Pharaoh (Jack Howard 7)

by Gibbins, David

  He turned back to his bag and took out the wrapped leaves containing the last of the biscuit, enough for two days. The lime juice had been finished that morning, and he left the empty bottle in the bag. He transferred the biscuit and his telescope to the pouch on his belt, along with a pencil, a roll of paper and a small leather wrap containing gold sovereigns and his Royal Engineers cap badge. He felt for the revolver on his belt, a Webley New Army Express .455, harder hitting than the old Webley-Pryse he had carried at the cataract, took it from its holster and broke it open to check that it was loaded, then snapped it shut and reholstered it. He felt for the extra box of cartridges he kept in a separate pouch beside his knife, a gold-handled blade his Dongolese escort had given him three weeks ago before they had parted ways. He pulled the empty water skin off the camel and slung it round his neck, and then did the same with the coiled blanket. He had weighed up the blanket in his mind, an extra burden he could ill afford, but the nights had been bitterly cold and with barely enough food or drink they would be feeling it more keenly from now on. Finally he slung on his back the wrapped wooden box containing his Sharps rifle, the barrel and stock tightly packed inside to ensure that the sights were not knocked out of place during their trip.

  He watched Charrière finish his own packing, swirling back his robe to check the large hunting knife he had brought with him from Canada. Charrière tightened his blanket roll over his back and deftly tied the camels’ front legs together with lengths of leather cord, to ensure that they did not bolt and attract attention from the British lines, then he stood up and pointed to a low rise in the gravel plain about half a mile away, midway between their position and the British square. ‘Let’s get to that knoll,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll decide whether we can follow the trail between the two armies. Are you ready to run?’

  Mayne shifted his burden until it was comfortable, leaving his arms free to swing, remembering how the Mohawk hunters preferred to run rather than walk along the forest trails in Canada. He took a deep breath and nodded. ‘You lead.’

  17

  Twenty minutes later, they stood panting on a rocky outcrop less than a thousand yards from the British square. To their left lay the rough ground flanking the low plateau of Abu Klea that was their chosen route, and ahead of them was a dried-up watercourse they had spotted between the two armies that was their fallback option should the other route became unviable. At the moment they could not risk moving, as they were within rifle range of the square; the British soldiers would be jittery, likely to shoot at anyone in Arab gear. They would have to wait until all eyes in the square were on the advancing Mahdist army to their right, until the moment when battle was about to be joined. And there was another factor: if the men somewhere behind who had been shadowing them since they had left Korti decided to break cover and ride them down now, it might force them to risk running, fully exposed to British fire, to seek shelter in the gullies in front of the square, hoping that their pursuers would rein up once they saw that they were being led into a murderous dead end. Mayne glanced at the angle of the sun in the sky: it was about 10.30 a.m. The watercourse gully had only become visible to them in the last few yards of their run, and would be invisible to anyone following them until they reached this point. He had to hope that their pursuers would never guess that one option open to the two men was to run a gauntlet that would appear suicidal to anyone bearing down on them from a distance.

  He wiped his face with the cloth of his headdress; it had become hot, and he had cast off the chill of dawn. With his telescope he could see the British square more clearly now, the soldiers wearing pith helmets and khaki tunics with bandolier cartridge belts, their rifles at the ready. They were standing four deep, three hundred or three hundred and fifty men to a side, their sword bayonets thrust out like pikes, the slight curve in the blades reflecting wickedly in the sunlight. It seemed an image straight out of the Napoleonic Wars, a garish anachronism in this modern age of rifles with a range and volume of fire many times that of the muskets of Waterloo. The American Civil War twenty years before had shown the horrific consequences of infantry fighting as their forefathers had done in close formation but with modern rifles, and the tactic had been all but dropped from the training manuals for a European conflict. Yet it was precisely that concentration of firepower that made the square such a devastating tactic in this kind of war; that could even the odds for the British in the face of seemingly overwhelming disparity in numbers. And as the Zulu wars had shown, massed assaults by an enemy with weapons little changed since the days of the Romans could still crush a modern army, and firepower was only as good as the resolve of Tommy Atkins to stand his ground in the face of an opponent who was terrifying precisely because he did not play by the rules of modern war.

