Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  They stopped after midnight, when the great Scorpion lay low on the stony hills. One of the sheikhs of the Saar came to the Prince to make his farewells and to reiterate his vows. ‘I go to raise my levy,’ he told al-Malik. ‘Before the full of this moon I will meet you at the wells of Ma Shadid with five hundred lances at my back,’ he promised.

  They watched his camel pace away swiftly into the east until it was lost in the purple shadows, then they went on. Twice more in the night other sheikhs detached themselves from the main column and, after they had sought the Prince’s blessing, slipped away into the sands, leaving with the promise to meet again at the wells of Ma Shadid in the full of the moon.

  They went on until they discovered a field of lush zahra, which had sprung up where, months before, a thunderstorm had drenched a tiny part of the desert. They stopped and let the camels graze, while they cut bundles of ‘the flower’, for this was the finest of all camel foods and highly prized. When they had loaded it onto their mounts they rode on until the dawn turned the eastern horizon orange and pink.

  They stopped again, this time to camp, couched the camels and fed them on the garnered zahra. Then they made coffee and cakes of meal over smoky fires of dried camel dung. When they had eaten, they lay down, wrapped in their robes. They slept through the hours of quivering heat when the rocks danced in the mirage. Dorian lay close beside Ibrisam, in her shadow, and the sound of her belches and the grinding of her jaws as she chewed the cud was familiar and lulling. He slept well and woke in the evening, when the air cooled.

  While the column roused itself and prepared for the long night march, Dorian sent a small patrol under Batula to scout ahead along their intended line of march. Then he mounted Ibrisam, and rode back to sweep their back trail, making certain that they were not being followed.

  This was the way of this hard, hostile land, where the tribes lived in a perpetual state of blood feud and war, where raids for camels and women were part of desert life, and vigilance was the centre of every man’s existence.

  Dorian found that the back trail was clear. He turned back, urged Ibrisam into a swinging trot and soon caught up with the main column. After midnight they reached the bitter wells at Ghail ya Yamin. A small encampment of the Saar was already there, and they came out of their tents and surrounded the Prince’s camel, ululating and firing joy shots in the air.

  They camped for two days under the straggly date palms at Ghail ya Yamin, where the water in the wells was so brackish that it could only be drunk when mixed with camel’s milk. The men had to climb down deep into the earth to reach it, and they carried it up to the surface in leather bags to water the camels. After the long, waterless journey the camels drank with relish. Ibrisam drank repeatedly and sucked up twenty-five gallons during the next few hours.

  The last of the sheikhs of the Saar left the column here and scattered out into the wilderness to find their people, leaving Prince al-Malik with only Dorian’s small force to guide and protect him on the last leg of the journey to meet the Awamir at the wells of Muhaid.

  It took them three nights of travel to cross the salt flats before the hills of Shiya. Even in the moonlight the flats were white as a snowfield, and the pads of the camels left a dark path over the shiny surface. On the third morning they saw the hills rise far ahead of them, a pale blue line, serrated like the fangs of a tiger shark against the dawn. They camped for the day in a shallow wadi where a growth of thorny ghaf trees gave them some shelter from the sun. Before he lay down to sleep, Dorian climbed to the lip of the wadi to study the line of hills that lay ahead. The red, rugged rock was highlighted by the rising sun.

  The hills of Shiya marked the boundary between the territories of the Saar and the Awamir. Dorian picked out a peak shaped like a castle turret. The Saar called it the Witch’s Tower. It marked the pass through the range that would take them into the domain of the Awamir. Dorian smiled with satisfaction that he had led the column across the trackless plains directly to the pass, then stood up and went down into the wadi to find shade and rest for the day.

  That evening when the column was ready to continue the march Dorian rode back as usual to sweep the back trail. Half a mile from the camp he cut the spoor of a strange camel. By now he had grown so adept in the ways of the desert that he could recognize the tracks of every beast in their column. These tracks showed that the unknown rider had come out of the west and crossed their trail. Dorian read how the man had dismounted to examine their trail, then remounted and followed it for almost two miles, before sheering off and riding to a low shale bank that rose like the spine of an elephant out of the salt-white plain. Behind this cover he had left his camel and crawled to the top of the ridge. His snake-like drag marks were clear for Dorian to read.

