Assegai

He levered a round into the breech, then swung the gun downwards on its mounting. He fired a short burst and the leading rank of charging Arabs disintegrated. Three horses went down, taking their riders with them. He traversed the gun right and fired again. Four more horses dropped, kicking, into the sand and the survivors scattered. Eva counted the casualties. Seven men were down, but two horses lunged back on to their feet and galloped after the rest.

‘I don’t think they’ll be coming back,’ he said casually. ‘You can stand the watch down until eighteen hundred hours, Lutz. Then we’ll start the engines again to fly on in the cool of the night.’

The last cablegram that Mr Goolam Vilabjhi had received from his niece in Altnau contained only a single number group. When Leon decoded it he found it was the date that Eva had promised to send him: that on which the Assegai would commence its flight from Wieskirche. In her previous cables, she had given him the name that Graf Otto had chosen for his machine, with its design number. The Assegai was a Mark ZL71. She had already outlined the course he intended to follow on his flight to South Africa. From this Leon had calculated when the airship might arrive over the Great Rift. Now all he needed was a plan of action that offered even a remote chance of success in bringing the massive ship to earth, then capturing its crew and cargo. With Penrod gone and Frederick Snell able to block his efforts, Leon was on his own.

He had seen drawings of the type of airship he was up against. When Graf Otto had been evacuated from Nairobi to Germany after his mauling, he had left piles of books and magazines in his private quarters at Tandala Camp. They were mostly technical engineering publications and one contained a long, illustrated article on the construction and operation of a large dirigible. It had included numerous drawings of the various types, including the Mark ZL71. Now Leon retrieved it and studied it carefully.

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 He

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.

Lusima Mama was waiting for them under a favourite tree beside the path. She greeted her sons and made them sit one on each side of her. ‘Your flower is not with you, M’bogo.’ It was a statement, not a question. ‘She has gone to that land far to the north.’

‘When will she return, Mama?’ Leon asked.

She smiled. ‘Do not seek to know that which is not for us to know. She will come in the fullness of days.’

Leon shrugged helplessly. ‘Then let us speak of that which is for us to know. I have a favour to ask of you, Mama.’

‘I have fifty men waiting for you near my hut. It is fortunate that the Mkuba Mkuba has already cleared much of the ground for you with his lightning bolt.’ She smiled slyly at him. ‘But you do not believe that, do you, my son?’

Lusima accompanied the expedition to the open tableland above the waterfall. She sat in the shade and watched her men labour. Leon soon understood why she had come: under her eye the team worked like a pack of demons and by noon on the second day he was able to pace out the extent of the ground they had opened up. At such high altitude the air was thin and he would have to maintain a high approach speed to avoid stalling his aircraft. It would be a near-run thing to get the Butterfly down on such a short runway. In fact, it would have been impossible if it were not for the slope and aspect of the ground. The landing strip was on the very edge of the cliffs. If he made his approach from the valley side, the strip would be at an uphill angle, and once he touched down, the slope would bring her to a rapid standstill. On the other hand, if he took off down the slope the Butterfly would accelerate and reach her flying speed equally swiftly. Then when he shot off the top of the cliff he could hold her nose down in a shallow dive and her airspeed would rocket up.