by Wilbur Smith
Yakub saw an opening in the Dervish ranks as they turned to meet Stewart’s reserves. “I have private affairs to attend to, Effendi,” he called to Penrod, but Penrod and Percy Stapleton had found three more maddened Dervish to deal with and did not notice as he slipped away.
As Yakub ran up behind Salida’s camel he scooped up a broadsword from the hand of a dead Arab. The animal was kicking and plunging, but Yakub dodged the flying hoofs, which might have delivered a killing blow. With a powerful double-handed swipe he cut through the tendons in one of the beast’s hind legs. It bellowed and lurched forward on three legs, but he ran after it and hacked through the other hamstring. The camel collapsed on to its hindquarters. Salida and Rufaar were hurled violently from its back. Rufaar kept hold of his father and tried to break his fall as they struck the ground at Yakub’s feet.
Rufaar looked up and recognized him. “Yakub bin Affar!” he said, and the bitter hatred of the blood feud roughened his voice. But he was holding his father with both hands and unable to defend himself.
“Mine enemy!” Yakub acknowledged, and killed him. He left the broadsword buried to the hilt in his chest, and drew his dagger. He caught a handful of Salida’s silver beard and pulled his head back, exposing his throat. He did not hack at the windpipe, but drew the razor edge of the dagger across the side of the watt led throat. It sliced through the carotid artery under Salida’s ear, and Yakub made no effort to avoid the jet of bright blood that spurted over his hands and arms.
“She is avenged,” he whispered as he daubed the blood on his forehead. He would not utter his sister’s name for she had been a whore, and many good men had died because of her. He let go of Salida’s beard and let his face flop into the dust. He left him lying beside his son and ran back to Penrod’s side.
The breach in the British square closed on the Dervish like the mouth of sea anemone on a small fish that had swum into its tentacles. The Dervish asked no quarter. Martyrdom was the way to eternal life, and they welcomed it. Stewart’s men knew that they would not surrender. Like a poisonous serpent with a broken back, they would strike at any hand extended to them, no matter how compassionately.
Relentlessly the soldiers plied the bayonet and the sword, but it was dangerous, bloody work, for each Dervish had to be surrounded and cut down. While there was life in them they fought on. The slaughter went on through the afternoon, raging at first, then gradually subsiding.
Even when it seemed to be over, it was not. Among the mounds of corpses individual Ansar were feigning death, poised to leap on any unwary victim. They lost a half-dozen more men to these furtive assassins before General Stewart ordered the advance. They gathered up their own casualties, and there were many. They took with them ninety-four wounded and seventy-four British corpses, wrapped in their own blankets, as they marched away towards the palm grove at the limit of the plain that marked the Wells of Abu Klea.
Among the palms they threw up a zareba, and buried their dead, laying them gently in rows in the shallow communal grave dug hastily in the sandy earth. It was evening before Penrod could go to find Hardinge in the hospital bivouac. “I have come to return your sword, sir.” He proffered the beautiful weapon.
“Thank you, Ballantyne,” Hardinge whispered weakly. “It was a gift from my wife.” His face was as pale as candle wax They had moved his stretcher close to the fire, because he had complained of the cold. He reached out painfully and touched the blade, as if in farewell. “However, I doubt I shall have much further use for it. Keep it for me, and use it as you did today.”
“I will not accept that, sir. You will march with us into Khartoum,” Penrod assured him, but Hardinge sagged back on to the stretcher.
“I think not,” he murmured. He was right: he was dead before daybreak.
The rest of the men were too exhausted to move on. Although he was haunted by thoughts of the great and lonely man waiting for them in Khartoum, Stewart could not drive them on in their present state. He gave them that night and most of the next morning to recover. They rested until noon in the scanty shade of the palm grove around the wells. The water was filthy, almost as salty as seawater. They boiled it with black tea and the last of the sugar.
