Wilbur Smith - Assegai

‘Ko’twa!’ Leon’s voice cracked like a rifle shot, and reached the tracker even in his excess of grief. He looked at Leon, but his eyes were sightless with rage and sorrow.

‘Ko’twa, your bwana needs you. Come, take him home.’ He offered him the lifeless body. Ko’twa stared at him. Slowly he came back from the far regions of his mind, and the red stains of rage faded from his eyes. He dropped his assegai , and shrugged off the restraining hands of the two Masai. He came to Leon, face bathed in tears, and Leon laid Percy in his arms. ‘Bear him gently, Ko’twa.’ He nodded wordlessly and carried Percy away, back to where the horses waited.

Leon went to where Eastmont lay and spurned him with the toe of his boot. ‘Get up. It’s all over. You’re safe. On your feet.’ Eastmont was sobbing softly. ‘Get up, damn you, you craven bastard!’ Leon repeated.

Eastmont uncurled his enormous frame and looked at him with incomprehension. ‘What happened?’ he asked uncertainly.

‘You bolted, my lord.’

‘It wasn’t my fault.’

‘That must be a great consolation to Percy Phillips and the troopers you left to die at Slang Nek. Or, for that matter, the wife you drowned in Ullswater.’

Eastmont did not seem to understand the accusations. ‘I didn’t want it to happen,’ he whimpered. ‘I wanted to prove myself. But I couldn’t help it happening again. Please try to understand, won’t you?’

‘No, my lord, I won’t. However, I have a piece of advice for you. Don’t speak to me again. Ever. I won’t be able to stop myself if I hear any more of your whining. I’ll wring that great grotesque head off your monstrously deformed carcass.’ Leon turned away and summoned Manyoro. ‘Take this man back to camp.’ He left them and went back to where the buffalo carcass lay. He found the pieces of his rifle in the bushes beside the path where he had thrown them. When he reached the horses Ko’twa was waiting for him. He was still holding Percy.

‘Brother, please let me take Samawati from you for he was my father.’ Leon took the body from his grieving tracker and carried Percy to his horse.

When Leon reached the lakeside camp he found that Max Rosenthal had arrived from Tandala in the other vehicle. Leon told him to make the arrangements for Eastmont’s luggage to be packed and loaded. When Eastmont, guided by Manyoro, arrived at the camp, he was hangdog and sullen.

‘I’m sending you back to Nairobi,’ Leon told him coldly. ‘Max will put you on the train to Mombasa, and book you a berth on the next sailing for Europe. I’ll send the buffalo head and your other trophies to you as soon as they have been cured. You will be happy and proud to know that your buffalo is well over fifty inches. I owe you some money as a refund for this curtailed safari. I will let you have a banker’s order as soon as I have calculated the amount. Now get into the motor, and stay out of my sight. I have to bury the man you killed.’

They dug Percy’s grave deep, under an ancient baobab tree on the headland above the lake. They wrapped him in his bedroll and laid him in the bottom of the hole. Then they covered him with a layer of the largest stones they could carry, before they filled it in. Leon stood beside the mound of earth while Manyoro led the others in the lion dance.

Leon stayed on after all the others had gone back to the camp. He sat on a dead branch that had fallen from the baobab and gazed out across the lake. Now, with the sun on the water, it was as blue as Percy’s eyes had been. He made his last farewell in silence. If Percy was lingering near, he would know what Leon was thinking without having to be told.

Looking out across the lake, Leon was satisfied with the beautiful place he had chosen for Percy to spend eternity. He thought that when his own time came he would not mind being buried in such a spot. When at last he left the grave and went back to the camp he found that Max had left for Nairobi with Lord Eastmont.

Well, at least I’m still drinking his whisky, Leon thought grimly. Those words had been Percy’s summation of a safari that had gone horribly wrong.

Leon travelled the rough track to Arusha, the local administrative centre of the government of German East Africa. He went before the district Amtsrichter, and swore an affidavit as to the circumstances of Percy’s demise. The judge issued a death certificate.

Some days later when he reached Tandala Camp, Max and Hennie du Rand were anxiously awaiting his return to find out what fate was in store for them now that Percy was gone. Leon told them he would speak to them as soon as he knew what was the position of the company.

After he had drunk a pot of tea to wash the dust out of his throat, he shaved, bathed and dressed in clothes freshly ironed by Ishmael. Then he faced the fact that he was deliberately marking time, reluctant to go to Percy’s bungalow. Percy had been a private man and Leon would feel guilty of sacrilege if he ferreted around in his personal possessions. However, he steeled himself at last with the thought that this was what Percy had charged him to do.

He went up the hill to the little thatched bungalow that had been Percy’s home for the last forty years. Yet he was still reluctant to enter and sat for a while on the stoep, remembering some of the banter that the two of them had enjoyed while seated in the comfortable teak chairs with their elephant-skin cushions and the whisky-glass coasters carved into the armrests. At last he stood up again and went to the front door. It swung open to his touch. In all those years Percy had never bothered to lock it.

Leon went into the cool, dim interior. The walls of the front room were lined with bookcases, the shelves packed with hundreds of books. Percy’s library was a treasury of Africana. Instinctively Leon crossed to the central shelf and took down a copy of Monsoon Clouds Over Africa by Percy ‘Samawati’ Phillips. It was his autobiography. Leon had read it more than once. Now he flicked through the pages, enjoying some of the illustrations. Then he replaced it on the shelf and went into Percy’s bedroom. He had never been in this room before and looked around diffidently. A crucifix hung on one wall. Leo smiled. ‘Percy, you crafty old dog, I always thought you were an unrepentant atheist, but you were a secret Catholic all along.’

There was one other decoration on the monastically austere walls. An ancient, hand-coloured daguerreotype of a couple, sitting stiffly in what were obviously their best Sunday clothes, faced the bed. The woman held a small child of indeterminate sex on her lap. Despite his sideburns, the man was a dead ringer for Percy. The couple were unmistakably his parents, and Leon wondered if the child was Percy himself or one of his siblings.

He sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress was as hard as concrete and the blankets were threadbare. He reached under the bed and dragged out a battered steel cabin trunk. As it came it encountered resistance. He went down on one knee to see what had snagged it.

‘My oath!’ he muttered. ‘I wondered what you’d done with that.’ It required considerably more effort to drag the heavy item into plain view. Then he was gazing at a great ivory tusk, the pair of the one he had pawned to Mr Goolam Vilabjhi Esquire. ‘I thought you’d sold it, Percy, but all along you had it squirrelled away.’

He resumed his seat on the edge of the bed and possessively placed both feet on the tusk, then threw back the lid of the trunk. The interior was neatly packed with all of Percy’s treasures and valuables, from his passport to his accounts and his cheque book, from small jewellery boxes of cufflinks and dress studs to old steamline tickets and faded photographs. There were also several neat wads of documents tied with ribbon. Leon smiled again when he saw that one comprised all the clippings of the newspaper reports of the great safari, which had so prominently featured himself. On top of this hoard a folded document, sealed with red wax, was inscribed in block capitals: ‘TO BE OPENED BY LEON COURTNEY ONLY IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH’.