By the time Moussa could return with new supplies, all the French would be dead.
* * *
They arrived at the well of Aïn El Kerma in the middle of the night, half-walking, half-dragging themselves to the pit. Worn fingers scrabbled at reluctant soil, trying to reach water. Men argued for their share and guerbas filled slowly. The camels were ignored. They would have to wait until later. It took hours to give everyone a drink.
Before dawn the familiar cry of the tirailleur summoned the Muslims to prayer. Paul felt Floop nuzzling him, wanting to be petted. He rolled over and opened his eyes. As they adjusted to the dim light he froze. In the distance he saw lances and turbans and meharis and a malevolent long line of Tuareg, watching the sleeping camp.
“Tuareg!” he cried, leaping to his feet.
The camp roared to life as men gripped their guns and orders were shouted. The line of Tuareg did not stir.
“Dianous, this is our chance,” Paul cried. He pointed excitedly. “Look where they are! They’ve left themselves vulnerable. If we move quickly we can gain the high ground, there, by that rise! Fifteen men there, another fifteen over there, the rest here! We can get them in a crossfire. If we can’t take them, at least we can do some damage, and get them on the run for a change! We’ve got to hurry!”
Dianous acted as though he hadn’t heard a word. He pushed Paul aside. “Pobeguin! Order the men into defensive positions. Form firing lines.”
As Pobeguin worked to establish the lines the Tuareg quietly began to move, abandoning their position and riding toward the north. Soon they were out of sight completely.
“You see?” said Dianous, pointing. ‘We couldn’t have done anything anyway. It was too late. They don’t want to face our guns. They want no battle here.” He said it with a mixture of triumph and uncertainty. He looked around to see if others might agree. El Madani looked away. Pobeguin was busy. Brame and Marjolet looked noncommittal.
“Of course they don’t want to face our guns,” Paul said. “That is exactly why we must make them.” He was angry, struggling with what he ought to do. He thought of the words of the tirailleur Mustafa ben Jardi. We are willing to go with you, to fight like men. We are ready to obey your commands.
It would be mutiny. But it might be the only way to survive. He was convinced now that Dianous would never fight. He would only run.
At that moment three meharis appeared from the southeast.
“The same ones from yesterday,” Dianous said as he watched their approach. “I can’t tell about the men for sure, but I recognize their camels.” The Tuareg were carrying heavy bags and approached the well. The bags thumped onto the ground, stirring up a cloud of dust.
“El Madani!” Dianous called out. “Pay them! Ask about the sheep!”
El Madani and Pobeguin trudged out to meet them.
“What of the sheep and camels you promised?” Madani asked as Pobeguin counted out the money for the dates.
“The Kel Rela Tuareg are too near just now,” one of them said. “Their numbers are too strong for us. We will return this afternoon, after they have gone.” They took their money and rode away.
The ranks of tirailleurs broke as men scrambled for the bags of dates. Again they were ripped open, frenzied hands plunging into the dark sweet mess. There were enough dates this time, plenty for everyone, but that didn’t stop hoarding and quarrels. Again Belkasem blackened eyes and bloodied noses as he stuffed his pack. Floop was everywhere among busy feet, picking up pieces that fell to the ground, wolfing them down.
Paul looked at the teeming mass of greed and decided to wait for his share. His stomach was so shrunken a few more minutes wouldn’t matter. He decided to walk the perimeter of the camp to make certain the Tuareg had planned no treachery. El Madani had the same thought and went the other way. Many of the Shamba cameleers sat unmoving, staring sullenly at the wild pack of men fighting over the food. Dianous, Brame, and Marjolet shared a fire, boiling their dates to soften them. Pobeguin was trying to get Sandeau to eat.
Paul and El Madani completed their circuit and met at the far end of the camp, between the well and the place where the Tuareg force had stood. They sat down together in the shadow of a rock that sheltered them from behind.
“It’s bizarre,” Paul said. “Tuareg just over the hill trying to kill us. Others selling us food. I don’t understand it.”
“This is not a place for understanding,” El Madani said.
