Golden grass swayed in the gentle wind, shoulder-high and healthy, heads rattling and rustling together softly as they were weighed down by their bounty.  The air was light and dry, the breeze was pleasantly cool against the gathering warmth of the sun.  It had been a good year.  The rain was heavy and warm, the cattle were fat and crops plentiful.  Through the grass cut a road, rich red earth beaten down by feet, cattle, carriages, motorbikes and automobiles.  Down this road trod a herd of men and beasts.


The bull at the head, the heavy and proud beast, was bigger than the fattest cow, and his muscle rippled beneath his thick flesh solid as stone.  His horns were crescents, and nearly touched in the center atop his head, save for the left was just an inch or perhaps two shorter than the other.  He was all white save for his black ears and nose, and cleaned to be sold, so impeccably that he almost looked painted.  Driving the herd of beasts was a group of wild dogs.  They were fit from the season as well, their muscles and bellies full and healthy.  What could be seen of it, anyway.  


The dogs, oyibo, were covered in various combinations of baggy covering clothes, some even wearing shoes.  The man at the head carried a rifle, a thing which was easily recognized, as did the man in the rear, though his was different.  They spoke with each other in an odd blabbering tongue, even their wordless exclamations and their laughters were offensive to the ear.  Their smell carried like their voices, brash and awful.  The wind carried sickeningly sweet fruits and chemicals away from them and diffused it through the grass.  


[i]“Would make a buzzard ill.”[/i]  Tapiwa, the monstrous lion thought to himself as his nose began to burn, unable to move for the moment, lest he be exposed before time.  He lied in wait, shaded and hidden in the grass, his tail low and his eyes narrow.  He could usually smell Adaeze across the road, even over the rottenest cattle and the least-washed ranchers, but right now his nose burnt like he had just huffed gasoline and he couldn’t smell anything, let alone his phantom of a wife.  


Adaeze herself was luckily upwind of the stench, if for nothing else than her comfort.  She didn’t need to smell Tapiwa to know where he was.  From his sheer size he was limited in his stealth, the void of split grass above him a dead giveaway for anyone looking.  He was quiet, yes, and his footfalls were like a mouse’s now that she had taught him better, but his frame would always betray him.  She could almost feel that he did not know where she was.  She could pick up their scent though it was faint enough from upwind it did not burn her like she knew it did Tapiwa.


The presence of multiple firearms complicated their plan slightly, but not enough to really matter.  If there were more than two, now that would have been a problem.  The largest obstacle now though, was her lack of any ability to signal him whatsoever.  There were five dogs, an odd number, and without having marked them beforehand, taking them silently and in good order would be difficult.  But, it would not be impossible.  Once it started, it would be over in an instant, and feeling her husband growing anxious she knew it would start soon.  


The largest dog was at the front, though he was nowhere close to Tapiwa’s size.  His rifle was large, as long as he was, and painted in shades of fresh, leafy green with stripes of a yellow reminiscent of an infant’s vomit.  Two more walked side by side, to the left of the herd, nearly attached at the shoulder.  On the right was a lone dog with a goad, and in the rear was another, the second largest after the one in front.  The one in the rear also had a gun though it was bigger and was red steel and raw wood.  They didn’t know much about those weapons, aside from the danger inherent in them.  Neither had ever used one themselves.  


Adaeze of course knew about guns, how dangerous they were, but she’d never used one herself.  She had tried to explain to Tapiwa about them before, but was unsure as to how well he grasped it.  He had a habit of dismissing anything outside of himself as a weakness, especially weapons, and this was no different. She knew enough to know that the one in the front was automatic and the one in the rear was not, and was less dangerous for it.  The man in front needed to go first, that was obvious.  The man in back, then the rest would fall in whatever order was most convenient.  She began to move towards the front.  


The herd had almost completely passed Adaeze as she watched, which gave her more than fifty meters to catch up to.  She knew her husband would underestimate the gun and would ignore the man in front, so she had to get to it before Tapiwa let his excitement get the better of him.  Moving quickly and quietly was something of her specialty, but as the season was ending and the grass was drying every step became more dangerous, more obvious.  She slowed around the right sentry, still overtaking him, but before she could a sound disturbed her, disturbed the herd, and disturbed the dogs.  


Tapiwa had sat and watched enough.  Not knowing where his wife had gone, not having a laid a plan, and not wanting to regroup and waste the time of setting up a trap for them, He waited for the two dogs to pass him, then eased himself out of the tall grass, keeping himself low and using the herd as his cover.  He was quieter than he once was by a large margin, but still far from silent.  In spite of his noise both of the dogs were oblivious of his presence as he waited for his opportunity.  Tapiwa slowed, and let the dogs walk until there was a good ten or so meters between them.  


