Sandstorm

by Asher, Michael

  ‘Hey, it’s getting late,’ Churchill said, recovering. ‘We ought to give Major Ravin’ Craven, DFC and bar, a decent Christian burial, don’t you think?’

  ‘All right,’ Sterling said.

  Outside the dusk was gathering. The last golden rim of the sun lay on the dunes, with streamers of colour laid at angles across the darkening sky. The utter silence of the desert engulfed them, stranger and more pregnant than ever.

  As they looked around for a suitable place to bury the corpse, the silence was shattered by a gunshot from the direction of the camp, followed by a raucous shout.

  Churchill and Sterling stiffened and stared at each other for a split second.

  ‘Just one of the boys shooting a hare,’ Churchill said calmly. ‘Nothing untoward.’

  Before he had finished the sentence, more shots crackled out of the night, so fast and furious that they sounded almost as if they came from a machine gun. Churchill knitted his brows and drew his Smith & Wesson. ‘Those were semi-automatics,’ he whispered. ‘Our boys don’t have those.’

  *

  After that last salvo there had been no more shots, and the night silence had descended again by the time they reached the camp. They came in slowly, cautiously, Churchill in the lead, taking in the glowing embers of the fire, the saddles and water-skins hanging from them, untouched.

  Sterling saw Jafar first. The ex-Znaga was face upwards, his long hair, wet with something slick, fanning out around his head like a garment, his eyes bulging, his chest a morass of blood, still grasping his ancient Martini-Henri rifle in his right hand, as if he had refused to be reduced to his former vassal status even in death.

  Faris was dead, too. His body was facedown in the dust, and a shot had sliced off the back of his head as cleanly as a blade. Even in the moonlight, Sterling could see bits of brain and fragments of bone, like eggshell, among the blood.

  Hamdu was still alive. He had been shot in the face — a bullet had passed through one side of the jaw and taken the other half off on exit. Sterling knelt beside him and saw that he was beyond communication, his fingers twitching spasmodically as if grasping for an unseen support, his eyes opaque, his breath coming in ragged spurts.

  ‘Jesus wept!’ Churchill whispered. He turned away, making gagging noises, and just then a camel groaned somewhere. The detective stopped gagging and pulled himself up. He moved towards the sound with his revolver extended before him in both hands. There was a rustle behind them. ‘Eric!’ Sterling hissed.

  Churchill had half turned to see what it was, when a dark ghost, hooded and in flowing robes, suddenly appeared from behind a thorn bush in front of them, shrieking like a banshee. Sterling’s blood ran cold. In the same moment he saw Churchill move like lightning, dropping and firing two shots, as calmly as if he had been snap-shooting on the ranges. Sterling saw the muzzle-flashes, saw the dark figure go down. An instant later all hell was let loose.

  Robed men appeared from all directions, screaming, shooting, brandishing long curved daggers. There seemed to be scores of them. Churchill yelled something that sounded like ‘Bastards!’ and fired once more. Then he was obscured from Sterling’s view by four or five ghosts with clubs and knives, who flung themselves on him with the hunger of starving jackals. His pistol fell. For an instant the big man struggled loose, his fists flailing, sending men staggering back. Then they were on him again, even more than before. Sterling was dimly aware of arms grabbing his, and then a battering ram connected with his skull, and a host of comets scored channels across his pupils, like diamonds cutting glass.

  *

  Churchill was kneeling with his arms lashed behind his back when Sterling regained consciousness. They had been dragged to another clearing, away from the bodies of Hamdu and his companions. Hamdu had to be dead by now, Churchill thought. A fire had been kindled and a group of shadows in flowing robes and head-cloths was squatting round it. Churchill could see others moving in the middle distance around a tightly packed troop of kneeling camels. The men by the fire were talking in loud, grating voices. There were at least twenty of them.

  Sterling groaned as he came round, his lips moving silently. His face was a mask of blood running from an open wound on his head. Churchill winced at the sight, and hoped fervently that the wound wasn’t as bad as it looked. Kneeling was painful; as he tried to shift position, the leather bindings cut into his flesh.

