Charrière thrust something at him, a scrap of paper. ‘I found this in their tracks.’ Mayne turned it over, staring. It was a torn piece from a tobacco wrapping. He could read the label: Wills Tobacco Co., Bristol. He shrugged. ‘There’s plenty of British stuff like this lying around. There would have been a haul from the dead officers when the Mahdi annihilated Hicks’ Egyptian army two years ago. And brigands could have rifled tobacco from British soldiers in the desert column while they slept.’ He thought for a moment; the Mahdi had expressly forbidden smoking among his followers. He looked at the scrap again, feeling a tinge of unease. He thought back to Korti, to the faces around the conference table with Wolseley. In this world of spies, of cat and mouse, Mayne surely occupied the deepest fold; he was the spy, not the one spied on. He thought of Kitchener, who had been with the desert column but had been ordered back by Wolseley from Jakdul, fuming at not being in on the action. He remembered Kitchener’s words to him outside the conference tent: his warning about Gordon, his suspicion of Mayne and his evasiveness when Mayne had asked him about his spy network. It was possible that Kitchener had secretly ordered him to be followed, exercising his self-appointed authority in the desert beyond Wolseley’s reach. He thought too of his own secret superior, Colonel Sir Charles Wilson, caught up now in that battle square ahead of them, an intelligence officer seeing action for the first time in his career and a hovering presence over Mayne’s mission. Surely Wilson was the linchpin of all subterfuge, and would not tolerate any others interfering in his game, whether sanctioned by Wolseley or by Whitehall. If he had known, he would surely have told Mayne about any possible impediment to his mission. Mayne knew there was little to be gained from further speculation, but it nagged at him. What was going on?
Charrière gestured ahead. ‘Our followers will be watching us now from that ridge behind, and will be able to see what we can see now. They will know that if we carry on forward we must go off the track to avoid the battle, and if so they could lose us. If they are intent on waylaying us, they may choose to make their move before that.’
Mayne took the telescope and stared at the British square, seeing sporadic puffs of smoke from rifle fire. He hoped that the Ansar ranged against them was not the main force of the Mahdi army; if so, they would annihilate the square and swarm over the Abu Klea hills, making his own progress to the Nile virtually impossible. But even a British victory could have adverse consequences. If Khartoum had not yet fallen, a victory could persuade the Mahdi that a British force to be reckoned with was on the way, and that he should storm the city without delay. Either way, what happened today was going to decide the fate of Gordon. He snapped the telescope shut, and stood up. ‘Agreed. We move now.’
Fifteen minutes later they dismounted beside an exposed knoll a thousand yards closer to the square. The dervish force was now clearly visible, and Mayne trained his telescope on the approaching mass. He could make out individuals beneath fluttering banners, surging forward behind emirs on horses and camels, their blades glinting. He had been shown dervish weapons by his guide Shaytan weeks before in the eastern desert, and he knew what the British would soon be facing: ten-foot-long leaf-bladed spears, razor-sharp and as lethal as a Zulu assegai, as well as shorter throwing spears, straight, double-edged, cross-hilted swords, and a few specialist weapons – the hippo-hide kurbash whip, lethal in the right hands if wrapped around a man’s neck, and boomerang-like throwing sticks embedded with slivers of razor-sharp obsidian that could hobble the legs of camels and men alike. He peered closely, scanning the front ranks. These were not the wild-haired, semi-naked warriors Corporal Jones had seen on the Red Sea coast the year before, the Baggara tribesmen who had been the first of the Mahdi’s supporters to meet the British in open battle, where Colonel Fred Burnaby had cut such an extravagant figure with his shotgun. Here, the front ranks were dominated by Kordofan Arabs from the Madhi’s heartland south of Khartoum, men who wore skullcaps and the patched jibba tunic, who eschewed the elephant-hide shields carried by the Baggara; they were the Ansar, the most fanatical supporters of jihad. The Mahdi had astutely celebrated their traditional ways of war, stoking their self-esteem as warriors, knowing that in overwhelming numbers at close quarters their weapons could win the day against the bayonets and bullets of the British. But he also knew the power of the rifle, and had equipped select Kordofan warriors with the Remingtons that they had taken from the slaughtered Egyptian soldiers of Hicks’ force two years before; Mayne could see their ragged fusillades today on the ridge behind the main force, and knew that among them would be the captured Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers who had chosen the Mahdi over execution and had trained select Kordofan to become expert marksmen.
