A bullet whanged off the boulder and punched Mayne in the neck, bowling him over. Charrière crouched down and felt for the wound. There was no blood, thank God; the bullet was nearly spent and had not penetrated. He caught sight of two distant camels about a thousand yards to the east of the square, their riders kneeling down and shooting. They were the two pursuers who had ridden away from the others to cut off their likely escape route, but they had now seen that they were not going that way and had turned back. Mayne knelt up, peering back along the desert track to the north. The other two men had also dismounted and were firing at them, the noise of their bullets lost in the din from ahead. He turned back to the square. The dervish line had now extended outwards, the phalanx having been split by the volley fire, the northern mass wheeling round to come in on the flank of the square in front of him and Charrière. The dervishes seemed to be coming directly at him, a surging wave of screaming men and shimmering spears that tore down upon them with a roar like the sea, the low hill behind them sparkling all over with jets of flame from rifle fire.
They were in a death trap. He crouched forward, ignoring the throbbing in his neck, and nodded at Charrière.
They dashed forward towards the square, swept in by the dervish advance. Dust swirled and lashed at Mayne’s face, a storm that sucked him in like a vortex. And then it lifted as they came close, and he saw detail with astonishing clarity. The first wave of dervishes seemed to bound into the square like animal predators, lunging into the British bayonets, screaming. One man was running so hard that the barrel of the soldier’s rifle went through the hole in his stomach made by the bayonet, thrusting out like a bloody pike and discharging into the press of dervishes behind. Men with hideous wounds from British rifle fire kept running forward, some so badly injured that they gargled blood when they tried to scream; they knew there would be no succour for the wounded from either side, and that to fall before they had expended their last drop of life might be to forfeit their promised place in the afterlife.
The British soldiers held their ground, dying where they stood rather than being pressed back. But the dervish tide was sweeping in like surf over rocks, surging and climbing over the soldiers, and then the first few were inside the square. Mayne saw one Ansar run screaming into a bayonet and be lifted bodily over the soldier’s head, a jet of flame bursting through his body in tendrils of blood as he cartwheeled away; the soldier fell backwards and was immediately speared under the chin by the next dervish, the broad blade slicing his face off and throwing it into the air. Dervishes tumbled and scrabbled over the bodies that cluttered the line, hacking and stabbing their way forward, following the emir whose camel had galloped through a gap into the square unscathed, spitting and snorting as it halted. Just as the emir planted his banner, a soldier shot him from below, the bullet ripping through him from the groin and blowing his head open like a flower, his body dropping like a stone. Beside the dead emir Mayne saw the sailors frantically trying to clear the Gardner machine gun being cut down to a man, speared in the back and the neck, their throats slit. A dervish throwing stick came scything in, slicing through the legs of two camels at the leading edge of the corralled mass in the centre of the square, causing them to fall with a bellow and crush the man who had been holding them. The first of the dervishes was at the camels now, the spearhead of a phalanx that seemed bound to envelop them and wash over the rear of the square just as it had done the front. And yet the camels stood solid and the square held, rent with gaps where the phalanx had struck but still unbroken.
And then Mayne too was inside, stumbling over bodies, everything in a blur. Dervish bullets zipped overhead like insects, whacking off metal and thudding into flesh, slapping into the flanks of camels. He heard the clash of blades, the dull thwack of swords on sweaty tunics, the screams and shrieks of the dervishes. And then he heard the bellowing of the British sergeants at the rear, reversing the line so that the soldiers could fire into the square, aiming on either side of the knot of camels in the centre and into the melee at the front where almost all of the British soldiers had fallen. There was an immense crack of rifle fire and a rushing of bullets overhead, and then another volley. The mountain gun joined in, a thunderous clap as it fired at point-blank range. Mayne ran on, staggering, his ears ringing from the gunfire. Another team of sailors raced up to take over the Gardner machine gun and got it into action, a juddering, hammering sound as it spat rounds from its multiple barrels, the men crouched behind the carriage wheels lifting the wooden trail and panning the gun along the line of the approaching dervishes. Then the gun jammed again and the bluejackets frantically tried to clear it, only to be swept away and hacked down by the tide of dervishes who overran the position. Seconds later the force of the assault was broken by the mass of camels in the centre of the square, imperturbable as ever despite the bullets thwacking into them and the tide of humanity pressing up against their flanks. In that instant of lost momentum the British soldiers were among the dervishes, the officers firing their revolvers and laying about them with swords, the men thrusting and slashing with their bayonets. Dervish bullets fired from the distant ridge whistled and rasped by as they plunged into the melee. More soldiers came up from the rear bayonet-fighting, desperately parrying and thrusting, slashing at necks and heads when they could with the points of their blades. Mayne saw an officer empty all five chambers of his revolver into a screaming dervish before the man ran him through with his spear and collapsed in a bloody heap on top of him. Another officer with a knuckleduster grasped a dervish in a headlock and punched his nose upwards so that it shattered into the man’s brain; he then was caught by an emir with a whirling kurbash whip who snared him round the neck and decapitated him with a sword.
