Southwestern Africa, 1864 AD
Luwi stalked with practiced silence through dry grass that grew high as her waist. With her spear in hand and a sheathed machete on her hip, she followed the lead of her two spotted hyenas, Kamfunti and Muzowa. The animals’ keen senses of smell would guide her toward potential game, and their bone-crushing jaws could be every bit as lethal as her iron-bladed weapons. Ever since she had raised them from cubhood, Luwi had found them to be far more dependable companions than any people she had known.
Kamfunti, the larger hyena, stopped to sniff the air and let out an apprehensive whoop with ears flattened. Her sister Muzowa did likewise. The perspiration on Luwi’s dark umber skin chilled in spite of the late morning heat. To show such anxiety, her companions must have sensed true danger. It might have been lions on the prowl, a leopard. Or, even worse, men.
Luwi gave both her hyenas gentle strokes on their heads to assuage their tension. From a bushy line of miombo trees across the field from them came the muffled scuffing of footsteps and the murmur of voices. They might have been Imbangala, the warlike marauders who had harassed Luwi’s Balunta people from time immemorial, or they might have been a harmless caravan of traders.
She whispered for her hyenas to keep their tempers in check while they sneaked toward the trees. They sneaked into the bushy undergrowth beneath the shade and laid their eyes on a dusty trail that cut eastward through the savanna. Muzowa curled her lips back to expose her fangs. Luwi pushed the creature’s head back with her hand.
From further down the trail advanced the strangest procession of men she had ever seen. They were neither Balunta or Imbangala. Instead, they were men with faces as pale as fish bellies whose gray shirts and trousers covered most of their bodies while gray caps sat on their heads. Balanced on their hands and shoulders were bayoneted muskets, those infamous thunder-sticks known to shoot death. The man leading the troop stood out from the rest with a beard of straight white hair, a hat with a wide brim folded along the sides, and a saber sheathed along his hip.
Both of Luwi’s hyenas were growling now. Her nose’s sensitivity may not have matched her companions’, but she could nonetheless pick up a pungent whiff of men’s sweat and musty clothing. It made no sense how these strangers could walk around in such extensive covering in the heat of a savanna day when Luwi’s own people found it more comfortable to wear little more than loincloths or sarongs. Then again, the stories about the white men did say that their complexions were prone to burning upon exposure to the sun. Perhaps they needed as much protection as they could gather.
The white-bearded man was surveying his surroundings as he walked, and his gaze landed on where Luwi and her hyenas lay hidden. Her heart palpitated while his frosty blue eyes bored into her. He raised his hand, barking in an unintelligible language and his men halted behind him, pointing their bayonets at Luwi like spears. They shoved out before them a scrawny young boy in a tattered loincloth who was the same dark brown kind of human being as the Balunta. A rusty iron collar encircled the boy’s neck, and the welts criss-crossing his back softened Luwi’s heart with pity.
“Are you alright, young man?” she asked.
“You need not feel too sorry for me,” the boy said. “I have been through no worse than anyone else in bondage. I am Bonga, and these white men from across the ocean have…purchased me to be their guide and interpreter.”
The white-bearded man drawled something in his native language with a bow to his waist while holding his hat over his breast. Bonga translated on his behalf. “They say they are from a place called the Confederate States of America, and their leader is Colonel Thaddeus J. Anderson.”
Musowa the hyena lunged toward the colonel with snaps of her jaws. Luwi pulled her back by the mane with a hush.
“Do not fear my friends,” Luwi said. “Now, what are these men from the ‘Confederate States of America’ doing here, Bonga?”
“They seek an ancient idol called the Nkisi of Nkongolo. They have heard stories of the great power contained within it and want to use it for their own ends.”
As a Balunta, Luwi knew exactly what Bonga was referring to. Many generations ago, there lived a sorcerer named Nkongolo who used his magic to seize control of the whole Balunta nation and tyrannize them, using the blood of their children to maintain his power. Once the Balunta people had overthrown him, their healers joined forces to imprison Nkongolo’s soul in a special sculpture called a nkisi and hid it deep within the hills to the north.
