Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Back to back!’ Dorian yelled. ‘Cover each other! Back into the pass.’

  They formed a tight, defensive ring, and the Turks bayed around them as they fell back quickly into the mouth of the pass, but they lost more men to the flashing blades and musket-balls fired at close range.

  ‘Now!’ Dorian gave the order. ‘Run!’

  They spun round and pounded back deeper into the pass, dragging their wounded with them, while the enemy jammed in the entrance, obstructing each other by their numbers as they tried to pursue.

  Dorian was in the lead as they raced round the bend in the rock passage and he shouted to the six men behind the walls of the sangar, ‘Hold your fire! It is us!’

  The rock wall of the sangar was chest high and they had to scramble over it. The men waiting behind the wall helped to drag the wounded over the top.

  As the last of the Saar fell over the wall the enemy came roaring down the rock passage close behind him. The six men who had not taken any part in the fighting so far were desperate to join in: they had loaded all the remaining muskets and stacked them along the side of the cliff, and they had planted the long lances in the earth, close at hand for when the Turks breached the sangar.

  The first volley into the front rank of the Turks brought them up short, and there was confusion and dismay as those in front tried to retreat and their comrades coming up behind pushed them forward. Another close-quarter volley with the second battery of reloaded muskets tipped the balance, and the remaining Turks fled back down the passage to disappear around the bend in the rock. Although they were hidden by the curved rock wall, the voices of the Turks were magnified by the surrounding walls, and Dorian could hear every word as they cursed the Saar and urged each other to attack again. He knew that there would be only a brief respite before the next assault.

  ‘Water!’ he ordered. ‘Bring a waterskin.’ The heat in the pass was like a bread oven, and the fighting had been heavy and hot. They gulped down the foul, brackish liquid from the bitter wells at Ghail ya Yamin as though it were sweet sherbet.

  ‘Where is Hassan?’ Dorian asked, as he counted heads.

  ‘I saw him fall,’ one of his men replied, ‘but I was carrying Zayid and I could not go back for him.’

  Dorian felt the loss, for Hassan had been one of his favourites. Now he had only twelve men still able to fight. They had dragged back five of their wounded with them but others had had to be left to the mercy of the Turks. Now they carried the five wounded back to where the camels were couched, then Dorian divided the survivors into four equal groups.

  The wall of the sangar was wide enough for only three of them to man it at a time. Dorian positioned the three other groups behind the leading rank, after each volley they would fall back to reload and the other ranks would step up to take their turn. In this fashion he hoped to maintain a steady fire into the Turks as they came forward to the attack. He might be able to hold them off until dark, but he doubted that they could survive the night.

  So few of the Saar were still on their feet, and the Turks had a reputation as terrible and doughty fighters. He knew they would be resourceful enough to find some strategy to thwart their best efforts of defence. All he could hope for was to buy time for al-Malik, and in the end they would have to try to fight their way out with lance and sword.

  They settled down behind the sangar in the hushed, heated air of the pass, husbanding their strength.

  ‘I would trade my place in Paradise for a pipe of kheef now.’ Misqha grinned as he wrapped a strip of filthy sweat-soaked cloth around the sword-cut in his upper arm. The heady smoke of the herb made the smoker fearless and oblivious to the pain of his wounds.

  ‘I will make one for you and light it with my own hands when we sit in the halls of Muscat,’ Dorian promised, then broke off as somebody called his name.

  ‘Al-Salil, my brother!’ the voice echoed and resonated from the rock. ‘My heart rejoices to see you again.’ It was high-pitched, almost girlish.

  Although the timbre had changed, Dorian recognized it. ‘How is your foot, Zayn al-Din?’ he called back. ‘Come, let me break the other for you, to balance your duck waddle.’

  Out of sight behind the bend of the passage, Zayn giggled. ‘We will come, my brother, believe me, we will come, and when we do I shall laugh while my Turkish allies lift the skirts of your robe and bend you over the saddle of your camel.’

  ‘I think you would enjoy that more than I would, Zayn.’ Dorian used the feminine form of address, as though he were speaking to a woman, and Zayn was silent for a while.

