Assegai

by Wilbur Smith

  Leon had been able to examine a number of captured Nandi weapons during the campaign so he was not surprised to see that the arrowhead was of unconventional design. It had been forged from an iron pot-leg the thickness of Lusima’s little finger. It was meant for deep penetration into the massive body of the elephant so it had no single large barb, such as appeared on the arrowhead medieval English bowmen had used against heavily armoured French knights. Instead there were row upon row of tiny jags, no larger than minnow scales, that would glide through flesh with little resistance. However, because of their large numbers and their back-facing angle it would be impossible to withdraw the arrowhead along its original entry channel.

  ‘Quickly!’ Lusima whispered to Leon. ‘Tie it!’

  He had the slip-knot in the catgut ready and looped it over the point of the arrow, just behind the first line of jags. ‘I have it,’ he told her, as he drew the loop tight.

  ‘Hold him now. Do not let him move and twist the thread or it will be cut by the edges of the barbs,’ Lusima warned the morani. Together they threw their combined weight across Manyoro’s supine body.

  ‘Pull,’ Lusima urged Leon, ‘with all your strength, my son. Draw this evil thing out of him.’

  Leon took three turns of the catgut around his wrist and brought it up firmly. Lusima started chanting again as he applied all the strength of his right arm to the thin thread. He was careful not to jerk or twist it around the razor-sharp jags. Slowly he increased the pressure on the loop. He felt it stretch slightly, but the arrowhead remained lodged. He took an additional turn of the thread around his other wrist and moved until both shoulders were lined foursquare with the angle at which the arrow had entered. He pulled again with both arms, ignoring the sharp pain of the thread cutting into his flesh. The muscles of his shoulders under the tattered shirt bunched and bulged. The cords stood out in his throat and his face darkened with effort.

  ‘Pull,’ Lusima whispered, ‘and may Mkuba Mkuba, the greatest of the great gods, give strength to your arms.’

  By now Manyoro was struggling so desperately that the four men could not hold him still. He was making a keening sound into the gag, and his eyes were wide, seeming to start out of the sunken sockets, bloodshot and wild. The trapped arrowhead raised his torn and swollen flesh into a peak, but still the barbs held firm.

  ‘Pull!’ Lusima urged Leon. ‘Your strength surpasses that of the lion. It is the strength of M’bogo, the great buffalo bull.’

  And the arrowhead moved. With a soft, ripping sound a second row of tiny jags appeared behind the first, then a third. At last two inches of dark-stained metal were protruding from the wound. Leon rested for a moment while he gathered himself for the final effort. Then he gritted his teeth until his jaw bulged and pulled again. Another inch of iron came reluctantly into sight. Then there was a rush of half-congealed black blood and purple pus. The stench made even Lusima gasp, but the fluids seemed to lubricate the arrow shaft, which slithered out of the wound now, like some evil foetus in the dreadful moment of its birth.

  Leon fell back, panting, and stared in horror at the damage he had wrought. The wound gaped like a dark mouth, while blood and detritus streamed from the torn flesh. In his agony Manyoro had chewed through the elephant-hide gag and bitten into his lips. Fresh blood trickled down his chin. He was still struggling wildly, and the morani used all their strength and weight to hold him down.

  ‘Keep the leg still, M’bogo,’ Lusima called to Leon. One of her girls handed her a long thin horn of the klipspringer antelope, which had been carved into a crude funnel. She probed the sharp end deeply into the wound and Manyoro redoubled his struggles. The girl held a gourd to Lusima’s lips and she filled her mouth with the liquid it contained. A few drops ran down her chin, and Leon caught its astringent odour. Lusima placed her lips around the flared end of the horn, like a trumpeter, and blew the substance down it and through the sharp end into the depths of the wound. Another mouthful followed the first. The liquid bubbled from the open wound, flushing out putrid blood and other matter.

  ‘Turn him over,’ she ordered the morani. Although Manyoro fought them they rolled him on to his stomach and Leon straddled his back, using all his weight to pin him down. Lusima worked the point of the horn into the entry wound at the back of the leg, then blew more of the infusion deep into the suppurating flesh.

