The Quest

by Wilbur Smith

  Stinging insects plagued men and animals. As soon as the sun set they rose in buzzing clouds from the surface of the pools, and the troopers huddled miserably in the smoke of the campfires to avoid their onslaught.

  In the morning their faces were swollen and spotted with bites.

  They had been travelling for twelve days before the first man showed symptoms of swamp-sickness. Soon, one after another, his comrades succumbed to it. They suffered from blinding headaches and uncontrollable shivering, even in the humid heat, and their skin was hot to the touch. But Meren would not break the march to let them recover. Each morning the stronger troopers helped the invalids to mount, then rode alongside them to hold them in their saddles. At night many babbled deliriously. In the morning dead bodies lay round the fires. On the twentieth day Captain Tonka died. They scraped a shallow grave for him in the mud, and rode on.

  Some of those struck down threw off the disease, although their faces were left yellowed and they were weak and exhausted. A few, including Taita and Meren, were unaffected by the sickness.

  Meren urged the fever-racked men on: ‘The sooner we escape from these terrible swamps and their poisonous mists, the sooner you will recover your health.’ Then he confided to Taita, ‘I worry ceaselessly that should we lose the Shilluk to the swamp-sickness or they desert us, we will be helpless. We will never escape from this dreary wilderness and shall all perish here.’

  ‘These swamps are their home. They are shielded from the diseases that abound here,’ Taita assured him. ‘They will stay with us to the end.’

  As they travelled on southwards, vast new expanses of papyrus opened before them, then closed behind them. They seemed trapped like insects in honey, never able to break free despite their violent struggles. The papyrus imprisoned them, ingested them and suffocated them. Its bland monotony wearied and dulled their minds. Then, on the thirty-sixth day of the march, there appeared at the limit of their forward vision a cluster of dark dots.

  ‘Are those trees?’ Taita called to the Shilluk. Nakonto sprang on to Nontu’s shoulders and stood to his full height, balancing easily. It was a position he often adopted when he needed to see over the reeds. ‘Nay, ancient one,’ he replied. ‘Those are huts of the Luo.’

  ‘Who are the Luo?’

  ‘They are hardly men. They are animals who live in these swamps, eating fish, snakes and crocodiles. They build their hovels on poles, such as those you see. They plaster their bodies with mud, ash and other filth to keep off the insects. They are savage and wild. We kill them when we find them for they steal our cattle. They drive the beasts they have stolen from us into this fastness of theirs and eat them. They are not true men but hyenas and jackals.’ He spat in contempt.

  Taita knew that the Shilluk were nomadic herders. They had a deep love for their cattle, and would never kill them. Instead they carefully punctured a vein in a beast’s throat, caught the blood that flowed in a calabash, and when they had sufficient they sealed the tiny wound with a handful of clay. They mixed it with cow’s milk and drank it. ‘That is why we are so tall and strong, such mighty warriors. That is why the swamp-sickness never affects us,’ the Shilluk would explain.

  They reached the Luo encampment to find that the huts sitting high on their stilts were deserted. However, there were signs of recent occupation. Some of the fish heads and scales beside the rack on which they smoked their catch were quite fresh, and had not yet been eaten by fresh-water crabs or the buzzards that perched on the roofs, and live coals still glowed in the fluffy white ash of the fires. The area beyond the encampment that the Luo had used as a latrine was littered with fresh excrement. Nakonto stood by it. ‘They were here this very morning. They are still close by. Probably they are watching us from the reeds.’

  They left the village and rode on for another seemingly interminable distance. Late in the afternoon Nakonto led them to an opening that was slightly higher than the surrounding mudbanks, a dry island in the wastes. They tethered the horses to wooden pegs driven into the earth, and fed them crushed dhurra meal in leather nosebags. Meanwhile Taita tended the sick troopers, and the men prepared their dinner. Soon after nightfall they were asleep around the fires. Only the sentries remained awake.

