A few weeks later in Nkwo Nkwerre market square, Ajaero met his friend, Uzoama. Their discussion became so intimate that Uzoama asked him about their friend, Egemole, who he said had not invited him for farm mounds making for the year. Ajaero told him that he helped him a few weeks ago for the same purpose at Ohia Ajandu farmland. He used the opportunity to tell him that his wife had just put to bed some weeks ago, of a beautiful baby girl.
Their discussion got even deeper, and Ajaero told him that Egemole's mother-in-law had come around, and was assisting. The discussion spiraled further, and the news of the attack Ndi Ikpa inflicted on the old woman came to open. Ajaero had forgotten that Daa Achikwu was Uzoama's aunt. He was angered and very furious about it. Daa Achikwu was the only sibling of his father that was still alive.
They were from a village renowned for warfare, Nkwerre. Uzoamaka could not control his anger, albeit entreaties coming from Ajaero, his friend, who now regretted telling his friend about the incident. Although, at last, he pretended as though he had calmed down, only so his friend could let him go and think over it. They disengaged, and Uzoama went to where his wife was selling breadfruit, and handed his Ogbono- a soup thickening seeds of a fruit, to sell for him, and walked back home to meditate on what he had just heard in the market square.
In the evening of the same day, Uzoama assembled his warrior friends of Nkwerre and those from across Ikwe. He told them what he heard at Nkwo market square. He was still describing what he heard when Okolobo, whose maternal home was in the Igodo kindred of Ntu, confirmed it. He was asked why he did not bring home the information. He told them that it was when he went for the burial of his grandmother in Igodo that he heard it. An argument ensued. However, in the end, a decision was taken to send out spies to Ndi Ikpa before they would overrun them, and that was a tragedy hanging in the air for the people of Ndi Ikpa village.
Ndi Ikpa was invaded in the early morning of Afor market day. That war expedition was led by young Anyim, who grew up with rage, vengeance, some dint of unforgetfulness and all that was making returns in his blood.
Ihentunga, an old coward warrior, was caught peeing under the bamboo cupboard of his wife in the kitchen. Fear had made a throw with his agitated body. He was dragged out with his family to be slaughtered by warriors of Nkwerre, at the front of his house. But then, something happened. The sight of a child born with albinism that Anyim saw close to Ihentuga hut became a representation of an image that had for years been engrossed in his memory. It was a memory of a man he grew to honor and respect. Instead of an arousal of rage and ferocity in his heart, a tears-shedding warrior was created in the land of his ancestors.
''I can't do this. I saw him with my two eyes. I will honor him even at death. I don't think I was called to do this. It should be for one who heard of him but never saw him. He shall come, stay, and take over,'' Anyim said, as the bows, arrows and spears of his warriors got stuck in their hands as the next command expected from him eluded them.
''Pray, Ihentuga, to be buried by humans. But definitely, it is not today. But surely it will come. However, if you can see what lies ahead of you, you will from today locate that bush path through which Okwaraoha came into this land, and get yourself back to Dunuora village,'' he continued while bringing down his weapons.
He caressed the head of the little child of albinism, and commanded his warriors to sheath their swords. They all did. He looked up in teary eyes, up into the heavens, and looked down to ask whose child the little boy was. He was amazed when he looked down and could not see the child with albinism around there. He was rather frozen when it was a dark-skinned child that stood close. His lips went ajar. He started asking around for the child.
''Where is that baby I touched now?'' he asked, curiously. Everybody was watching with incredulity, but without an answer to give. The little boy before him came closer, and held both his legs strongly. ''I mean, where is the ayari- the child with albinism I touched now?'' he asked further.
The boy kept looking into his eyes, but his men were not uttering any word. It was not what they came for. They had come for war, and not a childish entertainment as it seemed. ''I am asking; where is the boy?'' he asked again, this time with a loud voice. But on bringing his face down again, it seemed like something struck his mind. He bent his head further down before raising it up once again, and that was when two branches of an Ukwa tree fell beside them, and it adjusted attention towards the tree.
Two Lord Derby's scaly-tailed squirrels emerged from the opening the fallen branches had exposed on the tree. Anyiam shook his head, and left Ihentuga, who he had held all this while at his neck. He caressed the head of Esoro, the little child holding his legs, beckoned his warriors, and they left.
They were seen going to the Uzonwanne strip, where a ditch that was created to serve as a boundary between Igodo and Ntu Village had accidentally broached underground water. On getting there, they washed their feet, their hands, and their faces, before they went back home to Nkwerre village, where they came from.
