‘Effendi, we have to go! We have already lost the element of surprise! If we delay much longer, they will have reinforcements at the entrance to the gorge, and we won’t be able to take it!’
I felt Mr Ambrose’s fingers clench around my chin almost painfully tightly. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He didn’t take his gaze from me, almost not seeming to notice the commands shouted at the distant entrance of the gorge.
‘There’s nothing I can do to make you stay, is there?’
‘No,’ I vowed. ‘I’m coming with you!’
Before I could so much as flinch away, he was on me. His arms came around me, almost lifting me off my saddle, pulling me so tight against him I felt every crease in his tailcoat, every line of his hard body, every grain of sand between us. Our lips collided like two opposing armies, ready to die and love it.
‘Effendi! We have to…’
I didn’t hear the rest of Youssef’s words. My ears were ringing, my body was on fire. Dimly, I wondered whether one of the bullets had hit me. But this felt entirely too sweet for that.
When we finally broke apart, I was panting for breath. Mr Ambrose, of course, was as cold and collected as ever. Well, almost.
‘Stay safe!’ he ordered, pressing his forehead to mine for just a moment. Then he wheeled his camel around and raised his rifle into the air. ‘Attack!’
The Art of Losing your Way
It wasn’t quite the attack I had imagined. I had expected a brave rush towards the entrance of the gorge, waving our rifles in the air and firing the occasional well-aimed shot at the bandits.
Reality was somewhat less heroic. We hunkered down behind a few rocks some distance away from the entrance of the gorge. While bullets were flying over our heads, I watched with increasing puzzlement as several of our men put up three of the large cylindrical objects they had brought on tripods. At one end, the objects had a barrel, like a rifle. At the other, something that looked like handle stuck out of it.
‘What’s that?’ I demanded, pointing to one of the objects that was sitting a few rocks away from us.
‘One of my prototypes,’ Mr Ambrose answered, curtly.
A shot rang out, and I hurriedly snatched my hand back from over the rock, staring at him in disbelief. ‘We are being shot at by blood-thirsty bandits, and you want to test some new gadget?’
‘Yes.’ He gave a signal to one of the men around the cylindrical thingamy, and the fellow grabbed the handle, directing the barrel-shaped protrusion directly at the entrance of the gorge. One final time he looked up, searching for final approval from Mr Ambrose. Mr Ambrose nodded. ‘Fire!’
The handle began to turn - and the world turned into fire.
A roar went up the like of which I had never heard before. It wasn’t an explosion. No, it was a never-ending series of explosions, battering the ears with incessant noise. Agonizing noise. I couldn’t help uttering a small cry of pain. Then, suddenly hands were covering my ears. Looking up, I gazed in Mr Ambrose hard eyes.
‘It takes some getting used to!’ he shouted over the racket. He didn’t seem to be bothered by the ear-splitting roar in the least.
My fingers trembling just a little, I pointed at the thing that was spitting bullets faster than lighting.
‘What kind of hellish machine is that?’
‘The killing kind.’
Blimey, was he right about that! Three of the things had opened fire on the entrance of the gorge now, and shots from there had halved in a few moments! Not that I could hear them over the din of the killing machines. But the muzzle flashes grew fewer and fewer by the second. Only a few more moments, and they ceased completely.
Something flashed in the corner of my eye, and my gaze darted to the left, then to the right. Ha! From both sides of the cliff, our men were slowly approaching the gorge entrance. They had to have taken a roundabout route to stay out of the line of fire, and were now sneaking up on the enemy without the bandits being any the wiser. If there were bandits left at the gorge entrance at all, that is.
The men on either side of the gorge raised their hands in what had to be a signal. Abruptly, the noise of Mr Ambrose ‘prototype’ cut off, and safe from fire, the men darted into the gorge. A few lone screams rose up into the air, then silence fell.
Letting his hands fall from my ears, Mr Ambrose stood up. ‘Forwards, men!’
Some mounted their camels again. Others, whose animals had been hit by one of the enemy’s bullets, simply ran forward, ready to hurl themselves on the ground the moment the enemy started firing again. But no shots came. We arrived at the entrance of the gorge, all unhurt and hardly out of breath. We were greeted by cheers from the men who had taken down the first line of bandits. Littered on the ground lay the bodies of their vanquished foes, the red bloodstains contrasting sharply with the white burnouses.
