Lords of the Nile

by Jonathan Spencer

  The stream of horse dodged away from Desaix’s square to the right, towards Reynier’s division, and were at once caught in a crossfire as both squares loosed a third volley upon them, and a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth, the Mamluks dragged through the dust-cloud of flying hooves and slaughtered horses, crushed, trampled, their bodies bouncing to the earth, the silks aflame. They fell in their hundreds, troops riding in to loose a storm of djerid javelins, then riding to escape, regroup and attack again and again, never tiring.

  General Dugua’s 1st Division square moved faster, doubling towards Embabeh and the Nile to cut off the Mamluk cavalry from the city. Obscured by stands of twisted acacia and tamarisk, they had not yet seen the Ottoman batteries. Hazzard watched them approach.

  ‘Stand ready the guns! Wait for the command!’

  Cook bellowed at the crews, ‘Stand by your guns, you bloody beauties!’

  Yuzbashi Russuf shouted overtop, ‘Hazir!’ Ready!

  The Albanian footsoldiers had begun chanting a deep, repetitive Turkish battlecry, ‘Vur un, vur un, Allah Allah Allah!’ Smite them, smite them…

  Izzam snatched at Hazzard’s shoulder and pointed. ‘Hazar Pasha – innahu al-Sheikh!’

  They turned to see a squadron of horse appear between the whitewashed houses behind, riding up from the river road. At their head were an amir and two sheikhs, white robes blowing like gauze. In their centre was Sheikh Ali Qarim.

  His movements were stiff, his face once again the impassive mask. The amir stopped by the southern battery, too far for Hazzard to call, but Ali Qarim looked from left to right, then saw him.

  ‘God help him,’ said Cook. ‘He won’t make it out of there this time…’

  Hazzard looked back at Dugua’s advancing square. It was still out of range of both musket volley and cannon. He wanted to ride to Ali Qarim, to stop him, to save him from himself, but knew he could not. He watched as the amir drew his sword and cried out, ‘Allahu akbar!’

  Allah Allah Allah!

  The amir’s column sprang forward and charged at full gallop. Ali Qarim inclined his head in Hazzard’s direction, a brief bow, then followed, his men close behind. They swooped straight past Dugua’s square, taking a withering fire from the unprepared French infantry, and into the centre of the killing field. The amir was soon hidden by flying dust and sand.

  Ali Qarim rode into a fog of dust and smoke, his hands heavier than ever before, wearier than he could ever remember. ‘Martimar, Londan…’ He touched the Mortimer pistol at his belt, saved from Shubra Khit, and thought of Hazzard. This time, they would make the castle walls bleed.

  The scene before Ali Qarim’s eyes became a juddering torrent of sand and blurring shapes, with fleeting moments of clarity as the wind parted the haze of gunsmoke. He drew the Mortimer and fired. His lone bullet struck – among the first castle he saw a man fall. He saw one of the French sultans on his horse, a ferocious, dark, heavy man, armoured with golden plates upon his shoulders, a sword in hand, sultan, he thought, and heard the word he now knew so well.

  Fire!

  His troop racing beside him, Ali Qarim drew his Turkish carbine from its saddle holster and fired into the French square as their volleys exploded. The man beside him vanished as if plucked away by the wind. A group of mounted spearmen thundered past, launching their javelins at the squares, nearly all falling in a cloud of musket-fire, their cries left behind in the gallop, the eerie howls of aggrieved spirits.

  He dropped the carbine into its leather bucket holster and put the reins between his teeth. He thought of Selim at Shubra Khit, but the bay beneath him was just as fearless, just as trusting. He drew his two swords, their steel singing. Just ahead of him, the amir curved to the right and charged directly at the square.

  The first horses leapt the hedge of glittering bayonets, their bellies exploding from the musket-fire, their weight carrying them straight into the French lines, and screams filled the air.

  Ali Qarim’s bay dodged and flew to the right, nearly unseating him, and in that moment he saw a French soldier at his left, out of his line. He swung the scimitar down with a flick and the man fell. The horse was bolting, its eyes rolling. He felt an unholy wind blow in from the desert, as if from the Father of Terrors. It covered the world with sand and smoke – then just as suddenly cleared.

  Before him were six ranks of the 1st Battalion of the 9th demi-brigade de bataille in General Reynier’s square, surprised, their bayonets rising in a spiked hedgerow to face him as he emerged from the sandstorm, the two scimitars in his outstretched arms. He was alone.

