Blood and Sand

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Since then — nothing. Only the daily business of governing and holding Medina. But surely any time now, word must come …

  As though the intensity of his own anxiety had called it up, there came to Thomas suddenly a faint impression of distant hoof beats; so distant as to be like the sounds inside one’s own head that one heard sometimes in the dead silence of the desert at night. Imagination of course, it had played him this kind of trick before. It was gone now, anyway, as though swallowed by some fold in the ground.

  He turned his awareness back to Anoud lying beside him. The darkness was becoming thinner, watered with the first grey forewarning of the dawn, and he could see her, shapeless among her loosened clothes, her head tipped back a little on the cushion. He wanted to be able to make love to Anoud again, lie completely close to her again, his mouth on hers, all the length of his body along hers, like two halves of something joined together into a whole, a water-reed above its own reflection that makes perfection. Soon now, he thought, he would be able to do that again, not having to arch himself around that vast pumpkin belly. He raised on his elbow to look down at her. He could see the faint pallor of her face among the dark out-flung masses of her hair, and realised that her eyes were open and waiting for his.

  “May your day be white,” he whispered.

  And she returned the morning greeting of acquaintances in the street, with a thread of laughter, “May yours be as milk.”

  He bent his head and kissed her. He tried to put his arm round her, but even as he drew close, the bairn woke and kicked him in the belly.

  They drew apart, laughing.

  “Peace, small one, it is thy father,” Anoud said.

  “It is jealous.”

  “He is jealous.”

  “Are you so sure? Always so sure that he is a boy?”

  “Only a boy could be so strong within me. Besides the hakima says that he is a boy.” Her voice had a soft crooning note in the dark. “A son for my Lord, to carry his sword after him.”

  Thomas remembered something he had meant to say to her last night; it had been so late when he came to the little pavilion. “Now that the time is so near, we must be thinking about a house for you.”

  “I am well enough in the harem court of your house, the women’s quarter of your tent,” she said quickly.

  “But it is your right, according to the law of the Prophet,” Thomas spoke into her hair. “As the mother of my child, it is your right that I provide for you a house of your own, to be yours even if, maybe, you seldom bide under its roof — I saw such a house yesterday in the spicers’ ward, a small house with a small courtyard — just room enough for a rosebush in a jar.”

  “Not yet,” she broke in, her whisper hurried, almost frightened; she put up her hands and held on to him round the neck. “Not till the babe is safely born!”

  “Is it unlucky?” Thomas asked. “In my country — my birth country — many women will not have a cradle in the house-place before the bairn is born.” He was dropping small random kisses on her upturned face. “So — we will talk again when the bairn is born and all is well. But then we will talk, because I am a selfish man and I shall be the happier for knowing that you have the added security of a house of your own — because it will refuge you as my love would refuge you; you and the bairn —” He broke off. He was making it sound as though he would not be there, and a little shiver ran through his body. “And sometimes, when the times of peace come, and maybe I can take a breathing space from the governorship, you must go there and make ready for me, and I shall come to your house —” he whispered, trying to retrieve the situation, “Insh’ Allah.”

  “Insh’ Allah,” Anoud echoed. “God willing.”

  From somewhere below there came the sounds of a small disturbance; a hurried arrival, maybe, and a few moments later the sound of hurried feet on the steep outside stair, and the voice of one of the harem eunuchs in breathless urgency. “Ibrahim, Ibrahim Agha —”

  Thomas was already half up. “What is it?”

  “Come at once — A messenger —”

  In Thomas’s mind any messenger meant word from Tussun. He stooped and kissed Anoud once more, hard and hurried, and pulled away her hands which were still clinging about his neck, and getting up, went out between the tent curtains, straightening his thobe as he did so.

  “What message? Where is he?” he demanded.

  “How should I know the message, Effendi? One of your officers is waiting at the gate of the women’s court.” The eunuch stood aside at the stair-head for his master to take the lead, and Thomas plunged down at breakneck speed and headed at his long stride across the court.

