“I do not care that it should be easy,” she said, “so that it brings your child safe into the world.”
“It seems to me a great and wonderful thing that I shall have a child of your bearing. But, remember, you matter more with me than ever a child could do.” A few moments later, as he loosed his arms, she stood back from him, panting a little.
“Go now,” she said.
“Anoud, do you know how much I love you?”
“I know,” she said, “Oh my Lord I know — greet Tussun for me when you meet.”
He caught her into his arms again for one more awkward kiss, then almost thrust her away, and turned to the door.
Below in the courtyard his mare stood waiting in charge of a groom. He mounted and gathered up the rein.
At the last instant, in the outer gateway, something made him turn in the saddle and look back.
A woman had come out to the head of the steps that led from the harem court. Anoud had flung on her dish-dasha and pulled her veil across her face, and so was as anonymous as any other Arab woman outside the protective privacy of the women’s quarters. But the same knowledge-of-the-heart that had once shown him Tussun beyond the gates of Mecca in the dusk, told him that Anoud had covered herself, and come running, as a girl of his own people might have done. It was the first time she had ever done such a thing; the love within him twisted in his belly, and sharply, piercingly, as he had not allowed himself to do while he held her in his arms, he wondered when — if — he should hold her again.
He flung up his hand to her in a wide, sweeping gesture of farewell, then turned his mare and heeled her from a stand into a canter, out through the gate and away towards the citadel and his waiting squadrons.
33
Sitting in the mouth of his small and sparsely equipped tent, his morning coffee untasted on the rug beside him, Tussun watched the sky brighten in the east beyond the palm trees, watched the activity of the camp growing out of the fading darkness: half his infantry taking up their positions behind the shallow breastwork, while the other half, morning prayer being over, set about their own morning meal; horses being watered, ammunition issued. He smelled the familiar acrid smoke of dung fires, heard the usual bubbling snarl from the camel-lines, and tried to force his thoughts out of the aching confusion in his head into some kind of order.
He was still convinced that the sheikhs of the Kassim would have risen to him if there had been time, but that lightning march of ibn Saud’s had altered their minds for them. The sons of bitches had refused to join him, and thereby left him trapped between the strong and well-manned walls of El Rass and an approaching Wahabi war host.
Could he have pulled out, then? No; the lesson of Tarraba had taught him that. It would be suicidal madness to start a retreat across three hundred miles of mountain and desert in the face of a vastly superior enemy force. There had been nothing he could do but hold on where he was, and send an urgent call to Thomas for reinforcements.
As long as the Ottoman troops were the besiegers, they could use all the oases to pasture their own camels and the thousand captured beasts, but the arrival of ibn Saud three days since had turned them from besiegers to besieged, outnumbered by more than four to one, and he had been forced to pull in his outlying posts and concentrate his troops and animals in two oases to the south-west of the town and on the ridge that linked them. It was a reasonably good position against most things but famine — which the Wahabis, sitting on their haunches like waiting vultures across miles of surrounding desert, knew perfectly well. The wells in both oases were good and he had food for his men and horses for some days yet; but he would have known himself even if his camel men had not told it to him, that in two days he was going to have to choose between losing most of the camels and trying to cut his way out. There was always of course the possibility that he might be able to exchange a thousand of the camels for extra supplies for the rest under the flag of truce. Abdullah must badly want the camels (he had only one camel between every two musketeers at the moment, if the scouts spoke truth) and would not wish to see them dying by hundreds in his enemy’s camp. It was just possible.
It all depended on Thomas really, as so much generally seemed to depend on Thomas, on how soon he could arrive with the relief force — always supposing that Jusef or at any rate one of his escort, had got through. It could not be for another twenty-four hours yet, at the most wildly optimistic, even if he was making a forced march with the cavalry regiments and no infantry …
The orderly who had come out from the tent to take the wasted coffee was pointing and shouting. The rim of the sun had broken clear of the great dunes eastwards, and light and colour was spilling down the curved slopes; away to the right two horsemen were coming at full gallop down the scarp, their sand cloud trailing behind them. Beni Ali scouts of the all-night patrol. The camp was not completely surrounded by the Wahabis, and they were still able to send out the night patrols, though there was always a strong risk of running into the enemy cavalry screens. Tussun got up and strode to meet them, followed by the two young officers whose duty was to be always at his heels.
The men brought their horses to a plunging halt, already shouting as they dropped from the saddle. “It is the Wahabis. Something afoot, oh Tussun Pasha: nearly half of Ibn Saud’s war host has ridden out before dawn!”
Tussun swung round on his young attendants, bidding one to summon the senior officers, the other to fetch his horse. Then he turned his attention to the scouts and their report.
It came breathlessly, but clear enough. About an hour before dawn and some six miles to the north-west, the two had dismounted to lead their horses down a ridge too steep to be negotiated on horseback without a dangerous amount of noise, when they had become aware of the sounds of a considerable body of cavalry advancing up the stony bed of the Wadi just below them. “We hid behind a boulder, quieting the horses as best we could and waited. They were so close below us that even in the starlight we could see their black cloaks, and from time to time when one spoke, we could make out the accent of the Najd.”
The column of horsemen had seemed unending, “as many as the stars in the Milky Way”, but it was followed by an even longer column of camel-mounted infantry; and, afraid that dawn would find them still pinned down on the slope, they had taken advantage of the sounds of the camels passing to get back to the top of the ridge and secure their horses on the far side. Then they had lain up in some thorn scrub that broke the skyline and watched until the last of the Wahabi force had passed, just at dawn.
