Assegai Read online

  ‘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.

  ‘On me!’ Leon shouted again. ‘Close order! Follow me!’ He led them at a run straight into the narrow gap in the Nandi line, making directly for the main building. The tiny band of khaki-clad figures was almost through before the Nandi surged forward again and headed them off. Both sides were instantly embroiled in a hand-to-hand mêlée.

  ‘Take the bayonet to them!’ Leon roared, and fired the Webley into the grimacing face ahead of him. When the man dropped another appeared immediately behind him. Manyoro plunged his long silver bayonet full length into his chest and jumped over the body, plucking out the blade as he went. Leon followed closely and between them they killed three more with blade and bullet before they broke out of the ruck and reached the veranda steps. By now they were the only members of the detachment still on their feet. All the others had been speared.

  Leon took the veranda steps three at a time and charged through the open door into the main room. Manyoro slammed the door behind them. Each ran to a window and blazed away at the Nandi as they came after them. Their fire was so witheringly accurate that within seconds the steps were cluttered with bodies. The rest drew back in dismay, then turned tail and scattered into the plantation.

  Leon stood at the window reloading his pistol as he watched them go. ‘How much ammunition do you have, Sergeant?’ he called to Manyoro, at the other window.

  The sleeve of Manyoro’s tunic had been slashed by a Nandi panga, but there was little bleeding and Manyoro ignored the wound. He had the breech bolt of his rifle open and was loading bullets into the magazine. ‘These are my last two clips, Bwana,’ he answered, ‘but there are many more lying out there.’ He gestured through the window at the bandoliers of the fallen askari lying on the parade-ground, surrounded by the half-naked Nandi they had taken down with them.

  ‘We will go out and pick them up before the Nandi can regroup,’ Leon told him.

  Manyoro slammed the breech bolt of the rifle closed and propped the weapon against the windowsill.

  Leon slipped his pistol back into its holster and went to join him at the doorway. They stood side by side and gathered themselves for the effort. Manyoro was watching his face and Leon grinned at him. It was good to have the tall Masai at his side. They had been together ever since Leon had come out from England to join the regiment. That was little more than a year ago, but the rapport they had established was strong. ‘Are you ready, Sergeant?’ he asked.

  ‘I am, Bwana.’

  ‘Up the Rifles!’ Leon gave the regimental war-cry and threw open the door. They burst through it together. The steps were slippery with blood and cluttered with corpses so Leon hurdled the low retaining wall and landed on his feet running. He raced to the nearest dead askari and dropped to his knees. Quickly he unbuckled his webbing and slung the heavy bandoliers of ammunition over his shoulder. Then he jumped up and ran to the next man. Before he reached him a loud, angry hum rose from the edge of the banana plantation. Leon ignored it and dropped down beside the corpse. He did not look up again until he had another set of webbing slung over his shoulder. Then he leaped up as the Nandi swarmed back on to the parade-ground.

  ‘Get back, and be quick about it!’ he yelled at Manyoro, who was also draped with ammunition bandoliers. Leon paused just long enough to snatch up a dead askari’s rifle before he raced for the veranda wall. There he paused to glance back over his shoulder. Manyoro was a few yards behind him, while the leading Nandi warriors were fifty paces away and coming on swiftly.

  ‘Cutting it a little fine,’ Leon grunted. Then he saw one of the pursuers unsling the heavy bow from his shoulder. Leon recognized it as the weapon they used to hunt elephant. He felt a prickle of alarm at the back of his neck. The Nandi were expert archers. ‘Run, damn it, run!’ he shouted at Manyoro, as he saw the Nandi nock a long arrow, lift the bow and draw the fletching to his lips. Then he released the arrow, which shot upwards and fell in a silent arc. ‘Look out!’ Leon screamed, but the warning was futile, the arrow too swift. Helplessly he watched it plummet towards Manyoro’s unprotected back.

  ‘God!’ said Leon softly. ‘Please, God!’ For a moment he thought the arrow would fall short, for it was dropping steeply, but then he realized it would find its mark. He took a step back towards Manyoro, then stopped to watch helplessly. The strike
of the arrow was hidden from him by Manyoro’s body but he heard the meaty whunk of the iron head piercing flesh and Manyoro spun around. The head of the arrow was buried deeply in the back of his upper thigh. He tried to take another pace but the wounded leg anchored him. Leon pulled the bandoliers from around his own neck and hurled them and the rifle he was carrying over the retaining wall and through the open door. Then he started back. Manyoro was hopping towards him on his unwounded leg, the other dangling, the shaft of the arrow flapping. Another arrow came towards them and Leon flinched as it hummed a hand’s breadth past his ear, then clashed against the veranda wall.

