and then stood with bowed head just inside the door of the great hall. The masters and their females lay, or reclined, on gilded wooden couches along the three walls of the great high-roofed hall. Along the fourth wall, on either side of the door, stood cup-bearer slaves. Female slaves were carrying big baskets loaded with fruit, meat and corncakes, all ready to replenish the cup or the plate of any of the masters who might so wish.
There were small ivory-legged tables near each couch. On one stood the shining beer-cups while on the other stood the cake trays and meat plates. I could not help noticing that most of the masters now paid more attention to the beer cups than to the meat trays. The masters wore nothing save golden necklaces and bracelets, and white cloaks which they had only thrown around their waists because of the humidity. The females wore only light skirts and many golden bracelets and necklaces. A few even had broad golden bands around their heads. Their hair, ranging in colour from red to brown and to jet black, cascaded about their smooth shoulders like living smoke. Through the ringing of loud laughter and buzz of talking came my owner’s voice from the far corner of the hall:
‘You there, at the door, come to the middle of the hall.’
‘As you command, Master,’ I called out, drawing myself erect and stepping into the open space in the centre of the great hall.
‘Look at him,’ roared my owner to the rest of the masters. ‘Look at that tall black brute – only sixteen and yet as tall as an adult and just as heavily muscled. I am willing to wager two big elephant tusks full of gold dust that none of your slaves can beat him in a sword fight.’
‘Taken,’ shrieked one of the others – a White woman. ‘I have a female slave who can tear that brute of yours to pieces!’
‘What do you wager?’ demanded a chorus of excited voices.
‘Four cups of gold and two golden plates,’ snapped the black-haired female.
‘Taken!’ cried my owner. ‘Go and fetch your bitch and let us have a good fight tonight.’
The woman snapped a command to one of her slave boys and he flew out of the hall into the night. Then my owner ordered a bronze helmet and a sword brought and given to me to arm myself with. The helmet was shaped like a human head and had a nose and two holes shaped like eyes; it covered my face completely. The sword was of iron with a bronze hilt and was both sharp and very heavy, with a needle-sharp point. It was the same sword I had used in six previous fights – fights between me and fellow slaves in which I always had the doubtful honour of being the winner.
‘Fight well and win, second slave,’ roared my owner. ‘Fight well and win or, by the demons of hell, I shall cut your dirty black throat and fling your smelly carcass to the dogs!’
I drew myself up with pride and raised my sword high in salute. ‘I shall fight and win, Oh Master, I shall win as I have always won before.’
‘Insolent pig,’ hissed the White female whose slave I was due to fight. ‘We shall see about that.’
Putting women fighters against men was one of the new ways of entertainment the Strange Ones had invented. But I had never had to fight a woman before and also, as I stood there waiting, a strange feeling of uneasiness began to grow within me – so much so that at one time I almost felt like dropping my sword and running out of the hall.
A few moments later, my tall female opponent came striding through the door wearing, like myself, a helmet and carrying a long sharp sword. Like me, too, she was naked save for a green loincloth around her broad womanly hips. She went to where her mistress lay on the couch like a glittering snake and prostrated herself in salute. Then she saluted everybody else in the hall by raising her sword.
‘Fight,’ snapped her mistress. ‘Kill him, quick!’
Like a striking mamba, the fighting woman whirled upon me, her sword thrusting viciously at my stomach. But I sidestepped and the flashing sword only gave me a slight, though painful, cut in the side. Then I closed with her and our blades flashed and whirled in the torchlight, both of us fighting like the trained killers we were. Twice she wounded me with the darting point of her blade and twice I returned the compliment. For a while neither of us gained any advantage, then at last I forced her to give way by wounding her deeply in the thigh and above the left breast.
By this time the hall was in uproar, and none of the masters and their females was sitting any more; all were on their feet like so many bloodthirsty children and shouting encouragement to first one and then the other of us. Wagers flew back and forth and the owner of the female slave, stung to anger by my owner’s vicious taunts, shrieked angrily that if I defeated her fighting woman, she would become my owner’s wife for the night.
‘Not for the night only,’ cried my owner. ‘Not for tonight only, but for ten more nights!’
‘Yes,’ snarled the female, ‘if your slave wins.’
My adversary began to press me savagely now. She seemed anxious to end the fight as quickly as possible by killing me. Her sword was nothing less than a hissing silvery blur and only my skill saved me from being fatally wounded. Then at last I struck a blow at her that all but cut off her left breast. She fell with a loud cry of agony and my sword point entered her chest.
Loud cheers rang through the hall as I knelt down and removed her helmet to take to my owner as a trophy.
As I removed the helmet, the woman’s agony-clouded eyes opened and a look of great puzzlement and surprise spread over her dark beautiful face. She was looking at something on my chest, the black, moonshaped birthmark that stands out against the dark-brown of my body. She could not see my helmet-masked face and she could not see the tears that came welling into my eyes as I recognised her. She was the woman whom I had known most intimately once upon a time – sixteen years ago when she carried me in her womb, brought me forth, and suckled me.
‘It is your mother,’ whispered the old man Obu unnecessarily.
Sixteen years before, as a young girl, herself born in slavery, she had been mated to a young slave by the Slave Breeders, and had conceived and given birth to me. Like all slaves with suckling young, she had spent two years in the underground slave stalls where breeding took place, nursing her baby – me. After another year, when I was three, they took me away from her and I had never seen her again until this fateful night.
But she had not forgotten me and she particularly remembered the strange crescent-shaped birthmark on my chest, the birthmark that had excited the other slave mothers so many years ago.
Blind with tears I tore my helmet off and threw it to the floor. With great difficulty she opened her mouth and said: ‘My son . . . you are my son . . . Lumukanda!’
‘Forgive me, mother . . . Oh, forgive me . . .’ I cried.
‘Dear child,’ she said with a strange pitying smile, ‘I forgive you. You did not know – I could have killed you too. I am glad it is I, not you, who die.’
‘Mother, don’t die, don’t die,’ I cried.
Her eyes closed as I held her tightly, madly and desperately to my tear-bedewed chest. I looked up briefly to find that the hall was fast emptying of people. The masters were leaving in groups of threes and fours with their females, their laughter ringing loudly as they went into the moonlit night. My owner had already retired to his room with my mother’s mistress and soon only my friends, Lubo and Obu, were left with me in the silent hall. Then my parent’s eyes opened for
