by Wilbur Smith
“The Caliph comes to us now. As soon as he arrives you can order the assault to begin.” Kadem turned and went to meet the palanquin that eight slaves were carrying up the hill. It was covered with a sun canopy of gold and blue, and when they set it down Zayn al-Din stepped out.
He was no longer the chubby child whom Dorian had thrashed in the harem on Lamu island and whose foot he had maimed in the struggle to protect Yasmini from the torments Zayn had heaped upon her. He still limped, but the puppy-fat had fallen away long ago from his frame. A lifetime of intrigue and constant strife had hardened his features as it had sharpened his wits. His eyes were quick and acquisitive, his manner imperious. If it were not for the cruel lines of his mouth and the fierce cunning in his dark eyes, he might have been handsome. Kadem and Koots prostrated themselves before him. In the beginning Koots had found this form of respect abhorrent. However, like the Oriental attire he had adopted, it had become part of his new existence.
Zayn gestured to his two generals to rise. They followed him to the brow of the hill, and looked down over the open ground on which the assault force was drawn up. Zayn studied the dispositions of the troops with a practised eye. Then he nodded. “Proceed!” His voice was high-pitched, almost girlish. When he had first heard it, Koots had despised Zayn for it, but the voice was the only feminine thing about him. He had fathered a hundred and twenty-three children, and only sixteen were girls. He had slain his enemies in thousands, many with his own sword.
“One red rocket.” Koots nodded to his aide-de-camp. Swiftly the order was relayed down the back slope of the hill to the signallers. The rocket sparkled like a ruby as it rose into the cloudless sky on a long silver tail of smoke. From the foot of the hill they heard faint cheering, and the massed troops swarmed forward towards the walls. A slave stood in front of Zayn, who rested his long brass telescope on the man’s shoulder, using him as a living bipod.
The leading ranks of Turks had reached the ditch below the walls when suddenly the Sprite came into view from behind the stone ramparts. She was followed almost immediately by the Revenge. Zayn and the officers switched their telescopes to the two ships.
“Those are the ships in which the traitor, al-Salil, arrived in Muscat,” snapped Kadem. “Our spies warned us of their presence.”
Zayn said nothing, but his features altered at the mention of the name. He felt a stab of pain in his crippled foot, and the acid taste of hatred rose in the back of his throat.
“Their guns are run out.” Koots stared at them through the glass. “They have our battalions in enfilade. Send a galloper to warn them,” he snarled at his aide-de-camp.
“We have no horses,” the man reminded him.
“Go yourself!” Koots seized his shoulder and shoved him away down the slope. “Run, you useless dog, or I shall have you shot from a cannon’s mouth.” His Arabic was becoming more fluent every day. The man raced away down the slope, shouting, waving his arms and pointing towards the small squadron of warships. However, the Turks were fully launched upon the attack, and none looked back.
“Signal the recall?” Kadem suggested, but they all knew it was too late for that. They watched in silence. Suddenly the leading ship erupted in a cloud of white powder smoke. She heeled slightly to the broadside of her long black cannons, then came back on even keel, but her hull was blotted out by the billowing smoke cloud. Only her masts showed high above it. The thunderous sound of the blast reached their ears only seconds after the discharge, then rolled away in diminishing echoes among the distant hills.
The watchers on the hilltop turned their telescopes back to the dense pack of humanity on the plain below. The havoc shocked even these old soldiers, who were hardened to the carnage of the battlefield. The grape-shot spread so that each blast cut a swathe twenty paces wide through the massed battalions. Like the scythe blade through a field of ripe wheat, it left not a single one standing in its path. Chain-mail and bronze armour offered the same protection as a sheet of brittle parchment. Severed heads, bearded and still wearing their soup-bowl helmets, were tossed into the air. Torsos, with arms and legs torn off, were piled upon each other. The cries of the dying and wounded carried clearly to the men on the hilltop.
