Empires of Sand

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Empires of Sand Page 57

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)


  “We’re nearly a thousand kilometers from Wargla,” Dianous said. “If we don’t get lost, that is. If we can average twenty-five kilometers a day that’s forty days. Forty days on foot, without food. I don’t know about the water. If we can even find it, we’ll have to carry what we need.”

  “How much water can a man carry?” Paul wondered.

  “I don’t know, with weapons and the heat. Twenty or thirty liters. Not enough. It doesn’t matter anyway. We lost most of our water bags at Tadjenout.”

  A silence fell over the officers. One could walk the whole of France the longest way, and not travel a thousand kilometers.

  “Thank God it isn’t summer,” Pobeguin said.

  El Madani snorted. “You’ll think it’s summer.” “The only thing we have plenty of is ammunition,” Dianous said. “Everyone has a rifle, some more than one. Most have pistols. We haven’t seen the Tuareg since Tadjenout. Maybe they’re content with their camels and the horses, and will leave us alone.”

  El Madani grunted. “Don’t be such a fool,” he said. “They will be content with our blood.”

  Paul flinched at the obvious disrespect. Yet Dianous let it pass. El Madani’s views of the Tuareg, always expressed openly on the way south, had taken on considerable weight since Tadjenout, Dianous thought too much of the man’s experience and cunning to treat him like an enlisted man in any event. The old man was an intimidating presence. If in some perversion of standard military practice competence somehow aligned with rank, it would be General Madani giving the orders, and they all knew it.

  “If Madani’s right and the Tuareg are nearby we should find them and fight,” Paul said. “Take our camels back.”

  Dianous shook his head. “We’ll never find them.”

  “We missed our chance,” El Madani said. “Now they’ll find us.”

  “That’s enough, Madani,” Dianous snapped.

  Pobeguin asked Paul about his own experiences. As best he could remember, he told them everything that had happened since he’d fled from behind the camels. Almost everything. He didn’t know how or what to explain about Moussa, so he said nothing, leaving out the cave. He ended his story with the loss of his water. He couldn’t remember anything after that.

  “Mais, mon lieutenant,” Pobeguin said, puzzled. He was a cheerful, hearty man with a full thick beard and lively eyes. “You didn’t lose your water. I found your Targui’s water bag just next to you. It’s the only one like it we have. It was nearly full. The ground was wet around your head. You’d poured the water all over yourself before you passed out.” Paul gave him a blank look. El Madani was deep in thought and said nothing of the camel tracks he had seen.

  Dianous was puzzled. “The first night you were unconscious under the Targui. The second, you were bitten. The third, we found you. N’est-ce pas?” Paul nodded at the summary. “But we didn’t find you until the fourth day after Tadjenout,” Dianous said. “You lost a night somewhere.”

  Paul hadn’t thought to account for the extra night. He shrugged. “I guess I might have forgotten the harem.” He grinned. “They kept me longer than I thought. The women here are crazy for love.”

  El Madani joined in the laughter, but his mind was on the tracks.

  That night as Paul drifted off to sleep, he thought of the water. He had warned Moussa to stay away, and obviously he had not. It changed nothing.

  In the morning he not only felt but looked better as well. El Madani was pleased. Paul’s hand had returned to nearly its normal size, but the tirailleur told him to watch it closely. “It can rot,” he said, “like your brains must have already done when you went poking around those rocks in the first place.”

  Paul laughed sheepishly. Madani studied his face. “May I ask, Lieutenant, where you learned to treat the wound of the agrab in such a manner?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember what I did, exactly. I must have put something on it.”

  “That is most interesting,” El Madani said. “The only people I know who do it that way are the Tuareg.”

  “Lucky coincidence, I suppose.”

  “Amazing, is more like it. From your reaction that was a highly venomous scorpion. Should have killed you. I found a paste in the wound where you had cut it, from a plant called the effellem. It is extraordinary you would know to use it, Lieutenant. Even more so that you would have it with you.”