‘Dismount!’ Mr Ambrose called. ‘The gorge is too narrow for camels! We go on foot from here!’
He was right: the cleft in the rock was hardly wide enough for one man to walk through, let alone a camel. The bandits had chosen their hideout well. I didn’t know much about strategy, but under normal circumstances, this place would probably be as easy to defend as it would be impossible to take.
My eyes flitted to the massive prototype guns, and from them to Mr Ambrose. Circumstances, it seemed, were not normal today.
‘Youssef, know the desert mountains best.’ Mr Ambrose gestured for the Egyptian to squeeze past him. ‘You take the lead!’
‘Yes, Effendi!’
Pressed against the stone wall, rifle at the ready, Youssef started to edge down the gorge, Mr Ambrose right on his heels.
‘Sahib, wait!’ Karim called out. ‘I should go next, not you!’
‘Not this time, Karim.’ With a menacing ka-klack, Mr Ambrose reloaded his weapon. ‘I want them myself!’
And he slid into the shadows of the gorge.
Cursing in his native tongue, Karim dashed after him, and I followed suit.
“Blast and double blast that man! Does he think he’s invincible?” Gripping my rifle more tightly, I ran after my dear granite-head of an employer, my eyes firmly on his bodyguard’s back. I muttered a few more choice curses, but my efforts sounded pitiful next to Karim’s. I really had to make him teach me a few of his home-made curses! They sounded too interesting not to be sprung on London’s unsuspecting society.
Well, I could try to finagle them out of him - if we all got out of here alive.
Men pressed forward around me, sliding past me even though I ran at full speed. Whether it was because they had longer legs or were more used to moving in a burnous than I was, I didn’t know. But by the time gunfire started up ahead, I was already somewhere at the back of the line. Cursing, I redoubled my efforts to go faster, and was just about to slide past the man in front of me, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
‘Duck!’
The men didn’t react in time, and one of them went down with a bullet in his shoulder. Whirling around, I raised my rifle to a ledge, about ten feet up the side of the ravine, where a bandit had stepped out of some sort of cave entrance.
Please, God, I prayed. Please let that thing I’m about to squeeze be the trigger!
Bam!
Apparently, it was. The barrel in my hands spat fire and smoke, and the bandit twitched back, ducking his head. Then, as he realized my shot had gone wide of the mark, he rose again, grinning - and a volley of bullets from the men behind me caught him full in the chest.
‘Get up there!’ I shouted. ‘Check where that cave leads!’
‘How about this, instead?’ One of the men pulled something from his pocket. I only saw something round and shiny glint in the sun as it flew towards the cave entrance, then an explosion ripped apart the air, followed by the sound of stone crashing down. When the dust had settled, all that remained of the cave entrance was a pile of rubble.
‘That was spiffing!’ I grinned at the man who had thrown the explosive. ‘Can I have one
of those?’
‘Only if you promise me not to blow yourself up.’
‘Done!’ I lifted my rifle. ‘And can someone show me how to reload this blasted thing?’
We started down the gorge again, more careful this time about watching our backs. No ridges or openings appeared behind or above us. But after only a few minutes, the gorge started to widen, and suddenly we stepped out into a small valley with steep walls on all sides. The moment we were in the open, the noise of the fight assailed us.
‘Bloody hell!’ I sucked in a sharp breath. ‘I guess Mr Ambrose was right. There are more bandits!’
A lot more. They were swarming out of cave openings all along the opposite end of the valley. Dozens of them! Hundreds! Opposite them stood our band of fighters, which no longer seemed so insurmountably strong as when they had come storming down from the hills. From what I could see, we were evenly matched in numbers.
Without hesitation, I ducked behind a rock, laid the rifle atop, aimed, and fired. The recoil, which I had hardly noticed the first time, with a thick mass of men right behind me, now almost knocked me off my feet. But I didn’t give in! I reloaded and fired again. Not that I knew whether I actually hit someone - I was about as good a shot as Mr Ambrose was a conversationalist - but I couldn’t just sit here and do nothing!