He watched the force assemble in front of the British, their standards with Arabic slogans held high above the front ranks. It was an extraordinary image, half buried in history, a medieval army marching out of the folds of time to confront the might of modern firepower, yet still it sent a cold shudder through him. The sheer numbers could prove overwhelming; it had happened at Isandlwana in Zululand six years before, and it could happen again here. Everything depended on the resolve of the British soldiers in the square: on the years of parade-bashing and field drill that made the Grenadier Guards and the Household Cavalry the most disciplined soldiers the world had ever seen; on that stoicism and grim humour that Mayne had seen in Corporal Jones and every other seasoned British soldier he had encountered; on the determination of the officers to play the game for Queen and country, to lead from the front and be seen by their men in the thick of the action, to sell their lives dearly and take as many of the enemy with them as possible.
Mayne steadied his telescope, watching the men ululating and dancing in the front ranks. The Ansar still had faith in their own inviolability; they had not yet encountered the volley fire of Martini-Henry rifles, and had no reason to disbelieve the Mahdi’s promise that bullets would not harm them. They were driven by an unswerving belief in divine purpose and in the power of their leader; they also believed they were defending their way of life and their families, and would fight with a savagery that seemed natural in a desert world where life was cruel and death often came whimsically.
He cast an expert eye over the marksmen’s position in the rocks behind the main force. Like the sharpshooter at the cataract, the best of them should be able to pick off a man from six hundred yards; if they had been well taught they would also understand the principle of high-trajectory volley fire, and be able to land bullets with lethal velocity in the square from a range of fifteen hundred yards or more. The fact that the bullets would be indiscriminate, hitting friend and foe alike, would be irrelevant. Even if their inviolability proved to be a shaky promise, the Ansar were still convinced that greater glory awaited them in heaven if they gave their lives for the jihad, and whether they were felled by a bullet from a Martini-Henry or a Remington would be a matter of supreme indifference when their time came.
Charrière eyed Mayne. ‘Our camels will not last long without water.’
‘They’ll be found soon enough. Whichever way this goes, the battlefield will be swarming with scavengers once the soldiers have departed. If we tether the camels here beside the trail, they’ll be found. They’ll be someone’s prized possessions.’
Charrière put his hand up to the cheek of his camel, which flinched and then stared at him with limpid eyes, chewing contentedly on the last twist of desert grass they had cut for the animals the previous day. Mayne untied his saddle bag, pulled it off and then peered at Charrière. ‘Are you thinking you’d like to take your camel back to Canada?’
Charrière said nothing for a moment, taking his hand from the camel’s face and untying his own bag; then he stopped and narrowed his eyes at the southern horizon. ‘This is a long way from the Ottawa river.’
Mayne followed his gaze, imagining the shimmer from the Nile where it snaked its way through the desert some twenty-five miles off, and remembering the untouched wilderness far up the
Ottawa river: two great arteries whose course could take the unwary traveller into enveloping folds of darkness, where the river seemed to purge them of history and they became one with it, disconnected from their past lives and the motivations that had brought them there. He turned towards Charrière as he began disassembling his bag, selecting what was necessary for the trip ahead. ‘Almost all of your fellow Mohawks from the river column have returned to Canada. Why did you stay on?’
Charrière looked at him, his eyes dark, unfathomable. ‘Fifteen years ago we were hunting Louis Riel. Now it is General Gordon. Then, it was Colonel Wolseley. Now he is a general. Different quarry, same master.’
