by Wilbur Smith
Stewart made no effort to explain the delays he had encountered. He was a man of direct action, not one who made excuses. ‘I understand,’ he said simply. ‘Go on, please.’
‘General Gordon will fly the flags of Egypt and Great Britain from the tower of Mukran Fort, day and night, while the city is still being defended. With a telescope the flags can be seen from as far downstream as the heights of the Shabluka Gorge.’
‘I hope shortly to verify that for myself.’ Stewart nodded. Although he listened to Penrod with attention, his eyes were constantly busy, watching over the orderly formation of his square as it moved steadily southwards.
‘My journey from the city brought me through the midst of the enemy formations. I can give you my own estimate of their dispositions, if you consider that might be of use, General.’
‘I am listening.’
‘The commander of the Dervish vanguard is the Emir Salida, of the Jaalin tribe. He has probably fifteen thousand warriors under his red banner. The Jaalin are the northernmost tribe of the Sudan. Salida is a man in his late sixties, but he has a formidable reputation. The commander of the centre is the Emir Osman Atalan of the Beja.’ Stewart narrowed his eyes at the name. Obviously he had heard it before. ‘Osman has brought approximately twenty thousand of his own men from the siege of Khartoum. They have Martini-Henry rifles, captured from the Egyptians, and a great store of ammunition. As I am sure you are well aware, sir, the Dervish prefer to get to close quarters and use the sword.’
‘Guns?’
‘Although they have Nordenfelts, Krupps and plentiful supplies of ammunition in Omdurman, I have seen none being brought north with this wing of their army.’
‘I know you’re an old hand at Arab fighting, Ballantyne, where will they meet us, do you suppose?’
‘I believe that they will want to deny you the water, sir,’ Penrod replied. In the desert everything came down sooner or later to that. ‘The next water is at the Wells of Abu Klea. It is sparse and brackish, but they will try to prevent you using it. The approach to the wells is through a rocky defile. I would guess that they will offer battle there, probably as you debouch from the narrow way.’
Hardinge had the map ready. Stewart took it and spread it on the front of his saddle. Penrod pressed close enough to read it with him.
‘Point out to me the spot where you think they may attack,’ Stewart ordered.
When Penrod did so Stewart studied it for a short while. ‘I had planned to bivouac tonight on the north side of Tirbi Kebir.’ He placed his finger on the spot. ‘However, in the light of this new information it may be better to force march today, and reach the head of the defile before dark. This will place us in a flexible position in the morning.’
Penrod made no comment. His opinion had not been asked. Stewart rolled the map. ‘Thank you, Captain. I think you will be most useful with the vanguard under Major Kenwick. Will you ride forward again and place yourself under his command?’
Penrod saluted, and as he rode off Stewart called after him, ‘Before you join Kenwick, go back and see the quartermaster. Get yourself a decent uniform. From here you look like a bloody Dervish yourself. Somebody is going to take a pot at you.’
In the early-morning light, Osman Atalan and Salida sat at the top of the burnt-out hills of Abu Klea. From this vantage-point they overlooked a deep defile. They were seated on a fine woollen carpet, laid on the edge of the dragon’s back ridge of black basalt rock. An almost identical ridge of the same dark rock faced them across the pass. At its narrowest point it was some four hundred paces across.
The Emir Salida of the Jaalin had known Osman since he was a stripling of seventeen. At that age Osman had ridden into Jaalin territory from the east with his father’s raiding party. They had killed six of Salida’s warriors and driven off sixty-five of his finest camels. Osman had killed his first man on that long-ago raid. The Beja had also abducted twelve Jaalin girls and young women, but these in Salida’s eyes were insignificant against the loss of his camels. In the twelve years since then their blood feud had run red and rank across the desert.
Only since the Divine Mahdi, may he ever triumph over his foes, had called all the tribes of the Sudan to unite in the holy jihad against the infidel had Osman and Salida sat at the same campfire and shared the same pipe. In jihad all personal feuds were suspended. They were united by a common enemy.
