Flashman on the March

in ecstatio has no thought to spare for tottering thrones or collapsing empires, let alone beastly rivals collecting their well-deserved rations.

Speaking of whom, when we’d exhausted our rapture and recov ered sufficiently to raise the trap for a look- see, Yando had gone.

If you take-a look at my map you’ll see how our road lay, from Ad Abaga south-west to Lake Tana, easy riding for the most part, while over the mountains to eastward Napier’s army was grinding its way through those impossible highlands of huge peaks and deep chasms, carving a road along precipices, round mountain tops, and across rock-strewn plateaux. Horse, foot, guns, mules, and elephants, growing lighter and hungrier by the mile as they abandoned gear and clothing and camp-followers, pressing on desperately beyond hope of return in the race for Magdala, while far to the south Theodore’s dwindling army and motley rabble of prisoners were closing on the capital from Debra Tabor, with fewer miles to travel but hampered by the ponderous artillery dragged in his train, including his mighty mortar “Sevastopol'.

I don’t know which of them, the British general or the mad monarch, deserves the higher marks for leadership and determination and sheer ability in taking an army through and over hellish country, but you could say they were a matched pair and not be far wrong. They reached their goals against all the odds, and Hannibal and Marlborough couldn’t have done better.

Our immediate concern was to keep well clear of the various forces converging on Magdala, and somehow make our way to Queen Masteeat undetected. “We must ride wide to westward to avoid Gobayzy’s scouts,” says Uliba-Wark. “They will be along the Takazy river from Micara as far south as the Kerissa fork, so we shall go by way of Idaga, and then south over the river past Sokar and Gondar to the lake.” She traced a slim finger through the sand on which she had made a rough map with grass stems and pebbles. “It is a long way about, but there is no other safe path.”

“This one is safe, is it?” says I, and she laughed.

“In Habesh, where is safety? Who knows what raiding bands are abroad in Lasta these days, scavenging after the armies? Rebels, outlaws, brigands, slavers—perhaps even the main powers of Menelek and Gobayzy, although I think they will be farther south, in Begemder, watching Theodore and waiting. Somewhere thereabouts we should find Masteeat also, but only when we reach the lake will we have sure word of them. Meanwhile we ride carefully, by secret ways, approaching villages and ambas only when we must.” She swept a hand across the sand, obliterating her map, smiling lazily as she dusted her fingers and sat closer, stroking her cheek against mine. “It will be slow, but we have time… and we know how to beguile it, do we not?”

Having had her first taste of Flashy only the day before, she was still in honeymoon mood, so we beguiled away there and then, on the riverbank just within the edge of the woodland which she had pointed out to me from the top of her tower. We had slipped out of the citadel in the cold small hours, as she had planned, and she had picked her unerring way down to the valley floor and along the river in the dark to the shelter of the trees. Somewhere along the way we must have passed the remains of Yando spread over the rocks, but she didn’t pause to pay respects, and before daylight we were snug in cover, having breakfast and a flask of tej, considering our route, and enjoying the aforesaid bout of hareem gymnastics, in the course of which we rolled down the bank into the water, not that Uliba seemed to notice, the dear enamoured girl, for she thrashed about in the shallows like a landed trout.

A happy prelude to our journey, and a prudent one, I always think, for while the old Duke said one should never miss the opportunity of a run-off or a sleep, I say never miss the chance of a rattle, especially when going into mortal danger, for it may be your last, and you don’t want to die a prey to vain regret. Also, it puts you in fettle, and I was in prime trim when we set forward that morning through countryside as fresh and fair as an English spring, along wooded valleys where clear streams bubbled under the sycamores and wild flowers grew by the waters edge ? and by afternoon we were pushing our way through fields of waving grass as high as our horses’ heads, and by evening ascending a rocky desert slope towards mountains of fantastic shapes, twisted peaks and ugly cliffs looming over us as night came down. That’s Habesh, elysium fol lowed by Valley of the Shadow, and not improved by the savagery of its inhabitants.

