by Wilbur Smith
‘They are smashing down the doors of the ivory storeroom,’ Bacheet shouted. ‘We must stop them.’
‘A thousand of them, and ten of us?’ Ryder did not have to say more.
‘But the ivory and skins?’ Bacheet was entitled to a small share of Ryder’s profits, and now at the thought of his losses his face was a pattern of dismay.
‘They can have the elephant teeth and the animal skins, rather than my own teeth and skin,’ Ryder said. ‘Anyway, they cannot eat ivory. Perhaps when they find no dhurra in the stores they will lose interest.’
It was a vain hope, and he knew it. It was not long before the men were streaming back, egged on by the wild ululations of the women. They were carrying some of the largest elephant tusks and bundles of sun-dried animal hides. They piled these at the foot of the wall. Their intention was clear. They were building a ramp to scale the wall. Immediately Ryder ordered the men on the hose to direct the stream on to the pile. The tusks and the heavy bales were much more solid than the rubbish they had used in their first attempt and the hose stream made no impression upon them. Then they tried to drive off the men, but although the hose beat down on them most stayed on their feet and placed more tusks on the growing ramp. When one was knocked down, three others rushed forward to take his place. They kept piling up the heavy material until it reached just below the top of the wall. Then they reassembled in the outer courtyard out of range of the fire hose. The black harpy pranced among them.
‘You should have hit her harder,’ Bacheet muttered darkly, ‘or, better still, you should have put a bullet through that ugly head. It’s still not too late.’ He lifted the Martini-Henry and aimed it over the top of the parapet.
‘She is in no danger, with you doing the shooting,’ Ryder remarked. Despite the hours of instruction he had lavished on Bacheet he was a long way from mastering the art of musketry. Bacheet looked pained at the insult, but he lowered the rifle. ‘See? The old witch is picking out the best men to climb the walls.’
Bacheet was right. Somehow she had kept hold of the switch even when the hose had hit her squarely. It was secured round her wrist by a loop of rawhide. She was moving among the crowd and marking the ones she chose by slapping them in the face with it. Quickly she picked out thirty or forty of the youngest and strongest. Many were armed with broadswords or axes.
Encouraged by the harpy the women started that dreadful cacophony again. The assault troop brandished their weapons and rushed at the wall. The jet of water from the hose struck the leaders but they linked arms to support each other.
‘Let us shoot, Effendi,’ Bacheet pleaded. ‘They are so close even I cannot miss.’
‘I would not give odds on that,’ Ryder grunted, ‘But hold your fire. If we kill just one they will go berserk and start a massacre.’ He was thinking of the women in the blockhouse. Little else mattered.
Even with the hose playing over them the attackers climbed swiftly to the parapet. Ryder and his men checked them there, swinging at their heads with clubs and staves. They had the advantage of height. At a range of only a few feet the fire hose was almost irresistible, and the long staves kept the attackers from getting close enough to use their swords. But when some lost heart and retreated down the ramp of bales and tusks the harpy was at the bottom to meet them, lashing their faces with the switch and screaming abuse. Three times they fell back and each time she sent them up again.
‘They are giving up,’ Bacheet panted. ‘They are losing heart.’
‘I hope Allah is listening to you,’ Ryder said, and plied his staff, cracking it across the temple of the man in front of him. He rolled down the ramp and lay still at the bottom. Even the harpy’s stinging blows with the switch could not rouse him.
Then a man pushed through the throngs of ululating women. He walked with the rolling long-armed gait of a silver-backed gorilla bull. His head was round, shaven and shiny as a cannonball. His skin was the colour of anthracite and his features were Nubian, with thick lips and a wide, flattened nose. He had stripped to his loincloth and the muscles of his chest bulged under the oiled skin, and writhed like a black silk bag of pythons. ‘I know this one,’ Bacheet croaked huskily. ‘He is a famous wrestler from Dongola. They call him the Bone Cruncher. He is dangerous.’
The Nubian climbed the ramp with astonishing agility. Ryder ran down the platform to confront him, but he was already at the parapet. He raised himself to his full height, balanced like an ebony colossus.
