I cried by gad hadn’t we just, and gave her a loving squeeze and a hearty kiss, telling her she was the queen of guides – while noting to myself that she was now talking of the camp of her people, not Queen Masteeat’s. Very soon now I must discover what was at work behind that triumphant smile, and whatever it was, prepare myself for some nimble footwork – oh, and if possible carry out the task Napier had given me, and ensure that the Wollo Gallas closed the trap about Magdala … whoever was occupying their tribal throne. I half expected Uliba to advert to it, but she volunteered nothing, so I must wait and see, composing myself to sleep on the banks of the Great Abai, and reflecting unprofitably on the irony that given a small boat and enough grub (and if the Napiers and Ulibas and assorted Abs and Bedouin let me alone) I could have floated a few thousand miles downstream in peace and tranquillity to Shepherd’s or the Hôtel du Nil in Cairo.
I awoke suddenly with a hand gripping my arm and another over my mouth, and was about to lash out in panic when I realised they were Uliba’s hands, it was just on half-dawn, and she was hissing a warning in my ear.
“Still! Keep down!” She was out of her blanket, snaking away across the turf damp with dew, and I followed her with my innards turning over at this sudden alarm. “See – yonder, across the river!”
I followed her pointing finger, and froze where I lay. On the far side of the water, which was barely fifty yards broad at this point, a line of horsemen was emerging from the jungle, pricking down to the bank. They were lancers, forty or fifty of them, trim in white robes and turbans and breastplates, one or two with chain-mail shoulder guards, their leader wearing a steel casque and knight’s gauntlets and carrying a silver shield. They ranged along the bank, dismounting at his word of command to water their horses, their voices drifting across the misty surface.
More in desperation than hope I wondered if they might be Masteeat’s people, but Uliba shook her head impatiently and wormed her way backwards into the shelter of the bushes, dragging blanket and saddle-bag with her, and signing to me to do likewise.
“They are Theodore’s guardsmen, his household cavalry. That silver shield is carried only by nobles high in his service.” Her whisper was fierce but steady. “Those boats we saw last night, making towards Adeena – they must have been at Kourata, bearing word of us and where we were going!” She screwed her eyes shut in fury, clenching her fist. “God of gods, why did I not kill that loose-tongued fool!?”
“Hold on – how d’ye know they’re looking for us? You can’t be sure –”
“A silver shield abroad before dawn with picked troops of the Emperor? I can be sure they are not on manoeuvres! He would never leave such an elite to garrison Kourata when he is marching on Magdala! No, he will have sent them west the moment he learned (doubtless from Yando’s vermin!) that a British officer was coming south, plainly to enlist aid from Masteeat and the Wollo Gallas! They will have been scouring Begemder for us, and now those peasant scum at Adeena have given them our scent. And they are following it.”
Talking like a book, as usual, and keeping her head. She signed me to silence and crawled forward again, to a solitary bush, the braided head cocked to listen. After a moment she was back, her lips at my ear.
“They are looking for a place to cross, then they will sweep both banks downstream. And we must be the quarry; no ordinary fugitive would be worth such a hunt.”
“Oh, God! What can we do?”
She smiled grimly. “Run! – away from the river, before they can cross. We can circle wide and come back to it, for we’ll be swifter afoot in jungle than they can be on horseback. If we can reach the Silver Smoke ahead of them we shall be safe, for they’ll venture no closer to Masteeat’s army than that.” A word of command sounded across the water; they were mounting up again. “But we’ve no time to lose. It is twenty miles through jungle to the falls.”
If you’ve never travelled in jungle you may be under a false impression, thanks to the tales of blowhards who’ll tell you how they’ve hacked their way through impenetrable undergrowth and been lucky to make two miles a day battling snakes and great hairy spiders. Well, such jungle does exist, and sufficiently hellish it is, as I should know who have gone my mile in Borneo and the Fly River country, but as a rule it ain’t so thick, and what you have to look out for is where you’re putting your feet. Even such good rain forest as the headwaters of the Blue Nile has its hazards, like sudden swamp and potholes and solid fallen trunks which crumble rottenly and drop you unexpected into the slime; by and large, though, it’s fair going, with more trees than thickets, and space to move in. I reckon Uliba and I made a good four miles an hour, which is faster than marching, and if it was hot work it wasn’t unbearable in the shade. I doubted if Theodore’s cavalry could do as well; with luck, when we circled back to the river, we’d be comfortably ahead of them, provided we kept up our pace.
