Chanda's Wars (15 page)

N
ELSON STAYS UPSET
till I offer him lunch. A little of my chicken and maize bread and he settles down. I think he's even impressed when I tell him how I figure the trails from the rock will eventually hook up. At least he doesn't roll his eyes.

I watch him eat. I've never seen anyone do it like him before. I'm glad. He's kind of disgusting. He holds his food to his mouth with both hands and nibbles away like a rodent. Crumbs stick to the down over his lip. Every so often he flicks his tongue up to lasso them. He practically licks his nose. Not that I care. I'm too busy staring at his eyelashes. And the dimple in his chin.

I have to admit, he's pretty good looking. Smart, too. He's right about not trekking in the heat. Still, the longer we wait, the more I fidget.

Nelson watches me wriggle. “What's the matter?” he says. “You got fleas?”

“Very funny. I'm thinking about Mandiki. Every minute we're here, he's getting farther away.”

“I doubt it.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “He's been on the move since yesterday afternoon. Attacked a town. Escaped with kids and loot. He'll be resting.”

“Then now's the time to catch up.”

“Don't worry. We'll catch up easy.”

“How?”

A chicken fiber's stuck between his molars. He tries to suck it loose while he talks. “What's the key to Mandiki's success? He's traveling with a small raiding party. That gives him speed and surprise. He can move faster than an army, because his unit is small. It can attack and escape at will. Come out of nowhere, like a gang of cattle thieves.”

The fiber's still stuck. He covers his mouth and turns away. I watch his elbow move up and down as he pries at it with a fingernail. “Mandiki's advantage against the army is our advantage against him,” he continues, mouth full of finger. “He's slowed by kids carrying weapons and crates, traveling by night. All we've got is our knapsacks, and we
travel by day. As for surprise? He doesn't expect to be followed: the army's off-guard, the people are scared. So he's in no rush. He'll take his time, save his strength till he needs it.”

The thread of chicken pulls loose. I watch from behind as he inspects it. “When I was little, our post got robbed by cattle thieves,” he says casually. “Papa tracked 'em down. Killed 'em with his slingshot. Stones to the temple. They never knew what hit 'em.”

“You're planning to kill Mandiki with a slingshot?”

Nelson turns back to me, popping the chicken bit in his mouth. “Who knows?” he chews thoughtfully. “But I brought one with me.” He fishes it out of his knapsack. “Made it myself. Like it?” I nod. He's stitched a leather pouch around a strip of inner tube, and tied the tube's rubber ends to a forked piece of mopane wood. “If we run out of food, I can pick off a bird or a lizard, like I do at the post. If we run into the General, well…”

I search his face. He said things had changed. But more than “things” have changed. He's changed too. This isn't the Nelson who ran terrified across the dead land. The one afraid to follow the rebels to Tiro. This Nelson is fearless. Reckless even. What's happened? What's he hiding?

 

A few hours later, my nausea's gone. My body's cooled. So has the air. Before we leave, I look for a head cover. Nelson needs his bandanna for himself. I take Iris's swath of mosquito net, fold it four times, and tie it under my chin.

Nelson laughs. “Some kerchief. Is mosquito net the new fashion in Bonang?”

“What do you suggest?” I joke back. “My underwear?”

We skip up the ridge to get a better view of things. I sweep my hand across the trails. “How do we solve the maze?”

“Same way I do when a cow wanders off in a field full of spoor.”

“Spoor?”

“Spoor are tracks,” he sighs. “Anyway, if a cow wanders off, I walk in a wide circle beyond the grazing field. If my cow's truly gone, somewhere her spoor will cross my arc. That's where I pick up the hunt.”

“You always find her?”

“Sooner or later. She'll be chewing her cud, looking up at me with her big, stupid eyes as if to say, ‘Oh, hello. What took you so long?' Sort of like you this afternoon.”

“Ha ha. So how far out do you think the maze goes?”

“About where you got to, I'm guessing.” He scratches the back of his neck. “Mandiki'd want to pitch camp by dawn. He wouldn't have had much time. Certainly not enough to mess around in a patch of thornbushes in the dark.”

“So, then…we make a big arc beyond those bushes?”

“We would, if I didn't already know where the paths end up.” He points to a massive boulder breaking the wall of bushes. “The rebels went through there.”

“How do you know?”

Nelson's throat catches. “Mandiki's got Pako as his guide. Except for the flatbed, this is Pako's route when he runs away.”

“Then why did you waste time telling me about cows?”

