King of Kings

by Wilbur Smith

  “They planned to ambush us there.” Ryder pointed up the path. “Where the track is bare to the walls. That is where their main force will be waiting.”

  “The perfidious swine,” Alula said quietly. “May they rot eternally.” He spat on the ground. “Cowards.”

  Another bullet hit the rocks inches above Alula’s head and kicked up a spray of fragments, which fell over his white shawl. He brushed them away.

  “Silas, Amlak, take up position at the rear. You will kill the two men behind us. Silas, take the one on the east, Amlak the one on the west. Tamrat, when they are ready, offer the snipers another target.”

  No man questioned his orders. Silas and Amlak slid silently into the green cover on their stomachs, pulling themselves forward on their elbows. A minute of quiet followed, then each man clicked his tongue softly against the roof of his mouth. Another bullet slammed into the tree trunk, and Ryder felt the force of it through the wood. If both the rear enemy snipers fired on Tamrat, Alula’s men would be able to spot their positions and return fire. Ryder hoped Amlak and Silas were exceptional marksmen. They had to be if any of the party on the valley floor were to survive.

  Tamrat lifted himself into a half crouch at the rear edge of the cover. Two shots echoed from close behind them. Tamrat dropped at once and then the answering shots came from Amlak’s and Silas’s guns. On the rear west slope a body tumbled off one of the scrub-matted ledges and thumped sickeningly onto the path behind them. Amlak had found his mark. Silas had not. Ryder heard the click and scrape of the reload and the brassy ring of a discharged cartridge hitting stone. Then Silas fired again and they heard a scream behind them from the east. The body did not fall but was caught on the thorns and they could see him now, half visible, hanging in the ash-colored branches, still.

  Ryder reached for Tamrat, but he had already crawled into cover again, clutching his rifle to his chest and apparently unharmed. He must have the luck of the devil.

  Even with the rear riflemen dead, they could not retreat north along the gorge. The two snipers in front of them would have them in range for long enough to shoot them all in the back before they found more cover.

  Ryder touched Alula’s shoulder and pointed up the gully, where the rockfall had cut a narrow wedge into the steep wall.

  “Keep their attention,” he said.

  Alula nodded and started hissing orders. The men changed their positions. The two forward snipers were increasing their rate of fire, nervous now that their companions had been killed. The shots were not as accurate, but so packed were they in the patch of cover, the riflemen only needed a little luck now.

  Ryder had to move fast. He needed to climb up the side of the canyon and take out the snipers to the fore and east. The attacker to the west would see him, and Ryder’s broad back would be an excellent target unless the fire coming from the men on the valley floor could distract him.

  Ryder leaped up the slope like a leopard. The earth was loose and dry, and slid away treacherously under his boots. He dug his hands into the rock, pulling himself up by his fingertips. His muscles began to burn and he felt his skin beginning to bead with sweat. He forced his boot into a crevice and felt the sharp pull of gravity as he released his handhold, then reached up, his chest flat against the sheer rock, and hauled himself higher.

  Three quarters of the way up the slope where the shallow cover of the gully ended, he went sideways, grabbing on to a low thorn bush and praying the roots had dug their way in deep enough to hold his weight. He felt the skin on his palms tear on the thorns, and brought up his right leg and looked ahead, the sun and sweat almost blinding him. The rifles of Alula’s men cracked again in the ravine below, but he could see the sniper now, three yards in front of him, and the angle of the slope here meant he could take those three yards at a run. He yanked himself into a crouch just as a round buried itself into the soil next to him. The sniper on the opposite flank had spotted him, but too late. He plunged toward the sniper’s nest, his knife already in his hand.

  The enemy rifleman heard Ryder coming at the last moment, turned and took aim. Ryder was moving too quickly. He crashed into the man’s chest with his shoulder. The rifle flew out of the man’s grip and dropped onto a lower ledge. Ryder felt his blade slide between the man’s ribs. He was lying across him, the hilt bruising his own shoulder. He felt the man’s blood jetting out over both of them. Their faces were an inch apart. Ryder saw the surprise and shock in his opponent’s eyes, and then the life faded out of them.