  The fires had long burned out, and the troopers were deep in slumber when suddenly they were shocked awake. Pandemonium swept through the camp. There were shouts and screams, the thunder of galloping hoofs, and splashing from the pools around the island. Taita sprang up from his mat and ran to Windsmoke. She was rearing and plunging, trying to pull the peg that held her out of the ground, as most of the other horses had. Taita grabbed her halter rope and held her down. With relief he saw that the foal, shivering with terror, was still at her side.

  Strange dark shapes flitted around them, prancing, screaming and ululating shrilly, poking at the horses with spears, goading them to break away. The frenzied animals plunged and fought their ropes. One of the figures charged at Taita and thrust at him with his spear. Taita knocked it aside with his staff and drove the point into his assailant’s throat. The man dropped and lay still.

  Meren and his captains rallied their troops and rushed in with bared swords. They managed to cut down a few attackers before the others vanished into the night.

  ‘Follow them! Don’t let them get away with the horses!’ Meren bellowed.

  ‘Do not let your men go after them in the dark,’ Nakonto called urgently to Taita. ‘The Luo are treacherous. They will lead them into the pools and ambush them. We must wait for the light of day before we follow.’

  Taita hurried to restrain Meren, who accepted the warning reluctantly for his fighting blood was up. He called his men back.

  They assessed their losses. All four sentries’ throats had been cut, and another legionary had received a spear wound in the thigh. Three Luo had been killed, and another was badly wounded. He lay groaning in his blood and the vile matter that dribbled from the stab wound through his guts.

  ‘Finish him!’ Meren ordered, and one of his men decapitated the man with a swing of his battleaxe. Eighteen horses were missing.

  ‘We cannot afford to lose so many,’ Taita said.

  ‘We won’t,’ Meren promised grimly. ‘We will retrieve them - on Isis’s teats, I swear it.’

  Taita examined one of the Luo corpses in the firelight. It was the body of a short, stocky man, with a brutal ape-like face. He had a sloping forehead, thick lips and small close-set eyes. He was naked, except for a leather belt round his waist from which hung a pouch. It contained a collection of magical charms, knuckle bones and teeth, some of which were human. Around his neck, on a lanyard of plaited bark, hung a flint knife caked with the blood of one of the sentries. It was crudely fashioned, but when Taita tested the edge on the dead man’s shoulder it split the skin with little pressure. The Luo’s body was coated with a thick plaster of ash and river clay. On his chest and face were traced primitive designs in white clay and red ochre, spots, circles and wavy lines. He stank of woodsmoke, rotten fish and his own feral odour.

  ‘A repulsive creature,’ Meren spat.

  Taita moved to attend to the wounded trooper. The spear thrust was deep and he knew it would mortify. The man would be dead within hours, but Taita showed him a reassuring face.

  In the meantime Meren was picking his strongest and fittest troopers for the punitive column to follow the thieves. The rest of the party would be left to guard the baggage, the remaining horses and the sick.

  Before it was fully light the two Shilluk went out into the reedbeds to find the outward spoor of the raiders. They returned before sunrise.

  ‘The Luo dogs rounded up the runaway horses and drove them in a herd towards the south,’ Nakonto reported to Taita. ‘We found the bodies of two more and another who was wounded but still living. He is dead now.’ Nakonto touched the hilt of the heavy bronze knife that hung from his belt. ‘If your men are ready, ancient and exalted one, we will follow immediately.’

  Taita would not tak
e the grey mare on the raid: Whirlwind was still too young for hard riding, and Windsmoke had been wounded in her hindquarters by a Luo spear, fortunately not gravely. Instead he mounted his spare horse. When they rode out, Windsmoke whinnied after him, as though expressing indignation at having been passed over.

  The hoofs of the eighteen stolen horses had beaten a wide road through the reedbeds. The bare footprints of the Luo overlay the tracks of the horses they were driving. The Shilluk ran easily after them, and the horsemen followed at a trot. The trail led them south all that day.

  When the sun set, they rested to allow the horses to recover, but when the moon rose it shed sufficient light for them to go on. They rode all night with only short breaks to rest. At dawn they made out another feature in the distance ahead. After so long in the monotonous seas of papyrus their eyes rejoiced to behold even this low dark line.

