DANUSHIKI

CHAPTER SIX

Danushiki felt his body boiling, as he ran to the where his age mates stood, while perspiring profusely.  

The woven cloth which he wore reduced his speed at intervals while his mind still possessed thoughts of Sarme’s seductive body. Moments later, he arrived the sacred grounds, stood and watched the entire activity with intense curiousity. When it was finally his turn to face the large king cobra, it shifted its hood uneasily as if it was scared of the young man who now stood before it. When it eventually became still, it brought out its tongue and beckoned on Danushiki to come closer.  

Everything about the entire exercise radiated nothing but awe and mystery. The moment each man looked into the eyes of the large king cobra, he suddenly saw himself being transported to a battlefield in a split second. The next moment, the chosen weapon was placed few inches from his feet in a trance, before he returned to reality. Standing eyeball to eyeball when it was his turn to face the large reptile, Danushiki saw himself with a razor-sharp battle-axe on a battlefield. The weapon had a total length of thirty-six inches, with a blade forged from pure iron ore on a firm handle with bronze fittings at its end and midsection.

Danushiki cared less about the entire exercise as his mind kept revolving around Sarme’s hips and ever glowing lips. Stepping away from the large snake, he was directed to a surface resembling a swamp, which he walked upon until his head was swallowed up by the surface. Reaching the other side, he walked down a series of steps carved in stone and covered in moss, while forgetting the weapon in his right hand. When his foot touched the ground, he was ordered by two hefty men to strip off his clothing and put on the warrior’s apparel – a woven cloth which covered their body from the waist down to their knees.

The warrior’s apparel held their genitals firmly, though most of the twenty-one year old men felt the attires were more appropriate for girls. Danushiki put on the apparel, followed by his leather sandals and went to join his mates in a series of rows and columns, which was short of a thousand men, and arranged in order. The painstaking exercise which was carried out by hefty instructors, who placed the recruits (as they were soon to be addressed), in rows and columns of fifty by twenty, whereby a sixty centimeter space existed between a recruit and the next person behind him in a row, while an eighty centimeter space existed between a recruit and the next in a column.

The instructors were clad in white woven robes, and moved about without making a sound, while their eyes darted in all directions. Danushiki paused to look in the direction through where he’d come and was soon frightened at what was presently taking place, as the last man walked down the moss-covered stone steps. The large ‘swamp’ entrance from which he and the other nine hundred and ninety-nine men had come through rose to the sky, and was gradually illuminating and radiating Cobra Land, like the sun naturally did.

The field, upon which Danushiki and the other men stood perspiring, resembled one cleared in the middle of a dangerous jungle. They saw snakes slithering everywhere, showing no concern for the ‘intruders’ in their midst. Something about the instructors repulsed Danushiki and made him conclude that they weren’t normal human beings. He blamed himself for not inquiring more about them from his father as they stood erect and walked, with hard taut muscles glistening in the ‘sun’. None was less than six feet in height with clean shaven heads, and completely hairless body.

Though the material from which the woven cloths for the recruits and the instructors were the same, the instructors clearly showed how passionate they were in their woven robes, and frowned when a speck of dirt appeared on it. This was a sharp contrast to majority of the recruits who only saw their apparel as a dirty skirt. The ‘arrangement’ exercise was carried out for the sole purpose of discovering if any of the recruits possessed any form of disability, injury or infirmity. While it progressed, Danushiki and the other recruits were starting to get used to the sight of several types of snakes slithering everywhere. The most amazing thing about these snakes was that they didn’t make any attempt to attack anyone even when they were accidentally stepped on.

Moments later, after the ‘arrangement’ exercise was concluded, Danushiki felt rooted to the spot when an instructor who’d inspected the space around him, raised up his head and showed his eyeballs; they bore no difference from the eyes of the king cobra which he’d looked into some few moments ago. He soon regained his composure when twenty instructors lined up in front of them with their arms folded across their large chests. They had their backs a large seat carved out of a rock which was partially covered with long crawling branches and dead insects. A man with a deep voice and a scary countenance soon appeared and introduced himself as Karugo – the Commander of Cobra Land. He had similar traits like the other instructors but possessed distinctive features, and an authoritarian nature which made him superior to them. Although Danushiki feared the man, he couldn’t help but admire his stealth nature which bore no difference like his father’s.

The next moment two thousand pair of eyes focused on him, while he proceeded to lay down the ground rules of Cobra Land. He walked up to the rocky seat, sat down and began to scan the entire formation with his eyes. Moments later, he seemed satisfied with the deathly silence around him as he breathed deeply at intervals.

“The fun of your lives ends here,” he began with his voice echoing around the vicinity.

