DANUSHIKI

CHAPTER SEVEN

The next morning when it was his turn to be strapped, he doubted if the roasted groundnuts he had earlier eaten would be able to sustain him.

“It’s very heavy,”Danushiki whimpered, staggering under the weight of the rock on his back. “Silence,” Karugo hissed from where he stood.

“We knew very well the stones and rocks were heavy before deciding that they’d be strapped on your backs. This particular training is to prepare you for the rage of war and invasion, because you’ll have to fight till you drop.”

After Karugo left, their instructor reminded them of the distance they were to cover in ten minutes. This was clearly an impossible task for Danushiki and the other recruits in his unit, while they began to see the first streaks of sunlight piercing through the morning fog. The most painful part of this particular exercise as the recruits would soon realize, was that they had to go uphill with the rocks strapped to their bodies. Danushiki took the first step and wished he were carrying any of his elder sisters or a dead gazelle on his shoulders, rather than the small rock presently on his back.

‘The gazelle…’ now he remembered why his mind had gone to that swift animal. He had just witnessed his beloved Sarme dancing seductively in the midst of her peers from a hidden location that fateful day. When he began to go home, he walked past some armed youths and an elderly man who resembled their master. The three young men carried long sharp spears and surrounded their ‘master’ who sat on the ground with bloodstains on his right foot, and the hem of the white woven cloth he wore.

Upon inquiry, he’d learnt that they were after a gazelle that had been causing havoc to their master’s vegetable garden. They also informed him about how their master had injured his right foot on a tree stump while trying to hunt it. Danushiki convinced the three men and volunteered to hunt the gazelle down for the fun of it, since he was not occupied at that moment. He watched as they assisted their master walk towards a large tree, before sitting him down at its base. While they aided their master, Danushiki walked for about three feet from where he’d seen them and knelt on the ground to sniff the earth.

“It has gone in the direction of the Baiwar stream…I’ll need three spears to hunt it down.” The three young men looked at Danushiki with scorn, and were about to protest when their master ordered them to give him the spears he’d asked for, and also assist him to hunt the gazelle. Immediately he’d been given the spears, he jogged towards the Baiwar stream and stopPed at intervals to look for the gazelle’s footprints. Inside the stream, they were eleven bare-chested girls in their late teens, which were in the stream splashing water on their faces. They’d just finished washing their woven clothes and had spread on the smooth rocky surfaces and tree branches to dry. 

They did not see the three men lurking in the bush holding spears, with their gazes on a gazelle munching a large green leaf near the stream.

“Look at that gazelle,” one of the girls called out to the others, “it’s so cute.”

The girls began to swim towards the gazelle until it suddenly stopped chewing and jerked its head up. At that moment Danushiki who was on the opposite side of the footpath where the gazelle stood began to run ahead of it. The girls inside the stream were still admiring the gazelle when all of a sudden, it swallowed the leaf it’d been chewing, twitched its nose and began to walk towards the girls. The next moment, it turned away to the right bank of the stream and began to run for its life, while the three men prepared their spears. The girls were still admiring the gazelle as it ran, when the three men jumped out and began to run after it. The gazelle increased its speed while avoiding shrubs and large plants in its path, while the girls withdrew into the stream leaving only their heads to be seen.

 Danushiki knew this was undoubtedly a fast animal, and congratulated himself for running when he did ahead of the gazelle. Danushiki held one spear in his right hand, with its point facing his right side, while the other two were held loosely in his left hand.

Seconds later, six spears flew through the air and landed inches into the ground, behind the gazelle. The eleven girls were now contemplating coming out of the water, as a sixteen meter space now existed between Danushiki and the gazelle. Danushiki increased his speed for the last time as he kept eyeing the gazelle’s head and horns at intervals. In a split second he threw the first spear at the gazelle, followed by the remaining two, before he jumped over a large stone. The sight was not a nice one as two farmers strode by while he tried to catch his breath. Three small pools of blood were soon visible on the side of the dead gazelle, when Danushiki walked to the dead gazelle and shut its eyelids.

With the spears still stuck in the gazelle’s abdomen, chest and neck he lifted it up, balanced the spine on his head, with his two hands supporting the sides of the dead animal, and began to walk in the same direction the gazelle had run through. The three men gave Danushiki a nod of acknowledgment when they finally met near the Baiwar stream. While they walked back to their master with Danuhiki behind them, they looked away from the smooth wet brown skins, flat tummies and twenty-two breasts which faced their direction. Although it was forbidden for men to stare at naked women in Shaingwa, Danushiki by inadvertence, due to the weight of the dead animal on his head had a glimpse of one of the girls while she headed to where her clothes lay. At that moment, Danushiki wished Sarme was among the girls who were fooling around in the stream.

