The uneven pressure on the litter slewed it round. Kalulu was left unprotected on one flank. Chief Basma seized the moment: he darted out of the wall of shields, dodged around the litter and ran at him. Kalulu saw him coming and swung himself into a handstand. With amazing agility he shot towards the shelter of the nearby thicket of kittar thorns.
He had almost reached it when Basma overhauled him and stabbed him twice. 'Traitor!' the chief screamed, and the spearhead hit Kalulu in thej centre of the back. With a huge effort he managed to stay balanced on his hands. He bounced along, but Basma caught up with him again.
'Witchmonger!' he yelled and thrust again, deeply through the little man's inverted crotch and into his belly. Kalulu howled and tumbled into the thicket. Basma tried to follow up his attack, but from the corner of his eye he saw Imbali rushing at him with her axe above her head. He ducked and when her blade hissed past his ear, he swerved away from her return stroke and ran. His men saw him go and followed, pelting away down the slope.
'The sorcerer is dead!' Basma shouted.
His warriors took up the chant: 'Kalulu is dead! The familiar of devils and demons is slain!'
'Leave them to run back to the bitches that whelped them.' Imbali stopped her girls chasing them. 'We must save our master.'
By the time they found him in the thicket Kalulu was curled into a ball, whimpering with pain. Tenderly they extricated him from the hooked thorn branches and placed him on his litter. At that moment a shout from further down the slope checked them.
'It is the voice of the old man.' Imbali had recognized Taita, and ululated to direct them.
Soon Taita and Fenn came into view, followed closely by the party carrying Meren on his litter.
'Kalulu, you are wounded grievously,' Taita said gently.
'Nay, Magus, not wounded.' Kalulu shook his head painfully. 'I fear I am slain.'
'Swiftly. Take him to the camp!' Taita told Imbali and her three surviving companions. 'And you men!' He picked out four following Meren's litter. 'Your help is needed here!'
222 I
'Wait!' Kalulu seized Taita's hand to prevent him leaving. 'The man who did this is Basma, the paramount chief of Basmara.'
'Why did he attack you? You are his subject, surely?'
'Basma believes that you are of the same tribe who built the temple, and that you have come here to instigate further calamity and catastrophe.
He thinks I have joined with you to destroy the land, the rivers, the lakes and to kill all the Basmara.'
'He has gone now. Your women have driven him away.' Taita tried to reassure and calm him.
Kalulu would have none of it. 'He will return.' He reached up and seized Taita's wrist as he stooped over the litter. 'You must get into the town and prepare to defend yourselves. Basma will return with all his regiments.'
'When I leave Tamafupa, I will take you with me, Kalulu. Our pursuit of the witch cannot succeed without your help.'
'I can feel the bleeding deep in my belly. I will not be going on with you.'
Before sunset Kalulu died. The four bodyguards dug an adit into the side of a large abandoned anthill outside the stockade of Tamafupa. Taita wrapped the corpse in a sheet of unbleached linen and they laid it in the damp clay tunnel. Then they sealed it with large boulders to prevent the hyenas digging it out.
'Your ancestral gods will welcome you, Shaman Kalulu, for you were of the Truth.' Taita bade him farewell.
When he turned away from the tomb, the four bodyguards stood before him, and Imbali spoke for them all in the Shilluk language. 'Our master is gone. We are far from our own land, alone. You are a mighty shaman, greater even than Kalulu. We will follow you.'
Taita looked at Nakonto. 'What do you make of these women? If I enlist them, will you take them under your command?' he asked.
Nakonto considered the question solemnly. 'I have seen them fight.
I will be content to have them follow me.'
With a regal tilt of her head, Imbali acknowledged his presence and his words. 'For as long as it pleases us to do so, we will march shoulder to shoulder with this strutting Shilluk rooster, but not behind him,' she told Taita.
Her eyes were almost on a level with Nakonto's. The magnificent pair stared at each other with apparent scorn. Taita opened his Inner Eye and smiled as he saw how their auras mirrored the inclination they felt towards each other. 'Nakonto, is it agreed?' he asked.
22.3
'It is agreed.' Nakonto made another lordly gesture of acquiescence.
'For the time being.';
Fenn and the Shilluk camp-followers swept out one of the largest huts for Meren. Then Fenn burnt a handful of Taita's special herbs in the open fireplace. The aromatic smoke drove out the insects and spiders that had made the hut their home. They cut a mattress of fresh grass and laid Meren's sleeping mat upon it. He was in such pain that he could hardly raise his head to drink from the bowl that Fenn held to his lips. Taita promoted Hilto-bar-Hilto to take his place at the head of the four divisions until Meren had recovered sufficiently to assume command again.
Taita and Hilto toured the town to inspect the defences. Their first concern was to ensure that the water supply was secure. There was a deep well in the centre of the village, with a narrow circular clay staircase descending to the water, which was of good quality. Taita ordered that a party under Shofar should fill all of the gourds and waterskins in readiness for the anticipated assault by the Basmara. In the thick of the fighting, thirsty men would have no opportunity to draw from the well.
Taita's next concern was the condition of the outer stockade. They found that it was still in a reasonable state of repair, except for a few sections where termites had eaten the poles. However, it was immediately apparent that they could not hope to hold such an extended line.
Tamafupa was a big town that had once been home to a large tribe. The stockade was almost half a league in circumference. 'We will have to shorten it,' he told Hilto, 'then burn the remainder of the town to clear the approaches and enable our archers to cover the ground.'
'You have set us a daunting task, Magus,' Hilto remarked. 'We had better begin at once.'
Once Taita had marked out the new perimeter, men and women fell to. They dug out the best preserved of the stockade poles and set them up along the line Taita had surveyed. There was no time to make a permanent fortification, so they filled the gaps with branches of kittar thorn bush. They erected tall watch-towers at the four compass points of the new stockade, which commanded a good view over the valley and all the approaches.
Taita ordered bonfires to be set around the perimeter. When they were lit they would illuminate the stockade walls in the event of a night
attack. Once this was done he built an inner keep round the well, their last line of defence if the Basmara regiments broke into the town. Within this inner stronghold, he stored the remaining bags of dhurra, the spare weapons and all other valuable supplies. They built stables for the remaining horses. Windsmoke and her colt were still in good condition, but many others were sick or dying after the long hard road they had travelled.
Every evening after she had fed Meren and helped Taita change the dressing over the empty socket of his right eye, Fenn went down to visit Whirlwind and take him the dhurra cakes he loved.
Taita waited for a favourable wind before he set fire to the remains of the old town that lay outside the new stockade. The thatch and wooden walls had dried and burned rapidly, the wind blowing the flames away from the new walls. By nightfall that day the old town was levelled to a smouldering field of ashes.