by Wilbur Smith
‘It is finished. We have spoken,’ he declared at last, and led the way down the hill to where Ishmael had set up camp for the night. He handed a large enamel mug of tea to Leon as he settled down beside the fire. While they ate their dinner of ostrich steaks and stiff cakes of yellow maize-meal porridge, Loikot relayed to Leon the gossip he had learned from his long conversation with the chungaji beyond the river.
‘Two nights ago a lion killed one of their cattle, a fine black bull with good horns. This morning the morani followed the lion with their spears and surrounded it. When it charged, it chose Singidi as its victim and went for him. He killed it with a single thrust so has won great honour. Now he can place his spear outside the door of any woman in Masailand.’ Loikot thought about this for a moment. ‘One day I will do that, and then the girls will no longer laugh at me and call me baby,’ he said wistfully.
‘Bless your randy little dreams,’ Leon said in English, then switched to Maa. ‘What else did you hear?’ Loikot began a recitation that went on for several minutes, a catalogue of births, marriages, lost cattle and other such matters. ‘Did you ask if any white men are travelling at the moment in Masailand? Any Bula Matari soldiers with askari?’
‘The German commissioner from Arusha is on tour with six askari. They are marching down the valley towards Monduli. There are no other soldiers in the valley.’
‘Any other white men?’
‘Two German hunters with their women and wagons are camped in the Meto Hills. They have killed many buffalo and dried their meat.’
The Meto Hills were at least eighty miles away, and Leon was amazed at how much information the boy had gathered from across such a wide area. He had read the old hunters’ accounts of the Masai grapevine, but he had not set much store by them. This network must cover the entire Masai country. He smiled into his mug: Uncle Penrod now had his eyes along the border. ‘What about elephant? Did you ask your brethren if they had seen any big bulls in this area?’
‘There are many elephant, but mostly cows and calves. At this season the bulls are up in the mountains or over the escarpment in the craters of Ngorongoro and Empakaai. But that is common knowledge.’
‘Are there are no bulls at all in the valley?’
‘The chungaji saw one near Namanga, a very large bull, but that was many days ago and no one has seen him since. They think he might have gone into the Nyiri desert where there is no grazing for the cattle so none of my people are there.’
‘We must follow the wind,’ said Manyoro.
‘Or you must learn to sing sweetly for us,’ Leon suggested.
Before dawn Leon woke and went to be alone behind the bole of a large tree, well away from where the others slept. He dropped his trousers, squatted and broke wind. His was the only wind that was blowing this morning, he thought. The wilderness around him was hushed and still. The leaves in the branches above him hung limp and motionless against the pale promise of dawn. As he returned to the camp he saw that Ishmael already had the kettle on the fire and the two Masai were stirring. He sat close enough to the flames to feel their warmth. There was a chill in the dawn. ‘There is no wind,’ he told Manyoro.
‘Perhaps it will rise with the sun.’
‘Should we go on without it?’
‘Which way? We do not know,’ Manyoro pointed out. ‘We have come this far with my mother’s wind. We must wait for it to come again to lead us on.’
Leon felt impatient and disgruntled. He had pandered long enough to Lusima’s claptrap. He had a dull ache behind his eyes. During the night the cold had kept him awake and when he had slept he had been haunted by nightmares of Hugh Turvey and his crucified wife. Ishmael handed him a mug of coffee but even that did not have its usual therapeutic effect. In the thicket beyond the campfire a robin began its melodious greeting to the dawn and from afar a lion roared, answered by another even further off. Then silence descended again.
Leon finished a second mug of coffee and at last felt its curative powers take effect. He was about to say something to Manyoro when he was distracted by a loud, rattling call, which sounded like a box of small pebbles being shaken vigorously. They all looked up with interest. Everyone knew which bird had made the sound. A honeyguide was inviting them to follow it to a wild beehive. When the men raided it they would be expected to share the spoils with the bird. They would take the honey, leaving the beeswax and the larvae for the honeyguide. It was a symbiotic arrangement that, down the ages, had been faithfully adhered to by man and bird. It was said that if anybody failed to pay the bird its due, the next time it would lead him to a venomous snake or a man-eating lion. Only a greedy fool would attempt to cheat it.
