Assegai

The oldest of the three men wore a kilt of leopard tails and a cap of the same black and gold speckled fur. This was the regalia of the paramount witch doctor of the Nandi tribe. His name was Arap Samoei and for ten years he had led the rebellion against the white invaders and their infernal machines, which threatened to desecrate the sacred tribal lands of his people. The faces and bodies of the men with him were painted for war: their eyes were circled with red ochre, a stripe was painted down their noses and their cheeks were slashed with the same colour. Their bare chests were dotted with burned lime in a pattern that simulated the plumage of the vulturine guinea fowl. Their kilts were made of gazelle skins and their headdresses of genet and monkey fur.

‘The mzungu and his bastard Masai dogs are well into the trap,’ said Arap Samoei. ‘I had hoped for more, but seven Masai and one mzungu will make a good killing.’

‘What are they doing?’ asked the Nandi captain at his side, shading his eyes from the glare as he peered down the precipitous slope.

‘They are digging a hole to bury the white filth we left for them,’ said Samoei.

‘Is it time to carry the spears down to them?’ asked the third warrior.

‘It is time,’ answered the paramount witch doctor. ‘But keep the mzungu for me. I want to cut off his balls with my own blade. From them I will make a powerful medicine.’ He touched the hilt of the panga on his leopardskin belt. It was a knife with a short, heavy blade, the favoured close-quarters weapon of the Nandi. ‘I want to hear him squeal, squeal like a warthog in the jaws of a leopard as I cut away his manhood. The louder he screams the more powerful will be the medicine.’ He turned and strode back to the crest of the rugged rock wall, and looked down into the fold of dead ground behind it. His warriors squatted patiently in the short grass, rank upon rank of them. Samoei raised his clenched fist and the waiting impi sprang to its feet, making no sound that might carry to their quarry.

‘The fruit is ripe!’ called Samoei.

‘It is ready for the blade!’ his warriors agreed in unison.

‘Let us go down to the harvest!’

The grave was ready, waiting to receive its bounty. Leon nodded at Manyoro, who gave a quiet order to his men. Two jumped down into the pit and the others passed the wrapped bundles down to them. They laid the two larger awkwardly shaped forms side by side on the floor of the grave with the tiny one wedged between them, a pathetic little group united for ever in death.

Leon removed his slouch hat and went down on one knee at the edge of the grave. Manyoro ordered the small detachment of men to fall in behind him with their rifles at the slope. Leon began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. The askari did not understand the words, but they knew their significance for they had heard them uttered over many other graves.

‘For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, amen!’ Leon ended and began to rise, but before he stood upright the oppressive silence of the hot African afternoon was shattered by a deafening hubbub of howls and screams. He dropped his hand to the butt of the Webley pistol holstered on his Sam Browne belt, and glanced around him swiftly.

Out of the dense foliage of the bananas swarmed a mass of sweat-shining bodies. They came from all sides, cavorting and prancing, brandishing their weapons. The sunlight sparkled on the blades of spear and panga. They drummed on their rawhide shields with their knobkerries, leaping high in the air as they raced towards the tiny group of soldiers.

‘On me!’ bellowed Leon. ‘Form up on me! Load! Load! Load!’ The askari reacted with trained precision, immediately forming a tight circle around him, rifles at the ready, bayonets pointing outwards. Appraising their situation swiftly, Leon saw that his party was completely surrounded except on the side nearest the boma’s main building. The Nandi formation must have split as it rounded it, leaving a narrow gap in their line.

‘Commence firing!’ Leon shouted, and the crash of the seven rifles was almost drowned in the uproar of shouting and drumming shields. He saw only one of the Nandi go down, a chieftain wearing kilts and headdress of Colobus monkey pelts. His head was snapped back by the heavy lead bullet, and bloody tissue erupted in a cloud from the back of his skull. Leon knew who had fired the shot: Manyoro was an expert marksman, and Leon had seen him single out his victim, then aim deliberately.

The charge faltered as the chief went down, but at a shriek of rage from a leopard-robed witch doctor in the rear, the attackers rallied and came on again. Leon realized that this witch doctor was probably the notorious leader of the insurrection, Arap Samoei himself. He fired two quick shots at him, but the distance was well over fifty paces and the short-barrelled Webley was a close-range weapon. Neither bullet had any effect.