  He thought of those men now: the bluejackets of the naval division manning the Gardner machine gun, the artillerymen with their mountain guns, the sappers who had built the zariba and were now standing stolidly in the square with the rifles, and above all the infantry and the cavalry, the Grenadier Guards and Household Cavalry who made up much of the camel regiments, men whose normal duty was the most intimate defence of the realm, safeguarding London and the Queen. He remembered the fatalistic humour of Corporal Jones and his mates, the intense camaraderie that fortified them against the devilry without. For those men now facing the test of their lives, the true purpose of the expedition, the reason why they were here in the depths of the Sudan and not in their barracks at Knightsbridge, would by this hour have become an irrelevance; all that would concern them was not letting their comrades down. Mayne watched the square bow outwards at the rear as the camels corralled within tried to force their way out but were pulled back and hobbled in the centre, a great mass of grunting and foaming beasts. They could prove the greatest strength of the square, something the soldiers at Waterloo did not have, an imperturbable mass that might break the dervish charge if the front lines of soldiers should collapse.

  He thought of the officers he knew well, bunched together around Stewart in front of the camels, their field glasses glinting as they scanned the enemy lines: Colonel Wilson, who had been sent with the column by Wolseley to go ahead and communicate with Gordon; and Fred Burnaby, in his element again, who had hunted out war and would fight like a lion, whose yearning seemed almost a death wish. There would be other officers there too for whom the objective of the expedition would now be secondary, for whom the chance of battle would be a welcome certainty; it would give them a hope of glory little different from the aspirations of the dervish warriors, and freed from the murky uncertainties of Gordon and the opprobrium that would fall on them at home if they failed in their mission to rescue him. Whatever happened here, whether it was a last stand against impossible odds like Isandlwana in the Zulu War or a victory like Rorke’s Drift, their names would be immortalised as soldiers and not as pawns in a political game.

  Charrière suddenly cocked an ear towards the ground, and then twisted round to look behind them. ‘Our pursuers. They’re coming.’

  Mayne turned and raised his telescope. Over a low knoll they had traversed not long before he could see a knot of four riders, wavering in and out of focus like a mirage. The camels were tall, gaunt, spectre-like, their legs seemingly elongated in the heat haze, cantering in line abreast directly at them. The riders wore robes and headdress and had unholstered their rifles, carrying them angled out with the butts resting against their thighs. They were perhaps twelve hundred yards distant.

  Mayne’s mind raced. He could set up his Sharps rifle, and it would be four rifles against one. But to use it now would almost certainly be to compromise his mission: he had adjusted the sights minutely for his expected range when he had test-fired it over the Nile near Korti, and he was loath to risk jolting it. As long as there was still a chance of reaching Khartoum, the Sharps would remain packed in its case. And even if he were able to shoot one of them, the other three would dismount and could pick t
hem off at their ease. Their best chance still lay in the torrent beds and gullies around the plateau of Abu Klea to the east of the square, the escape route they had devised a few minutes before.

  A percussive report resounded from the direction of the square, and he looked back in time to see a cloud of white smoke above the screw gun. The round exploded in the front rank of the dervish line, creating a gap that was immediately filled with spearmen in jibbas who joined in the dance, stamping their feet rhythmically. They were now formed up like an ancient Greek phalanx, in a serrated line, with an emir on camelback holding a standard at the apex of each serration. Sharpshooters on both sides were beginning to find their mark, with men falling in the front ranks of the square and the phalanx. For the first time Mayne could see that Stewart had sent out a force of skirmishers, men who were now scurrying back under fire towards the square. He pursed his lips; that had been a tactical mistake. The value of skirmishers was as sharpshooters, and the phalanx was easily within range of the massed riflemen in the square. The minutes needed for their withdrawal would forestall the first volley, as the British would not shoot as long as the skirmishers were still in the line of fire. Stewart had taken a frightening gamble. The closer the phalanx was allowed to get, the more likely it was to overrun the square without being held back by volley fire. Even with the speed of reloading a Martini-Henry, they would only have the chance of a few volleys before the enemy were upon them. If the commander of the Madhist army had any sense, he would see that the British were exercising the kind of restraint to save their own men that would never occur to him, and would order his forces to charge now.

