Assegai

As his feet healed and hardened he was able to increase his speed and hurry after Loikot. The boy covered the ground with the long, flowing stride characteristic of his people. As he went he kept up a running commentary on everything that caught his attention. He missed nothing with the bright young eyes that could pick out the ethereal grey shape of a kudu bull standing deep in a thicket of thorn scrub three hundred yards distant.

The plain over which they were travelling abounded with living creatures. Loikot ignored the herds of smaller antelope that skittered around them, but remarked on anything of more significance. By this time, with his sharp ear for language, Leon had picked up enough Maa to follow the boy’s chatter with little difficulty.

They had carried no food with them when they left Lonsonyo Mountain and Leon had been puzzled as to how they would subsist, but he need not have worried: Loikot provided a strange variety of sustenance, which included small birds and their eggs, locusts and other insects, wild fruit and roots, a spurfowl, which he knocked out of the air with his staff as it flushed on noisy wings from under his feet, and a large monitor lizard that he pursued across the veld for half a mile before he beat it to death. The lizard’s flesh tasted like chicken, and there was enough to feed them for three days, although by then the carcass had been colonized by swarms of iridescent blue flies and their fat white offspring.

Leon and Loikot slept each night beside a small fire, covered with their shukas against the chill, and started again while the morning star was still high and bright in the dawn sky. On the third morning the sun was still below the horizon and the light poor when Loikot stopped dead and pointed in the direction of a flat-topped acacia tree only fifty yards away. ‘Ho, you killer of cattle, I greet you,’ he cried.

‘Who is it?’ Leon demanded.

‘Do you not see him? Open your eyes, M’bogo.’ Loikot pointed with his staff. Only then did Leon make out two small black tufts in the brown grass between them and the tree. One flicked and the whole picture sprang into focus. Leon was staring at an enormous male lion, crouching flat in the grass and watching them with implacable yellow eyes. The tell-tale tufts were the black tips of its round ears.

‘Sweet God!’ Leon took a step back.

Loikot laughed. ‘He knows I am Masai. He will run if I challenge him.’ He brandished his staff. ‘Hey, Old One, the day of my testing will soon come. I will meet you then, and we shall see which is the best of us.’ He was referring to his ritual trial of courage. Before he could be counted a man and have the right to plant his spear at the door of any woman who caught his fancy, the young morani must confront his lion face to face and kill him with his broad-bladed assegai.

‘Fear me, you thief of cattle. Fear me, for I am your death!’ Loikot raised his staff, held it like a stabbing spear and advanced on the lion with a lithe, dancing step. Leon was amazed when the lion leaped to its feet, curled its lip in a threatening growl, then slunk away into the grass.

‘Did you see me, M’bogo?’ Loikot crowed. ‘Did you see how Simba fears me? Did you see him run from me? He knows I am a morani. He knows I am a Masai.’

‘You crazy tyke!’ Leon relaxed his clenched fists. ‘You’ll get us both eaten.’ He laughed with relief. He remembered Lusima’s words, and it occurred to him that, over the hundreds of years that the Masai had relentlessly hunted generation after generation of lions, their persecution had ingrained a deep memory in the beasts. They had come to recognize a tall red-cloaked figure as a mortal threat.

Loikot leaped in the air, pirouetted with triumph and led him on northwards. As they went, Loikot continued his instruction. Without slackening his pace he pointed out the spoor of large game as he came upon it, and described the animal that had made it. Leon was fascinated by the depth of his knowledge of the wild and its creatures. Of course, it was not difficult to understand how the child had become so adept: almost since he had taken his first step he had tended his tribe’s herds. Manyoro had told him that even the youngest herd-boys could follow a lost beast for days over the most difficult terrain. But he was fascinated when Loikot came to a stop and, with the tip of his staff, traced the faint outline of an enormous round pad mark. The ground was baked hard by the sun, and covered with chips of shale and flint. Leon would never have picked out the track of a bull elephant without the boy’s help, but Loikot could read every detail and nuance of it.

‘I know this one. I have seen him often. His teeth are this long . . .’ He made a mark in the dust, then paced out three of his longest strides and made a second mark. ‘He is a great grey chief of his tribe.’

Lusima had used the same description: ‘Follow the great grey men who are not men.’ At the time it had puzzled Leon, but now he realized she been speaking about elephant. He pondered her advice as they went on into the north. He had always been fascinated by the wild chase. From his father’s library he had read all the books written by the great hunters. He had followed the adventures of Baker, Selous, Gordon-Cumming, Cornwallis Harris and the rest. The lure of wild sports was one of the most powerful reasons why he had enlisted in the KAR rather than enter his father’s business. His father termed any activity not aimed specifically at the accumulation of money as ‘slacking’. But Leon had heard that the army brass encouraged their young officers to indulge in such manly pursuits as big-game hunting. Captain Cornwallis Harris had been given a full year’s leave of absence from his regiment in India to travel to South Africa and hunt in the unexplored wilderness. Leon longed to be able to emulate his heroes but so far he had been disappointed.

Since he had joined the KAR he had applied on more than one occasion for a few days’ leave to indulge in his first big-game hunt. Major Snell, his commanding officer, had dismissed his requests out of hand. ‘If you think you have signed up for a glorified hunting safari then you are very much mistaken, Courtney,’ he said. ‘Get back to your duties. I want to hear no more of this nonsense.’ So far his hunting had been restricted to a few small antelope, Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelle – known to all as Tommies – which he had shot to feed his askari while they were on patrol. But his heart stirred when he watched the magnificent animals that flourished all around him. He longed for a chance to go after them.

He wondered if by counselling him to ‘follow the great grey men’, Lusima was suggesting he should take to the life of an ivory hunter. It was an intriguing prospect. He went on more cheerfully behind Loikot. Life seemed good and full of promise. He had comported himself honourably during his first military action. Manyoro was alive. A new career was opening ahead of him. Best of all, Verity O’Hearne was waiting for him in Nairobi. Yes, life was good, very good indeed.

Five days after they had left Lonsonyo Mountain, Loikot turned east and led him up the escarpment of the Great Rift Valley into the rolling forested hills of the uplands. They topped one and looked down into the shallow valley beyond. In the distance something glinted in the late-evening sunlight. Leon shaded his eyes. ‘Yes, M’bogo,’ Loikot told him. ‘There is your iron snake.’

He saw the smoke of the locomotive spurting in regular puffs above the tops of the trees and heard the mournful blast of a steam whistle.

‘I will leave you now. Even you cannot lose your way from here,’ Loikot told him loftily. ‘I must go back to care for the cattle.’

Leon watched him go regretfully. He had enjoyed the boy’s lively company. Then he put it out of his mind and went down the hill.

The locomotive driver leaned out of the side window of his cab and spotted the tall figure beside the tracks far ahead. He saw at once from his ochre-red shuka that he was Masai. It was only as the engine puffed closer that the man swept open his cloak and the driver saw he was a white man in the ragged remnants of a khaki uniform. He reached for the brake lever and the wheels squealed on the steel rails as they drew to a halt in a cloud of steam.