  One of the figures by the fire seemed to notice the movement, rose and came towards him. The man was small and moved with the lightness and grace of an acrobat. Closer up, his eyes looked dark and hooded in the firelight, his aquiline nose emphasizing an expression of arrogant disdain. He was barefooted and wore a cartridge belt around his waist, with a hooked dagger in a sheath in the centre. His hands were calloused, broad and strong, and in one of them he held a slender camel-stick. He stood before Churchill and let loose a stream of Arabic that the big man couldn’t catch. He repeated the words slowly and with sneering emphasis, and Churchill suddenly understood. The Arab was cursing him for killing one of his companions. The Arab spat on the ground in disgust. He kicked the big man’s leg with his bare foot, repeating the sentences, and suddenly whacked Churchill’s ankle with his stick. Churchill winced but did not cry out.

  Sterling also hadn’t grasped the Arabic, and he stared at Churchill, horrified, struggling to get loose. ‘What does he want?’ he gasped. ‘Who the hell are these people?’

  ‘Bandits,’ Churchill croaked. ‘They want to know what’s inside the aircraft.’

  ‘Why the hell don’t they just look for themselves?’ Sterling groaned.

  ‘They’re scared stiff of it. Think it’s guarded by evil spirits.’

  Sterling snorted. This was evidently the wrong thing to do, because the small man shouted to his companions, who quickly gathered round him. Their faces under the enveloping dark head-cloths were stony. The leader snapped a crisp order, and two or three men ripped away the legs of his trousers up to the crutch. ‘What the hell are they going to do?’ Sterling stammered.

  The leader whacked him with his camel-stick across the calf and he screamed.

  The man looked impatient now. He repeated his earlier questions to Churchill, and the big man shook his head. The leader made a sign to one of his men, who pulled a red-hot brand from the fire and brought it over to Sterling, holding it up a yard or so away from his eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, George,’ Churchill said. ‘Unless you or I tell them what they want to know, they’re going to start with your feet and end up with your balls.’

  ‘Why me?’ Sterling yelled.

  The leader repeated the same question and Churchill shook his head again. The Arab made a sign to the man with the red-hot brand, who leaned forward, grinning. Sterling watched the glowing end of the wood with horror-filled eyes. His mouth had already begun to form a scream of anticipation when there was a dull thud like a boxing glove striking a punchbag. The man with the firebrand lost his grin, and his lips groped soundlessly for a question to which there was no answer. Time changed direction with staggering abruptness. The man with the firebrand seemed to be falling forever, and it was only after aeons that Sterling realized there was something anomalous sticking out of his back — the handle of a dagger. The chief and his cronies seemed literally petrified, their eyes starting in disbelief. Sterling kicked instinctively to prevent the body rolling on him, and at that moment the fire erupted in a supernova of light.

  *

  The explosion lasted a fraction of a second, but was enough to momentarily blind everyone around the hearth. Almost simultaneously, gunshots rang out of the night. Sterling’s eyes opened in time to see an Arab fall into the fire. His head-cloth caught light immediately, and he leapt up, screaming and dancing, wearing a halo of flame. Men were rushing in every direction, jabbering, and beyond them the camels bellowed, lurching up and breaking their hobbles.

  A robed figure, indistinguishable from the rest except for a white band round his black turban, appeared
out of the shadows, walking unhurriedly towards Sterling and Churchill. Four feet away, he stooped, snatched the dagger out of the dead man’s back, and used it to slice through their bindings. One of the bandits crashed into him, and Sterling saw the dagger that had cut his bonds plunging in and out of his assailant’s belly faster than the eye could follow.

  The lower part of their rescuer’s face was veiled, but Sterling saw bright eyes shining like opals in the moon-light. ‘Ajri! Ajri!’ the man yelled. ‘Run! Run!’ He pointed towards a clump of dark tamarisks in the distance. Another bandit closed in on him, and Sterling recognized the ‘chief’, his hawkish features contorted with hatred as he slashed at the white-banded man with his dagger. ‘I am Amir ould Hamel of the Ulad Delim,’ he thundered.

  There was a clash of steel as the man with the white band parried the thrust.

  ‘I am Taha Minan Nijum of the Ulad al-Mizna!’ he roared back.

  The chief seemed startled. He took a step backwards, and in that moment the one named Taha grabbed Sterling’s arm and ran. Sterling just had time to see Churchill fell an Arab with a smashing blow from the butt of the man’s own rifle. There were more resounding thumps as the big man laid about him with the whirling rifle-stock, but already Sterling was leaping after Taha.