  Mayne snapped his head back. A bullet had zinged overhead and slapped into a boulder, ricocheting off into the plain. He turned and squinted, and could just make out one of the riders with his rifle levelled. He had fired mounted on his camel, from perhaps eight hundred yards; he was good. Not even the best of the Egyptian army marksmen who had gone over to the Mahdi were that proficient, and they only had Remingtons. Mayne recalled being with the soldiers above the cataract when the sharpshooter from the opposite bank had found their range; he remembered the distinctive whine of the Remington bullet, at about the same range. It was a lighter bullet than the Martini-Henry, .43 rather than .45 calibre, and made a different noise. The Martini-Henry was the rifle of the British army, the best service rifle in the world, one they did not even let their Egyptian allies use and which the Mahdi had not yet been able to capture. Yet the bullet he had just heard was unquestionably from a Martini-Henry. He had that cold feeling in his stomach again. Who were they?

  Two of the riders broke off to the right, and he watched them slowly pick up speed as they brought their camels to a gallop, whipping them hard as a cloud of dust rose behind. Mayne cursed under his breath. They were heading towards the hill of Abu Klea behind the square, cutting off their planned escape route. That left only one choice, the dried-up torrent bed between the opposing armies. He swiftly calculated the distances. The ground ahead of them was flat and unimpeded, and they would be able to run fast. They were perhaps two thousand yards now from the British square, and the gap between the armies was no more than eight hundred yards. If they ran now, they would be targeted by sharpshooters from either side, and by their pursuers. But if they waited until the moment the Mahdists began their charge, when all eyes would be on the opposing armies, they might have a chance of getting through. And their pursuers would know that if they followed, they would be caught up in the maelstrom as the armies converged.

  Another bullet tumbled by and ploughed into the dust ahead them. He gripped the bag with the rifle on his back and crouched down ready to run, watching Charrière do the same. Suddenly, the only meaningful time was measured in seconds. The Mahdi army must launch their attack now.

  Then he heard it. A low noise, different from the stomping of feet, different from the drumbeat, a shrill, insistent chant, ten thousand men in unison: La illaha la illa ras Muhammad – there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet – repeated over and over again until it became like the rushing of a mighty river.

  A great flash swept the front line as a thousand spears were brandished. The standards of the emirs were lowered like lances. The chant was lost in a rumbling that shook the earth, a pounding of feet that set Mayne’s teeth on edge. The dervish army was like a coiled spring, ready to strike.

  His heart was thumping. What happened next would take place with terrifying speed: the two armies were like beasts bent on death or victory, warily sniffing out their opponent’s weaknesses and strengths, tensed for a pounce that when it came would be of appalling savagery and violence. And he knew they might not make it to the gap in time to get through. They might be running headlong into a wall of death.

  A trumpet sounded, high and shrill. He looked at Charrière. Now.

  18

  Mayne ran forward as fast as he could, crouching low, his right hand behind his back clutching the strap on his rifle case, his left arm extended and ready in case he should trip over one of the black clinker rocks that were strewn on the desert floor. Charrière was slightly ahead and to the left, loping more than running, his Arab robe tied up around his waist and the long sheath of his knife poking out below. Ahead of them lay the gap between the British and the dervish lines, and in the centre of that the low torrent bed that was their objective. Already Mayne could see that it was shallower than he had hoped, that to run along it would leave them exposed to fire from both sides. They would either have to risk it or get down on their hands and knees and crawl, an option that was rapidly closing given the speed of the dervish advance.

