The Ashanti Raider: opening

The Ashanti Raider aka The Girl in the Golden Kusheshe
By: Nicholas Jakari-Williamson aka Nicholas Jakari.

 

“You are sure? It is convenient that this would be assassin is dead ” Bone saw the expression of fury on the old man’s face and backed off.

 
“Do you want it to go to New York?” Koyo walked into an alcove of the small chapel where an officiating burial officer was fidgeting about with his tools of spiritual redemption, ostentatiously peeking at his watch: trying not to lust after the golden mask lying in one of his cut price coffins. The officiating officer had made calls to various prospective buyers within moments of eyeballing it..
 

“No…it is too complicated.” Bone chewed his lips for a moment, and he stared vacantly at the coffin. Saw the pseudo priest eyeing its contents, and reached a decision that seemed to hurt him “She must go to Zone One, in Southern Azania. There will be a buyer there…and sellers too. We can move guns quickly from Zone One …” then, masking his own lust for the priceless artefact, “My main concern is whether she can be trusted to trade something this valuable without being tempted.”
 

“Yes. Well technically the thing is her’s by right of inheritance.” Koyo shrugged again, turned and leaned against a looming oversized plastic icon, which interpreted Durer’s immortal praying hands, and which decorated the cheap-whitewashed wall. He took out a battered packet of cigarettes, remembered where he was and put them away again.
“I do not understand.” Bone eventually decided that he was not going to get an answer. “What do you mean, hers?” He frowned, and then turning his face so Koyo didn’t see him, scowled.

 

“It is complicated, but by the more arcane rules of our clan, given the number of those who were slaughtered in the genocide, and ruling out those of the clan who orchestrated the murder of their kinsmen, she becomes the rightful inheritor. She has agreed to do this in the interests of rebuilding our people.”

 
They both stood staring at the mask, which had a history so complex that Bone’s mind had reeled when Koyo had first told him at the briefing just before the old bitch had died. It gave the resting body of the late Queen a surreal appearance. She had often called it the Golden Raider, and she would laugh and tell the stories of its creation back in the ancient golden time of Afrika. It had travelled from west Afrika to central Afrika over many centuries always travelling in disguise, with its lawful owner, until for the past century or so it had lived at Goma on Lake Kivu.

 
“Will that not affect her judgement?” Bone was impatient with all the mumbo jumbo of past protocols. He also had no truck with the idea that a woman had any entitlement to wealth, especially young and beautiful woman. He belonged to a generation that venerated new instruments of authority in the strict context of the old: the rights of present power blended to the rights of the past. A woman’s place was to be fucked regularly, and to stay in the kitchen afterwards. This was what he believed, notwithstanding any bullshit he may utter to the contrary while on the trail of campaign funds.

 
“Who knows? You can’t have it both ways.” The older of the two men shrugged again,” The truth is there is no one else we can trust after what happened.” He stared at Bone with such a hard intense stare that Bone began to feel uneasy, felt himself overwhelmed with guilt and hoped it wasn’t showing.
“Sh…she comes…”

 
“Greetings Princess, “ Her knees buckled slightly as she bent to accommodate Koyo and she hugged him, a hug that spoke of all the pain of loss and the joy of finding a familiar face in a strange place. It was an awkward hug, for although the man with parade ground bearing was tall; the epitome of a military man from a long military line, the woman was taller.

 
“Greetings from Goma.” She replied, referring to her home on the shores of Lake Kivu, one of the gem like cluster of lakes that collectively make up the Great Lakes region of central Afrika.

 
“May I introduce Compatriarch Born, this is Princess Ransome-Frankfurt of Goma.”
They both bowed with a certain stiff formality. They were after all at a funeral on a bitter cold October afternoon in an alien country.
“Call me D’Ax please.” …
 
 
This is an extract from the story called ‘The Ashanti Raider’ Part Two of the Azanian Quartet … The full digital version of what has been described as a violent, sexually explicit Adult content story, should arrive during 2015 and for sure by 2016.in the meantime follow the podcast of the Jonker Memorandum”.