On some days, time stops moving.

The violence started long before the sun cast its warm light on the earth. It was noon, only a few hours since the senseless slaughter started, to the soldiers wondering who among them would be slain next, it felt like it had been days.

“Sh-himunenga we have lost a lot of men, if-if-ff this keeps up we are going to—”

Shimunenga, the commander of the doomed and hopeless army couldn’t take his eyes off the battlefield. This was a war he had to win, if he lost here then it would all be over. All his dreams, his men’s hopes and the hopes of the people he was fighting for would die here.

“Shim—"

He raised his left hand, silencing the person interrupting his focus before he could voice his next thought. After observing the onslaught a bit longer, he shifted his attention to the thin, scared person with a big scar stretching from his forehead to his ear.

“Kaanda, be quiet. I cannot think with you pestering me,” he said, his voice deep and filled with determination, but also filled with a kind of desperation, the kind a man fighting for his life has.

“They keep fighting until the time is right,” said Shimunenga gripping his long spear even tighter.

 

 

The realization that this battle had been a lost cause from the very beginning was not doing him any favours, but he had to fight even if all hope was lost. He had lead his enemies to fight in the dry lands between two mountains.

Shimunenga stood a distance from where the fighting was, watching intently as if taking eyes his away would result in his men being wiped out. He stood with twenty men behind him, facing the sweaty backs of their outnumbered comrades fighting a losing battle.

Kaanda couldn’t keep still. He wiped the sweat off his brow with a trembling hand while holding his spear weakly. He kept looking back and forth between Shimunenga and the battlefield littered with corpses.

It was a hot sunny day but the ground was wet, wet with rivers of blood. Everywhere the fighting soldiers stepped, blood, thick and sticky. Its stench filled the air, but one doesn’t even mind the nauseating smell when fighting for sweet life.

“S-see? Two more of our s-soldiers have fallen, I mean… Shimunenga—”

“Be quiet Kaanda! I know what I’m doing.”

Shimunenga had nothing more to say to him and continued watching. When Shimunenga set out for blood, his men had been outnumbered nearly three to one, but he had managed to bring the ratio down in the middle of the night, if only a little.

And now the men that had been fighting were being pushed back. Their enemy’s number was just too superior and overwhelming. When Shimunenga judged that the men had reached a certain distance, he called out to Kaanda.

“Kaanda, now!”

Kaanda quickly called for a retreat. Less than twenty men on the front lines ran back at full speed. Their enemies didn’t we want to give them a chance to retreat, they had the upper hand after all, so they went on the pursuit. The number pursuing them was closer to forty.

“The ropes, now!” Shouted Shimunenga, nearly bursting his men’s ear drums.

On the word, seven men sprinted forward. When they got to a certain distance, they crouched down in pairs with their hands deep into the soil. The last man stood within ear shot of all the men, waiting to give a very important command. If he missed the timing by even a fraction of a second, they’d be dead men.

Their retreating allies rushed passed them and once they were all behind them, and the enemy near, the man standing behind the six men gave the word and on his order, they yanked hidden ropes from the ground and pulled with all their might.

The pursuers in front ran into sharp wooden spikes that had risen from the ground. The spikes were wide and arranged like a barricade. There were three of these barricades, and each one had stabbed four or five men through the chest, sending them to meet their ancestors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the enemy behind understood what was happening, they halted and moved slowly, warry of any nasty surprises. The six men let go of the ropes and fell back.

Using clever and unconventional tactics was how Shimunenga had thinned his enemy’s number, though, he couldn’t use those clever tactics forever. When fighting an enemy stronger than you, strike when he does not expect you, flee when he expects you to fight. Cowardly tactics.

“Now! Line up. The enemy is coming and only your blood will satisfy them. Defend this position,” shouted Shimunenga.

There was a chance they could win this war. It wouldn’t be easy but the chance was definitely there. The strategy they had developed, the hit and run, was working well so far.