  The force of his fall had thrown them both out of cover. Another bullet kicked dust close to Ryder’s head. He rolled over so the body of the man he had just killed was on top of him. He felt another bullet hit the corpse and a sudden burn in his side. Then he thrust the body from him, pushing the dead man off his knife, and scrambled back to the narrow protection of his nest. He was breathing hard.

  Geriel had taken his chance: while the sniper on the west bank was firing at Ryder, he sprinted across the shallow river and scrambled up the almost vertical incline, hauling himself up ledge by ledge, the muscles on his shoulders bulging.

  Ryder took his rifle from his shoulder and reloaded it, his movements swift and practiced from years of hunting. He did not wait to aim precisely. He had to keep the sniper opposite him from seeing the danger of Geriel’s approach. He shot by instinct and heard an answering bullet strike the rocks to his left. Ryder watched Geriel spring upward, as if he had wings, pulling his knife from his belt. Even as Ryder heard the bandit’s scream, he twisted around and looked up the valley. He could see much further from this new vantage point. Men were waiting around the curve of the river. Ryder counted fifteen of them, waiting to pounce on anyone who survived the sniper’s alley of the gorge. He turned back toward his own party and signaled the number, punching upward with his clenched fist three times.

  How long was it since Maki had cut the mule’s rope? Five minutes, perhaps. Ryder couldn’t understand why these men hadn’t attacked already. They looked as if they were arguing. Ryder reloaded, picked a target in the middle of the group, breathed out very steadily and smoothly squeezed the trigger. His man fell like a puppet with his strings cut. One of his fellows bent over him as if he could not understand what was happening. Ryder reloaded and shot again. It was a clean shot. The second man dropped on top of the corpse of his friend.

  One of the others aimed what looked like a musket in Ryder’s direction and fired. The gun had no more effect than a child’s catapult at this range. Ryder realized the bandits on the valley floor had no modern rifles. Those must have gone to the men on the hillside.

  He took aim again. The remaining bandits began running along the valley floor in a final effort to swamp Alula and his men. They threw themselves forward with desperate war cries, but as they came around the curve of the river they were exposed to Geriel’s rifle and those of Alula’s men from behind the rockfall. The rifles opened fire and the ambush became a slaughterhouse. Ryder bowled over another man before they closed on Alula’s position. It seemed as if Geriel took another two, judging by the angle. Alula’s men had time to shoot, reload and shoot again before the men could reach them and they made each shot count. One after another of the enemy fell as they sprinted forward, caught by the well-aimed fire from Alula’s men. Three of them made it through the hail of bullets. Maki took the one on the right with his knife, then Ryder watched as Ras Alula rose like a ghost and in the same movement brought his curved sword up hard into another man’s guts. His blood spattered the old man’s robes and his viscera poured from his belly as if from a butcher’s slop bucket. Alula turned and, with the grace of a dancer, sliced the same blade right and high through the throat of the last surviving attacker. The body collapsed sideways onto the rocky slope.

  Silence fell across the valley. Ryder could hear only the gurgle of the river. He reached down for the rifle of the sniper he had killed and shouldered it, wiped his knife and returned it to its sheath, then kicked the body so it tumbled and bo
unced down the steep incline in front of him. He began to clamber down after it. On the other side of the gorge, Geriel did the same.

  When Ryder reached the path, Alula bowed to him as if they were greeting each other for the first time that day.

  “Are you hurt, my friend?”

  Only then did Ryder remember the burn of the shot when he was using his enemy’s corpse as a shield. He noticed a patch of wetness across the bottom of his shirt and across his hip. He smelled alcohol and cursed as he lifted his shirt. The bullet had struck his hip flask. Ryder took it from its loop on his belt and shook it. The bullet rattled inside and some of the men laughed.

  “Don’t mock me, gentlemen,” he said. “That was damned fine whisky. Are my people well?”

  Alula stepped back so Ryder could see Tadesse tending to a thin, clean wound on Maki’s shoulder, the graze of one of the snipers’ bullets.