  Nakonto sprang on to his cousin’s shoulders and stared ahead. Then he grinned at Taita, his teeth shining like pearls in the early light of day.

  ‘Old man, what you see is the end of the swamps. Those are trees, and they stand on dry land.’

  Taita passed on this news to Meren and the troopers, who shouted, laughed and thumped each other’s backs. Meren let them rest again for they had ridden hard.

  From their tracks Nakonto judged that the Luo were not far ahead.

  As they rode forward the line of trees loomed larger and darker, but they could not make out any sign of human habitation. At last they dismounted and went forward leading their mounts, so that the riders’ heads would not show above the tops of the papyrus. It was long after midday before they stopped again. Only a thin strip of papyrus screened them now, then even that ended abruptly against a low bank of pale earth. It was no more than two cubits high, and beyond it lay pastures of short green grass, and groves of tall trees. Taita recognized Kigelia sausage trees, with their massive hanging seedpods, and sycamore figs, with the yellow fruit growing directly on the fat grey trunks. Most of the other species were foreign to him.

  From the cover of the groves they could clearly make out the tracks that the stolen horses’ hoofs had left as they climbed the soft earth bank.

  However, there was no sign of the animals in the open pasture beyond.

  They scrutinized the tree line.

  ‘What are those?’ Meren pointed out distant movement among the trees and a fine haze of dust.

  Nakonto shook his head. ‘Buffalo, a small herd. No horses. Nontu and I will scout ahead. You must remain hidden here.’ The two Shilluk moved forward into the papyrus and disappeared. Although Taita and Meren watched carefully they did not see them again, not even a glimpse of them crossing the open pasture.

  They moved back from the edge of the papyrus, found a small patch of open, drier ground, filled the nosebags and let the horses feed while they stretched out to rest. Taita wrapped his shawl round his head, placed his staff at hand and lay back. He was very tired and his legs ached from trudging through the mud. He drifted over the edge of sleep.

  ‘Be of good heart, Taita, I am close.’ Her voice, a faint whisper, was so clear and the tone so unmistakably Fenn’s that he jerked awake and sat up. He looked around quickly, expectantly, but saw only the horses, mules, the resting men and the eternal papyrus. He sank back again.

  It was some time before sleep returned, but he was weary and at last he was dreaming of fishes that leapt from the waters around him and sparkled in the sunlight. Although they were myriad, none was the fish he knew was there. Then the shoals opened and he saw it. Its scales sparkled like precious stones, its butterfly tail was long and lithe, the aura that surrounded it ethereal and sublime. As he watched, it transmuted into human shape, the body of a young girl. She glided through the water, her long naked legs held together, pumping from her hips with the grace of a dolphin. The sunlight from above dappled her pale body and her long bright hair streamed out behind her. She rolled on to her back and smiled up at him through the water. Tiny silver bubbles streamed from her nostrils. ‘I am close, darling Taita. Soon we will be together. Very soon.’ Before he could reply a voice and a rough touch shattered the vision.

  He tried to cling to the rapture, but it was torn from him. He opened his eyes and sat up.

  Beside him squatted Nakonto. ‘We have found the horses and the Luo jackals,’ he said. ‘Now comes the killing time.’

  They waited until nightfall before they left the concealment of the papyrus and climbed the low earth bank on to the open pasture.

  The horses’ hoofs made almost no sound on the soft sand.

  Through the darkness Nakonto led them to the trees that were silhouetted against the stars. Once they were under the spreading, protecting branches, he turned parallel to the edge of the swamp. They rode in silence for only a short while before he turned into the forest, where they had to bend low on the backs of the horses to avoid the overhanging foliage. They had not gone far when, above the treetops ahead, the night sky was suffused with a rosy glow. Nakonto led them towards it. Now they could hear drums beating a frenetic rhythm. As they moved towards it, the sound grew louder, until the night throbbed like the heart of the earth. Closer still, a chorus of discordant chanting joined the pounding of the drums.

