Flashman on the March

retire into the southern wilderness, taking the captives with him—”

“Unless he’s chopped ’em first!” grunts Speedy.

“That, too, is a possibility,” says Napier quietly. “Or he may march to meet us, and we must be prepared to fight him in the passes, perhaps even without our artillery if our transport should prove too slow. That would be a hard thing, but if we must we shall abandon guns, baggage, tents, porters, auxiliaries, and all the rest, and meet him with rifle and bayonet and sixty rounds a man, as we did against the Hassemezeia in the Black Mountain. God willing, we shall have done with him before the June rains, but if not we shall march and fight through them. And at need we shall follow him to the Congo or the Cape.”

They were the kind of words you’d expect to hear from a Brooke or a Custer, spoken with a heroic flourish and a fist on the table. Napier said them with all the fervour of a man reading a railway time-table… but I thought, farewell and adieu, Brother Theodore, your goose is cooked; this quiet old buffer with the dreary whiskers may not shout the odds, but what he says he will surely do. It remained to be seen what ghastly part he expected me to play in the doing. He touched the map again, drawing his finger in an arc south of Magdala.

“Whether he flees, or is driven southward after we defeat him, that is where his line of retreat must be cut off. And that can be done only with native help—no, not Gobayzy or Menelek, who are not only untrustworthy but would certainly regard a request for assis tance as weakness on our part, and might even turn on us. We must enlist a people who are implacable enemies of Theodore but have no political interest in his fate or, for that matter, in Abyssinia, which they regard simply as a source of plunder and slaves. They are the Gallas, of whom you may have heard. Speedy, you have the floor.”

“Thank’ee, Sir Robert,” says Speedy, and stood up, possibly to assist thought, for he stood frowning a moment, scratching his beard with his spear. “The Gallas,” says he. “Aye. You remember the Ghazis in Afghanistan, Sir Harry? Well, the Gallas are cut from the same cloth—ferocious, cruel, mad as bloody hatters!” He snapped his fingers. “No, I can give you a better comparison than the Ghazis—some fellows you know from the American West. Aye, the Gallas are the Apaches of Abyssinia! They seem to live only for raid and murder and abduction—the Lord alone knows how many youths and maidens they carry off each year and sell into Egypt and Arabia. You saw those burned villages and wasted fields on the way here? Those were Galla work. They are a monstrous crew, and as wicked and dangerous as any tribe in Africa. They loathe Theodore because they’re Mohammedans—so far as they’re anything—and he tried to Christianise ’em, mostly by fire and sword and massacre. He didn’t succeed, but he captured their great amba at Magdala, and made it his capital just so that he could keep an eye on ’em. And they’re waiting and praying for the day when they can tear him down!”

“And with our arrival they believe that day may be coming,” says Napier, and Speedy, who’d been going like a camp-meeting preacher, took the hint and sat down. “And we must convince them that it is at hand. They fear Theodore, with good cause, and they will not move against him unless they are certain that we are deter mined on his overthrow and will not rest until he is dead or our prisoner.”

So that was it. Flashy, ambassador extraordinary to a nation of bloodthirsty slave-traders, charged with the task of talking them into a war against a barbarian tyrant who was probably a good deal more civilised than they were themselves—that was what was about to be proposed, plain as print. Fortunately, it was impossible; there was something that Napier, in his eagerness to plunge me into the soup, had overlooked. Perhaps my relief showed in glad surprise which he misunderstood, for he nodded, with a glance at Speedy, who was gleaming in anticipation.

“I see you read my mind, Sir Harry,” says Napier. “Yes, it is a task for you, and you alone. I said no other man in the Army could play the part required—for it is a part, and one that you have played before, when you entered Lahore disguised as an Afridi horse-coper, when you smuggled Kavanagh out of Lucknow, when you spent months as a sowar of native cavalry at Meerut before the Mutiny.” He was smiling again, no doubt at my ruptured expression. “But your unique fitness for the work aside, I know it is the kind of service that you have always sought, and excelled at, which is why, I am not ashamed to say, I thanked Almighty God in my prayers when the telegraph told me it was you who was bringing the silver from Trieste.”

It was no consolation to me that Speedy was regarding me with something like worship at this recital of my supposed heroics. Of all the godless suggestions! I tried to compose my features into the right expression of bewildered amused regret as I kicked his appalling proposal into touch.

