motion practiced hundreds of times. A few of the French had fallen from Mameluke fire and these were dragged backward into the middle of our square as the rank awkwardly reformed, sergeants beating at slackers to force them to duty. It was like a sea creature growing another arm, impervious to fatal damage.
The Mamelukes charged again, this time trying to penetrate the side and rear ranks of our infantry square.
The result was the same as before. The horses came in at an angle and a few got closer, but even those steeds not hit pulled up at the hedge of bayonets, sometimes throwing their yelling riders. Fine silks and linens bloomed with red blossoms as the Arabs were hit with the thick lead balls, this time from two squares firing into each flank as the Mamelukes galloped between them. Once again the assault was thrown into confusion. The attackers were beginning to seem increasingly desperate. Some stood off and fired at us with musket and pistol, but the shots were too sporadic and inaccurate to seriously dent the French ranks. A few of our infantry grunted or cried and went down. Then another European volley would boom out, and these assailants too would be knocked from their horses. We were soon surrounded by a ring of the dead and dying, a heap of the military aristocracy of Egypt. It dwarfed the slaughter of the earlier battles.
Even though Arab bullets regularly whined overhead, I felt curiously immune to the havoc. There was a sense of unreality to the entire scene: the colossal pyramids in the far distance, the glassy air, the oppressive heat, the palms waving in the desert wind even as random shot clipped fronds from their tops. The fragments of green floated down like feathers. There were great rolling clouds of dust against the white sky as the enemy galloped this way and that to no apparent purpose, looking for a weakness in Bonaparte’s squares and not finding it. The Egyptian infantry seemed rooted irresolutely in the rear, as if fatalistically awaiting their doom. The Mamelukes, fearing revolt, had let the lesser arms of their nation atrophy into paralysed incompetence.
I looked to the west. The entire sky there was growing dark, the sun becoming an orange orb. Rain? No, I realised, these were other kinds of clouds – clouds of sand. The horizon had been blotted out with an approaching tempest.
No one else seemed to take notice of the weather. With undeniable courage, the Mamelukes reformed, took fresh rifles and pistols from their servants, and charged yet again. This time they seemed determined to concentrate all their fury on our own square alone. We fired, their front ranks went down as before, but their column was so thick that those to the rear survived to ride over their fallen comrades before we could reload. With desperate energy they drove their horses onto the French bayonets.
It was as if we’d been rammed by a ship. The square bent from the onslaught, horses dying even as they crushed Bonaparte’s infantry beneath their weight. Some men fell back in panic. Other French rushed from the square’s inner sides to reinforce the front before it buckled. There was a sudden desperate brawl of Mameluke sword, lance, and pistol against French bayonet and point-blank musket. Still perched on my caisson, I shot into a tossing sea. I had no idea who or what I was hitting.
Suddenly, as if fired from a cannon, a horse and gigantic warrior broke through, hurdling the entangled warriors. The Arabian mount was streaked with blood and its turbaned Mameluke spattered with gore, yet he fought with unstoppable frenzy. Infantry rushed to intercept him and his scimitar sliced through their musket barrels as if they were straw. The crazed animal was kicking and trampling, whirling in a circle like a dervish, its rider impregnable to bullets. The scientists scattered before the hooves, men toppling and shouting. Most disquieting of all, the attacker seemed to have his eye fixed on me, balanced as I was on the artillery supply wagon in my distinctive, unmilitary coat.
I took aim but before I could fire the steed crashed into my caisson and catapulted me into the air. I came down hard, the wind knocked out, and the wild-eyed stallion danced toward me, eyes rolling, hooves thrashing. Its master seemed intent on me to the exclusion of all the hundreds around him, as if he’d decided to pick a personal enemy.