  When Dorian followed these to the crest of the ridge he found that he overlooked the camp among the ghaf trees where the column had spent the day. Dorian saw that the stranger had lain on the ridge for a while, then drawn back and run down to where he had tethered his camel. He had ridden off, making a wide circle around the encampment, then headed directly towards the hills of Shiya and the Witch’s Tower above the pass. The spy had at least eight hours’ lead on the column and would have reached the pass by now.

  The implications were sinister. The news of the arrival of al-Malik and his journey through the desert to meet the leaders of the tribes would almost certainly have reached the Caliph in Muscat and his Ottoman allies. They might have sent a force to intercept him, and the logical place to set up an ambush would be at the pass of the Witch’s Tower.

  Dorian took only minutes to decide his next action. He swung up onto Ibrisam’s saddle and urged her into a run. They sped away across the white flats and within a short time he saw the column ahead, dark shadows on the shining earth. The rearguard challenged him as he came up, then recognized Ibrisam. ‘It is al-Salil, by God!’

  ‘Where is Batula?’ Dorian shouted, as he came within hail.

  His lance-bearer galloped back to him. As he reached Dorian’s side he threw back his veil and uncovered his face. ‘You come in haste, master, there is danger?’

  ‘A stranger rides in our shadow,’ Dorian told him. ‘He has watched us from afar while we camped, then he rode off towards the pass, perhaps to warn the men who are waiting there.’ Quickly he explained to Batula what he had found, then sent him out with two companions to follow up the tracks of the stranger. He watched them ride away and urged Ibrisam on to catch up with the Prince.

  Al-Malik listened intently while Dorian made his report. ‘There are many enemies. Almost certainly these are the servants of the Ottoman or of my brother the Caliph. Allah knows, there are many who would prevent me reaching the tribes of the interior. What do you plan, my son?’

  Dorian pointed ahead. The dark hills of Shiya were an unbroken barrier, rising five hundred feet above the salt flats. ‘Lord, we do not know how many of the enemy there are. I have thirty men, and can laugh at twice or thrice that number of enemy. However, if the Ottoman have got wind of your journey they may have sent an army to find you.’

  ‘That is likely.’

  ‘The pass at the Witch’s Tower is the main and swiftest route through the hills to reach the Awamir, but there is another lesser pass further to the west.’ Dorian pointed across the silver plain. ‘It is known as the Pass of the Bright Gazelle, and to reach it will take us many leagues out of our way, but I cannot risk riding into the Witch’s Tower and being trapped in its gut by a large force of the Ottoman.’

  Al-Malik nodded. ‘How far to this other pass? Can we reach it before daybreak?’

  ‘No,’ Dorian replied. ‘Even if we drive the camels hard we will not be there before the middle of the morning.’

  ‘Then let us ride,’ said al-Malik.

  Dorian called to his men of the vanguard and ordered them to change direction towards the west. They closed up and, with the Prince in the centre of the line, every man alert for an ambush, they pushed the camels harder. The beast
s were still fresh and strong and the salt crystals crunched under their pads. A soft white dustcloud rose up and sparkled behind them in the still night air as they sped forward.

  They halted for a short while after midnight, to let the camels blow and to drink a cup of water mixed with camel’s milk, then went on.

  In that darkest hour of the night, four hours before dawn, there was a shout of alarm from the riders in the rearguard of the column. Dorian turned his camel and raced back.

  ‘What is it?’ he began, then broke off as he spotted the dark clump of camels coming towards them out of the night. There were few, but they might be the outriders of an army.

  ‘Close up the ranks!’ he ordered, and loosened the butt of his lance in its leather boot. Swiftly the column evolved into a defensive formation, with the Prince in the centre where they could protect him. Then Dorian urged Ibrisam forward and challenged the approaching men with a shouted question.

