eye for easy work and could just imagine their tidy system. I looked around. ‘And what’s this writing?’ I asked of graffiti atop some pictures. ‘I don’t recognise the language. Is it Greek?’
‘Coptic,’ Ashraf said. ‘Legend has it that early Christians hid in these caves from the persecution of the Romans. We are the latest in a long chain of fugitives.’
Another wall took my eye. It seemed to be a tally of something, a series of hash marks in the old language none of us could read. Some seemed plain enough: one mark to designate 1, three for 3, and so on. There was something familiar about those marks and I mused about it as we lay on sand that had sifted through the entrance, half filling the cave. Then it came to me. I took out the medallion.
‘Ash, look at this. This little triangle of notches on my medallion – they look like the marks on that wall!’
He glanced from one to the other. ‘Indeed. What of it?’
What of it? This might change everything. If I was right, the bottom of the medallion was not meant to represent a pyramid, it represented numbers! I was carrying something that bore some kind of sum! The savants might be lunatics for mathematics, but my weeks enduring them was paying off – I’d seen a pattern I otherwise might have missed. True, I couldn’t make much sense of the numbers – they seemed a random grouping of 1s, 2s, and 3s.
But I was getting closer to the mystery.
After many days and miles, we came to the crest of a steep limestone bluff near Nag Hammadi, the Nile curling around its edge and green fields on the far shore. There, across the river, we saw our quarry. Desaix’s division of French soldiers, three thousand men and two guns, formed a column more than a mile long, marching slowly beside the Nile. From our vantage point they were insects on a timeless canvas, crawling blind on a sheen of oils. It was at this moment that I realised the impossibility of the task the French had set for themselves. I grasped finally the vast sprawl not just of Egypt, but of Africa beyond, an endless rolling vista that made the French division seem as insignificant as a flea on an elephant. How could this little puddle of men truly subdue this empire of desert, studded with ruins and swarming with horse-mounted tribesmen? It was as audacious as Cortez in Mexico, but Cortez had the heart of an empire to aim for, while poor Desaix had already captured the heart, and now was pursuing the thrashing but defiant arms, in a wilderness of sand. His difficulty was not conquering the enemy, but finding him.
My problem was not finding my enemy, who must be somewhere in that column of soldiers, but coming to grips with him now that I was a French outlaw. Astiza was down there too, I hoped, but how could I get a message to her? My only ally was a Mameluke; my only clothes my Arab robes. I didn’t even know where to start, now that we had the division in view. Should I swim the river and gallop in, demanding justice? Or try to assassinate Silano from behind a rock? And what proof did I have that he was really my enemy at all? If I succeeded, I’d be hanged.
‘Ash, it occurs to me that I’m like a dog after an ox cart, not at all certain how to handle my prize should I catch it.’
‘So don’t be a dog,’ the Mameluke said. ‘What is it you’re really after?’
‘The solution to my puzzle, a woman, revenge. Yet I have no proof yet that Silano is responsible for anything. Nor do I know exactly what to do with him. I’m not afraid to face the count. I’m just uncertain what he deserves. It’s been simpler riding through the desert. It’s empty. Uncomplicated.’
‘And yet in the end a man can no more be one with the desert than a boat can be of the sea – both pass on its surface. The desert is a passage, not a destination, friend.’
‘And now we near the end of the voyage. Will Silano have the army’s protection? Will I be regarded as a fugitive? And where will Achmed bin Sadr be lurking?’
‘Yes, Bin Sadr. I do not see his band down there with the soldiers.’
As if in answer, there was a ping off a nearby rock and the delayed echo of a gun’s report. A chip of rock flew up in the air and then plopped into the dirt.
‘See how the gods answer all?’ Ashraf pointed.
I twisted in my saddle. To the north behind us, from the hills where we’d come, were a dozen men. They were in Arab dress, riding camels, rocking as they trotted fast, their image wavering in the heat. Their leader was carrying something too long to be a musket – a wooden staff, I surmised.
‘Bin Sadr, the devil himself,’ I muttered. ‘He keeps raiders off the back of the French. Now he’s spotted us.’
Ashraf grinned. ‘He comes to me so easily, having killed my brother?’
‘The cavalry must have asked him to track us.’
‘His misfortune, then.’ The Mameluke looked ready to charge.
‘Ash, stop! Think! We can’t attack a dozen at once!’
He looked at me with scorn. ‘Are you afraid of a few bullets?’
More smoke puffed from the oncoming Arabs, and more spouts of dust twanged up around us. ‘Yes!’
My companion slowly raised a sleeve of his robe, displaying fabric neatly holed in a near-miss. He grinned. ‘I felt the wind of that one. Then I suggest we flee.’
We kicked and sped off, angling down the back side of the ridge and away from the Nile in a desperate effort to get distance and cover. Our horses could outrun a camel in a sprint, but the dromedaries had more endurance. They could go a week without water, and then drink a volume that would kill any other animal. The French cavalry we’d lost easily. These desert warriors might be more persistent.
We skidded into a side valley, our horses fighting to maintain balance as pebbles flew, and then on flatter ground leant into a dead run, trying to ignore the excited warble and random gunshots of our pursuers behind. They came after us hard, a trail of their dust hanging in their wake, frozen by the still and heavy air.
For an hour we kept them at a healthy distance, but with the heat and lack of water our mounts began to tire. We’d been days with no grazing and little to drink, and our animals were wearing out. We’d skitter up one sun-baked ridge and then drop down its other side, hoping somehow to confuse the chase, but our own dust marked us like a beacon.
‘Can you slow them down?’ Ash finally asked.
‘I certainly outrange them. But at the speed they’re coming I only have one good shot. It takes almost a minute to reload.’ We stopped at a high point and I took off the longrifle I carried across my back. Its strap had bit into my shoulder for three hundred miles, but I was never tempted to leave its reassuring weight behind. It was uncomplaining and deadly. So now I sighted across my saddle, aiming for Bin Sadr, knowing that to kill him might end the pursuit. He was a good four hundred paces off. There was no wind, dry air, a target charging head-on… and enough heat to ripple his image like a flapping flag. Damn, where exactly was he? I aimed high, allowing for the bullet drop, squeezed, and fired, my horse starting at the report.
There was a long moment for the bullet to arrive. Then his camel tumbled.
Had I got him? The pursuing Bedouins had all reined in an anxious circle, shouting in consternation and loosing a few shots even though we were far out of musket range. I leapt on my horse and we galloped on as best we could, hoping we’d at least bought ourselves time. Ash looked back.
‘Your friend has shoved one of his companions off his camel and is mounting it himself. The other warrior is doubling with another. They’ll come more cautiously now.’
‘But he survived.’ We stopped and I reloaded, but that lost us most of the little ground we’d gained. I didn’t want to be pinned down in a firefight because they’d overrun us while we loaded. ‘And they are still coming.’
‘It would seem so.’
‘Ash, we cannot fight them all.’
‘It would seem not.’
‘What will they do if they catch us?’
‘Before, just rape and kill us. But now that you have shot his camel, I suspect they will rape us, strip us, stake us to the desert, and use scorpions to torment us while we die of thirst and sun. If we’re lucky, a cobra will find us first.’
‘You didn’t tell me that before I fired.’
‘You didn’t tell me you were going to hit the camel, not the man.’
We rode into a twisting canyon, hoping it wouldn’t dead-end like the one where we’d dug for water. A dry wash or wadi gave it a sandy floor, and it twisted like a snake. Yet our trail was obvious, and our horse flanks were streaked with foam. They’d give out soon.