The Sprite put up her helm and tacked round into the open waters of the bay. The Revenge sailed serenely into her place. On shore the survivors stood in stunned dismay, unable to fathom the extent of the disaster that had swept through their ranks. As the Revenge levelled her cannon on them, the moans of the wounded were drowned out by the survivors’ wails of despair. Few had the presence of mind to throw themselves flat against the earth. They dropped the scaling ladders, turned their backs on the menace of the guns and ran.
The Revenge loosed her broadside upon them. Her shot swept the field. She put up her helm and followed her sister ship round.
The Sprite completed her tack across the wind, then came back on the other leg, offering her port battery to the fleeing Turks. Meanwhile her starboard battery had reloaded with canvas bags of grape, and the gunners were standing ready to take their next turn.
Like dancers performing a stately minuet, the two ships went through a series of elaborate figures-of-eight. Each time their guns bore they loosed another thunderclap of smoke, flame and cast-iron grape-shot across the narrow strip of open water.
After the Sprite had completed her second pass, Mansur snapped his telescope shut and told Kumrah, “There is nothing more to fire at. Run in the guns, take her out into the bay.” The two ships sailed back blithely to their anchorage under the protection of the guns on the parapets of the city walls.
Zayn and his two generals surveyed the field. Corpses littered the ground, thick as autumn leaves.
“How many?” asked Zayn, in his high girlish voice.
“Not more than three hundred,” Kadem hazarded.
“No, no! Fewer.” Koots shook his head. “A hundred and fifty, two hundred at the most.”
“They are only Turks, and another hundred dhows full of them will arrive before the week is out.” Zayn nodded dispassionately. “We must begin digging the approach trenches and throw up a wall of gabions filled with sand along the bayside to protect our men from the ships.”
“Will Your Majesty order the fleet to take up a blockading station across the entrance to the bay?” Kadem asked respectfully. “We must bottle up those two ships of al-Salil and, at the same time, prevent supplies of food reaching the city by sea.”
“The orders have already been given,” Zayn told him loftily. “The English consul will place his own ship at the head of the fleet. His is the only vessel to match those of the enemy for speed. Sir Guy will prevent them breaking out through our blockade and escaping to the open ocean.”
“Al-Salil and his bastard must not be allowed to escape.” Kadem’s eyes lit with the dark mesmeric glare as he said the name.
“My own hatred for him exceeds yours. Abubaker was my brother and al-Salil murdered him. There are other old scores, too, almost as compelling, which I still have to settle with him,” Zayn reminded him. “Despite this setback, we have the noose round his neck. Now we will draw it tight.”
Over the next weeks Dorian watched the development of the siege from his command post on the minaret. The enemy fleet sailed round the peninsula and deployed across the entrance to the bay, just out of range of the batteries on the walls or even of the long nine-pounders on the two schooners. Some of the larger, less manoeuvrable dhows were anchored on the twenty-fathom line where the sea bottom shelved in. The more nimble vessels patrolled back and forth in the deeper waters, ready to seize any supply ships trying to enter the bay, or to intercept the two schooners if they tried to break through.
The graceful hull and the elegant raked masts of the Arcturus hovered in the distance, sometimes hidden by the cliffs, sometimes dropping below the horizon. At intervals Dorian heard the distant rumble of her cannons as she fell on some unfortunate small vessel attempting to bring supplies in to Muscat. Then she reappear
ed from a different quarter. Mansur and Dorian discussed her as they watched her through their telescopes.
“She points well up into the wind when she is close-hauled, unlike any of the dhows. She can carry a spread of canvas nearly half as large again as either of our ships. She has eighteen guns to our twelve,” Dorian murmured. “She is a lovely ship.”
