cinnamon and chestnut, puce and chocolate. The hollows between them were thick with thorn scrub and saltbush.
Beyond the dunes, along the riverbank, lay the labyrinthine native town of Metemma. The narrow winding alleys, huts and hovels pressed right up to the water’s edge. It was silent and deserted as a necropolis.
“The town is a trap, sir.” Penrod offered his opinion diffidently. “You can be certain that it is teeming with Dervish. If the men get into those alleys they will be cut to shreds.”
“Quite right, Ballantyne,” Stewart grunted. “Make for the open stretch on the bank below the town.” The Dervish harassing fire still spurted and smoked from the tops of the dunes and from among the thick scrub in the hollows below them. Stewart took one step forward, then spun round as a heavy bullet thudded into him. He went down in a broken heap. Penrod knelt beside him and saw that the bullet had struck him in the groin, shattering the large joint of the femur. Shards of bone stuck out of the churned flesh, and blood bubbled over them. It was a wound that no man could survive.
Stewart sat up and thrust his clenched fist into the gaping hole in his flesh. “I am hit,” he called urgently to Sir Charles Wilson. “Take command, and keep the regiment pushing hard for the river. Let nothing stand in your way. Drive for the river with everything you have got.”
Penrod tried to lift him and carry him forward. “Damn you, Ballantyne. Do your job, man. Let me lie. Take them on. You must help Wilson to get them to the river.”
Penrod stood up and two burly troopers rushed to the general.
“Good luck, sir!” Penrod said, and left him. He hurried to catch up with the front rank and lead them down into the dunes.
It did not seem that a squadron of cavalry could conceal itself in that low scrub, but as they came off the ridge, the bush ahead came alive with horses and figures in speckled jib has Within seconds the two sides were once more locked in savage, bloody conflict. Every time the soldiers drove them back with those flailing volleys, they reassembled and charged again. Now some of the white men in the front rank of the mangled British square were dropping, not from their wounds but from heat exhaustion and that terrible thirst. The men on each side hoisted them up again and pushed them forward.
The sweat dried in salt-ringed patches on their tunics; their bodies could no longer sweat. They reeled like drunks and dragged their rifles with the last of their strength. Penrod’s vision wavered and darkened with cloudy shapes. He blinked eyes to clear his eyes, and each step was a monumental labour.
Just when it seemed that mortal man could endure no longer, the dense scrub ahead rustled and shook and out came the horsemen yet again. Riding at the head of the charge was the familiar figure in the green turban. The coat of the cream-coloured mare under him was dulled with sweat, her long mane matted and tangled. Osman Atalan recognized Penrod in the front rank of the square, turned the mare with his knees and rode straight at him.
Penrod tried to steady himself for his legs were rubbery under him. His light cavalry carbine seemed to have been transmuted to lead. It needed a painful effort to lift it to his shoulder. Even though they were still separated by fifty paces the image of his enemy, Osman Atalan, seemed to fill the field of his distorted vision. He fired. The sound seemed muted, and everything around him moved with dreamlike slowness. He watched his bullet strike the mare high in the forehead above the level of her magnificent dark eyes. She flung her head back and went down, struck the earth and rolled in a cloud of sand with her legs kicking spasmodically. She came to rest with her neck twisted back under her body.
With feline grace, Osman kicked his feet from the stirrups as she fell and sprang from her back to land lightly in balance. He stood and. glared at Penrod with an expression of deadly hatred. Penrod tried to reload the rifle, but his fingers were numb and slow, and Osman held his eyes with a mesmeric spell. Osman stooped and picked up his broadsword from where he had dropped it. He ran towards Penrod. At last Penrod managed to guide the cartridge into the open breech and closed the block. He lifted the weapon and his aim wavered. He tried desperately to steady it, and when, for an instant, the bead of the foresight lay on Osman’s chest he fired. He saw the bullet graze the emir’s sword arm, and leave a bloody line across the muscle of his biceps, but Osman neither flinched nor lost his grip on the hilt of the broadsword. He came on steadily. Other troopers on either side of Penrod turned their rifles on him. Bullets kicked up sand or snapped through the scrub around him. But Osman’s life seemed charmed.