“And what ends would those be?” Luwi asked.
“The Confederates say they are losing a war against northern enemies who threaten their most precious institutions, their way of life, and that they need everything they can find to turn the tide in their favor.”
Luwi cocked an eyebrow. “What ‘precious institutions’ of theirs are under threat?”
The colonel chortled.
“They do not wish to say,” Bonga translated for him.
“Well then, whatever they mean by it, they cannot have the nkisi. Our people would never let it fall into the wrong hands. Tell the white men it is for their own good!”
Several of the Confederate soldiers recoiled from the snap of Luwi’s voice. After stroking his beard in thought, the colonel dug into his pocket and pulled out a handful of gold coins that clinked as he rubbed them together with his fingers.
“Colonel Anderson promises to give a sample of the wealth his family has acquired over the generations in exchange for the nkisi. He can offer it in gold, cloth, guns, trinkets, or whatever your people might desire.”
Luwi beat the ground with the butt of her spear. “Forget it! Nothing these white men have will persuade me to betray my people. Why, I should call upon our warriors to impede them the best we can!”
The colonel’s face flared red while he grumbled under his breath in his own tongue. “Ungrateful negress…”
Bonga turned to kneel before the colonel, whimpering in the Confederates’ language. “Please, master, have mercy on her…”
Colonel Anderson slapped the boy, drawing blood from his lips, and the other soldiers dragged him away. Unsheathing his saber with a hiss of steel, the colonel thrust it straight at Luwi. “Capture her!”
His soldiers converged on Luwi, the bayonets on their guns glinting sharp beneath the sun. Luwi thrust out her spear and waved it in an arc to keep the Confederates back, hissing with bared teeth. The men cackled with more fiendish mockery than she had ever heard from her hyenas.
It was Muzowa who first sprang into the nearest soldier. She chomped on his forearm, his bones cracking between her fangs while dark red blood soaked the sleeve of his shirt. The man next to him stabbed the hyena in the shoulder with his bayonet. Letting out a shrill yelp, Muzowa swung her head aside to clamp her jaws onto his musket’s barrel and splinter it off its handle. Her sister Kamfunti wasted little time in joining in the fray, ravaging the Confederates with no less passionate intensity.
Kamfunti had jumped onto a man and bitten half his face off when another swatted her in the brow with his musket’s stock, knocking her off her paws. The soldier had drawn his musket back for another blow when Luwi pierced his temple with her spear and drove it through his skull. A Confederate bayonet slashed her shoulder. Too consumed by fury to mind the pain shooting through her flesh, Luwi plucked the spear out of the man she had killed to puncture her next assailant’s breast.
A thunderous bang cracked through the air. One of the soldiers toward the back of the rank had fired his musket at the sky. Shock from the loud and alien noise stunned Luwi immobile. She could not force one muscle of hers to move even as the Confederates closed in on her with drool glossing the teeth in their sneers. One man reached a hand out to grab her arm and dug his fingers into her skin like claws.
Muzowa jumped at the man, bit into his arm, and tore it out of its socket with one tug. With her courage rejuvenated, Luwi twirled on her feet and punched into a man’s crotch with her spear’s butt. In the corner of her eye, she saw another Confederate further back ramrodding ammunition into his musket.
“We have to run home,” she shouted to her hyenas. “Follow me!”
They turned and bolted back toward the miombo trees while the next gunshot rang. As they raced across the savanna, more shots followed in a banging staccato. Luwi and her hyenas ran in zigzags to dodge the bullets. One grazed the skin on Luwi’s arm, causing her to falter. Behind the line of trees, the soldiers were reloading, and she could not waste time on her wounds before they unleashed the next volley.
