Doomsday Warrior 15 - American Ultimatum (2 page)

“Ka Amun,” Aka-ta-Kal addressed Killov as softly as he could through the settling dust and sandstorm created by the exploding Sphinx. “Perhaps I can demonstrate the use of the Qu’ul again. It must be gripped softly and held very still, like this.” The high priest held it up in front of Killov.

The KGB colonel stared at him, his whole face and body trembling. He wanted to strike out and kill those who had seen him not know how to use the power of the thing properly. For power was all to Colonel Killov, and no one could ever question his authority. But Killov wanted to learn the use of the Qu’ul levitation device even more. For he had plans, great and terrible plans, for it. Deeds to rival the most cruel of the ancient pharaohs would soon be afoot. And so he watched. And learned. He practiced with the awesome weapon that no one had dared to pick up since the days of the pharaohs—the device that had been kept hidden for thousands of years by the cultists who thought he was a god!

Two

T
he African village that called itself Boswandi, meaning “We Who Live by the Volcano,” woke early that morning. It was an important day, the most important for as long as any man in the tribe could remember. For the chief’s son, Musubwambi, was to marry Unam, the daughter of the chief of the neighboring village. It was an event of profound importance to both villages since it meant they could stop the ceaseless warring that had continued between them for many years. The marriage meant that cattle would no longer be stolen, homes no longer burned, members of each tribe no longer killed as they went to gather fruits from the nearby forest or water from the rivers, or as they hunted on the plains. It meant—peace. So they all hoped.

Masdouri M’Bekwani awoke earlier than the others. He was the witch doctor of the village, which meant great and profound responsibilities for him. For his spells, incantations, potions, and sacrifices to the cattle and lion gods could well mean the difference between success and failure for this union of the two neighboring villages. They had lived in war for nearly a hundred years, since the Great Nuke War itself had sent fire over all the continents. This section of the northern Sudan had been spared the atomic fires, which meant that the savannahs still grew, the game animals still grazed. Life could have been decent enough—if the two tribes hadn’t begun warring with one another. They had been warring for a century, and would be heading into the second century within another year. To this day Masdouri didn’t really understand why they fought, had always fought. Both tribes were of the same blood, had shared common beliefs and culture. Even their jewelry and the ritual tattoos and scars that they carved on their arms and chest were very similar in design and appearance. But all the similarities and friendship were lost in the spilt blood that had followed the decades immediately after the Great Fire War. The mushroom clouds had gone up as close as a hundred miles from the spot where Masdouri’s thatched-roof, mud-walled hut now stood. Not that he had seen the towering funnels of glowing death. But his father had been told stories of them by
his
father. And all the secrets—of history and magic—had been passed on from generation to generation, too, with those stories.

Masdouri had no illusions. He knew that the union of the two tribes was fragile from the start. Very fragile, as brittle as the egg of an Ambala bird, which could shatter at a man’s touch. The people of his tribe prayed for peace, longed for peace. For many young men had died over the years. Not a family was untouched, unscathed. Not a mother had not lost a son. And Masdouri as well—he longed for peace too. Prayed that its time had come like the great migrating herds returning to the Rift Valley year after year.

He was old now, nearly eighty, an ancient age for a village in which fifty was considered old, sixty the blessing of the gods. Disease, attack by man and animal—all took their toll. But being so old, he had the wisdom of many years. Masdouri had seen it all.

Masdouri had been as warlike as the most hawkish of them in his youth, screaming and chanting around the fires in his most terrifying, demon-killing costumes to help the warriors get up their courage to go out and kill some more. But now things were different. Now he no longer had those feelings. Growing old takes some of the fierceness out of even the witch doctor and war-speller of the tribe. The desire for peace comes through wisdom. The desire for harmony comes through viewing too much bloodshed. Such a wise man was Masdouri. He had seen enough of the color red, enough rivers of tears from the wives and children of the dead. For such things alone man was not put on earth!

