1
Digging Two Graves
August 1914.
German East Africa, Moshi Town, near Mt. Kilimanjaro
A shame. A crying shame. Lance Fitch lifted his hands and twisted them around to examine them from different angles. But whatever he did, he could not hide the fact that these hands were not the hands of an artist.
They could turn a page readily enough. Ma had bequeathed him a love of the written word, so he wasn’t uncultured in all aspects. They were strong hands, strong enough to handle the tomes that Pa gave him, like The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, the legends of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, and Robin Hood and his merry men. All of them adventure tales long enough to help whittle away evenings during a long safari. Mind you, there were limits. Lance had once packed a battered version of the complete works of William Shakespeare for a six weekhunting trip. Pa said nothing, just cocked an eyebrow. Its bulk strained Lance’s saddlebags until a strap broke after a week. Pa just smirked, he believed you learned through your own mistakes.
Maybe in an earlier century, a much earlier one, Lance could have been a wandering bard. He knew all the legends and myths, plays and poems. Carry a tune? That was another matter. Not the hands of a musician either. Besides not a lot
6 of call for a bard or minstrel in British East Africa these days.
They looked like a worker’s hands, nicked and calloused, strong for an axe and cutting fence posts for the farm. But they were capable of sensitivity. He could strip his rifle in the darkest night and assemble it by touch. That wasn’t a skill to be sneezed at. But a brush and paint? He had tried, but the mystical connection between eyes and hands didn’t work. His brother Francis called his best efforts blobs and blotches, and it was hard to argue—no matter how hard you squinted.
Which was a shame. A crying shame. Not for art’s sake, but because he ached to capture the view in front of him. Perhaps if he froze it on canvas, he could seize forever these moments of pure happiness?
For how lucky could a man get?
A cold drink in his hand, the glass beaded with condensation in the burgeoning warmth of an African morning. Five yards away, a lissome lass posing her tanned limbs on the verandah wall and favouring him with a dazzling smile. Behind her, the towering, snow-capped caldera of Mount Kilimanjaro, glistening in the morning sun under the azure sky.
“A jug of wine, a loaf of bread—and Thou…were Paradise enough.” Lance toasted Heidi as he lounged in the wicker chair on the shady porch. He took a sip of her bittersweet lemonade, made with stream water from the melted snow of Africa’s highest peak, and almost choked as she eased into a languid stretch. His fiancée held the pose longer than necessary and finished with a wiggle of her bare toes and a mischievous grin.
“I can’t believe Germany and Britain will go to war over Serbia,” Pa said, “but if they do, I’m afraid they will drag us settlers into their idiotic rivalry.”
Lance started guiltily. He’d forgotten their fathers were seated deeper in the shade of the veranda. A quick glance reassured him. They were too distracted by their own conversation to notice the flirting.
7 “Nonsense.” Herr Schumacher waved his pipe in a dismissive arc that trailed acrid clouds of smoke. “Governor Schnee himself told me he’d agreed with your man ConwayBelfield. If war starts in Europe, they will invoke the Congo Treaty of 1885 and keep us East African colonies out of it.”
“I hope so,” Pa muttered.
“More lemonade, Lance?” Heidi asked as she materialised beside him, smelling of fresh soap. Her dress gaped as she leaned over to refill his glass from an earthenware jug, unveiling a tantalising glimpse of the creamy curve of her cleavage. Lance’s eyes lingered too long, and her eyes widened. As she straightened, she tossed her blond ponytail in mock indignation.
Lance blushed and looked away. Herr Schumacher pointed his pipe at Pa.
“People like you and me, Stan, we’ve carved livelihoods from this harsh land side by side. None of us settlers, German or British, want war. I will never forget how, when my Heidi became ill, you rode to Mtito Andei through the night to fetch the best doctor, a Britisher who saved her life.”
“And I will always remember how you and Bertha helped care for my three boys when my wife died.”
Herr Schumacher’s voice was gruff. “Ach so, who are these men in Europe to tell us to fight our friends?”
“I agree,” Pa raised his glass. “Prost!”
News from Europe took an age to filter through to this sparsely populated area, but Herr Schumacher played poker every day with the garrulous German officer who ran Moshi garrison’s military telegraph. Whoever ran that telegraph was invariably the best-informed man in the region. Herr Schumacher used those poker sessions to make sure he was the second best informed. Such things were good for trade. So, if Anton Schumacher wasn’t worried, that was good enough for Lance.
But Pa did not look so convinced. “Thanks for your
8 hospitality, Anton. We must go. I have to meet a hunting client back at the farm this afternoon, so I will ride there now with Will. Lance, you’re in charge of the wagon, and take Francis with you. Promise me you’ll look after your brother, get a good price for the skins in Moshi, buy the supplies, and get back home by sunset. Manage that and I’ll let you lead the next small hunting safari.”
Lance could not repress a huge smile. “I promise, Pa.”
By the standards of Pa’s usual challenges, this promised to be a doddle. Moshi was the inland terminus of the German railway that stretched two hundred miles to the port of Tanga. As a result, the town ruled as the trading mecca for colonial settlers from both sides of the nearby border. Skins were always in demand. Heck, even Francis could haggle a good price in Moshi. Meanwhile Hamisi would barter supplies from Bal Singh. Now that was a tough ask. If Lance bargained with Bal Singh, he’d lose both thumbs and four fingers and leave the Many Wonders Emporium thanking the slippery beggar. Which is why Lance would leave that to Hamisi, who was no mean huckster himself. Then an easy five-hour ride home to Taveta Ranch.