  A bullet whistled between them, ploughing into the gravel ahead. He dared not look behind for fear of tripping over, but the accuracy of the fire showed that their pursuers had kept within range. They zigzagged, keeping low, jumping into gullies and using any natural cover they could find. They were no more than three hundred yards away now, and the noise was suddenly overwhelming. The clap of the mountain gun was followed by the drone of the shell and then a krump as it burst in the Mahdist lines, throwing up bodies and limbs in a haze of red. The Gardner machine gun erupted in staccato fire, shooting over the heads of the crouching infantrymen, and then stopped abruptly, evidently jammed. He could hear the bullets now from the Mahdist sharpshooters zipping and droning overhead, and saw khaki forms in the British line fall back and crumple. The dervishes surged forward, keeping phalanx formation behind the emirs on camelback. The gap was narrowing alarmingly, now no more than two hundred yards, but still the British held their fire. They were close enough now to hear the hoarse goading and swearing of the soldiers, the grousing of camels, the sergeants and corporals bawling at their men to remain steady, to fire only in volley when the order came. A bullet zapped by dangerously close, not from their pursuers but fired from the square by some clear-eyed British marksman who thought he had seen two fanatical Arabs running at them from the north.

  Mayne grabbed Charrière and pulled him to a halt. It was no good. They were not going to make it. It had been a calculated gamble to go for the gap, but it had closed faster than he had hoped. To continue that way now would be to run straight into the jaws of death. He dragged Charrière into a low gully in front of a boulder, protected from the rear, and they crouched down together, panting hard. They could not run around the rear of the square, as the soldiers there would be ready for an attack on that side and would gun them down instantly; nor could they try to run through the dervish line, as they would be trampled. They were going to have to veer left, to ride the tide of the dervish advance and head straight into the side of the British square, in the hope that the troops would stem the tide long enough for them to get through to the other side and safety. Their chances were vanishingly small, but it was better than certain death. Once inside the square, they would aim for the far left corner: Mayne had seen it fall back and open to let the skirmishers in, a risky move on the part of the offi
cer in charge of that section of the line that could have put the entire square at jeopardy. He had a sudden image of Burnaby, of self-imposed heroic duty, of how such a man in his perfect milieu might make a pact with death to save his men; but all that mattered now to Mayne was that the disorder in the line at that point might allow them an escape route if they survived that far.

  A trumpet blared, and suddenly the dervish shooting ceased and the phalanx came to a halt, like some great beast pausing for breath. All Mayne could hear was a sound like a distant rushing wind, the low chanting of a thousand voices that had been in the background since the start of the dervish advance. Then the lead emir raised his standard and cried out, a deep, beautiful voice like a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. The moment he stopped, a thousand throwing spears were launched from the front line, silver streaks that reflected the sun like a shimmering rainbow, flying in a low arc and then falling to cries in the British line as those thrown the furthest found their mark. Then the chant was drowned in a cacophony of drumming and the pounding of thousands of sandalled feet, the dervishes marking time like parade-ground soldiers about to march forward, making the earth beneath Mayne tremor and shiver. The air was rent by shrieks, not of fear but of exaltation, by men who would soon be with the Prophet in heaven and would beckon more to join them, drawing the jihad inexorably on until it swept away all who did not believe in the divine wisdom of the Mahdi.

  Just as the dervish line surged forward, Mayne heard an order being bellowed from the British square, and then a deafening crack as three hundred and fifty Martini-Henry rifles fired in unison. It was as if a sudden hurricane had hit the dervish front line, blowing men back. Seconds later another volley thinned out the next wave, but still they kept coming. The British had cut it fine, holding their fire until every bullet would strike flesh, hoping that the piles of bodies would stem the dervish advance; and when there was no more time for reloading, the enemy would still face a glittering palisade of bayonets, wielded by modern riflemen trained to use cold steel as murderously as their predecessors who had confronted the forces of jihad in an earlier age.