  Just beyond the gateway in the light of the flambeau that always burned there, one of his own officers waited for him.

  “One of the patrols has brought in an officer sent by Tussun Pasha,” the man said. “They found him lying unconscious beside his dead horse on the Henakiah track. He has been carried to the caravanserai within the Eastern Gate. I have saddle horses waiting.”

  “And his despatch?” Thomas held out his hand. “There is none. Maybe he fell among thieves, or maybe there was no time to write, and he carries it in his head.”

  “And he’s unconscious.”

  “He was beginning to come to himself when I left. He said there were six of them when they set out; and that he has a desperately urgent message from Tussun Pasha for the Governor. The surgeon is with him and says he cannot last long.”

  “Oh God!” Thomas thought. “Oh God — oh God — oh God!” They were in the outer court by now, he was swinging into the saddle of one of the waiting horses, clattering out with one stirrup flying, past the guards at the main gate, and away down the street, scattering chickens and goats, beggars and pye-dogs and all the first swarming of Medina waking to the new day.

  In the wide central court of the caravanserai, filled with the morning activity of horse and man, he dropped from the horse’s back, flinging the reins to his companion, and turned to the trooper standing before one of the arched chamber entrances that surrounded the place. “Where is he?”

  The man stood aside, and Thomas strode in. Paling lamp-light met him, from a lamp held high by one of Abd el Rahman’s henchmen, and in the heart of the light the army surgeon knelt, supporting the head of the man who lay there on a spread camel rug. For a moment Thomas thought that the man was already dead, then he realised that Abd el Rahman was trickling water drip by drip between the swollen and blackened lips. He knelt down at the man’s other side. Seeing the grey and ravaged face, the crusted and gaping sword-cut that laid cheek and temple open and bit into the neck under the jawbone, he recognised Jusef ibn Muhammed, that son of a lesser wife, who would never now follow them to the gates of Diriyah. The man’s eyes were shut. If not dead, had he sunk into unconsciousness? But nobody trickled water down the throat of an unconscious man. He looked up, and met the surgeon’s warning look, and signalled a message: “Am I too late?”

  Abd el Rahman shook his head very slightly. “His will to deliver his message to you has kept him in this world — just — until your coming. But do not expect more than a few words. The effort to speak again will kill him.”

  Thomas leaned forward and took the other’s hand in a strong grip. “Jusef, my friend, what word do you bring from Tussun?”

  A spasm crossed the grey features. The dying man opened his eyes, seeking for Thomas’s face, trying to focus on it.

  Thomas leaned closer, holding the gaze that fastened and clung to his. “What word?” he said again. It seemed a cruel thing to drag the man back from wherever he was already half gone, and demand that final agony of effort from him. “Tell me what word you bring.”

  Jusef ibn Muhammed snatched a shuddering breath. “Rass too strong — ibn Saud marching — from Diriyah …” The words came in a broken whisper; Thomas had his ear close to the dying mouth, to catch them. “Tussun Pasha — come with all speed — Mines …”

  “Yes,” Thomas, said. “What
more? Jusef, try to tell me more.”

  But the other’s eyes were already slipping past him to some far horizon. He pulled them back by a supreme effort. The breath was rattling in his gashed throat, but his last words came more clearly than those that had gone before, and came moreover in a fair imitation of the Scots tongue, the phrase clearly learned by heart and so often repeated in his mind that now it came more easily than the words of his message which he had to search for among the mists of fading consciousness.

  “A thousand leagues an’ three,” said Jusef ibn Muhammed, a long shuddering breath racked his body and his head rolled sideways.

  Thomas knelt beside him a moment longer, holding the suddenly empty hand. Then he laid it down, and getting to his feet, turned to the waiting officers he had not noticed before. He had to steady his voice with care before he could trust it. “Council of war in the citadel in half an hour. All senior officers to attend. See to it, Malik. Sulman —” he turned back to the surgeon, “see to all things here for me. He was a brave man, and my friend.”

