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led the way down the hill. The dew had already dried on the long grass. There was no path and he had to force his way through. The sun was hidden in the dusty haze of the Harmattan.
    â€œWhat is your name?” Nandzi asked the boy.
    â€œI am called Suba,” he replied shyly, turning his head to look at her.
    He turned into a crude path which someone had beaten through the grass ahead of them.
    â€œWhere are you from?” she asked. She was following in his tracks. They had left Damba some way behind.
    Suba's reply froze on his lips. He halted so suddenly that Nandzi collided with him.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked.
    Then she saw the body lying face down across the path. The head was all but severed from the neck. The ground was soaked with blood. She took a step back.
    â€œWhat is it?” Damba asked in his language, pushing past them.
    He inserted the toe of his leather boot under a shoulder and turned the body over. The head twisted to one side showing a severed artery and windpipe. Nandzi put her hands over her eyes and uttered a terrible cry of woe. Then she fell to her knees and retched. She had eaten nothing since the previous day. She tasted bile. Damba looked at her and smirked.
    â€œWomen!” he said aloud while he waited for her to get up. “Come on, let's go.”
    Nandzi looked up at the vultures. It might have been Itsho , she thought. No! Itsho escaped. Itsho escaped. Itsho escaped.
    She repeated the words over and over again, willing her mind to control Itsho's fate. She could not bring herself to contemplate his death. Itsho escaped. Itsho escaped .
    The river turned out to be no more than a trickle of water running in a narrow channel which meandered along a sandy bed. Soon, as the dry season progressed, the flow would stop completely. Small trees grew on the banks, an oasis of green shade in the scorched dry plain. They washed their hands and faces in the cool water. Suba dipped his ladle into the shallow stream and began to fill his calabash. Damba kneeled to make his own ablutions. Nandzi watched Suba for a moment. Then she began to dig a small pit in the sandy bed.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Damba asked.
    She did not understand his question and continued to dig. When the hole was big enough she forced the empty calabash down into it. The water flowed in over the rim. Suba was still struggling to fill his vessel.
    Nandzi tried to break off a handful of grass from the bank but it was too tough. She pulled and it came away with a sod of soil around the roots.
    â€œHold it,” Damba told her and cut off the roots with his sword. He smiled at her but she did not see his face. She formed the grass into a ring and put it on her head. Suba helped her to lift the full calabash. She steadied it and adjusted the balance while Damba helped Suba in the same way.
    Damba led them up the hill. Vultures were picking at the naked body. Damba slashed at them with his sword. They screeched at him, flapped their great wings and hopped aside. Damba let the captives pass. Nandzi averted her eyes, unwilling to witness the damage the birds had inflicted on the corpse. It was not custom to leave the dead unburied. The man's spirit would wander without peace and return to trouble the living. She wanted to ask Damba to let her dig a grave, but she had no means of communicating with him.
    â€œDo you speak their language?” she asked Suba. “We should ask him to let us bury the dead.”
    â€œSmall,” replied Suba and added, in explanation, “from the market.”
    He had come to a fork. He took a rough path, made by the passage of a horse, which would lead back to the camp by a shorter route than the way they had come.
    â€œWhat should I say?” the lad was asking, when he came across another prone body.
    It was lying on its back, naked like the first they had seen. The impact of a horse's hoof had crushed the skull and splashed the victim's brains around. Flies