Lance found Francis in a hammock on the side porch, alone with a book. “Time to go, bookworm.”
Francis pushed his glasses up his nose and frowned. “But D’Artagnan has just met Milady, and I want—”
“If you don’t come now, I’ll tell you the ending.”
Lance chuckled as Francis almost fell out of the hammock in his haste.
It took longer to find Will who was hunting mousebirds with a catapult. When Lance passed on the message from Pa, Will’s face fell. “Why can’t I go to Moshi? I’d be more use to you than Francis.”
“True,” Lance allowed. His younger brothers, Will and Francis, were as alike as chilli peppers and peas. Will sported the brawn and red hair of a hell-raiser and thought of books
9 only as useful projectiles, but he was tough and competent in the bush. Unlike Francis.
“But,” Lance added, “Pa won’t allow you near Moshi until the Mother Superior forgives you. Pa is convinced she has a price on your head for a good beating.”
“Aw, come on! She wouldn’t do that.”
“No?” Lance raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t there when she promised Pa she would geld you with blunt scissors. When Pa said you’d marry Kathy and that would be the end of it, the Mother Superior offered to geld Pa first.”
Will winced. “That bad, huh?”
“At least it pushed Pa onto your side. Nobody threatens his family. Or his balls! But I’ll never know what possessed you to screw a nun.”
“Trainee nun. Kathy wanted it as bad as me. Besides, being a nun was her mother’s idea. This was her way out. Neither of us figured on her getting pregnant.”
Lance snorted. “Like Pa says, actions have consequences. The Mother Superior says you are hell-bound.”
Will uncorked his trademark guffaw. “Definitely worth it! Kathy is out of the nunnery and we’re married, so she’s happy. I’m happy. The hag Mother Superior is the only killjoy around here.”
“That’s as maybe, but you aren’t going to Moshi. Better saddle up before Pa comes looking for you.”
As the Fitch family left, Heidi tried to sneak a goodbye kiss with Lance, but Herr Schumacher kept a proprietary eye on his eighteen-year-old daughter. Lance was only a year older than Heidi, and Lance knew they would marry one day. But until that day, Herr Schumacher made it clear that any Lothario-esque behaviour would be as welcome as a hyena in his henhouse. He used a 12-bore shotgun on those occasions. Heidi’s kisses were the sweetest in the world, but buckshot was a powerful counter argument.
Lance swung into his saddle and blew Heidi a kiss. But she
10 was looking behind him and giggling at his brother’s attempt to mount. Francis had one foot in a stirrup and was hopping after his horse as it sidled away. Lance sighed. He manoeuvred his horse until he could grab Francis by the collar and yank him into the saddle like a sack of coffee beans.
The spectacle provoked peals of laughter from the road where the supply wagon waited. Hamisi—the cook and major domo of the Fitch household—sat in the driver’s seat with his habitual smile splitting his black face like a half moon. Beside him sat his son, Thomas, the same age as Lance. They’d grown up almost as siblings. When Lance tested a curry by dipping his finger in the sauce, Hamisi walloped him with the ladle just as hard as he hit Thomas for helping himself to a handful of groundnuts from the kitchen.
“You look like a stork chasing the horse, Bwana Francis,” Hamisi yelled in Swahili.
“Thomas,” Francis retorted red-faced, “Make sure old man mzee here does not fall asleep and drive our wagon into a ditch.”
“I will try,” Thomas grinned, “but he is mzee sana now.”
Hamisi cuffed the back of his son’s head. “Not too old to beat respect into a cub.” Thomas chortled with glee at getting a rise from his father.
“Twende!” Lance said. Hamisi cracked his whip over the mules, and the wagon jolted towards Moshi.
~
Six hours later Lance hummed as he led them eastwards, skirting the southern foothills of Kilimanjaro. Waves of pale straw grass rippled in the wind, stretching into the distance like a limitless ocean, dotted with islands of green flat-topped acacia trees and streaked with reefs of rust-coloured termite mounds. The occasional zebra or gazelle cantered away from them. God, but it was beautiful. Lance would never grow tired of this land. It lifted his soul.
11 Despite the idyll, Lance kept his rifle slung over his back, and Thomas had a shotgun under his feet. Best to be cautious with Africa: you might startle a lioness protecting her cubs, or a black mamba might spook your horse. Yes, Africa was beautiful, but she was also dangerous to the unwary.
Pa would be delighted. German silver rupees for the skins jangled in Lance’s pocket, and he would be home before sunset. In an hour, they would cross the invisible border near Taveta, where settlers and tribesmen crossed as freely as the wild game. No fences, flags, or men marked the frontier, only a few acacia thornbushes whose hollow-holed bulbs moaned a lonely dirge when the wind blew.
Lance drifted into daydreams of Heidi. Francis said that her face was strong rather than beautiful, but Lance could bask for hours in those cornflower-blue eyes and her quirky half-smile with the crooked eye-tooth. Yesterday evening, she had taken his hand and led him behind a scarlet bougainvillea tree that hid them from the house. There, she lifted her face for a kiss. He obliged, nibbling on the entrancing softness of her ripe lips. She murmured as she pressed against his hardness with a wanton thrust of her hips. His hand slipped under her blouse. “No, no,” she protested, but after more passionate kisses she—
The whiplash crack of a bullet snapping inches past his head stunned him.
