by Wilbur Smith
“Up! Move!” he yelled.
Amber stumbled onto her knees and began to clamber hand over hand up the mud-slicked stone. The mules brayed and pulled backward on their tethers. Amber desperately dragged herself higher up the slope as the roar of the water approached. Another flicker of light and she saw Ryder above her on the main path, his rifle raised. She was between him and Bill. He moved the rifle very slightly and fired.
Amber spun around in time to see as his shot felled one of the two loaded mules. The animal went down and Bill was jerked sharply backward by the sudden weight on the tether. The other animal tried to scramble past them. Bill roared and launched himself forward. Amber felt his fingers fasten around her ankle.
The first wave of the flash flood caught her, dragging her away from the side of the path. She grabbed on to the woody root of a thorn bush just above her head and felt it begin to give at once. Bill’s grip on her ankle did not weaken, but as he was caught by the force of the flood, Amber felt his weight pull on her ferociously. It felt as if her joints were being ripped apart. She cried out and her mouth filled with mud and water, debris from the river struck her in the side, and everything was agony and confusion.
“Amber!” Saffron’s voice was strong and close.
Amber tried to move, then felt her sister’s slim, strong arms grabbing her around the chest, trying to pull her free of the surging waters. Amber lifted her head above water, screamed and kicked out hard, slamming the heel of her free foot against Bill’s hold. Once, twice, then suddenly she was released and Saffron dragged her free of the waters.
For a minute the two sisters lay together on the edge of the torrent, panting, then Saffron pulled herself up into a sitting position and gathered Amber to her with a groan.
“Saffy?”
“Ryder! We’re here. Both of us.”
He was beside them a second later. The sudden flood was already abating and the waters were scouring the lower slope of the gorge. The rain had stopped and the sudden African dawn was almost with them. The storm was passing, rolling south and west until its rage faded into the wide sky. Of Bill and the two mules, they could see no sign.
“Is he dead? Why did he try and take you?” Saffron asked.
“That was a brilliant shot, Ryder,” Amber said as he put his arms around them both and held them in the softening rain. “I don’t know, Saffy. He said he had plans for me.” She shuddered. “And he said he’s been talking to the bandits. But I don’t understand.”
Saffron suddenly put out her hand and took her husband’s. “Ryder! We don’t have the full load of silver anymore! Will Menelik still grant us the land?”
“He must,” Ryder said. “He must.”
Menelik had heard news of their coming and sent men to meet them. A certain excitement pervaded the atmosphere that Ryder did not recognize. As they made their way into the city and toward the house Menelik had assigned for them, Ryder noticed representatives of every people of Ethiopia among the crowd. He made some comment about what he had seen to his escort, but he only smiled and said he thought the rains were better this year than they had been for some time, and that he hoped the worst of the cattle plague was over.
Ryder left Amber, Saffron and the children at the house, then went on to the new palace to see his silver counted into Menelik’s treasury. When the count came up short, he calmly asked for an audience with the King of Kings. It was granted, and Ryder took Geriel and Maki with him. They were shown not into the main audience hall, but a small side chamber, and found Menelik alone, seated on a velvet-covered stool, the table at his side covered in papers. Geriel and Maki dropped to one knee and Ryder made a low bow.
“So in the end you could not manage the count, Mr. Ryder,” Menelik said. “Your land is forfeit.”
“My lord,” Ryder said firmly, “I ask you to hear the testimony of these two men.”
Menelik nodded, and after exchanging nervous glances, Geriel and Maki told the King of Kings about the treachery of Bill Peters and swore to the number of ingots they’d carried when they left Courtney Mine.
Menelik listened carefully, then dismissed them, asking Ryder to remain and inviting him to sit opposite him.
“You do well to offer me my own people as witnesses, Ryder,” Menelik said when they were alone. “I hope Miss Amber is not hurt.”
“Thanks be to God, she is well. My lord, I have a request. If the loan of my share of this last load of silver might be of any use to you, I beg you to accept it. I naturally would ask no interest in this time of trouble. I wish also to inform you that once the grant in perpetuity is given, and the nation is at peace, I mean to return to Cairo with my family and put the management of the mine under Tom Western, who we know as Patch.”
Menelik studied him carefully. “You are a clever man. A tactful man. If I thought the life of a courtier held any interest for you, I would keep you in Addis. Yes, the loan of your silver would be useful. Though I insist you keep for yourself in ready money whatever is needful for the coming months.”
Menelik paused and Ryder examined his face. The emperor looked grave.
“But I cannot grant you the land,” he continued. “I am watched from all sides for weakness and I can show none. Today is not the day I can renegotiate to my disadvantage with a white man.”
“You cannot take the mine from me,” Ryder said fiercely, getting to his feet.
Menelik stood and threw out his hand, a grand, sweeping gesture that seemed to tear the air. “Do not say ‘cannot’ to an emperor, Mr. Ryder!” he roared. “I will not be commanded by you.”
Ryder rocked backward on his heels, but stood his ground. “Is this justice?” he spat out.
Menelik took two long strides until their faces were inches apart. Ryder could feel his breath hot on his face as they stared into each other’s eyes.