‘Fire!’
That single word out of Mr Ambrose’s mouth was all the warning I got before the roar I had heard only once before rose up again, straight out of hell. It was just as frightening as last time - only now Mr Ambrose wasn’t here to hold me. Covering my ears, I peered past my rock, to where the three sinister guns had been set up, facing towards the entrances of the caves. The bandits in front of them were suddenly falling like flies. Those who somehow, miraculously, hadn’t been hit yet, scrambled to get back in, bashing their own comrades over the head if necessary.
Glancing from left to right, I saw several of our own men on the ground, their hands stuffed into their ears. Apparently, they hadn’t been fully prepared for Mr Ambrose’s little surprise, either.
Knowledge is power is time is money. Meaning that if I shared knowledge, that would be tantamount to sharing power or money.
I snorted, remembering his words.
‘One of these days,’ I growled, fixing my eyes on Mr Ambrose’s straight, black-clad back, ‘your boarded up mouth is going to cost you dearly!’
But then - maybe spreading the word about weapons like these wouldn’t be a good idea either.
Forcing my hands away from my ears, I hurriedly stuffed the edges of my burnous into my earholes to muffle the torturous noise. Once it was bearable, I picked up my rifle, which had fallen to the ground, and resumed firing. Not that my help appeared to be needed. There was hardly a bandit alive outside the cave anymore. When the last of them finally limped into the darkness, the roar of the guns ceased, and I dared to lower my rifle.
‘Karim!’ Mr Ambrose made a gesture to his bodyguard. ‘Most of them went into these three big caves! That one, that one, and that one!’ He pointed them each out in turn. ‘You take fifty men and one of the prototypes and go down the left one. Youssef will take the right, and I the middle! Ten men stay outside to block up all the smaller exits with explosives! If the stone turns out to be too solid, stand guard outside the exit and shoot anyone who comes out that is not me or one of my commanders!’
‘Yes, Sahib!’
‘Yes, Effendi!’
In moments, the well-trained fighters split up into three main groups. But those moments were enough for me to slide out from behind my rock and join the middle one.
‘Ready and reporting for duty, Sir!’ I said, giving a mock salute.
Mr Ambrose didn’t return it.
‘What are you doing here?’ His eyes flashed with cold lightning. ‘I told you to stay safe!’
‘And I told you I’d be coming with you!’
‘A battleground is no proper place for a lady!’
My eyes narrowed. ‘It’s not, is it?’
‘No!’
‘Well, in that case I’m definitely coming with you. I love improper places.’
Mr Ambrose’s left little finger twitched, twice, betraying a roiling thunderstorm of emotion inside his stony form.
‘Fine! Stay behind me and do as I say!’
I gave him my demurest smile. ‘Don’t I always?’
Not deeming that worthy of a reply, he turned and headed towards the cave, surrounded by dozens of men bristling with weapons. Passing the prototype gun, he saw that one of the men in charge of it had been shot and lay dead on the ground.
‘A volunteer!’ he called. ‘We need a volunteer to help carry and fire this!’
My hand shot up in the air.
‘Not you! I order someone else to volunteer!’ His glare raked the assembled men. More than a hundred hands shot up into the air immediately, and I lowered mine, pouting.
‘You there!’ He gestured at the lucky winner, and the man hurried towards his assigned post.
Motioning forward with his head, Mr Ambrose led us into the cave. Several of the men pulled out lanterns and lit them without having to be ordered. Orange light flickered on bare, craggy stone walls.
‘Use only the rifles and other guns while we’re in here,’ Mr Ambrose ordered in a low voice. ‘Not the explosives. We don’t know how secure this place is, and we don’t want it to come down on us.’
Muttered ‘Yes, Sir’s and ‘Yes, Effendi’s came from all directions. We walked through the dark until we came to a bend in the tunnel. Behind the bend, I could just make out the tunnel splitting off into two directions.
‘What now?’ one of the men whispered.
‘Give me that.’ Shoving one of the men aside, Mr Ambrose took hold of his prototype. Without setting it on the ground, he started to turn the handle. Ear-splitting thunder echoed from the cave walls, and the prototype gun spat a lance of fire into the darkness. Other than that, nothing happened. Quickly, Mr Ambrose swung the gun around to face the other tunnel, and turned the handle again. Once more, thunder split the air. But this time, it was accompanied by a shrill scream from somewhere down the dark passage.