A slave girl set the hookah between them. With silver tongs she lifted a live coal from the clay fire pot and placed it carefully on top of the black tobacco packed into the bowl of the pipe. She sucked on the ivory mouthpiece until the smoke was flowing freely. She coughed prettily on the powerful fumes, and passed the mouthpiece to Salida, a mark of respect for his years. The water in the tall glass jar bubbled blue as he drew the smoke through it, held it in his lungs and passed the mouthpiece to Osman. The Mahdi had forbidden the use of tobacco but he was in Omdurman, and Omdurman was far away. They smoked contentedly, discussing their battle plans. When there remained only ash in the pipe bowl, they knelt and prostrated themselves in the ritual of morning prayers.
Then the girl lit another pipe, and at frequent intervals one of their sheikhs came up the ridge to report to them on the enemy movements and the disposition of their own regiments.
‘In God’s Name, the squadron of Sheikh Harun is in position,’ reported one.
Salida looked at Osman from under hooded, sun-freckled eyelids. ‘Harun is a fine fighting man. He has two thousand under him. I have placed him in the wadi where the buzzard perched yesterday evening. From there he will be able to rake the enemy rear when they come out on to the plain.’
A short while later another junior sheikh came up the steep slope. ‘In the Name of God and the Victorious Mahdi, the infidels have sent forward their scouts. A patrol of six soldiers rode through the pass as far as the mouth. They gazed through their long glasses at the palm grove of the wells, then rode back. As you ordered, mighty Emir, we let them go unhindered.’
An hour after sunrise the final report came in, and all the Dervish forces were in the positions allotted to them.
‘What of the infidel?’ Salida asked, in his rusty high-pitched voice.
‘They have not yet broken camp.’ The messenger pointed to the head of the long defile. Salida offered his elbow to Osman, and his erstwhile enemy helped the old man to his feet. His joints were lumpy with arthritis, but once in the saddle he could ride and ply the sword like a young warrior. Careful not to show a silhouette against the early-morning sky, Osman led him solicitously to the edge of the cliff and they looked down.
The infidel camp was in full view less than two miles away. The previous evening the soldiers had thrown up a zareba of stones and thornbush around the perimeter. As always the camp was in the shape of a square. They had placed a Nordenfelt gun at each of the four corners, so it could throw down enfilading fire on the outer walls of the stockade.
‘What machines are those?’ Salida had never fought the Franks. The Turks he knew well for he had slaughtered them in their hundreds with his own hands. But these big, red-faced men were a different breed. He knew nothing of their ways.
‘Those are rifles, which fire very fast. They can lay down fields of dead men, like grass under the scythe, until they grow hot and jam. It is necessary to feed them corpses to stop up their mouths.’
Salida cackled with laughter. ‘We will feed them well today.’ He made a wide gesture. ‘The feast is ready. We await the honoured guests.’
The hills, valleys and narrow gullies appeared barren and deserted, but in truth they were alive with tens of thousands of men and horses, sitting on their shields, waiting with the patience of the hunter.
‘What are the infidels doing now?’ Salida asked curiously as his attention went back to the enemy camp.
‘They are preparing for our attack.’
‘They know that we are here, waiting for them?’ al-Salida enquired. ‘How do they know that?’
‘We had a
spy in our ranks. A ferenghi officer. A clever, crafty infidel. He speaks our sweet mother tongue, and passes readily as a son of the Prophet. From Berber he rode northwards with our array. Doubtless, he has counted our heads, divined our intentions and gone into the infidel camp.’
‘What is his name? How do you know so much about him?’
‘His name is Abadan Riji. He gave me the wound at El Obeid that almost carried me to my grave. He is my blood enemy.’
‘Then why have you not killed him?’ Salida asked, in a reasonable tone.
‘He is slippery as a river eel. Twice he has wriggled through my fingers,’ Osman said, ‘but that was yesterday. Today is today, and we shall count the dead at the setting of this sun.’
‘The infidel may not offer us battle this day,’ Salida demurred.