Leon stood up and the drab brown and yellow bird flashed from the top branches of the tree and began to display. Its wings hummed and resonated as it dived and pulled up, then dived again.
‘Honey!’ said Manyoro greedily. No African could resist that invitation.
‘Honey, sweet honey!’ Loikot shouted.
The last vestige of Leon’s headache vanished miraculously, and he grabbed his rifle. ‘Hurry! Let’s go!’ The honeyguide saw them following and darted away, whirring and rattling excitedly.
For the next hour Leon trotted steadily after the bird. He had said nothing of it to the others, but he could not shake off the haunting idea that the bird was Lusima Mama’s sweet singer. However, his doubts were stronger than his faith and he steeled himself for disappointment. Manyoro was singing encouragement to the bird, and Loikot, skipping along at Leon’s side, joined in with the chorus:
‘Lead us to the hive of the little stingers,
And we will feast you on golden wax.
Can you not taste the sweet fat grubs?
Fly, little friend! Fly swiftly and we will follow.’
The little bird flitted on through the forest, darting from tree to tree, chirruping and dancing in the top branches until they caught up, then flashing away again. A little before noon they reached a dry riverbed. The forest along either bank was thicker and the trees taller, fed by subterranean waters. Before they reached the actual watercourse the honeyguide flew to the top of one of the tallest trees and waited for them there. As they came up, Manyoro cried out in delight and pointed at the tree-trunk. ‘There it is!’
Like swift golden dust motes in the sunlight, Leon saw the flight of the bees homing in on the hive. Three-quarters of the way up, the trunk forked into two heavy branches and the crotch between them was split by a narrow, vertical cleft. A thin trickle of tree sap ran from the opening and congealed in translucent globules of gum on the bark around it. Into this opening the homecoming bees flitted, while those leaving the hive crawled out on to the lips of the opening and buzzed away. The image brought Verity O’Hearne to Leon’s mind with sharp, lubricious nostalgia. It was the first time he had thought of her in several days.
The others laid aside their burdens to prepare for the harvest of the hive. Manyoro cut a square of bark from the trunk of another tree in the grove and rolled it into a tube, which he tied into shape with a strip of bark string. Then he fashioned a loop of bark into a handle. Ishmael had started a small fire and was feeding it with dry twigs. Loikot girded the tail of his shuka around his waist, leaving his legs and lower body bare, then went to the base of the tree and tested the texture of the bark and the girth of the trunk with his arms while he gazed up at the hive steeling himself mentally for the climb.
Ishmael fed chips of green wood into the fire and blew on them until they glowed and emitted dense clouds of pungent white smoke. With the wide blade of his panga, Manyoro scooped the coals into the bark tube and took it to Loikot, who used the loop handle to sling the tube over his shoulder, then tucked the panga into the folds of his shuka. He spat on his palms and grinned at Leon. ‘Watch me, M’bogo. No other can climb as I can.’
‘It doesn’t surprise me to learn that you are brother to the baboons,’ Leon told him, and Loikot laughed before he sprang at the tree-trunk. Gripping alternate
ly with his palms and the soles of his bare feet he shot up the trunk with amazing agility and reached the tree’s high crotch without a pause. He climbed into the fork and stood upright, with a swarm of angry bees buzzing around his head. He took the bark tube from his shoulder and blew into one end, like a trumpeter. A jet of smoke poured from the opposite end. As it enveloped them the bees dispersed.
Loikot paused to pick a few stings from his arms and legs. Then he hefted the panga and, balancing easily, ignoring the dizzying drop below him, he stooped and swung the heavy blade at the cleft between his feet. With a dozen ringing blows he made white wood chips fly. Then he peered into the enlarged opening. ‘I can smell the sweetness,’ he shouted to the upturned faces below. He reached into the hive and brought out a large thick comb. He held it up for them to see. ‘Thanks to the skills of Loikot, you will eat your fill today, my friends.’ They laughed.
‘Well done, little baboon!’ Leon shouted.