  ‘Listen, al-Salil,’ he shouted again. ‘This is your blood brother Hassan. You left him behind when you ran like a cowardly jackal. He still lives.’

  Dorian felt a chill of dread blow down his spine. ‘He is a brave man, Zayn al-Din. Let him die with dignity,’ he called back. Hassan had been his friend since the first day he had come to live among the Saar. He had two young wives and four little sons, the oldest only five years of age.

  A terrible scream came down the passage, a scream of mortal agony and outrage, which descended into a sobbing moan.

  ‘Here is a gift for you from your friend.’ Something small, soft and bloody was lobbed around the corner of the passage. It rolled in the sandy earth and came to rest in front of the sangar wall. ‘You are in need of another pair of balls, al-Salil, my brother,’ Zayn al-Din called. ‘There they are. Hassan will not need them where he is going.’

  The Saar growled and cursed, and Dorian felt tears sting his eyelids. His voice choked as he shouted back, ‘I swear, in the name of God, that I will do the same for you one day.’

  ‘Oh, my brother,’ Zayn called back, ‘if this dog of a Saar is so dear to you, I will send him back to you. But before I do I wish to look at his liver.’

  There was another terrible scream, then Hassan was thrust out into the open and sent staggering down the passage towards the sangar. He was naked, and between his legs was a dark hole, mushy with blood. They had ripped open his belly and his entrails dangled around his knees, slippery and purple. He reeled towards Dorian, his mouth open. He made a cawing animal sound, and his mouth was a blood-drenched cave. Zayn al-Din had cut out his tongue.

  Before he reached the sangar wall he collapsed and lay wriggling weakly in the dust. Dorian leaped over the wall with the musket in his hand. He placed the muzzle at the back of Hassan’s head and fired. His skull collapsed like a rotten melon. At the sound of the shot the Turks came pouring down the passage, like a wave of storm water. Dorian jumped back over the wall.

  ‘Fire!’ he shouted to his men, and the first volley of musket-balls slapped like thrown gravel into the front rank of the attackers.

  The fighting raged back and forth for the few hours of daylight that remained. Gradually the passage clogged with the enemy dead, they were piled almost as high as the rock wall, and a thick fog of gunsmoke filled the depths of the pass, so that the air was hard to breathe and they panted and gasped as they fired and reloaded. The smoke mingled with the metallic smell of blood and the gas from the torn intestines, and in the heat the sweat poured down their bodies and burned their eyes with its salt.

  Using their own dead as an assault ladder, the Turks managed to climb over the top of the wall three times, and three times Dorian and his Saar hurled them back. As darkness fell there were only seven Arabs still able to stand beside him and all were wounded. In the lull between each attack, they dragged their dead and wounded back to where the camels were couched. There was no one to tend the injured men, so Dorian placed a waterskin beside those who still had the strength to drink from it.

  Jaub, who was nicknamed the Cat, had had his right shoulder shattered by the blow of a battleaxe, and Dorian could not staunch the pumping arterial bleeding. ‘It is time for me to leave you, al-Salil,’ Jaub whispered, as he struggled to his knees. ‘Hold my sword for me.’

  Dorian could not refuse this last request: he could not leave this comrade of a dozen battles t
o the Turks. With ice in his heart, he set the hilt of the sword firmly in the sand and placed the point of the curved blade in the notch below the sternum, aimed up towards the heart.

  ‘The blessing of Allah and his Prophet on you, my friend,’ Jaub thanked him and fell forward. The blade slid in full length and the point, smeared with blood, came out between his shoulder-blades. Dorian stood up and ran back to the wall just as another rush of Turks came howling down the gut of the pass. They hurled them back at last, but two more of the Saar had gone down. I had hoped to hold them longer, Dorian thought, as he leaned heavily on the blood-soaked wall. I had hoped to give my father more time to raise the Awamir, but there are too few of us left and it is almost over now.

  It was becoming very dark in the passage. Soon the Turks would be able to creep up to the foot of the wall unseen.

  ‘Bin-Shibam,’ he croaked to the man beside him, for his throat was swollen with thirst and strained with shouting, ‘bring the last waterskin and the bundles of firewood from the camel loads. We will drink and light the night with our last fire.’

