The world had shrunk to a universe of pain. It was a simple, brutal equation, written in the raw, burning flesh of Nawi's wrists, the throbbing ache in her shoulders, the searing protest of her leg muscles. The rough hemp rope that had bound her in the village had been replaced, after the first day's march, by cold, heavy iron. Manacles, linked by a short, cruel chain, clamped around her wrists, their weight a constant, dragging reminder of her new reality. A longer chain ran from her ankle, connecting her to Binta in front and Sefu behind, forging them into a single, shuffling, miserable entity.
The march north was a descent into a new kind of hell, one of relentless motion and exquisite sensory torment. The initial, blinding storm of the raid had passed, leaving behind the slow, grinding agony of aftermath.
The forest, once a place of dappled light and chattering streams, was now a green tunnel of suffering. The air under the canopy was thick and stagnant, heavy with the smell of sweat, fear, and the unwashed bodies of over a hundred captives. It was laced with the coppery tang of blood from untreated wounds and the foul stench of human waste from those who could no longer hold it. The chains created their own music, a monotonous, grating cacophony of clinks and rattles, the sound of freedom being systematically dismantled, link by link.
Sunlight, when it pierced the thick leaves, was no longer a blessing. It was a spotlight of humiliation, highlighting their filth and despair. It baked the dust of the path onto their sweat-slicked skin, forming a grimy, cracking second layer. At night, the temperature plummeted, and the cold seeped into their bones, a deep, shivering chill that the huddled warmth of bodies chained together did little to dispel. The forest nights were alive with the sounds of predators—the whoop of hyenas, the distant cough of a leopard—and each sound was a fresh wave of terror, a reminder of how easily their captors could leave them as carrion.
Nawi's senses, once tuned to the subtle language of dragonflies and water spiders, were now brutally attuned to survival. She observed the guards not with curiosity, but with a predator's hyper-awareness. She learned to read the different tones of their voices—the bored drawl, the sharp command, the casual threat. She watched the way they held their spears, the set of their shoulders, the flick of their eyes. She memorized their routines, the changing of the watch, the times they were most alert and, more importantly, the rare moments when their vigilance waned.
Her primary focus, the single, burning point of her existence, was Binta. Her little sister was a ghost of her former self. The vibrant, chattering child was gone, replaced by a silent, hollow-eyed doll who stumbled when pulled and had to be coaxed to drink the few sips of muddy water they were allotted each day. Nawi spent the marches whispering to her, a constant, low stream of nonsense—stories of the goats, promises of cool water, memories of their mother's cooking—anything to keep a flicker of spirit alive behind those vacant eyes.
"Just a little further, Binta," she would murmur, her voice hoarse from dust and disuse. "See the light through the trees? We will stop soon. I will get you water."
Binta would not respond. She would simply lean into Nawi's chained body, her small weight a terrible burden of love and responsibility.
Sefu, chained behind them, was a different kind of worry. The boy with the quick smile was gone, replaced by a simmering cauldron of rage. Nawi could feel it emanating from him, a heat that seemed to radiate through the chain that linked them. His silence was volatile, filled with the tension of a coiled spring. She heard him testing his manacles in the dark, the faint, metallic scrape a testament to a mind plotting futile, desperate resistance.
"Sefu," she whispered one night, as they lay shivering on the bare earth, their chains pooling around them like metallic serpents. "Do not do anything foolish."
His reply was a low growl. "Foolish? What is foolish anymore, Nawi? To die on my feet like my father, or to die on my knees in some foreign field?"
"Your father would want you to live," she insisted, though the words felt hollow. What was living? This slow erosion of everything they were?
"This is not living," Sefu spat, echoing her thought. "This is… waiting. Waiting to be used up and thrown away. I will not wait."