An instant later the deep boom of rifles followed. Lance jerked with shock. Black gun-smoke billowed from bushes on his left. Time slowed, a dream happening to someone else. Thomas grabbed for the shotgun under his feet, but another volley of gunfire boomed from the bushes. Bullets hammered Thomas from the wagon seat. He pitched headfirst to the ground, twisted and broken, his shirt blossoming red.
Lance gaped. Then the tumblers in his mind clicked into place. He yanked his rifle off his shoulder. “Run, Francis!” he shouted, and slammed his heels into his horse’s ribs. The
12 startled animal, already spooked by the gunfire, leapt forwards.
A black man in khaki uniform stepped from the bush and swung his rifle muzzle towards Lance. Lance yanked the reins and smashed his horse into the man, sending him spinning. Another attacker leapt for the bridle. Lance kicked him in the teeth with a stirrup iron. A satisfying crunch and the man fell away. Ahead was open space and Lance yelled with savage glee. His horse’s hooves drummed on the hard earth, pulling Lance clear of the ambush.
But more soldiers emerged from the tall grass. Lance swore as they swung their rifles towards him, and he hunched low over the horse’s withers. Black smoke blossomed. He ducked. Bullets struck his horse with the sound of sticks beating a wet carpet. Her legs folded and she ploughed nosefirst into the dust. Lance catapulted over her head and crashed onto his left shoulder, grunting with pain as the rifle jolted from his grasp.
Winded, he staggered to his feet, hunched over in pain, and cradling his useless left arm. The hard-baked earth had scraped his left cheek raw, the weeping flesh stinging under its coat of grit. Two soldiers pricked his belly with their fastened bayonets—eight inches of sinister steel glinting in the bright sunlight. They prodded him back towards the wagon, their bayonets drawing pricks of blood with each prod.
Francis remained frozen on his horse, still open-mouthed as a soldier held his horse’s bridle. Hamisi sat on the wagon, looking down, ashen-faced and wide eyed, at his son who lay curled in a pool of congealed blood. Fat tears tracked down the cook’s cheeks, leaving rivulets of black skin between the layers of red dust.
Lance’s head throbbed, and his shoulder sent bolts of pain with every move. He stared round his captors, all askaris—the black soldiers who fought in the colonial armies. Their khaki uniforms and the eagle heads on their belt buckles proclaimed
13 they were German Schutztruppe, the most notorious colonial army in Africa. But brutal as they were, the Schutztruppen had never attacked whites in East Africa. What the hell was happening? “Unafanya nini?” he croaked.
A German officer thrust his way through the crowd of askaris. Lance stared—the man stood at least six and a half feet tall with a gargantuan belly. Under a white field cap, hard eyes perched above a pockmarked nose and a blond handlebar moustache. The voice was incongruously high-pitched, accented but fluent. “Our first Englander prisoners. What are your names?”
Lance spoke through waves of agony: “What do you mean by shooting at us? I demand—”
The officer backhanded Lance across the mouth. The casual swing pulped Lance’s lips and sent him staggering backwards into the arms of the soldiers behind him, flecking their uniforms with blood. They propped Lance up and chuckled as the German moved towards Lance with a menacing smile. “Perhaps you have not heard, English puppy? Germany and England are at war now. Your names?”
“Murderers!” Francis shouted. He jerked his reins to break free and kicked at the soldier holding his bridle. The askari sidestepped the clumsy blow and punched Francis’ horse hard on the nose. It reared up, throwing Francis off balance, and the askari pulled the boy headfirst into the dust. Two askaris seized Francis by his arms and legs. To a roar of acclaim from the others, they swung him high into the air and threw him as far as they could. He flew six feet before screaming in high-pitched agony as his right leg snapped when he hit the hardbaked earth. As Francis writhed in the dust, his knee mangled at an angle that made Lance blanch, the German officer walked over and kicked the knee with deliberate precision. Francis’ back arched off the ground in shock, and mercifully he lost unconsciousness.
“Bastard!” Lance tried to lunge at the officer. A thick arm
14 circled his neck from behind and choked him, and a bayonet sliced a shallow line of red across his belly. Lance heaved against the bunched muscles, but his vision clouded as the arm tightened. He stopped struggling and the arm relaxed a fraction, allowing him to breathe. Whooping for air, he gasped, “Animals! What the hell are you doing?”
The soldiers laughed as the officer walked over and peered into Lance’s face. “Look at me, pup. So the next time you see me, you remember your manners with Captain Otto Peters.”
Peters braced Lance’s face with his meaty left hand and feigned a punch with his right. Lance dropped his head downwards, but the German kneed him in the balls. As Lance doubled over in agony, Peters brought his knee up again. At the last second Lance twisted his face, and the knee drove like a pile driver into his left cheek. The bone shattered, and a flash of intense whiteness exploded into Lance’s brain, before darkness took him.
~
When Lance regained consciousness, he wished he hadn’t.
