Chapter 24 - Trials of Plague and Order
Khisa had fought many battles, but this... this was a war against something he couldn't stab, couldn't outmaneuver, couldn't intimidate.
Cholera took who it pleased.
His hands trembled as he pressed wet cloth against a dying child's forehead. He had boiled water, isolated the sick, built crude purification systems—and still, it wasn't enough.
Every morning, more bodies.
At night, his mind was haunted by faces he could not save. He barely slept, barely ate. His warriors, hardened by war, were shaken as well.
Yet they buried their grief, just as they buried the dead.
When the last wave of death finally passed, Khisa stood before a field of graves, his heart weighed down by failure.
The villagers gathered, silent in their grief.
An elder woman, one of the few left, stepped forward. A Kikuyu elder.
"We must send them off properly," she murmured.
Khisa had read about it before—the Kikuyu burial rites.