Assegai

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 gri

‘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.