Mayne was conscious of Charrière beside him, pulling him close to his ear. ‘To the camels!’ he yelled, dragging him forward. But then a dervish came screaming at him, his curved knife held high, and Mayne dropped to the ground and lifted a discarded rifle, pulling the trigger but only hearing the jar of the spring in the receiver. He dropped the loading lever and frantically tried to prise the spent cartridge from the breech, but was knocked violently sideways as the dervish ran straight into the bayonet; he saw the bone and cartilage protruding from the man’s hips where he had been hit as he ran into the square. He had been a dead man running, and for a horrible moment Mayne realised that most of the dervishes who had made it this far would be like that, the living dead, fuelled only by adrenalin and faith. He struggled upright and tried to pull the bayonet out, but the man’s abdomen muscles had clenched it tight and he saw that the blade had snapped where it had hit the backbone. He looked up and saw a British soldier staring at him, aiming, and then a hand grabbed his shoulder and Charrière pulled him violently away, towards the camels. Charrière had picked up a sword and was slashing and hacking on either side, cutting a way through to the centre of the square. The mountain gun a few yards away erupted in an immense clap and belch of flame, leaving Mayne reeling as Charrière dragged him on. The throng became too tight to move, and he dropped the sword and whipped out his knife, using it to parry a spear and then twisting his assailant off balance and slicing through his neck, nearly severing his head. Ahead of him Mayne saw a bullet take off the lower jaw of a camel and the bones and teeth fly into the soldier who had been holding it, ripping off his ear and leaving him screaming and clutching at the ragged hole. Another bullet burst through his head and sprayed blood and brains over the flank of the beast, which remained standing and making chewing motions with its upper jaw as if nothing had happened.
And then they were through and among the camels. They stumbled beneath the first beasts’ legs, crouching down and slithering through the faeces and urine as they made their way forward. The din of battle was muffled for a few moments but then intensified as they came towards the other side and out into the melee again, dodging among screaming and shrieking men, hearing the thwack of blades on flesh, the whine and whistle of bulle
ts and the thuds as they found their mark. Mayne slipped in a pool of blood and fell face to face with a British soldier lying on his back with a fearful wound to his head; his eyeballs had protruded from their sockets and burst, the liquid glistening like bloody tears on his face. ‘Water,’ the man croaked, reaching for him blindly. ‘Water.’ Before Mayne could think of acting, Charrière had heaved him up and dragged him on. A bullet nicked his arm and ricocheted into Charrière’s shoulder, lodging in the flesh. Charrière flicked the bullet away with his knife and then stood facing two dervishes who ran at them screaming, their spears levelled. He pulled the spear from the hands of one of them, reversed it and ran the man through until he was nearly embracing him, then pushed the body away as it went limp. Mayne drew his revolver and shot the other man, the gun jumping back in his hand as he fired; then he picked up a Martini-Henry rifle and slammed the butt into the man’s neck as he went down. A few yards ahead of him Charrière had found another sword and was slashing and stabbing, cutting a path through the mass of dervishes, allowing space for a British sergeant to order a ragged volley at point-blank range that dropped a dozen of them in one go. Mayne ran behind, crouching low, sensing the British soldiers on his left and the dervishes to the right, and the two sides closing together again behind him in the shrieks and yells of hand-to-hand fighting.
