“What are the infidels doing now?” Salida asked curiously as his attention went back to the enemy camp.
“They are preparing for our attack.”
“They know that we are here, waiting for them?” al-Salida enquired. “How do they know that?”
“We had a spy in our ranks. A ferenghi officer. A clever, crafty infidel. He speaks our sweet mother tongue, and passes readily as a son of the Prophet. From Berber he rode northwards with our array. Doubtless, he has counted our heads, divined our intentions and gone into the infidel camp.”
“What is his name? How do you know so much about him?”
“His name is Abadan Riji. He gave me the wound at El Obeid that almost carried me to my grave. “He is my blood enemy.”
“Then why have you not killed him?” Salida asked, in a reasonable tone.
“He is slippery as a river eel. Twice he has wriggled through my fingers,” Osman said, ‘but that was yesterday. Today is today, and we shall count the dead at the setting of this sun.”
“The infidel may not offer us battle this day,” Salida demurred.
“Look!” He passed Salida his telescope. The old man held it the wrong way round and peered through the large lens. Though he could see nothing but a vacant blue sky, he looked wise. Osman knew that he understood little of these infidel toys, so to spare him embarrassment he described the scene in the British camp for him.
“See how the quartermasters are passing down the ranks handing out extra ammunition.”
“By God, you are right,” Salida said, and the telescope wavered several degrees in the wrong direction.
“See how they are bringing in the Nordenfelts.”
“In the saintly name of the Mahdi, you are right.” Salida bumped his eyebrow on the brass frame of the telescope, and lowered it to rub the spot.
“See how the infidel mounts up, and you can hear the bugles sound the advance.”
Salida looked up and, without the hindrance of the lens, saw the enemy clearly for the first time, “By the holy name of the Mahdi, you are right!” said he. “Here he comes in full array.”
They watched the British break camp and ride out. Their orderly ranks immediately assumed the dreaded square formation. They moved deliberately into the mouth of the defile, and no gaps appeared in their lines. Their discipline and precision were chilling, even to men of Osman’s and Salida’s temperament.
“For them there is no turning back. They must win through to the water or perish as other armies have done, swallowed by the desert.”
“I will not leave them for the desert,” declared Salida. “We will destroy them with the sword.” He turned to Osman. “Embrace me, my beloved enemy,” he said softly, ‘for I am old and tired. Today seems a good day to die.”
Osman hugged him and kissed his withered cheeks. “When you die, may it be with your sword in your hand.” They parted and moved down the back slope of the ridge to where the lance-bearers held their horses.
Penrod looked up at the stark black cliffs that rose on each side of them. They were barren as ash heaps from the pit of hell. As they moved into the gut of the defile the cliffs compressed and deformed their formations. But no gaps appeared in the sides of the square. Carefully Penrod scanned the cliffs. There was no sign of life, but he knew this was an illusion. He glanced across at Yakub. “Osman Atalan is here,” he said.
“Yes, Abadan Riji.” Yakub smiled and his right eye rolled out of kilter. “He is here. There is the sweet perfume of death in the air.” He drew a deep breath. “I love it even more than the smell of fresh quimmy.”
“Only you, lascivious and bloodthirsty Yakub, could combine love and battle in the same thought.”
“But, Effendi, they are one and the same.”
They moved on down the narrow defile. Fear and excitement coursed like intoxicating wine through Penrod’s veins. He looked around at the bluff, honest faces that surrounded him and was proud to ride in their company. The quiet orders and responses were given in the familiar accents of home, so diverse that they might have been different languages: the sounds of the Scottish Highlands and the West Country, of Wales and the Emerald Isle, of York and Kent, of the Geordies, the Cockney, and the elegant drawl of Eton and Harrow.
“They will be waiting for us on the far side of this pass,” Yakub said. “Osman and Salida will want to work their cavalry in the open ground.”
“Salida is the emir of your tribe so you understand his mind well,” said Penrod.