Moving away from the river must have added two or three miles to our trek, but by sunset Uliba reckoned we had covered enough ground for the day; you don’t move in jungle after dark if you have any sense, so we camped among the banyans and acacias, not risking a fire but enjoying the rays of sundown gleaming through the groves, and the last chirping and calling of the millions of coloured birds in the branches overhead. It reminded me of the Madagascar forest, and you mayn’t believe it but I felt my eyes stinging at the memory of Elspeth blue-eyed and beautiful, smiling up at me with her golden hair tumbled about her head on the grass, her arms reaching up to me and those lovely lips parting … “My jo, my ain dear jo!”
Dear God, that had been more than twenty years ago, that strange idyll of joy and terror mingled, when we’d fled from Antan’ with Ranavalona’s Hovas on our trail … Theodore’s riders might be a fearsome crowd, and most professional by the look of them, but at least they were part-civilised, unlike those black monsters … Strange, though, how history repeated itself: here I was again, fleeing the forces of darkness through tropic forest in the company of beauteous tumble – not that Uliba could begin to compare in looks, style, deportment, vivacity, elegance, complexion, allure, voluptuousness, abandoned performance, erotic invention, or indeed in any way at all to my glorious Elspeth, at the thought of whom I was beginning to dribble … and whom I loved dearly and truly, I may say, and had seen only at brief ecstatic intervals in the past four weary years – no, five, dammit! It was too bad, and I missed her so, and God alone knew what she’d been up to while I was shirking shot and shell at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Yellow Tavern, Ford’s Theatre, and Queretaro, and look at me now, lachrymose in Ethiopia with the little grey monkeys sneering at me from the trees. Then the rain came on.36
It dawned gloriously sunny, however, and we were up and making for the river before first light. The closer we got to it, the thicker grew the jungle, which meant worse going for Theodore’s cavalry. At last we sighted the gleam through the undergrowth, and presently came out on a long stretch of sward running along the water’s edge. The river was about quarter of a mile across, I dare say, and a landscape painter’s dream, grey-green and shining as it slid smoothly by through the little forested islands. The far bank was luxurious foliage backed by green foothills rising to mountains, and to our right, a mile or two downstream, a faint mist hung over the river, with a perfect rainbow above it. Uliba clapped her hands and pointed.
“The Silver Smoke! Am I not the queen of guides, as you said?”
For the first time since we had left Tana there were folk to be seen, fishermen pottering about their ramshackle boats a few hundred yards downstream where the sward margin ended and the jungle overgrew the river’s surface. Closer at hand two girls were busy dhobying clothing and hanging it to dry on a line by the water’s edge, their little coracle drawn up on the bank. They stood up to stare at us, and when one of them waved, Uliba raised a hand. My spirits were rising as we set off down the bank, the birds were carolling, there was a perfumed breeze blowing from the water, we were within a few miles of journey’s end, I w
as absolutely humming “Drink, Puppy, Drink”, the larks and snails were no doubt on their respective wings and thorns, God was in his heaven, and on the verge of the jungle, not twenty yards away, a white-robed helmeted lancer was sitting his horse, watching us.
For three heartbeats we simply stared at each other, while I told myself this couldn’t be one of the troop we’d seen yesterday, they’d not had time – and then his eyes were wide, a hunter sighting the game, I was snatching out my Joslyn, Uliba was shouting “No!”, dashing my hand aside and racing past me, drawing her knife as she ran. Without breaking stride she threw it, straight as an arrow, for his breast, but this fellow knew his business, whipping his shield across to deflect the flying blade, shouting with triumph as he wheeled his mount for the forest.