  Nakonto stopped them at the edge of the forest. Taita rode up beside Meren and they looked across an expanse of cleared ground to a large village of primitive thatch and mud-daub huts lit by the flames of four huge bonfires, sparks streaming up in torrents. Rows of smoking racks stood beyond the last huts, covered with the split carcasses of fish, whose scales glittered like a sheet of silver in the firelight. Around the bonfires dozens of human bodies twisted, leapt and spun. They were painted from scalp to heels in glaring white, decorated with weird designs in black, ochre and red mud. Taita realized they were of both sexes, all naked under their coating of white clay and ash. As they danced, they chanted in a barbaric cadence, a sound like the baying of a pack of wild animals.

  Suddenly, from out of the shadows, another band of prancing and cavorting Luo dragged one of the stolen horses. All of the horsemen recognized her, a bay mare named Starling. The Luo had knotted a bark rope round her neck, and five of them were heaving on it as a dozen more shoved at her flanks and hindquarters or goaded her cruelly with pointed sticks, blood glistening from the wounds they inflicted. One of the Luo lifted a heavy wooden club in both hands, and rushed at her. He aimed a heavy blow at her head and the club cracked against her skull.

  She dropped instantly to kick spasmodically; her bowels voided in a liquid green rush. The painted Luo swarmed over her carcass, brandishing their flint knives. They hacked off lumps of her still twitching flesh and crammed it into their mouths. Blood dribbled down their chins to run across their painted torsos. They were a pack of wild dogs, fighting and howling over a kill. The watching troopers growled with outrage.

  Meren glanced sideways at Taita, who nodded. ‘Left and right wheel into extended order.’ Meren gave the command, low but clear. On each flank the two columns opened like wings into an extended line. As soon as they were in position Meren called again: ‘Detachment will charge! Present arms!’ They cleared their swords from the sheaths. ‘Forward march! Trot! Gallop! Charge!’

  They swept forward in close formation, the horses running shoulder to shoulder. The Luo were in such frenzy that they did not see the troopers coming until they burst into the village. Then they tried to scatter and run, but it was too late. The horses swept over them, crushing them beneath their hoofs. The swords rose and fell, the blades thumping through bone and flesh. The two Shilluk were at the front of the charge, howling, stabbing, leaping and stabbing again.

  Taita saw Nakonto send a spear clean through the body of one, so that the point stood out between the Luo’s shoulder-blades. When Nakonto cleared it, it seemed to suck out with it every drop of blood from the man’s body, a black spray in the firelight.

  A painted woman with pendulous dugs that hung to her navel raised both arms to cover her h
ead. Meren stood in his stirrups and hacked off one of her arms at the elbow, then swung the blade again and split her unprotected head like a ripe melon. Her mouth was still crammed with raw meat, which spewed out with her death wail. The troopers kept their tight formation, riding down the Luo, their sword arms rising and falling in a deadly rhythm. The Shilluk caught those who tried to break away.

  The drummers, seated before the long, hollowed-out trunks of the Kigelia tree, were in such a transport that they did not even look up. They continued beating out their frenzied rhythm with their wooden clubs until the horsemen rode over to cut them down where they sat. They fell, writhing and bleeding, on to their drums.

  At the far side of the village Meren checked the charge. He looked back and saw no one still standing. The ground around Starling’s carcass was covered with the painted naked bodies. A few of the wounded were trying to crawl away. Others were groaning and thrashing in the dust.

  The two Shilluk were running among them, stabbing and howling in murderous ecstasy.

  ‘Help the Shilluk finish them!’ Meren ordered. His men dismounted and went swiftly over the killing ground, dispatching any who showed signs of life.

  Taita reined in alongside Meren. He had not been in the first rank of the charge, but had followed close behind. ‘I saw a few run into the huts,’ he said. ‘Root them out, but don’t kill them all. Nakonto might glean good information from them about the country ahead.’

  Meren shouted the order to his captains, who went from hut to hut, ransacking them. Two or three Luo women ran out, wailing, with young children. They were hustled into the centre of the village where the Shilluk guides shouted orders to them in their own language. They forced them to squat in rows with their hands clasped on top of their heads.

  The children clung to their mothers, tears gleaming on their terrified faces.