongue, Siy and Hayo. The Kaywo were a mighty nation, they had huge houses and temples, roads of smooth stone, and a great navy and army. They had just won a ten-year war with Senglwi; they had slaughtered the citizens of that city. And now they were turning their attention to the great city of Skego. Skego, once a small town on the shores of the Miys Sea, had become big, too, and was extending its empire southwards, towards Kaywo.
“I would like to see this great city,” said Benoni, wondering if it were half as large as Fiiniks. “Can we go there without their killing us on sight or enslaving us?”
“I’ve been thinking that we could go there and enlist in the Foreign Legion,” said Zhem. “If we fight for Kaywo, we get much booty. Women, too. If a man serves five years in the Legion, he is made a citizen of Kaywo. That would be worth fighting for. A man would have a home again.”
“I would not mind going there if we would be allowed to leave again,” said Benoni. “But, I must get back to my home sometime.”
“You could always desert,” said Zhem. “But you will not be allowed to enter the country as a free man unless you join the Foreign Legion.”
Two days later, they reined their horses back upon the top of a high hill. Below was the Msibi, or Siy, the Great River. Benoni stared at it for a long time. He had never seen so much water before. It must be at least two miles, maybe more, wide. He shivered. It was like a giant snake, a snake of water. And that much water had to be dangerous.
“It’s worth walking across half the world to see this,” said Benoni. “Debra will never believe it when I tell her of it.”
“De po e de wote,” said Zhem. “The Father of the Waters. Do you want to ride toward Kaywo, elder brother?”
“Kaywo it is,” said Benoni. “I can’t wait.”
They rode northwards along the shore of the great river. After half a day, they came to a rough dirt road and followed it. They went around a small stockaded village. Zhem said they could skirt a certain number. However, according to what he understood, the villages and farms became very numerous. They w
ould encounter an army fort. Then, what happened would be in the hands of The Great Black God.
Benoni was a little jolted to hear this. He had always thought of Jehovah as being white. But, now he thought about it he had never seen Jehovah. Nor did he know anyone who had seen Him. So, how did he know what He looked like?
Benoni and Zhem had crossed the Kaywo border at a point above the frontier forts. According to Zhem, there were forts along every major road in the empire. It was inevitable that soldiers would find them. So, it would be best to present themselves at the first fort they came to. After a half day’s riding, they found their chance. They came to a little valley the entrance of which was walled with boulders cemented to a height of twenty feet. Two guards challenged their right to go through the big iron gateway. Zhem, speaking Kaywo hesitantly, asked to see the officer of the guard. Two other soldiers were called. These conducted the strangers through the gateway. Outside a large stone building, Benoni and Zhem dismounted. They were led into the building, through several rooms, and finally faced the commandant of the fort.
The captain was a big dark man with a snub nose, thick. lips, and curly hair that hung down the back of his neck. He wore a shiny silver-embossed steel helmet topped by a scarlet roach of dyed horsehair, a cuirass molded to fit his torso, a green kilt, and yellow leggings. He asked them what they wanted. Benoni could understand a word here and there, but the main sense was lost to him. Zhem translated for him.
Zhem replied that he was from the kingdom of Mngumwa. His blood-brother came from a place nobody had ever heard of. It was called Fiiniks, and it lay in the middle of a burning desert a thousand miles or more to the southwest.
The captain, Viyya, looked at Benoni with interest. He rose from his desk and walked staring around Benoni. Then he laughed and said something to Zhem.