“But, sir, you’re forgetting something! Of course I’d do it like a shot, or any other useful work…” Safe enough, thinks I, fool that I was. “… but I don’t speak Amharic, or any other local dialect, for that matter—”

“But you do speak Arabic!” cries Speedy. “That’ll serve your turn. There’s no lack of Arabic speakers up- country, especially among the Mohammedan Gallas, and Queen Masteeat is one of ’em.”

“Queen who?”

“Masteeat, Queen o’ the Wollo Gallas, the strongest—aye, and the most savage—tribe in the Galla confederacy. She’s the lass who’ll decide whether they march against Theodore or not. Win her over and we’ve won the Gallas, by the thousand!” He gave another of his booming laughs that set his barbaric ornaments shaking. “Mind you, it may be easier said than done. She’s a remark able lady, and I doubt if there’s been a shrewder or more ruthless crowned female in this neck of the world since Cleopatra!”

“Yes, you did say she was formidable,” murmurs Napier. “Indeed, she must be to hold sway over such people. And she is young, and a widow, is she not?” he went on, his eyes on the big moths flut tering round the lamp. “Personable?”

“What Galla girl isn’t?” grins Speedy. “Masteeat means ’looking glass’, so there you are. Not that she’s a girl in years—fair, fat, and forty rather, a real stately Juno, but with a fine bright eye and a whale of an appetite… for her vittles, I mean, regular glutton—”

“To be sure,” nods Napier. “What more?”

“Well, tell you the truth, Sir Robert, I was less interested in her looks than in getting out of her presence ek dum—when a playful tyrant with power of life and death starts to wonder whether a chap my size could tackle a full-grown lion with a knife… well, I’m glad to bid her good day!”

“Dear me. Why should she wonder any such thing?”

“Well, sir, she was three parts drunk at the time, but I reckon the real reason was feminine pique ’cos I’d declined a post in her service.” He said it straight-faced, the great idiot; some fellows don’t know a gift mare when she kicks ’em in the trinkets. “She’d ha’ pitted me against one of her pet monsters if her chamberlain hadn’t dissuaded her. Oh, she’s a rum ’un, Queen Masteeat. Jolly enough foxed, but wilful and sharp as a sabre when sober, for all her languid airs. Why, for two years she’s ruled the confederacy in despite of her elder sister Warkite, Queen of the Ambo Gallas, and there’s a third claimant—”

“Thank you, Speedy,” interrupted Napier. “Well… however wilful her majesty, she will hardly fail to respect a senior officer of a British army advancing on Magdala. What do you think, Sir Harry?”

Since Speedy had thrown my Arabic in my face I’d been lis tening to their exchanges with mounting alarm, and now I made for the only bolthole I could see, while playing up like an eager Dick Champion.

“Why, of course I’ll go, sir, if you wish it—nothing I’d like better!” A ringing laugh followed by a rueful smile. “But… I hate to say it… surely Captain Speedy is far fitter for this work than I? He knows this queen, and speaks her first language, and knows the country and customs—”

“That is precisely what disqualifies him—every Abyssinian knows him, and secrecy is essential. Theodore’s spies inform him of every move we make—but he must not know that I have sent an envoy to the Gallas.” Napier spoke with solemn emphasis, tapping a finger. “He would surely set his agents to work to prevent their lending us aid. He might even encompass the death of Queen Masteeat—and your life would not be worth two pice if he knew of your mission. You will be deep in enemy country, remember. That is why you must put on native garb again, a harmless Asian traveller going about his affairs unsuspected.”

You’ll notice that what had begun as an invitation had become a cut-and-dried certainty in the mind of this abominable dotard. I’d be skulking behind enemy lines, figged out like Ali Baba, risking capture by a maniac who twisted his victims’ limbs off, and playing travelling salesman to a demented bitch who thought it ever so jolly to throw visitors to the lions—and not a thing to be done about it except feign eagerness with a churning stomach and a grin of glad hurrah, as I sat sweating in that stifling tent with Napier regarding me like a prize pupil and the benighted buffoon Speedy clapping me on the shoulder.

Once again I was hoist with my undeserved reputation for derring-do, my fraudulent record of desperate service, and once again I couldn’t refuse—not and keep my good name. Time was I’d have wriggled and lied and gone to any length to escape from the coils of duty, but experience had taught me to recognise a hope less case,