Assegai

Far from being of help or inspiration, he found the illustrations and descriptions thoroughly discouraging. The airship was so enormous and so well protected, it flew so fast and high, that there seemed no possible way to prevent it getting through. He tried to imagine a comparison for the little Butterfly and this behemoth of the skies: a field mouse alongside a black-maned lion, perhaps, or a termite beside a pangolin?

He cast his mind back to the prophecy that Lusima had made for them when first he had taken Eva to Lonsonyo Mountain to meet her. She had conjured up the image of a great silver fish obscured by smoke and flame. When he looked at the illustration, in Graf Otto’s book, of the airship with its mighty fish-tailed rudder and generally piscine shape, he had no doubt that this was what she had foreseen. He wondered if there was any more she could tell him, but that was unlikely: Lusima never enlarged on an original prediction. She gave you the kernel, and it was up to you to make of it what you could.

Leon was isolated and abandoned. He had lost Eva and he knew that there was only a remote chance that he would see her again. It was as though a vital part of his body had been cut away. Penrod was gone too. He never thought he would miss his uncle, but he felt the loss intensely. He needed help and advice, and there was only one person left in his life who might provide it.

He called for Manyoro, Loikot and Ishmael. ‘We’re going to Lonsonyo Mountain,’ he told them.

Within half an hour they were airborne and winging down the Rift Valley, headed for Percy’s Camp. When they landed he found it in disarray. Both Hennie du Rand and Max Rosenthal had been gone for some time and Leon had been so distracted by Eva that he had taken no interest in the day-to-day operation of the camp. He had left it to his untrained and unsupervised staff.

He was not seriously concerned by this state of affairs. The future was uncertain, and it was highly unlikely that there would be any hunting guests to entertain until the cessation of hostilities, and probably for many years after peace was restored. He lingered in camp just long enough to select the mounts and make up the packs before they rode out towards the great blue silhouette of the mountain on the western horizon. His spirits lifted with every mile that brought them closer to it.

They made camp that evening at the base of Lonsonyo, and he sat late beside the fading embers of the campfire, staring up at the dark massif against the starry splendour of the African night sky. He found himself studying the mountain in a way he never had before. For the first time he was seeing it as a potential battlefield over which his little Butterfly might soon be pitted against the menace of Graf Otto’s mighty Assegai.

It had worried him that he would have to wait until Loikot’s chungaji scouts spotted the airship’s approach, before he could take off to intercept it. He would be at an enormous disadvantage. The Assegai would be at her cruising altitude of ten thousand feet so he would have to climb up and over the massif of Lonsonyo Mountain under full power from all his engines to meet her, which meant burning most of her fuel reserves as he pushed the Butterfly to the limit of her operational ceiling. And if the winds, humidity and air temperature were in the Assegai’s favour she might sweep on over his head and be gone before Leon could coax the Butterfly high enough.

He felt discouraged and depressed by the prospect of such an abysmal defeat and stared up angrily at the mountain. At that moment a ripple of distant sheet lightning far down the Rift Valley near Lake Natron backlit the heights boldly. The massif seemed like the glacis of an enemy castle, a great obstacle he must overcome.

Then some odd trick of the light and the play of lightning changed his perspective. He started to his feet, knocking his coffee mug flying. ‘By God, what’s wrong with me?’ he shouted at the sky. ‘It’s been under my nose all along. Lonsonyo is not my obstacle but my springboard!’ Now the ideas poured over him, like water from a ruptured dam wall.

‘That open tableland in the rainforest that Eva and I discovered! I knew it was significant the moment I laid eyes on it. It’s a natural landing strip on the highest point of Lonsonyo. With fifty strong men to help I could clear the undergrowth in a couple of days, enough to be able to land her up there and get her off again. I won’t have to chase after the Assegai. I need only wait on the mountaintop and let her come to me. What is most important, I’ll be able to open the game with the advantage of height. I’ll be able to swoop down on her instead of climbing up laboriously to intercept her.’ He was so excited that he slept only a few hours, and was on the pathway to the summit long before sunrise the next morning.