Assegai - Страница 3

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Leon took the veranda steps three at a time and charged through the open door into the main room. Manyoro slammed the door behind them. Each ran to a window and blazed away at the Nandi as they came after them. Their fire was so witheringly accurate that within seconds the steps were cluttered with bodies. The rest drew back in dismay, then turned tail and scattered into the plantation.

Leon stood at the window reloading his pistol as he watched them go. ‘How much ammunition do you have, Sergeant?’ he called to Manyoro, at the other window.

The sleeve of Manyoro’s tunic had been slashed by a Nandi panga, but there was little bleeding and Manyoro ignored the wound. He had the breech bolt of his rifle open and was loading bullets into the magazine. ‘These are my last two clips, Bwana,’ he answered, ‘but there are many more lying out there.’ He gestured through the window at the bandoliers of the fallen askari lying on the parade-ground, surrounded by the half-naked Nandi they had taken down with them.

‘We will go out and pick them up before the Nandi can regroup,’ Leon told him.

Manyoro slammed the breech bolt of the rifle closed and propped the weapon against the windowsill.

Leon slipped his pistol back into its holster and went to join him at the doorway. They stood side by side and gathered themselves for the effort. Manyoro was watching his face and Leon grinned at him. It was good to have the tall Masai at his side. They had been together ever since Leon had come out from England to join the regiment. That was little more than a year ago, but the rapport they had established was strong. ‘Are you ready, Sergeant?’ he asked.

‘I am, Bwana.’

‘Up the Rifles!’ Leon gave the regimental war-cry and threw open the door. They burst through it together. The steps were slippery with blood and cluttered with corpses so Leon hurdled the low retaining wall and landed on his feet running. He raced to the nearest dead askari and dropped to his knees. Quickly he unbuckled his webbing and slung the heavy bandoliers of ammunition over his shoulder. Then he jumped up and ran to the next man. Before he reached him a loud, angry hum rose from the edge of the banana plantation. Leon ignored it and dropped down beside the corpse. He did not look up again until he had another set of webbing slung over his shoulder. Then he leaped up as the Nandi swarmed back on to the parade-ground.

‘Get back, and be quick about it!’ he yelled at Manyoro, who was also draped with ammunition bandoliers. Leon paused just long enough to snatch up a dead askari’s rifle before he raced for the veranda wall. There he paused to glance back over his shoulder. Manyoro was a few yards behind him, while the leading Nandi warriors were fifty paces away and coming on swiftly.

‘Cutting it a little fine,’ Leon grunted. Then he saw one of the pursuers unsling the heavy bow from his shoulder. Leon recognized it as the weapon they used to hunt elephant. He felt a prickle of alarm at the back of his neck. The Nandi were expert archers. ‘Run, damn it, run!’ he shouted at Manyoro, as he saw the Nandi nock a long arrow, lift the bow and draw the fletching to his lips. Then he released the arrow, which shot upwards and fell in a silent arc. ‘Look out!’ Leon screamed, but the warning was futile, the arrow too swift. Helplessly he watched it plummet towards Manyoro’s unprotected back.

‘God!’ said Leon softly. ‘Please, God!’ For a moment he thought the arrow would fall short, for it was dropping steeply, but then he realized it would find its mark. He took a step back towards Manyoro, then stopped to watch helplessly. The strike of the arrow was hidden from him by Manyoro’s body but he heard the meaty whunk of the iron head piercing flesh and Manyoro spun around. The head of the arrow was buried deeply in the back of his upper thigh. He tried to take another pace but the wounded leg anchored him. Leon pulled the bandoliers from around his own neck and hurled them and the rifle he was carrying over the retaining wall and through the open door. Then he started back. Manyoro was hopping towards him on his unwounded leg, the other dangling, the shaft of the arrow flapping. Another arrow came towards them and Leon flinched as it hummed a hand’s breadth past his ear, then clashed against the veranda wall.

He reached Manyoro and wrapped his right arm around his sergeant’s torso beneath the armpit. He lifted him bodily and ran with him to the wall. Leon was surprised that although he was so tall the Masai was light. Leon was heavier by twenty pounds of solid muscle. At that moment every ounce of his powerful frame was charged with the strength of fear and desperation. He reached the wall and swung Manyoro over it, letting him tumble in a heap on the far side. Then he cleared the wall in a single bound. More arrows hummed and clattered around them but Leon ignored them, swept Manyoro into his arms, as though he was a child, and ran through the open door as the first of the pursuing Nandi reached the wall behind them.