Ropes dug into his chest and bound him to a fence post, seated upright with legs splayed in front and hands tied behind his back, so tightly his shoulder joints shrieked a protest. Each breath bubbled with coppery tasting blood, and a dagger stabbed up his cheek into his eye socket with every movement. Swelling jammed his left eye shut. He squinted through the prism of his concussion and dusk’s lengthening shadows, at what appeared to be a ramshackle fort. Its wooden stockade walls enclosed a dusty parade ground, barracks ran along one wall, and a corral for horses along another. Lance was tied to one of the posts of the empty corral. The black-white-red tricolour of Germany fluttered in a desultory fashion from a flagpole at the centre of the parade ground. Francis’ crumpled body lay motionless ten feet away,
15 and with Lance’s hazy vision he could not tell whether his brother was dead or alive. This is my fault. Pa put me in charge, and I was too busy daydreaming about Heidi. The guilt that seared his soul hurt worse than the agony of his shattered face.
Captain Peters sat thirty yards away under the shade of a temporary canvas awning, his massive bulk incongruous on a three-legged stool. Beyond him, in the centre of the parade ground, stood a large slatted wooden cage. Two soldiers dragged a black man in native dress towards the officer. A desiccated askari sergeant with tribal scars on his face interrogated the terrified man, then translated to his Captain. Peters raised a dismissive hand, and the soldiers hustled their victim into the cage, which they chained shut. The askaris hauled another prisoner in front of Peters for a brief interrogation. Again, Peters’ verdict was peremptory, and the victim joined the other man in the cage. The same scene repeated with a half-dozen more prisoners dragged screaming to the cage.
The last prisoner was Hamisi. Lance hoped that Hamisi’s easy style with powerful white men would help him with Peters, for Lance had never seen Hamisi at a loss. But despite the cook’s obsequious bowing and pleading, Peters raised his hand, and the guards threw the screaming Hamisi into the cage. Dully, Lance wondered how the German generated such terror, and why he took such pleasure in that fear. In Lance’s concussed state, emotions seemed alien to him. His world was only pulsing pain.
Peters took off his cap and ran his fingers through his damp thinning hair. The askari sergeant pointed towards Lance, and then strode over to untie his hands and drag him to the awning.
Peters peered at Lance. “Not so cocky now, pup?”
Lance stared through his one open eye, fascinated by the double head and wobbling chins of the concussion-induced
16 vision in front of him.
“No smart answer? Perhaps you have learnt respect? But perhaps not. Just in case, I will teach you a lesson. Sergeant Keino here will make sure you have a grandstand seat.”
Peters’ lips twisted into a parody of a smile. He walked away to supervise his troops, who were unloading bundles of dried grass from a wagon. They stacked the grass around the wooden cage, now jammed tight with screaming prisoners. Keino gripped Lance by both arms to keep him upright. “A treat for you!” he gloated in Swahili, baring his tobaccostained teeth.
The askaris backed away from the cage as Peters threw a flaming brand into the dried grass. Hungry flames soon licked at the wooden walls of the cage. Screams from the prisoners turned into high-pitched shrieks of pure terror as evil red flames danced. The captives kicked at the flames with their bare feet, trying to prevent the fire from taking hold.
“For God’s sake—” Lance tried to wriggle free from Sergeant Keino, who kidney-punched him and let him drop sideways into the dust, writhing in agony. Several askaris carrying jerry cans danced around the prison, throwing petrol into the cage and over the prisoners. With a dull ‘whomp’, the jail turned into an inferno as the dried timber caught fire.
Bile rose in Lance’s throat and tears rolled down his face as the screams escalated in volume and pitch. One of the jail walls fell inwards with a crash, and human torches escaped, lurching onto the dusty parade ground.
A figure flecked with blue-edged flames staggered through the choking smoke. The askaris laughed and fell back to give the burning man room to stumble forwards, until he collapsed twenty feet from the horrified Lance. Despite the melting of his flesh, Lance recognised Hamisi.
“Help your friend, English pup!” Peters said. Hamisi howled inhuman agony from between the white teeth of his lipless skull. Lance clamped his hands over his ears but could
17 not tear his eyes away.
Peters nudged Lance with his foot. “Why aren’t you helping him?” Lance vomited. The human pyre reached out to beseech Lance with fingers burned to crooked claws. Lance scrabbled away on his knees, gibbering with horror. Peters kicked him again, and Lance curled into a whimpering foetal ball.
When Lance looked up again, strings of vomit dribbling from his lips, there was no Hamisi left, just a twitching, smoking corpse. The sickening stench of burned human coated the inside of Lance’s mouth and nose. Peters wagged a thick finger at Lance.
“Ach pup, I expected more of you. You talk so big, but you are nothing but a Hosenscheisser, a trouser shitter to you English. Sergeant Keino, bring him to my table.”
The askari yanked Lance to his feet, winning a grunt of pain. A sudden breeze fluttered the German Imperial flag and wafted across more of the sickly-sweet smell. Lance glared at Peters with all the searing hatred in his soul. The fat man laughed at Lance’s helpless rage.
“Ja, you have learned respect, I think! Now you will do what I want. On this table is your confession. You are British spies, sent here to gather intelligence so your Army can attack across the border. When the authorities see this, even that peace-loving puppet, Governor Schnee, will have no choice but to declare war.” Peters held out a pen. “Sign it!”
Lance leant on the table for support, head hanging. Bloody drool dripped from his mouth onto the table next to the paper. Slowly he raised his eyes. “Lies,” he mumbled.
“Ach so! The heroic Englishman. You would rather burn?”
Lance spat blood. Words came with difficulty around the swollen sausage of his tongue. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Peters chuckled and shook his head. “Because you are white? Or because you are English? No matter. English are hard for themselves but soft for others. Sergeant Keino, burn
18 the brother.”