“If I speak it,” Menelik said, slowly and distinctly, “it is justice, law and truth.” Then he turned away and lifted his hands.
Ryder felt the audience coming to an end. He had to find the right words now, before Menelik could clap his palms together and summon his servants, or he would lose everything.
“Time then,” Ryder said, and Menelik paused, waiting. “You mean to call my men to fight at your side, as is your right and their duty. When they return after your victory to their home at the mine, give me a month to make up the shortfall.”
Menelik let his hands fall and did not reply at once. Instead he took his seat on the raised stool again. The silver bells that edged its velvet cover rang with their soft tongues.
“If I lose this war, Mr. Ryder,” he said more gently, “whoever is put in my place will not give you another month. They will take your mine and all the silver that sits unsold in my treasury.”
“But you will not lose, my lord,” Ryder replied.
Menelik looked up at him. “You are betting everything on my success? You are not tempted to run to the Italians and try to shelter under their wing?”
Ryder shook his head. “Emperor John awarded me the Star of Solomon and Judea, and I have carried it with pride every day since. I will not betray it, his memory, or you. Grant me a month after your victory, sire.”
Menelik leaned his elbow on the table. “You have fed many people at your camp during the cattle plague, have you not?”
Ryder hesitated. “That was Miss Amber’s doing, my lord.”
Menelik smiled. “Honest Ryder, even at this moment! I know it was her doing, but you did not drive the refugees away. You let her do what was right, even when it cost you labor and timber and time. So I return you that time.”
Ryder felt his breath steady.
“You will have your month, but no more. I will have to remain firm in victory, if God grants me victory, but I shall give you that month.”
•••
Amber, Saffron and Ryder were with the children in the marketplace when the war drums began to beat. Saffron took Penelope on her hip and Ryder walked with Leon on his shoulders,
and together they joined the excited crowd moving toward the center of the square.
The head of the emperor’s bodyguard waited for the masses to approach. He was mounted on a chestnut stallion and wearing his full regalia: a lion-skin headdress and cape with a decorated leather panel that covered his chest. Under his cape he wore a tunic of rippling green silk and trousers of pure white. His shield was decorated with bronze, and as well as his sword he had a M1870 Vetterli rifle over his shoulder.
On either side of him a man beat a negarit, the huge war drum, whose deep, echoing boom summoned the people from their businesses, their homes, their fields. Once the crowd had gathered, the horseman gave a word of command and the drummers ceased. The sudden silence was almost shocking.
Ryder lifted Leon down from his shoulders, but kept hold of his small hand as the horseman began to speak.
“I am the mouth of your Emperor Menelik, King of Kings, Lion of Judah. Hear me!”
The crowd’s attention was so complete it seemed they had even stopped breathing to listen.
“An enemy is come across the sea. He has broken through our frontiers in order to destroy our fatherland and our faith. I allowed him to seize my possessions and I entered upon lengthy negotiations with him in the hopes of obtaining justice without bloodshed. But the enemy refuses to listen. He continues to advance. Enough! With the help of God I will defend the inheritance of my forefathers and drive back the invader by force of arms. Let every man who has sufficient strength accompany me! And if he has not, let him pray for us!”
As soon as Menelik’s herald had finished speaking, he touched the reins of his horse and, with the drummers following, forced a way back through the crowd toward the palace. The crowd dispersed quickly. Runners and riders would already be on their way to regional capitals and market towns with copies of the proclamation and details as to where and when to muster.
“So it has come to this at last,” Amber said.
“It was inevitable from the moment you told Menelik about the treaty,” Ryder said.
Before Amber could protest that it was hardly fair to blame her for an entire war, they heard someone calling Saffron’s name. They saw a rather elderly white man approaching them across the square. It was Saffron who recognized him first.
“Yuri Alexandrovich! Penelope, my love, this is the doctor who helped Mummy the night you were born.”
Penelope had a sudden fit of shyness and hid her face in her mother’s neck.
“Doctor, I am glad to see you!” Saffron said.
“As I am you. And you, little Penelope.” He reached out a finger to stroke the girl’s cheek and she rewarded him with a brief dazzling smile. “But I must speak to you all. I have heard rumors in St. Petersburg that your engineer, Bill Peters, is not the man we thought he was.”
“We know,” Amber said simply. “He tried to kidnap me and steal our silver, and died in the attempt.”
The doctor blinked in surprise. “Bill Peters did exist,” he said, “but he died in Bohemia some years ago, it seems.”
“Come with us, doctor,” Ryder said. “And we shall tell each other all we can.”
•••
Menelik’s army had their first victory three months later. Major Pietro Toselli and his men were caught thirty miles ahead of the rest of the Italian troops at Amba Alagi by Menelik’s advance guard and were slaughtered. Penrod blamed General Arimondi for his vague orders, and he blamed the Italian telegraph officers for mangling them still further. He blamed Pietro for holding his position with a thousand men when he realized the advance guard of Menelik’s army consisted of at least twenty times that number. But Toselli had been expecting reinforcements and believed his orders were to hold his position. The march of Arimondi and his men, advancing toward Amba Alagi, and then leading a fighting retreat back to Mekelle with the traumatized remnants of Toselli’s forces, was a remarkable act of military skill and bravery.