He dropped Manyoro on the floor and picked up the rifle he had retrieved from the dead askari. As he turned back to the open doorway he levered a fresh cartridge into the breech and shot dead a Nandi as he was clambering over the wall. Swiftly he worked the bolt and fired again. When the magazine was empty he put down the rifle and slammed the door. It was made from heavy mahogany planks and the frame was deeply embedded in the thick walls. It shook as, on the other side, the Nandi hurled themselves against it. Leon drew his pistol and fired two shots through the panels. There was a yelp of pain from the far side, then silence. Leon waited for them to come again. He could hear whispering, and the scuffle of feet. Suddenly a painted face appeared in one of the side windows. Leon aimed at it but a shot rang out from behind him before he could press the trigger. The head vanished.

Leon turned and saw that Manyoro had dragged himself across the floor to the rifle he had left propped beside the other window. Using the sill to steady himself he had pulled himself on to his good leg. He fired again through the window and Leon heard the solid thud of a bullet striking flesh, and then the sound of another body falling on the veranda. ‘Morani! Warrior!’ he panted, and Manyoro grinned at the compliment.

‘Do not leave all the work to me, Bwana. Take the other window!’

Leon stuffed the pistol into his holster, snatched up the empty rifle and ran with it to the open window, cramming clips of cartridges into the magazine – two clips, ten rounds. The Lee-Enfield was a lovely weapon. It felt good in his hands.

He reached the window and threw out a sheet of rapid fire. Between them they swept the parade-ground with a fusillade that sent the Nandi scampering for the cover of the plantation. Manyoro sank slowly down the wall and leaned against it, legs thrust out before him, the wounded one cocked over the other so that the arrow shaft did not touch the floor.

With one last glance across the parade-ground to confirm that none of the enemy was sneaking back, Leon left his window and went to his sergeant. He squatted in front of him and tentatively grasped the arrow shaft. Manyoro winced. Leon exerted a little more pressure, but the barbed iron head was immovable. Though Manyoro made no sound the sweat poured down his face and dripped on to the front of his tunic.

‘I can’t pull it out so I’m going to break off the shaft and strap it,’ Leon said.

Manyoro looked at him without expression for a long moment, then smiled, his teeth showing large, even and white. His earlobes had been pierced in childhood, the holes stretched to hold ivory discs, which gave his face a mischievous, puckish aspect.

‘Up the Rifles!’ Manyoro said, and his lisping imitation of Leon’s favourite expression was so startling in the circumstances that Leon guffawed and, at the same instant, snapped off the reed shaft of the arrow close to where it protruded from the oozing wound. Manyoro closed his eyes, but uttered no sound.

Leon found a field dressing in the webbing pouch he had taken from the askari, and bandaged the stump of the arrow shaft to stop it moving. Then he rocked back on his heels and studied his handiwork. He unhooked the water-bottle from his own webbing, unscrewed the stopper and took a long swallow, then handed it to Manyoro. The Masai hesitated delicately: an askari did not drink from an officer’s bottle. Frowning, Leon thrust it into his hands. ‘Drink, damn you,’ he said. ‘That’s an order!’

Manyoro tilted back his head and held the bottle high. He poured the water directly into his mouth without touching the neck with his lips. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed three times. Then he screwed on the stopper tightly and handed it back to Leon. ‘Sweet as honey,’ he said.

‘We will move out as soon as it’s dark,’ Leon said.

Manyoro considered this statement for a moment. ‘Which way will you go?’

‘We will go the way we came.’ Leon emphasized the plural pronoun. ‘We must get back to the railway line.’

Manyoro chuckled.

‘What makes you laugh, Morani?’ Leon demanded.

‘It is almost two days’ march to the railway line,’ Manyoro reminded him. He shook his head in amusement and touched his bandaged leg significantly. ‘When you go, Bwana, you will go alone.’

‘Are you thinking of deserting, Manyoro? You know that’s a shooting offence—’ He broke off as movement beyond the window caught his eye. He snatched up the rifle and fired three quick shots out across the parade-ground. A bullet must have thumped into living flesh because a cry of pain and anger followed. ‘Baboons and sons of baboons,’ Leon growled. In Kiswahili the insult had a satisfying ring. He laid the rifle across his lap to reload it. Without looking up he said, ‘I will carry you.’