Tapiwa crouched down low, compressing his body.  His claws dug into the earth beneath him, the weight of his torso rested on the knuckles of his left hand, his left leg extended behind him in line with his back.  His right leg was bent and compressed beneath him, his muscles tensed, stretching at the skin and ready to explode.   And explode he did.  Thirty feet he covered in barely four bounds, like a bolt of lightning.  Before the dog so much as felt something coming Tapiwa’s jaws hit him right at the back of his neck, and the force of that blow broke his spine all at once.  Tapiwa’s right hand gripped the back of the other dog’s head as he went forward, and as he dropped with both of them, he slammed the other dog’s muzzle into the ground, shattering it inwards onto itself.  He took that one’s throat in his other hand, and held it by both claws as he quickly changed his direction and darted inwards, into the herd of now-frightened and quite disturbed cattle.  


All eyes turned inward to center as loud lowing and frightened stomping of the cattle overtook the sound of rustling grass.  Loud dry thuds and wet gurgles filled the space that was filled with speech and laughter.  Tapiwa had done just as Adaeze thought he would, and she wasn’t in a position to take either of the threats to the two of them.  Before her though, with his back to her, was an unaware dog, and she would take the advantage as it presented itself.  A long arm reached out from the grass, and in an instant pulled him off of his feet and into the grass.  Before he could scream, her jaws were wrapped around his throat, and with a firm squeeze and a sickening, wet crack, the flesh of his throat was crushed.  A twist and pull and a loud tearing noise saw his spine and the meat of his neck exposed to sunlight for the first time, his arteries spraying blood against the bottom of his muzzle and face.  Light began to fade from his eyes and his body kicked and thrashed in its final throes as the lioness moved away from him, retreating deeper into the grass.


The dog in front turned and began to stop the herd.  Stopping the lead bull, the docile old beast he was, by holding him with one horn was enough to stop their forward momentum, but not enough to keep them from spreading out, away from the commotion towards their center.  He yelled something to the dog in the rear and that one began walking into the herd, shouldering his way past the cattle.  The one in front kept turning, keeping his head on a swivel, keeping aware, or trying to at least.  It didn’t do much good as the lions both kept low, lower than his eyes, lower than the backs of his cows.  


Seeing the dog in the rear move closer to the source of the scent of blood that she knew her husband was the source of, Adaeze began moving quickly towards him.   Crossing out of the grass and into the herd was quick, and nearly unnoticeable.  She wove through the cattle, under their legs and between them, getting closer by inches.  She crawled on all fours behind him, moving in his wake, and as she finally came into arms’ reach of him, she took his ankles in both hands and pulled them backwards out from under him.  


The dog barked as his nose hit the dirt, cracking his muzzle audibly, leaving him to groan and gurgle in a momentarily unaware state.  The bolt handle of his rifle smacked him square in the chest, which hurt more than either his bleeding nose or split lip did, and it was only by luck it didn’t crack a rib.  Of course, by missing his ribs it did feel like it punched a hole in his lung, but aside from a knot that he was sure would welcome him in the morning he was none worse for wear.  He lifted up to get his gun out from under him, letting the air back into his chest as he moved into a push-up position.  Before he could make his way to his knees Adaeze fell upon him, the bone of her forearm slamming down against the back of his neck with all of her weight.  He grunted for half of a moment before his face hit the ground again, but was cut off immediately by the sharp, violent, crack of broken spine shatters grinding against themselves inside of his throat.  


Adaeze scrambled to grab the dog’s rifle from above his head, his arms limp and outstretched, lifelessly and weakly clutching the mass of dry wood and rusted steel.  She had seen one of her uncles’ friends use one of these before, the friends in the heavy robes.  She had listened and watched but not been allowed to actually lay hands on the thing then for the same reason her father disapproved her hunting, but she hoped she would remember enough now.  


To say Tapiwa laid in wait would be deceptive.  The time from the moment he made the first move until Adaeze broke the dog’s neck was less than a minute.  Tapiwa simply held the two dead dogs through their last throes, keeping them quiet until they were done twitching, and listening for his wife’s ques.  He counted them, every one, and at that last crack of bone he knew there was only one left.  Tapiwa was the closest a man could get to a beast.  Inside of him was no fear, hesitation was foreign to him.  His face coated in blood and his hands painted with it, he charged towards the dog in front, the dog with the larger painted rifle.  His head low, nothing signalling his coming but his heavy footfalls, still taking cover beneath the cattle.  The dog half-yelled and half-barked, showing the slightest bit of his suppressed wild nature out of reflex and a sudden fear.  

