Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Bring them to me,’ he ordered, and when the merchants gave the orders the women were paraded before him. Dorian saw at once that they had fobbed him off with the oldest and most sickly. Many would never survive the gruelling march to the coast. He felt his anger stir. He had come here to save these men from ruin. He had a firman from the Caliph commanding their obedience, and now they were niggardly and obstructive. He controlled his anger. The condition of the women was not vital to the success of his plans. He intended to place them in the caravan merely to lull the marauders into attacking. A slave column composed entirely of men must excite suspicion.

  Out of hand Dorian rejected fifty of the women, the weak old crones and the women far gone in pregnancy. The rigours of the march would kill the old and bring those pregnant into labour long before their time, and Dorian could not take on his conscience the inevitable deaths of their infants. For the same reason he had refused the offer of children the merchants made. ‘When we leave Ghandu, I want your lightest marching chains on these wretches,’ he warned the merchants. He rose to his feet as a signal that the meeting was ended.

  It was a relief to leave the odious village and to go up into the hills above the lake where the air was sweeter and cooler, the view glorious. Dorian had sited his camp upon the slopes. He had learned from his own experience that his men remained healthier if they were kept away from crowded villages, if the latrine pits were built away from the water supply and if the halal laws of food preparation were strictly observed. He had often wondered if the ritual washing before prayers also contributed to healthier troops. Certainly there were fewer diseases in his camps than his father had experienced on the crowded little English ships on which Dorian had sailed as a child.

  Although it was late afternoon by this time, his work was not yet finished for the day. There would be an early start tomorrow on the first leg of the march, and he had to review the order of his caravan.

  Five hundred of his own men, together with the female slaves, were to make up his decoy. The coloration of the captured slaves was almost purple-black. Not even the darkest-complexioned of his Arabs were that colour, so Dorian had used the infusion of tanning bark, in which the lake fishermen soaked their nets, to dye their bodies to a more natural African shade. It was still not perfect, but he depended on the dust and grime of the march to make the deception more effective.

  He had encountered further difficulties: none of his men would strip naked in public – religious modesty forbade that – so he was forced to allow them to wear loincloths, although he made certain these were filthy and ragged. They had also baulked at shaving their heads, but no African slave had flowing locks and Dorian had insisted sternly. They would wear light chains, but these would not be locked and could be cast off in an instant. With very poor grace the five merchants of Ghandu had contributed a hundred elephant tusks to sweeten the bait. These were small and light, so that the men could carry their weapons in bundles on their heads along with the ivory.

  Dorian would lead the column, mounted, robed and veiled, just as the marauders would expect. He would keep Yassie close at hand. She had learned to ride astride on the march up from the coast. He would have a small detachment of Arab guards flanking the column, not so weak as to excite suspicion, but not so strong as to deter an attack.

  Bashir al-Sind would bring up the rearguard with another thousand fighting men, keeping two or three leagues back so that his dust would not be visible to the enemy scouts. The signal that the vanguard was under attack would be a red Chinese rocket. At the signal Bashir would rush up and surround the attackers, while Dorian and his men would pin them down until Bashir could get his forces into position.

  ‘It’s a simple plan,’ Dorian decided, after he and Bashir had gone over it together for the tenth time. ‘There will be many things we cannot foresee, but those are the chances of war, and we will counter each as it arises. Perhaps the fisi will not come at all.’ Fisi was the Swahili word for hyena, and that was what they had called the marauders.

  ‘They will come, al-Salil,’ Bashir predicted. ‘They have the taste for Omani blood now, and they are addicted to it.’

  ‘Pray to Allah that you are right,’ said Dorian, and went to his own tent where the slave-boy, Yassie, had his evening meal prepared for him.

  ‘There is something about this that troubles me,’ said Aboli, as he studied the distant caravan through the lens.

  ‘Share your anxiety with me,’ Tom invited, with scarely veiled sarcasm.

  Aboli shrugged. ‘Those men are small-boned, delicately built. They walk with a strange grace, light-footed as cats. I have never seen slaves march like that.’