Yellow teeth gleamed. “Ndio Bwana!” The big askari dragged Francis’s unconscious body towards them, dropping it two yards away. He picked up a nearby can, twisted open the top, and sloshed petrol over Francis. The foul fumes washed over Lance, followed by a horror that raised gooseflesh. He’d thought he was beyond terror, that he had plumbed the absolute depths, that hell went no deeper.
But Peters proved him wrong.
Lance lunged for the German. A rifle butt smashed into his back and his face smacked into the ground. Bolts of agony jagged through his cheekbone. He sobbed with rage and pain, hands beseeching Peters. “No! You can’t!” Tears ran down his cheeks. He struggled to his knees and pleaded, but he might as well have begged a slavering hyena for mercy.
“Kommen sie… It is simple. Sign or your brother burns.” Peters’ lips twisted and his eyes gleamed. “I show you how simple.” He lit a match and held it in his right hand, which hovered over Francis. Peters offered a pen in his left and waved the flaming match and the pen closer then apart. “Choose Hosenscheisser! Schnell, before the match burns my fingers and you are too late!”
Something inside Lance’s mind fractured, and malevolent ancestral urges uncoiled, venomous in their intensity. “I… will…kill…you,” he mumbled past his bloated tongue.
Peters frowned, uncertain for a second.
Hooves beat on the hard-packed earth. A Schutztruppe officer galloped towards the fort, drawing up in a flurry of dust in front of Peters. The rider stood in his stirrups, shouting and pointing outside the compound.
Peters blew out the match with an oath and swung into a frenzied bellowing. Keino grabbed Lance and ruthlessly bound his arms, kicked his feet away, and trussed his ankles, ignoring his moans.
Around them, the askaris poured into ranks with well-
19 drilled precision. Minutes later they marched double-time out of the fort with shouldered rifles. Peters followed on a mule, his long legs dangling to the ground.
All was quiet except for Lance’s rasping breaths. Smoke from the smouldering cage drifted upwards, black against bloody streaks of sunset. Lance tried to roll onto his knees, but with his hands tied behind his back and his battered muscles weak as a child’s, he could only flop in the dirt like a stranded fish. His head dropped back into the dust, and he sobbed with frustration. Nothing in his life had remotely prepared him for the evil he had just experienced. Despair and self-pity crashed over him, drowning his will to fight with their inexorable weight.
“Lance. Lance! Can you move?”
Lance shook his head to get rid of the nagging voice.
“Christ! They brutalised him. Get Mebeke over here to lift him to the wagon. Then do the same with Francis. But get me a knife first.”
I’m delirious. It sounds like Erwin Bohme. A voice that belonged in the gilded life Lance had once enjoyed an aeon ago. It couldn’t be. Erwin was one of Germany’s most famous Alpine climbers and Moshi’s most glamorous bachelor. He often visited the Schumacher’s farm, and, as Moshi’s railway engineer, he’d arranged Lance’s first steam railway ride. No connection could exist between that idyllic life and this world of pulsing pain and barbaric brutality. Only a nightmare could mix the two…it’s just a nightmare.
A knife sawed at the ropes tying his hands behind his back. The hands, the knife, they were real. Lance groggily accepted he was not hallucinating.
Erwin’s voice grounded him further. “Steady, Lance. We’ll have you out of here in a minute.”
Strong hands lifted and carried Lance into a wagon. Erwin propped him up and trickled warm water between his torn lips. “Francis is unconscious, but he will live. But you must go
20 now. We told the Schutztruppe there was a British raiding column threatening Moshi, but they will soon find it was a lie. Then they will come back in a hurry. My man Kipchoge will get you over the border while Anton and I cover your tracks and lay a false trail. Do you understand?”
Lance nodded. The wagon rocked as someone climbed up to join them. He heard another voice in the darkening gloomHerr Schumacher, sounding low and strained. “Lance, I must get a message to the British, and I can’t trust it on paper. Can you pass on a message?”
Lance swallowed more water and gave a minuscule nod.
“Gut. Listen carefully. War was declared in Europe between Germany and Britain a few days ago, but the news only reached us today. Peters and other brutes are carrying out provocative acts to suck us colonies into this war. We must not allow that. We German settlers will ensure Peters is court-martialled for what he has done today, but we need you to tell your father, and the other British, that we will work with them to keep peace. Our Governors will help us. Do you understand?”
Lance raised his agonised face, swallowed, and looked at Schumacher with his one open eye. “I will kill Peters,” he slurred, not caring that the motion of his jaw sent new shock waves of pain stabbing up his cheek. “Court-martial…not enough.”
“You are young, Lance. Peace is the most important thing. Take my message to your father, and I promise you we will deliver Peters to justice. God knows we have no use for that animal.”
Rage boiled through Lance. I don’t want “justice”—I want to send Peters into the hottest part of hell, screaming in agony. The German’s brutality had unleashed a demon, the strength of which shocked even Lance. Yet the demon was cunning. It knew survival must come before revenge, and survival required Schumacher and Bohme’s help. So Lance nodded as
21 he hooded his eyes to hide his hate, and made a silent vow to Francis, Thomas, and Hamisi that he would avenge them.
~
Four weeks later – September 1914. British East Africa, near Taveta Farm.
Lance had waited for this day with wolfish hunger for five weeks. The last of the stars still pricked through the black shroud of night, but the orange glow on the horizon signalled the new day—a killing day.