Pushing herself against the sizzling pain, Luwi picked her speed back up. It must have been by the mercy of her ancestors’ spirits that she and her hyenas had passed a distance far beyond the Confederate muskets’ range. They were not giving chase either. Shouting a prayer of thanks to her ancestors, Luwi continued to jog in her village’s direction with her companions close ahead. If the three of them could not take on the Confederates by themselves, they could nonetheless lead a troop of warriors to ambush them later. All they had to do was report to their headman.
The sun had sunk halfway down the sky to the west when Luwi and her hyenas reached their village. It was a cluster of earthen huts arranged in rings that all sat atop a shallow hill, girdled by a low palisade. As Luwi ascended the hill on a dirt trail, she passed plots of maize, sorghum, and millet that grew under the shade of oil palm trees. A handsome young man waved to her while tending to the cattle that grazed on the slope, and she repaid his gesture with a brief yet amicable smile.
Once in the village, she hurried to the open plaza that stretched as a dirt circle in its middle. Under a central thatch-roofed pavilion, the pot-bellied old headman Ntambwa sat on a wooden stool, smacking his lips on his pipe. Luwi brushed away with her hand the rancid cloud of tobacco smoke as she approached him, and both her hyenas whined with irritation when the smoke fell upon their noses.
“You ought to give up that tobacco, my headman,” Luwi said. “Do you not remember what happened to your father? The healer said his lungs failed him because he smoked too much.”
Ntambwa chuckled as he lowered his pipe to his lap. “Neither the healer nor you can prove that it was the smoke that caused his lungs to fail him, young Luwi. Anyway…by Nzambi the Creator, you and your hyenas look like you’ve been through a scuffle out there! You should have the healer tend to your wounds as soon as you can.”
“That is what I’ve come to report. We found white men headed for the northern hills, men claiming to be from a place called the ‘Confederate States of America’.”
The headman’s rheumy eyes widened. “I’ve heard of those devils. They broke away from the United States because they want to keep black people like you and me under bondage. But why would they come all the way here across the ocean?”
“They seek the Nkisi of Nkongolo. They want to use Nkongolo’s power to win the war they are fighting over in America. We must stop them!”
“Stop them? How, on Nzambi’s green earth, would they be able to reach the nkisi? Not only have our ancestors hidden it within those hills, but we had the passage to it blocked. Only with an offering of fresh blood would anyone be able to open the passage.”
“They have a guide in bondage leading them, and I am sure they will find more than enough blood for opening the passage. They are fierce and cruel warriors, after all. In which case, we should track them down and ambush them before they can do any damage with the nkisi. I shall lead it myself with your permission.”
The headman scratched his short gray beard. “I can arrange that. But, assuming that these Confederates are indeed able to open the passage to the Nkisi, we must act as quickly as we can. I pity anyone who comes face to face with Nkongolo’s terrible power.”
“We were able to entrap him in that nkisi once. We can beat him again, whatever it will take!” Luwi pounded her fist on her palm.
“Very well,” the headman said. “I shall pray to our ancestors that you turn out to be correct.”
The sun burned red as blood as it drifted behind the miombo trees on the western horizon. Its waning light reflected on the grooved face of a cliff that reared high from the plain, with a flat rectangular stone resting on its foot like an altar to some forgotten god. Inscribed at the altar’s base were various stick-figure pictograms reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Colonel Thaddeus J. Anderson folded his arms with a disappointed grunt. “You sure this is where the idol lies, Bonga? Or did you lead me and my men on a wild goose chase?”
“I assure you, master, it is here,” Bonga said. “Trust me, it should be right here!”
“Then why don’t I see the damned thing anywhere? It’s not on the altar, it’s not on the cliff, it’s not even in the bushes. It’s nowhere! Tell me where it really is, boy, before I hack off your ear!”
Bonga scurried to the altar and ran his hand over the pictograms on its base. “Trust me, master, this altar is the key to finding it, or so my grandfather’s stories said. These ancient glyphs should explain it. Please let me read them!”