Paul considered what he ought to say. El Madani was the most experienced of the tirailleurs, the most respected. He himself trusted the man. He had to know how El Madani would act if Paul attempted to relieve Dianous of command. The others would follow him.
“Mustafa ben Jardi came to me,” Paul began. El Madani raised his eyebrows but said nothing. “He said some things that I thought out of order at the time, about our failure to fight the Tuareg. He said—”
Paul never had a chance to finish. Shots rang out. Men shouted. Paul and El Madani were up in an instant, weapons at the ready. They looked toward camp, expecting to see an attack under way. But there were no Tuareg in sight. Instead, it was as if the camp had gone suddenly insane. Men were screaming and dancing, scratching at their faces and eyes, ripping off their shirts, fighting each other. Paul watched incredulously as Dianous ran crazily around the fire, shooting his rifle into the air.
“What in God’s name—?” Paul looked uncertainly at El Madani.
El Madani began to run, slowly at first, then faster as it dawned on him. “I should have known, w’allahi! The Tuareg have attacked us after all. It is a plant they call efeleleh. Nightshade. They’ve poisoned the dates.”
Together they ran into the nightmare.
Hakeem was shrieking and thrashing wildly. He didn’t recognize Paul and pushed him away with superhuman strength. He threw himself onto the coals of a fire, bellowing and tearing at his hair. Desperately Paul pulled him off, stamping at the smoldering cloth. Hakeem was a smoking flurry of arms and legs, struggling to get up. “The devil!” he choked, his voice thick and barely intelligible. “There! In there! I must touch him!” He lunged again for the fire. Paul knocked him unconscious. He tore rope from a pack and quickly bound his ankles and feet.
Some of the tirailleurs were disappearing into the open desert, stripping off their clothes as they ran, trying to cool the fires inside. Paul was able to stop one, and then another, but there was no reasoning with them. They were delirious and hysterical. They sobbed and moaned. He hit them until they stopped. El Madani had fallen on top of Dianous and had gotten his weapon away. Pobeguin was stuffing his mouth with sand. Both officers had to be tied up.
Brame, the colonel’s batman, was walking in a lopsided circle, his gait clumsy. He tried to say something to Paul but only gagged. Then he laughed madly, flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth. Paul shook him by the shoulders, trying to calm him. Brame’s face lit with terror. His eyes went wild, filled with fiends and desert dragons. Paul slapped him. He sat heavily and started to sob. Paul turned to get rope and the next instant Brame was all over him. He screamed something unintelligible and bashed Paul on the back with a rock. El Madani materialized and held Brame’s arms while Paul got him tied.
Paul was a dervish swirling through camp, trying to douse the flames of a world gone mad. He looked desperately for help. Healthy men who had not eaten any dates sat cringing in dread. He yelled at them, and then hit one of the men viciously, trying to snap the paralysis. It seemed to shake them from their fright and at last they began to move. He dispatched four to act as sentries in case the Tuareg attacked. Others ran off to get more water from the well. A few began tearing cloth into strips that could be used to bind the poisoned men. The rest plunged in to help subdue the raving victims, who staggered and danced crazily through the camp.
One of the tirailleurs tried to club another to death and then turned the gun on himself. Men lay sobbing on the ground, hugging their rifles or curled up into tight balls. One of the Sham
ba tumbled head-first into the well and drowned. Paul had no time to think, only to react as he gave orders and tried to restore sanity. Within the first half hour the worst of those stricken had been tightly trussed and laid out next to each other on the ground, a retching line of tormented humanity. They struggled against their restraints and yelled at demons only they could see. Stomachs heaved and chests labored for breath. Their skin was hot and flushed, their pupils dilated. Only Sandeau was quiet. His breathing was shallow, his stare vacant. His limbs jerked gently every now and then.
When Hakeem regained consciousness he was burning up. His head thrashed from side to side. Paul tried to soothe him, but Hakeem still didn’t know him. An angry rash covered his face and neck. His belly was swollen. Paul tried to give him water but he couldn’t swallow. He choked on it. He opened his eyes and panicked. “I’m blind, I’m blind!” he cried. He struggled fiercely to get loose. Paul could do nothing for him.