I’d seen the havoc wreaked by war and foray on the road up from Zoola to Attegrat, and what we encountered on our ride west to Idaga was of a piece: the occasional burned-out village and deserted farm, the carcases of beasts lying in neglected fields, the distant smoke-clouds where raiders had been at work, the peasants still going doggedly about their business but keeping their distance. There were armed guards on the ambas and hill-top communities, and escorts for the water porters carrying their cargoes up from the wells.

We kept well clear of them all at first, for Uliba was known in the countryside and in the towns of Adowa and Axum not far to our north, and we daren’t risk her being recognised. So the task of buying food and drink along the way fell on Khasim Tamwar, who needs must learn enough elementary Amharic to enable him to ask for woha (water), halib (milk), engard (bread) and quantah (dried meat), while putting on his most charming Hyderabadi smile and proffering the little sticks of salt which are the local small change and the only currency in the country apart from the Maria Theresa dollar—known as the gourshi, and worth five salt sticks. I’ve a gift for languages, as you know, and got a smattering of Amharic in no time. [30] It’s gone now, but I must have become reasonably fluent, because by the end of my Abyssinian odyssey I was conversing with Abs who had no Arabic; even in the first week, with Uliba’s tuition, I had enough to haggle with, for I remember at one farm I got two guinea fowls and a mess of kidmeat for two “salts', which she assured me was well below the going rate.

She stayed far out of sight with the led-beast whenever I went shopping, and since my foreign garb and eccentric vocabulary seemed to excite no interest, let alone suspicion, I began to think her fear of Yando’s rascals spreading word of our coming might be groundless. She shook her head, and said it would be different beyond the Takazy river. “Theodore will be on the watch for us down yonder, you may be sure. Hereabouts the folk care nothing for him and his policies, and they are used to foreigners far stranger than an Indian horse-coper.”

She told me that only a couple of years before a Neapolitan lunatic named de Bisson had invaded this region, hoping to found a kingdom; he’d had a rabble of mercenaries, uniformed, bemedalled, and armed to the teeth, and his beauteous wife in the full fig of a Zouave cavalryman, red britches, kepi and all, but the local tribes had given them the rightabout, and he and his gang had been lucky to get out alive, much the worse for wear. He’d tried to sue the Egyptian Government for not supporting him, without success, and retired to the Riviera in disgust.

“After such a portent, who is going to think twice about a mere wanderer from Hindustan?” says Uliba. “Whatever befalls later, all is well now, so let us be thankful, and travel well together.”

So we did, but if that ride to the Takazy passed without disaster it was thanks to her woodcraft; she was an even better jancada than Speedy had said, with that strange gift that you get in the half-wild (like Bridger and Carson) of being able to sense a living presence long before she’d seen or heard it. Time and again she turned us aside into cover of rocks or undergrowth where we waited until, sure enough, a few minutes later a camel train or a party of peas ants would heave in view and pass by. And once she saved our hides altogether, detecting the approach of a gang of slave-traders, armed and mounted, lashing along a wretched coffle of women and boys.

As we lay watching, one of the boys collapsed, and when flogging didn’t revive him, the gang rode on another thirty yards or so, when two of them, laughing and plainly challenging each other, turned in their saddles and used the feebly stirring form for target practice, hurling their lances—and hitting him, too, at that distance. They retrieved their lances from the dying boy’s body, yelling with delight, and galloped after their companions. I was as shocked by their accuracy as by their callousness, but Uliba merely remarked that a Galla warrior could hit any target up to fifty yards with a spear or a knife or even a stone snatched up at random.

“Those bastards were Gallas?” cries I, astonished. “But they’re your people, ain’t they? Why, they may know where Masteeat’s to be found! Why did you not—”

“Bid them good day? I thought of it,” says she, “when I recog nised their leader—one of those who speared the boy—as my cousin. But he is an Ambo Galla, a subject of Queen Warkite, and while he and some other of my relatives might well prefer me, or even Masteeat, as monarch of all Galla—for no one loves Warkite, a sour old bitch—still, he is a slave-trader, after all, and I would fetch a splendid price at El Khartoum… and even more,” she added complacently, “at Jibout’ or Zanzibar; the coast buyers have finer discernment than the Soudanis.”

“Holy smoke! D’you mean he’d sell you—his kinswoman? And a chief’s wife?”