his
father.
Dorian ripped off his turban. 'Show them who we are!' he cried. Mansur pulled off his own turban and they rode on with their bright red hair streaming behind them like banners.
A cry went up from the parapets: 'Al-Salil! It is the Caliph!'
The gates began slowly to open again as the men on the winches bent to the handles.
The Turks saw that they could not cut them off on foot. Their cavalry had not yet arrived: it was following in the second fleet. They halted and unslung their short recurved bows. The first flight of arrows rose dark against the blue and hissed like a pitful of serpents as it fell among the racing horses. One was struck, and went down as though it had run full-tilt into a tripwire. Mansur turned back, hauled Istaph from the saddle of the floundering horse, swung him up on to his stallion's withers and raced on. The gates started to close again the moment the Caliph had galloped through. Mansur shouted to the winch men as he came through the storm of Turkish arrows. They seemed not to hear him and inexorably the gates continued to shut in his face.
Then, suddenly, Dorian turned back into the opening and stopped his horse full in the path of the great mahogany gates, which creaked to a standstill. Mansur galloped through with inches to spare. The gates slammed as the wave of Turkish attackers reached them, and the defenders on the parapets above fired muskets and arrows down into them. They fled back into the palm grove.
Dorian galloped at once through the narrow alleys to the mosque and climbed the spiral staircase to the top balcony of the tallest minaret. On one side he had a sweeping view over the harbour and peninsula, and on the other over cultivated fields and groves. Earlier he had devised a system of flag signals to communicate with the gunners on the parapets and his two ships in the bay so that he could co-ordinate their actions.
From this height he could make out through his telescope the forest of masts of Zayn al-Din's fleet showing above the high ground of the peninsula. He lowered the glass and turned to Mansur. 'Our ships are still safe,' he pointed to the Sprite and the Revenge at anchor, 'but as soon as Zayn brings his war dhows round the peninsula and enters the bay they will be exposed and vulnerable. We must bring them close in under the protection of the battery on the sea wall.'
How long can we hold out, Father?' Mansur lowered his voice and sPoke in English so that bin-Shibam and Mustapha Zindara, who had followed them, could not understand him.
'We have not had enough time to finish the work on the south wall,' Dorian replied. They will discover our weak places soon enough.'
'Zayn almost certainly knows of them already. The city is swarming with his spies. Look!' Mansur pointed at the corpses hanging on the outer wall like washing. 'Although Mustapha Zindara is taking care of as many as he can lay his hands on, no doubt he has overlooked one or two.'
Dorian surveyed the gaps in the defences, which had been hurriedly stopped up with timber balks and gab ions filled with sand. The repairs were temporary, and would not withstand a determined attack by seasoned troops. Then he lifted his spyglass and ran the lens over the palm groves to the south of the city. Suddenly he stiffened and handed the glass to Mansur. 'The first attack is gathering already.' They could make out the sparkle of sunlight on the helmets and spearheads of the Turkish troops, who were massing under cover of the groves. 'Mansur, I want you to go aboard the Sprite and take overall command of both our ships. Bring them in as close to the shore as is safe. I want your guns to cover the approaches to the south wall.'
Later, Dorian watched him being rowed out to the Sprite in the longboat. Almost as soon as he stepped aboard, both ships swung round as their anchor cables were hauled in. Under topsails they sailed deeper into the bay, Mansur in the Sprite leading Batula in the Revenge.
In the light breeze they were barely under steerage way, and they loafed in over the sparkling water, their hulls dappled turquoise green by the reflection of sunlight off the white sand of the lagoon bottom. Then Dorian looked to the south, and saw the first wave of the Turkish assault swarming across the open fields towards the walls. He ordered a red flag hoisted to the pinnacle of the minaret: the prearranged signal to the squadron that an attack was imminent. He saw Mansur look up at the flag, waved down at him and pointed to the south. Mansur waved back in acknowledgement, and sailed on sedately.
Then the ships turned in succession just below the harbour wall. Dorian watched the gun ports fall open and the guns run out, like the fangs of a snarling monster. Mansur's tall figure was pacing along the gundeck. He paused occasionally to speak to his crew as they gathered tensely around the gun carriages.