  Three miles from where they lay in wait, the Arab caravan was descending the escarpment of the hills, winding down it like a serpent. ‘They have been marching only a few weeks since leaving the lake country,’ Tom explained, for himself rather than for Aboli. ‘They are still fresh and strong.’ He did not want to accept any evidence that might counsel against carrying out the attack. This was the first caravan of the dry season that they had been able to intercept and he had feared that the source and wellspring of their fortunes had dried up. He was determined that this prize would not slip through his net.

  ‘Yes, the men are young and strong, but look at the women.’ Tom took back the telescope, and studied them. He felt a little stir of unease in his guts. The women were different in skin tone, age and body structure from their men. ‘They are of a different tribe,’ Tom said, with more confidence in his tone than he felt.

  ‘There are no children,’ said Aboli. ‘Where are the children?’

  ‘God love you, Aboli!’ Tom was exasperated. ‘Sometimes you could make a fresh-plucked rose smell like a wet fart.’

  They were both silent for a while. Tom swung the glass to the head of the caravan. The Arab headman rode on a grey dappled mare with rich trappings. At a glance Tom saw that he was a fine horseman, probably young. He rode tall and at ease in the saddle. He carried his long jezail slung over his back, and his shield on his shoulder. A lance-bearer rode at his right hand, ready to pass across the weapon, and a young boy rode at his other hand. A hand-slave or a favourite bum-boy, Tom guessed. The Arab wore the blue turban of the royal house of Oman, and the tail of the cloth was wound over the lower part of his face so that only his eyes were exposed.

  ‘I would like to test his steel.’ Tom forced himself to ignore his own misgivings. ‘By God, he looks as though he could give good account.’

  ‘The ivory is small and, by the ease with which they carry it, light,’ Aboli said softly.

  Tom rounded on him. ‘I have come a hundred miles to gather in that ivory, light or heavy, and I mean to have it. I will not slink home again because you have had a bad dream, Aboli.’

  I should never have told him about the dream, Aboli chided himself, then said aloud, ‘I have followed you into every wild and reckless venture you have ever conceived, Klebe. Perhaps it is an old man’s folly, but I intend to die at your side. So then, if you insist, let us go down and take these rich and easy pickings.’

  Tom snapped the telescope shut and grinned at him. ‘Let’s not talk of dying on such a glorious day as this, old friend.’ He stood up. ‘First we will cast their back trail, then go ahead of the column to find a good place to transact the main business.’ They went down to where Fundi held the horses at the base of the hill.

  Batula rode up to the head of the long column as it wound through the open forest, and made his salute to al-Salil. ‘The fisi are sniffing along our back trail,’ he reported.

  Dorian swung his horse out of the file. It skittered and threw its head. ‘When?’

  ‘After we had gone into bivouac yesterday evening. Two horsemen came up from the south, followed by two others on foot.’

  ‘What else did you make of them?’

  ‘When they dismounted to study our spoor, both riders were shod with leather. Though they have savages with them, I think that these are Fran
ks. They walked back and forth, then remounted and followed us. From a hill they overlooked our camp, then turned back into the south.’

  ‘Did it seem that they had become aware that Bashir al-Sind is following behind us?’

  ‘No, lord, it seems to me that they are unaware.’

  ‘In Allah’s name, it begins,’ Dorian said, with satisfaction. ‘Make the signal to warn Bashir al-Sind that the fisi are near, and that he can close up.’ Three innocent-looking cairns of stones, placed in a certain pattern in the road behind them, would mean nothing to anyone except al-Sind. Batula rode back to the tail of the caravan. When he returned he told Dorian, ‘It is done as you ordered, lord.’

  ‘Now, take three men with you and ride ahead to find the place where they will most likely come at us,’ Dorian ordered. ‘Ride openly, and make no suspicious move.’