Fifteen of the men that had been standing behind Shimunenga now lined up in front of him, each with a short spear, staring down the men rushing towards them.

“The rest of you pick up a long spear!”

The men that had come retreating discarded their short spears and picked up a long spear. They did this quickly and swiftly, there was no room for error. Hesitation meant death.

“Shimunenga, move back, you’re too close—”

The warning came from Kaanda. Shimunenga understood what Kaanda was getting at and retreated a short distance to where Kaanda and a few other squad leaders stood, but still within earshot of his soldiers.

“Ready!!” He shouted, his voice roaring through the whole field.

Fifteen men with long spears stood behind the men with the short spears. The men stood in such a way that the pointy end of the long spears was not easily visible from the other side. 

Their enemy was now upon them. The men with the long spears impaled the rushing men. One spear, one man. Once they stabbed the soldiers, they retreated behind Shimunenga and the men with the short spears engaged the enemy.

They had reduced the number of men that had come pursuing them significantly. This was the silver lining Shimunenga was looking for. If he kept reducing his enemy’s numbers like this then by sunset they’d be on even ground.

His enemy’s advantage was the large numbers. Shimunenga’s soldiers were powerful and aggressive but numbers were still numbers. Just when they thought they’d gotten a lucky break, more men came charging.

*

Shimunenga had set out with fifty men to fight the Ngoni raiders who’d been laying his people’s fields to waste. He was surprised to find that their number was not as small as he was expecting, out numbering his men, three to one.

The first plan had been executed the night before the battle, when the enemy was not expecting them. Shimunenga had sent a ten-man squad, led by Bautu, into his enemy’s camp. The squad killed nearly forty men, losing only five in the confusion. They moved quietly and aimed for the throat so that whoever was killed wouldn’t scream and have them surrounded.

*

After fighting for what felt like a lifetime, the sun looked orange. Darkness would soon be upon them.

“Bautu!” Shimunenga called out.

A man, calm and collected, stepped forward to stand next to Shimunenga. He was well built but not bulky, he didn’t have any notable features about him, just plain looking eyes and a head starting to look a little grey.

“Yes,” he answered, his eyes fixed on the fighting soldiers.

“Look there,”Shimunenga pointed with his spear to the field stained with blood, “the dead have left us many spears. Have two men under your charge bring them. Send the fastest men.”

A suicide mission. The two men had to be quick so that they wouldn’t be caught in the fight, even stray spears thrown at the right time in the right place would kill anyone of them. But one does not go to war for fear of death, does he?

“Shimwala!” Bautu called out, another man came forward, anxiously waiting to hear why he’d been called, “we are going to collect spears from there.” Bautu pointed to the field.

Shimwala nodded and the two bolted off immediately, they understood that they needed to be quick. They were both lean and tall, meaning they had the best chance of carrying out this mission. Though, Shimunenga did not expect Bautu to do it himself.

Bautu and Shimwala pried as many spears as they could from the many corpses who’s spirits had gone to meet the ancestors. They did that three times, each time carrying about six spears each. 

“Well done,” said Shimunenga when the two had collected as many spears as they could, the spears that remained were now closer and closer to the soldiers fighting which made it difficult to collect them.

The sun began to redden.

“Haboombe! Go tell Nachiinga to fall back.”

He ordered a soldier behind him to tell another soldier to fall back. When the soldier that was told to fall back returned, the other one, Haboombe, took his place on the battlefield.

Shimunenga kept swapping out soldiers one by one until all the ten men that were still fighting were replaced by those who’d been standing behind him, however, Bauta and three soldiers had not been allowed to fight.

At a time, Shimunenga would send two soldiers on the battle field and when they got there, they would swap positions with two others when they got the chance. It wasn’t a seamless transition and one of his soldiers had been killed because the timing of the swap was bad.