Ryder placed the butt of the long stave under his arm, like a lance, and ran at him. The sharpened point caught the Nubian in the centre of his chest and snagged in his flesh. Ryder threw his weight behind it, and the Nubian hovered at the point of balance, his arms windmilling, body arched backwards.
Bacheet sprang to Ryder’s side and the two threw their combined weight on the staff. The Nubian went over like an avalanche of black rock. He tumbled into five men behind him, and they tumbled down the steep incline of the ramp in a confused jumble of arms and legs.
The Nubian hit the sun-baked earth on the back of his shaven head and the impact reverberated like the fall of a lightning-blasted mahogany tree. He lay quiescent, mouth agape and thunderous snores echoing up his throat. The harpy jumped on to his chest and lashed at his face.
The Nubian opened his eyes and sat up. He swatted her away with the back of one hand and shook his head groggily. Then he saw Ryder and Bacheet grinning down at him. He threw back his head, bellowed like a bull buffalo in a pitfall, then groped for his sword, lurched to his feet and charged straight back up the ramp.
‘Sweet Mother of God,’ said Ryder. ‘Just look at him come.’ He raised the staff again, and as the Nubian reached the top he thrust at him viciously. With a flick of the blade the Nubian lopped two feet off the end. Ryder stabbed at him again with the butt. The Nubian cut again back-handed and left Ryder with a stump no longer than his arm. Ryder hurled it at him. It struck the Nubian in the centre of his sloping forehead. He blinked and roared again, then came over the top of the parapet, hacking wildly.
‘Back to the blockhouse!’ Ryder yelled, as he ducked under the blade.
Suddenly he realized he was alone on the parapet. The others had anticipated his order and taken themselves off at top speed. He dived down the rickety ladder into the yard and raced for the door. He could hear the Nubian close behind him, and the swish of his sword fanned the short sweaty hairs on the back of his neck.
‘Run, Ryder! He’s right behind you,’ Saffron shrilled from one of the loopholes. ‘Shoot him – I gave you your gun! Why don’t you shoot?’ In theory it was good advice, but if he lost even a second in loosening the flap of his holster the Nubian would take his head off at the shoulders. He found an extra turn of speed and began to catch up with Bacheet and the other Arabs.
‘Faster, Ryder, faster!’ Saffron yelped. Close behind him he could hear the hoarse breathing. Ahead, the others burst through the blockhouse door.
Rebecca was holding it open for him. Now she levelled the rifle and seemed to aim straight at his head. ‘I can’t shoot without hitting you,’ she cried, and lowered the barrel. ‘Come on, Ryder, please, come on.’ Even in the desperate circumstances, her use of his first name gave him a sweet thrill and added wings to his feet. He flew through the doorway and Rebecca and Saffron slammed it behind him. On the far side the Nubian crashed into it with a force that shivered the frame.
‘He’s going to smash it off its hinges.’ Rebecca gasped. They heard the Nubian hacking and kicking at it.
‘Steel door, steel frame,’ Ryder reassured her, and grabbed the rifle Saffron handed him. He opened the breech and checked the load. ‘We’ll be safe in here.’
He stepped up to the loophole and Rebecca stood close beside him. Through the narrow opening they had a view across the yard to the door of the workshop and in the other direction to the inner gate of the menagerie. The broad sweat-gleaming back of the Nubian appeared in their field of vision. He had abandoned his assault on the blo
ckhouse door. Now he was striding across the yard to the barred inner gates. When he reached them Ryder watched him lift the heavy teak locking bars and toss them aside. Then he stood back and kicked the brass lock off its hinges. As the gates swung open the harpy was first into the yard. The horde poured in behind her.
She headed straight for the blockhouse, and the rest followed her closely. It was a horrific spectacle, as though the gates of hell had burst open and spewed out the legions of the damned and long-dead. Their faces were ravaged by disease and hunger, their eyes too large for their wizened, emaciated heads, their lips and eyelids swollen and inflamed with running ulcers and carbuncles. Starvation and disease emit their own odour as the body devours itself and the skin releases the fluids of decay and dissolution: as they crowded to the loopholes the stench oozed through into the hot, airless interior and filled it with the reek of open sepulchres. It was a miasma that was difficult to breathe. The ruined faces leered and grimaced through the openings. ‘Food! Where is the food?’ They thrust their arms through. Their limbs were thin and gnarled as dead branches. The palms of their hands were as pale as the bellies of dead fish.