  The leaping flames lit the rock walls of the pass with a ruddy flickering light, and at intervals one of the Saar threw a burning brand over the wall to dispel the shadows in which the Turks might crawl forward.

  There was a lull now. They could hear the Turks talking beyond the bend, and the groans of the wounded and dying were hideous, but still the next attack did not come. They sat in a small lonely huddle against the wall, drinking the last of the water and helping each other bind up their wounds. All of them were hurt, but although Dorian had been in the thick of the fighting all that day his injuries were the least grave. There was a deep cut on the back of his left arm, and a sword-thrust through the same shoulder. ‘But I still have my right arm to wield a sword,’ he told the man who was fashioning an arm sling for him from a length of rope from the camel tack. ‘I think we have done all we can here. If any of you wishes to leave, take a camel and ride with my thanks and blessings.’

  ‘This is a good place to die,’ said the man beside him.

  ‘The houris of Paradise will be sad that we disregard their call,’ another refused Dorian’s offer.

  Then they all looked up in mild alarm as a pebble clattered down from high above, bouncing from wall to wall, striking tiny sparks from the rock.

  ‘They have climbed the cliffs and are over our heads.’ Dorian jumped to his feet. ‘Douse the fire.’ The flames would light them for the men high above to see their position. His warning came too late.

  Suddenly the air around them was filled with a thunderous roar, like that of a great waterfall, and a bombardment of rocks came hurtling down upon them. Some of the boulders were the size of powder-kegs, others only as large as a man’s head, but there was no shelter from this lethal rain in the gut of the pass.

  Three more men were crushed in the first few moments and the others struck down as they ran back along the passage to the camels. Dorian was the only one to get through. He reached Ibrisam’s side and threw himself into the saddle. ‘Hut! Hut!’ he urged her to her feet, but as she rose the bombardment of boulders ceased abruptly and the Turks swarmed over the wall behind him. They stabbed the wounded Arabs then, with barely a pause, rushed forward to surround Ibrisam.

  Dorian hit one of them in the chest with the lance, driving the steel head in deeply against the clinging resistance of living flesh, but the shaft snapped off in his hand and he hurled the stump into the face of another Turk and drew his sword. He slashed at the heads of the men who were trying to pull him down from the saddle, and drove Ibrisam back down the passage. She kicked out at the men who stood in her way, clashing her huge yellow teeth, biting all the fingers off one man’s hand and crushing another’s ribs with a single blow from her forefoot. Then she bounded forward and broke through their ranks.

  Dorian clung to the pommel of the saddle with his good hand as Ibrisam ran free, following the bends and convulsions of the pass. The bloodthirsty yells of the Turks dwindled behind them.

  The pass ran a mile or more through the hills, a dry water-course formed when a softer stratum of rock had been washed out by storm-water over the millennia. Once they were clear of their pursuers Ibrisam shifted into that smooth-pacing trot that covered the ground swiftly and had given her the name Silk Wind.

  Dorian fell into a trance from thirst, exhaustion and the stiffening pain of his wounds. The walls of the pass streamed past him endlessly, mesmerizing him further. Once he almost toppled from the saddle, but Ibrisam felt him slump and came to an abrupt halt. This roused Dorian and he sat more firmly in the saddle when she went on.

  Only then did he become aware that her gait was hampered, but he was confused and dazed, barely able to keep his seat. The effort required to dismount and check her condition was too much for him.

  Once again he dozed and when he started awake he found that they had emerged from the far end of the pass and were out into the open country of the Awamir. He could tell from the height of the moon and the position of the stars that it was after midnight.

  The night was icy cold, a cruel contrast to the burning heat of the day. The blood and sweat that soaked his robe chilled him further and he was shivering and light-headed. Ibrisam was moving strangely under him, her pace short and her back hunched. At last he summoned the strength and resolve to order her to halt and couch.

  He tested the waterskin that hung over her withers, and found that it contained less than a gallon of the stinking water from Ghail ya Yamin. He took his thick woollen shawl out of the carrying-net and spread it over his shoulders. Still shivering, he examined Ibrisam to find the cause of her distress.