  He reached Manyoro and wrapped his right arm around his sergeant’s torso beneath the armpit. He lifted him bodily and ran with him to the wall. Leon was surprised that although he was so tall the Masai was light. Leon was heavier by twenty pounds of solid muscle. At that moment every ounce of his powerful frame was charged with the strength of fear and desperation. He reached the wall and swung Manyoro over it, letting him tumble in a heap on the far side. Then he cleared the wall in a single bound. More arrows hummed and clattered around them but Leon ignored them, swept Manyoro into his arms, as though he was a child, and ran through the open door as the first of the pursuing Nandi reached the wall behind them.

  He dropped Manyoro on the floor and picked up the rifle he had retrieved from the dead askari. As he turned back to the open doorway he levered a fresh cartridge into the breech and shot dead a Nandi as he was clambering over the wall. Swiftly he worked the bolt and fired again. When the magazine was empty he put down the rifle and slammed the door. It was made from heavy mahogany planks and the frame was deeply embedded in the thick walls. It shook as, on the other side, the Nandi hurled themselves against it. Leon drew his pistol and fired two shots through the panels. There was a yelp of pain from the far side, then silence. Leon waited for them to come again. He could hear whispering, and the scuffle of feet. Suddenly a painted face appeared in one of the side windows. Leon aimed at it but a shot rang out from behind him before he could press the trigger. The head vanished.

  Leon turned and saw that Manyoro had dragged himself across the floor to the rifle he had left propped beside the other window. Using the sill to steady himself he had pulled himself on to his good leg. He fired again through the window and Leon heard the solid thud of a bullet striking flesh, and then the sound of another body falling on the veranda. ‘Morani! Warrior!’ he panted, and Manyoro grinned at the compliment.

  ‘Do not leave all the work to me, Bwana. Take the other window!’

  Leon stuffed the pistol into his holster, snatched up the empty rifle and ran with it to the open window, cramming clips of cartridges into the magazine - two clips, ten rounds. The Lee-Enfield was a lovely weapon. It felt good in his hands.

  He reached the window and threw out a sheet of rapid fire. Between them they swept the parade-ground with a fusillade that sent the Nandi scampering for the cover of the plantation. Manyoro sank slowly down the wall and leaned against it, legs thrust out before him, the wounded one cocked over the other so that the arrow shaft did not touch the floor.

  With one last glance across the parade-ground to confirm that none of the enemy was sneaking back, Leon left his window and went to his sergeant. He squatted in front of him and tentatively grasped the arrow shaft. Manyoro winced. Leon exerted a little more pressure, but the barbed iron head was immovable. Though Manyoro made no sound the sweat poured down his face and dripped on to the front of his tunic.

  ‘I can’t pull it out so I’m going to break off the shaft and strap it,’ Leon said.

  Manyoro looked at him without expression for a long moment, then smiled, his teeth showing large, even and white. His earlobes had been pierced in childhood, the holes stretched to hold ivory discs, which gave his face a mischievous, puckish aspect.

  ‘Up the Rifles!’ Manyoro said, and his lisping imitation of Leon’s favourite expression was so startling in the circumstances that Leon guffawed and, at the same instant, snapped off the reed shaft of the arrow close to where it protruded from the oozing wound. Manyoro closed his eyes, but uttered no sound.

  Leon found a field dressing in the webbing pouch he had taken from the askari, and bandaged the stump of the arrow shaft to stop it moving. Then he rocked back on his heels and studied his handiwork. He unhooked the water-bottle from his own webbing, unscrewed the stopper and took a long swallow, then handed it to Manyoro. The Masai hesitated delicately: an askari did not drink from an officer’s bottle. Frowning, Leon thrust it into his hands. ‘Drink, damn you,’ he said. ‘That’s an order!’

  Manyoro tilted back his head and held the bottle high. He poured the water directly into his mouth without touching the neck with his lips. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed three times. Then he screwed on the stopper tightly and handed it back to Leon. ‘Sweet as honey,’ he said.

  ‘We will move out as soon as it’s dark,’ Leon said.

  Manyoro considered this statement for a moment. ‘Which way will you go?’

  ‘We will go the way we came.’ Leon emphasized the plural pronoun. ‘We must get back to the railway line.’

  Manyoro chuckled.

  ‘What makes you laugh, Morani?’ Leon demanded.