The sounds in the camp haunted Paul as he worked. Men whimpered, others cried. “I want to die,” Mustafa ben Jardi pleaded through clenched teeth. “Kill me, kill me, oh merciful Allah take me now. Don’t let me be. Death to me. Please! Death now!” Paul tried to shut his ears to it. He moved away to help another man. A few moments later Mustafa fell silent. Paul looked over. One of the tirailleurs hadn’t been able to stand it, either. He had hit Mustafa with his rifle until the noise stopped.
When Paul had done everything he could do he collapsed onto the ground, exhausted. And then he had an awful thought. He pulled himself to his feet and moved quickly through the camp, past the trussed victims, past healthy men who talked in low voices, their eyes spooked. Paul’s eyes darted everywhere, looking, hoping, searching.
“Floop!”
He tried to keep the panic from his voice. There was no response. There was a pit in his stomach, a terrible knot of fear.
“Floop!” Merde, where was he?
He looked beseechingly at the men. They shrugged or shook their heads. He ran faster, to the well and to the rocks just beyond. Nothing.
“Floop!”
And then he saw.
Floop had made it just out onto the flat. He had been trying to find shade, perhaps, to cool himself. He had not gone far when he collapsed. He had crawled then, dragging his rear legs and leaving a wide trail on the ground. Then his front legs had given out. He had stopped moving when Paul got to him. His eyes were open but their life was gone.
Paul fell to his knees and gently cradled Floop’s head in his lap. He rocked back and forth, talking softly and rubbing the dog’s golden coat. And then his wrenching cry rose up over the well of Aïn El Kerma.
* * *
From the distance atop the hill the Tuareg watched silently as the efeleleh did its work and the French column disintegrated into hell. By order of Attici there was no move to attack. The time would soon be right, but for the moment he intended to let his broth of poison simmer in the desert.
Many of the Tuareg were deeply troubled. Taher made for his mehari, to return to the south. “Poison is not the manner of the Ihaggaren,” he said. “Moussa was right. There is no honor in this.”
“Go, then,” said Attici, shrugging. He could not order Taher to stay, nor the dozen others who followed him. It was their right to object. There would be plenty of men of courage left to complete the task at hand.
Attici moved to the side of the hill closest to Aïn El Kerma. He stood with Tamrit and Mahdi. “The second blow falls upon the barbarian,” he said. “The world will soon come to know the strength of the people of the veil. Ahitagel will be pleased.”
Mahdi wasn’t listening. His eyes were on the still form of the dog and the man kneeling over it.
Mahdi was truly moved.
It was a pity, about the dog.
* * *
Paul stumbled and fell to his knees. His muscles quivered painfully. They were making a forced night march, trying to make Amguid. There was no room on the camels, already overloaded with other men, so Paul was carrying Hakeem on his back.
Sandeau had died. No one noticed until he slipped from the ropes and dangled below the belly of the camel. There had been no time or tools or energy to make a proper grave. Paul scooped heaps of sand over him until his hands were bloody. He was too numb to find tears.
“Je suis désolée,” he whispered. “I wish, Sandeau, that I could have done more. I am sorry that I have no prayers.”
Dianous and Pobeguin were barely coherent, just able to walk by themselves. Brame and Marjolet held each other up, clutching their rifles and staggering in a daze. “The efeleleh works long,” El Madani said. “They will not fully recover for some days.”
The column was in wretched condition, devastated and demoralized. There had not been enough time to rest before moving. Five men were missing or dead. More than thirty were desperately ill. Even after two days the poison left them babbling and half-mad. They had to be pushed or dragged in the right direction. More than once Paul found tirailleurs dropping their rifles to the ground, leaving themselves defenseless as they marched forward. Some did it stupidly from the efeleleh, simply forgetting what the guns were for. Others did it because they were beginning to give up.
