Assegai

When he opened his eyes again, the morning sun was blazing through the doorway of the hut. Loikot was waiting for him at the door, squatting against the lintel, but he sprang to his feet as soon as Leon stirred. He came to him immediately and asked a question, pointing at his feet.

‘Too early to tell,’ Leon answered. Although every muscle in his body ached his head was clear. He sat up and unwrapped the bandages. He was amazed to see that most of the swelling and inflammation had subsided.

‘Dr Lusima’s snake oil.’ He grinned. His mood was light, until he remembered Manyoro.

Quickly he rebandaged his feet, and hobbled to the large clay water pot that stood outside the door. He stripped off the remnants of his shirt and washed the dust and dried sweat from his face and hair. When he straightened up he found that half of the village women, both young and old, were sitting in a circle around him, watching his every move with avid attention.

‘Ladies!’ he addressed them. ‘I am about to take a piss. You are not invited to observe the procedure.’ Leaning on Loikot’s shoulder he set off for the entrance to the cattle pen.

When he returned Lusima was waiting for him. ‘Come,’ she commanded. ‘It is time to begin.’ She led him to the hut that stood beside his. The interior was dark after the brilliant sunlight and it took his eyes a minute to adjust. The air was rank with woodsmoke from the fire and a more subtle odour, the sweet, nauseating smell of corrupting flesh. Manyoro lay face down on a leather kaross beside the fire. Leon went to him quickly and his spirits quailed. Manyoro lay like a dead man and his skin had lost its lustre. It was as dull as the soot that caked the bottom of the cooking pot on the fire. The lean muscles of his back seemed to have wasted. His head was twisted to one side and his eyes had receded into their sockets. Behind half-open lids they were as opaque as quartz pebbles from the riverbed. His leg above the knee was massively swollen, and the stench of the yellow pus that exuded from around the broken-off arrow filled the hut.

Lusima clapped her hands and four men crowded in. They picked up the corners of the litter on which Manyoro lay and carried him outside, across the open ground of the cattle pen to the single tall mukuyu tree in the centre. They laid him in the shade while Lusima shrugged off her cloak and stood bare-chested over him. She spoke softly to Leon: ‘The arrowhead cannot come out the way it entered. I must draw it through. The wound is ripe. You can smell it. Even so, it will not give up the arrow easily.’ One of the slave girls handed her a small knife with a rhino-horn handle, and the other brought a clay fire pot, swinging it around her head on its rope handle to fan the coals alight. When they glowed she placed the pot in front of her mistress. Lusima held the blade in the flames, turning it slowly until the metal glowed. Then she quenched it in another pot of liquid that smelled like the brew with which she had treated Leon’s feet. It bubbled and steamed as the metal cooled.

With the knife in her hand Lusima squatted beside her son. The four morani who had carried him from the hut knelt with her, two at Manyoro’s head and two at his feet. She looked up at Leon and spoke quietly: ‘You will do thus and thus.’ She explained in detail what she expected of him. ‘Even though you are the strongest among us, it will take all your strength. The grip of the barbs in his flesh is strong.’ She stared into his face. ‘Do you understand, my son?’

‘I understand, Mama.’ She opened the leather bag that hung at her waist and took from it a hank of thin white twine. ‘This is the rope you will use.’ She handed it to him. ‘I made it from the intestine of a leopard. It is tenacious. There is no stronger thread.’ She reached into the bag again and found a thick strip of elephant hide. Gently she opened Manyoro’s mouth. She placed the hide between his jaws and bound it in place with a short length of the catgut so that Manyoro could not spit it out.

‘It will prevent him cracking his teeth when the pain reaches its zenith,’ she explained.

Leon nodded, but he knew that the main reason for the gag was to prevent her son crying out and disgracing her.

‘Turn him on to his back,’ Lusima ordered the four morani, ‘but do it gently.’ As they rolled Manyoro over she guided the stump of the arrow shaft so that it did not catch in the kaross. Then she placed a block of wood on each side of it to keep it clear of the ground and to give the leg a firm platform. ‘Hold him,’ she ordered the morani.

She moved into position over the wounded leg and laid both her hands on it. Carefully she palpated the front of Manyoro’s thigh, feeling for the point of the arrowhead under the skin of the hot, swollen flesh. Manyoro moved restlessly as her probing fingers descried the shape of the buried arrowhead. She brought the blade of the horn-handled knife down precisely on the spot and began to chant a spell in Maa. After a while Manyoro seemed to succumb to the monotonous refrain. His shrunken body relaxed and he snored softly around the leather gag.

Suddenly, without interrupting her chant, Lusima pressed the point of the blade down. With barely a check it sank into the dark flesh. Manyoro stiffened and every muscle in his back stood proud. The blade grated on metal, and pus welled from the wound that the knife had opened. Lusima laid aside the knife and pressed down on either side of the cut. The sharp point of the arrowhead was forced out through the enlarged wound and the first row of barbs came into sight.

Leon had been able to examine a number of captured Nandi weapons during the campaign so he was not surprised to see that the arrowhead was of unconventional design. It had been forged from an iron pot-leg the thickness of Lusima’s little finger. It was meant for deep penetration into the massive body of the elephant so it had no single large barb, such as appeared on the arrowhead medieval English bowmen had used against heavily armoured French knights. Instead there were row upon row of tiny jags, no larger than minnow scales, that would glide through flesh with little resistance. However, because of their large numbers and their back-facing angle it would be impossible to withdraw the arrowhead along its original entry channel.

‘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.’