The column of captives was a living organism of misery. At first, there had been weeping, constant and hopeless. But as the days bled into one another, the energy for tears was spent. The weeping was replaced by a low, constant moan of discomfort, the coughs of the sick, the helpless whimpers of the children. They were a river of broken people, flowing inexorably towards an unknown, terrifying ocean.
On the fifth day, the character of the land began to change. The dense, primal forest gradually gave way to drier, more open savannah. The air lost its fungal dampness and took on the dusty, grassy scent of the plains. The sun here was unimpeded, a tyrannical presence that scorched their exposed skin and baked the earth until it was hard as pottery. The sight of the open sky, after days under the forest canopy, was somehow more frightening. There was nowhere to hide.
It was here, on this sun-blasted plain, that they saw their destination.
It was not a city, not as they understood it. It was a military encampment, vast and organised, sprawling at the foot of a range of low, brown hills. The air vibrated with a new symphony of sounds—the sharp, rhythmic cadence of drums, not the celebratory drums of their village, but a stern, commanding beat that spoke of order and discipline. There were shouts of command, the synchronized stomp of hundreds of feet, and the constant, ringing clang of a blacksmith's hammer.
As they were marched through the outer perimeter, Nawi's observant eyes, despite her exhaustion, took in every terrifying detail. Rows of identical, neat thatched huts stood in precise lines. Fierce-looking soldiers, both men and women, moved with purpose, their eyes forward, their postures rigid. She saw training grounds where lines of young women, their bodies sheened with sweat, practiced complex maneuvers with wooden spears, their movements a perfect, terrifying unison. The air was thick with the smells of leather, sweat, woodsmoke, and cooking porridge—the smells of a machine, vast and impersonal.
This was the underbelly of the Dahomean war machine. This was where the Iron Storm was forged.
They were herded into a large, fenced compound, little more than a dusty pen. Their chains were unlocked from the long line and re-attached to heavy iron rings set into a long, thick log that ran the length of the enclosure. They were given a single gourd of water and a wooden bowl of thin, tasteless millet porridge to share between four people. It was sustenance, but no comfort.
This was their existence for three days. Chained to the log by day, curled on the hard ground at night. They were specimens in a cage, subjected to the casual, curious stares of passing soldiers. The initial, explosive terror of the raid had been replaced by a slow, grinding dread, a suffocating sense of helplessness. This was the antechamber of their fate, and the wait was its own particular torture.
On the fourth morning, the atmosphere in the compound changed. The usual, bored guards straightened. A ripple of alertness passed through them. The gate creaked open, and a small group entered.
At its centre was a woman.
She was not tall, but she carried herself with an authority that seemed to make the very air around her still. She was older than the warriors Nawi had seen, perhaps in her forties, with a face that was a landscape of experience. A web of fine lines etched the corners of her eyes and mouth, but there was no softness in them. Her eyes were the colour of dark flint, and they moved over the cowering captives with a dispassionate, analytical gaze, like a farmer assessing livestock. Her hair was shorn close to her scalp, and she wore a simple tunic, but a single, heavy ivory bracelet carved with intricate patterns encircled her wrist—a mark of rank. This was Nanika. A veteran Mino commander.
She moved slowly down the line, followed by a younger aide who held a wax tablet, ready to take notes. Nanika barely spoke. A flick of her finger towards a strong-looking young man. A slight shake of her head at an older woman coughing into her hand. She was sorting them. The viable from the non-viable. The tools from the waste.
Nawi watched her approach, a cold knot tightening in her stomach. This was it. The final judgement. She pulled Binta closer, trying to make her small, fragile form seem even smaller. She kept her head down, hoping to blend into the misery, to be passed over.
Nanika's shadow fell over them. Nawi could smell her—not the stench of the captives, but the clean, sharp scents of leather and soap and a faint, herbal aroma, like crushed lemongrass.
The commander's gaze swept over Sefu, assessing his youthful strength with a clinical nod. The aide made a mark on the tablet. Then her flinty eyes moved to Nawi and Binta.