The warriors of Nkwerre had come and gone. But they had left behind them in Ndi Ikpa, a story of loss; in pride, in honor, in dignity and in number. Their coming had changed the tempo of their humanity. Yet, they were spared in part; the youths who came out for confrontation had paid dearly with their own blood. The close they were was a head injury they inflicted on one of the warriors of Nkwerre village.
There was a scolding silence in Ndi Ikpa for three market days, not even the proud Ihentuga could utter a word. To him, it was a return from the land of the dead, and he was given an opportunity to tell the tale. After four days, he called for a meeting of kinsmen. In the meeting, he still found it difficult to admit that he was wrong. He was rather bent on accusing the Igodo kindred of instigating the war.
He also went further to direct his anger at Ntu village, generally, by saying that they were their real enemies for not coming out to assist them to repel the warriors of Nkwerre, or came to their rescue when they were killed by the invaders. Everybody became angry with him, and in a rage left him where he was seated, and went to their respective homes.
Wars are fought for one reason or the other. It builds some hurt, and sometimes guilt in the hearts of those who engage in it. For as many reasons as these, the Igbos do not fight wars; they see war and pass through it. Because they see war from the light of conscience. They do so many things to see it: to avoid it, to end it, to sacrifice it, and ultimately, to own it.
However, they do not call war anything other than name. Deep inside the foundation of the word, it means counting. Thus, wars to them were not things you engage in because one feels like exercising his or her body parts. No, rather, wars are things they engage in after doing some countings that do them no good. Patiently, and swiftly, too, if the call demands such urgency as self-defense.
The Igbos fought many wars, in different ways; sometimes first with their mouth, which serves as a report. A stranger may see it as rhetoric, but deep down inside the mind of an Igbo man, he was not talking to you but trying to communicate with your conscience. That's part of their war. To the Igbos, at this point, if the conscience of their opponents is as healthy or becomes as healthy as theirs, the war has already been won by both parties in mutual trust, averting the catastrophe that is Igbos at war.
They hardly fight unnecessary wars because they fight so many times in their minds before coming to the open if their conscience throws them that far. To them also, war is a serious business, and because of this, they have it fought first within their souls. They were deeply emotional and vocal people, but their conscience was more. War was not a good brand of honey for the Igbos, but a necessity in necessity.
However, when you are tempted to hurt an Igbo woman, it means one thing: you have been tempted into courting a long-time rage of a people of their kind, and they are, more often than not, always Igbos. The revenge is always swift, but if it is allowed to wait it means one thing; that what waits is unimaginable.
An Igbo man would leave a girl of his daughter's age that slapped him, to beat up her husband, or possibly her male ancestors, because to him, they had failed in their responsibility to teach their spouse, their sister, or daughter that he was an Igbo man who respects women and deserves nothing less.
To him, allowing such a woman to roam about untrained to the extent of laying her hand on a man is still an act of exposing their mothers, sisters, and generally, their women to danger. Because sometimes, human impulses ruin things before order sets foot. So, men most times than not, pay the price, especially the kind of people who lack the background of remorseful appeal.
Therefore, to avoid this, Igbo men learned very well the importance of diplomacy. Every reasonable Igbo man is bred to defend what is defendable and condemn what is condemnable. To him, it is an honor rightly accorded him when another person admits that they have wronged them, or appeals for forgiveness. It makes such a man believe that though he was hurt, a mother was spared.
They mostly generalize the weaknesses of most women, and believe that any reasonable man should learn those traits because there is nothing anyone can do about them, other than exercise restraints in times like that.
Daa Achikwu was in a stone-throw-away neighborhood, but her war had been viciously fought without her knowledge. Nkwerre had investigated the matter and had deemed it right to go to war because of her. And they did. She was guiltless. If they had found her guilty, they knew how to caution or punish her, but she was an old woman beaten, humiliated and torn apart by children young enough to be her grandchildren. So Ndi Ikpa was made to pay in blood, and humiliation. Pity, the one who led the pains that visited was theirs in blood, albeit the same man saved them.
After the chaos, as it was later called in the neighborhood, Ihentuga remained mostly himself, an unrepentant nagging braggart. Even though the life he was living now was a token from a man. He remained unremorseful, still angry, and helplessly aggressive for the fact that he had lost his plots of land at Uzonwanne to the novel watercourse.
No doubt Iyi Agada Omirima had become a river, expanded its torso, daily showing protruding signs of expansive pregnancy from what was coming from Uzonwaane headwaters. There was peace on the graveyard which Ndi Ikpa had suddenly become. Yes, peace had been beaten into the hearts of her youth, and they fell in love with fate. No excuses.