Bila, a young peasant, decides to go to Ivory Coast to work and is asked by his parents to accompany Pogbi who is going to meet her fiancé, through an arranged marriage, for the first time. However, Pogbi is in love with Rasmane, a pariah from the smiths' caste, and runs away.
At a war crimes trial in an African country, an idealistic lawyer delves into the past of a man who, accused of committing unspeakable atrocities, is treated as an inhuman monster.
On 2 January 1899, starting from the French Sudan, a French column under the command of the captains Voulet and Chanoine is sent against the black Sultan Rabah in what is now the Cameroon. Those captains and their African mercenary troops destroy and kill everything they find on their path. The French authorities try to stop them sending orders and a second troop but the captains kill the emissaries who reach them. Sarraounia, queen of the Aznas, have heard about the exactions. Clever in war tactics and in witchcraft, she decides to resist and stop those mad men.