  It was afternoon when Dorian saw the patrol returning. Batula rode up calmly. ‘Lord, ahead of us there is such a place as favours the design of our enemies.’ Dorian waited for him to continue. Batula went on, ‘Our head will reach the place in an hour. The road goes down another escarpment, winding through a narrow place between broken ground. Bowmen can lie concealed close on each hand. Halfway down there is an even steeper place. Here the path descends, like a ladder, down natural stone steps. This is a place where they can cut our column in half.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dorian nodded. ‘I remember this place from when we marched up from the coast. There is a river in the valley below, with a pool where we rested for four days.’

  ‘It is the same place,’ Batula confirmed.

  ‘That is where they will make their attack,’ Dorian said, with certainty, ‘for beyond the river is a wide plain of many days’ march that does not suit their purpose so well.’

  Above the natural stone ladder hung a crenellated buttress of red lichen-painted rock, a hundred feet high and rotten. It was split by deep, vertical cracks and overhung the narrow pass below. Tom sat on the edge, swinging his feet over the drop, and looked into the narrow passage. He had discovered and made a note of this place two years earlier, after their first success against the slavers.

  No more than five horses can pass abreast, he estimated, and it’s too rugged to ride them up or down it. They will have to dismount and lead them. That was good, because the Lozi archers had proved unreliable in the face of a cavalry charge. However, they were formidable fighters in confined hand-to-hand encounters. There was not another place along all the hundreds of miles of the entire slave road that lent itself so perfectly to an ambush and the kind of fighting in which his men excelled.

  Under the supervision of Luke Jervis, ten men were toiling over the broken ground behind where Tom sat. Each carried a fifty-pound keg of black powder on his back. Tom stood up and went to direct them to the mouth of the crack in the rocky buttress. They stacked the kegs, then threw themselves down to rest.

  Quickly Aboli fashioned a crude boatswain’s chair from a plank and a coil of rope. With three of the men belaying the rope’s end, he lowered himself into the crack. When he reached the bottom they sent the powder-kegs swaying down to him. Tom knew that Aboli could do this kind of work better than any, so he left him to it and made another circuit of the cliff’s edge to check his dispositions, and assure himself of their escape route if the attack failed. Sarah would wait with the horses in a bush-choked gully well back from the fighting, but close enough if all turned against them and they were forced to make a run for it.

  When he returned to the mouth of the crack, he found that Aboli had finished placing the explosive and was being hauled up again. ‘I have laid three separate fuses,’ he told Tom, and pointed to the long white snakes dangling down the rock face, ‘in case one might fail.’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty pounds.’ Tom grinned. ‘That will open their eyelids and loosen their teeth for them.’

  They went back across the high broken ground to a vantage-point from which they could overlook the approaching slave caravan. They saw the dustcloud long before the column came into view among the trees of the open miombo forest. Tom studied the head of it through the lens, but could detect no change in the speed or composition of the column. The slaves still marched three and four abreast, their chains dangling and clanking. The Arab guards flanked them, and the blue-turbaned headman still rode at the point.

  ‘There is no singing,’ Aboli remarked.

  It was true, Tom realized. Always before there had been slave-singing. ‘They must be a gloomy lot.’

  ‘The slave-masters never use the whip on them,’ Aboli went on. ‘Think of another clever reason for that, Klebe.’

  Tom rubbed the lump of his broken nose. ‘We have come across the only kind-hearted Mussulmen in Araby. You waste your breath, Aboli, and test my patience. These are mine, and I will have them.’

  Aboli shrugged. ‘It is not your fault, Klebe. Your father was a stubborn man, and your grandfather before him. It runs in the blood.’

  Tom changed the subject. ‘Do you think they will camp tonight at the mouth of the pass or come straight in?’

  Aboli considered the height of the sun. ‘If they attempt to make the passage this day, it will be dark before they are through.’

  ‘Darkness will suit our plans well enough.’

  ‘Put away your spyglass now, Klebe. They are close.

  The angle of the sun could send a flash of light down to them, and startle the game.’

