Flashman on the March

dead men were her hirelings to murder me.” I nodded at the clearing. “And there she lies.”

“Uliba-Wark? Dead?” Theodore stared, and wheeled abruptly, striding to the group about Uliba’s body; they scattered like birds. Miriam followed him in some alarm. “I saw it was a woman, but I did not know her, negus, truly…”

“It is no matter,” says Theodore. He looked down at what remained of Uliba, and shrugged without disgust. “She was a stinging gadfly, a sower of discord, a trouble in the eyes of God and man. She coveted her sister’s throne, they say. Behold her now.”

“She coveted men, by all accounts,” says Miriam, and gave me her jeering grin. “Were you her lover, ras of the British?”

I was not about to mention a lady’s name, but her question seemed to catch Theodore on the raw somehow, for he stared hard at her, head back, and then at me, and then at her again, and smiled at last, crooking a finger.

“Hither, wanton,” says he, and she came to his side. He put an arm about her waist and fondled her chin, and she purred like a kitten and nuzzled him. “Speak not of love to fine tall soldiers,” says he. So that explained the licence she enjoyed; one of his concubines, obviously, as well as commanding his killing women. Versatile female. And Theodore of Abyssinia was as jealous as the next man.

And now Damash came rolling back, followed by a groom leading two horses. Behind him the women had finished their revolting chore, and were assembling more or less in ranks, except for Gorilla Jane who was dragging along one of the Galla corpses. Then I saw that it wasn’t a corpse, but a living being, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Theodore, still with his arm about Miriam, addressed me.

'Ras Flashman, though you come with the power of the English Queen to destroy me, who have wished for nothing but peace between her throne and mine, and laboured by the power of God to that end against the wickedness of evil men, yet I hold no malice in my heart towards you, or your Dedjaz Napier, who writes cordially to me and I to him. I take you to be my guest in Magdala, where we shall look into each other’s hearts, in love and friend ship.”

He seemed to expect an answer, so I said, “Much obliged… ah, negus.” He kissed Miriam and toyed with her hand a moment.

“Bring the ras to Islamgee,” says he, and mounted. Damash was budged into the saddle by the groom, but as they prepared to ride off Gorilla Jane cried that here was the Galla chief still alive, though incomplete, and what should be done with him. At her feet, with her companions crouched over it like vultures, was that dreadful thing, stirring feebly, and I saw it was Goram.

Miriam brightened. “We should question him, negus.”

“A Galla warrior will tell you nothing,” says Theodore. He stood in his stirrups, a hand raised. “The blessing of God upon you brave women. And the blessing also on you, Ras Flashman, and His mercy and peace.” He wheeled his horse, and as he passed Gorilla Jane and the shattered wreck of Goram, he added: “Throw him on the fire.” So they did.

I spent a week as “guest” of the Emperor Theodore, and it was one of the longest of my life. How our pris oners, Cameron and Co., endured it for two solid years is beyond me. There may be nothing worse than being in the hands of a deadly enemy, but finding yourself at the mercy of a lunatic runs it close, for there’s no telling what he’ll do—load you with chains or send you presents, threaten you with flogging or swear eternal friendship over a glass of tej, discuss the causes of the American Civil War or invite you to kill him ’cos life has become a burden—that was Theodore, the maniac who held our lives in his hands, tor turing our gracious Queen’s consul half to death, and firing twenty-one-gun salutes to celebrate her birthday. Not the worst host I’ve ever been billeted on, perhaps, but quite the most unpredictable.

There was no way of foreseeing, as they brought me away from that place of slaughter where the Gallas died, that those seven days of horror and hope, of living on the razor’s edge, were to see the final act of the astonishing melodrama, part-tragedy, part-farce, known as the Abyssinian War. For me, it was the last mile of that wild journey that had begun a few short months ago in Trieste. I tell you it as it was; it’s all true.