Savage glee flared inside him as he caressed his rifle, its metal cold and purposeful. He lay on his stomach in the long grass, shivering in the pre-dawn chill as dew soaked through his hunting jacket.
Pa lay on Lance’s left, his jaws grinding as he worked on a stubborn piece of biltong. They had inserted into the ambush site an hour before dawn, long enough for the wildlife to grow used to them. When men and other predators moved in the African bush, a chorus of alarms from birds and other animals preceded them. For this ambush site the loudest alarms would come from the vervet monkeys clustered in the fever trees on either side of the riverbed. Vervets possessed a plethora of alarm calls: a low-pitched twittering for snakes, guttural repetitive grunts for eagles, and urgent high-pitched screeches for mammal predators like man. But for now they cavorted in the trees on the far side of the ravine, ignoring the patient men who had not moved since dawn.
Pa fumbled in his pockets for his customary morning cigar but that was just habit, he would never be so stupid. A whiff of tobacco in the morning air would alert the dullest scout as surely as if Pa stood up and flapped his arms. And the Schutztruppen were not dullards. These days it wasn’t easy to hold the title as Africa’s most brutal army. God knows the
22 Belgians in the Congo had made a serious run at infamy, but the Schutztruppen were still the undisputed heavyweight champions. When the Maji-Maji rebels killed fifteen Europeans and four hundred askaris in German East Africa in 1905, the Schutztruppe retaliation littered the plains with more than 75,000 native corpses. But they were efficient too. Take away their brutality, and they were still the most battlehardened colonial Army in Africa.
But Pa was no slouch when it came to war in the bush. Even before rising to the rank of captain while fighting the Boers in South Africa, his father had served as the chief scout for the British army in the Second Matabele War. There he became friends with Frederick Selous, the legendary explorer, naturalist, and war hero. The American president Theodore Roosevelt had once called Selous “the last of the great white hunters”. More important to Lance, Selous was his godfather and had imparted his guiding philosophy as a hunter: “When you hunt dangerous animals, think like a leopard. Leopards lack the speed of the cheetah, the muscles of lions, the vicious horns of the buffalo, the bulk of the elephant, or the armour plating of the rhino. The leopards’ greatest weapon is their cunning. Yet they are the most dangerous of all.” Pa and Lance lived by those words when hunting. Man-eating lions and canny Boer commandoes made vicious teachers, and both had left scars on Pa. But he learned fast, remembered long and taught well. Pa could still teach the Schutztruppe a lesson or two in the bush.
Lance raised his binoculars, but Pa stretched out his hand and pressed them to the earth. “We’re facing the sun,” he whispered. “The rays will sparkle on the lens and give us away. Be patient.”
Lance nodded and packed away the binoculars, annoyed by his own foolishness. He settled to wait once again, trying to ignore the ever-present ache in his left jaw and cheek.
Old Doctor McCulloch, a once talented surgeon turned
23 partial soak, had done a good job restoring Lance’s shattered cheekbone, now almost healed. Lance did not enjoy the memory. Pa had made sure the Doc sobered up for the operation, but also promised a post-operative reward of a premium bottle of Scotch if the surgery was successful. McCulloch had no anaesthetic, and excruciating jolts of pain skewered through Lance’s cheek, teeth, and eye socket as the doc’s shaky fingertips slid together the shattered pieces of bone under the skin, like a blind man completing a jigsaw.
“Hold still, laddie,” McCulloch demanded. Pa cradled Lance’s face in his strong hands to hold it steady as the needles of pain stabbed and stabbed. Lance sobbed—the pain was too much.
His father tightened his grip. “Be a man,” he grunted.
The hate saved Lance. It came roaring like a mighty river in flash flood, scouring his mind clean. Lance floated from his body, away from the harsh breathing of the doctor, the sickening reek of disinfectant, the lightning bolts of agony. In this new place he heard only the mesmerising message of revenge in the drumbeats of his heart.
The bone was only half knitted three weeks later, but the only visible damage lay in the two-inch scar a finger’s width below his left eye, and a permanently damaged tear duct that leaked single teardrops intermittently. Lance never wiped the tears away, refusing to even acknowledge them. When he grew angry, those teardrops multiplied and chased down his cheek.
The night the Schutztruppen burnt Taveta Ranch those tears of rage had flowed like scalding lava. Warmongers on both sides had quickly gained the ascendancy and swamped all attempts to keep the African colonies out of the war. No message came from Anton Schumacher, or Heidi. Pa reckoned they must be too carefully watched. Von Lettow, the Schutztruppen commander, cast the die when he ignored Governor Schnee and invaded Taveta with two hundred men.
24 The twenty men of the British East African Police force fired one volley and fled to Voi, pausing only to warn the British settlers to run.
Pa had already sent Will to Nairobi to look after the crippled Francis, so Lance knelt with his father in the darkness and watched as the askaris made a towering inferno of the only home he had ever known. The next morning, with the grey ash flakes of their home still on their skin, Lance and Pa planned revenge as they watched the distinctive figure of Peters riding his mule around the Schutztruppe temporary camp in Taveta.
When the swelling on Lance’s cheekbone began to diminish, Pa and he returned to haunt the Riata Hills, waiting for an opening to spring an ambush. So Lance could kill Captain Otto Peters.
At last, they saw a chance—a slim one, but a chance.