  Paul shifted uncomfortably. “I told you – there’s a lot I don’t remember.”

  Madani nodded. “Oui, Lieutenant,” he agreed. “A lot.”

  * * *

  The column stirred to life in the blackness before the dawn. Sergeant Pobeguin was the first up, checking that the sentries remained alert, making flank assignments and seeing to it that all the food and water was collected. Excess clothes and blankets were abandoned. The men had begun their retreat carrying as much as they could hold, but they had been fresher then, and their eyes for what was important had been bigger then than their resolve after five days of walking. They jettisoned everything they could and still struggled with their loads.

  Paul watched them, disturbed. “Only five days. Already they look worn out, and they still have water and food,” he said to Dianous. “They don’t look in shape to make it another week.”

  Dianous said nothing. His silence made Paul think wistfully of Remy, whose company he missed terribly.

  Paul carried a new rifle, food and water, a blanket, and a robe. He tied everything together and slung it over his good shoulder. He’d lost his broad-brimmed hat that had been specially made in Paris. It had provided excellent protection from the sun, but only Pobeguin and Dianous still had theirs. Paul knelt at one of the abandoned piles of clothing and ripped a shirt into lengths, tying the ends together and wrapping it around his head.

  He noticed Sandeau, one of the engineers, struggling to keep up at the rear of the column. He was a frail, slender man, his bony frame lost in the too-big clothes he wore. He had a bookish, kindly face and was well into middle age. His shoulders sagged and his spindly legs wobbled as he fought to control the bags on his back. His face was drawn and pale. A cloud of flies hovered around him, invading his eyes, nose, and mouth. The engineer’s hands were occupied with his load, so he was trying to blow them off, blinking and squinting and working his face to get them away with little success. Paul strode up to him and brushed them away.

  “Here, let me carry those for you,” he said.

  Sandeau looked sideways up at the younger, taller man and shook his head. “Non, merci,” he said, “you’ve had a harder time of it than I, Lieutenant. I’ll be all right. Just slow, that’s all.”

  Without arguing Paul lifted the water and food bags off Sandeau’s shoulders. The man started to protest, but the relief in his eyes was evident as he felt the load lift.

  “Bless you, Lieutenant.” He sighed. “Just when one thinks he can go no farther, the Lord sees his burden and lightens it.” He looked out at the plain and at the long line of men stretching out before them toward the horizon. He brushed at the flies that had returned to plague him. “I’m going to die here.” He said it lightly, matter-of-factly, as he might have said, “It’s cold this morning.”

  Paul scoffed. “Nonsense, Sandeau, we’re all going to make it back.” He thought his own voice sounded hollow as he said it. He hoped Sandeau hadn’t noticed.

  The engineer only smiled. “Don’t worry about it on my account, Lieutenant. I don’t mind. Really I don’t. I’ve drawn my bridges and planned my roads. My wife died last year.”

  He waved his hand as Paul started to say something. “It’s why I came along. I’ve nothing left at home, nothing to keep me. And I’m tired of drawing, actually. I think I liked bridges best. Roads are so boring. You don’t ever really think much about a road, except where it might be taking you. But a bridge – ah, now there’s a work of art. Something to admire, something solid spanning the impassable.” His eyes were animated.

  “I did the bridge over the Seine at
Rouen. Do you know it?” Paul shook his head. “No matter; it’s lovely. The river’s wide there. They used ferries before. Pay and wait, wait and pay. Sink and drown, sometimes. But no more. It was my best work, I think. I have a photograph of it at home. Steel and concrete, a perfect design. It’s beautiful, free, fast, and won’t sink.” He limped along, trying to hurry as he talked, but they were dropping farther back from the column.

