Blood and Sand

  The light was growing, fingering its way further round the curve of the stairwell. Still no footsteps, they must be coming up for him barefooted as he was himself. Only the faintest brush and sensation of movement that had no form nor shape to it. A few moments later a shielded lantern came suddenly into view, and the arm holding it high, then the head belonging to the arm, and the bulk of shoulders climbing towards him. Thomas waited a breath of time longer, while a second head came into view, and the glint of lantern light on a knife blade, before he fired the first barrel. In the narrow space the roar of the discharge was deafening. A dark splash flowered suddenly on the wall-curve behind the second head. Before the man had time to fall, and while the roar of the first shot still seemed expanding inside his own head, Thomas aimed for the place under the leader’s raised lantern arm, and let him have it through the heart.

  The two men crashed backwards together; the stairwell was plunged in reeking darkness as the lantern went down. There was a third shot — probably the leader had been carrying a pistol ready cocked — and a dull slithering sound of falling bodies, a grunt and a startled curse.

  Two down, and, if Ali’s tally had been accurate, eight to go, said something within Thomas, quite calmly. He threw the empty weapon sideways on to the divan cushions to the right of the door, took the sabre in his right hand, drew the Somali knife with his left, and waited with jumping pulse for what was coming next. For what seemed a very long time nothing happened at all.

  They should have rushed him instantly; but thinking to take him by surprise, they had been taken by surprise themselves and they had two bodies to stumble over on the now unlit stair; and maybe Sulieman, finding him awake and ready, was now wondering whether he was alone in the armoury chambers, and if not, how many were with him.

  Silently, he swung the door wide, and took up his waiting stance a good sabre-stroke’s distance back from the doorway, feet well apart, breathing quietly and deeply. The formless, stealthy sounds of movement began again. And faintly, through the reek of blood and burned powder from the stairwell, another scent reached him; the heavy mingled sweetness of rose oil and musk. Mubarak! Probably Sulieman had brought his giant freed slave in case the door needed breaking down. But be that as it might, Mubarak was coming up at him through the pitch dark. For a moment nausea twisted in his belly, and it was all he could do to keep down the rising panic. The scent was growing stronger, cloying the back of his throat. No sound. At any time the man, for all his size, moved silently as a cat. A sense of nightmare came with him, and partly to quell it and to bring some vestige of reality, Thomas made himself consider how the creature might be armed. Probably only with a knife or his short heavy dagger, possibly only with the strength of his naked hands. Mubarak could kill a man with his hands once he came to grips with him; and that seemed the most horrifying possibility of all.

  The scent seemed to be coming at Thomas in waves. No sight nor sound, but a sense of movement, dark within dark, told him that the horror was in the doorway, right before him, stooping to enter under the lintel that was too low for him, hands reaching out ahead …

  He caught the faint animal sound of the other’s breathing and with all his strength he launched a backhand cut at the place where he judged the great bull throat to be.

  Two distinct impacts jarred his wrist, one following almost instantaneously upon the other, maybe the first caused by the blade’s meeting with an up flung arm, certainly the second was its meeting with the Nubian’s neck, though with something of the force spent. He heard a guttural choke, but Mubarak did not go down; he was staggering forward, his silence gone from him. His knife rang on the floor as it fell from what must have been an almost severed hand and next instant Thomas felt the sabre clutched by the blade and wrenched from his grasp.

  That left the Somali knife in his left hand. He took a half step forward and drove it in and up under the unseen rib cage, then sprang back.

  To his horror he realised that with two, maybe three killer wounds on him the man was still coming on. He heard the slurred stumbling of the bare feet, the breath bubbling and rasping. The reek of blood and rose oil seemed all about him. For one hideous moment his imagination showed him the gigantic Nubian plunging forward with no head on his shoulders, or worse, a head hanging sideways from a neck three parts hacked through, enormous hand outstretched for his throat; dead but not able to fall …

  He was back to the table now; he side stepped clear of the corner, and his hand found the waiting hilt of his broadsword.

