War Cry. Wilbur Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ He therefore decided to work with the grain of Kenyan life, rather than against it. So he made an agreement with Manyoro, by which he and his extended family could have the freedom of the entire Lusima estate, provided that they also herded and cared for Leon’s cattle alongside their own. Since the Masai measured a man’s worth not in money, but by the number of his cows and of his children, Leon paid his people in their preferred currency. For every ten calves born to Leon’s cows, the Masai kept one for themselves.

      This arrangement had a few teething problems. The Masai believed that every cow on earth belonged to them and, as a consequence, felt perfectly entitled to rustle from non-Masai. They also lived off their animals’ blood and milk and so kept their cattle alive for as long as possible, rather than sending them to the slaughterhouse. The concept of keeping another man’s cattle until such time as they were taken away to be sold and killed struck even Manyoro, accustomed as he was to British customs due to his time in the army, as bizarre.

      On the other hand, the offer of huge areas of grazing and a guaranteed increase in his and his people’s herds was too good to turn down. As the years had gone by, he had prospered mightily, particularly once he had seen how much money his cattle could fetch and how useful money could be in a world now run by white men. The arrangement had worked perfectly for Leon, too, since his herds did not suffer anything like the same rates of disease as those of his fellow farmers. His Masai herdsmen knew which ground was corrupted by plants that produced poisonous feed or insects that carried disease and so they kept to areas of safe, sweet grass. They guarded their animals and Leon’s against lions and other predators and they lived well on the blood and milk that they took from the animals they were herding, a practice to which Leon turned a blind eye once he realized that it did the cattle no harm whatsoever.

      In time Manyoro had handed over the day-to-day running of the estate and its buildings to his kinsman Loikot, whom Leon had watched grow from an impish boy to a young man worthy of his trust and respect. Manyoro now lived in the village where his mother had raised him. It stood atop Lonsonyo Mountain, a mighty tower of rock that rose from the plains by the eastern escarpment of the Great Rift Valley, at one corner of the Lusima estate. Two days after the dinner at Slains, Leon drove out to the mountain. He left the Rolls at its foot, guarded by two of his men (their job was to deter curious animals, rather than larcenous humans, for no man who valued his life would touch M’Bogo’s property and thereby risk Manyoro’s wrath). Then he set off up the footpath that zigzagged back and forth across the steep slope, recalling, as he always did whenever he visited, the first time he had made the journey. He had been half-starved and parched with thirst, his feet bloody and blistered, the skin flayed from his heels, the wounds so severe and the pain so great that he had managed no more than a couple of hundred feet up the climb before he had collapsed and been carried the rest of the way on a mushila, or litter, borne on four men’s shoulders.

      That had been twenty years ago, yet the memories of that time and his first encounter with Lusima were as vivid as if mere days, not decades had elapsed. He remembered too the times he had spent with Eva in this, their secret shelter from the outside world, the love they had made and the times they had swum in Sheba’s Pool, a crystalline sanctuary nestled beneath a waterfall that fell from the mountain summit. He smiled as he recalled the sight of her, dashing down the path towards him, heedless of the precipitous drop that fell away beside her, then throwing herself into his arms. He felt himself harden and it was not the climb that made his heart beat faster and his breathing deepen as he thought of her naked body, so lithe and graceful in the water, her legs locked around his waist and her soft warm lips pressed to his.

      Oh, Eva, my darling, my love, you were so beautiful then, so delicate, so fragile and yet so fierce and so strong. And then he smiled to himself as he thought, And I’d still rather make love to you than any other woman on earth.

      They had both grown older since then, but the mountain itself remained as it had always been. On the lower slopes the path was shaded by the groves of umbrella acacias, whose branches flared upwards and outwards from the trunk, like the spokes of an umbrella, before bursting into a broad, but virtually flat canopy of leaves at their top. But as he climbed higher the air cooled and grew moist, almost like mist, and the plants around him became more lush. Tree orchids bloomed in vivid hues of pink and violet in the branches of tall trees where eagles and hawks made their eyries. Leon watched the birds wheeling in the vastness of the cloudless sky scanning the bush far below them for any signs of prey.

      When he reached the top he was greeted by a gaggle of small children, grinning with delight and squealing, ‘M’Bogo! M’Bogo!’ A young woman, whom Leon knew to be one of Manyoro’s new wives, looked at him with unabashed appreciation, for it was the custom among the Masai for a man to share his wives with valued guests, but only if the wife liked the look of the guest in question. She had the final and decisive say in the matter.

      When Leon had first known Manyoro he had but one wife, for that was all the army would allow. She had produced three fine sons and two daughters. The Masai were, however, polygamous by tradition and it was an unspoken part of his bargain that Leon allowed them to live as they wished on his land. Having prospered mightily, Manyoro now had four wives to his name and a dozen or more new children, all of whom lived under the command and supervision of his first, senior bride. This had always been a prosperous community, whose inhabitants had been well-fed and housed in finely built huts. When Leon first arrived there, the women were bedecked in splendid ornaments of ivory and trade beads and the cattle were fat and sleek. All that was still true, but now Leon noticed a couple of paraffin lamps and, placed outside the largest and most splendid of all the huts, the incongruous sight of a set of rattan patio chairs arranged around a glass-topped table.

      Manyoro was sitting in one of the chairs drinking a bottle of Bass pale ale. He must, Leon realized, be more than fifty now and had put on a good deal of weight over the years, as the visible proof of his power and prosperity. Yet there was no sense of softness about Manyoro and when he stood to greet Leon, the Masai was still the taller of the pair.

      ‘I see you, Manyoro, my brother,’ Leon said, speaking in Masai.

      Manyoro’s face broke into a huge grin. ‘And I see you, M’Bogo, and my heart sings with joy.’

      Manyoro lifted a bottle of beer from a metal wastepaper basket filled with ice-cold spring-water and offered it to Leon. He was delighted to accept, for the walk had given him a powerful thirst.

      ‘You are the only Masai I know who always has a crate of pale ale ready to hand,’ said Leon as he took the cold, wet bottle.

      ‘More than one crate, I assure you,’ Manyoro replied. ‘It is a habit I learned in the army. They served this beer in the sergeants’ mess.’ He smacked his lips with relish. ‘This is the best thing you British ever brought to Africa. Cheers!’

      ‘Cheers!’

      The two men raised their bottles in mutual salute, and then savoured their drinks in silence for a moment. After a while they began to speak in English about their wives and children, Leon feeling almost embarrassed at having just one of each in this company, though Manyoro was keen to hear news of the son that he felt sure Eva was bearing, and of Saffron’s near-victory in the show jumping.

      ‘Ah, she has her father’s spirit, that one,’ Manyoro said, approvingly, when he heard how Saffron had responded to being beaten. ‘I have never understood how your people talk of being a “good loser”. How can losing be good? Why would a man take pride in accepting defeat? Miss Saffron is right to feel anger and shame. That way she will not make the mistake of losing a second time. Ah, but you must be proud of her, brother. She will be as beautiful as her mother, when she is grown.’

      ‘Not quite as beautiful as a Masai maiden, though, eh?’ said Leon, knowing Manyoro’s unshakable faith in the superiority of his tribe’s females to all others.

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