  ‘Al-Salil!’ The response was immediate, and he recognized Batula’s voice.

  ‘Batula!’ He rode to meet his lance-bearer. They came together at a gallop then Dorian turned Ibrisam to run alongside Batula’s mount so they could talk.

  ‘What news?’

  ‘A war party, many men,’ Batula replied. ‘They were waiting at the Witch’s Tower.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Five hundred, perhaps more.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Turks and Masakara.’ The Masakara were the tribe from the coastal lands around Muscat and Sur. Dorian had no doubt that they were the Caliph’s men, especially if Turks were with them.

  ‘Encamped?’

  ‘No, they are riding hard in pursuit of us.’

  ‘How do they know we have changed direction?’

  ‘I can only guess that they must have many scouts watching us, and we saw your dustcloud from many miles. It shines like a beacon fire in the moonlight.’

  Dorian looked up and saw it obscuring half the sky above them. ‘How far are they behind you?’

  Batula threw back the cloth from his face and grinned in the starlight. ‘If it were daylight you would be able to see their dustcloud clearly. Loosen your lance, al-Salil. There will be good fighting before the sun sets tomorrow.’

  They raced onwards all that night, until the dawn flushed the eastern sky and the light grew stronger.

  ‘Ride on!’ Dorian called to the Prince, turned Ibrisam aside and headed for a pimple of dark lava that rose abruptly fifty feet out of the flat white plain to their left. When he reached it he jumped down from the saddle and scrambled to the top of it.

  The dawn flared before his eyes, and the light came swiftly, that miraculous birth of the desert day. The wild hills of Shiya stood tall and serried ahead of him; their colours were as gorgeous as those of some tropical bird, bright gold and red with bars of purple and buttresses of crimson. He could clearly see the Pass of the Bright Gazelle, a dark blue cleft that split the sheer, rugged cliffs from top to bottom. The white sands were piled up at the base of the hills in a sloping ramp, and the wind had carved the soft dunes below the gaudy rockface into weird, fantastic shapes.

  Then Dorian looked back the way they had come and saw the dustcloud of the Turks, billowing up from the glistening plain close behind him. At that moment the rising sun shot its first arrow of light through a gap in the crest of the hills. Although Dorian was still in shadow, the plain behind him was lit, and he saw the sunlight sparkle on the lance heads of the approaching riders.

  ‘Batula was wrong,’ he whispered, as he saw their multitudes. ‘There are many more than he counted. A thousand, perhaps.’

  They were spread out over a wide front, many squadrons, some obscured by the dust of those ahead.

  ‘There must have been a traitor,’ Dorian mused. ‘They would not have sent this vast array had they not known for certain that the Prince was coming this way.’

  The closest squadron of the enemy was near the centre of the line, a small band that had outstripped the main body, leaving them floundering along behind. They were so close that he could see the shapes of the camels and the riders on their backs through the gossamer sheets of rolling dust. He could not count them but he guessed there were two hundred in this group and, judging from the way in which they rode, they were hard-fighting men.

  He narrowed his eyes as he tried to estimate their speed and compare it to the pace of the fleeing column of his own men. Those camels out there were fresh and fleet, while his own beast had run all night. The enemy were outrunning them, and it would be a close race to reach the Pass of the Bright Gazelle.

  He ran down to where Ibrisam stood and leaped up onto her back. She sprang away at the touch of his riding wand and fled in pursuit of the column. As he emerged from behind the cover of the rocks, the pursuers spotted him and he heard their faint but warlike cries carrying in the cool morning air. Dorian swivelled in the saddle and looked back just in time to see the puffs of gunsmoke as the riders in the leading ranks fired at him.

  The range was too long, and he did not even hear the flight of the musket-balls. Ibrisam, the Silk Wind, ran on untouched and caught up with their own band at the start of the sand ramp that led up to the foot of the cliffs. This was a slithering slope of loose, crystalline particles that gave under the weight of the camels and ran back like water beneath their pads.