“What does it matter?” asked one when Paul berated him. “What good is a gun against the devil? How can you shoot what you cannot see? How can you kill what will not die?”
Paul was enraged. He drew his pistol and waved it in the tirailleur’s face. “You would leave your weapons for the enemy to use against us?” His voice carried into the distance. He fired his gun into the air. The column was shocked to a halt. No one had ever seen Lieutenant deVries that way. He seemed quite as mad as the rest of them.
“It is not the devil we face! These men have no supernatural powers! They are primitive savages, do you hear me? Bullets will kill them! I will shoot the next man who abandons his weapon! Do you understand?” Meekly, the tirailleur nodded and picked up his rifle.
* * *
The battle came where El Madani said it would, at Amguid.
They saw the dunes first, a high range that skirted the western approaches to the well. Beyond were the heights of the Tassili, a plateau of bizarre shapes and sandstone mysteries. It was a rugged and beautiful place. The column reached the top of a long ridge that dropped steeply away into a deep gorge. At the bottom of the gorge was the stream they had all dreamed of reaching. And between the column and the stream, arrayed in a long line, sat the Tuareg on their meharis, barring the way.
Paul eased Hakeem to the ground. He groaned but remained unconscious. Paul studied the Tuareg through his field glasses. He felt his chest tightening. They had become more than the enemy. They had become an object of loathing. He wanted to jump up and take them all by himself, to give each of them a death, an execution as terrible as the deaths they had dealt. He fought to still his heart.
“They have carbines,” he said to Dianous as the lieutenant sagged down next to him. “But not many. They’re in a terrible position for defense. We can take them.”
“There are too many,” whispered Dianous, too weak to talk. “It would be suicide.”
Paul blew up. “For God’s sake, when will you stop cringing before them? You’re no better than the tirailleurs who have been throwing down their weapons! Why not just walk down there and surrender? Why wait to die, if you won’t fight? What kind of man are you? You’re a coward!”
Dianous reddened and lashed out, trying to strike Paul, but he missed and fell weakly to the ground. “You have no right,” he gasped. “You will obey orders, Lieutenant deVries. Look behind you. These men are in no condition to fight. They’re already half-dead. They haven’t anything left.”
Paul stared at the men arrayed behind them down the slope. Only twenty remained healthy; of those only twelve were riflemen. Yet Paul saw no other option.
“We have no choice now, Dianous. We have to fight here or we’re going to die for sure.”
Dianous shook his head again. “Wait, I
tell you. See what they do.”
Paul made up his mind. “I’m through waiting,” he said, and he started to crawl backward.
“I’m through arguing,” said Dianous. His hand was not steady, but his pistol was leveled at Paul’s head. “If you do anything except what I order, I’ll shoot you down right here.”
* * *
Attici motioned and the first wave of Ihaggaren roared forward in attack, fifty screaming warriors waving their swords and hefting their shields, their meharis bellowing, the noise shattering the silence that had enveloped the gorge. Even armed only with medieval weapons, they were terrifying.
All up and down the French line the tirailleurs struggled to get organized, to focus their fire. El Madani ran back and forth shouting orders. The men fired wildly at first, then with more precision and discipline as their training kicked in. Their guns roared in the gorge. Paul and Dianous began firing at the onrushing mass of warriors, their quarrel forgotten. Paul hit a Targui and felt a surge of excitement as the man tumbled from his mehari. He shot again and missed, then again, and another fell. His blood rushed with the fever of it all, his arms steady, his fatigue forgotten.
The charging Tuareg succumbed quickly to the deadly onslaught of the Gras rifles. A dozen had fallen when the others hastily retreated. Dust and noise choked the gorge as the Tuareg reorganized quickly, then charged once again. They swooped down in another frontal assault, while others mounted silent attacks on the flanks as their warriors crawled in to attack unwary tirailleurs with spears and knives. Men shouted and died. For hours it went on, violent bursts of terror and death interspersed with quiet anticipation.
Through it all the Tuareg rifles were noticeably silent. “They must have no ammunition,” Dianous said.
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