Loikot brought out five more combs, each hexagonal cell filled to the brim with dark brown honey, and sealed with a lid of wax. He packed them gently into the folds of his shuka.
‘Do not take it all,’ Manyoro cautioned him. ‘Leave half for our little winged friends or they will die.’ Loikot had been taught that when he was still a child and did not reply. Now he was a morani, and wise in the lore of the wild. He dropped the smoke tube and the panga to the base of the tree and slithered down the trunk, jumping the last six feet to land lightly on his feet.
They sat in a circle and divided the combs. In the branches above, the honeyguide hopped and chirruped to remind them of his presence and the debt they owed him. Carefully Manyoro broke off the edges of the combs where the cells were filled with white bee larvae and laid the pieces on a large green leaf. He looked up at the hovering bird. ‘Come, little brother, you have earned your reward.’ He carried the larvae-filled pieces of honeycomb a short distance away, and placed them carefully in an opening in the scrub. As soon as he turned away, the bird flew down boldly to partake of the feast.
Now that custom and tradition had been observed, the men were free to taste the spoils. Sitting around the pile of golden combs they broke off pieces, and stuffed them into their mouths, murmuring with pleasure as they chewed the honey out of the cells, then spat out the wax and licked their sticky fingers.
Leon had never tasted honey like this dark, smoky variety garnered from the nectar of acacia flowers. It coated his tongue and the back of his throat with such intense sweetness that he gasped at the shock, and his eyes swam with tears. He closed them tightly. The rich wild perfume filled his head and almost overpowered him. His tongue tingled. When he breathed he felt the taste drawn down deep into his throat. He swallowed and exhaled as sharply as though he had gulped down a dram of highland whisky.
Half a comb was enough for him. He felt satiated with sweetness. He rocked back on his heels and watched the others for a while. At last he stood up and left them to their gluttony. They took no notice of his departure. He picked up his rifle and sauntered idly into the bush, heading for where he thought the riverbed might be. The vegetation became thicker as he went deeper into it until he pushed his way through the last screen of branches and found himself on the bank. It had been cut back by flood water into a sheer wall that dropped six feet to a bed of fine white sand a hundred paces wide, trampled by the paws and hoofs of the animals that had used it as a highway.
On the far bank a massive wild fig tree’s roots had been exposed by the cutback. They twisted and writhed like mating serpents, and the branches that stretched out over the riverbed were laden with bunches of the small yellow figs. A flock of green pigeons had been gorging on the fruit and was startled into flight by Leon’s sudden appearance. Their wingbeats clattered in the silence as they arrowed away along the watercourse.
Beneath the spreading wild fig branches the white sand had been heaped into large mounds. Scattered around them were several pyramids of elephant dung, which commanded Leon’s attention. He held the rifle at arm’s length in front of him and jumped from the top of the bank. The soft sand broke his landing and he sank into it to his ankles, but soon recovered his balance and set off across the riverbed. When he reached the mounds he realized that the elephant had been digging for water. With their forefeet they had kicked away the dry sand until they had reached a firmer damp layer. Then they had used their trunks to burrow until they had come to the subterranean water table. The prints of their pads where they had stood over the seep holes were clearly visible. They had sucked up the water with their trunks into spongy cavities in their massive skulls, and when these were full, they had lifted their heads, thrust their trunk tips into the back of their throats and squirted the water into their bellies.
There were eight open seep holes. He went to each in turn to examine the tracks left by thirsty animals. Having been instructed by three grand-masters of the trade - Percy Phillips, Manyoro and Loikot - he had learned enough bushcraft to read them accurately. The shape and size of the footprints that the elephant had left around the first four seeps proved them to have been cows.
When he came to the fifth there was only one set of tracks. They were so large that his first glimpse of them made him pause in mid-stride. He drew a quick breath, sharp with excitement, then hurried forward and dropped to his knees beside the prints of the front feet, which were deeply embedded on the lip of the hole where the beast must have stood for hours to suck up water.