For a long moment, she studied Binta. The child was curled into a ball, her face hidden against Nawi's side, trembling uncontrollably. Nanika's expression did not change, but Nawi saw the minute flicker of dismissal in her eyes. Binta was too small, too broken. She would not survive hard labour. She was worth only a pittance on the block.
Then, those same eyes lifted and locked with Nawi's.
It was like being struck. The commander's gaze was not angry or cruel. It was… penetrating. It felt as if it could see through the grime and fear, down to the very core of her. It saw the grief for her mother, the terror for her sister, the shattered remnants of her old life.
And it saw the anger.
A spark of it, hot and bright, flared in Nawi's chest. This woman, this commander, was the embodiment of the machine that had destroyed her world. She was the reason her mother was dead, her father was lost, and her sister was broken. The helplessness of the march, the degradation of the pen, the clinical assessment—it all coalesced into a single, white-hot point of hatred.
She did not look away. She did not cast her eyes down in submission, as every instinct screamed for her to do. Instead, she lifted her chin. The chain between her manacles clinked as her fists clenched. And she glared back. She poured every ounce of her pain, her loss, her furious, stubborn will to survive into that look. It was a silent scream of defiance, a promise of vengeance made with her eyes alone.
Nanika went perfectly still.
The aide, sensing the shift, paused, his stylus hovering over the wax. The guards nearby subtly tightened their grips on their spears.
The silence stretched, thick and heavy. The only sound was Binta's ragged breathing and the distant, rhythmic stomp of drilling soldiers.
Nanika took a slow step closer. She was so close Nawi could see the individual scars that cross-hatched her knuckles, the faint pulse at the base of her throat.
"You have the eyes of a cornered jackal," Nanika said. Her voice was low, raspy, like stones grinding together. It was not loud, but it carried an immense weight. "All teeth and hate and the hope of a painful death for your hunter."
Nawi said nothing. She just held the gaze, her own eyes burning.
"Hate is a common currency here," Nanika continued, her tone conversational, as if discussing the weather. "Most spend it on weeping. On begging. It leaks out of them like pus from a wound, until they are empty shells." Her flinty eyes narrowed slightly. "You are different. You are holding yours. Forging it. What do you plan to do with it, little jackal?"
Nawi's voice, when it finally came, was a raw, shredded thing, but it did not waver. "Whatever I must."
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Nanika's lips. It did not reach her eyes. "A vague plan. Unlikely to succeed." She gestured vaguely at the squalor of the pen. "Your path from here is simple. You and the child will be sold. You to the fields of a palm oil plantation, where the sun will bake the spirit out of you in a season. The child… perhaps to a household. If she is lucky. She will be a servant, a toy. If she is not, her fate will be shorter, and less pleasant."
Each word was a deliberate, precise blow, designed to shatter what was left of her. Nawi felt Binta flinch against her. The image of her bright, beautiful sister as a broken toy in a stranger's house was more terrifying than any machete.
"But," Nanika said, and the single word hung in the air, charged with a terrifying possibility. Her eyes drilled into Nawi's. "There is another road. A harder one. A path of fire and iron."
She gestured with her chin towards the training grounds, where the synchronized stomp of the recruits echoed like a war drum.
"The Mino take only the willing. We are not breeders of slaves. We are forgers of weapons. We look for a certain… quality. A spark that cannot be extinguished." Her gaze was unwavering. "You have that spark. Misdirected, foolish, but it is there."
Nawi's heart was hammering against her ribs so hard she felt dizzy. She could barely process the words.
"You offer me a choice?" Nawi whispered, the concept so alien it was almost laughable.
"I offer you a different kind of chain," Nanika corrected, her voice flat. "One you will learn to wear with pride. The choice is this: pick up the sword. Swear the oath to the King. Become Agojie. Or…" Her eyes flicked to Binta, then back to Nawi, the threat implicit and absolute. "Take the path to the coast and the slave ships. The child goes with you, or without you, but she goes."