  Grief rose in his throat for yet another dead friend. He did not look again at the body, but strode from the chamber with a set face. An orderly stood in the gate arch, holding his horse. He took the reins and mounted without a word.

  The words of the old song were singing themselves in his head in Tussun’s voice, with the Scots brogue that was imitated from his own, as he rode up through the narrow streets to the citadel:

  Wild callants were we baith

  Chasing the red deer herd …

  And the winter breath from the high hills of Kassim was in his face.

  Full daylight, and the first shimmer of heat hung beyond the high windows of the majlis in the citadel, where Thomas sat confronting his senior officers gathered round the coffee hearth; but the coffee hearth was cold.

  “I am taking two hundred and fifty picked men. Each colonel of cavalry will provide a half squadron of his best troopers, all fit for a forced march to El Rass. My own bodyguard will bring the detachment up to strength. Each man will have a good spare mount, so I must ask you to let me have our five hundred best horses. Better say five hundred and fifty; that will give us fifty reserve mounts who can act as pack animals on the way up.”

  He heard his voice going on, level-sounding, in charge of the situation; not quite his. The morning sun through the high window was painting a sword-blade of gold on the dusty air. “Every trooper will carry flour, dates and butter for five days, water for only three — we can fill up from the wells at Henakiah. Each man will carry powder and ball for two major engagements.” He singled out Medhet’s eager face. “Medhet, have materials for four large mines — of the power we used here — included with the supplies on the spare remounts. It seems that what Tussun Pasha took with him may not have been sufficient for the work of breaching the walls.”

  He paused a moment. The young Egyptian clerk looked up from his scribbling. Mustapha Bey spoke urgently into the moment’s silence: “Ibrahim, this is madness! To take a mere two hundred and fifty cavalry across three hundred miles of desert which by now is infested with enemy tribesmen! Take at least a full regiment with the best horses, and let the other two follow after you as fast as they may.”

  Hassan ibn Khalid, the Egyptian colonel, added his own plea: “Mustapha is right. So small a column will simply be swallowed up if you meet a Wahabi war host. How can you hope to reach Tussun Pasha, still less relieve him, with not much over two squadrons at your heels?”

  Thomas looked from one to the other, and spoke slowly, weighing his words as he went along. “My Brothers, I have given careful thought to all this — hurried, I admit, but a man does not necessarily think the worse for having to think fast. And in the first place, Tussun did not send for a relief force, if the few words his messenger was able to speak have any meaning, he sent for me. I am simply taking a large enough escort to ensure, in the light of the information we possess, that I and the mining materials which it seems he stands in need of, together with a useful addition to his cavalry, reach him before ibn Saud and his war host do so.”

  He was not at all sure that his decision was the right one. Tussun might have intended him to bring all the troops he had, save just enough infantry to hold Medina until help could come. But he dared not risk losing the city and control of the Jedaida road, because of what Tussun might have intended. As to the messenger’s last words, so obviously learned parrot-fashion, they were just the call of friend for friend. The mines, surely, were the thing, and speed. Speed that called for the lightest possible force.

  “In the second place, I cannot endanger Medina. I dare not take even one whole regiment, while ibn Saud can bide his time until we are well away reinforcing Tussun, then outflank us to the south, cut Hijaz in half and isolate the city.” He was repeating Tussun’s own arguments, “Medina is the vital hinge by which hangs the safety of Hijaz and the safety of Tussun himself and his expeditionary force. Mustapha my friend, as commander of the garrisons here it is for you again to act as deputy governor of Medina and the northern Hijaz while I am away. Hassan ibn Khalid, for the same space of time you will act as overall cavalry commander, while you, Togra Aziz, take overall command of the infantry. Medhet —”

  He had intended leaving Medhet also, to ensure that the largely Albanian infantry gave no trouble, but while he hesitated, wondering quite how to put that without insulting the Albanians, the young man said with complete certainty, “I go where you go, Tho’mas. Am I not your oldest friend in the world? Was I not your friend even before Tussun Pasha?”

