Chapter 37: The Emptying Scrubland

Headman Shikongo of the Eastern Ridge village woke to a sound that chilled him to his core. 

Silence. 

In a traditional Owambo settlement, the morning was never silent. Even in the suffocating grip of a fifteen-month drought, there should have been the sound of women pounding the last remnants of grain, the bleating of the few surviving goats, or the soft chatter of subjects gathering at the dried-up wells. 

Shikongo stepped out of his central sleeping hut, wrapping his leopard-skin kaross tightly around his shoulders. The morning air was bitterly cold, but it was the sight of his village central area that made his stomach drop. 

It was empty. 

Not just from animal, but even the children were gone. The village tree where the children usually played stood tall in the cold wind, giving of an air of lonely destitute. The rising smoke from cooking fires was nowhere in sight. The village had become a ghost settlement overnight.

"Where is everyone?" Shikongo barked at his eldest son, who was sprinting into the homestead with wide, panicked eyes. 

"They are gone, Father," the young man gasped, pointing desperately toward the western horizon. "The blacksmith's family, the weavers, the farmers... even your third cousin and his wives. They packed their gourds and walking sticks in the middle of the night. They just walked away."

Shikongo’s face twisted in fury and disbelief. "Walked away? To where? The town governor has sealed his granaries! There is no food in the kingdom!"

"Not the town, Father," his son swallowed hard. "They went west. To the boy-chief. To Amutenya yaAmupolo."

Village-head Shikongo froze. The Fool of the Scrubland. 

For the past year, Shikongo and the other neighboring village-heads had laughed at the rumors of Amutenya digging dirt trenches in a drought and feeding useless refugees. They had fully expected the boy to starve to death by the fourth moon, bankrupting his own family out of naive pity. 

"Bring me my spear," Shikongo growled, his patriarchal pride flaring into dangerous anger. "And summon the village elders and other village-heads. Now!"

By midday, the leaders of the four neighboring settlements and their village elders had gathered under the shade of a dying mopane tree on the border of their lands. The mood was a toxic mixture of panic and outrage. 

Headman Iita, a scarred veteran in the eastern raids, slammed the butt of his spear into the dust. "Over two hundred of my people vanished in the last moon! First, it was the young men looking for wages. But last night, entire bloodlines left! They are stealing our lifeblood!"

"They are not stealing them," Headman Nekongo corrected bitterly, his face drawn and exhausted. "My own brother left this morning. He told me Amutenya’s village has a river flowing through the sand. He said they eat cured meat, work with clay pipes, and sleep in brick houses. The people are not being kidnapped, Iita. They are choosing to leave."

"It is a trick!" Shikongo shouted, refusing to accept the reality that his traditional authority was evaporating. "It is a temporary illusion bought with stolen trade goods. A boy who barely has hair on his chin cannot build a river! He is hoarding our people to build his own prestige, and when his food runs out, they will all starve!"

The four men looked at each other, the grim reality of their situation settling over them like a shroud. Without subjects to farm the land, draw water, and pay tribute, a headman was nothing but a beggar with an empty title. Their entire economic foundation had been quietly pulled out from under them.

"We cannot let this stand," Shikongo decreed, his grip tightening on his iron spear. "If we do not bring our people back by force, our lineages will end in this drought. We gather our remaining loyalists, our sons, and our guards. We march on Amutenya's borders today."

"And if he fights back?" Nekongo asked cautiously. 

"With what?" Iita scoffed. "A handful of starving scavengers and some wooden palisades? We will tear his fences down, strip his remaining grain, and drag our subjects back by their ears. We will remind this boy how the kingdom truly operates."

As the sun began to dip, casting long, bloody shadows across the desert, a war party of roughly eighty traditional guards and angry loyalists marched westward. 

They expected to arrive at a disorganized, starving refugee camp. They expected to kick down wooden fences and assert their divine right to rule. 

They had absolutely no idea they were marching toward an industrialized, ten-district municipality guarded by a heavily armed, 700-man professional military force. They unfortunately were marching directly into the lions mouth.