She’d known that a shot would bring the rest of his gang down on us, but I was bound to risk it now, and was drawing a bead on his back when she stooped, grabbed up a stone, stood poised for an instant, and hurled it after him. It took him just below his helmet rim with a thunk! like an axe hitting wood, his horse reared as he hauled on the reins, and then he was toppling from the saddle, helmet going one way, lance t’other, and hitting the ground with an almighty crash of his back and breast. I bit back a yell of delight, but it was precaution wasted, for before we could stir another step half a dozen lancers were bursting out of the green, taking in the scene in a second, and sweeping down on us.
It was blind instinct that made me blaze away at the leader, for an instant’s thought was enough to convince me that I couldn’t hope to down them all, and it was folly to waste time firing when I could be flying for dear life. Anyway, I’d missed the bastard, and he was dropping his lance-point and charging me. Uliba was flinging stones, the mad bitch, and yelling defiance; she caught the leader full in the clock and he swerved his horse into the path of a comrade, both coming down in a splendid tangle of lashing hooves. She screamed with delight, and I thought, good luck, lass, you give ’em what for, for I ain’t stopping. The river was a bare fifty yards away, and I made for it like a stung whippet; from the tail of my eye I saw Uliba hurl a last missile and then come racing after me.
My goal was the two dhobi wenches who had a boat beached; I’d barely have time to thrust it afloat and leap aboard before the hosts of Midian arrived, but it was the only hope – and even as I high-tailed it with Uliba a few paces behind, I found myself thinking, my stars, I’ve done this before, on the banks of the Ohio, with Cassy the runaway legging it after me and the slave-catchers roaring behind, and they shot me in the arse on the ice-floes, and she’d dragged me to safety – aye, but this time there’d be no Abe Lincoln on the far shore to face down our pursuers …
Hooves were thundering horrid close, and I stole a glance which showed a lancer coming full career, point down, not twenty yards behind me; the dhobi girls were screaming and scattering, I knew I’d never reach their boat in time, and as I tripped and went down on the shingle, Uliba swerved aside in her flight and leaped like a panther into the path of my pursuer, somehow catching his lance just behind the point with its ghastly burden of somebody’s goolies. The glittering steel was diverted, driving into the ground a foot from my hip as I sprawled helpless, the lancer was flung from the saddle, and Uliba, keeping her grip on the weapon, rolled away, came to her feet like an acrobat, wrenched the point free, and drove it into the fallen man’s body, screaming like a banshee.
It was no time for thanks or congratulation: I scrambled up and fairly flung myself at the boat, knocking one of the dhobi lasses flying, seized its prow and thrust it down the bank into the water. It was more like a canoe than their usual woven tubs, and almost capsized as I heaved myself inboard, grabbing wildly for one of the flat sticks which these benighted clowns use as paddles. Still on shore, Uliba was hurling rocks and howling abuse; at her feet the fallen lancer was kicking like a landed fish with his own weapon pinning him to the earth, there were half a dozen of his fellows within ten yards, but keeping a wary distance, one of them nursing an arm to testify to Uliba’s accuracy.
“Noseless pigs! Bullies of the bazaar! Cowardly bastards got by lepers on street-corner whores! Can one unarmed woman make you turn tail, dunghill disturbers that you are!” She was in rare voice, but now two of them couched their lances and charged, and with a last shrieked insult she turned and did a racing dive which brought her within reach of the stern even as I lashed the water with my clumsy oar and the current carried us swiftly downstream and out of their reach. She scrambled in, shouting with laughter and bloodlust, taunting them with obscene curses and gestures as they stood helpless on the shore.
“Procurers of perverts! Offspring of diseased apes! Tell Theodore how Uliba-Wark, Queen of the Gallas, whipped you single-handed!” She stood up to rail at them, and the canoe rocked alarmingly.
“You’ll have us over, rot you – sit down and paddle!” The current was strong, and we would have our work cut out to reach the far bank before it took us down to the little jungly islands where I could see the surface breaking into white water which must mean rocks and rapids. But even as I weighed the distance I saw that it was impossible; the green shore was at least four hundred yards off, and with these near-useless paddles we could hardly make headway across the river.