Nelson pauses. “We probably won't survive this. You know that, don't you?”

A chill goes up my spine. “I try not to think about it.”

“Well, think about it. “He squeezes my hand. “You shouldn't be here. You really shouldn't. But you are, and I can't stop you. What I
can
do, is teach you my bush tricks, so you can carry on when they kill me.”

“If.”

“When.” He pauses. “Do you understand?”

I nod. But inside, it's like the earth's giving way. I'm falling. Before I crash, I grab hold of my knapsack. “Right. Let's go.”

“S
O WHERE'S
P
AKO
taking the rebels?” I ask as we go around the boulder, through the wall of bushes.

“A waterhole straight north of here. It's pretty much his private place. Least, I've never seen anyone else there.”

“How far?”

“Maybe three hours,” he shrugs. “Three and a half.”

We don't say much at first, then Nelson starts going on about Pako's hideaway. I'm not sure if it's for my benefit, or to keep himself from being bored.

“Pako's waterhole's a good size,” he says. “It must've been made twenty, thirty years ago, before the elephants and hippos got hunted out. Back then, it would've been just a small depression on some flatland. But by the time the animals disappeared, they'd rolled, stomped, and mucked about in it so much, they'd made it into this huge
pond. Nice and deep. The water that collects in rainy season stays for months.”

According to Nelson, there's only a few active posts in the area. Over the last ten years, everyone else has passed away. Whole families. “A lot of pneumonia,” he says. But we both know what he means. “That's why this place makes a great stopover for the rebels. They can stock up on water, and there's nobody to report them.”

I'm glad Nelson knows the way. Following the rebels' path is getting hard. Since the stretch of rock, the grasses barely come to our knees. Without the thickness and height to weigh them down, they've been able to right themselves in the sun.

Nelson doesn't care. He shows me other signs of rebel movement. Here and there, blades broken mid-stalk: “Folks pick grass as they walk, without even thinking.” We come to a place full of flies and stink: “They shit, too,” he grins.

The vegetation thins. I see spots where people have stepped outside the narrow path. The prints aren't as clear as the ones I saw this morning. “When the sun dries the dirt, the edges of the spoor crumble,” Nelson explains. Something catches his eye. He squats. “See the wavy line across that one?”

I nod. It's the trail of a small snake.

“Watch for anything crossing the spoor. Grass snakes like that one come out early, find a rock, and bake all day. What does that tell us?”

“Well, that print was here before the snake, and the snake was here early morning. So that print was made by dawn.”

Nelson nods and winks. It's like being in class with Mr. Selalame. There's so much I don't know, but the way he acts when I get something right, I want to learn more.

The sun begins to drop. Even with less light, the prints are suddenly easier to spot. Are my eyes adjusting to this new world? Am I turning into a tracker? I grab Nelson's arm. “It's like I have new eyes,” I say, all excited. “The spoor are lifting off the ground!”

He laughs. “When the sun's low, the rim around the track casts a shadow. Every mark—claw, hoof, or boot—looks underlined. That's why tracking's best just after dawn and before dusk.”

My shoulders slump. “Oh.”

“Cheer up. At least you're not hallucinating.”

There's a haze on the horizon. “It'll be dark soon,” I say. “How far to the mudhole?”

“Under a mile. We'll have time to make camp, wash up.”

“What if the rebels are still there?”

Nelson frowns. “Good question.”

 

The waterhole is in the middle of a tract of land, maybe a quarter of a mile across, sunk into the landscape. It's as if a giant has pressed a shallow baking pan into the earth; the mudhole is a biscuit at the center. We approach the edge of the high ground on our knees. Nelson holds up his hand for silence. He listens hard, scans the sky, and motions me to lie flat. We crawl up to the rim on our bellies and peer down the rugged slope to the land below.

The animals that made the mudhole were pretty smart. The area around the water is flat as a pancake. Predators could be spotted with ease, or smelled, depending on the wind. In case of attack, there's a sweep of thornbushes for escape. Back then, this would've been like the pictures Mr. Lesole has of mudholes in Mfuala Park: the nearby trees stunted, dead or dying, their leaves devoured, their bark ringed by elephant tusks; the vegetation by the water trampled to bare mud.

Today, free of elephants, it's a lush oasis. The circle of high ground we're on has sent down enough runoff to cre
ate a woodland. I see acacia and baobab trees. Sedges and reeds line the mudhole's banks; algae blooms green the surface. It's become a place where people can hide, shielded from view by thick branches and broad-leafed undergrowth.