It was still pitch dark and drizzling gently when we set out, Miriam and I and a few others mounted, with the rest of those female crocodiles trotting behind. I didn’t reckon we’d gone far by sunrise, five miles perhaps, and then we were in a stony desolation of tall cliffs and deep ravines, rounding a mighty eminence of rock on our right hand and following a saddle that connected it to another towering flat-topped height a mile or so ahead, which came into full view as the dawn mist lifted and the sunlight struck it and turned it for a moment into a mountain of gold. I asked where we were.

“Selassie,” says Miriam, pointing ahead and then jerking a thumb at the cliff to our right. “Fala.”

These were the names I’d heard only yesterday, in Fasil’s room at Masteeat’s camp… yesterday, dear God, it seemed an eternity ago! I pictured that sand-table model and tried to match it to what I was seeing… yes, there below us was the road that Theodore had made for his artillery, winding between Fala and Selassie, with folk and carts moving along it, and gangs of what looked like men in chains. As near as I could judge we were coming from the southwest, and if you look at my map you’ll see what was about to come into my view as we rounded Fala.

Beyond the saddle, at the foot of Selassie, was a group of tents—or pavilions, rather, for they were larger and set apart from the camp of little bivouacs at the northern end of the long plain that I knew must be Islamgee. And at the far southern end of that plain, less than two miles from where I sat transfixed, was a great tower ing cylinder of black rock sprouting out of the plain like a column fashioned by some giant sculptor—and the reason I sat transfixed was that I knew what it was before Miriam said the word: “Magdala'.

So there it was, the eagle’s nest, the stronghold where Mad King Theodore had held a handful of British and German cap tives for four years, his last outpost where he would be trapped with nowhere to run, for I didn’t doubt that Masteeat’s regiments would even now be marching to cut him off from that wilderness of peaks in the hazy southern distance. And there, below me on Islamgee, was his army—how many strong? Seven thousand, ten? Was he waiting there to meet Napier in the open, or would he retire into Magdala, pulling up the metaphorical drawbridge—gad, if he did, that rock would be a bastard to take by storm! Or might he even march to meet Napier, who must be close by now, surely… And on the thought I turned to gaze north-westwards, straining my eyes across that rock-strewn plain that stretched away across the Arogee plateau directly below us, five miles and more to a distant dark line running across our front, which I knew must be the chasm of the Bechelo. From it the King’s Road wound across the undulating land to Arogee and between Fala and Selassie to the very foot of Magdala.

Surveying that broken ground, bordered by hills and gullies, it struck me that Theodore could do a sight worse than choose the third course—advance beyond Arogee to lay ambushes in the rough country bordering his road; better that than being besieged in Magdala or meeting our people on the flat plain of Islamgee where they’d make mincemeat of him in open battle…

Miriam gave a cry of excitement and stood in her stirrups, shading her eyes and pointing—and as I followed her finger I felt that same wild thrill of disbelief giving way to joy that I’d felt in the garden of Lucknow when we’d heard, ever so faint on the morning air, the far whisper of the pipes that told us Campbell was coming. For it was there, through that shimmering heat haze and the last wisps of mist, on the lip of the plateau beyond the Bechelo… as though to a cue, the last actor was coming on to the stage, with no sound of pipes or rumble of gunfire, heralded only by tiny shining pinpricks of light barely visible in the dusty distance, and I’d ha’ given a thousand for a glass just then, for I’d seen ’em too often to be mistaken—lance-points catching the morning sun… But whose? Bengali Native Cavalry? Scindees? For instinct told me they must be ours, and now it was confirmed by eyes that were younger and sharper than mine.

'Farangil” cries Miriam, with an added oath. “On Dalanta! The Negus was right— those vermin of Dawunt and Dalanta should have been destroyed! They have lain down before your people! Aiee, they come! See there, they come!”

“How d’ye know they’re my people?”

I didn’t know, then, that Theodore had fallen out with the tribes on the Dalanta plateau, which lies north of the Bechelo river, slap across Napier’s line of march, and that the obliging niggers had cleared the way for us. [42] But I could read the consternation on Miriam’s pretty face.

“They can be no one else! We had word when they crossed the Jedda three days ago; now they are on the lip of the Bechelo, and once across the ravine…” She gave a disgusted shrug and spat, and I gazed towards salvation