Assegai

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Perhaps she is watching over us, for she is a great magician,’ said Loikot brightly. ‘Perhaps she can hear me if I call to her.’ He jumped to his feet and broke into a leaping praise dance, hopping high in the air on his long skinny legs. ‘Hear me, Great Black Cow, hear me call to you.’ Leon laughed and even Manyoro grinned and began to clap in time to the dance.

  ‘Hear him, Mama! Hear our little baboon!’

  ‘Hear me, Mother of the Tribe! You have shown us the marks of his feet, now do not let him walk away from us. Slow his great feet. Fill his belly with hunger. Make him stop to feed.’

  ‘That’s enough magic for one day. Surely the bull cannot escape us now,’ Leon intervened. ‘On your feet, Manyoro. Let us go on.’

  The spoor ran on. The bull was moving so fast that when it crossed areas of loose earth it kicked spurts of dust forward with each long stride. When Leon looked up at the sun his heart sank. There was no more than an hour of daylight left, no possibility of coming up with the elephant before darkness cloaked the spoor, forcing them to break off the pursuit until dawn on the morrow. By then he would be fifty miles ahead of them.

  He was still gazing up at the sky so he bumped into Manyoro, who had stopped abruptly in his path. Both Masai were poring over the earth. They looked up at Leon and, with hand signals, urged him to remain silent. They were both grinning and their eyes shone. They had been revitalized and no longer showed any trace of fatigue. Manyoro indicated the altered spoor with an eloquent, graceful gesture.

  Leon grasped that a little miracle had taken place. The bull had slowed, his pace had shortened, and he had turned aside from his determined flight towards the eastern escarpment of the valley. Manyoro pointed to a grove of ngong nut trees a quarter of a mile to their right. The tops of the trees were round in shape, taller and greener than the lesser trees surrounding them. He leaned over to Leon and placed his lips close to his ear. ‘At this season the trees are in bearing. He has smelled the ripe nuts and cannot resist them. We will find him in the grove.’ He took up a handful of earth and let it sift through his fingers. ‘There is still no wind. We can move straight in towards him.’ He looked back at Ishmael and signalled to him to stay where he was. Ishmael laid his bundle at his feet and lowered himself thankfully to the ground beside it.

  With the two Masai still leading, they crept forward, moving from one patch of cover to the next, pausing to scan the forest ahead before going forward again. They reached the nearest ngong tree. The ground beneath it was littered with fallen nuts but the branches above were still thick with bunches of half-ripe ones. The bull had stood under this tree for a long time, picking up the hard nuts with the fingers at the tip of his trunk and stuffing them into his mouth. Then he had moved on. They followed his huge pad marks to the next tree, where he had fed again, then moved on once more. This time he had headed towards a shallow depression, above which only the tops of the nut trees showed. They crept forward until they could look down into it.

  At the same instant all three saw the enormous black mass of the bull elephant. He was three hundred paces away, standing in the shade of one of the largest nut trees, angled half away from them. He rocked gently from one forefoot to the other, ears fanning lazily, trunk draped nonchalantly over the curve of the only visible tusk. The other was hidden from view by his massive bulk, but Leon stared at the one he could see, hardly able to believe its length and girth. To him, it seemed the size of a marble column from a Greek temple.

  ‘The wind?’ he breathed to Manyoro. ‘How is the wind?’ Manyoro scooped up another handful of earth and dribbled it through his fingers. Then he dusted his hand on his leg and made a sign that was as clear as any words. ‘No wind. Nothing.’

  Leon broke open the barrels of his rifle and removed the fat brass cartridges from the breeches one at a time. He examined them for blemishes and polished them on his shirt before he slipped them back into place. He snapped the barrels shut and tucked the butt of the loaded rifle under his right armpit. Then he nodded to Manyoro, and as they moved forward, Leon took the lead. He angled towards the bull until the tree-trunk covered his approach, then turned straight towards it.

  The tree blocked out the bull’s head but his body protruded on one side of it, while the curve of the nearest tusk stuck out beyond the other. A shaft of sunlight pierced the canopy of leaves above his head and struck the ivory like the beam of a limelight. Closer still, and Leon heard the animal’s belly rumble like distant thunder. He moved in steadily upon him, setting down each footstep with exaggerated care. Now he held the heavy rifle at the ready position across his chest.

