Finding Contentus

Chapter 84: The Long Walk (3)

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"Musa! Musa!"

"Come here you little roach!"

Roach? Musa heard that degrading term all his life, never at him, but at those beneath him that he wanted to help. He turned to the direction of the little girl that ran for her life towards him with tears rolling down her face.

"Oh. Another one," one of his friends, Karloo, an Eifri man said like the occurrence was nothing.

"Frikkie! Chrissie!" Musa raised his hand at the two Eifri commanders in khaki armour to stop in place. They paused, confused with angered looks on their pale faces, but they did as they were told.

Musa got up from his chair and raced down to the girl who fell in his arms. She was trembling, exhausted, panicking, looking to be around seven years of age, with cuts on her arms, dressed in a simple dark brown cloak.

"Zita rako ndiani?" He asked her name, giving her some water to drink.

She gulped it all down to calm herself before grabbing his wrist with dull horror in her brown eyes.

"Vimbo! Zita rangu ndiVimbo!" She let out. "You must come quickly Musa! They are going to kill her! They are going to kill her family! She didn't do anything wrong! She was just trying to help us! To help my mother and our taxes!"

The girl's visceral fear had claws that bit into Musa's skin. The tears continued, as did her shaking hands that refused to let go of him.

"Hey! Let go of him you—"

Musa glared at Frikki, turning him to stone. The Eifri commander raised his hands innocently. "She's causing trouble Musa, I'm just doing my job."

Musa ignored him and looked back at the girl. "Show me."

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Vimbo led him to all the commotion. Everyone made way as Musa ran with her in his arms. Whispers and shouts shot through the streets until they arrived at the scenery in the slums of the townships, met by a gut-wrenching scream that rattled the air, shook the ground of soiled roots and ripped out the foundations of fairness.

Four Ghyppty guards were killed, and an Ishonga woman was being restrained by two Eifri commanders.

"What's going on here?" Musa placed Vimbo down, who after seeing that her mother was safe, ran straight into her arms and cried in relief.

Musa locked eyes with the commanders that held the woman who was fighting against their chains. She had dark brown skin. She looked beaten and bruised, but she had a warrior's strength, and she refused to go down. Enraged tears fell down her face. She was bulky, but her brown eyes had no bulk as she sobbed at the sight before her.

Musa felt like sobbing when he saw what she saw. Vimbo looked at the very thing she hoped Musa could prevent, only to cry at the fact that they were too late. Musa saw a Ishonga family that looked like the woman. He saw what looked to be her father with a sickle-shaped sword driven in his chest, staring up at nothing. He saw..

He saw two boys, the father's sons and the woman's younger brothers. A boy, no more than four years of age, dead, and a... a baby, a baby boy, that was suckling on his mother... his head smashed, with the mother, barely alive, looking up at the sky with blood spewing from her chest and mouth.

Musa ignored the calls of the Ghyppty units, of the weeping crowd to reach for the dying mother. His hand went to the thick blood on her chest. His eyes that brimmed with tears stilled on the baby that looked...

He shook his head from the waves of nausea building up from his stomach. The woman's gaze looked lost, until her eyes found his, and only then did she manage to widen her horizons with the smallest glimpses of life.