  ‘Enough,’ she said at last. ‘I have washed out the poisons.’ She set aside the horn, placed pads of dried herbs over the wounds and bound them in place with long strips of trade cloth. Gradually Manyoro’s struggles abated until at last he slumped back into a deathlike coma.

  ‘It is done. There is nothing more I can do,’ she said. ‘Now it is a battle between the gods of his ancestors and the dark devils. Within three days we will know the outcome. Take him to his hut.’ She looked up at Leon. ‘You and I, M’bogo, must take turns to sit at his side and give him strength for the fight.’

  Over the days that followed Manyoro hovered over the void. At times he lay in such a deep coma that Leon had to place his ear against his chest to listen for his breathing. At other times he gasped and writhed and shouted on his sleeping mat, sweating and grinding his teeth in fever. Lusima and Leon sat on each side of him, restraining him when he seemed in danger of injuring himself with his wild convulsions. The nights were long and neither slept. They talked quietly through the hours with the low fire between them.

  ‘I sense you were not born on some far-away island over the sea, as most of your compatriots were but in this very Africa,’ Lusima said. Leon was no longer surprised by her uncanny perception. He did not reply at once, and she went on, ‘You were born far to the north on the banks of a great river.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You are right. The place is Cairo, and the river is the Nile.’

  ‘You belong to this land and you will never leave it.’

  ‘I had never thought to do so,’ he answered. She reached across and took his hand, closed her eyes and was quiet for a while. ‘I see your mother,’ she said. ‘She is a woman of great understanding. The two of you are close in spirit. She did not want you to leave her.’

  Leon’s eyes filled with the dark shadows of regret.

  ‘I see your father also. It was because of him that you left.’

  ‘He treated me like a child. He tried to force me to do things I did not want to do. I refused. We argued and made my mother unhappy.’

  ‘What did he want you to do?’ she asked, with the air of one who already knew the answer.

  ‘My father grubs after money. There is nothing else in his life, neither his wife nor his children. He is a hard man, and we do not like each other. I suppose I respect him, but I do not admire him. He wanted me to work with him, doing the things he does. It was a bleak prospect.’

  ‘So you ran away?’

  ‘I did not run. I walked.’

  ‘What was it you sought?’ she asked.

  He looked thoughtful. ‘Truly, I do not know, Lusima Mama.’

  ‘You have not found it?’ she asked.

  He shook his head uncertainly. Then he thought of Verity O’Hearne. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I have found someone.’

  ‘No. Not the woman you are thinking of. She is just one woman among many others.’

  The question was out before he could check himself: ‘How do you know about her?’ Then he answered himself: ‘Of course. You were there. And you know many things.’

  She chuckled, and they were silent for a long while. It was a warm, comforting silence. He felt a strange bond with her, a closeness as though she were truly his mother.

  ‘I do not like what I am doing with my life now,’ he said at last. He had not thought about it until this moment, but as he said it, he knew it was the truth.

  ‘Because you are a soldier you are not able to do what your heart tells you,’ she agreed. ‘You must do as the old men order.’

  ‘You understand,’ he said. ‘I dislike hunting down and killing peo
ple I do not even know.’

  ‘Do you want me to point the way for you, M’bogo?’

  ‘I have come to trust you. I need your guidance.’

  She was silent again for so long that he was about to speak. Then he saw that her eyes were wide open but rolled back in her head so that in the firelight only the whites were exposed. She was rocking rhythmically on her haunches and after a while she began to speak, but her voice had changed to a low, grating monotone. ‘There are two men. Neither is your father, but both will be more than your father,’ she said. ‘There is another road. You must follow the road of the great grey men who are not men.’ She drew a long, wheezing, asthmatic breath. ‘Learn the secret ways of the wild creatures, and other men will honour you for that knowledge and understanding. You will walk with mighty men of power, and they will count you their equal. There will be many women, but only one woman who will be many women. She will come to you from the clouds. Like them she will show you many faces.’ She broke off and made a strangling noise at the back of her throat. With supernatural chill he realized that she was in the struggles of divination. At last she shook herself violently and blinked. Her eyes rolled forward so that he could look into their dark centres as she focused on his face. ‘Hearken to what I told you, my son,’ she said softly. ‘The time for you to choose will soon be upon you.’