  The stumbling footsteps and bubbling, retching breaths were the only sounds in the world. He spared no thought for the men below on the stair who must surely rush him at any moment — he could not afford to unfocus his whole awareness from the immediate horror before him — but at the feel of the familiar sword hilt in his hand the sense of nightmare was leaving him, giving place to something else, something that came of his highland grandmother, the surge of fiery confidence, the smell of blood in the back of his nose, the faint red mist of battle. He brought the heavy weapon up over his shoulder, then crashing down in a savage cut aimed at the place where that terrible breathing told him that Mubarak’s head must be. He felt the blow land true, splitting the other’s thick skull. He dropped then like a poled ox, and the agonised attempt at breathing stopped on a kind of snore.

  Thomas stood an instant leaning against the table, trying to steady his own sobbing breath. The men on the stairs must have heard that floundering fall. Feeling for Mubarak’s body with his foot, he moved back to the doorway, thrusting the juicy knife back into his waist-shawl as he did so and laying his sword beside the threshold. Then, imitating Mubarak’s deep guttural tones as well as he could, he called, “Come, it is done!”

  There was an answering shout, and light flickered again on the curved stairwell; they must have managed to rekindle the lantern. All to the good, that would give him shooting-light for a couple more of his assailants. He slipped into the doorway, the first of his duelling pistols ready, as they came surging up. There was a moment’s check while they negotiated the two bodies, then they came jostling their way up, one man ahead of the lantern, his shadow leaping black on the curve of the wall. Thomas dropped him in his tracks, slammed the pistol back into his cummerbund and with its fellow, shot the man behind the lantern bearer as his head came round the stone newel. Five down and five to go, said something in the back of his head, coolly keeping the tally. The broadsword was in his hand again and springing forward to the stair-head he cut down the man with the lantern before he had a chance to use his own sabre. Again the stairway was plunged into darkness. Well, his fire-power was finished and he had no further use for shooting light. From below him in the darkness came sounds of chaos, as of men stumbling over one another, men on the edge of flight. Someone was shouting to them to stand; he thought it was Sulieman, but the authority in the voice had an edge of desperation.

  Time to go over to the offensive.

  Sword in hand, Thomas took to the stairs, climbing over fallen bodies and feeling for fallen weapons with his feet, which found also the slipperiness of blood and filth on every step. The turnpike was a shambles. At the last turn of the stair he checked. He was still hidden in the blackness of the stairwell, but below him was a trace of milky light, and he could make out figures silhouetted against the doorway and the moon-washed courtyard beyond. The man nearest to the doorway, standing actually on the fringe of the moonlight, had something that looked very like a musket in his hand. Allah: What a bobbery pack Sulieman had collected against him! He must be dealt with first. Thomas drew the Somali knife once more. He was no knife-thrower, but it was not a kill he was after, not in the first instance. He swung the blade-tip between finger and thumb and threw left-handed. The knife arched, spinning over the heads of the men below, and caught its target, only a glancing blow on the cheekbone, but enough to serve the purpose. The man jerked, and the musket — Thomas, who knew the habits of the Mamelukes, if they could be persuaded to use f
irearms at all, had counted on it being already cocked — went off, the ball burying itself harmlessly in the woodwork overhead.

  He hurled himself down the last curve of the stair upon the huddle of men below. The musketeer, seeing him coming, flung up the empty and still smoking gun in a desperate attempt to shield his head. Thomas changed his cut from left to right, and slashed in under his guard. Seven down and three to go, said the thing that was keeping tally in the back of his head.

  But from the remaining dark blot of men, two had in that moment sprung back and were gone through the doorway in full flight. One remained, standing his ground and blocking the doorway. The moon flickered on the blade of his sword and the backwash of moonlight on the side of his face showed Thomas that he was not Sulieman, who must have been one of the two who had fled, but ibn Ishak, a fellow officer, standing now to cover his retreat, a better friend that he deserved, Thomas thought, manoeuvring for a better position.

