Assegai

Before they set off into the blue, the princess tried out every mount in the string of thoroughbreds that Leon had assembled for her. She rode astride like a man. As Leon watched her appraise the first horse with her disdainful expression, walking around it twice before she swung up gracefully into the saddle and bent the animal to her will, he realized that she was a superb horsewoman. In fact, he had seldom seen another woman who came close to her.

When they rode out from Tandala and were among the game herds, she forgot her original demand for lions and pigs and became a great deal less selective. She had a beautiful little 9.3 × 74 Mannlicher rifle made by Joseph Just of Ferlach, inlaid with gold by Wilhelm Röder with sylvan scenes of fauns and naked nymphs cavorting riotously together. When she bowled over three running Grant’s gazelle at a range of three hundred yards in three consecutive shots without dismounting, Leon decided she was probably the most deadly shot, man or woman, he had ever met.

‘Yes, I want to kill many animals,’ she remarked, as she reloaded the Mannlicher. She was smiling warmly for the first time since she had arrived in Africa.