A cool breeze teased the warm night. It played with the Harmattan leaves; tickling the tree borne and dancing with the fallen. On it rode half-forgotten memories of the distant south; a ghostly tang of sea salt hiding behind the skirts of the northern dust. It escaped its wooden cage and blew into a dwelling of men that had been raped by fire, there it caressed soot-stained walls and inspected abandoned silos. Heavy with grief for the suffering of man, the breeze gathered the last of its waning strength and crept into a hut that sheltered only one, there to die on the breath of a restless warrior.

That night the moon shunned the sight of her radiant lover and her scurrying children kept the company of their burrows. Ter couldn’t find sleep, the demons that haunted the gates between closed eyes and blessed sleep had him firmly in their talons and would not let him past their threshold. He tossed and turned on his pallet, an unseen face drifted in and out of his thoughts as invisible stones dug into his back.

It gets to a point in the courtship of a lady, when she refuses passionate plea that a man must turn his back on her in favor of more fruitful pursuits and sleep is no different. Having been refused the warm embrace of sleep, Ter decided to seek the moon. He knotted a short wrapper to cover his nakedness but elected to proceed bare chested in a silent nod to the heat. He tied his bone punch dagger to his arm and slung his cutlass over his shoulder.

The darkness of the night was a physical presence; vast and pregnant with expectation. Uche had gone off to his Obi, something about strengthening its connection or his connection? Ter found it hard to follow his friend’s explanations most of the time.

He stepped outside his co-opted hut and had to stop to enhance his vision. First deep breaths to center his body, then he envisioned his spirit; the potency that lay just beneath his skin and pulsed to the cadence of his heart. He probed it till he found a knot that pulsed to a slower measure, it was a wound in his spirit, a tied off umbilical cord. Finally came the hard part of his week-long lessons with Uche. He coaxed and teased the knot till it unraveled; opening a path to a roiling torrent of life. Quick as lightening he clamped a vise around the opened conduit. The power fought to overwhelm him but his will was a steel band around it. The opening of the conduit happened within the space of a sneeze and the night opened up to Ter. He could make out the burnt-out husk of the granary at the opposite end of the village, half seen creatures flitted in and out of his field of vision. The buzzing of the bush flies was loud in his ears and he could smell the dryness of the earth as it waited patiently for rain. He was proud of his progress, what had been unconscious reflex a few days ago was now within his control.

Ter made his way into the trees and walked the forest as one of its hunters. He sniffed out game trails and made mental notes for when next he came out hunting with Uche. He was soon lost to time and the mundane calculation of the distance he’d travelled. Vitality suffused his limbs and nature welcomed him as a distant cousin. Some of the younger more adventurous tree spirits flirted with him, surprised to find a mortal who could see them as plainly as any spirit with one even let him peek into her abode; disguised as an Obeche tree.

Ter finally decided the moon was not to be found that night and was about to retrace his path, when something caught his attention. The feeling was familiar and it didn’t take Ter long to recognize it from the day he almost burnt himself out. He was careful this time while following the impulse, though he knew it was a dangerous path he was powerless to stop himself from walking it.

He opened his spiritual senses to the limit of his mortal body and followed the fixation. A deep feeling of foreboding tunneled its way into his heart, still, he continued to stalk through the forest. His passage didn’t cause the night to go silent as that of any normal man would. He was one with the night, another one of its creatures going about its nightly business; being spirit marked was a gift beyond all reckoning, when he wasn’t trying to get drunk or lying with a woman that is.

The familiar twang of a bowstring came a heartbeat before an arrow came flying at him, surprise kept him rooted in place and only the interference of a sudden gust of wind saved his life. The arrow veered off its fatal path and buried itself in his arm instead. The impact staggered him; his heightened senses magnified the blossoming pain till it brought tears to his eyes. Rage rode on the wave of pain, he broke off the protruding arrow shaft and eyes blazing with an unholy light snapped to the origin of the missile, there was another twang. Forewarned this time, he swatted the arrow away. Impossibly, their eyes met across the distance and he knew. The itch was finally scratched; the enigma that had consumed his reasoning was broken. In its place settled an unfamiliar sense of kinship with this huntress of men. The moment stretched out into a thousand heartbeats as they took the measure of each other, she in her hunting leathers and him half naked in only his wrapper.

Shattering the moment, she shot off, a sprinting gazelle causing a cacophony of sound as she fled. He could tell she had panicked, no longer the predator that had silently stalked him. Ter sped after her, indignation driving him. The distance between them closed in moments, she was fast and moved through the foliage with skill but he was spirit touched, the very ground threw him forward and the roots and grass cradled his feet. He had only a moment of warning before someone hurtled into him from the side, but the moment was enough.

Ter sprang back up, ready to continue the pursuit, leaving his aggressor on the ground with a fatal dagger wound. Four figures materialized out of the night shadows and Ter felt his heart sink when it normally would soar at the prospect of battle; his quarry was getting away. The warriors arrayed themselves in a defensive crescent brandishing long knives and flails, Ter took the initiative.

