Khumbi is sold as a slave during a severe drought and famine in South Central Africa. The Bantu boy is taken by a Swahili trader to Angola, where he is traded to a Mbundu family. He becomes their servant but sees himself as a junior member of the family. He engages in preadolescent sex play with the family’s daughter, Lusati, until she reaches puberty and must marry a titled man. He is sold again to the Swahili and taken toward Matamba, Queen Nzinga’s capital. He hopes to return to his family to obtain a bride price so he can win Lusati’s hand. Instead, the caravan is attacked by Imbangalas, cannibal land pirates who live off pillage and have no families, capturing young boys to train as child soldiers.
Khumbi must adjust to his new role. He excels in his training and makes his first kill. After initiation as a warrior, he acquires two concubines. He loses Kasinda when she becomes pregnant and must flee to avoid her baby being killed, as the Imbangalas have no families. He is left with Yela, whom he dearly loves. He participates in a historic victory over Portuguese forces on Queen Nzinga’s side and joins in the siege of a holdout Portuguese fortress.
Yela disappears, and Khumbi fears she has been sold into slavery in Luanda. He goes there to reclaim her and is drafted in the defense of Dutch-held Luanda against a Portuguese invasion force from Brazil. The Dutch surrender, and he is drafted by the Portuguese into their forces and taken to Brazil to fight the Dutch, who control the rich sugar cane lands of Pernambuco. He becomes a soldier in an African unit of the Portuguese army and participates in a successful defeat of Dutch forces outside of Recife.
He joins the Bandierantes as a slave catcher but is wounded and left for dead in a skirmish with escaped slaves called Maroons. A Tupi Indian trader finds him and mistakenly assumes he is a Maroon and has killed a hated slave catcher. He is taken to a Maroon village to heal, and there he reunites with his lost Yela, though now she is married and has a baby.
They take him to Quilombo dos Palmares, the capital of the Maroon Republic. A disgraced Jewish physician sets his broken arm and tells him about his own troubles. He hopes to start a new life among the Maroons and rejoin Yela somehow, but his role as a slave catcher is discovered, and he must flee.
He joins the Tupi trader and his family on a long journey across the length of Brazil by canoe and on foot, seeking the Tupi’s New Christian partner, who has fled Recife to the Dutch settlements in Guiana. Along the way, Khumbi falls in love with the Tupi’s lovely daughter, Poranga. They finally reach Guiana. Englishmen mistake Khumbi for an escaped slave and attempt to capture him. The Tupi is shot trying to prevent Khumbi’s capture. He and Poranga are taken to jail, where a Kalinago chief is also held.
The chief’s men are joined by the Tupi trader’s sons and attack the English settlement to free their chief, Khumbi, and Poranga. They join the Kalinagos as traders until they learn the English want to arrest Khumbi for killing one of their men during the escape. He and Poranga must flee with Island Carib traders to avoid his recapture.