Then there was a cry and the horse reared and went down. Talma, I saw, had grabbed a lance and stabbed the animal’s hindquarter. The rider slid off and landed as hard as I had, momentarily stunned. Before he could scramble up, Astiza gave a ferocious yell and with Talma’s help pushed the caisson at him. Its wheels lodged against the crippled horse, pinning the fanatic rider between his saddle and the iron rims. The Mameluke had shoulders like an ox; he thrashed like an animal but was suddenly helpless. I crawled over and threw myself over the horse and onto him, my tomahawk at his throat. Astiza piled on as well, shouting in Arabic, and either her words or her gender seemed to freeze him. Then exhaustion overcame his frenzy and he slumped, looking dazed.
‘Tell him to surrender!’ I cried to Astiza.
She shouted something and the Mameluke nodded in defeat, his head falling backward against the sand. I’d won my first prisoner! It was an unexpectedly heady feeling, even more satisfying than a particularly lucky hand of whist. By Jove, I was beginning to understand the soldiers’ enthusiasms. Living, after a whiff of death, is a heady thing.
Swiftly disarming the Arab, I borrowed an officer’s pistol to finish the suffering horse. Other horsemen had also broken through, I saw, but each was eventually clubbed and hacked to earth by the French infantry. The exception was one bold chap who cut down two men, took a ball himself, and then jumped his horse back over the chaotic front rank to gallop away, warbling in desperate, wounded triumph. That was the kind of courage these devils had, and it led Napoleon to remark that with a handful of them, he’d whip the world. He would eventually recruit Mameluke survivors into his personal bodyguard.
Still, the escape of that warrior was a rare occurrence, and most of the enemy simply couldn’t break through our hedge of men. Their horses were gutted on the rows of bayonets. Finally the survivors broke in despair, French grapeshot chasing their retreat and cutting still more from their saddles. Despite Egyptian bravery, it had been a massacre. The Europeans had dozens of casualties but the Mamelukes had thousands. The sand was clotted with their dead.
‘Search his clothing,’ Astiza said as we sat on our captive. ‘They carry their wealth into battle, to be lost if they are lost.’
Indeed, my prisoner proved a treasure chest. His turban was cashmere, and I knocked it aside to reveal a skullcap sewn with gold pieces like a yellow helmet. More gold was in a sash around his waist, his pistols were inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gems, and his scimitar had a black Damascus blade and a handle of rhinoceros horn inlaid with gold. In the span of a few seconds I’d become rich, but then so had much of the army. The French would later estimate that each Mameluke could be robbed, on average, of fifteen thousand francs. Men were capering over the dead.
‘My God, who is he?’ I said.
She gripped to turn his hand, looking at his rings, and stopped. ‘A son of Horus,’ she murmured. On his finger was the same symbol she wore as an amulet. It was not an Islamic sign.
He jerked his hand away. ‘That’s not for you,’ he suddenly growled in English.
‘You speak our language?’ I asked, once more startled.
‘I’ve had dealings with European merchants. And I’ve heard of you, the British in a green coat. What is a British doing with the Franks?’
‘I’m American. Antoine is French, Astiza Egyptian and Greek.’
He absorbed this. ‘And I a Mameluke.’ He was on his back, looking up at the sky. ‘So does war and destiny bring us together.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘I am Ashraf el-Din, a lieutenant of Murad Bey.’
‘And what’s a son of Horus?’ I asked Astiza.
‘A follower of the ancients. This man is not the typical Mameluke from the Caucasus. He’s of the old families here, aren’t you?’
‘The Nile runs in my veins. I’m a descendant of the Ptolomies. But I was sworn into Mameluke ranks by Murad Bey himself.’
‘The Ptolomies? You mean Cleopatra’s clan?’ I asked.
‘And the generals of Alexander and Caesar,’ he said proudly.
‘The Mamelukes despise the Egyptians they rule,’ Astiza explained, ‘but occasionally they’ve recruited from the great old families.’
All this seemed a curious coincidence. I’m attacked by the rare Mameluke who swears by a pagan god and