  A volley of shots kicked up the sand around Sterling’s feet and burned past his ears, but he kept on running, faster than he’d run from the police in London, faster than he’d ever run in his life. From the darkness among the trees came muzzle-flashes and then the blast of answering shots. The grotesquely distorted tamarisks loomed up out of the moonlight, growing on an island in the centre of a deep hollow from which the sand had been scooped by the prevailing wind. Taha disappeared into the depression, and a moment later Sterling threw himself down beside him. His head felt top-heavy and tight, as though he was wearing a helmet.

  His head wound was bleeding again. Sterling wiped blood out of his eyes, and only then did he realize there was someone else inside the hollow. A yard away was a dwarflike man with a black beard and large hairy hands, who was shoving a flat-nosed round into the breech of his rifle, his heavy jowls set in grim determination.

  Taha skittered down to the base of the hollow and crawled back up the slope carrying two rifles. He thrust one at Sterling, but Sterling shook his head. Taha made a sound of derision, and monkey-ran up to join the dwarf. There was the clunk of a weapon cocking, then a krrraaak, and a flatter snort of fire from the dwarf’s gun. Sterling felt as though his eardrums had been ruptured. He smelled cordite and the odour of the men nearby — gunpowder and animal grease.

  He pulled himself up beside them and peered over the edge. Eric Churchill was limping towards them, with a dozen Ulad Delim close on his heels, like a bear pursued by wolves. He was carrying his kitbag on his back and it was slowing him down. ‘Drop the kitbag!’ Sterling bawled.

  Shots whined above Sterling’s head, slapping into the trunk of the tamarisk behind him. He ducked, and when he looked again a Delim with a smooth-shaved skull was springing across the sage-clumps after Churchill, a dagger in one hand, a rifle in the other. He was within only five paces of the big man when there was a krrraaak and a flash from the dwarf’s rifle. The running Delim dropped without a sound. A moment later Churchill crawled over the edge of the hollow like a tortoise, still dragging his kitbag with him.

  The dwarf fired again, grunting with satisfaction. Taha pointed to Sterling. ‘You come with me,’ he snapped in Arabic. ‘The hunter will take your friend.’

  He began to slide down towards the tamarisk trunk at the bottom of the hollow. Sterling hesitated and shot Churchill a nervous glance. ‘Go on!’ Churchill wheezed. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  Sterling followed Taha, slithering down towards the mass of wormlike tamarisk roots at the bottom of the hollow, and creeping up the other side. Shots whizzed and cracked in the high branches. Under the bank of the hollow a camel was couched, and by the time Sterling got there Taha had whipped off the hobble and was holding the animal still by its head-rope. ‘Arkab! Arkab!’ he told Sterling urgently, pointing to the space behind the saddle. ‘Ride! Ride!’

  The moment Sterling had slung his leg over, the animal began to rise, shunting forwards and backwards and forwards again. Before it was on its feet, Taha had hoisted himself into the saddle.

  He headed the camel up the gentler slope on the other side of the hollow, shielded from enemy view by the branches of the tamarisk. Seconds later they were on the open plain, trotting southwestward into the night.

  *

  After the first rush to get away, Taha slowed his camel to a walk. He slipped off its back, taking the head-rope and leading it forward. Taha never spoke to Sterling or gave directions, and Sterling gripped the saddle-horns dumbly. As the shooting faded, the night grew deathly silent, with no sound but the crunch of the camel’s feet in the gravel and the slap of water in Taha’s skins. Sterling’s head ached savagely. He was tortured with thirst, but he did not ask Taha to stop.

  For long periods he stared vacantly at the stars above him. The night was so clear that the Milky Way was visible, a nebula of stardust like a path twisting through the heavens. Nausea and faintness came in waves. His head swam, his vision fuzzed and the blood pulsed like a drum-beat in his ears.

