Page 46 - Microsoft Word - FANG EMPIRE - NOVEL.docx

Chapter 5

The Prince’s Last Hope

An enormous bonfire burned in the Timbuktu city square surrounded by Moroccan commanders,

soldiers, and elite mercenaries. Mandinka women were chained to posts. Drunken soldiers beat

and violated them as they screamed. To keep the bonfires raging, the soldiers threw priceless

books and irreplaceable manuscripts into the blaze as they drank and celebrated. The losing king

of an invasion is never respected. In fact, he is punished for having the twin vices most reviled by

the dogs of war: weakness and stupidity. His name is mocked for having been cuckolded in his

own kingdom. Such was the fate of Omar’s father.

King Kanja’s body was stripped naked then impaled on a long wooden spike through the

anus and posted like a gruesome voodoo doll in the center of the city for all to mock. Moroccan

archers shot their arrows, like witchdoctors with juju needles, into his flesh at random angles,

caring not what body part they pierced. Hitting the more intimate organ got the loudest reaction

from the rabble, until the once foolish king looked like a human pincushion. Ramoth walked over

and took a bow from one of the archers. He thrust an arrow tip into a flame pit. The arrow caught

fire. He aimed and let the flaming arrow fly. It struck Kanja in his ghoulish gaping mouth. His

head ignited in flames. Ramoth and the archers erupted with drunken cheers.

The Moroccan general, Judar Pasha, sat outside on Kanja’s own throne, ripped from the

palace and nailed to the top of the long royal dining table that only a night ago held the king’s

Albaka feast. He watched Ramoth revel in the bloodletting. In contrast, Judar sat quietly,

circumspect, almost inanimate in comparison to the boisterous butchery and epic debauchery

going on around him. Ramoth took a big guzzle from a bottle of wine, then climbed up onto the

table and motioned to sit next to Judar on GoGo’s throne. But first he had to remove the axe he

himself plunged into the chair cushion in an episode of hatred earlier that evening.

“I never thought this night would come, Judar,” Ramoth said as he looked down and