While the boy squinted over the glyphs and murmured to himself, his brow shone with beads of sweat.
“Oh, no,” he said. “It says it needs fresh blood to open the passage.”
The colonel grinned while lowering his hand toward his saber’s hilt. “How about that? It looks like we came prepared. Wouldn’t you agree, my boy?”
Bonga’s eyes dilated. He fell to his knees whimpering and tugging at the colonel’s shirt.
“Please, master, I beg of you, show mercy to me!” the boy said. “I am a lonely child, who has lost both his mother and father and all his brothers and—”
Colonel Anderson slapped him twice. “Bring him to the altar, boys!”
His soldiers grabbed a screaming Bonga by the arms and dragged him onto the altar, having him lay spreadeagle like an Aztec prisoner about to have his heart ripped out. While his men pinned the squirming boy’s arms down, the colonel drew out his saber with an eager cackle. He raised the sword overhead, catching the light of the setting sun, and swept it down onto the child’s neck.
The blood sank into the stone of the altar like a sponge absorbing water. The glyphs on the base glowed with red light while the earth shook beneath the colonel’s feet. A deep fissure in the rock descended from the summit of the cliff before him, reaching down to the base. With a deafening grind, the fissure opened wide enough to admit a whole brigade of men, forming the mouth of a cavernous tunnel.
Colonel Anderson’s family over in Alabama may have accrued their wealth on the backs of their property, but the enslaved came in handy for far more than picking cotton on the plantation.
“Looks like it worked,” the colonel said. “Light your lanterns, men, we’re going in together!”
They entered the tunnel in single file. The light of their lanterns revealed more pictograms like the one on the altar, except these were painted in red and white ocher along with the stick figures of men and savanna animals. These might have told the story of the sorcerer named Nkongolo and how he came to be imprisoned in that idol, like what the native legends had said, but that was the colonel’s best guess for interpreting these primitive scribbles.
The deeper they went, the more resonant a vibrating hum became. Every pulse of its rhythm seemed to match the beat of the colonel’s heart, which had accelerated with excitement. His skin sweated from the swelling warmth of a power that drew him in, pulling on him like the force of gravity. It had to have been a power that, once harnessed, would be strong enough not only to beat back the Yankees at home, but also to crush them all like ants underfoot. The Confederacy could seize control of Washington itself, reinstate that so-called “peculiar institution” nationwide, and expand across the Americas and beyond.
Of course, they would return here to Africa, but this time, they would be able to bring all the Dark Continent’s inhabitants to their rightful station. And ironically all due to the power of one of their own bygone sorcerers, assuming the old stories about the idol were true.
The tunnel opened into a spacious chamber illuminated with a fiery red light that rendered the soldiers’ flickering lanterns superfluous. The light emanated from a glowing humanoid sculpture no larger than a drinking mug that squatted on a rocky pedestal in the middle of the chamber. The power was sweltering here, threatening to singe Colonel Anderson’s skin even as he followed its unspoken beckoning toward the idol. Its light was so bright that he needed to squint to discern its stylized features, reminiscent of primitive African sculptures he had seen in photographs before.
Come to me, Thaddeus John Anderson of Alabama, a voice echoed in his brain. Come to me.
The colonel stopped to unsheath his saber and search the chamber in a frantic panic. “Who goes there? And how do you know my name?”
His soldiers were gawking at him in befuddlement.
Foolish outlander, the voice in his head said. Only you can hear me. It is I, Nkongolo of the Balunta, who sits imprisoned in this nkisi after so many ages. Only through contact with mortal flesh can you liberate me.
“Will you then grant me your power, mighty Nkongolo?” Colonel Anderson asked. “Or do as I bid?”