  ‘Allahu akbar.’

  The front two ranks raised their Charlevilles. En joue…!

  ‘Allah!’

  His cry soaring out and taken by the wind, he heard no more, the horse leaping the first three rows of bayonets.

  The blurred faces of frightened men passed beneath him, some shrinking away, closing their eyes, their bayonets dragging at the horse’s underside, its whinnying screams sharp. His leaden arms swung downward, the Damascus steel of the scimitars irresistible. Six severed musket barrels and their fixed bayonets floated up around him, with them a hand, a sliced leather shako cap with its brigade plate of two crossed banners, his only sensation a weightless ease, and he was satisfied.

  Allah…

  The dying horse crashed down upon fifteen men and carried another ten with it, turning end over end, a flailing battering ram more effective than artillery. The ranks flew apart and several mounts of the 4th Horse Artillery collapsed, legs thrashing. The ranks closed fast, Réformez, vous salauds!

  Ali Qarim lay helpless, his legs trapped beneath the horse, his old wounds open, his arms dead. Bayonets were thrust into him again and again, ‘What kind of man does this, what kind of man,’ someone repeated in sobs as he stabbed downwards and Ali Qarim felt nothing after the first pounding blow but a warmth and a wish he had said goodbye. ‘Martimar… Hazar…’

  At the Embabeh line with the artillery company, Hazzard waited as the square of General Dugua drew nearer – but then it was joined by another: the division of General Bon paused, adjusted, and wheeled in their direction as well. When he could hear their shouted commands he raised his sword.

  ‘Ready…!’

  Yuzbashi Russuf shouted to his crews to stand by, ‘Estaaeed…!’

  Hazzard swung the sword down, ‘Fire!’

  As he promised, Russuf roared like the lion: ‘Edrab!’

  The four batteries fired a massed salvo, the equivalent of a warship’s broadside. The blast of shot burst through the fog of white gunsmoke and shredded the leading ranks of Bon’s square. Round-shot, langrage, and chain-shot smashed into the closely packed French ranks, the infernal rain of whirling iron carrying away dozens at a stroke. Hazzard swung his sword again.

  ‘Fire as they come to bear! Fire!’

  A second salvo blasted the corner of Bon’s formation, peppering the gap between the two squares with fountains of earth, catching Dugua’s division and sweeping away two ranks of the 25th demi in a flurry of flying limbs. Battalion commanders screaming out, Bon’s square pulled back.

  As they withdrew, the heavy Ottoman bombards roared, and the earth shook, shrouding the scene in white smoke, the noise so terrible Hazzard’s mount nearly threw him from the saddle. The packed shot of the cannon removed heads and an entire corner gun-crew from Bon’s square. The batteries cheered, Russuf! Russuf!

  But one of the heavy guns had recoiled more than fifteen feet, tearing itself from its antique mounting. The artillerymen rushed to lift it back into place, Hazzard shouting ‘Reload! Jory!’

  Cook was already dismounting to help. ‘Got ’em, sir!’

  Some of the Albanian troops following him, Cook dived into the gun-pit among the gun-crews and they heaved the stricken cannon upwards, Yuzbashi Russuf beating at them with his stick. ‘Come on, lads, damn ye!’ roared Cook as he lifted the gun by its thick trunions. A squad of Albanian infantry shoved the carriage underneath and they dropp
ed the gun in place, a huge Turk clapping him on the back, ‘Kuq guchlu!’ The Albanians cheered, Kuq guchlu! Kuq guchlu! Mighty Kuq!

  They loaded and rammed and Yuzbashi Russuf gave the order.

  ‘Edrab!’

  The guns blasted once again, the thunder of the reports raising cheers among the troops on the eastern shore as the French fortresses flew apart and their unstoppable advance faltered. The walls had begun to bleed.

  They are men! They are men!

  Vur un! Vur un! Allah Allah Allah!

  Bon’s division swung off to the left, drums rapping double-time, the boots of the fortress ranks fouling on the dead, dragging the wounded to the interior, reforming, earth and sand bursting all around them.

  ‘Ye’ did it, boys!’ roared Cook, and they raised their arms high.

  ‘Allahu akbar! Kuq guchlu!’

  The other squares drove the Mamluks away from the river and the city, horse and foot riding over the fallen, the smoke and stench of burning corpses blowing across the field on the hot desert wind.