The sun was now about to set and the number of men on both sides had reduced. This outcome was still in favour of his enemy. Unlike the commander he was fighting, Shimunenga didn’t have any men in reserve, he wasn’t going to receive any reinforcements at the very last minute to save him.

“Kaanda! Follow the men and command them all to fall back, now!” Shimunenga called for a full retreat.

Kaanda ran at full speed. The distance was short from where they were so it wouldn’t take long for the men to reach Shimunenga’s position. Shimunenga turned to face his men, perhaps for one last attempt to boost morale.

“We started with fifty of our brothers and now we are fewer, are we going to let their deaths be in vain as we retreat with our tails between our legs like some pathetic wild dogs? No! Many of us have heard the stories of the Twenty Spears, of how these lands trembled at the mere mention of them. We’ve heard the stories of how only twenty soldiers decimated entire armies of thousands of soldiers. This is our time, this is our moment. This is where we end this war, victory is in sight and we will begin a new legend! We will go back to our women and children with our heads held high!”

The short speech moved the hearts of his men. They rose up in an uproar. They forgot their tiredness and strength surged through them again, ending the war meant they could go back home to their women and children.

“Alright listen, all of you, stand at the ready, our men will be coming back at full sprint but so will our enemies. Our goal will be to protect our men by sending these Ngoni dogs to meet their puny ancestors. When the dogs are in range, I want you to aim true and kill them all. One spear one man, if you miss you will be sleeping with the hyenas!”

That was not a threat, Shimungena had put a lot of effort into training the men that stood before him, making them almost perfect at throwing their spears. 

He had them taught how to throw the spear so they could hit a moving target, even at night.

“Shimwala, how many spears did you collect?”

Shimwala seemed to be thinking before he could give an answer. He was doing a mental check of how many spears he and Bauta had brought back.

“Shimwala!”

“Shimunenga, we collected about about thirty six spears.”

“About? Count them again and give me a true number. Not knowing the number of spears we have could be the difference between life and death.”

He gave the man a fierce look that screamed, if you don’t give me the number of those spears, I’ll put my spear in your chest.

“Number now!”

“Thirty five!” Shouted the man.

This was the defining moment. One misstep and they’d all be slaughtered like thoughtless animals. His soldiers were motivated but the look on their faces told a different story, even they could tell that this was it, the final attack, which made them stiff.

“All those with long spears plant them in the ground and pick up the short ones, make your aim true and wait for my command!”

Following his words, the soldiers planted their long spears and picked up the shorter ones. The short spears were a meter long. The longer ones were about two and a half meters long.

“Bautu,” Shimunenga turned to face Bautu, “Our victory depends on your success, can I trust you to do this?”

“I will not fail,” Bautu answered with a straight face, “you three, follow me,” he added, pointing to three men, who, unlike him, were anxious.

“Do not fail,” said Shimunenga with a hopeful look in his eyes.

Bautu nodded, took the three men with him and vanished into the forest leading into the mountain on the left on Shimunenga’s position.

Shimunenga returned his attention to the men retreating and their pursuers, he planted his long spear into the ground and picked up one of the bloody spears Shimwala and Bautu had retrieved.

“Ready!”

The sun had just left behind the darkness of night. The war was still far from over. The Shimunenga’s men rushing back numbered less than eight from his estimate.

“Aim!”

Their enemies were now within throwing distance of the spear every soldier had gripped in his hand. Shimunenga’s soldiers knew who to target and who not to, thanks to the rising moon that was providing a little light.

“Steady!”

Their enemies were almost upon them. This spread an air of unease among his soldiers. This battle had been hopeless from the very beginning, how they got this far could be considered a miracle.

 “Now!”

Shimunenga’s voice roared and spears went flying through the sky. Wherever a spear landed, a soldier fell. The men picked up another set of spears and threw them without Shimunenga’s command.

“I want ten men on the front line, ten with long spears at the back. After we are done, Kaanda get a team of five and attack from the left, I want four men to join me, we will attack from the right.”