In a sense, I can. All I ask is that you lay your hand on my nkisi. Come to me, come to me…
A whoosh, a thunk, and a death rattle interrupted the droning sound of Nkongolo’s power. Not even the heat of that sorcerous power could suppress the chill rising up the colonel’s spine. One of his own soldiers toward the back had fallen with a native javelin embedded in his back. From further up the tunnel where they had come, there echoed an approaching din of clipping sandals, tribal war cries and the frenzied whooping of hyenas on the hunt.
The Confederates were still standing dumbstruck, faces blanched to the color of mountaintop snow, when Luwi and her warriors fell upon them. Spears plunged through gray cloth into flesh, machetes sliced through necks and limbs, and the fanged jaws of Kamfunti and Muzowa crunched through bone and musket barrels. Without enough time to load and fire their muskets, the Confederate soldiers could only flail them around like clubs or poke back with their bayonets while the Balunta blocked their blows with oblong wooden shields.
The white men fought with as much valor as any desperate men caught between the jaws of death. In the end, however, they had the disadvantage this time. It was almost disappointing how Luwi’s forces were able to jab and carve away at their ranks with little difficulty. No wonder they had sought Nkongolo’s hidden power to aid them.
On the other side of the melee, the Confederate colonel had extended his open hand toward the glowing nkisi. Fighting her way through his soldiers, Luwi screamed while rushing to stop him. A fallen Confederate grabbed her ankle, tripping her. She rolled and kicked him in the face, shattering his teeth, and scrambled back to her footing.
She was too late. The colonel’s fingertips touched the nkisi, and its light flooded the room, blinding white like the daytime sun . An unearthly wail suppressed all other sound in the chamber, ramming against Luwi’s eardrums.
When the white light receded, the Confederate colonel was no more. Standing in his place was a tall and lean Balunta man with numerous charms and amulets hanging from his gold and ivory necklaces. His eyes blazed with the same red glow as the nkisi that had imprisoned him for so many centuries as he held outspread arms up toward the chamber’s ceiling.
“I am free!” Nkongolo cried. “At last, I am free! And I shall reclaim my rightful place as High King of the Balunta!”
Luwi charged at the sorcerer with a shriek of the Balunta war cry. He sidestepped in a swift blur and laughed.
“Your only hope of defeating me this time is to kill me, young Luwi,” Nkongolo said. “Let us see you try!”
Black scales grew on his skin while his body expanded in size, his legs thickening into pillars. A serrated crocodilian tail extended from his backside while his nose protruded into a long, elephantine proboscis. His teeth whetted into sharp tusks, two of which stretched forth from his mouth, and his finger- and toenails became curving talons.
In a flash, Nkongolo had transformed from a human being into a colossal monstrosity with an elephant’s face, a crocodile’s tail and armor, and an eagle’s claws while standing taller than a giraffe. He threw his head back and let out a booming guffaw that shook the entire chamber and everything in it.
The remaining Confederate soldiers, who had already retreated some distance from their Balunta ambushers, cocked their muskets and fired at him in a volley. Their bullets ricocheted off his scaly hide without leaving marks. With another laugh and a sweep of his trunk and tusks, Nkongolo batted them all into the chamber’s sides. They hollered in pain and terror until their bodies became little more than smears of blood and flesh on the rocky walls.
To Luwi’s dismay, her Balunta warriors threw their weapons down and cowered on their knees while the transformed sorcerer stomped toward them with murder in his flaming eyes. She would not let her people surrender to that monster, no matter how powerful he had made himself.
Skirting around the lumbering beast’s legs, Luwi thrust her spear into his calves. Her arm muscles bunched as she pressed the weapon through the thick hide. Nkongolo shook her off with a kick of his leg, the spear stuck in his flesh. He swung a clawed hand down at her. She ducked, but the breeze flowing alongside his hand whisked her off balance. With a second swipe, the sorcerer scooped her up and squeezed her body in a clenched fist. Luwi’s ribs were on the brink of cracking from the pressure, and Nkongolo’s fetid breath steamed her face to scalding.
