Umkhombo was troubled, though to be perfectly honest, troubled had been his state of being for many months now. Fate was a fickle thing, and though it had been kind to him here and there, just enough to keep him going, more often than not it preferred to throw snares in his path. He had had a plan for his life once, one in youthful foolishness he thought simple and easy. As an adolescent, he had set out from the land of his birth - leaving before he was old enough to be kicked out outright - with the full intention of returning to it sooner rather than later. He hadn't anticipated spending much time at all as a rogue, sure that he would be quick to gain the strength and experience necessary to successfully challenge the Abaholi of the Bonelands and win.
But, as he had now come to expect from life, nothing ever went quite to plan. In his early wanderings, he had found himself in a harsh desert far from home, and the desert had nearly killed him; if it had not been for the intervention of a scouting lioness, it would have. He then found himself in debt to that deceptively delicate lioness and the pride she led, the Qyrhyesheshti with their strange names and stranger ways. He had thought himself a good fighter until they'd gotten hold of him and taught him many a painful lesson, learned from lions and lionesses smaller than him but infinitely more experienced, hardened and brutal fighters who lived their lives in perpetual war.
It was in sparring that he had earned his first scars, given to him by the very lioness who had saved him to drive into his then-thick skull how very real battle was, how deadly serious the risk. He had before been intrigued and impressed by - not to mention indebted to - her, but that moment when she struck him so, his life in her paws, was the moment he had fallen in love with her, Aribak bint Adala. Hatun. A little lioness, a warlord! Never would he have conceived of such a thing before seeing it for himself. It always gave him a little chuckle to imagine what the Abazingeli would think of that! She could have sauntered in, challenged the Abaholi and won, he liked to think, and told her so once. It had amused her, too.
In time, she had come to return his feelings, though it took a great deal more effort on his part to win her over than to had on hers to win him. But he proved strong and able, and just as importantly, level-headed in battle, given neither to rash action nor blood-blind rage. She took him as her mate, and though that had been his only ambition, their partnering came with title and duty for him. The duty was heavy indeed, for the Qyrhyeshti had long been on the losing side of the war with the Burkuteshti, and teetered on the brink of extinction. Aribak planned to change that, and he would have given his life to see her plans fulfilled and their pride returned to glory.
He wished it had been so, even if he had died in the doing, but he was alive and she was dead, her bones swallowed by the gods-cursed desert that lay far behind him. It had not even been war that took her from him, but their love, and in dark hours he loathed himself for it. She had died giving birth, leaving him with a lonely child, a dying pride, and a choice, and he had dealt the final blow to her dream by disbanding the Qyrhyeshti.
A handful of the remnant rested behind him under watchful guard, a scattering of lionesses who had deigned to follow him back to the Ithambo'hlabathi. At the time of their leaving, there had been as many cubs as lionesses, but it had struck him just that morning that that was no longer the case. Those who had been cubs had begun to blossom into adolescents, a realization that had settled on him with a mixture of shock and pride, and small tinge of something altogether less pleasant he could not quite put a word to.
His daughter was among them, the rest being her cousins but in truth more like her siblings, as their mother her aunt who had nursed and raised her alongside them. He cherished her above all else in this world, Khazine bint Aribak. His treasure. She was a gangly thing now, going about on legs she had yet to grow into - she would be taller than her mother, from the look of it, though what heft she would have remained to be seen. In color she favored him strongly, but her golden eyes were her mother's. It chilled him, sometimes, to look into them. He tried not to let her see.
Nothing was as it should have been. She should have been a princess, heir to her mother, perhaps even the final conqueror of the hated Burkuteshti, but instead she was a nomad who had never known a home, only the stories of one when she would sit still long enough to hear them. Khazine had been a wild, savage child, born to fight and thrive in a harsh place during a harsh time. Her mother would have been proud of her, and would likely have laughed at how often he was vexed by her. As she grew, though, she was beginning to calm, to show reason and even occasional poise. There was a lioness in there, a fine one, and she needed a home, not this constant wandering.
Within the week, he hoped, she would have one. With the help of Tala the falcon, they would locate his former pride, and he would trade blows with Bangizwe and Andhaka. His best hope would be to catch them separately, to defeat one and then the other rather than take them both at once. He was good, but so were they, and they were two...and better fed and less weary. It did not seem so simple a task as it had in his youth, though the plan remained much the same.
But nothing ever went quite to plan. Umkhombo knew to expect that much, at least.
