Pharaoh (Jack Howard 7)

by Gibbins, David

  Mayne looked out again. ‘About a quarter of an hour ago they began to form a square. They’ve dismounted and corralled the camels inside. They’ve only just left the zariba where they spent the night, so it’s too early for them to be setting up camp again. You can see the glint of steel where they’ve fixed bayonets. They must be able to see something closer to the wells that we can’t.’

  Charrière squinted at the low hills behind the wells, then slid off the rock and lay splayed in the dust beside the camels, his ear to the ground. ‘We may not be able to see it,’ he said, ‘but I can hear it. There is a pounding, a great pounding of human feet, many thousands of them. And something else I can hear in the air too, a beating sound, like a thousand drums.’

  Mayne shut his eyes for a moment. The soldiers in the square were not just preparing for a skirmish, to repel a suicidal attack by a few jihadi horsemen like those that had beset them since they had entered the desert. What they could hear and see ahead of them now was barely imaginable, terrifying, a storm from the south, the edge of a sweeping darkness that would stir up an atavistic fear in the hearts of men whose crusader ancestors had faced it eight hundred years ago when they had come to reclaim the Holy Land. Mayne remembered how the tom-toms had so terrified the Egyptian soldiers with the river column on the Nile; he hoped the British would have more resolve than the Egyptian fellahin, men with an ancestral fear of warriors from the south. But what the men in the square must be able to see now would shake anyone, a mass advancing from the horizon against which victory might seem inconceivable.

  Charrière picked up the telescope and peered through it. ‘I can see puffs of rifle fire near the square. Mahdist sharpshooters must have come up among the rocks. These folds and gullies in the desert will provide them with cover.’

  ‘When you see volley fire from the square, then you know the Mahdi army is attacking,’ Mayne replied. He turned over and sank back against the rock, forgetting for a moment the chill and the hunger and thirst, retracing the brief for his mission. He and Charrière had left General Wolseley’s base at Korti dressed as Arabs and riding the best camels that could be found for them, shadowing Stewart’s desert column. The column had been sent south across the Bayuda desert towards Metemma on the Nile, a direct route of 176 miles that cut off the wide loop of the river to the east. Once at Metemma, it was to meet up with General Earle’s river column and a small vanguard under Colonel Wilson would embark in the river steamers that had been sent there by Gordon from Khartoum, 98 miles to the south. The plan then was either breathtakingly audacious, or astonishingly naïve. The arrival of a few dozen British redcoats would cow the enemy, who would disappear back into the desert. Khartoum would be relieved, and Gordon saved. The expedition would be the greatest triumph of British arms since Queen Victoria had come to the throne.

  Mayne knew that the chances weighed astronomically against any of this coming to fruition, not least the time factor: Gordon had issued a last plea for help weeks before, and already Stewart’s column had lingered for ten days longer than was necessary at the wells of Jakdul in the middle of the desert. The chances of the river column reaching Metemma before February were vanishingly small, with the falling level of the Nile at this time of year making the cataracts more treacherous by the hour. Yet Mayne’s own mission to get to Gordon just before the steamers arrived at Khartoum depended on Gordon knowing that the relief expedition had reached Metemma, and that rescue for himself and his people was possible; only then, Mayne knew, would he stand any chance of convincing him to leave. It had meant dogging the tails of the desert column, waiting until now, with the Nile less than twenty-five miles ahead, when the arrival of Stewart’s force at Metemma within two days seemed a fair certainty; he and Charrière could then bypass the column and make their way to Khartoum to reach it just ahead of the steamers and the relief force.

  Following the column had hardly required Charrière’s tracking skills. More than a thousand British soldiers mounted on camels and horses, a thousand more camels carrying disassembled mountain guns, a Gardner machine gun, ammunition and supplies, and the usual trail of followers and servants had created a veritable dust storm visible for miles. The enemy would have known about it even before the force had departed Korti. The question in Mayne’s mind for days now had not been whether the Mahdi would detach a force from the besieging army at Khartoum to confront Stewart, but when. This morning he had the answer. The Mahdi had ample forces at his disposal, at least 250,000 men according to Kitchener, an army growing daily as the local tribesmen lost faith in British resolve and threw in their lot with the jihad. Mayne could only hope that the detachment of a large force would show that the Mahdi had not yet decided to take Khartoum by storm, but that he would starve the city into submission; that might give Mayne a better chance of reaching Gordon in time. Or it could mean that Khartoum had already fallen and that the entire Mahdi army had been released to move north. If so, his mission was over and the survival of Stewart’s force, of Mayne himself and of Charrière, would be hanging in the balance, with Egypt itself the next to fall as the Ansar surged north.

  He remembered Charrière’s morning foray, and peered at him. ‘Are we still being followed?’

  The other man nodded. ‘The same distance behind each day. I circled back to find their tracks. They bivouacked last night behind that ridge visible back along the trail on the horizon. Four men, with camels.’

  Mayne grunted, pursing his lips. Charrière had spotted them on the first night after leaving Korti, but to begin with Mayne had thought little of it; the desert track was well used and local tribesman plied it even in times of war. But the four men had remained behind them for the full ten days it had taken Stewart to leave Jakdul, and he had become suspicious. They were not simply waiting their turn to use the wells, as Stewart’s men would have let local tribesmen through and there would have been no need for them to remain concealed. They must either be brigands or Mahdist spies, or both. It had been impossible to be stealthy with two snorting and kicking camels under them, and the tribesmen of the desert were as adept at tracking as Charrière was. But Mayne wanted to shake them soon, once they had left the exposed wasteland of the desert route. Kitchener’s map had shown an area of dense mimosa and acacia scrub in the final miles of the journey towards the Nile, beyond Abu Klea; that was where Mayne planned to leave the camels and make their move.

  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. I
f 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 fri
ends 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.