As they approached the far edge of the square, Mayne saw a huge man propped with his back against a rock, surrounded by dead dervishes, his tunic drenched with blood. He blinked, wiping the sweat from his eyes, and stared again. It was Burnaby. He had taken a fearful spear thrust to the neck, a gash wide enough to put a hand through that had somehow missed the jugular but had sliced deep into his windpipe. Above his thick thatch of dark hair the top of his skull had been sliced clean off by a sword, exposing his brain. His left arm was twisted horribly under his back, but with his right hand he was fumbling to load the massive four-barrelled howdah pistol on his chest, spilling the big .577 rifle cartridges out of a pouch on his belt. His eyes were strangely askew, but they flickered with recognition as Mayne came over to him. ‘I say, Mayne old chap.’ His voice sounded strange, reedy, and the gash in his throat frothed as he spoke. ‘Nearly took you for Johnny Arab in that attire. You couldn’t help me, could you? Trying to load this damned thing. I’m afraid that dervish bowled me over an awful crumpler.’
Mayne knelt down and reached for the cartridges. He and Burnaby had been to the same school, and that peculiar expression was one he had used himself countless times on the playing fields, holding his cricket bat with the wicket knocked out behind him. For a second it seemed a perfectly normal thing to say out here, where war for a man like Burnaby was simply a continuation of the contests of his youth. It was a thought that instantly evaporated when he looked again at Burnaby’s horrific wounds. He grasped the barrel of the pistol and dropped four cartridges into the breech, then snapped it shut and clamped Burnaby’s hand around the grip, putting his finger on the trigger. ‘I say, Mayne,’ said Burnaby, his voice weaker. ‘You couldn’t light me one of my cigarettes, could you? Really could do with it now.’ He seemed to be struggling for words, and Mayne knelt down. Burnaby’s voice was now little more than a whisper, and his neck was seeping bloody froth. ‘Listen here, Mayne. You know I work for Wilson too. I know your true mission. Watch your back. Don’t trust anyone. Anyone. Now, out of my way.’
Mayne had blocked out the battle for the last few seconds, but threw himself sideways just in time to see a half-naked dervish rush at them, his spear held high. Burnaby raised the pistol with a wobbly hand and fired. The round hit the dervish square in the face, blowing his head backwards in a haze of blood and brain. Burnaby suddenly jerked back and blood erupted from his nose. He had been hit in the forehead by a spent bullet that had caved in his sinuses and lodged in the bone of his forehead. The force of the blow had knocked him unconscious, and his head was lolling, his eyes half open and sightless and his breathing coming in terrible rasps. The bullet had been a small mercy, but not enough. There was only one thing Mayne could do for him now. As he pulled out his revolver, he saw a soldier who had detached himself from the melee and was hurtling towards him, bellowing for him to stop, his bayonet poised. Mayne remembered Burnaby’s comment about his desert attire; to the soldier he would look like a Mahdist about to finish off their beloved colonel. There was a shriek from in front, and another dervish came hurling forward. Mayne wrenched the howdah pistol from Burnaby’s hand and fired all three remaining barrels in quick succession, the massive recoil kicking the gun high above him each time. The rounds hit the dervish in the centre of his chest, blowing his heart out and leaving a hole large enough to see through. The man fell in a gory heap on Burnaby, whose eyes were now glazed over in death. Mayne sprang back to face the soldier, dropping the pistol and raising his Webley, but before he could aim it and shout a warning that he was British, the other man had tumbled backwards as a bullet struck him.
Mayne turned and ran forward, slipping over the gore from a man’s abdomen and driving his right knee painfully into the ground, then picked himself up and leapt over the stacked wooden crates that formed the edge of the zariba. He saw Charrière waiting, then glanced back, hearing his own rasping breath, the pounding and ringing in his ears, the shrill whistling he experienced after gunfire. Hearing those things, he realised that something was different. The shooting and shrieking had stopped. And then he saw a most incredible sight. The dervishes had turned and begun to walk silently out of the billowing gun smoke in the direction they had come, their spears and swords held down. The ferocious energy that had propelled their advance had suddenly been expended, and the British had stood their ground. He was astonished by the dignity of their departure, by its utter disjunction from the savagery of a few moments before; it was as if they were mere tribesmen again, no more than people passing through, a timeless imprint of humanity in the desert that made the battle seem just a passing storm. The last of them disappeared out of sight, and for a moment the British troops slumped and exhausted in the zariba seemed agape with disbelief, stunned into immobility. It had been less than fifteen minutes since the dervish charge had begun. Fifteen minutes.