The dog’s  eyes darted up from the herd and in all directions, only now noticing that his brothers were nowhere to be seen and only now noticing the scent of iron in the air flowing through his dulled nose.  In the rear a head rose, a female, feline form clumsily holding his brother’s rifle.  His own rifle found his shoulder as his vision tunneled; old, slick plastic setting into the furred pocket as his sights rose, the ring disappearing as the post centered naturally, his eyes focusing, his hands twitching and making it hard to center.  He hesitated, unable to make the post rest on her or near her, and unwilling to let the R1 rip.  Almost simultaneously, at least to the dog’s perception, came the flash of his brother’s rifle and the sudden appearance of a leaping lion, too close to move, too close to dodge.  He almost reflexively squeezed the trigger in his panic, gripping his rifle as if his life depended on it. 


Adaeze watched as blood and meat and bone exploded from her husband’s back. Three volcanoes of flesh erupting in order, the first just inside the boundary of his ribs, the next two trailing straight up towards his shoulder, the final one exiting just below his collarbone.  From her perspective the two males disappeared as Tapiwa landed on top of the dog.  She heard no more shots, heard no more struggle, and from that she knew her husband’s wounds were serious.  She shoved her way through the herd of cattle, fiddling with the rifle in her hands.  She was inexperienced, but she was quick witted, and found the smoking brass hull flying out and a fresh, only slightly tarnished round forced into battery and locked.  

Tapiwa lay on his stomach on the ground beside the dog, his eyes wide and his breathing heavy, deep and growling.  He didn’t taste blood, he didn’t feel bleeding in his lung.  He’d been speared before and knew that feeling, burned into his mind.  But now his anger kept him from feeling much pain, at least consciously.  From outside of his head he did obviously look in pain, writhing and twitching, but from the inside looking out he was naught but surprised, caught off-guard by sensation and efficacy of this, what he had honestly considered a toy, a weapon for cowards and children, for the weak, an alternative to actual strength.  As his wits came to him he began to feel the pain, slowly bleeding in from the edges of his consciousness, and he realised just how wrong he had been.  He got his right arm under him, his good arm.  His left earnestly felt like it would fall off at the slightest movement.  The pain was like being torn apart and being on fire simultaneously, centered mostly on his shoulder bone and one of his ribs.  


The dog gurgled, laying on his back staring up unto the bright blue sky.  His rifle laid across his chest, and his hands had fallen limp at his sides.  Blood poured from a hole ripped in the right side of his throat, bubbled from his lips and nostrils.  The wind was knocked out of him by the lion’s dead weight hitting his chest, and with the gaping hole in his neck he was having little luck bringing in any more air.  He pitifully watched the sky, his eyes watching the clouds as he let himself drift away towards death, giving up any chance of living.  It was strange then that after that serene cowardice, that capitulation to death, he did tense, he did move towards his rifle as Adaeze’s shadow came over him.  Some primal instinct to live, if only for a moment longer, stole his mind and steeled his resolve.  He lifted his head with a struggle, with the half of the muscles in his neck still answering his calls.  He pushed the rifle off his chest with the half of the blood still pumping in his veins, his strain pushing more violent streams from his throat like a leaking hydraulic hose suddenly put under pressure.


Adaeze didn’t use the sights.  She’d barely used them before.  She pointed it at him, braced under her arm like a spear, and pulled the trigger a second time.  Blood splashed against the dry earth and onto Tapiwa’s face before the dog’s head fell limply down.  The blood poured from him, thicker than one would imagine, like a heavy cream, too rich for the earth to soak up quickly.  It rolled across the silty clay like oil over a cold pan as Tapiwa found his way to his feet, hunching forward as ragged breath and shaky feet rose a cloud of dust around him.  Tapiwa heard Adaeze’s rifle clatter in the periphery, though his own heartbeat, breathing, and the ringing in  his ears formed a white noise that nearly deafened him.  


Adaeze quickly moved around Tapiwa, to his uninjured side, and hooked herself under his arm, straightening him up.  She knew his lung was fine, or else he’d be hacking blood, at least she thought.  He was struggling to breath and blood came in pulses from his wounds, pouring down his back and chest.  His pupils seemed to take up half of his eyes, only the slightest golden rim around great black saucers laid upon bloodshot sclera. Adaeze was frightened, which was rare for her.  Tapiwa took damage in stride, absorbed pain well as a treasured and well-earned skill.  this kind of tunnel-vision, this kind of weakness in him wasn’t normal.  He hadn’t spoken yet and he was still struggling to breath, and she remembered the only time he had ever been hurt this bad before.  A chill ran up her spine before she finally spoke to him sternly, hiding her fear well.  “We’re going to Komona.  We’ll get you sewn up and you can rest, and we can live off of these cattle and skins for the rest of the season.  You know how much they love dogskins.”  


To Be Continued.


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