Part 3 (1)
"Behold over there! The lumberjack is back from the forbidden mountain but the young lad is not with him." A soldier exclaimed while standing in front of his tent in Okunde's garden.
The troop and the residents glared in the direction where Babida was. He looked sad and exhausted from his overnight journey. The inner corners of his eyebrows were raised and his eyes were red. He retained his emotion throughout the way back but at the sight of the military camp, he could no longer. It was hard to cope with the incessant flashbacks of the Beast's coup de grace on Bodo. The memory of the tragedy appeared, disappeared, and then reappeared.
Devastated, he let his axe slide from his right hand and drop to the ground. Then hot tears began to roll down his jaws. He wiped them off with the back of his hands but they kept on flowing to the extent that even his chest was imbibed with some of the salty liquid.
Everyone understood what had happened to the scout mission. Some soldiers of the battalion, like the tradition of the imperial forces required, planted their swords on the lawn and kneeled on the right foot to pay tribute to the courageous youngster. Other warriors along with local inhabitants prayed in silence. They begged for ancestors' favor on the lad's soul.
However, the pain was particularly awful for a middle-aged man in the crowd. He wore no fighter uniform, but rather a regular brown boubou and caoutchouc slippers. He was frowning and burning inside. He glanced at Babida nervously and spat on the lawn to express his contempt vis-a-vis the superhero.
Then with a voice filled with sorrow, he cried out to the amazement of the troop: "Noooo. You let my son die under the criminal claws of that Monster."
"You are a counterfeit hero. You were unable to protect a kid that could have been your son. You should have perished on that cursed mountain, not him. He was too young for a sacrifice of this magnitude." The man whined.
"If only he had listened to me. I had advised him to stay at home with us but he chose to act otherwise. Now he went prematurely into the world of the ancestors. What a stubborn kid he was! His mom might sustain a stroke when she is informed of this ordeal." The man deplored.
Babida heard him mourn but did not utter a single word. He stared instead at the ground, his hands on his waists. He was outpowered by the turn of events.
The Governor's aide de camp, Polo, came out of the headquarters like an arrow. He saw the lumberjack in a state of severe depression and drew with no questioning the conclusions of the spy mission. He instructed two guards to take the woodsman to his tent for him to rest and make sure the servants fed him after his wake-up. Then he went back inside the main quarters.
One of the two sentinels retrieved Babida's axe from the soil. Then they gripped each of his arms and escorted him to his lodging. It was a four-picket foundation that measured three meters long and was covered on the top, the lateral, and back sides with palm leaves. The front side was entirely open since there was no door. The ground had remained untouched. It was simply a portion of the lawn of Okunde's garden. The area hosted up to twenty warriors.
The soldiers helped Babida lie on the floor. He fell asleep immediately. They looked after him for a while, then left as everything was in order.