  There were voices inside his head: Billy’s voice saying, ‘Come on, Dad, you can make it.’ Billy, aged eight, holding up the bloody, severed joint of his little finger, making a whimpering sound, but bravely holding back the tears. Billy, thirteen years old, confronting him angrily after a term of baiting from the other pupils at Scowcroft, and more than one fist fight to defend the family honour. ‘Why, Dad? Why don’t you just fight like all the rest?’ The gut-wrenching feeling that his own son was ashamed of him. ‘I know you’re not really a coward, Dad. Why don’t you just show them?’ The terrible inability to explain. He gasped out loud. His head, until now top-heavy, felt suddenly light, as though it was floating. He heard, as if from afar, his own voice again, murmuring, ‘We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end ... whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.’

  He smiled fondly. Then slowly, with a momentum that felt wholly inevitable, he surrendered, crumpling, toppling out of the saddle.

  *

  When Sterling came to it was half light, and he was lying on soft sand. The camel was couched in the shelter of some high rocks, munching grain from a nosebag. The water-skin slung from its saddle looked inviting; his mouth was as dry as parchment. He got up unsteadily, feeling his head, and staggered towards the camel. It was then that he saw Taha.

  A black head-cloth and blue dara’a lay airing out over a couple of thorn bushes nearby, and Taha, naked but for a short loin-cloth, was crouching over a flickering fire with his back to him. Sterling saw a lean youth’s body with a taut back, and arm muscles like rope, long legs, a tangle of dark hair that fell to his shoulders. It was the body of a gymnast, flesh burned down to hard fibre by years of activity and little food and water.

  The youth fished a kettle off the fire with a twig and turned suddenly to face Sterling. The shock was so swift and powerful that Sterling felt as if he had been punched.

  The breath hissed out of his lungs, and he teetered to his knees. The youth stopped in his tracks and their eyes locked for an infinite second.

  The face raced at Sterling out of the landscape, a face within a face: older, more mature, but one he had seen grow and change from infancy to near adulthood. The face of a little boy he had brought up, the features of the woman he had loved. A face imprinted on him for all time, a face he could have picked out of a million. His eyes fell to the youth’s left hand, and he saw that the joint of the little finger was missing.

  ‘Billy?’ he whispered. ‘Billy, is it really you?’

  8

  The words chimed in Taha’s head, familiar yet so
mehow crippled, as if heard distorted on a wireless. He studied the afrangi’s face closely for the first time, and knew it was the face that had haunted his dreams, the face he had deliberately rejected on waking as a visitation from the spirit world.

  ‘Billy?’ the man said again.

  The name was a key unlocking an ancient rusted door. The dam Taha had built inside him burst, a torrent of images came gushing out with such force that he began to shake. The lid of the box he had kept closed for so many years was blasted off.

  ‘Dad?’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘Dad?’

  They threw their arms around each other, and Sterling felt tears streaming down his face. Taha fought to control his wildly conflicting emotions — fear, anger, joy, disbelief. Two distinct personalities grappled for supremacy within him: one a man of the desert; the other a child with memories of a different place and time. It was like looking out at the world through two windows at once, each viewing the same thing with a different perspective.

  He remembered the man’s face, yet it was also different from the way he remembered it — unnaturally pink, and of a curious shape and colour. The man’s behaviour and the way he held himself seemed uncouth and primitive compared with the Blue Men. The man’s clothes, too, were familiar, yet they looked outlandish — even ridiculous. The battered, broad-brimmed hat gave him the look of an imbecile. And Taha recalled suddenly how the previous night the man had refused the rifle — the one he’d stolen from the Delim. He’d refused to fight, even in defence of his friend. The memory embarrassed Taha — courage was one of the five qualities that together comprised ‘humanness’. To be without courage was a disgrace.

  And yet, this odd-looking stranger was Dad, there could be no doubt of that. A million images of his previous life were blinking in his mind like mirages on the open Zrouft. Taha felt dazed, reduced to silence by the unfathomable mystery that had brought this man here. He felt reverent, just as he had on the day he had shot the white antelope and retrieved the bezoar stones. The Divine had brought Sterling here, to the same spot as Taha, and placed his life in Taha’s own hands. There was purpose in it, Taha knew. First the Delim had come looking for him; now this. The seeds of these events had lain in his falling out of the sky seven summers ago, a lifetime ago. The purpose had lain dormant all that time, just as the seeds of the desert grasses lay dormant in the sand for years, awaiting a downpour of rain. Now was the time of its fruition. The purpose was still opaque, but would become clear very soon. It was a simple matter of patience, and if there was one thing the Blue Men had taught him it was patience.