Warren Murphy: Slave Safari

"These people got about as much backbone as a worm," he said.

Chiun hummed, his eyes fixed intently on the fire pit which shimmered heat and smoke at the other end of the village square.

"The men are wetting their pants just because Obode's got a couple of elephants. They're all ready to run away."

Chiun stared and hummed softly to himself but said nothing.

"I don't know how the House of Sinanju ever got into such a crap deal, taking care of these Loni. They're not worth it."

Chiun did not speak, and exasperatedly Remo said, "And another thing, I don't like this business about the fire ritual. I'm not letting you take any crazy chances of getting hurt."

Slowly, Chiun turned and confronted Remo. "There is a proverb of the Loni," he said. "Jogoo likiwika lisiwike, kutakuctia."

"Which means?"

"Whether the cock crows or not, it will dawn."

"In other words, whether I like it or not, you're going to do what you're going to do?"

"How quickly you learn," Chiun said and smilingly turned away to stare again at the fire.

Remo left the hut and wandered the village. All he heard, everywhere he went, was "tembo, tembo, tembo." The entire population was in a snit about a couple of elephants. Worry instead about Obode's soldiers and their guns. Pfooey. The Loni weren't worth saving.

He was annoyed and only later realized that he might be taking out his anger at Obode in annoyance against the Loni. The more he thought about it, the surer he was, and late that night, stripped naked, Remo slipped past the guards and out of the village. It was well after midnight when he returned. He moved silently, unseen, past the guards who capped the nearby rocks, stepped into his hut and immediately sensed the presence of someone else there.

His eyes scanned the bare hut and then saw the outline of a form on the raised grass mat which served as his bed.

He moved closer and the form turned. In the faint flicker from the flames in the ceremonial pit, he could make out Princess Saffah.

"You have been away," she said.

"I got tired of hearing everybody yelling tembo. I decided to do something about it."

"Good," she said. "You are a brave man." She lifted her hands toward him and he could feel and see the warmth of her smile. "Come to me, Remo," she said.

Remo lay down alongside her on the mat and she wrapped her arms around him. "When the sun is high tomorrow, you face your challenge," she said. "I want you now."

"Why now? Why not later?"

"What we have between us, Remo, may not survive a later. I have this feeling that all may be changed after tomorrow."

"You think I might lose?" Remo asked. Along the length of his warm flushed body, he felt the black coolness of her ebony skin.

"One can always lose, Remo," she said. "So one must take victories where one can. This now will be our victory. And then, no matter what happens on the morrow, we will always have this victory to remember."

"To victory," Remo said.

"To us," Saffah said, and with surprisingly strong arms moved Remo over her. "I was conceived a Lord and born a princess. Now make me a woman."

She placed Remo's hands on her breasts. "God made you a woman," he said.

"No. God made me a female. Only a man can make me a woman. Only you, Remo. Only this way."

And Remo did go into her and did know her and it could be truly written that on that hour she did become a well-made woman. And when both had done and the first rays of the sun were beginning to pink the sky, they slept, side by side, man and woman, God's team, by God's design.

And while they slept, General Obode arose.

It was barely dawn when he pushed aside the flaps of his umbrella tent and, scratching his stomach, walked out into the pre-sun mist and did not like it at all.

His sergeant major's eyes scanned the camp quickly. The campfire had burned out. The guards who had been posted at the corners of the small campsite were not at their stations. There was too much stillness in the camp. Things bring stillnesses, the wrong things. There was sleep on duty and that was one kind of stillness but that was not this kind. And there was death, and this was that kind of stillness, which hung heavy in the air like a mist.

Obode stepped forward and with his toe kicked the ashes of the campfire. Not even an ember remained, not even a glow. Farther from his tent now, he looked around the camp. Next to him was General Butler's tent, its flaps still closed. All over the clearing lay the sleeping bags of the soldiers who had accompanied them, but the bags were empty.

He heard a sound ahead of him and looked up. The elephants had been chained to scrub trees up ahead, and they were hidden from his view by bushes. Despite his feeling of foreboding, Obode smiled. The elephants had been a good idea; the Loni fear of them was strong and traditional.

They must have seen them marching with Obode's soldiers and that must have terrified them. Today, Obode and his soldiers would storm the main Loni camp, and the Loni would look upon the slaughter that followed as inevitable, resign themselves to it as a historical fact. It had been a good idea. The great conquerors had used elephants. Hannibal and… Well, Hannibal anyway, thought Obode. Hannibal and Obode. It was enough to make a case.

The invincible elephant; the sign of the conqueror.

He thought for a moment to wake up Butler, but decided to let him sleep. This was a military matter for a military man, not a football player no matter how brave or loyal he was. He pushed his way through the bushes. Up ahead, forty yards away, he saw the vague gray forms of the elephants but there was something wrong with that too. Their outlines seemed somehow blunt and muted. And what was that before them on the ground? Slowly now, apprehensively, Obode moved forward through the thinning brush. Thirty yards now. Then twenty. And then he saw things clearly and his fingers rose to his lips in the Moslem supplication of mercy.

The elephants' outlines had been softened because their tusks were gone.

Like a moth pursuing a flame, despite himself, he went closer. The tusks of the three elephants had been hacked off near then" bases. Only stumps of ivory remained, broken, chipped, craggy, like a memorable bad teeth that demanded the ministrations of tongue.

And the lumps on the ground. They were his men, his soldiers, and he did not have to look hard to be sure they were dead. Bodies lay there twisted, limbs askew, and through the chests of six of them, impaling them, spiking them to the ground were the six elephant tusks.

Obode. horrified, moved yet closer, impelled by some instinct of duty, some disremembered tradition that told the sergeant major he must be sure of his facts to be able to give a thorough report to the commander.

On the ground near the foot of one of the soldiers, he saw a piece of paper. He picked it up and looked at it.

It was a note pencilled on the back of a printed military order that must have come from one of the soldiers:

The note read:

"Obode.

"I wait for you in the village of the Loni."

That was all. No name. No signature.

Obode looked around him. There had been two companies of soldiers here. Some must still be around, because these corpses sure weren't two companies worth.

"Sergeant," he bellowed. The sound of his voice rolled across the fields, across the land. He could almost hear it grow weaker as it travelled, unanswered, across the miles of Busati plain.

"Lieutenant!' he shouted. It was as if he were shouting into a bottomless well in which sound reverberated but did not echo.

There was no sound and no sign of his soldiers.

Two whole companies?

Obode looked at the note in his hand again, thought deeply for a full ten seconds, dropped the paper, turned and ran. "Butler," he shouted as he neared the other tent. "Butler."