‘Is it Wolseley you serve?’
Charriere gazed back at him. ‘I could ask you the same question. Who do you serve?’
Mayne paused, and gave a wry smile. ‘Queen and country.’
‘Then I will tell you. Moi, je préfère la chasse. I like to hunt.’
Mayne eyed him. ‘Do you prefer to hunt men?’
‘I like to track my quarry, to wait for the right moment, and to kill cleanly.’
Mayne nodded towards the dust cloud over the wells. ‘There’s going to be plenty of killing before long. And unless we’re lucky enough to get through before the battle starts, we’re going to have blood on our hands, and perhaps end up as bloody heaps in the desert.’
‘Insha’Allah.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Insha’Allah. It is the will of God. My Arab friends taught me this expression at the cataracts.’
Mayne pulled out the contents of his bag, and cracked another smile. ‘You should be careful, my friend. You’re going native.’
Charrière spoke slowly. ‘An American officer serving Gordon out here who fought the Lakota after the Battle of the Little Bighorn called the Dongolese tribesmen the Indians of the desert. I find that these people and my people have a lot in common.’
Mayne stared at the horizon. He thought of the cruelty of this place, of the hardened faces of the tribesmen, of the decisions the desert forced on them that could mean life or death in an instant; and also of the humanity he had experienced travelling with them, the intensity of life for a people constantly on the edge. He remembered the year he had spent with his uncle in Canada after his parents had been killed, a damaged boy seeking meaning, and the comfort he had found in the forests with Charrière and his father, the moments of pleasure that were only possible with the danger and excitement of the hunt. He knew what Charrière meant. And he had seen enough of the Sudanese tribesmen over the past weeks to understand his empathy.
He turned back to his bag and took out the wrapped leaves containing the last of the biscuit, enough for two days. The lime juice had been finished that morning, and he left the empty bottle in the bag. He transferred the biscuit and his telescope to the pouch on his belt, along with a pencil, a roll of paper and a small leather wrap containing gold sovereigns and his Royal Engineers cap badge. He felt for the revolver on his belt, a Webley New Army Express .455, harder hitting than the old Webley-Pryse he had carried at the cataract, took it from its holster and broke it open to check that it was loaded, then snapped it shut and reholstered it. He felt for the extra box of cartridges he kept in a separate pouch beside his knife, a gold-handled blade his Dongolese escort had given him three weeks ago before they had parted ways. He pulled the empty water skin off the camel and slung it round his neck, and then did the same with the coiled blanket. He had weighed up the blanket in his mind, an extra burden he could ill afford, but the nights had been bitterly cold and with barely enough food or drink they would be feeling it more keenly from now on. Finally he slung on his back the wrapped wooden box containing his Sharps rifle, the barrel and stock tightly packed inside to ensure that the sights were not knocked out of place during their trip.
He watched Charrière finish his own packing, swirling back his robe to check the large hunting knife he had brought with him from Canada. Charrière tightened his blanket roll over his back and deftly tied the camels’ front legs together with lengths of leather cord, to ensure that they did not bolt and attract attention from the British lines, then he stood up and pointed to a low rise in the gravel plain about half a mile away, midway between their position and the British square. ‘Let’s get to that knoll,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll decide whether we can follow the trail between the two armies. Are you ready to run?’
Mayne shifted his burden until it was comfortable, leaving his arms free to swing, remembering how the Mohawk hunters preferred to run rather than walk along the forest trails in Canada. He took a deep breath and nodded. ‘You lead.’