  He saw at once that her rump was wet and shining in the moonlight, and discovered that she was scouring heavily. The liquid dung she was passing was dark red with blood. Dorian felt a plunge of dismay. His own injuries and misery forgotten, he palpated her sleek, smooth flanks but when he touched her belly, just forward of her back legs, she moaned softly and his hand came away wet and shining with blood.

  A thrust from a Turkish lance had cut deep into her belly and ruptured her bowels. She was mortally wounded, and it was a miracle of love and determination that she had carried him this far. Dorian was so weak and sad that his tears welled. He untied the leather bucket from the load and filled it with the last of the water from the skin. He drank half a pint of the filthy liquid, then went to kneel at Ibrisam’s head.

  ‘My brave darling,’ he said, and gave her to drink of what remained in the bucket. She sucked up the water eagerly, and when it was finished she snuffled the bottom. ‘There is nothing more I can do for you,’ he told her, as he stroked her ears. She loved him to do that. ‘You will be dead by morning,’ he said, ‘and I with you, unless you can carry me a little further, for the Turks will follow closely. Will you carry me for the last time?’ He stood up and called to her softly, ‘Hut! Hut!’

  She swung her head and looked at him with those great dark eyes swimming with agony.

  ‘Hut! Hut!’ he said, and she groaned, roared and heaved herself upright. Dorian dragged himself up into the saddle.

  She went on at that cramped painful gait, following the tracks that the Prince and Batula had left through the broken hills and deep wadis. Dorian almost toppled again, but he rallied and used the empty carrying-net to tie himself into the saddle. He dozed, jerked awake and dozed again, slowly sinking into a coma. He lost all track of time, speed, direction, and they wandered on, the dying beast and the man.

  An hour after dawn, just as the cruel flail of the sun scourged them once again, Ibrisam went down for the last time. She died on her feet still trying to struggle forward. With a last low moan, she fell heavily, throwing him from the saddle to sprawl on the rock-strewn earth.

  Dorian crawled to his knees then dragged himself into the shade of Ibrisam’s carcass. He forced himself not to think about the death of his beloved beast, or the loss of so many of his men. He had to concentrate all his strength a
nd wits on staying alive until Batula could lead the Awamir back to rescue him.

  He saw the heavy tracks of many camels in the loose earth ahead of him, and realized that even in her death throes Ibrisam had still faithfully followed the route that Batula and the Prince had taken towards the oasis at Muhaid. That might yet save his life, for when they returned they would come back along their own tracks.

  It was the rule of survival in the desert not to leave a place of safety and wander off into the wilderness, but Dorian knew that the Turks were following him. Zayn al-Din would not let him go so easily. The enemy must be close, and if they found him before Batula returned he could expect the same treatment that Zayn had given to the wounded he had captured at the Pass of the Bright Gazelle.

  He must go on to meet Batula and he must try to keep ahead of the following Turks for as long as he had the strength to remain on his feet. He stood up shakily and looked down at the load that Ibrisam had carried. Was there anything that might be of use to him? He unhooked the waterskin, shook it, then held it high with both hands, the spout to his lips. A few bitter drops slid reluctantly into his mouth and he swallowed painfully, his throat already swelling. Then he dropped the empty skin.

  Weapons. He looked to what he had with him. There was his jezail in the leather scabbard, and the powder flask and shot bag. The butt stock of the musket was inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, the lock chased with silver. It weighed almost seven pounds, too heavy to carry. Leave it.

  His broken lance had been left at the pass, and the sword would weigh him down – its weight would seem to double with every mile he walked. Sadly, he unbuckled the belt and let it drop. He kept the dagger, he would need that at the end. The edge was keen. He had honed it until he could shave the red-gold hairs from his own forearm with it. When the Turks closed in, he would fall on it, choosing a clean death, rather than emasculation and disembowelment.

  He looked down at Ibrisam and said, ‘There is one last thing I ask you for, my darling.’ He knelt beside her and slit open her belly with the dagger. From her stomach he took handfuls of the contents and squeezed out the liquid between his fingers and drank it. It was bitter with gall, and he had to control the urge to vomit it out again, but he knew it would give him the strength to survive a few more hours under the cruel sun.