And so he felt fear. Fear of a kind he hadn’t experienced for many years. He felt his very body trembling, his hands shaking as he sat up from his straw mat feeling the sweat pouring down his spindly arms and legs. For Masdouri knew that the very future of the tribe, its very existence, depended on what he did today, on whether or not he pleased the gods, carried out the right spells, picked the right potions to ward off demons and demon lackeys. And it made his heart beat like the dancing drums to have such a responsibility.

Masdouri rose slowly from the mat bed on the floor of his round mud-walled hut with finely meshed roof of vine and savannah growth. He really didn’t want to get up today. Masdouri wanted to stay in the protective dimness of the klut, stay here where only a few streaks of early violet dawn broke through hair-thin cracks in the thatched roof. He felt strange inside. As if there was something beyond the wedding itself, something beyond the entry into the village of many warriors from the other tribe to threaten him. Something gnawed at his very heart, tugged at it, as if trying to tell him something.

“Ah, Masdouri, you are becoming an old hen, like a woman,” he scolded himself, forcing an insincere chuckle out of his narrow leathery lips. He sat fully up on the mat, his back against the rough mud and cattle-dung walls now baked hard as brick.

Father Sun had not even climbed from his black bed, and the air was thick, thicker than usual with a sheet of dank air from the jungles to the east. That didn’t usually penetrate out onto the edges of the savannah belt where Masdouri and his people lived! It was going to be very hot today, he could tell already.

The gods were toying with him. They were not going to make things easy. Usually he had one of his four wives prepare his morning rituals, bring him water, but he had banished them from the klut two days before. No women could be near him for at least forty-eight hours before an important ceremony, particularly one of the magnitude of the chief’s son’s wedding.

This was the most important spell-dispensing he had ever undertaken. He wished he were a younger man, one with the exuberance and cockiness of youth. He felt tired, old, hardly able to rise up without the women around to fetch things for him, help him dress. He had gotten used to them. Too used to them perhaps.

Hearing his knees cracking like dry twigs, Masdouri dragged himself upright, pushing his back against one of the wooden support branches which held his klut upright.

The hardest part was getting to a standing position. Once he was fully up, it wasn’t really that bad. He held onto the center support, nearly two feet thick, gnarled and twisted, and walked around it in a stumbling circle. Three times to the east, three times to the west, just to make sure that the whole wedding list of gods and devils was honored properly, making little bows at every step and mumbling prayers very fast under his breath.

Then he stopped and kindled a fire off to one side of the klut in a dugout pit. It flamed quickly. He was quite adept at such things, having been around so long. He put a gourd over it—blackened and smeared with pitch on the bottom so it could take heat without cracking—and heated up his morning drink, Kusamba, a mixture of cattle blood, curdled milk, and herbs. It tasted wonderful and energizing. After he had finished the Kusamba he felt more awake and alert.

Masdouri surveyed the curved walls of the klut, looking at the numerous masks, costumes, rattles, and other sacred items which only he knew and understood the significance of. The main question was just what he would wear today. It had been bothering him for weeks. There were no real rules about intertribal marriages, because there hadn’t been one in his time—or even that of his father, who had taught him all that he knew about the magic ways. He had put off the decision about what to wear. Now the morning of the Day was here, and he still wasn’t sure at all.

Hmmm! Let’s see. The lion mask for sure, with its actual lion’s face, a big male with thick golden mane and jaws that looked like they could swallow a man whole. It was a creature he himself had killed many years before. It was a little tattered by now, slightly diminished in the luster of its fur, but not in its fierce pride.

Yes, the lion’s mask, that was for sure. It was the only headpiece that he felt was strong enough to ward off supernatural attacks. And for his body, why not the serpent outfit, with its overlaid black-bark scales so that it looked almost snakelike, sinuous when he moved. Yes, that would contrast frighteningly with the lion’s head. The snake and the lion were compatible as well in divine tradition. For it was not just the guests he wished to impress—but the animal gods and the plains weather gods as well. There were many, many things to consider.

