It was getting later into the evening and the marketplace was settled down from the earlier clamoring and calling for customers.
Benaiah was moving methodically toward the other end of the oasis toward the fighting area but as he moved past the tents and he was able to see the small caravan families getting the younger children corralled and ready to settle down for bed he wondered,
“We are all so much the same, we wake, we work, we eat, we sleep, and yet we behave as if we were so much different from one another and then we hate on each other thinking the difference is what separates us and not realizing we are exactly the same in those differences.”
(Little Drummer Boy, Rankin/Bass NBC 1968)
He passed one tent and he caught a glimpse of a Grandfather and grandson sharing a blanket and with the grandson leaning against the grandfather as the grandfather was obviously telling him a bedtime story.
“See, the same. Just like grandfather and me when I was little.”
As Benaiah neared the fighting area he noticed the strange, hushed atmosphere of the crowd.
When he made his way toward the fight edge to get a better look he was hearing bit’s and pieces of what transpired so far, but it didn’t make any sense.
Until he reached the edge and saw what lay in the fight circle.
(Mahala.co.za Nguni stick fighting)
The peculiar slave had sat down as was his custom and except for a bit of a scuff on his right cheek and sweating heavily you would not have noticed anything different about him if you saw him at the end of his movement time before sunrise.
Benaiah looked at the scene and then asked a Bedouin standing by him if he saw what transpired.
The Bedouin answered,
“The fight promoter was looking for more than one opponent who would fight his slave. The men did not think that was honorable, until only one man went in. It all happened so fast no one really knew what happened and then the other man was dead and the slave stood there very calmly. The fight promoter looked proud and so two more men laid a wager and again paid with their life. Being fighting men they got close but barely and then the slave was so fast, he killed one with his chain, the other two with his bare hands.”
Benaiah got that same wry smile on his face because he knew what happened to those men from watching the slave work out in the morning’s before sunrise.
Benaiah made a quick scan and discerned that the peculiar slave did not reveal his staff he has buried and upon a closer look at the fight circle he determined that the stick was close but was yet uncovered.
Benaiah thought, “Wait till they see him with his stick if he decides he needs it.”
The argument now with the fight promoter seemed to be if five men would be a good number to send against the slave but the point of contention was if they could take their swords or not…
as the slave had proven deadly with his chain, even still attached as it was.
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