He had proved himself, slain the enemy. The great god Kirinyaga would be appeased. The spirits of his ancestors would be placated; his father’s spirit would be placated. He straightened, turned and vanished into the forest, avoiding the animal trails until he reached a clearing far from the ridge. There he stopped, satisfied that he had covered his tracks sufficiently. His hands shook as he unfastened a small pouch from the leather thong around his waist, tapped some of its dark powder on to his palm, and inhaled it deeply into both nostrils. There was another rush of adrenalin to his system so that he shook with the power and the strength of it, and then he began to run again, loping through the night and out of the forest, along the edge of the plain, making for his other sanctuary. Twice more, he stopped to give himself another burst of energy from the contents of the leather pouch. But then it was all gone, and he still had a great distance to cover before he reached his destination.

The screaming had begun again in his head, and flashes of remembrance were confusing his vision, causing him to stumble on the rough terrain. The smell of the dead man’s blood invaded his lungs, so that he felt he was inhaling his victim’s death with every breath. Now he began to see shapes in the shadows around him. Hyenas. Running behind him. Tracking him. He thought he could smell them too, but it might be the scent of the animal he had speared, or the odour of the victim’s sacrificial blood turned rancid by the heat of his own body. For a moment he thought he saw a fire flickering some distance ahead of him. In his imagination, figures moved in the red light, and his nostrils were filled with the stench of burning flesh. He swerved away, not wanting to see who might have built the fire, or what would be burning there. The image faded.

The darkness was beginning to dissipate, and in the limbo world between night and dawn, when all was grey and misted, he was no longer sure what was real and what was not. He feared that inadvertently he had entered the spirit world, that he would not be able to find his way back. He should not have killed the hyena. It had been coming to devour the spirit of the man, and he had prevented it from its task. Hyena and dead man wandering the spirit path, looking for him. They could smell the blood on him. He felt a surge of panic and tried to run faster. A branch whipped across his face and he felt his headdress fall, but he resisted the urge to stop and retrieve it. He was a true warrior now, whether or not he wore the plumed and beaded headdress.