  “My wife thought this railroad idea was just the thing. She read about it in the papers. She was quite sick for a long time, confined to bed, and read a lot. Talked more than ever, which I’d have thought impossible. Talked my ears off at night. She said I ought to show them how a railroad was done. She knew she was going to die. I think she wanted to be sure I had something to do afterward.” He was quiet for a moment, remembering. His eyes misted. He waved at the desert. “I didn’t understand this place before. Just what she read me. Even without the Tuareg, I’ve seen what fools they are in Paris. They’ll never put a railroad here, Lieutenant, not in two hundred years. Oh, you could build one, all right, but it wouldn’t last. The dunes would smother it, and the rains would wash it away. The only things that survive here are things that can adapt. A railroad can’t adapt. It’s why I’m going to die; I’m afraid I can’t, either.” He stumbled on a rock. Paul helped steady him.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. Would you care to pray with me?” Paul shook his head. Sandeau shut his eyes and held Paul’s arm for guidance as he walked. “Hail, holy queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears…”

  The engineer’s voice had a pleasing, soothing rhythm. Paul remembered the words. He’d said them many times at St. Paul’s. But now he felt as empty as the plain, and no words could fill him up. Sandeau crossed himself and opened his eyes. They were brighter.

  “Thank you for your help, Lieutenant. I’ll be fine.”

  “Call out if you need anything.” Paul squeezed him on the shoulder and walked ahead. The sun was barely up over the horizon, but already promised a blistering day. Paul knew most of the men he passed, greeting them by name. Most were subdued, their expressions grim. When he passed Belkasem, puffing hard from the strain of walking, their eyes met. The butcher looked away. El Madani had told Paul what the man had done. Paul felt no bitterness, but no particular forgiveness, either. He was glad the man hadn’t killed him instead of just stealing the boots.

  Within an hour Paul was sagging under the extra weight of Sandeau’s bags. He had tried to do too much too quickly. Hakeem saw it and reproached him. “Even camels have enough sense to complain when overloaded. Surely the patron is shrewder than a camel?” Paul laughed and gave up one of the bags. The boy shouldered it effortlessly.

  Of all the men in the column, only Hakeem and Pobeguin seemed to treat the situation as if it were an adventure. Their spirits were chronically high. Pobeguin sang as they walked, loud and off key, stopping only when a pebble struck him on the back. He turned and glared at the silent line of Algerians trudging behind him, but then he laughed, and sang even louder. He was a practical man and quickly took over the rationing of food and water. He announced when it was all right to drink, permitting it much less frequently than they would have liked, but occasionally going without himself, to offer an example. The man’s energy was boundless. Even when broiling he seemed to bounce when he walked. By noon, his vitality was annoying.

  The two French troopers, Brame and Marjolet, stayed close together. Brame was a lanky, good-looking Parisian with a shock of black hair and a slender face. He had been Flatters’s much-abused batman. For him, the quiet retreat was a blessed contrast to serving the volatile colonel, and he seemed almost content. His chin showed the first sproutings of a beard. The colonel had insisted he shave, as had Brame’s father before him, so the first personal items he abandoned for the return march were his shaving things. Marjolet was a tall, strapping dark-skinned youth from southern France who’d enlisted when his family’s vineyards died of disease. He cooked for the French members of the expedition, selected by Flatters for the task in that sacred military tradition of choosing only men who couldn’t cook to be cooks. Paul supposed that only he himself would have been a better choice.

  Pobeguin’s singing eventually died. Those who had listened didn’t know whether to feel grateful or not, because in the silence the sun seemed to press in more than ever, the plain shimmering with relentless fire. Weary feet shuffled on endless gravel, making the only noise except for an occasional dry cough or murmured conversation. With no reference points on the horizon, there was no way to mark their progress. It appeared as if they weren’t moving, that they were trudging along some massive and cruel treadmill, going nowhere at all.

  In the afternoon Dianous called a short rest halt. The men gratefully collapsed on the ground, and Pobeguin let them drink. Men propped blankets over rifles or swords to make shelter. Some tried to sleep but found it impossible. Others sat motionless, staring into the void.

  Suddenly one of the sentries approached at a run, raising a distant shout. His figure looked oddly compressed by the distortion of the heat, the light playing tricks with his body. At first he seemed to be running with no legs, and then he was running on air. The effect might have been comical except he was clearly alarmed, waving his arms and yelling. Paul and Dianous ran to meet him. Out of breath and sweating hard, he pointed east.