Mr Ambrose lowered the gun, pointing in the direction from which the scream had come. ‘We go that way.’
And he started forward.
The tunnel was long and winding. Every time we reached a bend, Mr Ambrose gave a silent sign for us to stop. Then, the men with the prototype gun marched forward, held it around the corner and started firing. Almost every time we turned the corner, we came across blood-spattered corpses. After the latest such bloodbath, I turned to Mr Ambrose and whispered: ‘You say this is a prototype? Still in development?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much money do you mean to ask of the government for one of these things when it is finished?’
He gave me a cool look. ‘You don’t honestly think I’ll be selling a weapon like that to anyone, do you, let alone a government! It’s far too powerful a thing for politicians to play with!’
‘Why, Sir, you almost sound like a man with a conscience!”
‘Au contraire, Mr Linton. I sound like a man who prefers to have the biggest gun himself, instead of giving it away.’
Well, that was certainly one way of looking at it.
Shrugging, he marched over the corpses on the floor, not bothering to step around them. ‘Maybe in twenty years or so, once I have a better model for myself, I’ll find a front man and sell these somewhere where the government is not quite as inane as in Great Britain.’[29]
Finally, we reached the last bend in the tunnel.
How did I know it was the last?
I couldn’t see around it, of course. But we all could hear the bandits’ hushed, angry voices, and see the light of torches and lamps flickering on the walls. They were not far ahead, and they had nowhere else to flee to.
‘Has someone got a mirror?’ Mr Ambrose asked, his voice almost inaudible.
Nobody spoke up.
&
nbsp; ‘A mirror? Anyone?’ His gaze drifted to me.
‘Don’t look at me! Do you think that just because I’m female, I’m carrying mirrors and fans and lace handkerchiefs around with me wherever I go?’ I snapped.
‘It certainly would come in handy.’ He let his eyes wander over the rest of us. ‘Anyone?’
Finally, a cautious hand rose from the back. One of the prettier men in the company apparently did carry a hand mirror around with him wherever he went. So much for gender roles.
‘Hand it over.’ Mr Ambrose held out his hand. Taking the mirror from the reluctant dandy, he cautiously slid it around the corner of the tunnel. It barely protruded a few inches past the stone, but suddenly there was a shout, and shots rang out.
‘Idiots!’ Mr Ambrose hissed, and pulled back the mirror with a jerk. We heard a strange, harsh ping sound, followed by a scream, and curses.
‘Listen up.’ Turning towards us, Mr Ambrose fixed us with those dark eyes of his that seemed even darker and more threatening in the gloom. ‘I got a glimpse around the bend. There’s a cave there, fairly round, with all sorts of crates and bags, probably the bandits’ plunder. The bandits are scattered throughout the cave. Once we go around the bend, we can’t use guns anymore. Not the prototype, not rifles, not even revolvers. The cave is too small. The bullets will ricochet off the walls, and they might be as likely to hit any of us as our enemies.’ He jerked a thumb towards the cave, from which we still heard curses in Arabic. ‘I think the bandits found that out just now, too. So it’ll be one on one in there, close combat. Does everyone still have their blade?’
Shouldering their rifles, the men pulled scimitars, daggers and sabres. Suddenly, the light of the lamps was illuminating a forest of wickedly sharp steel.
‘Good. That’s everyone.’
I cleared my throat, meaningfully.
‘Everyone but one,’ he amended, and with a glare handed me a small knife from his belt.
‘Is that a joke?’ I looked at the tiny thing with distaste. ‘That’s not big enough to cut my toenails with!’
‘Then you must have impressive toenails. Forward!’
And he charged into the cave. Not waiting to be outdone by one of the men this time, I dashed after him. I skidded around the corner, my dagger half-raised - and ran straight into one of the bandits. And by ‘ran into him’ I don’t just mean we knocked heads. I really mean ‘ran into him’. The tip of my dagger was just about belly-high. We collided, and there was strange, wet thud, like a blade being slammed into a soft sheath.