“He was my emir, and I rode in his raiding parties with him and ate at his fire. Until the day his eldest son ravished my little sister and I took the dagger to them both, for it was she who enticed him. Now there is blood between me and Salida. If he does not kill me first, one day I will kill him.”
“Ah, patient and vengeful Yakub, this may be that day.”
They rode on through the narrow neck of the pass and the sides opened like the jaws of a monster on each side of them. Still there was no sign of life on the dead, seared hills, not a bird or a gazelle. The bugle sounded the halt, and the distorted square came to a jerky stop.
The sergeants rode down the ranks to redress them. “Close up on the right!”
“Keep your spacing in the ranks.”
“Wheel into line on the left.”
Within minutes the integrity of the square was restored. The corners were at meticulous right angles and the spacings were precise. The lines of bayonets glittered in the relentless sunlight, and the faces of the waiting men were ruddy with sweat, but not one unhooked a water-bottle from his webbing. In this thirsty wilderness, to drink without orders was a court-martial offence. From the back of his camel Penrod surveyed the ground ahead. Beyond the funnel of hills it opened into a broad, level plain. The earth was carpeted with white quartz pebbles and studded with low, sun-blackened salt scrub. At the far end of this bleak expanse stood a tiny clump of palm trees that seemed to have fossilized with age.
Good cavalry country, Penrod thought, and turned his full attention back to the trap of hills on either hand. Still they were devoid of all life, yet seemed charged with menace. They quivered in the heat mirage like hunting hounds brought up short by the scent of the quarry, waiting only the slip to send them away in full tongue.
The cliffs were riven by gullies and wadi mouths, by rocky salients and deep re-entrants. Some were choked with rock and scree, others coated with sand like the floor of a bullring. Yakub giggled softly and indicated the nearest of these with the point of his camel goad. There was no need for him to speak. The tracks of a thousand horses dimpled the surface of the sand. They were so fresh that the edge of each hoof print was crisply defined and the low angle of the sun defined it with bold blue shadow.
Penrod raised his eyes to the serrated tops of the hills. They were sharp as the fangs of an ancient crocodile against the eggshell blue sky. Then something moved among the rocks and Penrod’s eye pounced upon it. It was a tiny speck and the movement was no more striking than that of a flea crawling in the belly fur of a black cat.
He brought his small telescope out of the leather saddlebag and focused on it, then saw the head of a single man peering down on them. He wore a black turban and his beard was black, blending well with the rock around him. It was too far to recognize his features but the man turned his head, perhaps to give an order to those behind him. Another head appeared beside his, and then another, until the skyline was lined with human heads like beads on a string.
Penrod lowered the glass and opened his mouth to shout a warning, but at that moment the air throbbed with the gut-jarring beat of the Dervish war drums. The echoes rebounded off the facing cliffs, and now the host of the Mahdi appeared, with miraculous suddenness, upon all the ledges, galleries and crests of the pass. The central figure stood clear upon the utmost pinnacle. His jibba sparkled white in the sun, and his turban was dark emerald green. He lifted his rifle with one hand and pointed it at the sky. The grey gunsmoke spurted high into the air like the breath of a breaching sperm whale, and the sound of the gunshot followed seconds later. A mighty shout went up from the serried Dervish ranks: “La il aha ill allah There is but one God!”
The echoes shouted back: “God! God! God!”
The bugle in the centre of the British square sang on a wild, urgent note, and the troops reacted with smooth, practised precision. Down went the camels, kneeling in orderly lines, forming at once the outer ramparts of this living fortress. The baggage animals and their handlers moved back and couched in a dense mass in the centre. They were the inner keep. Swiftly the gunners unloaded the Nordenfelt machine-guns from the pack-camels and staggered with them to the four corners, from where they could lay down enfilading fire along the front of each wall of the square. General Stewart and his staff stood in a group just within the front wall. The runners knelt close at hand, ready to race to any corner of the square with the general’s orders.
