was secured round her wrist by a loop of rawhide. She was moving among the crowd and marking the ones she chose by slapping them in the face with it. Quickly she picked out thirty or forty of the youngest and strongest. Many were armed with broadswords or axes.
Encouraged by the harpy the women started that dreadful cacophony again. The assault troop brandished their weapons and rushed at the wall. The jet of water from the hose struck the leaders but they linked arms to support each other.
“Let us shoot, Effendi,” Bacheet pleaded. “They are so close even I cannot miss.”
“I would not give odds on that,” Ryder grunted, “But hold your fire. If we kill just one they will go berserk and start a massacre.” He was thinking of the women in the blockhouse. Little else mattered.
Even with the hose playing over them the attackers climbed swiftly to the parapet. Ryder and his men checked them there, swinging at their heads with clubs and staves. They had the advantage of height. At a range of only a few feet the fire hose was almost irresistible, and the long staves kept the attackers from getting close enough to use their swords. But when some lost heart and retreated down the ramp of bales and tusks the harpy was at the bottom to meet them, lashing their faces with the switch and screaming abuse. Three times they fell back and each time she sent them up again.
“They are giving up,” Bacheet panted. “They are losing heart.”
“I hope Allah is listening to you,” Ryder said, and plied his staff, cracking it across the temple of the man in front of him. He rolled down the ramp and lay still at the bottom. Even the harpy’s stinging blows with the switch could not rouse him.
Then a man pushed through the throngs of ululating women. He walked with the rolling long-armed gait of a silver-backed gorilla bull. His head was round, shaven and shiny as a cannonball. His skin was the colour of anthracite and his features were Nubian, with thick lips and a wide, flattened nose. He had stripped to his loincloth and the muscles of his chest bulged under the oiled skin, and writhed like a black silk bag of pythons. “I know this one,” Bacheet croaked huskily. “He is a famous wrestler from Dongola. They call him the Bone Cruncher. He is dangerous.”
The Nubian climbed the ramp with astonishing agility. Ryder ran down the platform to confront him, but he was already at the parapet. He raised himself to his full height, balanced like an ebony colossus.
Ryder placed the butt of the long stave under his arm, like a lance, and ran at him. The sharpened point caught the Nubian in the centre of his chest and snagged in his flesh. Ryder threw his weight behind it, and the Nubian hovered at the point of balance, his arms windmilling, body arched backwards.
Bacheet sprang to Ryder’s side and the two threw their combined weight on the staff. The Nubian went over like an avalanche of black rock. He tumbled into five men behind him, and they tumbled down the steep incline of the ramp in a confused jumble of arms and legs.
The Nubian hit the sunbaked earth on the back of his shaven head and the impact reverberated like the fall of a lightning-blasted mahogany tree. He lay quiescent, mouth agape and thunderous snores echoing up his throat. The harpy jumped on to his chest and lashed at his face.
The Nubian opened his eyes and sat up. He swatted her away with the back of one hand and shoak his head groggily. Then he saw Ryder and Bacheet grinning down at him. He threw back his head, bellowed like a bull buffalo in a pitfall, then groped for his sword, lurched to his feet and charged straight back up the ramp.
“Sweet Mother of God,” said Ryder. “Just look at him come.” He raised the staff again, and as the Nubian reached the top he thrust at him viciously. With a flick of the blade the Nubian lopped two feet off the end. Ryder stabbed at him again with the butt. The Nubian cut again backhanded and left Ryder with a stump no longer than his arm. Ryder hurled it at him. It struck the Nubian in the centre of his sloping forehead. He blinked and roared again, then came over the top of the parapet, hacking wildly.
“Back to the blockhouse!” Ryder yelled, as he ducked under the blade.
Suddenly he realized he was alone on the parapet. The others had anticipated his order and taken themselves off at top speed. He dived down the rickety ladder into the yard and raced for the door. He could hear the Nubian close behind him, and the swish of his sword fanned the short sweaty hairs on the back of his neck.