“That’s…Danushiki, Harshiri’s little boy who is crazy about Sarme…he’s so swift…”

The three men were in a hurry to get away from the girls, but Danushiki slowed his pace when he heard Sarme’s name being mentioned.

“I wish I could prepare that gazelle into something delicious for him, before he does me right throughout the night…” Another girl chipped in, followed by giggles from the others.

Danushiki believed he’d heard enough from the girls and hastened away from their endless remarks.

Moments later, he was pulling out the third spear out of the gazelle’s body in front of their master, while the three young men kept commending his hunting skills.He responded to their master’s man’s words of appreciation, before hurrying back home. He remembered with a smile how he’d expected his mother to shout at him for spending a lot of time outside doing nothing; rather, she’d welcomed him home with open arms and asked him if he could finish the right hind limb of the gazelle he had killed.

“Move faster”, their instructor snarled as Danushiki snapped out of his reverie and began to trudge ahead with the other recruits in his unit.

“If any of you falls down,” he continued while cracking a whip, “he must start all over from the beginning.” The task would have been much easier for the recruits in this particular unit, alongside the nineteen other units, had it not been for the booby traps, swampy passages and other obstacles along the way. Danushiki forged ahead with perspiration streaming down his body after covering barely eighteen meters.

”Move faster if you don’t want to be eaten by the alligators,” their instructor ordered, followed by another c***k of his whip. It was only then Danushiki and the other men realized that they’d been walking on flat stony surfaces on a pool containing at least thirteen alligators, whose noses were poking out of the dark and dirty water intermittently. After this exercise had been completed,

accompanied by heavy panting and trembling they were required to climb a mountain about sixty meters high, with thick greenish ropes dangling around it from the top. The only thing Danushiki remembered being told by his father about Cobra Land which he never forgot was the need for fresh warriors to fight Shaingwa’s battles if they ever arose – ‘fresh’ warriors from Cobra Land.

This rule according to Darjer, was laid down by the gods and goddesses of Shaingwa, and could never be challenged by any mortal. He had told Danushiki that that the gods and goddesses laid emphasis on the potency of ‘fresh venom’ to kill Shaingwa’s enemies…

“Are you all tired?” their instructor asked in a mocking tone, “you are required to run when you reach the top of the mountain,

understood?”

“Yes sir,” the recruits shouted.

The mountain Danushiki and his unit were to climb was a moss covered one with a very slippery surface. An hour later, he had gone almost halfway when he heard the snap of a rope and a heavy thud that followed it thereafter. He raised his left hand to grasp a rope, followed by his right. He managed to continue this way until he reached the top with his entire body drenched with perspiration. Clinging to the ropes strapping the rock to his back with one hand, he tried to ignore the other men around him while he focused on reaching the top. The moment he reached the top with a handful of recruits behind him, he didn’t pause to rest, but immediately began to jog while holding the ropes strapping the rocks to his back with both hands. Deep down he knew the energy developing inside him was not his, as the jogging turned into a run with five recruits running abreast of him. They soon slowed down at the sight of a small canyon covered with thick vegetation, tree stumps and a small footpath measuring thirty-five centimeters. They didn’t need their instructor to remind them that they had to pass and arrive at the other side, as they steadied the rocks on their backs and forged ahead.

While waiting for his legs to fail him, the mysterious ‘energy’ inside him began to surge again, while his mind kept reverting to a scene in his childhood. He was running towards his father’s house and almost fell down in the process, when Harshiri caught him in her arms. Minutes later, while leading the other recruits in his unit through the footpath, he smiled and imagined what would’ve happened to him if any of his elder sisters were in Harshiri’s shoes when he tripped.

The c***k of their instructor’s whip soon brought him back to reality as he proceeded to complete the exercise. Danushiki began to believe that there was a strong possibility of the recruits possessing the same energy the gods and goddesses possessed, if it continued to increase in him and the others at this rate for the next three years.

“We have no time to waste,” a man called Mahar told Danushiki, while shaking under the weight of the rocks on his back and limbs.

“You lead the way,” he whispered to Danushiki while wiping blood from his face, after a thorn-covered branch tore through his left cheek. Without answering him, Danushiki gripped the strapping ropes tightly, increased his walking pace and ignored the bruises on his legs. He and the others in the unit continued this way, step by step atop several stumps until they reached the last ‘lap’ which was a distance of sixty meters.

The last phase was one which required balance, timing and precision. It also required Danushiki and his fellow recruits to cross a very large pool by using the backs of crocodiles as stepping stones. Two men soon overtook Danushiki and ignored the creatures which were now snapping their large jaws.