Wilbur Smith - Assegai

‘Ninety-four and ninety-eight. Didn’t quite make the magic number of one hundred.’

‘I want to do better.’

‘You worry a lot about doing better than him. Is this meant to be a competition?’

‘My father has always succeeded in everything he turns his hand to. Hell, he was a war hero, a state governor, a hunter and sportsman all before he turned forty, and as if that wasn’t enough, he became the youngest and most successful President of America ever. He respects winners and despises losers.’ He took a sip. ‘From what you’ve told me, you and I have lived through the same situation. You should understand.’

‘You think your father despises you?’

‘No. He loves me but he doesn’t respect me. I want his respect more than anything else in the world.’

‘You’ve just taken a bigger rhino than he has.’

They looked across at the enormous carcass, the horn glinting in the firelight.

‘That’s a start.’ Kermit nodded. ‘However, knowing my father, he’d put much more value on an elephant or a lion. Find one of those for me, Fairy Godmother.’

Manyoro was sitting at the other fire with Ishmael, and Leon called across to him, ‘Come to me, my brother. There is something of importance we must discuss.’ Manyoro got up and came to squat across the fire from him. ‘We need to find a big elephant for this bwana .’

‘We have given him a Swahili name,’ Manyoro said. ‘We have named him Bwana Popoo Hima.’

Leon laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ Kermit asked.

‘You have been honoured,’ Leon told him. ‘Manyoro at least respects you. He has given you a Swahili name.’

‘What is it?’ Kermit demanded.

‘Bwana Popoo Hima.’

‘That sounds disgusting,’ Kermit said, suspicious.

‘It means “Sir Quick Bullet”.’

‘Popoo Hima! Hey! Tell him I like that!’ Kermit was pleased. ‘Why did they choose that name?’

‘They’re very impressed by the way you shoot.’ Leon turned back to Manyoro. ‘Bwana Popoo Hima wants a very big elephant.’

‘Every white man wants a very big elephant. But we must go to Lonsonyo Mountain to seek the counsel of our mother.’

‘Kermit, the advice I have from Manyoro is that we go to a Masai lady witch doctor on a mountaintop. She will tell us where to find your elephant.’

‘Do you really believe in that sort of thing?’ Kermit asked.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Well, it just so happens that so do I.’ Kermit nodded seriously. ‘In the hills to the north of our ranch in the badlands of Dakota there lives an old Indian shaman. I never hunt without going to see him first. Every real hunter has his little superstitions, even my father, who’s the hardest-nosed guy you’ll ever meet. He always carries a rabbit’s foot when he goes out into the field.’

‘It pays to give Lady Luck a wink and a nod,’ Leon agreed. ‘This lady I’m taking you to meet is her twin sister. She’s also my adopted mother.’

‘Then I reckon we can trust her. When can we leave?’

‘We’re more than twenty miles from the main camp. We’ll lose a couple of days if we take the rhino head back there first. I plan to cache it here and Manyoro will pick it up later. That way we can leave at once for the mountain.’

‘How far?’

‘Two days, if we push along.’

The next morning they hoisted the rhino head into the high branches of a pod mahogany tree and wedged it in a fork where it was well out of the reach of hyenas and other scavengers. Then they headed east, and camped only when it was too dark to see the ground ahead. Leon did not want to risk one of the horses breaking a leg in an antbear hole. During the night he woke and lay for a minute listening for what had disturbed him. One of the horses whickered and stamped.

Lions! he thought. After the horses. He threw off his blanket and reached for his rifle as he sat up. Then he saw an alien figure sitting at the smouldering ashes of the fire. It was shrouded in an ochre-red shuka .

‘Who is it?’ he demanded.

‘It is me, Loikot. I have come.’

He stood up and Leon recognized him at once, although he was several inches taller than he had been when they had last met only six months before. In the same period his voice had broken and he had become fully a man. ‘How did you find us, Loikot?’

‘Lusima Mama told me where you were. She sent me to welcome you.’

Their voices had roused Kermit. He sat up and asked sleepily, ‘What’s going on? Who’s this skinny kid?’

‘He’s a messenger from the lady we’re going to visit. She sent him to find us and bring us to the mountain.’

‘How the hell did she know we were on our way? We didn’t know ourselves until last night.’

‘Wake up, Bwana Popoo Hima. Think about it. The lady is a sorcerer. She keeps her eye on the road and her foot on the gas. You wouldn’t want to play poker with her.’

In the middle of the morning they raised the flat top of Lonsonyo Mountain above the dreaming blue horizon ahead, but it was late in the day when they stood under its towering mass, and dark before they rode into the manyatta and dismounted in front of Lusima’s hut. She had heard the horses and stood tall in the doorway with the firelight behind her. She was naked except for the string of beads around her waist. Her skin had been freshly anointed with fat and ochre, and polished until it gleamed.

Leon walked across to her and went down on one knee. ‘Give me your blessing, Mama,’ he asked.

‘You have it, my son.’ She touched his head. ‘My motherly love is yours also.’

‘I have brought another petitioner to you.’ Leon stood up and beckoned Kermit forward. ‘His Swahili name is Bwana Popoo Hima.’

‘So this is the prince, the son of a great white king.’ Lusima looked closely into Kermit’s face. ‘He is a twig of the mighty tree, but he will never grow as tall as the tree from which he sprang. There is always one tree in the forest that grows taller than any other, one eagle that flies higher than any other bird.’ She smiled kindly at Kermit. ‘All these things he knows in his heart, and it makes him feel small and unhappy.’

Even Leon was amazed at her insight. ‘He longs desperately to earn his father’s respect,’ he agreed.

‘So he comes to me to find him an elephant.’ She nodded. ‘In the morning I will bless his bunduki and point the way of the hunter for him. But now you will feast with me. I have killed a young goat for you and this mzungu , who does not drink blood and milk, and prefers cooked meat.’

They gathered at noon the next day under the council tree in the cattle pen. Big Medicine lay on the tanned lionskin. The blued metal was freshly oiled and her woodwork shone. The sacrificial offering of fresh cow’s blood and milk, salt, snuff and glass trade beads had been set out. Leon and Kermit squatted side by side at the head of the lionskin with Manyoro and Loikot behind them.

Lusima emerged from her hut, magnificent in her finery. She came to the council tree with her regal stride, her slave girls attending her closely. The men clapped with respect and called her praises: ‘She is the great black cow who feeds us with the milk of her udders. She is the watcher who sees all things. She is the mother of the tribe. She is the wise one who knows all things on this earth. Pray for us, Lusima Mama.’

She squatted in front of the men and asked the ritual questions: ‘Why do you come to my mountain? What is it you seek from me?’

‘We beg you to bless our weapons,’ Leon replied. ‘We importune you to divine the path that the great grey men take through the wilderness.’

Lusima rose and sprinkled the rifle with blood and milk, snuff and salt. ‘Make this weapon as the dreadful eye of the hunter that it may slay whatever he looks upon. May his popoo fly straight as the bee returning to the hive.’