  The front ranks of some squares were already looting the bodies of the Mamluk dead. An elderly Mamluk with long white beard galloped out to challenge them alone, driving the looters away with his sword. He rode back and forth before a square, but no volley came, no shot fired.

  A mounted French officer charged out of the formation, sword drawn, and clashed with the old man. But the Mamluk scimitar beat away the Frenchman’s attacks and nearly knocked the younger man’s sabre from his hand. The officer made another pass and struck his aged opponent from his seat. The Mamluk fell. There was a cheer from the square.

  Bleeding from a cut to the head, the old man pulled himself along the ground, towards the officer’s horse, swinging and slashing at its legs with his scimitar. No matter where the officer tugged his mount, the old Mamluk crawled over the bodies in the field, trying to slash at the horse. The officer shouted down at him ‘Ça suffit alors! Enough! Vous êtes fou! You are mad!’ He tried to strike the old man with his sword but the Mamluk was too low. A squad of infantrymen ran from the front lines instead, and battered the old man to death with their muskets. They then ripped the robes from his body and waved them in the air in celebration.

  Hazzard had witnessed it all. ‘By Christ I shall have them for that. I shall bloody well have them…’ He kicked his heels in, ‘Izzam! Alahum!’

  Izzam and Alahum behind, Hazzard galloped down the road, keeping pace with the French squares as they passed each Ottoman battery. ‘Fire as they come to bear! Edrab!’ – the darbzen sounding their flat, percussive bark.

  The French artillery began to answer the Embabeh batteries. Their muzzles were levelled to a flat trajectory and fired point-blank, rounds whistling past, crashing into the mud houses behind. The town shook, the rubble cascading into the streets, stray inhabitants running for the river. A second salvo struck near a battery, the whitewashed mud and brick collapsing onto the gunners dug in beneath. Hazzard jerked the reins round to dodge into a side-street, but a round-shot crashed into the road behind him. Hazzard’s mount slewed to one side and he was thrown, the horse bolting.

  Alahum turned back for him. ‘Hazar Pasha!’

  The dust choking him, Hazzard rolled, a roar in his deafened ears. Alahum dismounted and ran to him, pulling Hazzard to his feet, dragging him out of the street. Even amid the fury of the cannons, Hazzard heard the sharp crack of a single pistol-shot.

  Alahum threw his arms out to the sides, his back arching, and he looked round for his cousin, ‘Zam…!’ He fell forward, one hand reaching behind as if to feel the wound in disbelief. When he found it, he stopped moving and lay still. Hazzard shook him, ‘Alahum!’

  The shattered road was crowded with villagers fleeing the bombardment – but at the far end appeared two French cavalrymen, the youngest of them holding a spent pistol in his extended hand. Cook and Izzam came to the head of the road, Izzam jumping from his saddle, ‘Alahum!’

  The villagers swarmed towards the Frenchmen and they backed their horses away, drawing their sabres. They beat down at the hands reaching up to them and began hacking at them. More shell-bursts, rubble crashing into the street, the dust clouding about them as the horsemen tried to ride through the running mob, trampling them, one screeching warhorse knocking down an old man, its iron shoes stamping, crushing, a woman tangled in her kaftan ridden down and trampled, a running child cut almost in two by the panicked aimless swings of the horseman’s heavy sabre.

  Hazzard could hardly breathe, the heat and rising dust suffocating. The guns had not been enough, the fifty French dead and maimed blown from the advancing square nowhere near enough: now he wanted blood. He dragged his scimitar from under the weight of rubble beside him and stumbled towards the cavalrymen, raising the blade over one shoulder as if it were his old Mughal Talwar. ‘Vous là! Tiens!’ You there!

  The Frenchman saw him. Hazzard called to him agaun.

  ‘Moi, je suis soldat! Come fight a real bloody soldier if you dare!’

  The rider kicked into a canter and charged him, leaning over to his left side to catch Hazzard with his sabre. As the horse closed, Hazzard dived across its path and swung the scimitar in a tight arc behind him with all his strength.

  The foreleg of the horse struck him like a cannon-round and knocked him tumbling. He crashed against a wall gasping for air – but the razor-edge of the Damascus steel had bitten into the hamstrings of the horse’s right fetlock and the animal collapsed, calling in pain. Hazzard could see the Frenchman’s enraged expression as he sank past. In the next moment the man’s head snapped back and his throat opened in a fountain of red as Izzam decapitated him.

  The second horseman pulled up so sharply his horse skidded and fell backward onto its haunches and he was thrown to the ground not yards from Hazzard and scrambled to his feet.

