Blood and Sand

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  At which point the thought of Musa brought him up with a jerk. In all likelihood he was safely dead by now, but you could never be sure with stomach wounds, and if he was not? The man had always been something of a lone wolf, what if there was no one who counted themselves his friend to perform the last act of friendship for him, and he was left to the impersonal mercy of the army surgeon? Thomas spoke a quick word to the officer who was with him, and went swiftly back through the disintegrating camp in the direction of the hospital tents.

  In the furthest of the two, a shielded lantern still hung from one of the tent poles, casting a dim pool of light over the centre bay, while the end bays were lost in shadows; a few still figures lay there under their cloaks, and a couple of men were moving among them. “Musa ibn Aziz?” he said to one of them. The man pointed to a figure lying beside the tent pole.

  “Dead?” Thomas asked.

  “No, Sir, but he knows nothing. We left him until the last, in case one came,” the man said simply. “But now it is the time.”

  “And I have come,” Thomas said, and knelt down beside his dying trooper.

  The medic was wrong. Musa ibn Aziz was past speech, and the stink of death came up from the wound under his cloak; but his eyes were open and a still living man looked out of them to meet Thomas’s gaze as though he had been waiting for him to come.

  “You have borne the pain long enough,” Thomas said. “Now it is time for rest.”

  He saw the faintest flicker in the sunken eyes, heard the faintest check in the tortured breathing, and knew that Musa understood.

  “Shut your eyes.”

  But the eyes remained open and holding to his. A look of tranquillity came into them, as though the man behind them was already slipping free …

  Not for an instant taking his own gaze away, Thomas drew the Somali knife from his waist-shawl. “Go in peace,” he said. “May Allah the All Merciful receive you into his Paradise,” and slipped the point home under the angle of the jaw.

  The blood came in a bright jet, the trooper’s body bucked for an instant and then lay still as his head rolled sideways.

  Thomas got up and walked out, stooping outside the tent to clean his blade by driving it into the threadbare grass between the rocks.

  The surgeon had gone already, back to oversee the loading up of the wounded, and behind him in the hospital tent, nothing moved.

  None of the wounded would fall alive into the hands of the Wahabis.

  27

  Thomas had just reached the horse-lines, and on the far side of the camp the last minute task of spiking the guns was all but completed, when the attack came, and came with no cry from the outposts, no moment of forewarning. A sudden surge of sound, a clashing of steel on steel, a howling as of fiends out of Eblis that broke like a wave all along the piled thornwork on the Wadi side of the camp. “Oh God!” he thought. “The infantry pickets! They must have been asleep — or fallen back on the main body without waiting for orders!”

  Someone close by was shouting that the witch-woman had indeed spread her cloak of darkness over her followers. “I warned you! I warned you!”

  Running for the place where his own horse was tethered, Thomas’s ears caught from far away to his right, across the growing tumult, the nearing thunder of hooves bearing down upon the camp from the further side. This time there was warning in plenty, from the cavalry pickets, as the enemy horse rolled into them: into and through and over, and came sweeping on; and above the scream of stricken horses a name yelled as for a war cry: “Ghalid! Ghalid!”

  Muhammed Ali’s treatment of the Grand Shariff was indeed bearing bitter fruit.

  The horse lines were a swirling chaos in darkness shot through with ragged light from the torches that still burned at the end of each picket line. But there was something of order in the turmoil, for Thomas’s troopers, already on standby for the march, were swinging into the saddle and wheeling their horses to face the oncoming menace. Thomas’s own mare was ready for him and as he sprang into the saddle, and the trooper at her head slashed her free, suddenly like two faithful shadows Daud and Jassim Khan were ranging up on either side of him. “Sound, Form Troop!” Thomas shouted to the young bugler, and the call sang out, fierce and bright as cock-crow above the tumult.

  The men formed up roughly, still forming, half in their stirrups as they swept forward to meet the in-flooding wave of Wahabi cavalry.

  They came together with the shock and roar of a breaking wave where tide and current meet. In the dark there could be no form or pattern to the fighting. To Thomas the attackers were a black whirlpool-mass from which the tattered torchlight struck out the animal glint of wild eyes and bared teeth and deadly flicker of steel. Shadow-riders were plucking brands from the watch-fires and galloping with them through the camp. One of the hospital tents was afire and going up in a great sheet of flame, and by its light the swirling shapes of men and horses gained for the moment form and substance. In the midst of all, Thomas was shouting to his troopers, ordering, encouraging. He could hear the bugle calls from the far side of the camp, where Tussun was struggling to rally his men. But the infantry were beyond rallying. With the fear not only of death, but of damnation upon them, they were flinging down their weapons and streaming away, abandoning transport animals and equipment, trampling their own dead and wounded as they ran.

  No orders could reach Thomas through that chaos and in the dark, but guessing clearly enough from the unmistakable note of terror and dismay, what must be happening elsewhere in the camp, he knew that it was for him to thrust his own men for a shield between the Wahabis and the fleeing infantry and hold back the pursuit as best he could. “Sound the charge,” he shouted to the shadow riding on his left, and again the bugle crowed sharply imperative through the surging dark; and again the Bedouin cavalry drove forward, yelling, against the Wahabi host.