The men did as they were told and a formation was formed in the limited time Shimunenga had.

“Now attack!”

There were over thirty soldiers now lying dead because of the spears that were thrown. None of Shimunenga’s men had been injured from friendly fire. This however, did not mean that their enemies were all defeated, there were about thitry men rushing towards them.

Shimunenga picked up a short spear and joined the men on the front line, a set of ten men stood behind them with long spears.

This was the same formation they used when the confrontation just started at first light but Shimunenga now had smaller numbers to work with, and his enemies were also fewer.

The moonlight showed the number of corpses surrounding Shimungenga and his men, they fought hard until they numbered less than ten. They had somehow managed to overwhelm their enemies in the first few minutes but they were seriously outnumbered.

Shimunenga had taken a spear to the shoulder while killing three men from a fourth man who’d been in his blind spot, the blow would have been fatal but he reflexively shifted his body when he saw his enemy coming, barely missing the center of his chest.

“Protect Shimunenga!” Kaanda shouted, and on his command, they all surrounded the injured Shimunenga. As with every war, when the leader falls, the battle is over.

The sky was painted a dark blue with few stars dancing and below the heavenly bodies, the only sound that could be heard throughout the land was that of soldiers fighting.

Shimunenga looked to the sky and despair sipped its way through his wound. The pain made gripping his spear with both hands nearly impossible, if he couldn’t fight, he was a dead man.

Just as his men gathered around him to form a defensive war, their enemies who were twice their number also surrounded them.

“It seems Bautu has failed,” murmured Shimunenga.

He couldn’t see his men’s faces because they had their backs turned to him but he knew they were frightened. There were no words in the tongue of men or gods he could use to give them hope.

Shimunenga quietly whispered a prayer to every god there was in existence, to every ancestral spirit that ever was, hoping that they could somehow save him from this hopeless situation. He gritted his teeth at the burning sensation in his left shoulder, cursing his own weakness as he felt his hand go numb from the pain.

He wanted so badly to live up to that man’s expectations but it seemed that was not going to happen. He would only be remembered as the fool who led innocent men to their slaughter.

In his mind, he could see the faces of men laughing at his foolishness for generations to come. He could see their smug faces with mocking smiles as the arms of death reached up from the ground to claim their prize.

His enemies were about to finish slaughtering them one by one, he could feel it but there was nothing he could do. Maybe he could tell the last few men to retreat, to run for their lives and abandon him, but they were surrounded and retreating would only make them easy targets.

Another one of his men was struck down, his screams echoing through the night. As the earth drunk the soldier’s blood, the rest of Shimunenga’s men, futily repelled more of the oncoming assault. There were now less than seven men with him. It would all be over soon.

Another, and then another fell. Shimunenga looked to the sky, searching for the moon, the last beautiful thing he wanted to see. As if the world wanted to show him that he couldn’t even have that, a dark cloud covered the moon, robbing the earth of the little light it once had.

‘Is this it?’  He thought, ‘I just wanted… Moomba, how did he do it? I just wanted my brother to…’

His last thoughts were cut short. A horn came from a distance, this halted the enemy’s attack. It was too dark to see and Shimunenga had lost too much blood to focus, all he were heard spears falling to the ground, one by one. “Retreat!”

One of the men shouted. Shimunenga breathed a sigh of relief as he heard his enemies retreating, his men looked on in confusion, wondering what had just happened.

“Th-they are retreating?” Asked one of his men.

“Bautu took the Ngoni commander’s head. Victory is ours…”

The battlefield was filled with the roars of the few men that were still alive. After all they had sacrificed, the men that had fallen in battle, it was finally over.

“K-Kaanda, tell the men... to light touches”, he said with heavy breaths.

Shimunenga commanded his men to save any of their comrades that were injured and to kill all of the enemies still alive.