He attacked the warrior closest to him, bowling the surprised warrior over with his full weight. Hand behind the head, he followed up with quick stabs to the side of the neck with his bone dagger. Ter howled as a flail scoured his side. Re-orienting on the source of aggression, he used the hand behind the dead warrior’s head to shove the dying man at the two lunging to his right, leaving the one with the flail open to an attack. The warrior was quick as a lance, his hands were a blur, flinging two throw daggers in straight arcs for his ribs. Ter saw the blades flash mere seconds before they reached their target, he slapped the first straight out of the air with his left hand, plucking the second like a hanging guava with his right. Rushing the gawping warrior, he killed the man with his own throwing dagger using three brutal strokes to the mid-section; bone crunching as the tempered steel blade ground against the man’s rib cage. He snatched the flail that had marked him from lifeless hands.

The living men had spread out in two parallels, watching him warily, bloodless knuckles around their blades. He stepped away from the dead and circled deeper into the trees, picking up the trail of his original quarry. They followed at a safe distance, keeping respectable pace with him in spite of his preternatural speed, still at parallels with him, reluctant to commit to an attack without a clear opening. Ter tried to take his mind from the arrow stump sticking out of his arm and the gash in his side, the loss of blood was a distant worry as his blessing started healing the wound in his side.

He stopped on a loose patch of ground and fell into a low crouch, fingers buried in the soil as his lips moved in a murmured invocation, forming words he didn’t know or understand under full sway of the power burning through his meridians. The two warriors, mistaking his crouch for a moment weakness, attacked. The older man’s blade bit into his shoulder and Ter’s eyes flew open, white as pearl. A fountain of dirt and forest debris erupted around him, flinging both attackers away.

“Now is our chance.” The older warrior screamed, rallying to his feet. “My blade has tasted his blood.”

They charged the miniscule debris storm that obscured Ter, slashing blindly, hoping to hear the meaty crack of blade meeting flesh. Ter leapt through the sand screen with his seized flail swinging indiscriminately in a relentless assault. The younger warrior as Ter’s dagger found the soft underside of his jaw, stabbing through flesh and impaling his tongue to his palate. The scream devolved into a wet gurgling as Ter tried to worry out the dagger but abandoned it to dervish away from the swinging blade of the older warrior. The blade found home in the younger warrior’s neck, silencing his screams.

“Danjuma!” the older warrior shouted; eyes wide with rage at his dead companion.

Ter spared him a fleeting thought of pity before catching him in a leg sweep, toppling the man over. Ter was ready, arms outstretched to cushion the falling man’s head. His hands tightened and twisted sharply; the light went out of the warrior’s eyes. He hit the ground already dead from a broken neck.

Ter leaned against a tree to catch his breath. Ragged pants tore themselves out of his chest and sweat dripped into his eyes. The combination of physical exertion and charm casting threatened to test the limits of his endurance. His vision swam and it was all he could do to keep the darkness of exhaustion out of his vision.

“I hold you completely in my power at this moment stranger.”

Ter looked up to find the huntress a few strides away. It was a measure of his fatigue that he hadn’t sensed her.

“If you are going to shoot me, do it now while I am winded or else put your bow away lest I take it from you myself when I recover my strength.”

She laughed. it was a husky sound that floated on the night, equal parts warmth and chill, it challenged you to join in.

“I see your skill in robbing men of their lives is matched by your arrogance. You did not have to kill my people stranger; they were but looking to my safety.”

Ter pushed off the tree he was leaning on and forced himself to stand unsupported.

“You try to take my life with your arrows, after which your men come at me out of the darkness armed with very sharp knives. I was but playing according to your terms, huntress.”

A smirk crept into his voice and he laid emphasis on his last word. He was rewarded as her eyes lit up with fierce pride.

“I am Sarauniya Aminah Zazzau; the blade of Zazzau, may its light shine forever. You are not fit to look upon me nor to speak terms with me.”

She had to take a breath after the long-winded declaration and Ter jumped into the interval.

“I take it then that you’re the one riding at the head of the army that has been pillaging the villages around?”

Aminah’s face took a suspicious cast and she started to raise her bow again.

“Have you been following me?”

“Put away the bow, I mean you no harm. I feel like I should tell you something but I have no idea what.”

Aminah visibly relaxed “My dreams have led me to you, though they spoke of you and another.”

The effort of remaining standing was getting too much to bear for Ter, so he strode over to a broad tree and sat on its roots all the while trying to mask the true depth of his fatigue. He could almost feel his strings being pulled by the destiny the spirits spoke about.

“I have a companion, a friend I travel with. He is…”

“He is here and wondering why you are out in the trees in the middle of the night with a stealing and murdering princess instead of sleeping.”

Uche stepped out of a tree, his eyes on Aminah and not looking the least bit pleased.

“My dreams have spoken true yet again; I meet the blade and the claw.” She slung her bow on her back and turned. “Come, you are welcome in my camp. We have much to talk about.”