Flashman on the March

and concluded reluctantly that I daren’t try a run for it, not on a miserable Ab screw that was bound to founder within a mile. Besides, all I had to do was wait; Napier was far closer than I’d dared to hope, and even with the Bechelo chasm to cross, which I knew from Fasil’s model was three-quarters of a mile deep, he couldn’t be more than two days’ march away. I absolutely smacked my palm in delight, and Miriam cried out scorn fully:

“Ha! You rejoice at their coming? But what of their going, when the Amhara drive them like sheep back to Egypt?”

I knew she didn’t believe it, just from her sullen scowl. “If the Amhara are mad enough to try, they’ll find those sheep are wolves,” I told her. “They’ll eat your army of peasants at a bite… no, they’ll not need to, for their guns will blow your rabble to bits, and the elephants will trample the dead.” Unless Theodore has the sense to go to ground on that bloody rock, I might have added, but didn’t.

“Elephants!” She shuddered; they’re mortal scared of jumbo, you see, being convinced he can’t be tamed. She looked thoughtful, and as we rode on I guessed she was wondering how she’d fare in person if Theodore took a hiding. Sure enough, after a moment:

“Suppose your people triumphed… what would they do to Habesh?”

“To a pretty lass like you, you mean? I know what I’d do.”

“No!” cries she fiercely. “You would protect me!”

“Would I now? In gratitude for wanting me fed into the fire?”

“You were a prisoner then!” She rode closer, and said in a low tone, “Now, if your people triumphed, you could do me good… and I would be grateful.” Softly, with her knee against mine, if you please.

“My dear, you’re a girl after my own heart,” says I. “But what if your side won, eh? They won’t… but just suppose…”

“Then I would protect you from the wrath of Theodore! As I shall, even now.”

“I doubt if he’ll be wrathful with me just now,” says I. “Not with the British Army on his doorstep.”

She stared at me. “You do not know him! Oh, believe me, ras of the British, you know him not at all!”

In fact, she was wrong; I did know him, all too well—but I’d forgotten, you see. I thought of him as the well- spoken soldier I’d mistaken for a bodyguard—given to sudden bursts of temper over trifles, if you like, and didn’t care two straws about roasting an enemy, but that’s African war for you. But I’d not associated that man, who’d seemed to be sane enough, and a reasoning being, with the ghastly tales I’d heard of atrocities, of women and children massacred, of frightful tortures practised on countless victims… I’d forgotten Gondar, and that dreadful garden of the crucified. Yet that horror had been the work of the intelligent, earnest man who’d cross-examined me so briskly, and smiled and joked and dallied with the bonny bint riding beside me. It didn’t seem possible… until we rode down from the Fala saddle to the camp below Selassie. Then it became all too horribly plain.

The first intimation came when we had to halt at the King’s Road while a procession of Ab prisoners shuffled by. There were hundreds of them, in the most appalling condition, starved skeletons virtually naked, many of them covered in loathsome sores. Every one of them was chained, some in fetters so heavy they could barely drag them along, others manacled wrist to ankle with chains so short they couldn’t stand upright, but must totter along bent double. The stench was fit to choke you, and to complete their misery they were driven along by burly guards wielding girafs, the hippo-hide whips which are the Ab equivalent of the Russian knout.

“Who in God’s name are they?” I asked Miriam. “Rebels?”

“Huh, you’ll find no living rebels here!” says she. “They die where they’re taken.”

“So these are criminals? What the hell have they done?”

Her answer defied belief, but it’s what she said, with a shrug, and I was to learn that it was gospel true.

“What have they done? Smiled when the King was in ill humour—or scowled when he was merry. Served him a dish that was not to his taste, or mentioned tape-worm medicine, or spoken well of someone he dislikes, or came in his way when he was drunk.” She laughed at my incredulity. “You don’t believe me? Indeed, you do not know him!”

“By God, I don’t believe you!”

“You will.” She surveyed the last of that pitiful coffle as it stag gered past. “True, not all have committed those offences; some merely had the misfortune to be related to the offenders. Oh, yes, that is enough, truly.”