“You will all wake up before the break of dawn every day and jog eastwards from your respective huts, and only stop when you see no king cobra around you. Danushiki soon realised this was an almost impossible task, because no matter what anyone tried or planned to try, the king cobras were everywhere, but he didn’t dare ask any question.

“You must obey everything and anything you are asked to do by your respective instructors… any act of disobedience would be punished by death.”

He paused and looked around, while waiting to see the ‘effect’ of his last statement on the recruits before he continued talking.

“You’ll all train till the sun goes down.” He paused again and ignored the bead of sweat flowing down his face, while observing the reaction of the recruits at the same time.

“You’ll be trained to kill efficiently and effectively, how to handle the respective weapons shown to you by the gods and goddesses themselves. Your bodies will be forged into a tough and painless object that every Shaingwan warrior must possess. You’d be trained to love pain and abhor pleasure. Everything you are going to learn and would engage in will be based on the concept of maximum discipline – matumwadi honyo.”

‘Abhor pleasure,’ Danushiki believed he hadn’t heard Karugo properly, because after three years in this jungle, when he finally met Sarme it was going to be a straight week of continuous lovemaking.

“The instructors are merely guides, you’ll know the basic things to do when the gods and goddesses possesses your entire being. Have no fear… none of you will die in the process, but every one of you here would wish his mother never brought him to this world.”

He soon brought out a very sharp dagger from nowhere and called one of the instructors, whispered some few words and handed the dagger to him. Tension was in the air as the recruits wondered what the instructor would do with the weapon. He began to walk towards Danushiki’s row with the dagger in his firm grip. Suddenly, without warning he stabbed a man in the chest and waited for some few seconds while a thin smile emanated on Karugo’s face.

When he eventually pulled the dagger out, Danushiki was shocked to see some of the recruit’s blood spilled on his arm and battle-axe. The man who’d been stabbed began to groan, thinking he was going to die that very moment, while the other recruits strained their necks to look in horror. It wasn’t up to five seconds before the bleeding from the wound on his chest ceased, followed by a reverse flow of blood into the wound. This was followed by the torn flesh which smoothened itself, soon looked as if nothing had pierced it.

The instructor didn’t wait for the wound to ‘heal’ before he handed the dagger to Danushiki, who received it with trembling hands. While examining the dagger, Danushiki’s mouth was agape as it slowly melted into his right palm.

“Don’t worry about what you’ll eat, rather worry about the pain that awaits you.” He concluded abruptly, stood up and walked three or four steps before dismissing them to their respective instructors. The recruits were made to eat fruits, vegetables and edible grains on a daily basis, with exception to the evenings, when the gods and goddesses of Shaingwa provided cooked food for them in mysterious circumstances. A recruit could be walking near a rock in the evening and suddenly stumble across a steaming bowl of well-prepared yam pottage in front of him, or retire to his hut and see roasted mutton a large plantain leaf.

After the jogging had been completed that morning they were lined up in rows and columns of fifty and twenty; thereafter, an instructor was put in charge of fifty recruits. Cobra Land upheld the highest degree of training for its prospective warriors, and no man entered its bowels and came out the same. The first exercise known as the ‘stone throw’ was an energy sapping exercise, whereby a recruit stood erect and had heavy stones tied to his arms and legs. He also had a rock balanced on his back that had to be carried for a distance of two hundred meters within a given time.

Failure or inability to complete the distance within the stipulated time by a recruit led to a repeat of the exercise until such a recruit had completed it to the satisfaction of the supervising instructor. This was followed by archery, boxing, weapon usage, training with wooden rods and physical combat.

When it was Danushiki’s turn to be ‘strapped’, he had only one thing in mind, to endure every form of pain and training at all costs. One interesting thing about each stage of training was that a recruit could not get to the next stage until he’d been successful in the previous stage. If he failed this particular requirement at the end of the three year period, he simply had to choose between fighting an instructor of his or any wild four-footed beast to be chosen by Karugo. A total of fifty recruits were assigned to an instructor who proceeded with his unit to any desired part of Cobra Land to commence training.

Danushiki was anxious to know what Karugo meant by the basic things to be known when possessed by the gods and goddesses of Shaingwa. He knew that whatever the basic things were, they were not going to be too pleasant. That night as he lay alone on a raffia mat inside a small mud hut, he felt the moonlight was torturing his mind by reminding him of his trysts with Sarme. The next morning he ran towards the spot that’d been marked out by their instructor for their unit and eagerly anticipated the training session to commence. When they all arrived, their instructor ordered them into a large circle and guided them on how to strap rocks to their backs and smaller ones to their arms and legs.

Fortunately or unfortunately for his unit, Karugo became interested in everything they did, and was always seen standing close to where their training was conducted.