Leon stared at them in disbelief. They were enormous. The animal that had made them must have been a massive old bull: the soles of his feet had worn smooth with age. One side of the print he was studying slipped away in a trickle of soft sand - which meant that the bull had left the riverbed only recently: the disturbed earth had not had time to settle. Perhaps the animal had been frightened off by the sound of Loikot chopping open the entrance to the beehive.
Leon laid the twin barrels of his rifle across the pad print to gauge its size, and whistled softly. His barrels were two feet long, and the diameter of the footprint was only two inches less. Applying the formula that Percy Phillips had propounded to him, he calculated that this bull must stand more than twelve feet high at the shoulder, a giant among a race of giants.
Leon jumped up and ran back across the riverbed. He scrambled up the bank and pushed his way through the undergrowth to where his three companions were huddled over the last scraps of honeycomb. ‘Lusima Mama and her sweet singer have shown us the way,’ he told them. ‘I have found the spoor of a great bull elephant in the riverbed.’ The trackers snatched up their kit and ran after him, but Ishmael scooped the remains of the honeycomb into one of his pots before he hoisted his bundle on to his head and followed.
‘M’bogo, this is veritably the bull that I showed you the first time we travelled together,’ Loikot exclaimed, as soon as he saw the spoor, and danced with excitement. ‘I recognize him. This is a paramount chief of all the elephants.’
Manyoro shook his head. ‘He is so old he must be ready to die. Surely his ivory is broken and worn away.’
‘No! No!’ Loikot denied it vehemently. ‘With my own eyes I have seen his tusks. They are as long as you are, Manyoro, and thicker even than your head!’ He made a circle with his arms.
Manyoro laughed. ‘My poor little Loikot, you have been bitten by blow-flies, and they have filled your head with maggots. I will ask my mother to prepare for you a draught to loosen your bowels and clear these dreams from your eyes.’
Loikot bridled and glared at him. ‘And perhaps it is not the elephant but you who has become old and senile. We should have left you on Lonsonyo Mountain, drinking beer with your decrepit cronies.’
‘While you two exchange compliments the bull is walking away from us,’ Leon intervened. ‘Take the spoor, and let us settle this debate by looking upon his tusks and not merely upon the marks of his feet.’
As soon as they had followed the spoor out of the riverbed and into the open savannah it became obvious that t
he bull elephant had been thoroughly alarmed by the sound of axe blows and their voices as they had raided the beehive.
‘He is in full flight.’ Manyoro pointed out the length of the bull’s strides. He had settled into the long swinging gait that covers the ground as fast as a man can run. They all knew that he could keep up that pace from dawn to dusk without pausing to rest.
‘He is going east. It seems to me that he is heading for the Nyiri desert, that dry land where there are no men and only he knows where to dig for water,’ Manyoro remarked after the first hour. ‘If he keeps up this pace, by sunrise tomorrow he will be over the top of the escarpment and deep into the desert.’
‘Do not listen to him, M’bogo,’ Loikot advised. ‘It is the habit of old men to be gloomy. They can smell shit in the perfume of the kigelia flower.’
After another hour they stopped for a swig from the water-bottles.
‘The bull has not turned aside from his chosen path,’ Manyoro observed. ‘Not once has he paused to feed or even slowed his pace. Already he is many hours ahead of us.’
‘Not only can this old man smell dung in the kigelia bloom, but he can smell it even in the flower between the thighs of the sweetest young virgin.’ Loikot grinned cheekily at Leon. ‘Pay him no heed, M’bogo. Follow me, and before sunset I will show you such tusks as will amaze your eyes and fill your heart with joy.’
But the spoor ran on straight and unwavering. Another hour, and even Loikot was beginning to wilt. When they stopped for a few minutes to drink and stretch out in the shade they were all quiet and subdued. Even though they had driven themselves hard since leaving the dry riverbed, they knew how far they had dropped behind the bull elephant. Leon screwed the stopper back on the water-bottle and stood up. Without a word the others came to their feet. They went on.
In the middle of the afternoon they stopped to rest again. ‘If my mother was with us she would work such a spell as would turn the bull aside and make him start feeding,’ said Manyoro, ‘but, alas, she is not with us.’