Wilbur Smith - Assegai

‘Quickly!’ Lusima whispered to Leon. ‘Tie it!’

He had the slip-knot in the catgut ready and looped it over the point of the arrow, just behind the first line of jags. ‘I have it,’ he told her, as he drew the loop tight.

‘Hold him now. Do not let him move and twist the thread or it will be cut by the edges of the barbs,’ Lusima warned the morani . Together they threw their combined weight across Manyoro’s supine body.

‘Pull,’ Lusima urged Leon, ‘with all your strength, my son. Draw this evil thing out of him.’

Leon took three turns of the catgut around his wrist and brought it up firmly. Lusima started chanting again as he applied all the strength of his right arm to the thin thread. He was careful not to jerk or twist it around the razor-sharp jags. Slowly he increased the pressure on the loop. He felt it stretch slightly, but the arrowhead remained lodged. He took an additional turn of the thread around his other wrist and moved until both shoulders were lined foursquare with the angle at which the arrow had entered. He pulled again with both arms, ignoring the sharp pain of the thread cutting into his flesh. The muscles of his shoulders under the tattered shirt bunched and bulged. The cords stood out in his throat and his face darkened with effort.

‘Pull,’ Lusima whispered, ‘and may Mkuba Mkuba, the greatest of the great gods, give strength to your arms.’

By now Manyoro was struggling so desperately that the four men could not hold him still. He was making a keening sound into the gag, and his eyes were wide, seeming to start out of the sunken sockets, bloodshot and wild. The trapped arrowhead raised his torn and swollen flesh into a peak, but still the barbs held firm.

‘Pull!’ Lusima urged Leon. ‘Your strength surpasses that of the lion. It is the strength of M’bogo, the great buffalo bull.’

And the arrowhead moved. With a soft, ripping sound a second row of tiny jags appeared behind the first, then a third. At last two inches of dark-stained metal were protruding from the wound. Leon rested for a moment while he gathered himself for the final effort. Then he gritted his teeth until his jaw bulged and pulled again. Another inch of iron came reluctantly into sight. Then there was a rush of half-congealed black blood and purple pus. The stench made even Lusima gasp, but the fluids seemed to lubricate the arrow shaft, which slithered out of the wound now, like some evil foetus in the dreadful moment of its birth.

Leon fell back, panting, and stared in horror at the damage he had wrought. The wound gaped like a dark mouth, while blood and detritus streamed from the torn flesh. In his agony Manyoro had chewed through the elephant-hide gag and bitten into his lips. Fresh blood trickled down his chin. He was still struggling wildly, and the morani used all their strength and weight to hold him down.

‘Keep the leg still, M’bogo,’ Lusima called to Leon. One of her girls handed her a long thin horn of the klipspringer antelope, which had been carved into a crude funnel. She probed the sharp end deeply into the wound and Manyoro redoubled his struggles. The girl held a gourd to Lusima’s lips and she filled her mouth with the liquid it contained. A few drops ran down her chin, and Leon caught its astringent odour. Lusima placed her lips around the flared end of the horn, like a trumpeter, and blew the substance down it and through the sharp end into the depths of the wound. Another mouthful followed the first. The liquid bubbled from the open wound, flushing out putrid blood and other matter.

‘Turn him over,’ she ordered the morani . Although Manyoro fought them they rolled him on to his stomach and Leon straddled his back, using all his weight to pin him down. Lusima worked the point of the horn into the entry wound at the back of the leg, then blew more of the infusion deep into the suppurating flesh.

‘Enough,’ she said at last. ‘I have washed out the poisons.’ She set aside the horn, placed pads of dried herbs over the wounds and bound them in place with long strips of trade cloth. Gradually Manyoro’s struggles abated until at last he slumped back into a deathlike coma.

‘It is done. There is nothing more I can do,’ she said. ‘Now it is a battle between the gods of his ancestors and the dark devils. Within three days we will know the outcome. Take him to his hut.’ She looked up at Leon. ‘You and I, M’bogo, must take turns to sit at his side and give him strength for the fight.’

Over the days that followed Manyoro hovered over the void. At times he lay in such a deep coma that Leon had to place his ear against his chest to listen for his breathing. At other times he gasped and writhed and shouted on his sleeping mat, sweating and grinding his teeth in fever. Lusima and Leon sat on each side of him, restraining him when he seemed in danger of injuring himself with his wild convulsions. The nights were long and neither slept. They talked quietly through the hours with the low fire between them.

‘I sense you were not born on some far-away island over the sea, as most of your compatriots were but in this very Africa,’ Lusima said. Leon was no longer surprised by her uncanny perception. He did not reply at once, and she went on, ‘You were born far to the north on the banks of a great river.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You are right. The place is Cairo, and the river is the Nile.’

‘You belong to this land and you will never leave it.’

‘I had never thought to do so,’ he answered. She reached across and took his hand, closed her eyes and was quiet for a while. ‘I see your mother,’ she said. ‘She is a woman of great understanding. The two of you are close in spirit. She did not want you to leave her.’

Leon’s eyes filled with the dark shadows of regret.

‘I see your father also. It was because of him that you left.’

‘He treated me like a child. He tried to force me to do things I did not want to do. I refused. We argued and made my mother unhappy.’

‘What did he want you to do?’ she asked, with the air of one who already knew the answer.

‘My father grubs after money. There is nothing else in his life, neither his wife nor his children. He is a hard man, and we do not like each other. I suppose I respect him, but I do not admire him. He wanted me to work with him, doing the things he does. It was a bleak prospect.’

‘So you ran away?’

‘I did not run. I walked.’

‘What was it you sought?’ she asked.

He looked thoughtful. ‘Truly, I do not know, Lusima Mama.’

‘You have not found it?’ she asked.

He shook his head uncertainly. Then he thought of Verity O’Hearne. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I have found someone.’

‘No. Not the woman you are thinking of. She is just one woman among many others.’

The question was out before he could check himself: ‘How do you know about her?’ Then he answered himself: ‘Of course. You were there. And you know many things.’

She chuckled, and they were silent for a long while. It was a warm, comforting silence. He felt a strange bond with her, a closeness as though she were truly his mother.

‘I do not like what I am doing with my life now,’ he said at last. He had not thought about it until this moment, but as he said it, he knew it was the truth.

‘Because you are a soldier you are not able to do what your heart tells you,’ she agreed. ‘You must do as the old men order.’

‘You understand,’ he said. ‘I dislike hunting down and killing people I do not even know.’

‘Do you want me to point the way for you, M’bogo?’

‘I have come to trust you. I need your guidance.’

She was silent again for so long that he was about to speak. Then he saw that her eyes were wide open but rolled back in her head so that in the firelight only the whites were exposed. She was rocking rhythmically on her haunches and after a while she began to speak, but her voice had changed to a low, grating monotone. ‘There are two men. Neither is your father, but both will be more than your father,’ she said. ‘There is another road. You must follow the road of the great grey men who are not men.’ She drew a long, wheezing, asthmatic breath. ‘Learn the secret ways of the wild creatures, and other men will honour you for that knowledge and understanding. You will walk with mighty men of power, and they will count you their equal. There will be many women, but only one woman who will be many women. She will come to you from the clouds. Like them she will show you many faces.’ She broke off and made a strangling noise at the back of her throat. With supernatural chill he realized that she was in the struggles of divination. At last she shook herself violently and blinked. Her eyes rolled forward so that he could look into their dark centres as she focused on his face. ‘Hearken to what I told you, my son,’ she said softly. ‘The time for you to choose will soon be upon you.’