  Dorian reined in his horse, and stood in the saddle to survey the mouth of the pass. It opened gradually, the sides growing deeper and steeper as the ground fell away. He remembered the terrain clearly: he had memorized its perils when first he passed through it. It was the perfect place for an ambush. He felt the skin prickle at the nape of his neck, the premonition of danger, which he trusted from long experience. ‘Batula, take two men with you and go down the pass to scout it.’ That was what any prudent caravan master must do. ‘Make a show of searching for sign, but if you discover any do not call the alarm. Come back to me. Before you reach me shout loudly that the road is clear and all is safe.’

  Batula dipped his lance-tip, rode into the pass and disappeared beyond the first turn. Dorian dismounted stiffly, and behind him the long column shuffled to a halt, the slaves sank to the earth and set aside their loads. The slave-boy, Yassie, set up a sunshade for the sheikh then blew on the coals in the copper brazier that he carried on the back of his saddle. When they burst into bright flame he placed the coffee pot over them. The coffee bubbled, and Yassie drew a thimble of it then knelt to offer it to his master.

  ‘Stay close to me when the fighting begins,’ Dorian whispered to Yassie. ‘Under no circumstances pick up a weapon or make any warlike gesture. If you are menaced by an enemy, throw yourself down and scream for mercy. If you are captured do not let them know you are a woman, lest they use you as one.’

  ‘As you command, master. But with you at my side I am not afraid of anything.’

  ‘Know that I love you, little one, and that I shall always love you.’

  ‘As I love you, master.’

  A shout from the mouth of the pass interrupted them. ‘The road is clear, and all is safe.’ Dorian looked up to see Batula waving his lance back and forth, the blue pennant fluttering at its tip.

  Dorian mounted and stood in the stirrups to give the forward command. That was all that was needed, for every one of his men knew his duty. Ponderously the caravan rolled down into the maw of red rock.

  The walls of stone closed in upon them. This was one of the old elephant roads, and over the ages the pads of the great pachyderms had worn the rock floor smooth. Dorian wound the blue headcloth tighter over his mouth and nose and, without leaning forward to make it obvious, he examined the ground for recent sign of the marauders. The stone was clean, but that meant nothing: these were dangerous men and they would not have been so careless as to mark the path.

  As the pass narrowed, the ranks of slaves and guards were compressed until they marched with s
houlders touching. There was no talking in the column, no singing, for none of the Arabs could imitate the cadence and rhythm of wild Africa.

  High on the wall of the pass, Dorian saw a flicker of movement, a tiny flash of grey. His heart skipped and beat faster. Then he saw that it was only a tiny klipspringer, one of the hare-sized gazelle that lived among the rocks. It stood poised on the crest of a boulder, all four minute hoofs held together, its straight horns and ears pricked, watching the men below with large, startled eyes.

  Halfway down the escarpment the steep pitch began as the pass squeezed between high portals of weathered, eroded rock, then dropped down a flight of natural stone stairs. Dorian swung off the saddle of the grey, and led it down the treacherous footing. From the bottom he looked back up the pitch. His soldier’s instincts crawled to see his men in such a cramped, perilous situation: they were confined in the narrow stone gut, so cramped that they would only be able to swing an edged weapon or aim a musket with difficulty.

  He drew the horse off the path and they squeezed against the wall to let the files of slaves and guards pass. Now he searched the walls on either side, looking for the flash of gunmetal, the movement of a human head against the sky. There was nothing, and half the column was down the stone ladder. The second half of the caravan was squeezing through the red rock portals. It must come now. He judged the moment: they were fairly in the trap. He glanced back at Yassie. She had stopped close behind him, and pulled her own horse off the track. She had wedged herself against a large boulder to let the files of men pass her.

  Dorian looked back at the sky. A single vulture was sailing in the tall blue on widespread pinions. It was a funereal black with a bald red head and hooked beak. It turned its head and looked down on the mass of men as it circled.

  Patience, foul bird, Dorian thought grimly. This day we will lay such a feast that will satiate even your lust for flesh.