  And meeting the bright steady gaze, Thomas thought, ‘After all, why not? Togra is not brilliant but he’s a good officer.’ “You go where I go,” he agreed, and saw the look on the faces of the men, all friends and comrades-in-arms, who he had ordered to remain in Medina. “It’s an unfair world, my brothers,” he agreed.

  *

  The council brought to a close and orders issued for the march at the fourth hour after noon, Thomas, with Mustapha, who as deputy governor must of course know of his planned movements, spent the next half hour or so with his senior guides, all camel men and experienced caravan escorts, poring over rough sketch maps of the north-eastern Hijaz and western Kassim. Last winter’s thrust had not been by any direct route, being meant to consume time and draw off troops from the main Wahabi army for as long as possible; beside which it had never actually brought them within sight of El Rass. Now the route had to be worked out, with speed as its main aim. El Rass was upward of three hundred miles away, the direct route lying partly through “good desert”, partly over mountain country. Riding hard from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. with changes of horses every two hours, it seemed possible that they might reach Tussun in three days and nights, at the worst in four …

  Studying the maps, which were not properly to scale, and therefore of extremely doubtful value, Thomas cursed inwardly the fact that none of the Beni Ali were there to act as guides. The entire tribe had vanished into the northern fastnesses of the Kassim, and he suspected that they were positioning for a massive raid on their hereditary foes the Aneiz as soon as they heard of the fall of El Rass. Jusef ibn Muhammed of course had made the ride both ways, and would have been invaluable, but Jusef was dead …

  Well, if he and his little band were to fall in with a Wahabi war host, that too must be the Will of Allah.

  With less than an hour left before marching time, Thomas, having seen to all those things which it was for the commander of the expedition to see to in person, was able to snatch a little time to return to the Governor’s Palace to gather up his own gear and bid goodbye to Anoud.

  He went first to his own quarters, and shouted to Jassim Khan for his burnous — he was still in his white thobe, and unarmed save for his Somali knife thrust into his hurriedly tied waist-shawl. The boy was already waiting. So were his sabre and pistols, his bandoleers with the cartridges burnished like gold. “I was not so fine as this when I went to be made Govern
or!” he said laughing. “Surely you send me into battle shining like the sun!”

  “Send? I come with you!” the boy said quickly. He was already armed to the teeth.

  “Surely you come with me. Are you not my standard-bearer? Have my saddlebags sent to the mustering point.” Thomas flung away to the harem court.

  Anoud stood waiting for him in her private chamber with the blue hyacinth tiles in the wall niches; very straight, very still in the centre of the room, his great broadsword which he kept in her quarters, lying in her arms.

  “You will be wanting this?” she said.

  “You know, then.”

  “All Medina knows.” She held the sword out to him. The hilt and silver scabbard-mountings were freshly burnished like the rest of his equipment, and he realised that she herself was clad in her best, proud with gold, all the gold he had ever given her.

  He took the sword, feeling the familiar balance of it and, slipping the baldric over his head, settled it across his shoulder. Some women would have cried and let their hair fall loose, making the parting harder for him than it was already. Anoud kept her usual quiet, only it seemed to him that her eyes were larger than he had ever seen them.

  “You have to go now? At once?” she said.

  “In only a few minutes, but those that are left are yours. Heart of my heart.” He put his arms round her, and she leaned into the curve of his shoulder with a sigh.

  But after a moment she looked up, laughing, but not so far from tears after all. “All these hard-edged things, man things, belts and weapons, these killing things! It is as hard to come close to you as it is for you to come close to me!”

  “When I come back, I will lay aside the hard-edged things, and the babe will have come to birth, and we shall be able to come as close to each other as ever we did, as close as two can come in this world.”

  She caught her breath. “I wish you had not to go just when the babe is due.”

  “I also.” He bent over the curved prow of her belly with awkward tenderness, and kissed her, slipping his tongue between her lips, tasting the sweet soft water of her mouth. “May Allah spread the cloak of his protection over you, and may the birth be easy, my most dear.”