But like a crack of lightning on the savannah horizon, it all seemed so clear on this burning morning. He smiled as he reached up onto the mud wall to take down what he would wear today. In his chest it felt right. And that was where he always looked for the final decision. To the heart.

Once he was fully outfitted, he headed outside. But Masdouri reeled as he stepped into the rays of the fully risen sun. He would have to wear the heavy and hot costume all day! He could not be seen even for one instant as Masdouri by the others, not on this day. He was now the Lion Man, maker and breaker of souls—let all fear the Lion Man. And even though they knew who he was, all of the tribe—the children running naked through the village between the scores of kluts, the bare-breasted women adorning themselves with their beads, shells, ostrich feathers, and precious stones—they would all fear to look toward Masdouri. Today, he was of the gods, not of men.

Masdouri spent the day preparing for the ceremonies. There were the twin fires to build—one to ward off demons, the other to welcome, to warm the lion gods when they came to witness the marriage in the cool evening. As well, Masdouri had to plant stakes in the ground all around the ritual fires in a circle nearly a hundred feet in diameter. Within this circle the dancing and the wedding would take place. He couldn’t have possibly done it all on his own, but he had three apprentice-boys, one of whom would someday be his heir.

Tradition had it that the witch doctor passed his position to his firstborn son, but Masdouri had been cursed by the plains gods in that respect. Though he had tried with over a dozen wives over the years, he had never produced offspring. Thus he would choose one of the three teens to take his place; he still wasn’t sure which one. All were intelligent, quick to do his bidding. He kept his eye on all of them, particularly on such a day as this.

At last it was all done, and the sun began sinking again, the evening breezes slinking along the savannah which surrounded the grove of cooling trees within which the village had been built. The log and zebra-skin drums began pounding. The men danced wildly around the fires in their own elaborate outfits of bones, feathers, and lion and cheetah hides. Many of them were already somewhat drunk from the Dsaka leaves which they had buried in large gourds the month before. Now the juices within the leaves had fermented and were potent. The leaves burned the tongue, made the body loose and the mind festive.

The sun had disappeared completely, like a snake back into its hole for the night, when they all heard a commotion coming across the black-shadowed savannah.

The Triori. They were here.

Instantly, all the men in the tribe tensed up, and Masdouri could see they were nervous. Weapons, spears, battle swords had all been put away, but were close at hand just in case there was trouble. It was up to him to see that there wasn’t. He shook his hummingbird-bones rattle and jumped around wildly, catching their attention as the king of the Triori was carried in on a leopard sedan by ten warriors, lions’ teeth covering his round chest and stomach. Behind him came the princess, carried along as well. She was beautiful, and the women stared jealously, the men lustfully, as she was brought in and set down within the magic circle alongside her father.

The chief of his tribe greeted the chief of the Triori with all the friendliness of a brother. Both men wanted this peace, this marriage. They had met twice, secretly, over the last year to make it happen. And a genuine warmth had somehow sprung up between the two. He greeted the Triori wearing his own crocodile costume, the Triori in water-buffalo garb, with huge horns fitted on top of the elaborate headdress he carried. The two men embraced, and the crowds of both tribes cheered.

The chief’s son stood by his side and looked fixedly at his bride-to-be, who returned his glances with coy, quick looks of her own. They had not met before. All had been arranged by their fathers. But when they saw each other, they were not unhappy. There was, Masdouri felt, an instant attraction between them.

“Come, let us drink like elephants, eat like lions, and dance like ostriches in heat,” Masdouri’s chief said, leading the Triori chief to an honored seat by his throne. A second throne had been constructed just for his visit. The other chief’s chair was a bit smaller than his own, but nonetheless it was festooned with skins and teeth quite worthy of any chieftain.

The two groups of warriors didn’t mingle, but stood on opposite sides of the circle of magic that Masdouri had built and looked at each other nervously. There had been too much fighting and death over the years for them to relax so easily. But they tried. Their kings, after all, had decreed that the time for peace was here. One did not argue with the chief.