Penrod would have blown up the fort at Mekelle and continued the retreat until Arimondi could join up with Baratieri’s forces, but the general would not do so. Mekelle was full of valuable supplies, and he believed the fort would be a perfect base for future offensive actions against the natives.
He left a garrison of twelve hundred men under Captain Galliano.
“We will be back in a few days,” he said and left.
Within a week Menelik’s vast army had surrounded them.
Back at Courtney Mine, Christmas came and went. It was strangely quiet in the camp as most of the men had gone to fight with Menelik. Ryder trained the men too young or too old to join their emperor to use their rifles, and sent regular patrols in sweeping arcs around his land. They heard that thousands of reinforcements were arriving from Italy every day, and in early February an elder from a hamlet three miles to the west visited them with the news the fort of Mekelle had been taken.
“The Italians fought like lions,” he told them, drawing a plan of the fort on the dirt in front of the church, “so Menelik said they should be allowed to march out with full military honors. Now why did he do that, do you think?”
The little boys and girls of the camp who had clustered around him, Leon and Penelope among them, shook their heads.
“I shall tell you! Our emperor is a wily one. Now look! The Italian dogs are here.” He drew a line—the English road that led through Tigray all the way to Addis Ababa—and stabbed it where the Italians held a strong position at Adagamus. “Now Menelik does not want to fight them between those hills! He wants to give battle to the west—” he swung his stick toward Adowa—“where he has room to move about. But he does not want to show them his soft belly as he passes by. They might shoot him.” The stick became a rifle. “Bang, bang!”
The children shrieked and giggled.
“So what has he done, Grandfather?” Leon piped up.
“Well, my little cub, he has made all those brave Italians from Mekelle walk alongside him, so now, as he turns toward Adowa, where he wants to be . . .”
“The Italians cannot shoot him!” Leon shouted. “They might hit their own soldiers!”
“Just so, my boy,” the old man answered.
Ryder and Saffron were watching from a few paces away. Saffron looked up at her husband.
“This cannot go on much longer, can it, Ryder? Menelik’s men must run out of forage soon.”
He held her slim body close to him but did not answer her. He had not forgotten what Menelik had said. If the King of Kings lost this war, they would lose the mine.
•••
The alarm woke Saffron in the thick of the night: the sound of a bell being struck on the escarpment; a rapid jangling suddenly cut off. Before she had opened her eyes, Ryder was out of bed and pulling on his breeches. He grabbed his rifle from the rack by the door and went out. Saffron did the same, but before she put her hand on the latch she heard a patter of steps behind her. Leon had woken.
“Mummy, where are you going? Why do you have your gun?”
“Stay here and keep your sister safe, Leon,” she said quickly.
“But I always have to look after her!”
Saffron crouched down so she could look in to his eyes. “Leon, someday it will be your job to run out of the house when the alarm rings, I know it shall, but for now your job is to look after Penelope for Daddy and me. And that is a very important job. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Thank you, Leon.”
He drew back a step and Saffron left.
The women and children of the camp, woken by the bell, had stumbled out in to the chill dawn. Ryder could see nothing through the mist lifting from the river. He ordered Patch and the older boys to take rifles and ammunition and find cover behind the heavy wooden log benches. Most of the good rifles had gone into battle with the men. The women carried knives. He ordered them into the church with the children.
Bandits. The bastards had seen their chance, but Ryder still had a dozen men, skilled workers too old to joi
n the army and endure the rigors of the march but bred with the martial pride of their people.
Once the bandits realized he had some armed men in camp, they would retreat in search of easier prey. Ryder was irritated, but neither surprised nor afraid. Every Ethiopian warrior worth his salt was with Menelik or harassing the Italian supply routes. Whoever was waiting in the mist could pose no real threat to him or his people.
“You’ll find no easy meat here, you jackals!” he shouted into the darkness.
Ryder gave the order and the camp’s defenders fired a single warning volley into the air.
“Now run like the cowards you are, or the next shots will hit home!”
Ryder expected to hear the sounds of retreat immediately, but none came. Instead, out of the mist, a volley was returned. It was disciplined and focused. The dirt in front of the church sprang up in dozens of neat fountains.
He heard a click beside him. It was his wife, still tousled with sleep, calmly loading her revolver.
“What on earth? Ryder, that must be twenty guns.”
A voice spoke out of the mist, in English. “Good morning, Courtney,” it said.
“Bill Peters! I so hoped he was dead!” Saffron exclaimed. She stepped forward and fired into the mist. They heard the bullet strike stone.
“And Mrs. Saffron is here!” Bill laughed.
Saffron looked up indignantly at her husband. “How did he know it was me?”
“No one else here would fire without word from me, and I wouldn’t shoot straight into the mist like an idiot,” Ryder said.
Saffron pouted. “He sounds different, doesn’t he?”
Bill’s fine drawl echoed across the square. “Still, lovely as it is to chat, one of my men has a message for the members of your camp.”
A loud voice began to speak in Amharic.
Patch dashed across to their position in a low crouch. “What’s he saying? I can’t make it out.”