In the enervating heat of midday Stewart dared delay no longer. He gave the order to continue the march. They loaded the seriously wounded on to the camels, and when the bugler sounded the advance they toiled away across the burning land. They marched on through the rest of that day, then on again through the night. They had covered twenty-three miles before sunrise, and then they stopped. They could go no further. They were utterly exhausted. There remained only a few cupfuls of water for each man. The camels were all played out: even though they could smell the river ahead, they could not go on. The wounded were in desperate straits. Stewart knew he would lose most of them unless he could bring them to the water. He sent a runner to summon Penrod. “Ballantyne, I have need of your local knowledge again. How far is it to the river?”
“We are very close, sir, about four miles. You will be able to see it from the next ridge.”
“Four miles,” Stewart mused. He looked back over the exhausted British formation. Four miles might as well have been a hundred for all the hope he had of getting them there. He was about to speak again, but Penrod interrupted him.
“Look ahead, sir.”
Upon the ridge of higher ground that lay between them and the river a small band of fifty or so Dervish had appeared. All the officers reached for their telescopes. Through the lens Penrod at once recognized the banner of Osman Atalan. Then in the centre of the band he picked out his tall lean figure on the back of the cream-coloured mare.
“Not too many of them,” said Sir Charles Wilson, Stewart’s secondin-command, but his tone was dubious. “We should be able to brush them aside without too much trouble. I don’t think they will have the temerity to come at us again, not after the lesson we gave them at the wells.”
Penrod was about to contradict him. He wanted to point out that Atalan was a clever tactician: he had pulled his men out of the lost battle at Abu Klea before they were utterly destroyed. During the previous day and night, his scouts must have shadowed the battered British square, waiting for this moment when they had used up all their strength and endurance and their camels were finished. With an effort Penrod bit back the words.
“You wanted to say something, Ballantyne?” Stewart had not lowered his telescope but he had been aware of Penrod’s reaction.
“That is Osman Atalan himself on the cream horse. I think there are more than just that one troop. He got off comparatively lightly at Abu Klea. His divisions are almost intact.”
“You are probably right,” Stewart agreed.
“There is dust on the right,” Penrod pointed out. All the telescopes turned in that direction, and another group of several hundred more Dervish cavalry appeared upon the ridge. Then there was more dust further to the left. Swiftly the numbers of the enemy swelled from fifty to thousands. Their sullen squadrons stood squarely across the road to the Nile.
Stewart lowered his telescope and snapped it shut. He looked directly at Sir Charles Wilson. “I propose to laager the baggage and the wounded here in a zareba, and leave five hundred able-bodied men to protect them. Then with a flying column of eight or nine hundred of the fittest men we shall make a run for the river.”
“The camels are done in, sir,” Wilson cut in quickly. “They will never make it.”
“I am aware of that,” said Stewart, crisply. Privately he had come to think of his secondin-command as a man who could smell the dung in a bed of roses. “We will leave the camels here with the wounded and proceed on foot.” He ignored the shocked expressions of his staff and looked at Penrod, “How long would it take you lead us to the river, Ballantyne?”
“Without the wounded and the baggage I can have you there in two hours, sir,” Penrod answered, with all the confidence he did not feel.
“Very well. The company commanders will select thei
r strongest and fittest men. We will march in forty minutes’ time, at fifteen hundred hours precisely.”
What kind of men are these?” al-Noor asked with wonder, as they sat on their horses and watched the depleted British square form up and march out of the zareba. “They have no animals and no water and still they come on. In God’s Holy Name, what kind of men are they?”
“They are descendants of the men who fought our ancestor Saladin, Righteous of the Faith, eight hundred years ago before Jerusalem,” Osman Atalan replied, “They are men of the Red Cross, like the crusaders of old. But they are only men. Look upon them now and remember the battle of Hattin.”
“We must always remember Hattin,” agreed his aggagiers. “At Hattin Saladin trapped an exhausted, thirst-crazed army of these men and destroyed it at a single blow. So great were the losses he inflicted upon the infidel that he tore from their bloody hands the entire kingdom of Jerusalem, which they had stolen from the faithful and held for eighty-eight years.” Osman Atalan rose in his stirrups and pointed the blade of his broadsword at the band of marching men, so tiny and insignificant on the stony grey plain. “This is our field of Hattin. Before the setting of the sun we will destroy this army. Not one will reach the river alive. For the glory of Allah and his Mahdi!”