  “Allahu akba! Allahu akba!”

  *

  The first promise of day was beginning to glimmer in the eastern sky; and from the dark mass of the fortress at the head of the Wadi, the one light still shone, like the unwinking golden eye of a great cat watching the Egyptian camp empty of life save for the abandoned pack camels in the baggage lines, and black shapes that flapped about it vulture-like in search of loot; and silent and smoking, while the dark rivulets of men streamed westward from it as blood streams from a crushed body, leaving only death behind.

  Full daylight found them among the outriders of the hills through which their line of retreat wound back towards distant Teif, the desperate infantry still straggling ahead, the Bedouin cavalry still grimly playing their part as flank and rear-guard. At least the retreat was no longer quite a rout; with the faint sense of shelter of the hills about them the infantry had steadied somewhat, and Tussun and his officers had been able to win back some kind of control over them.

  From the slight lift in the ground, where he had drawn his horse aside for a few moments, Thomas sat looking down and taking stock of the situation. Away ahead the infantry was raggedly on the move, but even at that distance with a sullen and disheartened look to them that was grievous to see; and few enough of them, compared with the force that had come that way three days before. The cavalry was in better case. Its second regiment had been virtually swept away in the fore-dawn attack, but during the first hours of the day the survivors had returned in ones and twos and small tattered groups; now they were joined with what remained of his own regiment, in the rear-guard.

  Earlier that morning they had been fighting a stiff rear-guard action, each half in turn covering the other half’s retreat; but now the enemy pressure on their rear had slackened, seeming to fall back on itself for the moment. There was still spasmodic sniping from among the rocks, but nothing more; it was almost as though the hunters did not wish to push the hunted along too fast; as though they knew something that the hunted did not, and were in no hurry.

  Uneasiness prickled in Thomas’s tired nerve ends. ‘I am not liking it,’ he thought. �
�I am not liking it at all.’

  His gaze returned from the cavalry to the weary straggle of the infantry up ahead. Men and horses alike were in sore need of rest, but there could be no rest for any of them till they were through the pass — the Pass of the Meeting Place, where two tribal territories came together — and down to the wells on the far side. Thinking of the wells, Thomas ran his tongue over his dry lips. There was water in the leather bottle at his saddle bow; most of the men would have full water bottles since they had been ready for the march when the attack came, but there would be no more till the first ridge of the high hills was behind them and they came down to the wells, however long that took them. They should make it by nightfall with luck; but how much luck could they count on between now and then? His mind went to the narrowness of the pass ahead of them; the black and jagged defile that could so easily be the jaws of a trap.

  Once through that and across the tribal boundary the country opened up somewhat, and they might stand a chance. Always supposing, of course, that the wells were not too strongly held against them. If they were, and they could not break through to the water, then they were finished. The thing was as simple as that, so there was no point in sitting here agonising about it. He took the water bottle from his saddle bow and allowed himself one mouthful of warm foul-tasting water, holding it in his mouth for a long moment before he swallowed, then pushed the wooden stopper back into the bottle, slamming it home with the flat of his hand, and rode down to re-join his men.

  Through what remained of the morning hours they pushed on and upward into the mountains, while the occasional report of a jezail, the puff of smoke from a seemingly empty hillside, the singing bullet into their midst, bringing down horse or man, kept them from any false ideas about having lost contact with the enemy. They returned fire when they could see anything to fire at, which was seldom; when they came near to the pass it would be time to send covering parties ahead; to do that too soon would only mean needless losses …

  It was well past noon and the defile not far ahead when Thomas saw one of the scouts haring back along the line of the ragged column. He pulled his horse clear of the rear-guard and rode forward to meet him, and a few moments later was looking down into the man’s grey sweat-streaked, face staring up at him past the arch of the mare’s neck.

  The man was fighting for breath. “The guns — They are bringing up — one of the guns —”

  Something kicked below Thomas’s breast bone. “The guns were spiked.”

  “Maybe in the swiftness of the attack, one — was missed or — the spiking was not finished — They can bring it up —camels — on to the spur that overhangs the defile just — beyond the highest point —”

  “But how in Allah’s name could they have got ahead of us with such a burden?”

  The man shook his head like a worried dog. “There will be other ways … shortcuts not known to us who are not native to these hills, but familiar enough to the scouts who —”

  “Who betrayed us,” Thomas said harshly. “It is not needful that you remind me.” He saw inside his head the narrow defile choked with retreating infantry, and the gun crouched above them on its spur … “Tussun Pasha knows this?” he asked.

  “I am from Tussun Pasha now. He sent me to bring you the warning.”

  “Is there any way known to you by which we may get round them avoiding the pass?” Thomas demanded.

  “None from here that will not lose us the wells.”

  “And without the wells, we die.”

  “It is certain.”

  “Then we must pass through the defile.”

  “But Ibrahim Agha — the gun —”

  “How many are with the gun?”

