their feet at the first touch of the goad.
Penrod leapt into the saddle and pointed his mount’s head at the distant line of palm trees. He used the goad and it lumbered into a gallop. From behind he heard the distant thud of a rifle shot and a bullet ricocheted off the stony ground in a puff of dust and chips, but it was fifty yards out on the left. Even at such long range it was poor shooting, but the Dervish favoured the sword and the spear above the gun. They considered any expertise in the use of firearms to be effete and unmanly. The true warrior killed with the blade, man to man.
Within seconds the camels had crossed the ridge and were screened by the shale bank from further enemy fire. Penrod knew that they were no match for a good horse over the short run, but he pushed his on with cries of “Ha! Ha!” the sting of the goad and urgent movements of his body. Yakub was lighter, though, and his mount drew gradually ahead.
As they raced for the edge of the palm groves Penrod searched for any sign of the horsemen he had spotted earlier. He hoped they might have ridden on towards Omdurman, and left their path open to the river. Even the best of us needs a little luck, he thought, then heard faint but excited cries from far behind. He looked back under his arm, and saw the nine horsemen sweeping over the shale bank they had just crossed. They were strung out but riding hard. There were more shots, but they flew wide. The palm groves drew closer, and he felt his confidence burgeoning. They had a clear run to the bank of the Nile.
“Come, Effendi, watch Yakub and you will learn how to ride a camel.”
The little Jaalin tribesman laughed with delight at his own sense of humour. Both their animals were extended in full gallop, and Penrod ducked as loose pebbles flew back from the pads of the camel in front of him and flicked past his ears.
Suddenly there was a different sound of gunfire, much sharper and clearer. The band of riders he had seen earlier raced out of the grove. They must have been halted and resting among the trees, but now they had been alerted by the shots of the pursuers. All of them wore the jibba of the Dervish and were armed with spear, sword, targe and rifle. They were on a converging course, racing in from the right along the edge of the grove to cut them off from the river. Penrod narrowed his eyes as he judged their speed and the distance to where their paths would cross.
We will make it, but with little to spare, he decided. At that moment a heavy Boxer-Henry .45 calibre bullet struck Yakub’s camel in the head and killed it instantly. It dropped onto its nose and the long legs flew over its head as it tumbled. Yakub was thrown high, then struck the hard ground heavily.
Penrod knew that he must be either killed or knocked senseless. He dared not stop to help him. Baring’s messages were more important than the life of one man. None the less he was filled with dismay at the thought of leaving Yakub to the mercy of the Dervish. He knew they would give him to their women to play with. The Hadendowa woman could castrate a man, then flay every inch of skin from his body without allowing him to lose consciousness, forcing him to endure every exquisite cut of the blade. “Yakub!” he bellowed, with little hope of any response, but to his astonishment Yakub clambered shakily to his feet and looked about groggily.
“Yakub! Make ready.” Penrod leant out sideways from the saddle. Yakub turned and ran in the same direction, to lessen the shock as they came together. They had often practised this trick in preparation for just such a moment on the battlefield or the hunting ground. Yakub was looking back over his shoulder to judge his moment. As the camel swept by him he reached up and linked arms with Penrod. He was jerked clean off his feet, but Penrod used the momentum to swing him back over the camel’s croup.
Yakub grabbed him round the waist and stuck to him like a tick to a dog. The camel ran on without check. The moment Penrod was sure that Yakub was secure he twisted in the saddle and saw that the closest Dervish was only two hundred yards out on their right flank. He rode a magnificent cream mare with a flowing golden mane. Although he wore the green turban of an emir, he was not a greybeard but a warrior in his prime, and he rode with the menace of a couched lance, slim, supple and deadly.
“Abadan Riji!” To Penrod’s astonishment the emir challenged him by name. “Since El Obeid I have waited for you to return to Sudan.”
Then Penrod remembered him. His face and figure were not easily forgotten. This was Osman Atalan, emir of the Beja.