  The Holland was essentially a short-range weapon. He had fired several shots at a target before he had set out from Tandala Camp, and had discovered that the twin barrels were regulated to shoot to the same point of aim at precisely thirty yards. At any greater distance, the bullets would spread out unpredictably. He knew that to be completely certain of his shot he had to get closer than that. He wanted to reach the trunk of the nut tree and fire from behind its cover. Now he was so close that he could see the oxpeckers scrambling around on the elephant’s wrinkled grey skin. There were five or six of the slender little yellow birds, balancing themselves with their tails as they foraged with their sharp red beaks in the creases of the skin for ticks, blind flies and other blood-sucking insects. One crept into the ear and the bull flapped loudly to warn it away from the sensitive parts deep inside. Other birds hung upside-down under his belly or in his crotch, pecking busily at the sagging folds of grey skin. Then, suddenly, they became aware of Leon’s approach and ran up the bull’s flanks to stand in a line along his spine, staring with glittering eyes at the intruder.

  Manyoro tried to warn Leon of what was about to happen but he dared not speak, and Leon was so intent on his stalk that he did not see the desperate hand signals behind him. He was still a dozen paces from the bole of the ngong tree when the row of oxpeckers on the bull’s back exploded into flight, uttered their frenzied twittering alarm call. It was a warning that the beast understood well, for the birds were not only his grooms but also his sentinels.

  From comfortable somnolence he plunged forward, reaching his top speed in half a dozen strides. He had no idea where the danger lay, but he trusted the birds and simply ran in the direction he was facing. He was heading at a thirty-degree angle away from Leon. For a second Leon was stunned by the speed and agility of the massive creature. Then he raced forward in pursuit, aiming to get ahead of the bull before he could get clear away. For a short distance he gained ground, closing to just under the critical thirty-yard range. He fastened his eyes on the bull’s head. The wide sails of the ears were cocked back so Leon could see the long, vertical slit of the earhole. But the head nodded violently and rolled from side to side with each stride. The oxpeckers were shrilling, and behind Leon, the two Masai shouted unintelligibly. All around there was movement and wild confusion and the bull pulled rapidly away. Within a few more strides he would be out of range.

  Leon slammed to a halt. All his vision and attention were concentrated on the long slit of the earhole in the centre of the swinging and swaying head. The rifle came up to his shoulder and he looked over the barrels, hardly seeing them, so intense was his concentration. Time and movement seemed to slow into a dreamlike unreality. His vision was as sharp as a diamond drill. He saw beyond the moving wall of grey skin and the spreading ears. He saw the brain. It was an extraordinary sensation - Percy Phillips had called it the hunter’s eye. With the hunter’s eye he could see through skin and bone, and descry the exact position of the brain. It was the size of a football, set low behind the line of the earhole.

  The rifle crashed, and even in the sunlight he saw the flame spurt from the muzzle. He was startled. He had not been aware of touching the trigger. He hardly felt the recoil of five thousand foot-pounds of energy kicking back into his shoulder. His vision was not deflected by it: he saw the bullet strike two inches behind the earhole, precisely where he knew it sh
ould go. He saw the bull’s nearest eye blink shut, heard the heavy bullet strike bone with a sound like a woodman’s axe swung against a hardwood tree. With his new gift of the hunter’s eye he could imagine the bullet ploughing through bone and tissue, tearing into the brain.

  The bull threw back his head, long tusks pointing for an instant at the sky. Then his front legs folded under him and he collapsed heavily into a kneeling position. The force of the impact sent up a cloud of dust and made the ground tremble beneath Leon’s feet. The elephant lay on his folded front legs as though waiting to be mounted by a mahout, head supported by the curves of the tusks, sightless eyes wide open. The tail flicked once, then all was still. The echoes of gunfire rang in Leon’s head, but all around was a deep hush.

  ‘It’s the dead elephant that kills you.’ He heard Percy’s warning in his memory. ‘Always put in the coup de grâce.’ Leon raised the rifle again and aimed for the crease in the bull’s armpit. Again the rifle boomed. The beast never so much as twitched as the second bullet drove through its heart.