His aggagiers drew their swords. “The victory belongs to God and his Mahdi,” they cried.
As the slow-moving British square climbed the gentle slope towards them the Dervish disappeared behind the ridge. The British toiled on. Every few hundred yards they halted to preserve the order of the wavering ranks and bring in their stragglers. They could not leave them for the Dervish and the castrating knife. Then they started again. In one of the pauses Stewart sent for Penrod. “What lies beyond the ridge? Describe the ground ahead,” he ordered.
“From the ridge we should overlook the town of Metemma on the near bank,” Penrod assured him. “There is an intervening strip of heavy scrub and dunes about half a mile wide, then the steep bank of the Nile.”
“Please, God, from the ridge let us also see Gordon’s steamers moored against the bank and waiting to take us up to Khartoum.” As Stewart said it the ridge ahead was transformed. The entire length was sown with bright white puffs of powder gunsmoke, like a cotton field with ripe pods bursting open in the hot sunlight. The Boxer-Henry bullets began to whip around them, ploughing up the red earth and whining off the white quartz rocks.
“Should we not return their fire, sir?” Wilson asked. “Clear that ridge before we move on?”
“No time for that. We must keep stepping out,” Stewart snapped. “Pass the word for my piper.”
General Sir Herbert Stewart’s personal piper, like his master, was a Highlander. His tartan was the hunting Stewart and he wore his glengarry at a jaunty angle, the ribbons dangling down his back.
“Give us a good marching tune,” Stewart ordered.
“The Road to the Isles”, sir?”
“You know my favourites, don’t you, young Patrick Duffy?”
The piper marched twenty paces ahead of the front wall of the square, his kilt swinging and his pipes skirling the wild, outlandish music that inflames the warlike passions of all men who hear it. The bullets still whipped around them. Every few minutes a man was hit and went down. His comrades lifted him and carried him forward. The Dervish snipers retreated before the resolute advance until at last the ridge was silent and deserted. The square marched on towards it.
Suddenly the drums hidden behind the ridge began a deep bass beat that made the air tremble. Then the ground seemed to tremble in sympathy. To the rumbling thunder of hoofs, the Beja cavalry swept over the skyline ahead.
The square halted and tightened its formation, and the horde of horsemen rode into the first blast of gunfire and reeled back. The second and third volleys decimated them and they turned and galloped away.
The soldiers picked up their wounded comrades and started forward again. The next Beja charge thundered over the skyline. The drums thudded and ombeyas shrieked. The British laid down their wounded and dead, and formed up in the impenetrable walls. The charge broke against them and, like a retreating wave, fell back. The weary march resumed. They passed over the fallen Dervish, and to forestall the treacherous suicidal attack of the warriors feigning death, they bayoneted the living and dead bodies as they stepped over them.
At last, the front rank came out on the skyline. A hoarse cheer issued from their parched throats and they grinned with cracked, bleeding lips. Before them lay the broad sweep of the Nile. The surface of the river splintered the sunlight into myriad bright reflections like spinning silver coins. There, against the far bank, lay the pretty little steamers of Gordon’s flotilla, waiting to take them upriver to Khartoum.
Some of the men sank to their knees, but their comrades hauled them to their feet and held them erect. Penrod heard a youngster croak, “Water! Sweet God, water!” But his voice was gagged by his swollen purple tongue.
The corporal who supported him answered, “The bottles are dry, but there is all the water you can drink down there. Brace up, lad! We’re going down to fetch it. Ain’t no blackamoor going to stop us either.”
“No stopping, lads,” the sergeant major called to them. “Not until you wash off the stink of your sweat in yon wee stream.”
Those who were still able to laughed, and with a new lift in their weary stride they started down towards the Nile. Ahead stood an undulating series of low dunes, the last barrier before the river. The sands were multi-hued: cinnamon and chestnut, puce and chocolate. The hollows between them were thick with thorn scrub and saltbush.
