09 Assegai by Wilbur Smith

Author:Wilbur Smith
Language: deu
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The journey south to Lake Manyara was over brutally rough tracks for the first two hundred miles. The Vauxhall took cruel punishment and they were forced to stop and repair punctured tyres at least a dozen times. Manyoro and Loikot had become past masters at the art of locating and removing the thorns that had pierced them. In the sandy stretches of road the engine boiled over regularly and they had to wait for it to cool before they refilled the radiator.

The boundary between British and German East Africa was neither marked nor guarded. There were no signposts along the way, other than blazes on roadside trees and a few bleached animal skulls set on poles. Navigating chiefly by instinct and the heavens, they at last reached the tiny bush store run by a Hindu trader at Makuyuni river. Percy had left a pair of good horses with the store owner to await his arrival.

Leon parked the truck under a ficus tree at the back of the store and saddled up one of the horses. From there it was a ride of at least fifty miles to Percy’s hunting camp, which was set on a promontory above the lake shore.

Leon and his Masai reached it an hour after dark on the following day. He found out that neither Percy nor his noble client had returned to camp. Percy’s cook served Leon a dinner of grilled hippo heart and cassava porridge with pumpkin mash and thick Bisto gravy.

Afterwards Leon sat at the fire and watched the flamingoes flying across the moon in dark, wavering lines. A bush fire was burning on the far shore of the lake. It looked like a fiery snake crawling through the dark hills, and he could smell the smoke. It was past ten o’clock when he heard the horses coming out of the night and went to the perimeter of the camp to meet them.

As Percy dismounted stiffly and painfully from the saddle, he recognized Leon waiting in the shadows. His shoulders straightened and his face creased in a smile of welcome. ‘Well met indeed!’ he called. ‘Your timing’s immaculate, Leon. Come to the fire and I’ll introduce you to his lordship. I might even be minded to pour you a dram of Talisker.’

Eastmont was a tall, gangling figure, with huge hands and feet and a head the size of a watermelon. His long, thin limbs were illmatched to his bulky torso. Percy stood at a little more than six feet and his Masai tracker was an inch taller, yet Eastmont towered over them, and Leon realized that he must be six foot three. When he shook hands, his fist engulfed Leon’s fingers as though they were a child’s. In the flickering firelight Eastmont’s features were gaunt and bony, his expression dark and morose. He said little but instead left the talking to Percy. Once the glasses were charged he sat staring into the fire while Percy described the day’s hunting,

‘Well, his lordship wanted a truly monumental buffalo and, by golly, we found one this morning.

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