Every morning Peters would take a column of about a hundred men out on a raiding mission, with advance scouts on both flanks to prevent any surprise attack. Peters rode in the middle of the column, the safest place if an enemy ambushed them. Such a formation made it impossible to kill Peters and escape alive. But when the Schutzruppen first left their camp, Peters rode at the head of the column to avoid the dust kicked up by marching boots. So the ambush must be in that first mile, close to the German camp, before Peters deployed the scouts.
Pa and Lance agreed there was only one possible ambush site in that first mile. The Schutztruppen habitually took the old Arab slavers’ trail eastwards out of Taveta, which wound down a slight slope towards a belt of fever trees and heavy bush, then dropped out of sight from Taveta as it crossed a ravine. The Schutztruppen would be an easy target as they crossed the riverbed, and the ambushers in the long grass on the far bank would be out of the sight of the soldiers left in Taveta. Behind the ambush site, a long gully snaked away for
25 two-hundred yards before fading into a narrow belt of brush. The gully was deep enough for the ambushers to escape unseen, and the brush behind provided cover for tethered horses.
“All ambush plans need to be simple,” Pa had said. “The simpler the better, because in war Sullivan’s Law applies.”
“You mean Murphy’s Law?” Lance asked. “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong?”
“Close, but no. Sullivan’s Law says Murphy is an optimist.”
And so, Pa’s ambush plan was simple: “Shoot Peters in the heart. Lay down two minutes of rapid fire at the askaris to convince them we are a large force and dissuade any immediate pursuit. Then run like hell along the gully, jump on the horses, and ride like the wind. Got it?”
Lance had nodded, though he had one big variation in mind. One Pa would not enjoy.
Now they were putting Pa’s plan into action. The rising sun slipped the horizon’s embrace, a perfect yellow sphere of flame illuminating the grass in its golden glow. This was Africa, land of extremes, so having shivered for the first hour soon they would drip sweat. Ahead of them, the ravine yawned fifty yards wide and ten feet deep. The locals called these ravines donga. During the rainy season mighty flash-floods carved out riverbeds with a deadly maelstrom of water and debris; in the dry season they lay dormant. Now, with the short rains just finished, a narrow crystalline stream chuckled down the slope towards Taveta.
Time crawled as they waited, and Lance worried that the raiding column wouldn’t come. The molten sun burned higher into the cloudless sky, a fiery hammer beating Lance against the anvil of the baked earth. Despite his wide-brimmed hat, sweat beaded on his eyebrows, and he tilted his head, so the drips fell onto the earth instead of stinging his eyes. He pulled his hat brim lower against the glare and lifted the collar of his hunting jacket to protect his neck against the pitiless sun.
26 They waited with the stamina of experienced hunters. The still air shimmered in a heat haze, and a thousand feet above them a lone vulture turned in a widening gyre.
Lance wondered what Heidi was doing and his guts flopped inside out. He could still see her face as clearly as if she were in front of him, taste her kisses, hear her call his name, his heart flipping at the slight German intonation she gave his name. It wasn’t just the kisses, the satin smooth skin, the warm softness of her and the flower fresh waft of her hair. Other girls had those things too, but only Heidi lit his whole world. She made the sunsets more vivid, laughter easier, music more stirring, food more mouth-watering, and when she looked at him with those cornflower blue eyes, he was both wise and invincible. He treasured the quiet times too. Her head resting on his shoulders as they silently watched iridescent kingfishers dart over a sun-dappled stream. Surreptitiously holding hands in the dark as their families gathered around a crackling fire, the tang of woodsmoke strong and shadows cavorting. Or sipping coffee, alone together on the veranda rocking chairs as the rain hissed off the roof and ran down the eaves in rivulets, releasing the pungent scent of the thirsty red soil.
But Pa had been blunt. “Best put her out of your mind. You won’t see her until the war is finished, and even then, war changes a lot of things.” That assessment had knelled like the bell of doom to Lance, but he could not fault the wisdom. He must become a warrior, hard of heart and purpose. Such a man did not pine for love. Or so Lance told himself, but his heart ached more fiercely than his broken cheek. And his cheek ached something fearsome.
Another good reason to extract revenge. Peters had broken Lance’s bones, his heart, his faith in humanity, and his pride. Killing him wouldn’t mend all that, but Lance knew with certainty that justice was a necessary first step in the healing process.
27 The screech of a vervet monkey interrupted his thoughts. Pa touched Lance’s shoulder. Lance nodded without turning his head, proud he had picked up the alarm as fast as Pa, the experienced white hunter. He eased his rifle forward through the grass, so he had a clear field of fire across the donga. Between the treetops came a faint pall of dust.
Lance forced himself to breathe. Would Peters protect himself in the middle of the column with flanking scouts deployed? If so, the ambushers would have to kill the first scouts in the ravine, then run for their lives. As Pa had said, “As a Plan B it isn’t the best, but it’s a darn sight better than suicide.”
Lance agreed—much as he lusted to kill Peters, throwing his life away in a futile attempt would only give Peters the satisfaction of killing him.
The monkeys on the far bank jumped up and down on their branches, their cries shriller and more urgent. Lance’s pulse beat faster, his hearing became more acute, and his vision sharpened.
He tensed as an askari broke through the brush on the far bank, and then another. Lance swore, sighted on the left man’s khaki chest, and his trigger finger tightened.