Beyond the dunes, along the riverbank, lay the labyrinthine native town of Metemma. The narrow winding alleys, huts and hovels pressed right up to the water’s edge. It was silent and deserted as a necropolis.
“The town is a trap, sir.” Penrod offered his opinion diffidently. “You can be certain that it is teeming with Dervish. If the men get into those alleys they will be cut to shreds.”
“Quite right, Ballantyne,” Stewart grunted. “Make for the open stretch on the bank below the town.” The Dervish harassing fire still spurted and smoked from the tops of the dunes and from among the thick scrub in the hollows below them. Stewart took one step forward, then spun round as a heavy bullet thudded into him. He went down in a broken heap. Penrod knelt beside him and saw that the bullet had struck him in the groin, shattering the large joint of the femur. Shards of bone stuck out of the churned flesh, and blood bubbled over them. It was a wound that no man could survive.
Stewart sat up and thrust his clenched fist into the gaping hole in his flesh. “I am hit,” he called urgently to Sir Charles Wilson. “Take command, and keep the regiment pushing hard for the river. Let nothing stand in your way. Drive for the river with everything you have got.”
Penrod tried to lift him and carry him forward. “Damn you, Ballantyne. Do your job, man. Let me lie. Take them on. You must help Wilson to get them to the river.”
Penrod stood up and two burly troopers rushed to the general.
“Good luck, sir!” Penrod said, and left him. He hurried to catch up with the front rank and lead them down into the dunes.
It did not seem that a squadron of cavalry could conceal itself in that low scrub, but as they came off the ridge, the bush ahead came alive with horses and figures in speckled jib has Within seconds the two sides were once more locked in savage, bloody conflict. Every time the soldiers drove them back with those flailing volleys, they reassembled and charged again. Now some of the white men in the front rank of the mangled British square were dropping, not from their wounds but from heat exhaustion and that terrible thirst. The men on each side hoisted them up again and pushed them forward.
The sweat dried in salt-ringed patches on their tunics; their bodies could no longer sweat. They reeled like drunks and dragged their rifles with the last of their strength. Penrod’s vision wavered and darkened with cloudy shapes. He blinked eyes to clear his eyes, and
each step was a monumental labour.
Just when it seemed that mortal man could endure no longer, the dense scrub ahead rustled and shook and out came the horsemen yet again. Riding at the head of the charge was the familiar figure in the green turban. The coat of the cream-coloured mare under him was dulled with sweat, her long mane matted and tangled. Osman Atalan recognized Penrod in the front rank of the square, turned the mare with his knees and rode straight at him.
Penrod tried to steady himself for his legs were rubbery under him. His light cavalry carbine seemed to have been transmuted to lead. It needed a painful effort to lift it to his shoulder. Even though they were still separated by fifty paces the image of his enemy, Osman Atalan, seemed to fill the field of his distorted vision. He fired. The sound seemed muted, and everything around him moved with dreamlike slowness. He watched his bullet strike the mare high in the forehead above the level of her magnificent dark eyes. She flung her head back and went down, struck the earth and rolled in a cloud of sand with her legs kicking spasmodically. She came to rest with her neck twisted back under her body.
With feline grace, Osman kicked his feet from the stirrups as she fell and sprang from her back to land lightly in balance. He stood and. glared at Penrod with an expression of deadly hatred. Penrod tried to reload the rifle, but his fingers were numb and slow, and Osman held his eyes with a mesmeric spell. Osman stooped and picked up his broadsword from where he had dropped it. He ran towards Penrod. At last Penrod managed to guide the cartridge into the open breech and closed the block. He lifted the weapon and his aim wavered. He tried desperately to steady it, and when, for an instant, the bead of the foresight lay on Osman’s chest he fired. He saw the bullet graze the emir’s sword arm, and leave a bloody line across the muscle of his biceps, but Osman neither flinched nor lost his grip on the hilt of the broadsword. He came on steadily. Other troopers on either side of Penrod turned their rifles on him. Bullets kicked up sand or snapped through the scrub around him. But Osman’s life seemed charmed.