“Run, Ryder! He’s right behind you,” Saffron shrilled from one of the loopholes. “Shoot him I gave you your gun! Why don’t you shoot?” In theory it was good advice, but if he lost even a second in loosening the flap of his holster the Nubian would take his head off at the shoulders. He found an extra turn of speed and began to catch up with Bacheet and the other Arabs.
“Faster, Ryder, faster!” Saffron yelped. Close behind him he could hear the hoarse breathing. Ahead, the others burst through the blockhouse door.
Rebecca was holding it open for him. Now she levelled the rifle and seemed to aim straight at his head. “I can’t shoot without hitting you,” she cried, and lowered the barrel. “Come on, Ryder, please, come on.” Even in the desperate circumstances, her use of his first name gave him a sweet thrill and added wings to his feet. He flew through the doorway and Rebecca and Saffron slammed it behind him. On the far side the Nubian crashed into it with a force that shivered the frame.
“He’s going to smash it off its hinges.” Rebecca gasped. They heard the Nubian hacking and kicking at it.
“Steel door, steel frame,” Ryder reassured her, and grabbed the rifle Saffron handed him. He opened the breech and checked the load. “We’ll be safe in here.”
He stepped up to the loophole and Rebecca stood close beside him. Through the narrow opening they had a view across the yard to the door of the workshop and in the other direction to the inner gate of the menagerie. The broad sweat-gleaming back of the Nubian appeared in their field of vision. He had abandoned his assault on the blockhouse door. Now he was striding across the yard to the barred inner gates. When he reached them Ryder watched him lift the heavy teak locking bars and toss them aside. Then he stood back and kicked the brass lock off its hinges. As the gates swung open the harpy was first into the yard. The horde poured in behind her.
She headed straight for the blockhouse, and the rest followed her closely. It was a horrific spectacle, as though the gates of hell had burst open and spewed out the legions of the damned and long-dead. Their faces were ravaged by disease and hunger, their eyes too large for their wizened, emaciated heads, their lips and eyelids swollen and inflamed with running ulcers and carbuncles. Starvation and disease emit their own odour as the body devours itself and the skin releases the fluids of decay and dissolution: as they crowded to the loopholes the stench oozed through into the hot, airless interior and filled it with the reek of open sepulchres. It was a miasma that was difficult to breathe. The ruined faces leered and grimaced through the openings. “Food! Where is the food?” They thrust their arms through. Their limbs were thin and gnarled as dead branches. The palms of their hands were as pale as the bellies of dead fish.
“Oh, Jesus, have mercy on us,” Rebecca gasped, and shrank against Ryder, instinctively seeking his protection. He placed one arm round her shoulders. This time she made no effort to pull away from him. “What will happen to us now?”
“Whatever happens, I will stay with you,” he said, and she pressed closer to him.
The harpy was shrieking orders to the mob. “Search all the buildings! We must find where they have hidden the dhurra! Then we will smash the pots in which they have brewed the Devil’s manna. It is evil and an offence in the sight of God. It is this that has brought misfortune upon the city, and visited us with pestilence and disaster. Find where they have hidden the animals. You shall feast on sweet meat this day.” Her shrill voice reached to the depths of their starved bodies. They responded to her with a kind of blind, hypnotic obedience and rushed away from the rifle slits so that Ryder could see out again. He and Rebecca pressed their faces to the same opening, breathing the cleaner air and watching the hordes streaming towards the gates of the menagerie, led by the colossal Nubian and the harpy.
“Well, them bongos of yours ain’t going to be shitting on the decks of my ship again, skipper,” said Jock McCrump lugubriously. Suddenly he remembered his manners and touched the brim of his cap to Rebecca. “If you’ll forgive my Erench, ladies.”
“What are they going to do with them, Jock?” Saffron’s voice was fearful.
“It’s the cooking pot for all of them beasties, dye ken, Miss Saffy?”
Saffron flew at the door and tried to tear open the locking bars. “Lucy! I have to save Lucy and her baby!”
Ryder took her arm gently but firmly, and drew her to his side. “Saffron,” he whispered huskily, ‘there is
