On the heights of the escarpment, just below the skyline and screened by a small patch of scrub from any watcher below, three men leaned on their war spears, balancing easily on one leg in the stork-like attitude of rest. Before them, the floor of the Rift Valley was a vast plain, brown grassland interspersed with stands of thorn, scrub and acacia trees. Despite its desiccated appearance the grasses made sweet grazing and were highly prized by the Masai, who ran their long-horned, hump-backed cattle on them. Since the most recent Nandi rebellion, though, they had driven their herds to a safer area much further to the south. The Nandi were famous cattle thieves.
This part of the valley had been left to the wild game, whose multitudes swarmed across the plain as far as the eye could see. At a distance the zebra were as grey as the dustclouds they raised when they galloped skittishly from any perceived danger, the kongoni, the gnu and the buffalo darker stains on the golden landscape. The long necks of the giraffe stood tall as telegraph poles above the flat tops of the acacia trees, while the antelope were insubstantial creamy specks that danced and shimmered in the heat. Here and there masses of what looked like black volcanic rock moved ponderously through the lesser animals, like ocean-going ships through shoals of sardines. These were the mighty pachyderms: rhinoceros and elephant.
It was a scene both primeval and awe-inspiring in its extent and abundance, but to the three watchers on the heights it was commonplace. Their interest was focused on the tiny cluster of buildings directly below them. A spring, which oozed from the foot of the escarpment wall, sustained the patch of greenery that surrounded the buildings of the government boma.
The oldest of the three men wore a kilt of leopard tails and a cap of the same black and gold speckled fur. This was the regalia of the paramount witch doctor of the Nandi tribe. His name was Arap Samoei and for ten years he had led the rebellion against the white invaders and their infernal machines, which threatened to desecrate the sacred tribal lands of his people. The faces and bodies of the men with him were painted for war: their eyes were circled with red ochre, a stripe was painted down their noses and their cheeks were slashed with the same colour. Their bare chests were dotted with burned lime in a pattern that simulated the plumage of the vulturine guinea fowl. Their kilts were made of gazelle skins and their headdresses of genet and monkey fur.
‘The mzungu and his bastard Masai dogs are well into the trap,’ said Arap Samoei. ‘I had hoped for more, but seven Masai and one mzungu will make a good killing.’
‘What are they doing?’ asked the Nandi captain at his side, shading his eyes from the glare as he peered down the precipitous slope.
‘They are digging a hole to bury the white filth we left for them,’ said Samoei.
‘Is it time to carry the spears down to them?’ asked the third warrior.
‘It is time,’ answered the paramount witch doctor. ‘But keep the mzungu for me. I want to cut off his balls with my own blade. From them I will make a powerful medicine.’ He touched the hilt of the panga on his leopardskin belt. It was a knife with a short, heavy blade, the favoured close-quarters weapon of the Nandi. ‘I want to hear him squeal, squeal like a warthog in the jaws of a leopard as I cut away his manhood. The louder he screams the more powerful will be the medicine.’ He turned and strode back to the crest of the rugged rock wall, and looked down into the fold of dead ground behind it. His warriors squatted patiently in the short grass, rank upon rank of them. Samoei raised his clenched fist and the waiting impi sprang to its feet, making no sound that might carry to their quarry.
‘The fruit is ripe!’ called Samoei.
‘It is ready for the blade!’ his warriors agreed in unison.
‘Let us go down to the harvest!’