17
Twenty minutes later, they stood panting on a rocky outcrop less than a thousand yards from the British square. To their left lay the rough ground flanking the low plateau of Abu Klea that was their chosen route, and ahead of them was a dried-up watercourse they had spotted between the two armies that was their fallback option should the other route became unviable. At the moment they could not risk moving, as they were within rifle range of the square; the British soldiers would be jittery, likely to shoot at anyone in Arab gear. They would have to wait until all eyes in the square were on the advancing Mahdist army to their right, until the moment when battle was about to be joined. And there was another factor: if the men somewhere behind who had been shadowing them since they had left Korti decided to break cover and ride them down now, it might force them to risk running, fully exposed to British fire, to seek shelter in the gullies in front of the square, hoping that their pursuers would rein up once they saw that they were being led into a murderous dead end. Mayne glanced at the angle of the sun in the sky: it was about 10.30 a.m. The watercourse gully had only become visible to them in the last few yards of their run, and would be invisible to anyone following them until they reached this point. He had to hope that their pursuers would never guess that one option open to the two men was to run a gauntlet that would appear suicidal to anyone bearing down on them from a distance.
He wiped his face with the cloth of his headdress; it had become hot, and he had cast off the chill of dawn. With his telescope he could see the British square more clearly now, the soldiers wearing pith helmets and khaki tunics with bandolier cartridge belts, their rifles at the ready. They were standing four deep, three hundred or three hundred and fifty men to a side, their sword bayonets thrust out like pikes, the slight curve in the blades reflecting wickedly in the sunlight. It seemed an image straight out of the Napoleonic Wars, a garish anachronism in this modern age of rifles with a range and volume of fire many times that of the muskets of Waterloo. The American Civil War twenty years before had shown the horrific consequences of infantry fighting as their forefathers had done in close formation but with modern rifles, and the tactic had been all but dropped from the training manuals for a European conflict. Yet it was precisely that concentration of firepower that made the square such a devastating tactic in this kind of war; that could even the odds for the British in the face of seemingly overwhelming disparity in numbers. And as the Zulu wars had shown, massed assaults by an enemy with weapons little changed since the days of the Romans could still crush a modern army, and firepower was only as good as the resolve of Tommy Atkins to stand his ground in the face of an opponent who was terrifying precisely because he did not play by the rules of modern war.
He thought of those men now: the bluejackets of the naval division manning the Gardner machine gun, the artillerymen with their mountain guns, the sappers who had built the zariba and were now standing stolidly in the square with the rifles, and above all the infantry and the cavalry, the Grenadier Guards and Household Cavalry who made up much of the camel regiments, men whose normal duty was the most intimate defence of the realm, safeguarding London and the Queen. He remembered the fatalistic humour of Corporal Jones and his mates, the intense camaraderie that fortified them against the devilry without. For those men now facing the test of their lives, the true purpose of the expeditio
n, the reason why they were here in the depths of the Sudan and not in their barracks at Knightsbridge, would by this hour have become an irrelevance; all that would concern them was not letting their comrades down. Mayne watched the square bow outwards at the rear as the camels corralled within tried to force their way out but were pulled back and hobbled in the centre, a great mass of grunting and foaming beasts. They could prove the greatest strength of the square, something the soldiers at Waterloo did not have, an imperturbable mass that might break the dervish charge if the front lines of soldiers should collapse.
He thought of the officers he knew well, bunched together around Stewart in front of the camels, their field glasses glinting as they scanned the enemy lines: Colonel Wilson, who had been sent with the column by Wolseley to go ahead and communicate with Gordon; and Fred Burnaby, in his element again, who had hunted out war and would fight like a lion, whose yearning seemed almost a death wish. There would be other officers there too for whom the objective of the expedition would now be secondary, for whom the chance of battle would be a welcome certainty; it would give them a hope of glory little different from the aspirations of the dervish warriors, and freed from the murky uncertainties of Gordon and the opprobrium that would fall on them at home if they failed in their mission to rescue him. Whatever happened here, whether it was a last stand against impossible odds like Isandlwana in the Zulu War or a victory like Rorke’s Drift, their names would be immortalised as soldiers and not as pawns in a political game.
Charrière suddenly cocked an ear towards the ground, and then twisted round to look behind them. ‘Our pursuers. They’re coming.’
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