Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [34]
“If they come to you, you may go to them,” he said at parting.
For the greater part of three months Bosambo was Tempter. He withdrew his spies from the forest, he sent secret word to the Akasava king, inviting him to great hunts; he conveyed taunts and threats calculated to arouse all that was warlike in his bosom, but the Akasava king rejected the overtures and returned insult for insult. And Bosambo brooded on roast duck and grew morose.
Then on a day Sanders had a message from one of his spies who kept a watchful eye upon the people of the Akasava. And there was need for watchfulness, apart from the trouble with Bosambo, for it had been a year of record crops, and when the crops are plentiful and goats multiply in the Akasava country, and men grow rich in a season, and are relieved for the moment of the strain which judiciously applied taxation and the stubbornness of the soil impose, their minds turn to spears, and to the ancient stories of Akasava valour which the old men tell and the young maidens sing. And they are apt, in their pride, to look around for new enemies, or to furbish old grievances. For this is the way of all peoples, primitive or civilised, that prosperity and idleness are the foundations of all mischief.
Cala cala, which means long ago, the N’gombi people, who were wonderful workers of iron, had stolen a bedstead of solid brass, bequeathed to the king of the Akasava by a misguided missionary, who in turn had received it from as misguided a patron. And this bedstead of brass was an object of veneration and awe for twenty years; and then, in a little war which raged for the space of three moons between the Akasava and the N’gombi, the Akasava city had been taken and sacked, and the bed of brass had gone across the river into the depths of the forest, and there, by cunning N’gombi hands, had reappeared in the shape of bowls and rings and fine-drawn wire of fabulous value. For any object of metal is an irresistible attraction to the craftsmen of the forest – did not Sanders himself lose a steel anvil from the lower deck of the Zaire? The story of how ten men swam across the river, carrying that weight of metal, is a legend of N’gombi.
The true city of these people is situated two days’ march in the forest; and hither, one fine morning, came messengers from the king of the Akasava – four haughty men, wearing feathers in their hair and leopard skins about their middle, and each man carrying a new shield and a bunch of bright killing spears, which the N’gombi eyed with professional interest.
“O king, I see you,” said the chief envoy, one M’guru. “I am from your master, the king and lord of the Akasava, who, as you know, are the greatest people in these lands, being feared even by Sandi because of their valour and wonderful courage.”
“I have heard of such people,” said the king of the N’gombi, “though I have never seen them, except the spearers of fish who live by the riverside.”
This was designed and accepted as a deadly insult, for the Akasava are great fish-eaters, and the N’gombi do not eat fish at all, preferring frogs and snakes (as the slander goes).
“My king will bring his people to see you,” said the envoy significantly. “And this he will do soon, if you do not return to us the bedstead you stole cala cala, and which my king desires.”
The king of the N’gombi was smoking a long-stemmed pipe with a tiny bowl, and the rancid scent of the native tobacco was an offence to the nose of the Akasava messenger.
“Am I M’shimba M’shamba, that I can bring from nothing something?” he asked. “As to your bedstead, it is not! Nor will it ever be again. Take this word to the little king of the Akasava, that I am M’shulu-M’shulu, son of B’faro, son of M’labo, son of E’goro, who put the Akasava city to the flames and carried away the bedstead which was his by right. That I, this man who speaks, will meet the Akasava, and many will run quickly home, and they will run with the happiest, for they will be alive. This palaver is finished.”
All this the embassy carried back to the Akasava, and the lokalis beat,