  Leon walked forward slowly and reached out to touch the staring amber eye with a fingertip. It did not blink. His legs felt as soft and limp as boiled spaghetti. He sank down, leaned his back against the elephant’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He felt nothing. He was empty inside. He felt no sense of triumph or elation, no remorse or sorrow for the death of such a magnificent creature. All that would come later. Now there was only the aching emptiness, as though he had just made love to a beautiful woman.

  Leon sent Manyoro and Loikot off to some distant villages outside the boundaries of Masailand. Their task was to recruit porters to carry the ivory to the railway. They had to be from some tribe other than Masai, for the morani would not stoop to such menial employment. Leon and Ishmael camped for the following five days at a discreet distance upwind from the putrefying carcass, its belly swelling with gas. They guarded the tusks while they waited for them to loosen with rot in their bone canals.

  The nights were raucous as the scavengers gathered. Jackals yipped and packs of hyena giggled, shrieked and squabbled among themselves. On the third night the lions arrived and added their imperial roaring to the general cacophony. Ishmael spent the hours of darkness perched in the top branches of one of the ngong trees, reciting verses from the Koran in Kiswahili and calling on Allah for protection from these demons.

  On the sixth day Manyoro and Loikot returned, followed by a gang of stalwart Luo porters whom Manyoro had hired for ten shillings.

  ‘Ten shillings a day each?’ Leon was aghast at such profligacy. Ten shillings was almost the sum of his worldly wealth.

  ‘Nay, Bwana, for all of them.’

  ‘Ten shillings a day for all six?’ Leon was only slightly mollified.

  ‘Nay, Bwana. It is for all six to carry the tusks to the railway, no matter how many days it takes.’

  ‘Manyoro, your mother should be proud of you,’ Leon told him with relief. ‘I certainly am.’ He led the porters to where the remains of the carcass lay. Only the great bones and the hide had not been dragged away and devoured by the scavengers. The head was still propped upright by the two curves of ivory. Leon looped a length of bark rope around one of the tusks and the Luo porters sang a work chant as they heaved on the line. The butt end of the tusk, which had been buried in the skull, slid out of its canal with little resistance. Until then almost half its length had been hidden and now the true dimensions were revealed for the first time. When they laid the two tusks side by side on a bed of fresh green leaves Leon was amazed by their length and lovely symmetry. Once again he used the barrels of his rifle as a gauge to measure them. The longest of the two was a hand’s breadth over eleven feet and the lesser was almost exactly eleven feet.

  Under Manyoro’s direction the Luo cut two long poles of acacia wood and strapped each tusk to one. With a porter at each end they lifted the poles and started towards the railway, the remainder of the team trotting behind them, ready to spell them as they tired.

  Leon was no longer entitled to a military travel pass, so on the steepest stretch of the railway, where it climbed up the escarpment from the floor of the Rift Valley, they waited for the night train from Lake Victoria. Here, even the double team of locomotives was reduced to walking speed. Under cover of darkness they ran along-side one of the goods trucks until they could catch hold of the steel ladder and clamber onto the roof. The Luo porters passed the tusks and Ishmael’s bundle up to them. Leon tossed a canvas purse of shillings down to the headman and the porters shouted thanks and farewells until they were left in the darkness behind the guard’s van. The locomotives puffed gamely to the top of the escarpment. The truck on which they were perched was filled with baskets of dried fish from the lake, but as the train picked up speed the stink was wafted away.

  It was still dark when they dropped the tusks and their baggage over the side of the truck and jumped from the rolling train as it slowed before steaming into Nairobi station.

  Percy Phillips was eating his breakfast in the mess tent when they staggered into Tandala Camp, bowed under the weight of the tusks.

  ‘Upon my soul!’ he spluttered into his coffee, and knocked over his chair as he sprang to his feet. ‘Those aren’t yours, are they?’

  ‘One is.’ Leon kept a straight face. ‘Unfortunately, sir, the other is yours.’

  ‘Take them to the beam scale. Let’s see what we have here,’ Percy ordered.

  The entire staff of the camp trooped after them to the skinning shed and gathered around the scale as Leon lifted the smaller tusk into the sling.

  ‘One hundred and twenty-eight pounds,’ said Percy, noncommittally. ‘Now let’s try the other.’