  He had never crossed blades even on the training ground with this particular man, but he knew that he was by reputation a fine swordsman though not such a one as Aziz had been, and furthermore he must be comparatively fresh.

  Thomas realised that the thing might still go against him after all. But, in fact, the fight went his way almost from the start and once he had forced his opponent on to the defensive, was soon over.

  Once the Mameluke’s blade sliced through his sleeve and he felt the warm trickle of blood from a shallow gash just below his shoulder. The end came when ibn Ishak stumbled over the body of the dead musketeer; for an instant before he could recover himself his guard flew wide, and in that instant Thomas thrust home. The Mameluke officer staggered back with wide-flung arms, and dropped without a sound.

  Thomas looked about him for the next comer, then remembered that there were no more to come.

  The moonlight showed the old armoury chamber still and empty of all life except his own and for the moment he did not feel too sure about that. He turned to the musketeer lying grotesquely sprawled in the backwash of the moon, and checked that he was dead indeed, then heaved his body clear of the door, urged it shut and relocked it. He did not think that the two who had fled into the night would be coming back; but better to make sure. Black darkness instantly swallowed the scene. He remained a few moments gasping for breath and leaning against the doorpost until the darkness stopped swimming round him, then groped his way like a blind man up the fouled and corpse-clotted stair back to his own chamber, stumbling over Mubarak’s body as he entered. He found the tinder box and relit the candles with hands that, now the danger was spent, had begun to shake like a sick old man’s. His room stank of blood and ordure mingled with rose oil and musk, but it was not until he had the candlelight by which to see the hacked and mutilated body of the huge Nubian grinning up at him with his head half split in two, that the wave of cold nausea came upon him and he vomited his heart up to add to the general mess of his quarters that in the last few minutes — it could be no more — had become an obscene and stinking slaughterhouse.

  Afterwards he washed his face and hands and rinsed his mouth out with cold water from the jug in his sleeping chamber, and with the same water did his best to bathe the wound in his upper arm and staunch the bleeding. He tore a strip from one of his sheets and lashed it tightly about his arm, knotting it off with the help of his teeth. He pulled on a pair of soft leather boots and flung on the old rough burnous over his hideously blotched and dabbled garments. He had no desire to walk through the moonlit streets looking like some spectre of war and massacre. He wiped the great broadsword hurriedly free of blood — a proper cleaning must wait — slammed it back into its sheath and belted it on. Two of the would-be murderers were still at large, and he had no time to spare for reloading his pistols. Then he made his way down the clotted mess of the turnpike stair and out into the clean coolness of the moon-washed night, heading for the citadel.

  The guards on the main gate stopped him in the nature of things, but they knew him well, though he did look a bit strange — maybe spent a night on the town and got into a fight, as one of them remarked to a comrade afterwards — and on his explanation that he had urgent business with Tussun Bey, let him through without trouble, shrugging between themselves at the hours kept by princelings and their boon companions.

  The guard on Tussun’s private apartments seemed in two minds; clearly they had an idea that something was wrong, but were not at all sure what, and in their moment of uncertainty, Thomas walked straight through them, brushing them as it were from his path with the spreading of his burnous.

  Reaction from the night’s work had begun to set in, he had lost a fair amount of blood, and a faintly dreamlike sensation was coming over him. In the dream he saw various familiar faces, for Tussun’s household seemed to be still up and wakeful; concerned and startled faces of people half trying to stand in his way. It seemed to him that the whole night had gone through and it must be the edge of dawn, but he realised suddenly that it was probably no more than two in the morning, a time at which he and Tussun had often enough been abroad together.

  He turned to the main door through which he could hear muffled and extremely painful sounds of grief. “Tussun Bey?” he asked one of the faces.

  “In his sleeping chamber — not to be disturbed —”

  Thomas thrust the door wide and stood on the threshold.

