The warrior's oath

At a Glance

• Central figures: Meyitsüla, a young Ao Naga warrior seeking his first head; Longpok, a seasoned warrior and keeper of the oath-stone in the village of Longkong; and Tsüknungba, the elder who administered the oath.
• Setting: The Ao Naga village of Longkong in the Mokokchung hills of present-day Nagaland, in the oral tradition of the Ao people; the story is set in the era before British pacification ended head-taking.
• The turn: Meyitsüla swears the warrior’s oath on the thuthumia - the oath-stone of the village - binding himself to bring back a head or not return alive.
• The outcome: Meyitsüla takes a head but loses Longpok in the raid, and must carry both the trophy and the dead warrior’s dao back to Longkong to complete the oath.
• The legacy: The oath-stone of Longkong, which remained at the edge of the morung ground, marked with the scratches of many daos; warriors touched it before leaving and upon returning, and the stone carried the weight of every oath spoken over it.

The morung was cold before dawn. Meyitsüla sat against the wall with his legs drawn up, his father’s dao across his knees, listening to the older men breathe in their sleep. He had not slept. The fire had gone to ash hours ago, and he could see the outline of the roof beams, the row of skulls along the high shelf, and the gap where new ones belonged.

Today he would stand at the stone and open his mouth and say the words, and after that he could not take them back.

The Stone at the Edge of the Morung Ground

The thuthumia was not large. It came up to a man’s knee and was flat on top, worn smooth from hands and blades. It sat at the edge of the open ground in front of the morung, the bachelors’ dormitory where every Ao boy came to live when he was old enough to leave his mother’s house. The stone had been there longer than the village. Some elders said it had been there when the first Ao families climbed to this ridge and cut the forest back. Others said the ancestors carried it.

Tsüknungba stood beside it. He was the eldest man in Longkong - not the chief, not the tatar, just old. Old enough that his own warrior marks had faded into the loose skin of his arms. He held a rooster by the legs, the bird quiet and hanging.

Meyitsüla came forward. Longpok came with him.

Longpok was ten years older. He had three heads already. He did not need to swear anything - he had sworn before and come back each time. But a young man’s first raid required a companion, someone who had already killed and could read a trail and keep the younger one from doing something stupid. Longpok had agreed to go.

Tsüknungba cut the rooster’s throat. The blood hit the stone and ran into its cracks, which were already dark from other mornings like this one. The elder spoke the oath aloud and Meyitsüla repeated it, phrase by phrase. The words were simple. He would bring a head or he would not come back alive. There was no middle ground. A man who fled the oath lived in shame so total that his name would be struck from the clan records and his family would not speak it.

Meyitsüla touched the stone with the flat of his dao. Longpok did the same. Then they turned and walked down the hill path toward the valley.

The Trail Below Longkong

They walked for two days. The target was a village to the southeast that had raided Longkong’s fields the previous season, burning a granary and killing a boy. The raid was both personal and sanctioned - the village council had approved it.

Longpok set the pace. He did not talk much. He carried his dao and a short spear and a bag of rice wrapped in banana leaf. Meyitsüla carried the same. They slept in the open, no fire, and Longpok woke Meyitsüla twice in the night to listen. Both times there was nothing. The forest was doing what the forest did.

On the second evening they reached the ridge above the enemy village. Longpok pointed out the paths, the water source, the fields where men would be working at first light. They watched until it was too dark to see.

“One head,” Longpok said. “We get one and we leave. You do not stop to take a second.”

Meyitsüla nodded. His hands were steady. His stomach was not.

The Raid at First Light

They went in when the sky was grey. A man was at the edge of the field with a hoe, bent over, alone. Meyitsüla moved through the tall grass the way Longpok had taught him in practice drills on the hillside above Longkong. He came up behind the man and struck.

The blow was clean. The man dropped without a sound. Meyitsüla took the head.

Then the shouting started from the village. Someone had seen them. Longpok was already pulling Meyitsüla toward the tree line when the first spear came. It hit Longpok below the shoulder, entering from behind and pushing through until the point showed at the front of his chest. Longpok went down on one knee and did not get up.

Meyitsüla could have run. The oath said bring a head or die. He had the head. But Longpok was looking at him, and Longpok’s dao had fallen in the grass, and a warrior did not leave another warrior’s dao for the enemy to take. The dao carried the marks of its owner’s kills. To lose it was to lose the record.

He grabbed Longpok under the arms and dragged him into the trees. The head was tied to his belt by the hair. Longpok’s dao was in his left hand, his own dao in his right. Behind him the village men were running.

The Walk Back

He could not carry Longpok far. The older man was heavy and the spear was still in him and every step made it worse. A hundred paces into the forest Longpok put his hand on Meyitsüla’s arm and shook his head.

“Leave me. Take the dao.”

Meyitsüla set him against a tree. Longpok died there, with his eyes open, looking at the canopy. Meyitsüla closed them with his thumb.

He walked for three days. The village men followed for the first half-day and then stopped - they were too few to risk going further from their own village. Meyitsüla ate the last of the rice on the second night and went hungry on the third day. He carried two daos and a head, and the weight of all three was different from what he had expected.

He came up the hill path to Longkong in the late afternoon. The children saw him first and ran. By the time he reached the morung ground, the village was standing in a half-circle around the stone.

The Return to the Thuthumia

Meyitsüla walked to the stone. He laid Longpok’s dao on it first, blade flat, handle facing the morung. Then he laid his own dao beside it. Then he set the head on the ground at the base of the stone.

Tsüknungba looked at the two daos and the one head and the one man where two men had left.

“Longpok?”

“Dead. Below the ridge. A spear.”

The elder picked up Longpok’s dao and held it. It would go to Longpok’s family. The kill-marks on the blade were the record of a life, and the family would keep it the way other people keep written histories.

Meyitsüla touched the stone with his open palm. The oath was done. He had brought a head and he had come back alive. But the stone was warm from the afternoon sun and the blood on it was old, and Longpok’s dao was no longer on it, and there was a space on the skull-shelf in the morung where one more would sit - and another space, somewhere in the forest below the ridge, where Longpok’s bones would stay.

The village did not celebrate that night. There would be a feast later, when the mourning was done. For now the head was placed on the shelf and the fire was built up and the men of the morung sat in the dark and did not say much.

The stone stayed where it was. It would be there in the morning.