Mansur found himself wondering if Verity was aboard her. Then he thought, If Sir Guy is there, of course she must be with him. She is his voice. He could not do without her. He thought of having to turn his guns on the Arcturus if Verity were standing on the open deck. I will worry about that when the time comes, he decided, then answered his father. “The Sprite and the Revenge are able to point higher. Between them they have twenty-four guns to Sir Guy’s eighteen. Both Kumrah and Batula know these waters like lovers. Ruby Cornish is a babe in arms compared to them.” Mansur smiled with the reckless abandon of youth. “Besides, we will make our stand here. We will send Zayn and his Turks running like curs with live coals tucked under their tails.”
“I wish I had the same confidence.” Dorian turned his spyglass inland, and they watched the besieging army inch inexorably towards the walls. “Zayn has done this many times before. He will make few mistakes. See how he has begun to sap forward? Those trenches and the lines of gabions will protect his assault forces until they are right under the walls.” Each day he instructed Mansur on the ancient science of siege-making. “See there, they are bringing up their great guns to position them in the emplacements they have prepared. Once they begin firing in earnest they will smash through the weak spots in our defences and shoot away any repairs faster than we can make them. When they have opened the breaches they will rush them from the head of the assault trenches.”
They watched the guns being dragged forward by the teams of oxen. Weeks earlier the remainder of Zayn’s fleet had arrived from Lamu and had landed his horses, draught animals and the rest of his men on the other side of the peninsula. Now his cavalry patrolled the palm groves and the foothills of the interior. Their dust was always visible.
“What can we do?” Mansur sounded less certain of the outcome.
“Very little,” Dorian replied. “We can sortie and raid the earthworks. But they are expecting us to do that. We will take heavy losses. We can shoot away a few of the gabions, but they will repair any damage we can inflict within hours.”
“You sound despondent,” Mansur said, accusingly. “I am unaccustomed to that, Father.”
“Despondent?” Dorian said. “No, not of the eventual outcome. However, I should never have allowed Zayn to trap us in the city. Our men do not fight well from behind walls. They love to be the attackers. They are the ones losing heart. Mustapha Zindara and bin-Shibam are having difficulty keeping them here. Even they want to be out in the open desert, fighting the way they know best.”
That night a hundred of bin-Shibam’s men threw open the city gates and, in a tight group, galloped through the Turkish lines and escaped into the desert. The guards were only just able to close the gates before the attackers rushed to exploit this opportunity.
“Could you not have stopped them going?” Mansur demanded, next morning.
Bin-Shibam shrugged at his lack of understanding, and Dorian answered him. “The Saar do not accept orders, Mansur. They follow a sheikh just as long as they agree with what he asks of them. If they don’t, they go home.”
“Now that it has begun, more will leave. The Dahm and the Awamir are restless also,” Mustapha Zindara warned.
At dawn the following day the enemy batteries in their deep, heavily fortified emplacements began to bombard the southern wall. Counting the flashes and the spurts of gunsmoke with each discharge, Dorian and Mansur determined that there were eleven guns of cavernous calibre. The stone balls they fired must have weighed well over a hundred pounds each. It was possible to watch the flight of the massive projectiles with the naked eye. Mansur timed the rate of fire: it took almost twenty minutes for each gun to be swabbed, loaded, primed, then run out, relaid and fired. Once the enemy guns had ranged in, the massive balls smashed into their target with disturbing accuracy, each one striking within a few feet of its predecessor. A single ball might crack a block in the wall, and the second, striking on the same spot, dislodged it entirely. If it struck the timber balks, which the defenders had used to repair the weak sections, it splintered them to toothpicks. By nightfall of the first day two breaches had been knocked through the walls. As soon as it was dark, teams of workmen under Mansur’s command rushed forward to begin the repairs.
With the dawn the bombardment began again. By noon the repairs had been swept away, and the stone balls were chipping away to enlarge the breaches. Dorian’s gunners dragged half of their guns round from the harbour side to reinforce the battery on the south wall, and steadily returned the fire. However, Zayn’s guns were well set in their emplacements, with deep banks of sand-filled gabions protecting them. Only the gaping bronze muzzles were visible, and these were tiny targets to hit at such ranges. When the defenders’ balls struck the gabions, the sand-filled baskets of woven cane absorbed the shot so completely that it made almost no impression at all.