  ‘It is almost two days’ march to the railway line,’ Manyoro reminded him. He shook his head in amusement and touched his bandaged leg significantly. ‘When you go, Bwana, you will go alone.’

  ‘Are you thinking of deserting, Manyoro? You know that’s a shooting offence-’ He broke off as movement beyond the window caught his eye. He snatched up the rifle and fired three quick shots out across the parade-ground. A bullet must have thumped into living flesh because a cry of pain and anger followed. ‘Baboons and sons of baboons,’ Leon growled. In Kiswahili the insult had a satisfying ring. He laid the rifle across his lap to reload it. Without looking up he said, ‘I will carry you.’

  Manyoro gave his puckish smile and asked politely, ‘For two days, Bwana, with half the Nandi tribe chasing after us, you will carry me? Is that what I heard you say?’

  ‘Perhaps the wise and witty sergeant has a better plan,’ Leon challenged him.

  ‘Two days!’ Manyoro marvelled. ‘I should call you “Horse”.’

  They were silent for a while, and then Leon said, ‘Speak, O wise one. Give me counsel.’

  Manyoro paused, then said, ‘This is not the land of the Nandi. These are the grazing lands of my people. These treacherous curs trespass on the lands of the Masai.’

  Leon nodded. His field map showed no such boundaries: his orders had not made such divisions clear. His superiors were probably ignorant of the nuances of tribal territorial demarcations, but Leon had been with Manyoro on long foot patrols through these lands before this most recent outbreak of rebellion. ‘This I know, for you have explained it to me. Now tell me your better plan, Manyoro.’

  ‘If you go towards the railway-’

  Leon interrupted: ‘You mean if we go that way.’

  Manyoro inclined his head slightly in acquiescence. ‘If we go towards the railway we will be moving back into Nandi ground. They will grow bold and harry us, like a pack of hyenas. However, if we move down the valley...’ Manyoro indicated south with his chin ‘... we will be moving into Masai territory. Each step they take in pursuit will fill the bowels of the Nandi with fear. They will not follow us far.’

  Leon thought about this, then shook his head dubiously. ‘There is nothing to the south but wilderness and I must get you to a doctor before the leg festers and has to be cut off.’

  ‘Less than a day’s easy march to the south lies the manyatta of my mother,’ Manyoro told him.

  Leon blinked with surprise. Somehow he had never thought of Manyoro as having a parent. Then he collected himself. ‘You don’t hear me. You need a doctor, somebody who can get that arrow out of your leg before it kills you.’

  ‘My mother is the most famous doctor in all the land. Her fame as the paramount witch doctor is
known from the ocean to the great lakes. She has saved a hundred of our morani who have been struck down by spear and arrow or savaged by lions. She has medicines that are not even dreamed of by your white doctors in Nairobi.’ Manyoro sank back against the wall. By now his skin bore a greyish sheen and the smell of his sweat was rancid. They stared at each other for a moment, then Leon nodded.

  ‘Very well. We will go south down the Rift. We will leave in the dark before the rise of the moon.’

  But Manyoro sat up again and sniffed the sultry air, like a hunting dog picking up a distant scent. ‘No, Bwana. If we go, we must go at once. Can you not smell it?’

  ‘Smoke!’ Leon whispered. ‘The swine are going to flush us out with fire.’ He glanced out of the window again. The parade-ground was empty, but he knew they would not come again from that direction: there were no windows in the rear wall of the building. That was the way they would come. He studied the leaves of the nearest banana plants. A light breeze was ruffling them. ‘Wind from the east,’ he murmured. ‘That suits us.’ He looked at Manyoro. ‘We can carry little with us. Every extra ounce will make a difference. Leave the rifles and bandoliers. We will take a bayonet and one water-bottle each. That’s all.’ As he spoke, he reached for the pile of canvas webbing they had salvaged. He buckled three of the waist belts together to form a single loop, slipped it over his head and settled it on his right shoulder. It hung down just below his left hip. He held his water-bottle to his ear and shook it. ‘Less than half.’ He decanted the contents of the salvaged bottles into his own, then topped up Manyoro’s. ‘What we can’t carry we will drink here.’ Between them they drained what was left in the others.

  ‘Come on, Sergeant, get up.’ Leon put a hand under Manyoro’s armpit and hoisted him to his feet. The sergeant balanced on his good leg as he strapped his water-bottle and bayonet around his waist. At that moment something heavy thumped on the thatch above their heads.

  ‘Torches!’ Leon snapped. ‘They’ve crept up to the back of the building and are throwing firebrands on to the roof.’ There was another loud thump above them, and the smell of burning was stronger in the room.