  ‘I did not understand what you were telling me.’

  ‘In time it will become clear to you,’ she assured him. ‘When you need me I will always be here. I am not your mother, but I have become more than your mother.’

  ‘You speak in riddles, Mama,’ he said, and she smiled a fond but enigmatic smile.

  In the morning Manyoro regained consciousness but he was very weak and confused. He tried to sit up but did not have the strength to do so. He gazed at them blearily. ‘What has happened? What place is this?’ Then he recognized his mother. ‘Mama, is it truly you? I thought it was a dream. I have been dreaming.’

  ‘You are safe in my manyatta on Lonsonyo Mountain,’ she told him. ‘We removed the Nandi arrow from your leg.’

  ‘The arrow? Yes, I remember... The Nandi?’

  The slave girls brought him a bowl of ox blood and milk, which he drank greedily, spilling some down his chest. He lay back gasping. Then, for the first time, he noticed Leon squatting in the gloom of the hut. ‘Bwana!’ This time he managed to sit up. ‘You are with me still?’

  ‘I am here.’ Leon went to him quietly.

  ‘How long? How many days since we left Niombi?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Headquarters in Nairobi will think you are dead or that you have deserted.’ He gripped Leon’s shirt and shook it agitatedly. ‘You must report to Headquarters, Bwana. You must not neglect your duty for me.’

  ‘We will go back to Nairobi when you are ready to march.’

  ‘No, Bwana, no. You must go at once. You know that the major is not your friend. He will make trouble for you. You must go at once, and I will follow you when I am able.’

  ‘Manyoro is right,’ Lusima intervened. ‘You can do no more here. You must go to your chief in Nairobi.’ Leon had lost track of time, but now he realized with a guilty shock that it must be more than three weeks since he had had contact with his battalion headquarters. ‘Loikot will guide you to the railway line. He knows that part of the country well. Go with him,’ Lusima urged him.

  ‘I will,’ he agreed, and stood up. There were no preparations he needed to make for the journey. He had no weapons or baggage, and hardly any clothing other than his ragged khaki.

  Lusima provided him with a Masai shuka. ‘It is the best protection I can give you. It will shield you from sun and cold. The Nandi fear the red shuka - even the lions flee from it.’

  ‘Lions also?’ Leon suppressed a smile.

  ‘You will see.’ She returned his smile.

  He and Loikot left within an hour of making the decision. During the rains of the previous season the boy had herded his father’s cattle as far north as the railway and knew the land well.

  Leon’s feet had healed just sufficiently for him to lace on his boots. Limping gingerly he followed Loikot down the mountain towards the great plain below. At the foot he paused to relace his boots. When he straightened again he looked up and saw the tiny but unmistakable silhouette of Lusima standing on the lip of the cliff. He lifted one arm in farewell, but she did not acknowledge the gesture. Instead she turned and disappeared from his sight.

  As his feet healed and hardened he was able to increase his speed and hurry after Loikot. The boy covered the ground with the long, flowing stride characteristic of his people. As he went he kept up a running commentary on everything that caught his attention. He missed nothing with the bright young eyes that could pick out the ethereal grey shape of a kudu bull standing deep in a thicket of thorn scrub three hundred yards distant.

  The plain over which they were travelling abounded with living creatures. Loikot ignored the herds of smaller antelope that skittered around them, but remarked on anything of more significance. By this time, with his sharp ear for language, Leon had picked up enough Maa to follow the boy’s chatter with little difficulty.

  They had carried no food with them when they left Lonsonyo Mountain and Leon had been puzzled as to how they would subsist, but he need not have worried: Loikot provided a strange variety of sustenance, which included small birds and their eggs, locusts and other insects, wild fruit and roots, a spurfowl, which he knocked out of the air with his staff as it flushed on noisy wings from under his feet, and a large monitor lizard that he pursued across the veld for half a mile before he beat it to death. The lizard’s flesh tasted like chicken, and there was enough to feed them for three days, although by then the carcass had been colonized by swarms of iridescent blue flies and their fat white offspring.