  “It is nothing,” Maki said. “My little son has given me worse injuries.”

  Alula was looking with distaste at the blood that had spattered his white robe. “We shall bury these men here, and my men with them,” he said. “I will not have the paths through my lands befouled with their corpses.”

  “We shall help you,” Ryder replied, but Alula shook his head.

  “No, do not delay, if you are to arrive home before the end of tomorrow you should go. Besides, I am out of humor now. That these shifta bastards should attack so close to Axum—I am vexed. Leave an old man in his bad mood and take my greetings to Mrs. Saffron home with you.”

  Geriel was already reloading the pack mule.

  “If that is your wish.” Ryder was looking at the bodies of the slain men. They looked thin. He wondered why they had been chosen for ambush. Most shifta waited until some lightly guarded caravan crossed their path. Why would they attack such a well-armed group as theirs? Even with their superior numbers and the element of surprise, it had been a dangerous gambit. It smelled of desperation.

  Alula followed his gaze. “They were weak and they knew it. They were badly led.”

  “Is that why they dared to make the attack, my lord?” Ryder asked.

  Alula shrugged. For all his calm and self-possession during the attack, the fact of the ambush had obviously ruffled him.

  “So it would seem. Now go. You must return to your wife. I hear she is with child?”

  “The quality of your information is always impressive, my lord,” Ryder replied, casting a bitter glance at Tadesse.

  Alula closed his eyes and tilted his head upward, as if offering some prayer, then he looked at Ryder again. His shoulders relaxed and some of the anger left his large dark eyes, to be replaced by a weary hopelessness.

  “Do not forget the boy spoke for you, Ryder,” he said. “Come, embrace me!”

  Alula opened his arms and Ryder bent forward so the old warrior could encircle his shoulders, but he wondered for a brief moment if he was going to feel Alula’s knife between his ribs. Alula put his hand around the back of Ryder’s neck. It was an affectionate gesture, fatherly and resigned.

  “No, Ryder. You have fought beside me. You brought me silver from your mine, when you might have kept it. You have been honest with me and a courteous guest in our lands.”

  He clasped his hands around Ryder’s face, then brushed his blood-dampened fingers through Ryder’s thick black hair. Ryder remained still. The gesture felt like the blessing an old man gives to his child when they know their ways are parting.

  “Go now, my friend, and go in peace,” Alula said, releasing him. “But guard your people well. This is the start of our troubles, not their end. May we always fight side by side when the battles begin.”

  “I hope we shall, my lord.” Ryder swung the rifle he had taken from the bandit and offered it to Alula with a low bow.

  The old warrior took it and examined it carefully. “Italian-made, I think, like your own, Ryder. Now farewell.”

  With that he turned and walked away. Tadesse, Geriel and Maki were ready, the mules loaded. Ryder led them across the battlefield in silence and toward home.

  •••

  Amber was trying to keep a watch on her sister without Saffron noticing. Saffron’s pregnancy with Leon had been straightforward, but she had been frightened when the birth pangs arrived, and Amber had never seen her sister scared before that day. The birth had been quick and Saffron was dismissive of the pain she had endured as soon as it was over. But that had been in Cairo. If anything had gone wrong in the city, Ryder and Amber could have ordered in an army of specialists, European or Egyptian, to help her. In Tigray they had only the help of the other women in the camp and half of them liked to entertain Saffron with stories of dying mothers and stillborn monsters. Amber told them not to frighten her sister, but they looked at her as if she were an idiot and told her Saffron should be prepared. Tadesse had told them, firmly, that childbirth was not his business, though Amber believed he would not abandon her sister if anything went wrong.

  “Not that anything will go wrong,” she said aloud. She was grinding pepper for the evening meal and wondering which of the chickens she should pick for the pot. It was an extravagance to kill another bird, but Amber had an Englishwoman’s faith in chicken as a sort of universal cure. It must, therefore, be effective against morning sickness. She would kill and cook it while Saffron was resting. Her sister would hardly refuse to eat it if it were dead already.