“But… for smiling? Tape-worm medicine? And he takes it out on whole families? How long have they been chained, for God’s sake?”

“Some, for years. Why he brings them down now from their prison on Magdala, who knows? Perhaps to preach to them. Perhaps to kill them before your army arrives. Perhaps to free them. We shall see.”

“He must be bloody mad!” cries I. Well, I’d heard it said often enough, but you don’t think what it means until you see the truth of it at point-blank. And here was this lovely lass, riding at ease in the warm sunlight, tits at the high port and talking cool as you please of a monster to rival Caligula. She must have read the stricken question in my eye, for she nodded.

“Yes, he is a dangerous master, as his ministers and generals will tell you.” She smiled, chin up. “But those who know him, and his moods, and how to please him, find in him a devout and kind and loving friend. But even they must learn to turn his anger, for it is terrible, and when the fit is on him he is no better than a beast. Is that mad, Ras Flashman of the British? Come!”

She led the way across the road to the nearest pavilions, the first of which was the great red royal marquee with carpets spread on the ground about it, guards on the fly, and servants everywhere. Groups of men in red- fringed shamas were gathered before the other large pavilions, evidently waiting, and the plain beyond was covered almost to Magdala by a forest of bivouacs and shelters. The army of Abyssinia was at rest, thousands of men loafing and talking and brewing their billies like any other soldiers, save that these were black, and instead of shirt-sleeves and dangling gal luses there were white shamas and tight leggings, and as well as the piled firearms there were stands of spears and racks of sickle-bladed swords. They looked well, as the Gallas had done, and perhaps as soon as tomorrow they would go out to face the finest army in the world under one of the great captains. And how many of them would come well to bed-time? How many Scindees and King’s Own and Dukes and Baluch, for that matter? Fall out, Flashy, thinks I, this ain’t your party; lie low, keep quiet, and above all, stay alive.

Easier said than done. There was a stiffening to attention of the groups outside the tents, the servants scurried out of sight, and Miriam suddenly whipped a noose over my head and thrust me out of my saddle crying, “Get down! Be still!” as down the hill came a procession in haste. In front was Theodore, with a chico holding a brolly over his head, and in his wake a motley crowd of guards and attendants. I staggered but kept my feet, and was about to protest when Theodore, striding full tilt and shouting abuse at two skinny wretches hurrying alongside him (astrologers, I learned later) caught sight of me, and let out a yell of anger.

“You! You have betrayed me! You lied to me!” He came at me almost at the run, fists clenched and by the grace of God he was carrying nothing more lethal than a telescope, which he flourished in my face. “You swore you had no talk with the Gallas—yet they have marched, in their thousands, and lie now below Sangalat! How came they there? By Masteeat’s order! And who prompted her?” He flung out a hand in denunciation. “You! As Christ is my witness, I had nothing in my heart against you! Judas! Judas!” bawls he, and swung up the telescope to brain me.

Two things saved me. One was Miriam’s horse; startled by someone raving and capering a yard away, it reared, and since Miriam was holding t’sother end of my noose I was jerked violently off my feet and went down half-strangled, but out of harm’s way. My other saviour was one of the astrologers who ran in front of Theodore, waving his arms and crying out, possibly a warning that the omens weren’t favourable for cracking heads—in which case he was dead right, for Theodore smashed him full on the crown with the telescope, and it was a lethal weapon after all, for it stove him in like an eggshell.

It had happened in seconds. I realised that Miriam, seeing him come down the hill in a towering rage, had sensibly decided that the more captive I looked the better, so she’d noosed me—and in an instant there beside me lay the corpse of the poor prophet with his skull leaking, and Theodore was dashing down the telescope, staring at his victim, and suddenly burying his face in his hands and running howling towards the red pavilion. He seized a spear from one of the guards on the fly, and began to stab the surrounding carpet, cursing something fearful. Then he flung the spear aside, shook his fists at heaven, and darted into the pavilion… and the assembled military and