  Leon and Loikot slept each night beside a small fire, covered with their shukas against the chill, and started again while the morning star was still high and bright in the dawn sky. On the third morning the sun was still below the horizon and the light poor when Loikot stopped dead and pointed in the direction of a flat-topped acacia tree only fifty yards away. ‘Ho, you killer of cattle, I greet you,’ he cried.

  ‘Who is it?’ Leon demanded.

  ‘Do you not see him? Open your eyes, M’bogo.’ Loikot pointed with his staff. Only then did Leon make out two small black tufts in the brown grass between them and the tree. One flicked and the whole picture sprang into focus. Leon was staring at an enormous male lion, crouching flat in the grass and watching them with implacable yellow eyes. The tell-tale tufts were the black tips of its round ears.

  ‘Sweet God!’ Leon took a step back.

  Loikot laughed. ‘He knows I am Masai. He will run if I challenge him.’ He brandished his staff. ‘Hey, Old One, the day of my testing will soon come. I will meet you then, and we shall see which is the best of us.’ He was referring to his ritual trial of courage. Before he could be counted a man and have the right to plant his spear at the door of any woman who caught his fancy, the young morani must confront his lion face to face and kill him with his broad-bladed assegai.

  ‘Fear me, you thief of cattle. Fear me, for I am your death!’ Loikot raised his staff, held it like a stabbing spear and advanced on the lion with a lithe, dancing step. Leon was amazed when the lion leaped to its feet, curled its lip in a threatening growl, then slunk away into the grass.

  ‘Did you see me, M’bogo?’ Loikot crowed. ‘Did you see how Simba fears me? Did you see him run from me? He knows I am a morani. He knows I am a Masai.’

  ‘You crazy tyke!’ Leon relaxed his clenched fists. ‘You’ll get us both eaten.’ He laughed with relief. He remembered Lusima’s words, and it occurred to him that, over the hundreds of years that the Masai had relentlessly hunted generation after generation of lions, their persecution had ingrained a deep memory in the beasts. They had come to recognize a tall red-cloaked figure as a mortal threat.

  Loikot leaped in
the air, pirouetted with triumph and led him on northwards. As they went, Loikot continued his instruction. Without slackening his pace he pointed out the spoor of large game as he came upon it, and described the animal that had made it. Leon was fascinated by the depth of his knowledge of the wild and its creatures. Of course, it was not difficult to understand how the child had become so adept: almost since he had taken his first step he had tended his tribe’s herds. Manyoro had told him that even the youngest herd-boys could follow a lost beast for days over the most difficult terrain. But he was fascinated when Loikot came to a stop and, with the tip of his staff, traced the faint outline of an enormous round pad mark. The ground was baked hard by the sun, and covered with chips of shale and flint. Leon would never have picked out the track of a bull elephant without the boy’s help, but Loikot could read every detail and nuance of it.

  ‘I know this one. I have seen him often. His teeth are this long...’ He made a mark in the dust, then paced out three of his longest strides and made a second mark. ‘He is a great grey chief of his tribe.’

  Lusima had used the same description: ‘Follow the great grey men who are not men.’ At the time it had puzzled Leon, but now he realized she been speaking about elephant. He pondered her advice as they went on into the north. He had always been fascinated by the wild chase. From his father’s library he had read all the books written by the great hunters. He had followed the adventures of Baker, Selous, Gordon-Cumming, Cornwallis Harris and the rest. The lure of wild sports was one of the most powerful reasons why he had enlisted in the KAR rather than enter his father’s business. His father termed any activity not aimed specifically at the accumulation of money as ‘slacking’. But Leon had heard that the army brass encouraged their young officers to indulge in such manly pursuits as big-game hunting. Captain Cornwallis Harris had been given a full year’s leave of absence from his regiment in India to travel to South Africa and hunt in the unexplored wilderness. Leon longed to be able to emulate his heroes but so far he had been disappointed.