“I thought I had killed you there,” Penrod shouted back. The emir had chased him as he carried the wounded Adams out of the broken square, just as the Dervish charge overwhelmed it. Osman had been riding another mount, not that lovely mare. Penrod had been up on a big strong gelding. Even burdened with Adams it had taken Osman a good half-mile to catch him. Then they rode stirrup to stirrup and shoulder to shoulder, as though riding each other off the ball in a game of polo, Osman slashing and hacking with that great silver blade, and Penrod meeting it with parries and stop hits, until his moment came. Then he feigned a straight thrust at Osman’s eyes. The Dervish threw up his targe to catch the point, and Penrod dropped his aim and hit him, driving hard under the bottom rim of the targe. He had felt his steel go well in. Osman reeled back in the saddle and his mount had swerved aside, breaking out of the trial of strength.
Looking back under his arm as he carried Adams away, Penrod had seen that Osman’s mount had slowed to a walk, and that his rider was hunched over and swaying. He had thought he was probably mortally wounded.
But that was clearly not the case, for now Osman shouted, “I swear on my love of the Prophet that today I will give you another chance to kill me.”
Osman’s men rode close behind him and Penrod saw that they were as dangerous as a pack of wolves. One of the aggagiers aimed his carbine and fired. The black powder smoke erupted from the muzzle and the bullet parted the air so close to Penrod’s cheek that he felt its kiss. He ducked instinctively, and heard Osman shout behind him, “No guns! Blades only. I want this one for my sword, for he has tainted my honour.”
Penrod faced ahead, giving all his concentration to wringing the utmost from the camel under him. They rushed towards the palm grove, but behind him he could hear the thunder of hoofs riding to a crescendo. As they rode past the first trees of the grove, he saw that he had been mistaken; this was not a field of dhurra but a dense stand of second-growth palmetto. The long needle spines could stab through the hide of a horse, but not that of a camel. He turned his mount’s head and it charged straight at the thicket.
He heard the hoofs closer behind him and the hoarse breathing of a horse at full gallop, then saw the mare’s golden head appear in the periphery of his vision.
“Now is your chance, Abadan Riji!” Osman called, and pushed the mare alongside the camel. Penrod leant across the narrow gap and thrust at his turbaned head, but Osman swayed back and kept his targe low, sneering at Penrod over the rim. “The fox never comes twice to the snare,” he said.
“You learn swiftly.” Penrod conceded, and caught the great crusader sword on his own slim blade, turning it in the air so that it flew past his head. He steered the camel with his toes against its neck into the thicket of spiny palmetto. The camel crashed through, but Osman turned aside, breaking off his attack rather than lame or cripple the mare.
He galloped furiously round the edge of the thicket while the camel ran straight through. He had lost at least a hundred paces as he came back into the camel’s tracks and rode hard to catch up with it again.
Penrod saw the wide expanse of the Nile directly ahead, a shimmering luminescence in the fading light. The camel bounded forward under him as it, too, saw the river. Penrod carried the sabre in his right hand, with the goad and the reins in the left. “Yakub, take my pistol!” he said softly. “And for the love and mercy of Allah, try this time to aim fair and shoot straight.”
Yakub reached round his body and pulled the Webley from his sash. “The remarkable Yakub will slay this false emir with a single shot,” he cried, took deliberate aim and closed both eyes before he fired.
Osman Atalan did not flinch at the crack of the shot: he came on swiftly, but he had seen how close they were to the riverbank. He swung the mare in across the camel’s rump, and stood in the stirrups with the long sword poised.
Penrod saw that he had changed his attack, and that he meant to cripple the camel with a deep cut through the hamstrings. With a stab of the goad and a hard tug on the reins he swung the beast’s shoulder into the mare. Standing off balance in his stirrups Osman could not respond swiftly enough to counter the turn, and the two animals came together with the impetus of their combined weights. The camel was almost twice the height of the mare at the shoulder, and half again as heavy. She reeled and went down on her front knees. Osman was thrown on to her neck.
With the skill and balance of an acrobat he retained his seat, and kept a grip on his sword. However, by the time the mare had found her feet again, the camel had pulled too far ahead for her to catch up before it reached the