  The column struggled upwards, sliding back half a pace for every one they gained, and the camels moaned with fear at the treacherous footing. One of the leading animals went down on its haunches, lunging wildly to regain its feet, then rolled backwards, crushing its rider under the saddle. Dorian was close enough to hear the screams and the crackle of the bones as both the man’s legs snapped. Then the heavy beast slid back in a tangle to the foot of the ramp, leaving the slope behind it littered with waterskins and broken equipment, dragging its rider down with it, caught in the traces.

  Dorian jumped down and, with his sword, cut the injured man free. Batula saw what he was doing and turned back to help him. His mount slid down the slope in sheets of flying sand, and at the bottom he jumped down beside Dorian. Between them they lifted the injured man, his shattered legs dangling, up onto Ibrisam’s back.

  The tail of the column was already halfway up the slope. The Prince and the vanguard had reached the foot of the rocks and were disappearing into the dark cleft of the pass through the hills.

  Dorian seized Ibrisam’s halter, dragged her head round and started her up the dune. He glanced back over the plain and saw the pursuit bearing down upon them. Their mounts were stretched out at full run, the dust boiling out behind them, the riders on their backs brandishing their weapons, howling war cries into the wind, robes streaming out behind them, racing in to cut them down while they struggled up the treacherous slope.

  Abruptly, from high above, came the blast of musket fire. The Prince had rallied the men as they reached the mouth of the pass, and the crash of the volley echoed and boomed along the cliff face. Dorian saw at least three of the onrushing riders knocked from the saddle by the heavy lead balls, and one of the camels must have been struck in the brain, for it dropped so suddenly that it cartwheeled, haunches over head, flinging its rider high as it sprawled on the hard-baked earth. The charge lost speed and impetus, and as Dorian and Batula toiled up the soft slope another volley of musket fire swept over their heads.

  It was answered by a rattle of rolling fire from the foot of the dunes where the enemy were dismounting and turning their jezails on the struggling pair exposed on the ramp above them. Lead balls kicked up spurts of sand around Dorian’s feet, but there seemed a charm of protection over him, for despite the rain of shots he and Batula battled on.

  Running with sweat and gasping for breath, they dragged the camels over the top of the sand ramp and onto the stony ledge at the mouth of the pass. Dorian looked around him swiftly as he heaved and panted for breath.

  The other camels had been led into shelter behind the first turn of the high stone walls, a
nd his men had couched them there then run back to take up positions among the rocks from where they could fire down on the enemy.

  Dorian looked out across the plain below and saw the Ottoman squadrons strung out over miles of the pale earth, but all headed in his direction. He made a swift count of their numbers.

  ‘Certainly close to a thousand!’ he decided, and wiped the stinging sweat from his eyes with his headcloth. Then he examined Ibrisam quickly, running his hands over her flanks and haunches, dreading to find blood from a bullet wound, but she was unharmed. He tossed the halter rope to Batula. ‘Take the camels to safety,’ he ordered, ‘and have the injured man cared for.’

  While Batula led the beasts deeper into the gut of the pass, Dorian went to find the Prince. Al-Malik squatted, musket in hand, unharmed and composed, quietly directing the musketeers among the rocks. Dorian crouched beside him. ‘Lord, this is not your business. It is mine.’

  The Prince smiled at him. ‘You have done well thus far. You should have left that clumsy fellow to fend for himself. Your life is worth a hundred of his.’

  Dorian ignored both the rebuke and the compliment. He said quietly, ‘With half the men I can hold the enemy here for many days, until our water is spent. I will send Batula and the other half to escort you through the pass and on to the oasis of Muhaid.’

  The Prince looked into his face, his expression grave. The odds would be twenty against a thousand, and though the position was strong, they could expect the enemy to be determined and resourceful. He knew the sacrifice Dorian was offering. ‘Leave Batula here,’ he said, ‘and come with me to Muhaid.’ The tone of his voice was a question, not an order.

  ‘No, my lord.’ Dorian rejected it. ‘I cannot do that. My place is here with my men.’

  ‘You are right.’ The Prince rose to his feet. ‘I cannot force you to neglect your duty, but I can command you not to fight here to the death.’