Shimunenga was called a fool for going to war with only fifty men against an army of one hundred and fifty but he did the impossible. He was victorious.

“I did not think we would win.”

As the men were tending to their injured and collecting spears, Shimwala followed Shimunenga who was looking out at the massacre. The land had been enshrouded in darkness but he was slowly starting to see the chaos of the war from the torches and fires his men had lit.

“I have fought many wars, our enemies lacked experience. That is why we won.” Explained Shimunenga.

“Still, we were outnumbered three to one.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the battle started Shimunenga commanded all of his men to charge into battle. The formation was quite simple, he had twenty men with short spears in front and twenty men with long spears behind them. The other nine stood at distance, throwing spears.

When the enemy met them, the men with long spears impaled them, since no one on both sides carried a shield, it was much easier to execute this plan. In the first few minutes, the enemy lost nearly thirty men while Shimunenga lost less than ten men.

“If you had three times more men than your enemy Shimwala, what would you do?”

“The simplest thing to do, I would order my men to surround yours.”

To avoid being surrounded, just a few minutes into the fight Shimunenga ordered nineteen of his men, assigned to a special group, to fall back. 

By the time their enemies broke through the tight defense to surround them, it was too late, they were slaughtered by the men that had fallen back. After making sure that the Ngoni’s wouldn’t attempt to break the formation again, the nineteen soldiers were commanded to retreat again.

“That is true. If I was fighting you today and you had three times more men than me, you would have lost the war. Just like these Ngoni dogs today.”

“What do you mean?”

Shimwala was baffled by what Shimunenga said. He wasn’t as inexperienced as the men they fought today. With three times the number of men, he could win any battle, at least he thought.

“Did you not notice that our enemies sent less than a hundred men to fight ours? Why do you think they did not send out all the men to surround us on the field?”

Shimwala’s eyes went wide, it finally hit him.

“So, you are saying they were afraid to surround our men again because the rest of us would break up their formation even if our numbers were now fewer?”

Shimunenga did not hide the men he had been commanded to retreat. He kept them in plain sight, making sure that the enemy commander could see them. The enemy commander started adding more soldiers to the field bit by bit, but it didn’t do them any good.

 “And why were you so sure that they would chase our retreating men at the last minute?”

Shimunenga was basically employing hit and run tactics. Since they were fighting in a place he wanted, the plan was simple, set traps ahead of time. The other thing that saved him was that this had been a surprise attack all along, and the Ngoni raiders didn’t have enough spears to spare, which meant they couldn’t use long range attacks.

“Because they knew that I was swapping out men. I’m sure their commander thought that he’d add well rested soldiers to the field and wipe us out. He thought wrong.”

“But if they knew that you were swapping out men, surely they should have known that you were collecting the spears scattered everywhere. Why did they think we were too exhausted to fight?”

“Must I tell you everything? Can you not think for yourself?” Shimunenga was irritated by Shimwala’s questions.

“Look, Shimwala if you saw your outnumbered enemy picking as many spears as he could and then calling for a retreat after a full day of fighting, what would you think?”

Shimwala couldn’t come up with anything to say.

“They thought we wanted to get many spears so that we could come fight another day. Now try to think for yourself. Where is Bautu? He should have returned by now.”

Bautu was given charge of three men from the men that had survived the attack at night, Shimunenga had kept them from battle, making sure they were well rested. Bautu’s job was simple, fight in the shadows and pick off their enemies one by one, and when the time was right, kill the commander.

He was quick and had a way with the spear. He was the oldest looking soldier of the bunch, and his age showed wisdom. His skills were unmatched.

Shimwala left Shimunenga to look for Bautu. Shimunenga wanted to thank the man on the success of his mission, it was because of him that the war had come to an end. If Bautu had failed to kill the enemy commander, this war would have ended differently.

After a long time, Shimunenga grew tired of waiting for Bautu.

“Where is Bautu?!” Asked an impatient Shimunenga in the deep of the night.  