The nearest islands were perhaps a mile distant; with luck we might adjust our course to find the smoothest water between them. I shouted to Uliba to paddle in harmony, but it was all we could do to keep the crazy little boat steady as the speed of the river increased. I turned my head to see how our pursuers were faring; the stretch of open shore from which we’d escaped was enclosed at its downstream end by jungle, so they would make only slow progress that way, but there were the fisher-folk’s boats, and I thought they might take to the water after us. But no; they were mounting up, in no haste that I could see, apparently giving up the chase.
We were bearing down at speed on the islands now, and the current was so swift that I could see the water absolutely sloping as it rushed between them. I shouted to Uliba, but there was little we could do to steer the boat; it slipped smoothly down the grey foamy slope which broke either side in white flurries as it dashed over the rocks, but immediately ahead the surface was unruffled, and if the canoe could pass through the great eddy at the foot of the watery slope without foundering, there was smooth water beyond. The islands were slipping past – and once again memory took hold, as I recalled the brown flood of the Ganges below Cawnpore, when we had to scramble in panic on to the mudflats with the muggers snapping at our heels.
There were no crocs this far up the Nile, but I didn’t know that as I clung to the gunwale of that rickety craft, absolutely bellowing in dismay as we struck the eddy, wallowed half-submerged for a frightening moment, and then surged through on to the calmer surface. We were sitting in a foot of water, but stayed afloat by a miracle – surface tension, I believe, although I did not define it as such just then. The river was carrying us on at a gentler pace now, but we were in midstream with the banks as far away as ever; we must wait for a bend, when we might be able to guide ourselves to one shore or the other, no matter which, for pursuit must be far behind by now.
I cried this over my shoulder to Uliba, and she called a reply, but I couldn’t catch it above the sound of the river, which seemed to be growing louder. I thought that strange, since we’d left the noisy rapids behind, but then I realised it was coming from ahead, a distant rumbling from beyond another crop of little jungly islands strung across the stream. In the distance there was a mist drifting up, stretching from bank to bank, the rumble was growing to a roar, the speed of the current was increasing, rocking us from side to side, and suddenly Uliba was clutching my shoulder, pointing ahead and yelling:
“The Silver Smoke! The Great Silver Smoke!”
I distinctly remember shouting: “The what?” – and then it struck me like a blow: it was the Ab name of the Blue Nile falls beyond which Queen Masteeat had her camp. Uliba had said nothing of their size, but from the inc
reasing noise and the appearance of white water ahead among the islands, I guessed that they must be more hazardous than the rapids we’d already passed through, and that it would be a sound move to seek terra firma without delay. Had I known that they were the height of Niagara, I dare say I might have joined Uliba’s frenzied paddling with even greater enthusiasm; as it was I flailed the water, blaspheming vigorously at the futility of our efforts to guide the canoe to one of the islands towards which we were rushing. She was shouting something, but the roar of the river had risen to a thunder that blotted out every other noise, even my own anguished bellowing.
It was the damnedest thing: the din was deafening, we were racing along at the very deuce of a clip, and yet the water around us was as smooth as oil. Right in our path was a line of black rocks, great rounded masses gleaming like polished marble, for all the world like the backs of whales, and as our boat collided with the nearest I was sure it must be shattered to pieces. I seized the gunwale, screaming, but the rock must have been slick with river slime, for we shot along its surface for a sickening second before being flung into the eddies beyond; the current whirled the canoe clean round, branches were lashing across my head and shoulders, and I grabbed at them in desperation, tearing my hands on the thorny twigs but holding on, feeling the canoe slew round beneath me.
I’m strong, but how I kept my grip, God knows. We were at the downstream end of a little overgrown islet, a few yards ahead the smooth water was being smashed into foam by the jagged teeth of a rocky ridge, and beyond that a mass of raging white water was vanishing into a mist as thick as London fog. We must be almost on the lip of the fall, and my arms were being dragged from their sockets by the appalling strength of the current tugging the dead weight of the canoe and our two bodies.
The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection Page 387