‘Oh, Jesus, have mercy on us,’ Rebecca gasped, and shrank against Ryder, instinctively seeking his protection. He placed one arm round her shoulders. This time she made no effort to pull away from him. ‘What will happen to us now?’
‘Whatever happens, I will stay with you,’ he said, and she pressed closer to him.
The harpy was shrieking orders to the mob. ‘Search all the buildings! We must find where they have hidden the dhurra! Then we will smash the pots in which they have brewed the Devil’s manna. It is evil and an offence in the sight of God. It is this that has brought misfortune upon the city, and visited us with pestilence and disaster. Find where they have hidden the animals. You shall feast on sweet meat this day.’ Her shrill voice reached to the depths of their starved bodies. They responded to her with a kind of blind, hypnotic obedience and rushed away from the rifle slits so that Ryder could see out again. He and Rebecca pressed their faces to the same opening, breathing the cleaner air and watching the hordes streaming towards the gates of the menagerie, led by the colossal Nubian and the harpy.
‘Well, them bongos of yours ain’t going to be shitting on the decks of my ship again, skipper,’ said Jock McCrump lugubriously. Suddenly he remembered his manners and touched the brim of his cap to Rebecca. ‘If you’ll forgive my French, ladies.’
‘What are they going to do with them, Jock?’ Saffron’s voice was fearful.
‘It’s the cooking pot for all of them beasties, d’ye ken, Miss Saffy?’
Saffron flew at the door and tried to tear open the locking bars. ‘Lucy! I have to save Lucy and her baby!’
Ryder took her arm gently but firmly, and drew her to his side. ‘Saffron,’ he whispered huskily, ‘there is nothing we can do for Lucy now.’
‘Can’t you stop them? Please! Won’t you stop them, Ryder?’
There was no reply he could give her. He held the two girls tightly, Saffron on one side and Rebecca on the other. They clung to him and watched some of the mob crowd the gate that led to the menagerie and try to break in, but it was stout and resisted their efforts. Then the Nubian shouldered them aside. He braced himself against the gate and shook it until it rattled in its frame, but it did not give way. He stepped back, charged and crashed into it with one massive shoulder. The hinges were torn from the frame and the door flew open.
Ali, the old keeper, stood in the open doorway with a rusty sword in his hands.
‘Ali, you old fool,’ Ryder groaned and tried to turn the girls away so that they would not see what was about to happen. But they resisted and stared ashen-faced through the loophole.
Ali raised the sword above his head. ‘Begone, all of you! You will not enter here.’ His voice was high-pitched and quavering. ‘I will not allow you to touch my darlings.’ He hobbled towards the giant, threatening him with the dented weapon. The Bone Cruncher shot out one thick arm and seized the old man’s sword wrist. He shook it as a terrier shakes a rat, and they heard the bone of the old man’s forearm crack. The rusty sword dropped into the dust at his feet. Using the broken arm as a handle the Bone Cruncher lifted Ali’s wriggling body above his head and slammed him into the jamb of the gate with such force that his ribs snapped like dry kindling. He dropped the broken body, and stepped over it. The crowd rushed after him into the menagerie, but as they passed they hacked at Ali’s head with club or sword.
A great roar of greed and hunger went up from within the menagerie as the mob saw the rows of cages and the terrified animals they contained.
‘Food! Meat!’ screamed the harpy. ‘I promised you a feast of fresh red meat. It is here for you.’ She rushed at the nearest cage and tore open the door. It was filled with scarlet and grey parrots, a swirling screeching cloud of wings. She leapt in and slashed at them with the whisk, knocking them to the floor of the cage and stamping on them with both horny feet.
The crowd followed her example, breaking open the monkey cages and clubbing the terrified occupants as they bounded around. Then they attacked the stockades and pens of the antelope.
In the blockhouse they could hear what was happening. Above the crash of breaking cages and the uproar of the mob, Saffron was able to identify the terrified voices of her favourite creatures: the shrieks of the parrots and the howls of the monkeys.
