The Triumph of the Sun By Wilbur Smith
Synopsis:
In the Sudan decades of brutal misgovernment by the ruling Egyptian Khedive in Cairo precipitate a fierce and bloody rebellion and Holy War headed by a charismatic new religious leader, the Mahdi or Expected One’. The British are forced to intervene to protect their national interests and to attempt to rescue the hundreds of British subjects stranded in the country.
Along with hundreds of others, British trader and businessman Ryder Courtney is trapped in the capital city of Khartoum. It is here that he meets Captain Penrod Ballantyne of the 10th Hussars, as well as the British Consul, David Benbrook, and his three beautiful daughters. Against the vivid and bloody backdrop of the siege of Khartoum, in which British General Charles George Gordon is killed and the British retreat, these three powerful men fight to survive.
Rich with vibrant historical detail and infused with his inimitable powers of storytelling, The Triumph of the Sun is Wilbur Smith at his masterful best.
Also by Wilbur Smith
THE COURTNEYS
When the Lion Feeds
The Sound of Thunder
A Sparrow Falls
Birds of Prey
Monsoon Blue Horizon
THE COURTNEYS OF AFRICA
The Burning Shore Power of the Sword
Rage
A Time to Die Golden Fox
THE BALLANTYNE NOVELS
A Falcon Flies
Men of Men
The Angels Weep
The Leopard Hunts in Darkness
Also
The Dark of the Sun Shout at the Devil
Gold Mine The Diamond Hunters
The Sunbird
Eagle in the Sky
The Eye of the Tiger
Cry Wolf Hungry as the Sea
Wild Justice Elephant Song
River God
The Seventh Scroll
Warlock
WILBUR SMITH
THE TRIUMPH OF THE SUN
A Novel of African Adventure
This book is for
My helpmate, playmate, soulmate, wife and best friend, Mokhiniso Rakhimova Smith
Rebecca leant her elbows on the sill of the wide, unglazed window, and the heat of the desert blew into her face like the exhalation of a blast furnace. Even the river below her seemed to steam like a cauldron. Here it was almost a mile wide, for this was the season of High Nile. The flow was so strong that it created whirlpools and glossy eddies across the surface. The White Nile was green and fetid with the taint of the swamps through which it had so recently flowed, swamps that extended over an area the size of Belgium. The Arabs called this vast slough the Bahr el Ghazal, and the British named it the Sud.
In the cool months of the previous year Rebecca had voyaged upstream with her father to where the flow of the river emerged from the swamps. Beyond that point the channels and lagoons of the Sud were tract less and uncharted, carpeted densely with floating weed that was perpetually shifting, obscuring them from the eyes of all but the most skilled and experienced navigator. This watery, fever-ridden world was the haunt of crocodile and hippopotamus; of myriad strange birds, some beautiful and others grotesque; and of sitatunga, the weird amphibious antelope with corkscrew horns, shaggy coats and elongated hoofs, adapted for life in the water.
Rebecca turned her head and a thick blonde tress of hair fell across one eye. She brushed it aside and looked downstream to where the two great rivers met. It was a sight that always intrigued her, though she had looked upon it every day for two long years. A huge raft of water weed was sailing down the centre of the channel. It had broken free of the swamps and would be carried on by the current until it dispersed far to the north in the turbulence of the cataracts, those rapids that, from time to time, broke the smooth flow of the Nile. She followed its ponderous progress until it reached the confluence of the two Niles.
The other Nile came down from the east. It was fresh and sweet as the mountain stream that was its source. At this season of High Nile its waters were tinted a pale blue grey by the silt it had scoured from the mountainous ranges of Abyssinia. It was named for this colour. The Blue Nile was slightly narrower than its twin, but was still a massive serpent of water. The rivers came together at the apex of the triangle of land on which the City of the Elephant’s Trunk stood. That was the meaning of its name, Khartoum. The two Niles did not mingle at once. As far downstream as Rebecca could see they ran side by side in the same bed, each maintaining its own distinct colour and character until they dashed together on to the rocks at the entrance to the Shabluka Gorge twenty miles on and were churned into a tumultuous union.
“You are not listening to me, my darling,” said her father sharply.
Rebecca smiled as she turned to face him. “Forgive me, Father, I was distracted.”
“I know. I know. These are trying times,” he agreed. “But you must face up to them. You are no longer a child, Becky.”
“Indeed I am not,” she agreed vehemently. She had not intended to whine she never whined. “I was seventeen last week. Mother married you when she was the same age.”
“And now you stand in her place as mistress of my household.” His expression was forlorn as he remembered his beloved wife and the terrible nature of her death.
“Father dear, you have just jumped off the cliff of your own argument.” She laughed. “If I am what you say I am, then how can you prevail on me to abandon you?”
David Benbrook looked confused, then thrust aside his sorrow and laughed with her. She was so quick and pretty that he could seldom resist her. “You are so like your mother.” This statement was usually his white flag of defeat, but now he struggled on with his arguments. Rebecca turned back to the window, not ignoring him but listening with only half her attention. Now that her father had reminded her of the terrible peril in which they stood she felt the cold claws of dread in the pit of her stomach as she looked across the river.
The sprawling buildings of the native city of Omdurman pressed up to the far riverbank, earth-coloured like the desert around them, tiny as dolls’ houses at this distance, and wavering in the mirage. Yet menace emanated from them as fiercely as the heat from the sun. Night and day, the drums never stopped, a constant reminder of the mortal threat that hung over them. She could hear them booming across the waters, like the heartbeat of the monster. She could imagine him sitting at the centre of his web, gazing hungrily across the river at them, a fanatic with a quenchless thirst for human blood. Soon he and his minions would come for them. She shuddered, and concentrated again on her father’s voice.
“Of course, I grant that you have your mother’s raw courage and obstinacy, but think of the twins, Becky. Think of the babies. They are your babies now.”
“I am aware of my duty to them every waking moment of my day,”