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. The sounds of the camp faded into a dull roar in Nawi's ears. Join them. Join the very people who had murdered her mother, burned her village, and broken her sister. Wrap her hands around the same weapons that had cut her life to pieces.
It was a obscene proposition. A betrayal so profound it made her stomach heave.
But beneath the revulsion, the cold, stubborn core of her—the part that had observed the leopard's track, that had argued with her mother, that had vowed to survive—was calculating. It was a path. A path away from the slow death of the plantation. A path that kept Binta, somehow, within her orbit. And most of all, it was a path to power.
The power to never feel this helpless again.
The power to protect what was left of her family.
The power,one day, to look this commander in the eye not as a captive, but as an equal.
The power,perhaps, for revenge.
It was not a choice born of loyalty, or belief, or any noble ideal. It was a choice born of a single, burning, all-consuming need: to turn the weapon back on its makers.
She looked at Binta, at her tear-streaked, filthy face. She looked at Sefu, who was staring at her, his eyes wide with a mixture of horror and understanding. She saw the faces of the other captives, hollow and defeated. This was not their choice. It was hers alone.
She turned her head back to Nanika. The hatred was still there, a frozen fire in her veins. But now it had a purpose. A direction.
"The sword," Nawi said. Her voice was clear now, stripped of all emotion, hard and sharp as flint.
Nanika's eyebrow twitched, the only sign of her satisfaction. "You choose for the wrong reasons."
"They are my reasons," Nawi shot back, the defiance still blazing.
"For now," Nanika conceded. "Reasons can be reshaped. The spirit, however, is a gift from the gods." She turned to her aide. "Unchain her."
The aide produced a key. The metal scraped in the lock, and the heavy manacles fell from Nawi's wrists with a final, heavy clank. The sensation was shocking. Her arms felt unnaturally light, the raw, chafed skin screaming in protest at the sudden absence of pressure. She stumbled forward a step, her legs unsteady.
"The child will be placed in the royal household's service," Nanika said, her tone leaving no room for argument. "She will be safe. She will be fed. It is a better fate than the block. You may see her, if you earn the privilege."
It was a leash. A cruel, brilliant one. Binta's well-being was now directly tied to Nawi's performance. Her cooperation.
Nawi knelt, ignoring the commander, and cupped Binta's face. "Listen to me, little one. You must be brave. Be brave for me. I will find you. I promise."
Binta's eyes focused on her for the first time in days. A flicker of understanding. A tiny, fragile trust. She gave a barely perceptible nod.
As Nawi stood, Sefu found his voice. "Nawi… no. You cannot."
She looked at him, her childhood friend, chained to a log, his future a short, brutal life of servitude. The gulf between them had opened in an instant, vast and unbridgeable.
"I have to," she said, and the words were a farewell.
Nanika was already turning away. "Bring her. Bathe her. Feed her. She stinks of despair." She paused, casting one last look at Nawi. "The jackal is leaving the trap. Now we shall see if we can forge it into a leopard."
Nawi took one last, long look at the pen, at Sefu's betrayed expression, at Binta's small, terrified face. She memorised it. She let the image sear itself onto her soul, a brand to fuel the fire within.
Then, she turned her back on them. She followed the retreating figure of Commander Nanika out of the gate, away from the chains and the stench of defeat. The sun beat down on her, hot and unforgiving. The hard-packed earth of the training ground felt strange beneath her bare, bleeding feet.
She was not free. She had simply exchanged one captivity for another. But this new cage had weapons in it. This new cage had a path that led forward, not down.
She walked into the heart of the machine that had destroyed her, her hands empty, her heart full of hate, her future a terrifying, open question. The choice was made. The stubborn, observant girl from Keti was gone. What would emerge from the forge remained to be seen. But as she heard the gate of the captives' pen clang shut behind her, the sound was not of an ending, but of a beginning. The beginning of her revenge.