men eager to leave.
When they bade Rabat farewell, he told Taita dolefully, 'We shall probably never meet again in this life, Magus, but it has been a great honour for me to be allowed to render you some small service.'
'I am grateful for your willing assistance and cheerful company.
Pharaoh himself will hear of it,' Taita assured him.
They struck out again southwards, with Tolas as their guide, towards the hills shaped like a virgin's breasts, and the fly country. Their time at Fort Adari had refreshed men and animals and they made good progress.
Taita ordered that the hunters should keep the tails of the animal game they caught. He showed the men how to skin them, scrape flesh, salt them, then leave them to dry in the air. Meanwhile they carved wood into handles and inserted them into the tubes of dried skin in place of the bone they had removed. Finally Taita brandished one of the fly switches and told them, 'Soon you will be grateful for these. It is probably the only weapon that will discourage the fly.'
On the twentieth morning after they had left Fort Adari they made the customary early start on the day's trek. Then at a little past noon, as Tolas had predicted, the twin nipples of the hills, like the breasts of a virgin, thrust above the horizon.
'No further. Order the halt,' Taita called to Meren. He had decided before they left Fort Adari that he would not follow Tolas's advice slavishly. He had already been dosing Windsmoke and Whirlwind with the cakes and hoped that the medicine would concentrate in their blood long before they suffered the first sting. On that last evening before they entered the fly territory he took Fenn with him to the horse lines. When she saw them coming Windsmoke whickered. Taita rubbed her forehead and scratched behind her ears, then fed her a Tolas cake. Fenn did the same for Whirlwind. By now both had developed a taste for the cakes and swallowed them with appetite. Tolas had been watching from the shadows. Now he approached Taita and greeted him diffidently. 'So you are taking the grey mare and her foal with you?' he asked.
'I could not bear to leave them behind,' Taita replied.
Tolas sighed. 'I understand, Magus. Perhaps I would have done the same, for already I love them. I pray to Horus and Isis that they will survive.'
'Thank you, Tolas. We will all come together again, of that I am certain.'
Next morning they parted company. Tolas could guide them no further and turned back for Fort Adari. Nakonto was out on the point, breaking the trail, Meren and three squads marching behind him. Taita and Fenn came next, on Windsmoke and Whirlwind. The eighteen salted horses followed in a loose herd. Shabako, with the fourth squad, brought up the rear.
They camped that evening under the hills. While they ate their dinner by the fires a pride of hunting lions began to roar on the dark plain beyond the hills, a menacing sound. Taita and Meren went to check the head ropes of the tethered horses, but the lions did not come closer and gradually their roars receded and the silence of the night settled over them.
The next morning, while the column mustered, Taita and Fenn fed the horses their Tolas cakes. Then they mounted and rode on between the twin hills. Taita had just relaxed into the rhythm of the march when suddenly he straightened and stared at Windsmoke's neck. A large dark insect had appeared on her creamy hide, close to her mane. He cupped his right hand and waited for the insect to settle, extend its sharp black
proboscis and probe for the blood vessels beneath the mare's skin. The buried sting anchored it, so he was able to snatch it up in his cupped hands. It buzzed shrilly as it tried to escape but he tightened his; grip and crushed its head and body. Then he held it between two fingers and showed it to Fenn. 'This is a fly that the tribes call the tsetse. It is the first of many to come,' he predicted. At the words, another fly settled on his neck and plunged its sting into the soft skin behind his ear.
He winced and slapped at it. Although he caught it a hard blow, it shot away seemingly unharmed.
'Get out your fly switches,' Meren ordered, and soon they were all lashing at themselves and their mounts, like religious flagellants, trying to drive off the stinging swarms. The following days were a torment as the flies plagued them ceaselessly. They were at their worst during the heat of the day, but kept up the attack by the light of the moon and the stars, maddening men and horses alike.
The tails of the horses lashed continuously against their flanks and hindquarters. They tossed their heads and twitched their skins as they rtried to shake off the flies that crawled into their ears and eyes.
The faces of the men swelled like some grotesque crimson fruit and their eyes became slits in the puffy flesh. The backs of their necks were lumpy and the itching was intolerable. With their fingernails they scratched raw the skin behind their ears. At night they built smudge fires ,of dried elephant dung and crouched, coughing and gasping, in the acrid Ismoke to seek respite. But as soon as they moved away for a breath of Ifresh air the flies arrowed in on them, driving their stings deep at the instant they landed. Their bodies were so tough that a hard blow with the palm of a hand hardly disturbed them. Even when they were knocked from their perch, they rebounded in the same movement, stinging again ion some other exposed body part. The fly switches were the only effective weapon. They did not kill them, but the long tail hairs tangled legs and wings and held them so that they could be crushed between the fingers.
'There is a limit to the range of these monsters,' Taita encouraged the men. 'Nakonto knows their habits well. He says that as suddenly as we came upon them we will be free of them.'
Meren ordered forced marches and rode at the head of the column, setting a driving pace. Deprived of sleep and weakened by the venom that the flies pumped into their blood the men swayed in their saddles.
When a trooper collapsed his comrades threw him over the back of his horse and rode on.
Nakonto alone was inured to the insects. His skin remained smooth
and glossy, unmarked by stings. He allowed the insects to suck themselves full of his blood so that they could not fly. Then he mocked them as he tore off their wings: 'I have been stabbed by men, leopards have bitten me and lions clawed me. Who are you to annoy me? Now you can walk home to hell.'
On the tenth day after they had left the hills, they rode out of the fly country. It happened so suddenly that they were taken unawares. At one moment they were cursing and flogging at the whirling insects, then fifty paces further on the silence of the forest was no longer disturbed by the vicious whine. Within a league of passing out of the tyranny they came upon an isolated river pool. Meren took pity on the party. 'Fall out!' he roared. 'The last one into the water is a simpering virgin.'
There was a rush of naked bodies, then the forest rang with cries of relief and jubilation. When they emerged from the pool, Taita and Fenn ministered to everyone's swollen stings, smearing them with one of the magus's salves. That night the laughter and banter round the campfires was unstinted.