The south wall and its approaches were still hidden by the angle of the tall stone ramparts, but as the Sprite cleared the range and angled in towards the beach the view opened before Mansur's eyes.
The Turks were bunched up as they carried in the long scaling ladders. Some of them looked across the narrow strip of water as the two pretty little ships emerged from behind the citadel walls. The Turkish infantry had never seen the effect of shot from a naval nine pounder. Some even waved, and Mansur ordered his crews to wave back to lull their fears.
It happened with dreamlike deliberation. Mansur had time to walk down his deck and lay each gun with his own hand, turning down the elevation screws. He found it difficult to convince some of his crew that the power of the guns was not enhanced when the screws were turned up to maximum. Closer and closer they crept in towards the beach and Mansur listened with one ear to the leadsman in the chains calling the soundings: 'By the mark, five.'
'Close enough,' Mansur murmured, and then to Kumrah, 'Bring her up a point.'
The Sprite settled on the new course parallel to the shore. 'We will now serve out a taste of Mr. Pandit Singh's very best,' he murmured, without lowering the glass. The Sprite's guns began to bear by the bows. Still he waited. Mansur knew that the first broadside would do the most damage. After that the enemy would scatter into cover.
They were so close that through the lens he could see the links in the chain-mail of the nearest Turks and the individual feathers in the plumed helmets of the officers.
He lowered the glass and walked back down the battery. Every gun was bearing and the gun-crews were watching him, waiting on his command. He lifted the scarf of scarlet silk in his right hand, and held it high.
'Fire!' he shouted, and snapped it down.
Kadem ibn Abubaker and Herminius Koots, that unlikely couple, stood on a rocky eminence and looked across the open ground towards the southern ramparts of the city. Their staff were gathered around them, among them the Turkish officers whose authority they had usurped when Zayn al-Din had promoted them.
They watched the assault troops moving forward in three columns of two hundred men each. They carried the scaling ladders, and on their shoulders were strapped the round bronze targes to defend them against the missiles that would rain down on them from the walls as soon as they were within range. Close behind them, in massed quarter columns, followed the battalions that would surge forward to exploit any foothold they won on the parapets. 'It is worth the risk of losing a few hundred men against the chance of a quick break-in,' Koots said.
'We can afford the loss,' Kadem agreed. The rest of the fleet will arrive within days, another ten thousand men. If we fail today, we can begin the formal siege works on the morrow.'
'You must prevail on your revered uncle, the Caliph, to bring his warships round to begin the blockade of the bay and the harbour.'
'He will give the order as soon as he has seen the outcome of this first assault,' Kadem assured the Dutchman. 'Have faith, General. My uncle is a seasoned commander. He has been waging war on his enemies since the day he ascended the Elephant Throne. The treacherous revolution of these pork-eating swine we see before us,' he pointed to the lines of defenders on the city wall, 'was the only defeat he has ever suffered through treason and betrayal within his own court. It will not happen again.'
'The Caliph is a great man. I never said different,' Koots assured him j hastily. 'We shall hang those traitors by their own entrails on the walls | of the city.'
'With God's favour, thanks be to God,' Kadem intoned.
The first tenuous bond between them had been tempered to steel J links over the two years they had been together. That terrible journey, forced upon them after they were routed by Jim Courtney in the | disastrous night attack, was one that lesser men could not have survived. They had braved disease and starvation across thousands of leagues of ':| wild country. Their horses died of sickness and exhaustion, or had been killed by hostile tribesmen. They had covered the last stages on foot :| through swamps and mangrove forest before they reached the coast again. There they had come across a fishing village. They attacked it in |
the night and slaughtered all the men and children at once, but they killed the five women and the three little girls only after Koots and Oudeman had expended their pent-up lust on them. Kadem ibn Abu baker had kept aloof from this orgy. He had prayed upon the beach while the women screamed and sobbed, then gave one last shriek as Koots and Oudeman slit their throats.
They had embarked in the captured fishing-boats that were nothing more than ancient, dilapidated outrigger canoes. After another arduous journey, they at last reached Lamu harbour.