Nelson scouts with his eyes. Me, I need the binoculars from Mr. Lesole.

“See all the birds?” he says. “The egrets on that candelabra tree? The water-walkers off the far bank of the mudhole? Nobody's squawking. Good sign. I'll crawl down, get a better look. Keep your eyes peeled. If you spot anyone, back away. I'll see that you're not here, and retreat. If everything's fine, I'll wave an all-clear.”

He slithers down the slope. I watch him zigzag from a termite mound to a sausage tree to an acacia. He's amazing. Even though I know where he is, half the time I can't see him. It's as if he decides to be invisible.

Now he's beside a date palm. They're mainly up in the park around the river. Way back, an animal must have wandered down with dates in its poop and dropped them here by the waterhole. My god, the park. Traveling north all day, we must be halfway there.

I scan the high ground for rebels. Nothing. I look back
for Nelson. Where did he go? I swear at my binoculars. With a cracked lens, it's hard to focus.

Oh, there he is. On the top of the date palm. He must be scanning the rebels' spoor. There's spoor everywhere. No surprise. The rebels arrived, made camp, and moved around before leaving. I see breaks in the sedges where they broke through to get water.

I zoom in on his face and adjust the lenses. He looks up at me and grins. Can he tell I'm staring at him? He waves the all-clear.

By the time I join him, Nelson's sitting on a hollow tree that's fallen near the mudhole. A candelabra tree grows through the heavy mulch at the far end.

“They camped here last night,” he says, pointing at the ashen remains of a campfire. “But here's the best news. We've almost caught up. They only left within the hour.”

“How do you know?”

“The earth has a thin, dry crust. When it's disturbed, the damp underneath shows up darker. The tracks we saw today were made last night. The sun had dried them out. But look…” He points to the spoor in front of us. “Those tracks are darker than the ground around. The moisture hasn't had time to evaporate.”

“Which means…they're new.”

“Well done, O wise one.” I know he's being sarcastic, but he's smiling. I smile back.

The shadow from the high ground rolls over the woodland. Puffs of tiny insects float into the dusky air. I get a mouthful, spit them out. “With the rebels so close, we should get a move-on.”

Nelson shakes his head. “I wouldn't know where to go. Pako never went much farther than this, and we can't see tracks in the dark. We'd lose them easy.”

I turn away in frustration.

“Look, with the kids and the dark, the rebels are slower than us, remember? If we head out at first light, we'll catch up by tomorrow night. That's a promise.”

We spread our blankets by the thornbushes, then Nelson washes up in the waterhole. When he comes back, I take my turn, and he makes supper. He's the sort to sneak a peek, so I wait till I'm past the sedges to take off my clothes. On my way across the bank, I notice something odd. There are dozens of tracks in the mud, but all of them go into the water. How can that be? Didn't the rebels come out?

I smile with the answer: When they left, Mandiki made them walk backward. It's a trick to confuse people about the
direction you're headed.

I remember this from a game of hide-and-seek when I was little, before we moved to Bonang. My older cousins had entered a stream and retraced their steps backward. I saw footprints heading into the water and none leaving. I thought they'd drowned. After Mama calmed me down, she showed me how to tell the trick. “When people move forward,” she said, “they hit the ground with their heels; the heels press deeper. Going backward, they walk on their toes; the toes press deeper.” I tried it. It was true.

Both kind of prints are at the mudhole. Heels-deeper, as the rebels marched forward into formation, then toes-deeper as they headed away. Follow the toe prints, we'll have their route. Tomorrow morning, I'll shock Nelson with what I know. I can't wait to see his face.

By the time I've cleaned up, Nelson's laid out our meal: some biltong and biscuits from his food stash. The biltong's tastier than the beef jerky we get in Bonang.

“Papa loved extra coriander,” Nelson smiles. “Pepper, too.”

The sun's gone down behind the high ground. The sky's a dusty gray. A few minutes later, a sheet of stars. All I see are the silhouettes of treetops, and a few silver streaks—
the moon's reflection peeking through the cracks in the reed curtain around the waterhole. I lie on my blanket, my knapsack under my head as a pillow. “Good night.”

“'Night,” Nelson says back. There's a pause, then he adds: “You should shake out that ‘kerchief' of yours. Use it to keep the mosquitoes off.”

I chuckle. “Too many holes. That netting's only good to make me look like an idiot.”

“You aren't an idiot,” Nelson says quietly. “You don't look like one either.”

Does he mean it? I look over. How I wish I could see in the dark.