However, half-way through the afternoon they scored their first direct hit. One of their twenty-pound iron balls struck the extreme left-hand gun full on the muzzle. The bronze rang like a church bell, and even that weight of metal was hurled backwards off its carriage, crushing the gun-crew behind it to mincemeat. The barrel stuck straight up in the air. On the city walls the gunners cheered themselves hoarse, and redoubled their efforts. But by dusk they had not achieved another hit, and the breaches in the walls gaped wide.
As soon as the moon set, bin-Shibam and Mansur led a sortie into the enemy lines. They took twenty men each and crept up on the battery emplacement. Even though the Turks were expecting the raid, Mansur’s party had almost reached the wall of the emplacement before they were spotted and one of the sentries fired his musket. The ball hummed past Mansur’s head and he shouted at his men, “Follow me!”
As he scrambled in through the embrasure, jumped up on the barrel of the gun and ran along the top of it, he stabbed at the throat of the man who had fired the shot at him. He dropped the musket he was trying to reload and grabbed the naked blade with both hands. When Mansur pulled it back the steel ran through the man’s fingers, severing flesh and tendons to the bone. Mansur jumped over his twitching body and down among the Turkish gunners, who were dulled with sleep, and struggling out of their blankets. He killed another, and wounded a third before they ran howling with terror into the night. His men followed him in to join the attack. While they were busy, Mansur plunged the point of one of the iron spikes he carried in his pouch into the touch-hole of the gun, and another of his men drove it home with a dozen lusty blows of the hammer.
Then they ran down the connecting trench to the adjoining emplacement. Here the gunners were fully awake, waiting to meet them with pikes and battleaxes. Within seconds they were a shouting, struggling mass, and Mansur knew they would never be able to reach the second gun. More of the enemy were rushing up the communication trench from the rear to repel them.
“Back!” Mansur yelled, and they clambered over the front wall, just as Istaph and the other grooms rode up with horses. They galloped back through the city gates with bin-Shibam coming in close behind them.
There they found they had lost five men killed and another dozen wounded. In the dawn light they saw that the Turks had stripped the corpses of the missing men and displayed them on the front wall of the emplacement. Between them, Mansur and bin-Shibam had managed to spike only two of the guns, and the remaining eight opened fire again. Within hours the stone balls had ripped away all the repairs that had been thrown up during the night. In the middle of the afternoon a single lucky shot brought twenty feet of wall tumbling down in a heap of masonry and rubble. Surveying the damage from the top of the minaret, Dorian estimated, “Another week at the latest, and Zayn will be read
y to launch his attack.”
That night two hundred of the Awamir and the Dahm saddled their horses and rode out of the city. The next day, as was customary, the muezzin gave his wailing call to the faithful from the minaret of the main mosque in the city. Both sides responded: the big guns stopped firing, the Turks took off their round helmets and knelt among the palm groves, while on the parapets the defenders did the same. Before he joined in the worship, Dorian smiled ironically at the notion that both sides prayed to the same God for the victory.
This time there was a new development to the ritual. After the prayers Zayn’s heralds rode around the perimeter of the walls shouting a warning to the defenders on the parapets: “Hear the words of the true Caliph. ‘Those of you who wish to leave this doomed city may do so without let. I grant you pardon for their treachery. You may take with you your horse and your weapons and return to your tents and your wives. Any man who brings me the head of the incestuous usurper al-Salil, I will reward with a lakh of gold rupees.’”
The defenders jeered at them. However, that night another thousand warriors rode out through the gates. Before they went, two of the lesser sheikhs came to take their leave of Dorian. “We are not traitors or cowards,” they told him, “but this is not a fight for a man. Out in the desert we will ride with you unto death. We love you as we loved your father, but we will not die here like caged dogs.”
“Go with my blessing,” Dorian told them, “and may you always find favour in the sight of God. Know you that I will come to you again.”