Assegai

‘I understand, Mama.’ She opened the leather bag that hung at her waist and took from it a hank of thin white twine. ‘This is the rope you will use.’ She handed it to him. ‘I made it from the intestine of a leopard. It is tenacious. There is no stronger thread.’ She reached into the bag again and found a thick strip of elephant hide. Gently she opened Manyoro’s mouth. She placed the hide between his jaws and bound it in place with a short length of the catgut so that Manyoro could not spit it out.

‘It will prevent him cracking his teeth when the pain reaches its zenith,’ she explained.

Leon nodded, but he knew that the main reason for the gag was to prevent her son crying out and disgracing her.

‘Turn him on to his back,’ Lusima ordered the four morani, ‘but do it gently.’ As they rolled Manyoro over she guided the stump of the arrow shaft so that it did not catch in the kaross. Then she placed a block of wood on each side of it to keep it clear of the ground and to give the leg a firm platform. ‘Hold him,’ she ordered the morani.

She moved into position over the wounded leg and laid both her hands on it. Carefully she palpated the front of Manyoro’s thigh, feeling for the point of the arrowhead under the skin of the hot, swollen flesh. Manyoro moved restlessly as her probing fingers descried the shape of the buried arrowhead. She brought the blade of the horn-handled knife down precisely on the spot and began to chant a spell in Maa. After a while Manyoro seemed to succumb to the monotonous refrain. His shrunken body relaxed and he snored softly around the leather gag.

Suddenly, without interrupting her chant, Lusima pressed the point of the blade down. With barely a check it sank into the dark flesh. Manyoro stiffened and every muscle in his back stood proud. The blade grated on metal, and pus welled from the wound that the knife had opened. Lusima laid aside the knife and pressed down on either side of the cut. The sharp point of the arrowhead was forced out through the enlarged wound and the first row of barbs came into sight.

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.’