‘Look!’ He passed Salida his telescope. The old man held it the wrong way round and peered through the large lens. Though he could see nothing but a vacant blue sky, he looked wise. Osman knew that he understood little of these infidel toys, so to spare him embarrassment he described the scene in the British camp for him.
‘See how the quartermasters are passing down the ranks handing out extra ammunition.’
‘By God, you are right,’ Salida said, and the telescope wavered several degrees in the wrong direction.
‘See how they are bringing in the Nordenfelts.’
‘In the saintly name of the Mahdi, you are right.’ Salida bumped his eyebrow on the brass frame of the telescope, and lowered it to rub the spot.
‘See how the infidel mounts up, and you can hear the bugles sound the advance.’
Salida looked up and, without the hindrance of the lens, saw the enemy clearly for the first time. ‘By the holy name of the Mahdi, you are right!’ said he. ‘Here he comes in full array.’
They watched the British break camp and ride out. Their orderly ranks immediately assumed the dreaded square formation. They moved deliberately into the mouth of the defile, and no gaps appeared in their lines. Their discipline and precision were chilling, even to men of Osman’s and Salida’s temperament.
‘For them there is no turning back. They must win through to the water or perish as other armies have done, swallowed by the desert.’
‘I will not leave them for the desert,’ declared Salida. ‘We will destroy them with the sword.’ He turned to Osman. ‘Embrace me, my beloved enemy,’ he said softly, ‘for I am old and tired. Today seems a good day to die.’
Osman hugged him and kissed his withered cheeks. ‘When you die, may it be with your sword in your hand.’ They parted and moved down the back slope of the ridge to where the lance-bearers held their horses.
Penrod looked up at the stark black cliffs that rose on each side of them. They were barren as ash heaps from the pit of hell. As they moved into the gut of the defile the cliffs compressed and deformed their formations. But no gaps appeared in the sides of the square. Carefully Penrod scanned the cliffs. There was no sign of life, but he knew this was an illusion. He glanced across at Yakub. ‘Osman Atalan is here,’ he said.
‘Yes, Abadan Riji.’ Yakub smiled and his right eye rolled out of kilter. ‘He is here. There is the sweet perfume of death in the air.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I love it even more than the smell of fresh quimmy.’
‘Only you, lascivious and bloodthirsty Yakub, could combine love and battle in the same thought.’
‘But, Effendi, they are one and the same.’
They moved on down the narrow defile. Fear and excitement coursed like intoxicating wine through Penrod’s veins. He looked around at the bluff, honest faces that surrounded him and was proud to ride in their company. The quiet orders and responses were given in the familiar accents of home, so diverse that they might have been different languages: the sounds of the Scottish Highlands and the West Country, of Wales and the Emerald Isle, of York and Kent, of the Geordies, the Cockney, and the elegant drawl of Eton and Harrow.
‘They will be waiting for us on the far side of this pass,’ Yakub said. ‘Osman and Salida will want to work their cavalry in the open ground.’
‘Salida is the emir of your tribe so you understand his mind well,’ said Penrod.
‘He was my emir, and I rode in his raiding parties with him and ate at his fire. Until the day his eldest son ravished my little sister and I took the dagger to them both, for it was she who enticed him. Now there is blood between me and Salida. If he does not kill me first, one day I will kill him.’
‘Ah, patient and vengeful Yakub, this may be that day.’
They rode on through the narrow neck of the pass and the sides opened like the jaws of a monster on each side of them. Still there was no sign of life on the dead, seared hills, not a bird or a gazelle. The bugle sounded the halt, and the distorted square came to a jerky stop.
The sergeants rode down the ranks to redress them. ‘Close up on the right!’
‘Keep your spacing in the ranks.’
‘Wheel into line on the left.’
Within minutes the integrity of the square was restored. The corners were at meticulous right angles and the spacings were precise. The lines of bayonets glittered in the relentless sunlight, and the faces of the waiting men were ruddy with sweat, but not one unhooked a water-bottle from his webbing. In this thirsty wilderness, to drink without orders was a court-martial offence. From the back of his camel Penrod surveyed the ground ahead. Beyond the funnel of hills it opened into a broad, level plain. The earth was carpeted with white quartz pebbles and studded with low, sun-blackened salt scrub. At the far end of this bleak expanse stood a tiny clump of palm trees that seemed to have fossilized with age.