“Kill that man!” shouted Wilson, his tone strident and nervous.
The rest of the Arab horsemen had seen their emir go down and their ranks broke up. One of his aggagiers swerved towards Osman’s isolated figure. “I am coming, master.”
“Let me be, Noor. It is not yet finished,” Osman shouted back.
“It is enough for this day. We will fight again.” Without slowing his mount al-Noor leant out of the saddle, linked arms with him and swung him up behind his saddle.
As he was carried away into the dense scrub, Osman glared back at Penrod. “It is not finished. In God’s Name, this is not the end.” Then he was gone. The rest of the Dervish cavalry disappeared as swiftly, and an eerie silence fell over the field. Some of the exhausted men in the British line sank to the earth again, their legs no longer able to support them, but the cries of the sergeants roused them: “On your feet, boys. There is the river in front of you!”
Stewart’s piper puffed up his bag and “Scotland the Brave’ shrilled on the desert air. The men shouldered their weapons, picked up their dead and the square moved forward yet again. Staggering along in the front rank, Penrod licked the salt and dried blood from his cracked lips, and the last few drops of his sweat burned his bloodshot eyes as he searched the scrub ahead for the next wave of savage horsemen.
But the Dervish had gone, blown away like smoke. The British came out on to the high bank of the Nile, and waved and shouted to the steamers across the river. They were pretty as model boats floating on the Serpentine on a bright Sunday morning in London Town.
They had won through. They had reached the river, and a hundred and fifty miles to the south in Khartoum, General Charles Gordon still endured.
Osman Atalan waited in the village of Metemma for shattered divisions of his Jaalin allies to reassemble, for their sheikhs to come to him and place themselves under his command. But their own emir, Salida, and all his sons were dead. So brave when he led them, they were now like children without a father. Allah had deserted them. The cause was lost. They disappeared back into their desert fastnesses. Osman waited in vain.
At first light the next morning he called for the master of the pigeons. “Bring me three of your fastest and swiftest birds,” he ordered. With his own hand he wrote out his message for the Mahdi in triplicate, one copy to be carried by each bird. If falcons or other misfortune struck one or even two, the vital message would still reach the holy man in Omdurman.
“To the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmed, may Allah protect and cherish him. You are the light of our eyes, and the breath of our bodies. My shame and sadness is a great rock in my belly, for know you that the infidel has prevailed in battle against us. Emir Salida is dead, and his division destroyed. The infidel has reached the Nile at Metemma. I am returning in all haste with my division to Omdurman. Pray for us, Holy and Mighty Mahdi.”
The pigeon-master tied the folded messages to the legs of the birds, replaced them in their basket and carried them to the riverbank. Osman went ahead of him. The pigeon-master handed the birds to him one at a time. Before he launched them, Osman held each in his cupped hands and blessed it. “Fly swiftly and straight, little friend. May Allah protect you.” He tossed the bird into the air, and it rose on the clatter of wings, circled the little village of Metemma, then picked up its bearings and shot away on rapid wingbeats into the south. He let each pigeon get well clear before he sent away the next, lest they should form a flock that would attract the attention of the predators.
When they were gone he walked back to the village and climbed the mud dome of the mosque. From the top balcony of the prayer tower, whence the muezzin called the faithful to their devotions, he had a full view of both banks of the river. The cluster of small white steamers was still anchored downstream in the Pool of the Crocodiles. They were beyond his reach, for he had no artillery with which to attack them. Instead he turned his attention to the British camp. With the naked eye he could make out the men within the walls of their hastily constructed zareba. They had not yet made any effort to begin loading the steamers with either men or equipment. He wondered at their curious lethargy. It was much at variance with the energy and urgency they had displayed until now. If their goal was still to reach and relieve Khartoum as swiftly as possible they should have left their wounded on the riverbank, embarked their fighting men and sailed southwards without an hour’s delay.
