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surroundings were unfamiliar and for a moment she wondered where she was. Then she knew. The stress of the previous morning, the forced march, the late hour at which she had fallen asleep: all had taken their toll and she had overslept. Already the camp was stirring. Her plan to flee would have to be postponed.
    * * *
    Damba took to riding alongside them. He asked them their names and told them his own.
    â€œDid you understand Abdulai's history last night?” he asked Suba.
    The boy hung his head and made a non-committal noise.
    â€œWhat does he say?” Nandzi asked him.
    Suba explained, “Last night their leader, the one they call Abdulai, told them a long story, about how they, the Bedagbam, came to be living in this place. He is asking me whether I understood the story.”
    â€œWell, did you?”
    â€œMore or less,” Suba replied, “but I don't know if it would be wise to admit that to him.”
    â€œWhat was the story?”
    â€œHe said their ancestors came on horses from a far place on the edge of the great desert, where they had lived before. Their leader was called the Red Hunter. The son of this Red Hunter married the daughter of the priest, the Tindan Na. During the annual festival, while the Tindan Na was in his tent, putting on his robes, his daughter's husband crept up behind the old man and brought a great club crashing down on his skull. Then he donned the dead man's priestly robes and declared himself the new Tindan Na. So it was, he told them, that the Bedagbam became the owners of the land.”

CHAPTER 4

    At noon on the fourth day after Nandzi's capture, they saw Yendi in the distance.
    The warriors halted to put on their armour and smarten up their horses’ trappings. Abdulai took the lead on his white charger. The horsemen formed up in two files with the ragged slaves on foot between them. The drummers set up a triumphant rhythm and the party entered the town.
    The houses, like those in Tigen's hamlet, were roughly circular in plan, with conical thatched roofs and grouped in family compounds. The white walls shone in the sun and the thatch on the roofs was fresh and neat. Everything looked new.
    As they passed the first compound children appeared as if from nowhere and fell into place, skipping and dancing after the cavalcade. A small boy called out, “Papa, papa!” to a hero on horseback, but his father passed by without hearing or recognising him. Women abandoned their domestic chores and ran to join their neighbours, merging into groups, pointing out the warriors and the slaves to one another and falling into animated conversation. Men with white beards, who had been squatting on their haunches in the shade of a mango tree to chew kola and discuss the weighty matters of the day, rose and stretched, adjusted their baggy cotton trousers and their batakaris, slipped into their sandals and made their own more leisurely and dignified way to the market square.
    A woman ran up ahead of the party and halting, looked back to scan the warriors’ faces. When they had all passed her, she gathered up her cloth and pursued Abdulai.
    Coming abreast of him for the second time, she caught her breath and screamed, “Captain Abdulai, where is my son Ali? What have you done with Ali?”
    Abdulai waved a greeting to Ali's mother.
    â€œLater,” he cried back, “Later. I will come to see you.”
    Ali had been struck by a poisoned arrow. He lay buried in a grave his mother would never see. Abdulai did not relish the prospect of having to break the news of the death of three of his troop to their families. Especially to the women. The men were usually understanding in such circumstances, even proud of a son who had died in battle; but the women were troublesome. “Why my son?” this woman would demand. What answer could one give to such a question? She would make him feel personally responsible for Ali's death: and that was manifestly