‘That’s Lucy, my poor darling Lucy,’ she sobbed. ‘They can’t eat her. Tell me they won’t eat Lucy.’ Ryder hugged her but could find no words of comfort.
Then there came wild bleating and bellows of pain from the larger animals.
‘That’s Victoria, my bongo!’ Saffron struggled again. ‘Let me go! Please, I have to save her.’
The female bongo bounded out through the gates of the menagerie where old Ali’s corpse still lay in the bloody dust. She must have escaped from her pen as the mob tore it down and seemed unhurt.
‘Run, Victoria!’ Saffron screamed. ‘Run, my baby.’
A dozen men and women ran after her with spears and swords. The large, strikingly coloured animal saw the open gate ahead of her and swerved towards it, her sleek hide glistening dark chestnut with creamy white stripes, ears pricked forward, eyes filled with terror, huge and dark in her lovely head. She had almost reached the open gate when one of the spearmen checked and swivelled his shoulders, his left hand pointing straight at her, the right cocked back and holding the spear. He swung his weight forward and the spear flew in a high arc, then dropped towards the animal. It struck her just forward of the croup and the spearhead buried itself. The point must have struck the spine, for her paralysed hindquarters dropped, and she stood still on her front legs.
A triumphant howl went up from the hunters and they crowded round the maimed animal. They made no effort to put her out of her misery, but hacked off lumps of her living flesh. The Nubian rushed up and, with a sweep of his sword, opened her belly as if it were a purse. The pale bag of her stomach and the entwined ropes of entrails bulged out through the gash. These were delicacies, and the mob dragged them out of her, and devoured them voraciously. The yellow contents of the uncleaned guts mingled with the blood, and dribbled from their lips and jowls as they chewed.
Rebecca gagged at the sight and turned away her face, but Saffron watched until at last the bongo collapsed and the crowd swarmed over her carcass like a flock of vultures hiding it from view. From the gates of the menagerie others ran out carrying bleeding lumps of meat and the battered carcasses of the birds and monkeys. They tried to escape before the latecomers from the city streets joined in. They were too late, and all across the compound vicious squabbles and fighting broke out. Saffron saw one of the children pounce upon a scrap. He stuffed it into his mouth and tried to swallow it. But the woman who had dropped it set upon him, beating him and pummelled him until he was forced to spit it out. Before she could pick it out of the dust, someone else snatched it and ran out of the gates with t
he woman chasing after her.
Another group broke down the door of the shed that contained the day’s cooking of green-cake. They gathered up slabs in their shirts, but before they could make off with it the harpy fell upon them. She seemed to have risen above the simple need to find food and ran among them, striking at random with her whisk, screaming, ‘That is the poison of Shaitan! Throw it on the fire. Throw it into the latrines where it belongs.’ Although a few ran off with their booty, the harpy forced most to fling their share into the cooking fires or down the latrine pits.
‘She has destroyed it all. What a shameful waste,’ Rebecca cried in anguish. ‘And she is making them smash our cauldrons. Now we shall all starve.’
Ryder watched the harpy helplessly. He saw how dangerous this raving demagogue was, that at any moment she might trigger another explosion of murderous passion and insanity. However, most of the mob had disappeared, and it seemed that the riot must soon die of its own accord.
Even though the damage they had wreaked was punishing, Ryder sought some small comfort in the fact that they were making no effort to take the ivory. It was clearly too heavy to carry far. Most of his other valuable possessions were locked in the strongroom in the blockhouse. Just as soon as the Intrepid Ibis was seaworthy again, he would load what was left of them and be ready for instant flight.
But the harpy was still prowling round the yard, stopping every few minutes to shake her whisk at the blockhouse and scream curses and insults at the white faces she could see watching her from the loopholes. When she paused at the door of the workshop, Ryder was not seriously alarmed. Some of the other looters had gone in there but had soon come out again. There was nothing in there for them to eat, nothing of obvious value for them to carry away. However, the harpy was in the workshop for only a minute, before she rushed out and screamed across the yard for the Nubian wrestler. Like a tame gorilla responding to its trainer, he crossed the yard with his massive rolling gait. She led him into the workshop. When the Nubian came out again he was carrying such a heavy burden that his legs were bowed under its weight.