CHAPTER 178: CHAPTER 178 - LESSONS IN DISCIPLINE

The sun was barely a pale coin on the horizon when Onyango swung into the palace courtyard. He did not linger. Barely time for a bow, a handful of breath, and he mounted his horse — a lean, steady bay that had carried many messages through rough country. The saddle creaked like an urgent clock.

"Tell them at once," Khisa had said, voice flat with the gravity of what would come. "Timing is the only thing that keeps the plan from unravelling."

Onyango’s face held no drama — only the look of a man who had slept poorly and ridden too far. He clicked the horse forward and vanished down the road toward the Kongo-Buganda border, the dust of Mengo rising behind him like smoke from the evening pyres. The message had to travel; the pieces had to move. The net had been cast. Now it needed seams to be tight, knots to hold.

Back in Mengo, Khisa and his commanders set the rhythm of the kingdom. Dawn to dusk, the palace yard rang with the clack of feet and the bark of officers. The Buganda levies were no strangers to hardship — farmers and fishermen with spears and stubborn hearts — but they were untrained in the cadence of a disciplined army. Khisa’s three captains were relentless.

"Five paces forward. One-two—one-two—hold!" Bakari shouted, his voice cutting like a whip. The square of new soldiers moved as best they could, backward and forward until the sand took the shape of their feet.

Odinga walked the ranks, his gaze picking out the weakest links and correcting them with a half-word and a gesture. Ole Samoei rounded the corner, arms folded, voice soft but absolute when he scolded a man for dragging his shield.

Training was not only about marching. Khisa brought in battlefield medicine — quick, dirty fixes that could keep men alive long enough to fetch a healer. Bandaging lessons taught with the bluntness of reality: "If the artery is crushed, don’t waste cloth — find the stump, press with both hands." The first-aid drills were met with grim faces; no one liked thinking of a friend writhing with his guts spilling out. But the men learned.

Khisa watched from the edge of the yard as the Buganda men stumbled through another formation. Their steps were uneven, shields dragging like burdens instead of armor. He said nothing, but in his chest a cold knot twisted. Time was a luxury they did not have.

These men would soon face seasoned killers, soldiers sharpened by Portuguese steel and Lumingu’s fury. And yet here they were, tripping over their own feet. Khisa clenched his fist at his side. If pride and fear consumed them before the enemy even arrived, Buganda would be lost before the first spear was thrown.

Day after day the drills ate at them. The men’s muscles tightened into unfamiliar shapes. The buganda soldiers watched Nuri’s men move like a single living thing — precise, economical, calm in their step. The more Buganda lagged, the deeper the furrows appeared on their brows.

At dusk, after a sun that had felt unkind, ranks sat in a rough semicircle to eat their meager pottage. Lanterns threw wavering light on tired faces. The air was raw with sweat and the smell of the cooking fire. The exhausted silence, fragile as thread, held until a voice cut it like a snapped bowstring.

"You people think you’re better than us, don’t you?" a man spat, eyes dark as old grief. He pushed his bowl aside and rose, the small chair scraping like a cry. He was a farmer by trade, plump with years of work, his name lost beneath the heat of his anger.

Kimani, a Nuri soldier who had been watching them with that still, practiced patience of years’ training, clenched his teeth. He had come here to teach, not to be insulted. "Just because we trained longer doesn’t mean we look down on Buganda."

"You say that now," the farmer snapped, "but the way you walk, the way you talk... you hold yourselves with the pride of usurpers!" He jabbed a finger toward Kimani. "You think your armor makes you a better man."

"You want better?" Kimani’s voice was low, controlled. "Then learn. Learn the order of march, the signals, how to close a wound in minutes and keep a brother breathing. We did not become better because of fancy armor. We became better because of the work."

"Work?" another Bugandan cut in. "You call making men of us work? We have work too. We work the soil, we keep this land fed. We don’t pretend to be better because we know how to swing a spear a certain way."

The words were small, but they pulled at a taut line across the circle. Others watched, unwanted memories of arrogance and humiliation quiet but present — when Buganda’s banners had once been dismissed as provincial by outsiders. The Nuri soldiers, for all their discipline, bore a foreignness that sometimes felt like an accusation in their ears.

Tension blossomed into heat. Words became edged remarks. A hand rose — not in argument, but in action. The farmer swung first, a clumsy, brutal motion of flesh against the practiced reflexes of a trained man. Fists found faces. The lantern chimneys rattled. A shout split open the night. Blood spattered on the dusty floor, hot and copper-bright.

Fists answered fists. A Bugandan’s jaw snapped under a well-placed blow. A Nuri man stumbled into a wooden crate and swore like an oath. Men surged. The melee was a storm — raw, animal, necessary to the unlearning of a thousand little insults.

For a heartbeat, the fight was more than anger — it was fear given fists and teeth. Each man swung not just at his opponent, but at the shadow of what awaited them on the battlefield: Portuguese gunfire, the Kongo blades, the possibility of dying unprepared.

Then Bakari strode in.

He did not run or shout. He walked through the yard like a dark tide, each stride swallowing space. His voice rang out, not like a reprimand but like a command that belonged to a greater order.

"Quiet!" Bakari barked. The sound peeled through the yard. Men froze as if struck. "How disgraceful."

He surveyed them: the Nuri men with dust on their breath, the Bugandans with anger in their eyes. "As soldiers of Nuri, hold yourselves to a higher standard. Your kingdom’s honor depends on how you carry yourselves. And you," he turned his gaze to the Bugandans, "your kingdom depends on you. Petty squabbles will break ranks and fall men into graves before the enemy appears. I understand your frustration — Nuri had time to prepare. Learn from them. Put your pride aside and ensure you return to your families."

He stepped closer. "A soldier’s duty is to hold the line for a man who cannot — not to trade insults. You are greater than this. If you cannot carry that, you will not carry a spear into battle."

The soldiers saluted mechanically, anger cooled by the stern authority of a man who had seen too much. Bakari’s scowl was not cruel, but it carried the shape of truth, and deep down the men knew it. Pride had been wounded; pride could be repaired. They could not allow it to break them.

When the yard quieted, Ole Samoei moved among them, laying hands on the bruised, checking the cuts. "Make sure the blood is cleaned," he said, voice like gravel. "Tomorrow, we train again. And you —" he pointed at the farmer who had started it — "you will stand at the front and learn the first formation. No excuses."

They slept then, with stiff limbs and humbled faces, each man turning the fight over in his head and deciding what kind of soldier he would be.