  They had at last begun to produce silver, but the process was painfully slow and Ryder had taken what they had produced to Ras Alula. Even the little they had made since was worth no more than the stones in the river bed until they could be transported and sold, and given what they had heard from Iyasu, Amber had no idea when that would happen.

  She tipped the ground pepper carefully into the saucepot, then left the hut in search of an unlucky hen. The chickens wandered the camp in perfect freedom. They were the responsibility of the children—those too old to spend their time constantly with their mothers but too young to act as shepherds or help in the fields. They guarded the grain bins and searched for eggs where the hens liked to lay. Amber consulted with one of the little girls about which birds were the best producers, so should be saved, and together they solemnly marked for death a fat but bad-tempered bird who had provided nothing for her keep for a week.

  Amber was fond of the animals, but not sentimental about their deaths. The bird was caught and killed with the minimum of fuss. She set her little co-conspirator to plucking and preparing it, then looked about her, considering the next of her domestic tasks to be tackled. Her gaze was caught by a movement on the ridge above the camp and she looked up, shielding her eyes. She saw the silhouette of a man and her heart quickened. They were not expecting Ryder home until tomorrow at the earliest, but perhaps he had come ahead of time. Another figure appeared on the ridge next to the first, then another. It was not Ryder, nor was it Maki or Geriel or Tadesse.

  “Saffy!” she called sharply. Then she grabbed one of the young boys of the camp. “Go get Patch. And the others.”

  The little boy dashed off and Saffron emerged from her hut. She wore a skirt and blouse in the English fashion, but both women now went barefoot in the camp and wore the thin gauzy netela veil over their hair. She joined Amber and squinted upward. Perhaps twenty men were now lining the ridge. Amber could make out the shapes of their shields and rifles, either held at their sides or worn slung across their backs. She felt Saffron slip a hand into her own. Soon the ridge was completely lined with warriors, silent and watchful. Then those in the center moved away to the flanks and a new shadow appeared on the horizon. It was a man on horseback.

  “Saffy, what shall we do?” Amber hissed.

  Instead of answering her sister, Saffron lifted her head, cupped her hands around her mouth and called out in Amharic. She used the high-pitched, carrying singsong voice that the highland shepherds and travelers used to swap news and messages over miles. It had a sort of chanting rhythm to it, which was both beautiful and slig
htly unearthly. Her veil slipped back from her hair.

  “Great lord,” she called, “come down and be our guest, honor us with your presence. Let us offer you our home and the best of our meat and drink.” She lowered her hands and waited.

  In the camp and on the ridge no one moved or spoke. Even the animals seemed to feel the heavy tension of the moment and became still. The man on horseback leaned forward in his saddle. The man whom he spoke to then stepped forward to the edge of the escarpment and cupped his hands to his mouth.

  “He comes. Menelik of Shoa, King of Kings, Emperor of Ethiopia approaches,” he called, then, as the horseman dismounted, the spokesman lifted up his arms and let out a cry. It reminded Amber of the ululation of the women during the religious ceremonies. This, too, was devout, but warlike and powerful. The other men along the ridge lifted their arms and took up the shout, then drummed their fists on their shields. The sound echoed like thunder up and down the gorge. Already a group was separating from the rest, starting down the steep trail toward them.

  Saffron licked her lips. “Amber, you might need another chicken,” she said.

  Ryder approached the camp the following day in the late morning. They had made good progress since parting from Ras Alula. Ryder always moved quickly when he was thinking and he hardly saw or felt the miles of trails, the steep climbs and trackless descents, the views of the impossible mountains, the golden craters of the high plains, the groups of shepherds and farmers moving through the landscape.

  He felt his heart lift as he reached the familiar landscape within ten miles of his home and began to watch for signs of game, the spoor of the mountain ibex and nyala, the pad prints of the leopard, marking them in his mind for the next time he came out with his rifle to provide something extra for the feasts. Perhaps the political problems of Ethiopia would pass them by after all.

  Then, where the trail toward his home crossed the path that led from Mekelle in the south to Adrigat in the north, he stopped dead and called for Maki to join him.