Then there was a rippling noise, a ragged cheer that quickly became a snarling frenzy of rage. The soldiers picked themselves up and surged forward, hacking and stabbing at the fallen dervishes, yelling profanities in voices hoarse with gunpowder and adrenalin and thirst. Mayne heard the crack of rifle fire, and the sliding and crunching of bayonets in bodies. They had seen dervishes feign death and leap up with knives, and they were taking no chances. Ever since Hicks’ army had been annihilated, they had known they would be given no quarter in defeat, and now they were doling out the same in return. It was war unchanged from the days of the first jihad over a thousand years before, war without morality. Mayne saw a soldier bayonet a dead dervish over and over again in the face, bellowing maniacally. Another was on his knees bashing a head to pulp with a rock, his arms drenched with blood like a butcher’s. An officer appeared, waving his revolver and trying to restore order, but Mayne knew he would be able to do nothing until the bloodlust had run its course.
He sat alongside Charrière behind a rock. They were outside the zariba now, but it was safer to hide until the officers had regained control and there was less risk of being mistaken for dervishes and shot. The officers would want to capture any surviving dervishes, yet would probably be unwilling to give chase until they were certain that the enemy was routed. Mayne and Charrière would have to rely on their speed to escape once they had revealed themselves. Mayne lay close to the earth, panting hard, regaining his breath. His sense of smell was returning, and he recoiled from it: the acrid sulphurous reek of black powder, the sickly latrine stench of spilled bowels, the coppery odour of blood, the smell on his own body of sweat and fear and adrenalin. He caught a whiff of roasting flesh, and saw a dervish a few feet away who had been shot at point-blank range, the powder burns encircling the
wound and wisps of smoke rising from the hole. The smoke of battle was clearing now, and he sensed sunlight through the haze. He heard a bugle and the shouted orders of the sergeants and corporals, ordering the men to re-form the square in case of fresh attack. He stared back at the ground. The earth was cracked and blackened, parched as it always had been, the dark patches of blood already sopped up by the dust. The desert was beginning to absorb the residue of battle even before the frenzy of killing had died away.
He listened hard. He realised that the background sound had gone, the chanting, the drumbeat, the pounding of feet; the dervish army had abandoned the wells and was retreating. Soon the soldiers he could now see standing and moving about slowly in the swirling dust would snap back to reality; the square would consolidate, and the advance would be ordered. But for the moment they were caught by the shock of battle, as dazed as he was. Colour was returning, gradually, as if he were looking at an old-fashioned daguerreotype, where the iodine and mercury had created a maroon monochrome but the artist had touched it up with crude streaks of colour to give a semblance of reality.
Mayne looked at his hands, blackened by the greasy grime of gunpowder, and felt the throbbing bruise on his neck where the bullet had struck him before they had entered the square. He stood up and looked around him, trying to calm his breathing. He saw blood and brains spattered on faces, and the cracked lips of dying men, their bodies no longer producing saliva, their tongues swollen and off-white with mucus. One man missing the top of his head convulsed and juddered, and then went still. A soldier lying on dead comrades pulled a spear from his own neck, as he did so releasing a gush of arterial blood that pumped out of him like a geyser, his face whitening as his body drained. He fell back, alabaster among the grey. Another who had been too close to the muzzle blast of the screw gun was lying obscenely exposed with his clothes blown off, his skin lacerated in a crazy pattern like a pavement. It was the first time Mayne had registered the instant aftermath of battle. Ten minutes ago these men had all been alive, and the shocking speed of their deaths seemed to leave a lingering aura over them, like the warmth on a fresh corpse; but he knew that with each rasping final breath that aura would dissipate and the colours would go, sucked into the desert and extinguished by the burning heat of the sun, leaving only a monochrome image of desiccation and decay.
Pharaoh (Jack Howard 7) Page 25