  Hazzard gripped his side, ribs, raised his guard, the Frenchman raising his sabre fearfully, the scimitar crashing down onto it, and he sliced under its ornate cup, throwing the man backward, ‘En garde alors! Come on!’ shouted Hazzard. The boy struck again and Hazzard thought briefly of Wayland, then dismissed it, and whipped round, the scimitar blade flying from the horseman’s hip to shoulder and back down again, opening his trunk. Belching blood, the boy fell, his eyes bulging, hands clutching at his midriff.

  Izzam leapt upon him, striking his curved khanjar dagger again and again into the man’s face, smothering his screams, cursing him, a squad of Albanians joining in, stabbing down with their bayonets until nothing but a sightless skull and carcase remained.

  His vision no more than a tunnel through a cloud of dust and smoke, Hazzard found his horse and threw himself at the saddle, his bloody scimitar still in hand, only one thought in his mind, Bonaparte, and charged into the field.

  Cook called after him but Izzam ran behind, crying out, ‘Kuq! Kuq!’

  Cook gave up his horse for him. ‘Go! Be after him, lad!’

  The Bedouin kicked it into immediate full gallop in pursuit. ‘Hazar!’

  As Hazzard streaked past the Mamluk footsoldiers, cheers went up, ‘Vur un, vur un! Allah Allah Allah! Al-Aafrit al-ahmar!’ But Hazzard heard none of it. He felt the earth pounding beneath him and the tied white shemagh of the keffiyah headdress low over his eyes, crushing his skull in the consuming heat. His binish robe flew behind him, his hands slick and red with the young Frenchman’s blood, his Marine scarlet sleeves bright in the corner of his eye, not seeing them, not knowing if he were running or charging, no more no more – Bonaparte! From his lips emerged inarticulate cries as he shot into the thunder of the field, shouting at the storm, raging against the wind and sand.

  French infantry at the rear of a reforming column scattered, their bayonets rising to meet him, a startled general in the saddle, his horse rearing, officers reaching for him in protection, but Hazzard ploughed through the rearguard, the scimitar biting, a cry dying far behind him as he rode past another line of looting infantry, the men still with their backs to him, a
nd he hacked as he passed, ‘Cry God for mercy, damn you all!’

  Two more fell, and he heard an insistent voice calling, Hazar! Hazar Pasha! always calling him, the gallop furious, the wind hot in his face, is this where you fell, Ali Qarim, was it here? and the squares rose up before him at drunken angles, one to the right, one to the left, God God God! Damn you! Damn you! French infantrymen in the field, four, five, six of them, looting, fools, and he brought one down, the blade feeling nothing, something soft, another cry, and the horse roared round in a sharp curve – Bonaparte, I will have you for this…

  The dunes of the distant desert swung in dizzying parallax, al-Sahraa, effendi, and he lost his bearings, the squares too big, too confusing, Mamluk riders veering off, blooms of muzzle-flashes, an inferno. At the centre of every square a knot of generals, staff officers, screaming, pointing, every one a Bonaparte, yet none, every one a sultan ruling his own domain, Bonaparte…

  In the distance he saw them, watching, and he slowed.

  Pyramids.

  Izzam drew alongside him, his voice almost quiet, a lull for the furies of his mind, Hazar, and volleys burst. The Bedouin rode him out and past a square, puffs of smoke moving along a rank, too slow, and he realised where he was, Christ, what are you doing what are you doing…

  Galloping across the ranks of a square, men pointing, Là-bas! En joue! Then gone, dust, sand, watch the rocks, palms, shade, Nile – Nahr al-Nil, effendi – shaking, leaning, slowing, Hazar-effendi, Hazar…

  They slowed, yes, the shade, the horse tossing its head, trotting, walking. They drew to a halt. He slumped forward onto the horse’s hot neck. His now burnt and bloody shemagh headdress hung down raggedly over his neck and face, the heat beating at him. He closed his eyes as if to sleep, or hide. The scimitar, its ivory grip, his hands, all were dark with blood and caked with sand. His binish robe hung in blackened shreds, the left sleeve of the scarlet coat ripped open, the brass and braid torn away. Pain flooded into him and he wanted to drop.

  God. God rot them all. Lewis, Melville, Bonaparte, and Nelson – rot with them, anointed tyrants all… in everlasting damnation, your petty kingdoms-come, for nevermore, for dust, for nothing, and pass from here on the wind.