Good cavalry country, Penrod thought, and turned his full attention back to the trap of hills on either hand. Still they were devoid of all life, yet seemed charged with menace. They quivered in the heat mirage like hunting hounds brought up short by the scent of the quarry, waiting only the slip to send them away in full tongue.
The cliffs were riven by gullies and wadi mouths, by rocky salients and deep re-entrants. Some were choked with rock and scree, others coated with sand like the floor of a bullring. Yakub giggled softly and indicated the nearest of these with the point of his camel goad. There was no need for him to speak. The tracks of a thousand horses dimpled the surface of the sand. They were so fresh that the edge of each hoofprint was crisply defined and the low angle of the sun defined it with bold blue shadow.
Penrod raised his eyes to the serrated tops of the hills. They were sharp as the fangs of an ancient crocodile against the eggshell blue sky. Then something moved among the rocks and Penrod’s eye pounced upon it. It was a tiny speck and the movement was no more striking than that of a flea crawling in the belly fur of a black cat.
He brought his small telescope out of the leather saddlebag and focused on it, then saw the head of a single man peering down on them. He wore a black turban and his beard was black, blending well with the rock around him. It was too far to recognize his features but the man turned his head, perhaps to give an order to those behind him. Another head appeared beside his, and then another, until the skyline was lined with human heads like beads on a string.
Penrod lowered the glass and opened his mouth to shout a warning, but at that moment the air throbbed with the gut-jarring beat of the Dervish war drums. The echoes rebounded off the facing cliffs, and now the host of the Mahdi appeared, with miraculous suddenness, upon all the ledges, galleries and crests of the pass. The central figure stood clear upon the utmost pinnacle. His jibba sparkled white in the sun, and his turban was dark emerald green. He lifted his rifle with one hand and pointed it at the sky. The grey gunsmoke spurted high into the air like the breath of a breaching sperm whale, and the sound of the gunshot followed seconds later. A mighty shout went up from the serried Dervish ranks: ‘La ilaha illallah! There is but one God!’
The echoes shouted back: ‘God! God! God!’
The bugle in the centre of the British square sang on a wild, urge
nt note, and the troops reacted with smooth, practised precision. Down went the camels, kneeling in orderly lines, forming at once the outer ramparts of this living fortress. The baggage animals and their handlers moved back and couched in a dense mass in the centre. They were the inner keep. Swiftly the gunners unloaded the Nordenfelt machine-guns from the pack-camels and staggered with them to the four corners, from where they could lay down enfilading fire along the front of each wall of the square. General Stewart and his staff stood in a group just within the front wall. The runners knelt close at hand, ready to race to any corner of the square with the general’s orders.
A deadly silence fell upon this assembly of warriors. The Dervish ranks stared down upon them, and time seemed frozen. Then a single Dervish horseman rode out from the stony mouth of the main wadi. At extreme rifle range, he stopped, facing the square. He raised the curved ivory war clarion, the ombeya, and its clear, deep voice resounded along the cliff.
From the mouth of every wadi and combe poured the Dervish host, rank upon rank, thousand upon thousand, camels and horses. They kept coming, wheeling into loose squadrons, facing the little square. Few man were dressed or armed in the same way: lance and spear, axe and round leather targe, rifle, jezail and the dreadful broadsword were poised. The drums started again, a slow rhythmic beat and the Dervish ranks started forward.
‘Wait for ’em, lads.’ The sergeants strolled down behind the front wall of the square.
‘Hold your fire, boys.’
‘No hurry. There’s enough for everybody.’ The voices were calm, almost jocular.
The drums beat faster and the Dervish lines broke into a trot, the Ansar in the front beginning to jostle each other to be first into the square. Faster still, and the dense, savage masses seemed to fill the valley floor. Drums crescendoed and hoofs thundered. The dust rose in a choking miasma. The war cries were shrill.