The Wanyisanza scout's words, delivered between gasping breaths, fell like ice shards into the heart of Jabari's ikulu. "Thousands… red coats… cannons like suns… a Jenerali they call 'The Butcher'… he swears to hang Jabari from the highest tree…" The news, stripped of its initial terrified hyperbole but no less grim in its core truth, spread through the Batembo capital with the speed of a bushfire, then rippled outwards to the furthest allied villages. Fear, cold and sharp, pricked at the edges of the hard-won confidence that had blossomed since Steiner's defeat. This was not another trading company's blustering captain; this was the mailed fist of the British Empire itself.
Jabari, Kaelo's mind a fortress of forced calm within the young Ntemi's suddenly taut frame, convened his full war council within the hour. The great hut was packed, not just with Batembo elders and war leaders, but with grim-faced representatives from every allied Nyamwezi clan and the ever-loyal Wanyisanza, led by Ntemi Gwala himself, who had journeyed with Lبانجى upon hearing the first, vague rumors of a new, massive European force. The air was thick with unspoken dread, the flickering oil lamps casting stark shadows on faces etched with worry.
"The hyena, Steiner, was but a scout for the lion," Mzee Kachenje said, his voice thin but unwavering. "Now, the true pride comes, and its roar shakes the very earth."
Lبانجى, his youthful bravado tempered by the sheer scale of the reported enemy, nonetheless struck a defiant note. "Let them come! We have tasted English blood before! We have their rifles! We know their ways now!"
"Their ways, Lبانجى," Hamisi interjected, his scarred face somber, "may be different when led by a true 'Jenerali' with thousands at his back, not a mere 'Meja' with a few hundred. This 'Butcher' will not be so easily baited or bled as Harrison was."
Jabari allowed the murmurs of fear and defiance to rise and fall before he spoke, Kaelo's carefully chosen words designed to acknowledge the peril without succumbing to despair. "The storm we have long prepared for is now upon us," he began, his voice clear and steady, resonating through the hushed hut. "The Jenerali they call 'The Butcher' comes with many warriors, with great thunder-sticks, and with the belief that his Queen's power is without limit. He believes he can sweep across our lands like a flood, washing away our homes, our traditions, our very names."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over each face, meeting their eyes. "He is wrong."
A subtle shift occurred in the room, a stiffening of spines, a hardening of expressions.
"We are not the scattered reeds he imagines," Jabari continued, his voice rising with controlled passion. "We are the forest of Unyamwezi, rooted deep in this land, our branches intertwined! We have faced the sun-haired men before and made them taste the bitterness of our iron. This Jenerali will find no easy conquest here. He will find a united people, fighting for their ancestral soil, for their children's future. He will find every village a fortress, every path an ambush, every warrior a lion!"
Kaelo's grand strategy for defense, refined over months of study and intelligence gathering, was then laid bare. There would be no single, decisive battle where British firepower could annihilate them. Instead, it would be a war of a thousand stings, a kingdom-wide scorched earth, a relentless harassment designed to bleed the invaders dry, to break their will, to turn their march into a passage through hell.
"The land itself will be our greatest weapon," Jabari explained, Juma unrolling his most detailed map, now showing not just Batembo territory but the wider region, marked with strategic points. "As the red coats advance, all villages in their path will be evacuated. Women, children, elders, livestock, and every sack of grain, every gourd of water, will be moved to hidden strongholds in the deepest forests or the most inaccessible hills. What cannot be moved will be burned or buried. They will find no food, no shelter, no willing hands to serve them. Only ashes and silence."
A murmur of understanding, mixed with apprehension at the hardship this would entail, went through the council.
"Our warriors," Jabari continued, his eyes finding Hamisi and Lبانجى, "will not offer a single, massed target for their cannons. Instead, we will divide our strength. Lبانجى, you and Juma, with the Nkonde sya Ntemi and the swiftest Wanyisanza trackers, will be the teeth of the leopard that tear at their flanks and their endlessly long supply train. You will strike without warning, day and night. You will take their scouts, burn their wagons, stampede their oxen, disrupt their camps. Make them fear every shadow, every rustle in the grass."
Lبانجى's eyes gleamed with fierce anticipation. This was the kind of warfare he understood and excelled at.
"Hamisi," Jabari turned to his steadfast war leader, "you will command our main forces, including the warriors from our allies. But your task will be to choose your ground. We will fortify key villages and strategic passes, places where their numbers and cannons offer less advantage. These will be our 'thorns.' We will defend them fiercely, bleed the red coats for every step they take. But we will not die for empty pride or a pile of stones. When the cost becomes too great, our warriors will withdraw in good order, leaving the enemy a ruined village and more empty bellies, only to find another 'thorn' further down their path."
He outlined how their core army would remain mobile, a powerful reserve that could strike if an opportunity arose – if the British overextended, divided their forces, or were caught in difficult terrain. He spoke of psychological warfare – spreading rumors among the enemy's askaris (many of whom were Nyamwezi or from neighboring tribes, conscripted or lured by pay) of Batembo invincibility, of harsh British discipline, of the futility of their invasion, encouraging desertion.
