3 The Son

Seasons and 'moons' passed, the birth and the naming of the chief's son was expunged from everyone's minds. Everyone was attending to their daily activities and nothing seemed unusual. Ochieng' Lwanda was already thirty two seasons or eight years old. At this age, he had proved to be a reliable boy and the chief was always by his side, teaching him how to run a few things of the clan.

One day, they were walking across the woods of Kobuthi, Ong'am showing the young boy the Lu land.

"Father, I heard there is likely to be a bettle between the Lu tribe and the Kunde tribe..." the boy started, breaking the long silence.

"Where did you hear that from? " asked the father and the boy answered almost immediately.

"You forget that I never leave your side, nothing passes my ears... "

The man frowned a little upon hearing that, he wanted to toss the story aside but the kid couldn't just allow him to.

"I cannot forget that nervous face of yours when you were disclosing that news to the clan elders, are those from Kunde strong? "

The man wanted to answer or comment but the boy didn't give him a chance,

" Then our Lu tribe is very weak, isn't it the other day that uncle Amunde your younger brother bluffed about the Lu tribe being the strongest in the world and Kunde being the weakest?"

" Son... "

" Or that uncle of mine was drunk when he said so... but I remember the sun was just rising, could he be drunk that early?" the son continued.

"Son, your uncle was not drunk and he was right about our tribe being the strongest in the world, we don't really fear the Kunde people... "

"But why were you nervous? "

" Son, the Lu tribe has enjoyed peace for the last twenty four seasons, this is because there was an agreement between the tribe head of Lu tribe and the other tribes..."

"Then why should the Kunde people want a fight?"

"Son, these things are complicated, you'll understand nothing... "

"Then why did you start telling me about it in the first place? "

The father was at first stunned but a moment later he could not help but laugh inside, 'he is at least growing up and is even smarter than those other sons of mine. I believe he'll make a very good chief. ' he then decided to tell his son about everything.

It turned out that the Lu people had discovered a gold deposit near the great lake of Luwa. Top leaders of the tribe decided to conceal this news so that it couldn't get to the ears of other tribes. However, for some reasons, this news got to the other tribes. It was not only the Kunde tribe but also the Lang, Kalek and other tribes.

Gold could be traded for very many heads of cattle, a huge number of weapons and several other goods. In as much as the tribe head had agreed with other tribe heads to live in peace, trade and marry, greed had already blinded the other tribe heads.

Those tribe heads wanted to attack Lu tribe and conquer the area with the gold deposit. The reason why the chief was nervous was because the Lu tribe had to face several tribes at the same time. That was a very difficult matter at hand.

The boy did not ask much but deep inside his eyes there was determination, determination to protect his land, determination that no warrior who had seen many battles could have, determination that only he, and he himself had and this was however not noticed by the father.

A big battle would soon brake out and this meant bad for the whole Lu tribe. There was silence between the duo for the rest of the walk. The father was more of thinking about his growing son while the latter about the big battle.