  The man rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “Maybe three score, maybe more.”

  “On foot or on horseback?”

  “On foot, with the three camels, manhandling all the rest that the gun needs.”

  “How armed?”

  “Jezails and captured carbines.”

  “There is a way to come at them? You can guide us?”

  The man nodded. “There’s a goat track. Have to leave the horses before the last stretch.”

  “Then by Allah’s will, we will take care of the gun, if —” he checked an instant, looking down into the dark sun-narrowed eyes that looked levelly back into his.

  “If I am to be trusted? If this is not a trap to lead the flower of the Bedouin cavalry to their deaths? No trap, Ibrahim Agha.”

  Thomas said, “I trust you.” He grinned suddenly. “I believe that I might trust you even if I had a choice in the matter.”

  *

  The spur that thrust out above the angle of the defile was swarming with men. The gun camels had been unloaded and led aside and hastily tethered behind some rocks; and on the furthest point, positioned to sweep the narrows below, the gun had been assembled and was being made ready for action. Clearly among the enemy, probably among Shariff Rashid’s followers, there were some who knew one end of a field gun from the other.

  Their confidence, it seemed, had caused them to neglect posting scouts, and the surprise was complete as Thomas and his band of dismounted cavalry came down upon them out of the sun, firing as they came. Men scattered and fell. Some of the Wahabis swung round their jezails and returned ragged fire, while others whirled about to meet the onslaught sword in hand. “Ya Allah! il Allah,” the war shouts burst up and beat to and fro among the jagged slopes. Thomas discharged his pistol into a howling face, then thrust it back into his waist-shawl and betook himself to his broadsword. It was hot and ugly work and for a while the thing could have gone either way. He lifted up his voice again and again, “Allahu akba! God is great!” and made for a black-robed warrior with a sword in one hand and a long curved dagger in the other, who seemed to be the leader …

  At the end, the few remaining of the Wahabis fought like tigers, backed about their captured gun, and died where they fought. With the suddenness of a dissolving dream the struggle was over; and the silence of the high hills came back. A silence that sang in the ears beyond the low bubbling wail of a wounded man and the harsh call of a vulture circling high overhead. Bodies lay grotesquely sprawled among the rocks. No time just now for separating friend from foe.

  Thomas spoke to Daud, beside him still: “Sound the signal. One long, followed by three short.”

  The notes of the bugle sounded thin and clear through the waiting quiet and as they listened, from beyond the head of the pass came one long note in answer.

  “They will pass in safety now,” one of the troopers said. “But the hunt will not be far behind.”

  “It would be a sad thing to waste a gun set up and ready to our hands,” Thomas said. “Maybe we can do something to discourage the hunt …” He issued quick orders, posting scouts on the higher slopes against surprise. A hurried investigation among the rocks, where the gun camels were tethered, showed that the Wahabis had taken thought to bring up not only powder and ball but also the implements of gunnery. Only one thing was lacking; water for the sponging down after each discharge. Well, there was a way that problem could be got over; and in any case they would not need the sponge until after the first round had been fired; and another investigation showed that the first round, together with its flannel-cased charge of black powder, was already in position, with a head cloth rammed in after the ball to prevent it from trundling out of the muzzle when the gun was depressed for firing down into the defile.

  Thomas took out his tinder box and kindled the slow-match which was already in the linstock, then gave it to the steadiest of his troopers, and calling up three more, stationed them two on either side of the gun — less chance of confusion in the long run if they mounted a full gun’s crew, each with their own quite simple task to perform.

  Even as they heaved on the wheels, manhandling the gun round to fire along the line of the defile, the forefront of the retreat came into view, a weary draggle-tail of men lurching blin
dly along, herded and kept moving by the mounted flank guards like sheep herded by their dogs.

  Thomas, kneeling to squint one-eyed along the barrel, took careful aim through the sparse branches of the wild almond trees on the slope of the spur, sighting on his own people against the time when they should be past and the men filling the defile were the enemy; for the Wahabi would be quick to realise, if they had not already done so, that something had gone amiss with their plan, and return again to their hunting.

  While the retreating infantry passed below, Thomas gave a hurried gunnery lesson to his motley crew as they crouched waiting, shielded from below by the almond branches. A rattle of musket fire from the rear told them that the pursuit had indeed closed in again; and the rear of the ragged column had taken on a driven and harried look, though there must still be a screen of cavalry between them and what followed after. For a few moments the defile below was almost empty, and then the hard pressed rear-guard spilled into view; the foremost knot of cavalry checking almost below the spur and wheeling round to cover the retreat of the squadron that followed after, close-hounded by the black swarm of the Wahabis.

  Thomas spoke to the man who held the pole sponge. “We shall need that wet, before we load the second round, and the one thing that the Black Brotherhood forgot was a water skin.”

  “The water bottles —” the man began.

  “Forget about the water bottles, the water is for drinking.”

  The others looked at him with dawning understanding. “It is not decent, Ibrahim Agha.”

  “Better indecent than dead because the gun blows up for lack of sponging out,” Thomas said simply.