  Leon hoisted the second into the sling and Percy blinked. ‘One hundred and thirty-eight.’ His voice cracked just a little. It was the largest tusk that had ever been brought into Tandala Camp. However, he could think of no good reason why the youngster should be told so. Don’t want him to get too big for his boots, he thought, as he scratched his beard. Then he said to Manyoro, ‘Put both tusks into the truck.’ At last he looked at Leon and his eyes twinkled. ‘All right, young fella, you can drive me in to the club. I’m about to buy you a drink.’

  As the vehicle bounced and rattled over the track, Percy had to raise his voice to be heard above the racket of the engine. ‘Rightyho! Tell me all about it. Start at the beginning. Don’t leave anything out. How many shots did it take you to put him down?’

  ‘That isn’t the beginning, sir,’ Leon reminded him.

  ‘It will do as a starting point. You can work backwards from there. How many shots?’

  ‘One brain shot. And then I remembered your advice and put in a finisher when he was down.’

  Percy nodded his approval. ‘Now tell me the rest.’ As he listened, Percy was impressed with Leon’s account of the hunt. He made it sound fascinating, even to Percy who had lived it all a hundred times. One of the most important duties of a white hunter was to entertain his clients. They wanted more than simply to mow down a few animals: they were paying a fortune to take part in an unforgettable adventure and wanted to be taken out of their cosseted urban existence and led back to their primeval beginnings by someone they could trust and admire. Percy knew a number of fine men who were skilled in bushcraft and the lore of the wild but lacked charm and empathy. They were dour and taciturn. They understood the enchanted wilderness intimately but could not explain it to others. They never had a return client. Their names were not bandied around in the palaces of Europe or the exclusive clubs of London, New York and Berlin. No one clamoured for their services.

  This lad did not fall into that category. He was willing and eager. He was modest, charming and tactful. He was articulate. He had a quirky, dry sense of humour. He was personable. People liked him. Percy smiled inwardly. Hell, even I like him.

  When they reached the club Percy made him park directly in front of the main doors. He led Leon into the long bar where a dozen regulars, most of them
living on remittances sent from their families in England, had already taken their seats. ‘Gentlemen,’ Percy addressed the congregation, ‘I want you to meet my new apprentice, and then I’m going to take you outside and show you a pair of tusks. And I do mean a pair of tusks!’

  When they trooped out to the front of the building they found that the news had already flashed through the town, and a small crowd was gathered around the truck. Percy invited them all into the bar.

  By the time Hugh Delamere limped into the bar on the leg that had been chewed years ago by a lion, the proceedings were noisy. This was a state of affairs much to his lordship’s liking. As was the case with so many English public-school boys, Delamere enjoyed boisterous games that resulted in broken furniture and other peripheral damage. This evening he was accompanied by Colonel Penrod Ballantyne. They congratulated Leon on his prowess as a hunter, and Delamere poured him a large Talisker whisky from his private stock, which he kept under the bar. Then he challenged uncle and nephew to a game of High Cockalorum, which involved a race around the large room without touching the floor. At one stage the shelves behind the bar were unable to bear his lordship’s weight and collapsed in a crash of breaking bottles. Just before midnight one of the club residents came into the bar to complain of the noise. His lordship locked him into the wine cellar for the rest of the night.

  A few hours later Percy was carried feet first into the billiard room and laid on the green baize of the table. Leon reached the front seat of the truck, where he passed what remained of the night.

  He woke with an abominable headache.

  ‘Good morning, Effendi.’ Ishmael was standing beside the truck with a steaming mug of black coffee in his hand. ‘I wish you a day perfumed with jasmine.’ The coffee revived him sufficiently to call for Manyoro. Between them they were able to start the Vauxhall and drive down the main street to the headquarters of the Greater Lake Victoria Trading Company. Below the name on the board, some other script had recently been painted out by direct order of his excellency the governor. However, the writing was still legible under the single coat of paint intended to obliterate it: ‘By appointment to His Majesty the King of England purveyor of fine, rare and precious items’. The uncensored text read: ‘Dealer in gold, diamonds, ivory carvings and curios, and all manner of natural produce. Sundry goods of every description for sale. Prop. Mr Goolam Vilabjhi Esq.’