The Quest

'There is a limit to the range of these monsters,' Taita encouraged the men. 'Nakonto knows their habits well. He says that as suddenly as we came upon them we will be free of them.'

Meren ordered forced marches and rode at the head of the column, setting a driving pace. Deprived of sleep and weakened by the venom that the flies pumped into their blood the men swayed in their saddles.

When a trooper collapsed his comrades threw him over the back of his horse and rode on.

Nakonto alone was inured to the insects. His skin remained smooth

and glossy, unmarked by stings. He allowed the insects to suck themselves full of his blood so that they could not fly. Then he mocked them as he tore off their wings: 'I have been stabbed by men, leopards have bitten me and lions clawed me. Who are you to a

On the tenth day after they had left the hills, they rode out of the fly country. It happened so suddenly that they were taken unawares. At one moment they were cursing and flogging at the whirling insects, then fifty paces further on the silence of the forest was no longer disturbed by the vicious whine. Within a league of passing out of the tyra

There was a rush of naked bodies, then the forest rang with cries of relief and jubilation. When they emerged from the pool, Taita and Fe

It was dark when Fe

When they reached the lines, the colt was down, his body heaving to the urgent tempo of his breathing. Windsmoke stood over him, licking his head with long strokes of her tongue. She reeled weakly as she tried to keep her balance. Her coat was standing on end and she was drenched with sweat: it dripped from her belly and ran down all four legs.

'Call Shofar and his troops. Tell them to hurry. Then run and ask them to fill their largest pot with hot water and bring it to me.' Taita's main concern was to get Whirlwind back on his feet and keep Windsmoke on hers. Once a horse was down it had lost the will to fight and surrendered to the disease.

Shofar and his men lifted Whirlwind and placed him on his feet, then Taita sponged him with warm water. Fe

As soon as he had bathed the colt, Taita turned to Windsmoke.

'Be brave, my darling,' he murmured, as he wiped her down with a wet linen rag. Meren helped him to dry her vigorously with fresh cloths, and then they spread Taita's tiger-skin over her back. 'You and I will defeat this thing together.' He kept talking quietly to her, and used the

voice of power whenever he spoke her name. She cocked her ears to listen to him, splayed her legs and braced herself to keep her balance.

'Bak-her, Windsmoke. Do not give in.”

He hand-fed her the Tolas cakes, which he had dipped in honey. Even in her distress she could not resist this delicacy. Then he persuaded her to swallow a bowl of his special remedy for fever, yellow-strangler and equine distemper. He and Fe

'He has lifted his head,' one man said excitedly.

'She stands more firmly,' another observed. 'She is fighting for herself and for her foal.'

'She has stopped sweating. The fever is breaking.'

That evening Windsmoke ate five more Tolas cakes with honey. The next morning she followed Taita down into the riverbed and rolled in the white sand. She had always favoured a particular variety of soft grass with fluffy pink seed heads that grew on the banks of the Nile, so Taita and Fe

On the fourth day both Windsmoke and Whirlwind filled their empty bellies with it.

'They are out of danger,' Taita pronounced, and Fe

Despite the Tolas cakes, many other horses showed symptoms of the disease. Twelve died, but Meren replaced them from the small herd of salted animals. Some men were also suffering from the effects of the fly venom: they were racked with enervating headaches, and every joint in their bodies was so stiff that they could hardly walk. It was many more days before animals and men had recovered enough to resume the march.

Even then Taita and Fe

For two hundred leagues beyond the flies the land was devoid of human habitation. Then they encountered a small village of itinerant fishermen. The inhabitants fled as soon as the column of horsemen appeared. The shock of meeting these pale-ski

Clearly the fishermen were starving.

On the floodplains along the riverbank herds of large, robust antelope, with scimitar horns and white patches around their eyes, were feeding.

The males were black, the females dark red. Meren sent out five of his mounted archers. The antelope seemed curious about the horses, and came to meet them. The first volley of arrows brought down four, and the next as many again. They laid out the carcasses on the outskirts of the village as a peace-offering, then settled down to wait. The starving villagers could not long resist and crept forward cautiously, ready to flee again at the first sign of aggression from the strangers. Once they had butchered the carcasses and had the meat grilling on a dozen smoky fires, Nakonto went forward to hail them. Their spokesman was a venerable greybeard, who replied in a squeaky treble.

Nakonto came back to report to Taita. 'These people are related to the Ootasa. Their languages are so similar that we understand each other well.'

By now the villagers were so emboldened that they came trooping back to examine the men, their weapons and horses. The unmarried girls wore only a string of beads round their waists, and almost immediately established friendships with the troopers who had no Shilluk camp followers.

The married women brought calabashes of sour native beer to Taita, Meren and the captains, while the elder, whose name was Poto, sat proudly beside Taita and readily answered the questions Nakonto put to him.

'I know the southlands well,' he boasted. 'My father and his father before him lived on the great lakes, which were full of fish, some so large it needed four men to lift them. Their girth was thus .. .' he made a circle with his ski