gesture he took the dead man’s arm and rolled the body face up in the shallows. He stared at it in astonishment. This was an older, less noble face, with brutish brows, thick lips and broken teeth stained by the smoke of the hashish pipe.
“Ostnan Atalan has escaped.” He spoke aloud in his relief. He was overtaken by a sense of prescience. It was not over yet. Fate had linked him and Atalan, as a serpentine liana binds two great forest trees to each other. There was more to follow, much more. He knew it in his heart.
There was a soft sound behind him, but it did not alarm him. He thought it was either Yakub or Amber. He went on studying the features of the dead emir, until Amber screamed, “Pen! Behind you! Look out!” She was some way to his right. Even as he turned he knew it was not her he had heard so close behind him. And he knew he was too late. Perhaps, after all, this was where it ended, on this strip of mud beside the great river.
He completed the turn with his right hand on the hilt of his sabre, rising from his knees, but he knew he could not regain his feet and draw his sword in time. He had only a fleeting glimpse of his assassin. The Dervish had been feigning death: it was one of their tricks. Coiled like a poisonous adder he had waited his moment. Penrod had fallen into the trap: he had turned his back and sheathed his sabre. The Dervish had come to his feet with his broadsword drawn back like a forester about to make the first cut on the trunk of a tree. Now he swung all his wiry frame behind the stroke. He was aiming a few inches above the point of Penrod’s left hip bone.
Penrod watched the massive silver blade looping towards him, but it seemed that time had slowed. He was like an insect trapped in a bowl of honey, and his movements were sluggish. He realized that the blade would slice through the soft tissue of his midriff, until it struck his spinal column just above the pelvic girdle. That would not stop it. The entire circumference of his body would offer as little resistance as if it were the spongy stem of a banana tree. This single stroke of the blade would bisect him neatly.
The shot came from his right, a flat blurt of sound, the characteristic report of the Webley .44. Although he was not looking directly at her, Penrod was aware of Amber’s small shape at the periphery of his vision. She was holding the weapon double-handed at the full reach of both her arms, but the heavy recoil threw it high above her head.
The assassin was a young man with a thin, unkempt beard, his pockmarked skin the colour of toffee. Penrod was staring at his face as the heavy Webley bullet struck him in the left temple and blasted through his skull just behind the eyes. It distorted his features as though they were an india-rubber mask. His lips twisted and elongated, and his eyelids fluttered like the wings of butterflies. His eyes bulged from their sockets, and the bullet erupted from his right temple in a cloud of bone chips and wet tissue.
Half-way through the sword stroke his fingers opened nervelessly and the weapon flew from his grip. It spun past Penrod’s hip, missing it by a hand-span, and cartwheeled away to peg point first into the muddy bank. The assassin took a step back before his legs folded and he collapsed.
With his right hand on the hilt of his half-drawn sabre Penrod turned to stare in amazement at Amber. She dropped the revolver and burst into sobs. He went to her and picked up the Webley, thrust it into the holster on his belt and buckled the flap. Amber was sobbing as though her heart was breaking. She was shivering and her lips were quivering wildly as she tried to tell him something. He placed one arm round her shoulders and the other behind her knees and lifted her as though she were an infant. She clung to him with both thin arms round his neck.
“That is absolutely enough for one day,” he said gently. “This time I shall take you home myself.”
Gordon was waiting for him in the Gatling redoubt as he came up the bank. “A fair night’s work, Ballantyne. The Mahdi will think once or twice before he comes again, and the populace will be much heartened.” He lit a cigarette and his hand was steady. “We will throw the Dervish dead into the river, a floating warning to their comrades. Perhaps some may even be carried down through the gorge to our troops coming upriver. They will know that we are holding out. It may encourage them to a little more haste.” Now he glanced at Amber, who was still weeping silently. Her whole body shook with sobs, but the only sounds were small gulps of breath. “I will take command here. You may escort the young lady back to her family.”
Penrod carried Amber into the street. She was still weeping. “Cry if it makes you feel better,” he whispered to her, ‘but, by God, you are as brave a little thing as any man I have known.” She stopped weeping but her grip tightened round his neck.
By the time he handed her over to Rebecca and Nazeera Amber had cried herself to sleep. They had to prise her arms from round Penrod’s neck.
General Gordon used their little victory to counter the numbing despair of the civilian inhabitants of the city. He gathered up the corpses of the enemy, two hundred and sixteen, laid them out in rows on the harbour quay and invited the populace to view them. The women spat upon them, and the men kicked them and shouted abuse, calling down the curse of Allah and condemning them to the fires and torments of hell. They shouted with glee as the corpses were thrown into the river, where the crocodiles snapped at them and dragged them below the surface.
Gordon posted official bulletins in every square and souk of the city, announcing that the British relief columns were now in full march for the city and would almost certainly arrive within days. He also gave them the joyous tidings that the Dervish were so disheartened by their devastating defeat and the approach of the British columns that vast numbers were deserting the black flag of the Mahdi and marching into the desert to return to their tribal homelands. It was true that there was a large movement of Dervish troops on the enemy bank, but Gordon knew that they were being sent northwards in battle array to oppose the British relief columns.
More welcome bulletins announced that General Gordon had declared a double ration of dhurra from the stock he was holding in the arsenal. The same bulletin informed the people that the remaining stocks of grain were more than sufficient to feed the city until the arrival of the relief column. It assured them that when the steamers docked in the harbour they would off load thousands of sacks of grain.
That night Gordon lit bonfires on the maid an The band played until midnight, and the night sky was lit up again by rockets and coloured flares.
Early the following morning he called a more sombre meeting in his headquarters. There were only two other participants: David Benbrook and Penrod Ballantyne.
Gordon looked at Penrod first. “You have drawn up the latest inventory of the grain stocks?”
“It did not take long, sir. At ten o’clock last night there were four thousand nine hundred and sixty sacks remaining. Yesterday’s issue of double rations expended five hundred and sixty-two. At the present rate of consumption, we have sufficient dhurra for another fifteen days.”
“In three days I will be forced to halve the ration again,” Gordon said, ‘but this is not the time to tell the people.”
David looked shocked. “But, General, surely the relief column will be here in two weeks. Your own bulletins gave that assurance.”
“I have to protect the people from the truth,” Gordon replied.
“What, then, is the truth?” David demanded.
Gordon contemplated the ash on his cigarette before he replied. “The truth, sir? The truth is not a monolith cast in iron. It is like a cloud in the sky, constantly changing shape. From every direction that one views it, it offers a different aspect.”
“That description has great literary value, I have no doubt, but in this situation it is of little help.” David smiled bleakly. “When can we expect the relief column to reach us?”
“The information I am about to disclose to you must not go beyond the four walls of this room.”
“I understand.”
“Six Dervish were taken prisoner at the harbour.”
“I thought there would have been more.” David frowned.
“There were.” Gordon shrugged. David knew better than to pursue the subject. This was the Orient where different standards prevailed. Interrogation under torture fell within those standards. “The six prisoners were questioned by my Sergeant Khaled. We obtained much useful intelligence, none of it reassuring. The steamers of the River Division seem to have been delayed at Korti.”
“Good Lord! They should have been at Abu Hamed by now,” David exclaimed. “What on earth is holding them back?”
“We do not know, and speculation is vain.”
“What of the Desert Division under Stewart?”