The monster’s eyes widened with a startled harrumph. The hyenas Kamfunti and Muzowa had both bitten onto his tail and were clinging to it with their fangs buried in its hide. While Nkongolo wobbled his immense body to shake them off, Luwi took advantage of his relaxed grip by slipping her hand down to tear out her machete and stab him in the finger. The sorcerer let go of her with a loud and shrill trumpet, and she dropped to the floor on her feet, dodging another sweep of his tail. The hyenas were still holding onto him.
The rest of the warriors rose with a cheer to attack Nkongolo with their spears and javelins. He swung his tail at them with enough velocity to fling both Kamfunti and Muzowa off. Luwi ran in haste toward her beloved hyenas, praying under her panting breath that they had not met the same fate as the Confederate soldiers. Nkongolo blocked her path with a slam of his trunk that made the earth tremble again.
He rumbled with cruel glee. “You think you can defeat me so easily, young Luwi? Foolish woman. Submit to me, and I shall spare all your lives. Why, I shall even restore the lives of your two dearest companions!”
Those last few words stung Luwi worse than all her bodily injuries. If dear Kamfunti and Muzowa truly needed their lives restored, that could only mean one thing. Should she take the sorcerer up on his offer? Would it be worth another generation or more of his tyranny? Would she have all the Balunta people suffer so she could have her two best friends back?
No, that would be wrong. She could not have either Kamfunti or Muzowa back. The best she could do was avenge them.
The rage coursed in Luwi’s veins like molten magma. Yelling her battle cry again, she sprang toward Nkongolo’s trunk and sliced it off with one chop of her machete. He lurched back with a wavering roar while blood spurted from the stump. What was left of Luwi’s warriors added to his torment by poking and hurling their weapons at his staggering form.
Luwi dashed toward the faltering colossus to retrieve her spear from his leg. Nkongolo lifted it out of her reach and sent his foot crashing down on the floor in front of her. He raised his leg a second time, holding it straight above Luwi with the loudest and most reverberant of his evil laughs.
His cackling gave way to a shrill, almost whinnying trumpet. Muzowa the hyena had clamped onto the heel of his other foot and torn the tendon out. Nkongolo tottered on his wounded leg, flailing his bleeding stump of a trunk over his head, and toppled onto the chamber’s far wall. With an explosion of pale red light, his monstrous form had reverted back to a human one that lay on the floor beside Luwi’s bloodied spear.
She picked her spear up and held it over the fallen sorcerer, its point aimed down at his breast. “So you lied about my dearest companions needing their lives restored!”
“I must not have flicked them away as hard as I thought,” Nkongolo croaked. “And I wanted to tempt you into submission anyway. You can kill me now. My soul will flow back into that nkisi and remain there…until the next time someone comes along to free me.”
“We shall see to it that there is no next time, Nkongolo. We’ll have those instructions on the altar chiseled out so that no one can figure out how to get in here. However, I won’t be the one killing you. My friends will take care of that instead.”
Luwi withdrew her spear and smiled as two pairs of glowing green eyes encroached on Nkongolo with whooping calls almost like laughter of their own. He squealed in agony when Kamfunti and Muzowa sank their fangs into his flesh and crunched his bones between their jaws. As the hyenas gorged on him, the sorcerer’s soul billowed out of his body as a red vapor that shrank across the chamber back into the nkisi, restoring its radiance of light.
Luwi gave both of her companions loving pats on their bodies while they ate. The flesh around their ribs was soft and tender, so they might have fractured a few ribs when they fell, but the village healer would know how to take care of that. More than anything else, Luwi was grateful her beloved Kamfunti and Muzowa were both alive and able to walk.
Other than the smacking and wet crackle of the hyenas’ feasting, the chamber fell silent, with the coppery scent of blood and the sulfuric stink of gunpowder lingering in the air. The silence ended when the surviving Balunta warriors brandished their weapons and hooted cheers of triumph. Luwi joined them with a yipping cry of her own that bounced between the subterranean walls as loud as any monster could roar.