Pa made a low soft “sic, sic” noise between his teeth, and Lance eased pressure off the trigger. Pa had noticed what Lance had missed—the askaris were not on alert. They had slung their rifles over their shoulders as they hacked at the branches and brush along the path. They were clearing the way for Peters, who with magical abruptness materialised on the far bank.
Lance took a deep breath. In his nightmares Peters ruled as a chilling ogre, but the officer in front of him appeared comical. He sat astride a mule that sagged under his massive weight. The German’s uniform was a patchwork of dark sweat stains, large crescents from his armpits merging with the spreading stain from the belly that strained against the brass-
28 buttoned uniform. That belly wobbled as the mule shuffled its way down the bank into the shallow riverbed, its front legs quivering with each step as the full load of the gargantuan German fell on the mule’s front haunches.
Lance laid his sights between those eyes—eyes that still haunted many a night.
“Thou shalt not kill.” The unwanted commandment forced itself into Lance’s mind as he squinted through the sights. His rifle barrel wavered, and his trigger finger hesitated.
Images flashed into his mind. Thomas lying crumpled in the dust, his scattered brains grey and red against the brown earth. Hamisi beseeching Lance with his wide lidless eyes and skeletal claws. Lance took a deep breath and shifted his sights a fraction. “An eye for an eye…” he whispered. And fired.
Dust jumped from Peters’ jacket as the bullet bisected the first and second brass buttons above his belt.
“Belly shot, by God!” Pa growled. “How in hell’s name did you miss the heart from fifty yards?”
Peters clutched his stomach and toppled from the saddle. The scouts scattered back into the brush on the far side of the river. Pa fired as fast as he could work the bolt action, not aiming but firing fast to prevent the troopers realising that the ambush was only two men. The plan called for Lance to do the same, but he just stared at Peters.
The German sat upright in the shallow stream with his legs straight, mewling with pain. Bewilderment filled his coarse features and both hands clutched at the growing stain that darkened his khaki uniform. The river flowed red downstream.
“Finish the bloody job,” Pa snarled, still firing as fast as he could.
Lance did not reply. His youth and innocence seeped away with the crimson stain blossoming in the once clear stream. He fixed the scene in his mind—the long stalks of golden grass swaying either side of his glistening gun barrel, the stench of
29 gunpowder, Peters whimpering, and the river running red. Lance had crossed his Rubicon.
“Lance! What are you playing at? Finish the bastard and let’s go!”
Lance ignored Pa as the bullets whipped past him into the long grass. “Suffer you bastard!” he whispered, staring at Peters.
Pa swore and swung his rifle onto Peters. Before he could squeeze the trigger, Lance fired for the second time. This bullet took the German between his eyes, sending his peaked cap flying and knocking the hulking figure onto its back.
Pa emptied the rest of his magazine at the askaris crouching in the bush. “Twende! Now!” The two men turned and elbow-crawled the ten yards through the long grass to the gulley. Once in the gulley, they ran crouching low for another fifty yards. Then the cover doglegged to the left and grew deep enough so they could run upright at full pace to the horses. Behind them they heard the bellowing of the Schutztruppe sergeants as the askaris realised the ambush had ended. The two panting men, hunters turned prey, slipped the horses’ tethers and vaulted into the saddles.
The riders bolted out of the brush onto the plain. They rode low, their weight over their horse’s haunches as they galloped, swerving between the low thorn bushes dotting the dun-coloured grass. The hooves drummed on the hard earth and dust plumed behind them.
After a mile, Pa slowed them to a fast trot so the horses did not blow themselves out. Further on they slowed to a walk. Father and son rode in silence, alert to their surroundings. When they reached Kiboko Springs, Pa dismounted, and they led the horses to the cool water. Then they grabbed their rifles and binoculars and climbed the rocks above the spring to search their back trail. No sign of pursuit, no plume of dust, just the hot windswept plain.
Pa unscrewed his canteen and offered it to Lance, who
30 shook his head. His father took several deep swigs, poured a little onto his neckerchief, and wiped his face. Anger flushed Pa’s face under the tanned skin, but he kept his tone measured. “Care to tell me what happened back there?”
Lance looked at him without speaking.
“Lance, you can hit a charging buffalo in the heart at fifty yards. You didn’t gut shoot Peters by mistake. You put us in danger by not sticking to our plan—in, kill, out. Why, man?”
“I wanted him to suffer like Hamisi, Francis, and the others,” Lance said in a low voice. “A bullet in the heart was too good for that animal.”
“I understand the sentiment, but revenge is dangerous. There’s an old saying that when you start on the road for revenge, you had better dig two graves—the second being your own. Hate distorts your judgement. Peters was evil, but if you descend to his level, victory over him has no meaning. We were putting down a rabid dog, not indulging in an act of revenge.”
“If you say so.” Lance’s voice was toneless.
Pa grunted in disgust. “Well, if today was revenge for you—how did it feel?”
“Good, it felt good.”
“I doubt that, son. When I killed my first man in battle, I had an empty feeling in my guts for days. Killing a man should not come easily, whatever the righteousness of it. But enough talk, we need to ride. We’ve done what we came to do.” Pa clapped Lance on the shoulder and walked back to the horses.
Lance hung back, detouring to vomit behind a thorn bush. Whatever he had said to Pa, the killing did not sit well on his stomach. He wiped away the drool with the back of his hand and took a long swig from his water bottle. The tepid fluid wet his parched mouth but failed to flush away the sour taste.