  “Les Tuareg, Lieutenant,” he panted.

  “El Madani! Pobeguin! Quickly!” The four of them followed the sentry. After a few minutes they came to a fault line where the plain dropped sharply away and then stretched out into the distance. The sentry motioned them down and they crawled to the edge.

  Below them, a few hundred meters away, rode a long column of meharistes. Paul drew in his breath. There were nearly two hundred Tuareg, all mounted, riding on a course parallel to their own. He could faintly hear their conversation and laughter.

  Dianous studied them through his field glasses. “Merde,” he said quietly. He handed the glasses to Paul, who rested on his elbows to stare through them. The long column was well provisioned, equipped with extra pack camels, all fully loaded. A few of the Tuareg carried the Gras rifles they’d captured. As his glasses swept along the column he was overtaken with rage.

  The Tuareg had taken six prisoners at Tadjenout. The men were walking in a gap between the ranks of their captors. It was the manner in which they were forced to walk that was so horrible. Paul nearly cried out for them. None of them wore shirts. Even from the distance, their skin showed blistered and raw. Leather hoods had been forced over their heads. Paul could only imagine the agony they caused as they squeezed tightly, blinding them and magnifying the terrible heat.

  The first man in the line of prisoners had had a metal ring forced down under his shoulder blade. His back was covered with blood and he was clearly the weakest of them all. Two ropes were attached to the ring. One led to the tail of the camel in front of him, the other back to the second prisoner in line, where it had been tied tightly like a noose, and the rope passed from him to the next, on to the end. Each movement of the camel had a ripple effect down the wretched line. If the lead prisoner couldn’t time his motions to coincide with those of the faster camel, the rope pulled at the ring, and he screamed under his hood, lurching forward. The motion would jerk at the nooses around the necks of those who followed, choking them. If one of them stumbled the others fell, and only when the whole group was down would the Targui on the lead camel stop to let them get up.

  “God have mercy on them,” Paul whispered. He let the field glasses down, thought for a moment, then turned to Dianous. “We’ve got to take them. We’ve got to attack.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Dianous said. “They outnumber us four to one. They’ve got camels. We’re on foot. There’s nothing we can do except guarantee the prisoners will die.”

  “They can’t have much a
mmunition. We’ve got plenty.”

  “You don’t know what they have. We cannot mount a direct attack.”

  “Then we could do it tonight. Raid their camp, steal some camels, and set the prisoners free.”

  “And kill some Tuareg,” El Madani muttered. Pobeguin grunted in assent.

  Dianous shook his head. “They know exactly where we are. They know we’re well armed. Do you think they won’t have guards posted? Do we just walk into camp, excuse ourselves and simply walk off with everything?” There was scorn, but something more in his voice. Paul couldn’t quite make out what it was.

  “We could mount an attack from the far side of their camp,” Paul insisted. “Divert them, then send in some other men from this side.”

  Dianous was having none of it. “They’d be expecting something like that. The prisoners would be dead before you could even find them.”

  Paul pointed at the tormented line of prisoners staggering below them. “Look at them, for God’s sake. They’ll die anyway, if we don’t try.”

  Madani agreed. “I think we could do it, sir,” he said. “Two hours before dawn. It’s worth a try.”

  Dianous straightened himself up to a sitting position. His eyes narrowed, his temper flaring. “I’m telling you it’s stupid,” he snapped. “I won’t permit it.”

  Paul sat up beside him, his teeth clenched. “All right, forget the prisoners,” he hissed. “That column is going to follow us until we have no more strength. Do you want to fight them in twenty days, where they choose, or fight them now, while we still can? It’s a hundred degrees. We’re on foot and just about out of food. How many days do you think we can do it? How many days do you think Sandeau can make it? We can ride back to Wargla on those camels, Dianous. At least we’ll have a chance!”

 

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