  The lamp in its niche cast faint arabesques of light over the chamber, over the grey-bearded figure of Tussun’s orderly and personal bodyguard standing just within, over Ali huddled against the divan on which Tussun lay face down with his head in his arms, sobbing his heart out.

  All the way from the shambles of the armoury, Thomas had known quite clearly what he was going to say when he came into Tussun’s presence: “What in the name of Shaitan do you mean by setting that pack of cut-throats on to me?” But now, standing in the doorway, he was suddenly too tired, the flaming rage that would have flung the words in his friend’s face sunk within him to a grey ash of weariness.

  Standing in the doorway, he said, “Tussun.”

  The boy on the bed seemed too deep-sunk in his grief to hear and the desperate gasping sobs went on unabated.

  “Tussun,” Thomas said again, and this time the voice speaking his name seemed to reach him in his depths. The sobbing ceased on a choking breath, and Tussun’s whole body went rigid.

  There was a long moment’s silence. The old orderly moved aside, as though realising that no defence was needed against the tall man whose clothes showed blood-stained where his hurriedly flung-on burnous had fallen open. Ali scuttled aside from the bed into his usual shadows.

  “Tussun,” Thomas said a third time. “It is me.”

  Slowly the rigid figure shuddered into movement, rolled over and came to one elbow, revealing a face blotched like a child’s with weeping, but haggard and tormented as a grown man’s who had just killed his brother. He was not even very drunk anymore; probably the shock of realisation had sobered him.

  There was incredulity on the young face, and for an instant stark fear. “Tho’mas!” It was a shaking whisper. “You’re — you are not dead?”

  And Thomas realised that for that moment Tussun had half thought that he was looking at a blood-stained and avenging ghost. But even so he had made no attempt to thrust him away. Somewhere deep in the fog of his own torn and weary emotions the Scotsman was glad of that …

  “I am not dead,” he agreed.

  “But Sulieman —”

  “Nor Sulieman. He and one other escaped, out of the ten who came against me.”

  Tussun was slowly swinging his legs over the edge of the low divan, and getting to his feet.

  “Why in Allah’s name did you send him and his cut-throats against me in the night?” Thomas asked, but not in the voice in which he had heard it in his mind, all the way from the armoury.

  “They said —” Sulieman said, “that you —”

  “I —” Thomas began. He had been going to say
, “I know what Sulieman said”, but a faint movement drew his gaze aside for an instant to meet the terrified and beseeching stare of the page Ali. “I can guess what Sulieman said. Could you not have trusted me? Not even long enough to ask me the truth of his story?”

  “It is not true?”

  “Of course it’s no’ true ye daft callant!” Thomas relapsed into the speech of his own people: then, hearing himself, translated. “It is not true. On the sacred name of Allah the All Compassionate, I swear it.”

  “I will kill Sulieman,” Tussun said between shut teeth, and rubbed his face and nose with the back of his hand.

  “I doubt if he is still to be found in Cairo.”

  “I am sorry! Tho’mas, I am so sorry —”

  There was a startled silence from the onlookers. Tussun had never been known to apologise to anybody for anything before.

  “So am I.”

  “Forgive me — you shall forgive me!” It started as a plea and ended as a kind of desperate demand.

  That sounded more like Tussun.

  He started forward, arms held out. Thomas was not aware of taking a great stride himself in the same instant. He only knew that they had come together in the middle of the room, that they had their arms round each other. “Brother — my brother —”

  Staring over the top of the other’s tousled russet head that was butting hot and damp into the hollow of his shoulder, Thomas was suddenly understanding his real reason for staying to fight his crazy Border Ballad battle; that if he survived, by the very enormity of the thing Tussun had done, all debts and inequalities must be cancelled; the small unhappy constraint that he had felt like a shadow between them ever since Tussun had bought him from Ahmed Agha all washed away. If he lived, the slate would be wiped clean, and if he died, it would no longer matter.