It was a strategy born of Kaelo's historical knowledge of successful guerrilla campaigns against larger, conventional armies, adapted to the Nyamwezi context. It demanded immense discipline, coordination, and sacrifice from every clan, every village.
The mobilization of the Batembo Kingdom and its confederation began immediately. Boroga, his organizational talents now indispensable, oversaw the massive, heartbreaking task of evacuating frontier villages, his commands sharp but his eyes reflecting the sorrow of uprooting entire communities. Smoke plumed across the horizon as granaries that could not be emptied were torched. Herds of cattle were driven deep into hidden valleys. Mzee Kachenje and other respected elders moved among the people, explaining the necessity of these harsh measures, steeling their resolve, invoking the spirits of the ancestors to protect them.
Seke's forges glowed hotter than ever, the clang of hammers a defiant rhythm against the distant, imagined thunder of British cannons. Every warrior checked his weapons, every bowstring was tested, every musket cleaned and oiled. The women prepared rations of dried meat and millet, sharpened knives, and tended to the children, their faces grim but determined.
As the British expedition, led by General Sir Charles Ashworth (Kaelo had finally gleaned his name from terrified traders fleeing north), began its ponderous advance into the southern reaches of Jabari's claimed territory, the first phase of the defensive war commenced. Ashworth, known indeed as "The Butcher of the Indus" for his brutal suppression of a rebellion in British India, was a caricature of imperial arrogance and military orthodoxy. He expected a few sharp engagements, a decisive victory, and the swift submission of this upstart Nyamwezi chief.
He found something entirely different.
His scouts, sent ahead to map the route and locate water sources, began to disappear without a trace, victims of Lبانجى's silent Wanyisanza arrows or Juma's cleverly laid snares. Small foraging parties, venturing out from the main column in search of local produce, would return with half their number missing, or not at all, their mules driven off, their supplies taken. At night, the British camp, though heavily guarded, was plagued by unnerving sounds just beyond the perimeter of firelight – sudden war cries, the ghostly flicker of torches, a shower of harassing arrows falling into the transport lines, wounding oxen and sending porters into a panic.
General Ashworth, a man of rigid military thinking, responded with predictable fury. He sent out punitive patrols, but they found only empty villages and elusive enemies who struck from ambush and vanished. He ordered his artillery to shell any suspicious-looking thicket or ridge, wasting precious ammunition and achieving little beyond further enraging the landscape itself. The disciplined red coats, trained for set-piece battles on open fields, found themselves bogged down in a frustrating, invisible war against an enemy who refused to stand and fight on their terms. Their long supply train, snaking for miles behind the main column, became a constant source of anxiety, vulnerable to Lبانجى's daring raids that seized vital food, powder, and medical supplies.
Kaelo, receiving daily reports at Jabari's mobile command post – a constantly shifting encampment deep within the wooded hills – felt a grim satisfaction. The first part of his strategy was working. The British were being slowed, harassed, denied local resources. Their morale, particularly among the colonial askaris and conscripted porters, was beginning to fray.
One specific incident highlighted the effectiveness of their tactics. A British company, detailed to secure a vital river ford, was expertly lured by Juma's scouts into a narrow, densely wooded ravine. There, Lبانجى's warriors, hidden on the slopes above, unleashed a torrent of rocks, spears, and musket fire. The British, caught in constricted terrain, their formations broken, suffered significant casualties before they could fight their way out, leaving behind several dead and abandoning a cart laden with rifle ammunition. It was not a decisive battle, but it was another deep cut, another drain on British strength and confidence.
Jabari himself, though Kaelo advised him against unnecessary personal risk, made a point of being seen by his warriors, visiting forward outposts, consulting with Hamisi and Lبانجى, his presence a visible symbol of their unified resistance. He shared their simple rations, listened to their concerns, and spoke with an unwavering conviction in their ultimate, if costly, success. The lines between Kaelo the strategist and Jabari the Nyamwezi Ntemi were now so blurred as to be almost indistinguishable; they were two facets of a single, unyielding will.
As General Ashworth's vast but increasingly weary column pushed deeper into Batembo territory, they found a land that was empty yet hostile. Villages were deserted, fields fallow or burned, wells sometimes deliberately fouled. The sun beat down mercilessly. Disease began to whisper through their ranks. And always, just out of sight, were the shadows – Lبانجى's warriors, Juma's scouts – watching, waiting, striking.
The Red Tide had indeed approached, Kaelo thought, as he studied Juma's latest map, marking Ashworth's slow, agonizing progress. But it was now flowing into a vast, unforgiving swamp of resistance, its powerful currents being dissipated, its momentum sapped by a thousand unseen obstacles. The Butcher of the Indus had come to Unyamwezi expecting a swift, brutal hunt. Instead, he was finding himself the hunted. The real test, the defense of the designated Nyamwezi strongholds, was yet to come. But the Batembo and their allies had drawn first blood, and the great British lion was learning that this corner of Africa would not be easily tamed.