His men had set up a camp some distance away from the battle field. It wasn’t a big camp site since only a few men were alive to use it. He looked around and noticed that there were only about four men around.

“Shimunenga, Shimwala got some men to go with him. He said he wanted to search for Bautu.”

The war ended a long time ago and the man responsible for ending it had not returned, it made sense for Shimwala to go check the enemy camp for him. Just in case there were enemy soldiers that decided to stick around, Shimwala went with back up.

Shimunenga waited impatiently for a while, Shimwala eventually returned, his face heavy with disappointment. The party came back with a body. Dead or alive, Shimunenga wasn’t sure, but the body definitely looked lifeless.

“Shimwala,” he called.

He got up to welcome his men, ignoring the wound that had now been closed up by one of his soldiers.

“Sh-Shimunenga…” Kaanda, who’d gone with Shimwala, wearing a sullen face was first to speak, “sorry.”

The look on Shimwala and Kaanda’s faces told Shimunenga that something was wrong, and since they came back with a body, he put two and two together and guessed that it was Bautu’s body.

“We couldn’t… find Bautu’s body, or Wesele’s… but the others are dead…”

In war the most unexpected things always happen. The loss of Bautu was among them. Bautu was by far the best and most experienced soldier Shimunenga had.

 “There’s… s-something else, that you, uh, should know about.”

The war was over, and his Champion must have been captured or died while trying to escape the retreating men, what other troubling news could Kaanda have brought back?

“What is it?”

“Well. I-It’s about the men we fought to day, so uh, we fought against Ngoni raiders, right?”

“Yes. Get to the point Kaanda.”

“Uh, right. So, the thing is, when we went to look for Bautu, we found an injured soldier… not one of ours obviously—”

“What about this soldier?”

“That’s the thing, he, uhh, spoke…Tonga.”

Shimunenga’s eyes went wide with surprise. They shouldn’t have fought any Tongas. Their campaign was against the Ngoni raiders, so what was a Tonga doing all the way out here?

“Are you sure of your words Kaanda?”

“Well, that’s the truth, yah, you can ask him… if you want.”

Ask him? Shimunenga looked at the body they’d brought back, it wasn’t exactly lifeless. The man had been set down when the party returned. Shimunenga noticed something, the man was still breathing.

“This man, is still alive?”

“Yes, we thought he’d answer some questions, so… we brought him back.”

Shimwala slapped the injured man on the cheek, forcing him to wake up. Two men made him sit up facing Shimunenga. The man was on the verge of death, his eyes barely able to stay open and blood staining the ground from his stomach.

“Who was your commander?” Asked Shimunenga.

“Ch-chief… -ief…,” he coughed up blood, sputtering it on the ground, “Chchief… Lwiindi’s seventh son.”

Ila and Tonga may not be the same language, but they were so similar that one could almost understand the other. The words the dying man spoke were as grim as they could possibly get.

“H-Hey, h-hey, you’re joking, right? I-I mean… they will have our heads for this,” said Kaanda, unable to contain his anxieties.

“This war was supposed to be fought against Ngoni raiders, what do the Tongas have to do with this?” Asked Shimwala.

“Enough. Start burning the bodies. We’ve done our job, that is all.”

Ignoring the problem wasn’t going to change anything, Shimunenga, however, decided to focus on the problem at hand. The bodies everywhere if left unburied would lead to disease.

The Tonga soldier eventually died and his body was thrown on the pile of corpses burning.

Shimunenga had won an important battle, but this victory may have come at a cost no one was prepared to pay. War on a scale that he couldn’t possibly imagine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Story By: The Orchestrator

Art By: PK Trilogy

 

Disclaimer: This book is work of fiction based on the records of the Book called Ceremony by Mulenga Kapwepwe and Tamara Guhrs.

 

This is purely fan fiction and has no relation to anyone, either by name or description.

 

UnFractured Reality