“And this force? How many in horse and foot?” (“As many as the stars in the Milky Way” seemed a rather loose estimate.)
“More than a thousand cavalry, somewhere between two and three thousand camel men,” said the scout who had been doing most of the talking.
Tussun thanked them — with irregular troops one must always remember the courtesies — and dismissed them to food and rest. The officers he had sent for had come up by now, mounted, and one of them leading his horse. He swung into the saddle and rode up to the crest of the ridge, giving them a condensed version of the scouts’ report as they rode. From the high ground he could see the walls of El Rass crowded with men, so also the fringes of the Saudi encampment, while on the level ground below the walls, cavalry were manoeuvring in full view. “Does it seem to you,” he said to the men around him, “that yonder are a few men trying to look like as many as were there last night?”
But he was speaking his thoughts aloud, to himself as much as to them … “It must be Tho’mas — the Amir Ibrahim. Their scouts have brought word of his coming, and Abdullah is away to intercept him. But when and where? They must be at least a full day and night’s march away. Well, he shall fight us as well.”
He spoke to the senior infantry officer beside him, but the words were for all those listening. “Barak, concentrate all but one company of foot on the northern oasis, and strengthen the breastworks — but not too obviously. Make sure the companies remain
ing in the southern oasis understand that they are not being sacrificed; if their position is attacked in strength they are to abandon the camels and retire to join the rest.” He hesitated, thankful that at least his brain seemed to be working again. “The northern oasis you will defend to the last.” He turned to another officer: “Jacoba, concentrate all the cavalry save for a hundred Turkish troopers under Jemal, among the trees at the north-west corner down there. They are to carry food and water for two days, maximum powder and ball for those with carbines. The second Turkish squadron will remain on the ridge to give support to infantry.” With the Beni Jehaine commander he remembered the courtesies again: “Ibn Salam, may I ask you to join forces with Jacoba, your men to form our right flank when we break out to follow the Wahabi column.”
“I am your servant and your brother, I hear and obey.”
Tussun turned again to the cavalry commander: “Jacoba, place my personal squadron in the van, the Egyptian cavalry on the left, the Jehaine on the right and the Turks in the centre rear; the whole force in a loose wedge shape.” He touched the other’s shoulder. “Go now and give the orders.”
Doubt suddenly struck at him again. A few moments ago he had felt in clear-headed command of the situation; but now he was wondering — Had he been over impetuous and issued his orders hours too early? He turned to Banda, the leader of the Beni Ali: “At what time should we march out in order to overtake the rear of the Wahabi column by say two hours past midnight?”
But instead of answering, the tribesman asked a question in return, gentling his fidgeting mare as he did so. “Are you so sure that the Wahabis will meet the Amir Ibrahim at two hours past midnight and not at today’s sunset?”
“But —” Tussun felt as though he had taken a blow beneath the ribs. “Even if they march through the heat of the day, could they be as near to us as that, by sunset?”
“It is possible,” the man said. “Just possible. But only if he has ridden ahead with a small body of picked horsemen and enough spare mounts.”
Tussun looked at him in consternation, taking in the implication of this. Horrible doubts crowded in on him. If he advanced too soon, and came up with the Wahabis with Thomas still far away, the Black Brotherhood would destroy him, then turn back to Thomas at their leisure; if he advanced too late, they would destroy Thomas and his small force before he, Tussun, could come up with them …
“Banda —”he began. But in the event, the decision never had to be made; for at that instant one of the Beni Ali turned, cocking his head to the north wind.
“What is it?”
“Quiet — Keep that mare still!”
For a long moment the listening stillness took them. Fortunately they were well above and slightly upwind of the ordered stir from the camps.
It seemed to Tussun that the silence was thick in his ears like wool, as he strained to hear through it, his eyes fixed on the tribesman’s face.
Then the man let go his breath, gently, through widened nostrils. “Bugles,” he said, “a cavalry call.”
A few moments later it seemed to Tussun that he caught something himself. Something on the edge of sound … “They’re sounding the charge,” the Jehaine officer said. “There it is again — And again —”
“That is from the Wadi el Aas,” Banda said. “With the wind in this quarter.”
“In Allah’s name where is that?” Tussun asked with a dry throat.
“Only two miles beyond where the Wahabis were sighted two hours ago.”
Tussun gathered his reins. “Banda, leave two of your men with the Turkish cavalry. They are slower, and may lose touch without guides. Ride with me as my guide.” He turned to his bugler, who had come up with the officers: “Sound ‘Saddle up’ then ‘Assembly’ for one minute, then sound ‘Mount horses’, and keep on sounding it.”
He drove his heel into his mare’s flank, and plunged away down the slope followed by the others like a skein of wild geese, the bugles sounding for the assembly as he rode.
The cavalry had been drawing ammunition, but hearing the bugle and seeing their commander racing back down the ridge, they made for their horses.
Tussun, on his way to take his place with his personal squadron at the head of the rough arrowhead that was soon forming, reined in for a panting moment beside the Turkish commander. “Follow me with all the speed you can make for the Wadi el Aas — take the Beni Ali guides with you. We shall not wait for you; if we are already engaged when you come up with us try to form on our left flank and provide a rear-guard.”
He wrenched his mare’s head round and made for the head of the formation. There was no time to speak to the groups who were being left to hold the camp, but no need either; word that a relief force was on the way would be racing around the oases like quick-fire, to put heart into all who heard it and did not know how desperately small it almost certainly was.
He brought the mare dancing and fidgeting into her appointed place. Behind him, as he looked back over his shoulder, the cavalry had a rough-disciplined and formidable look, their morale suddenly high at the prospect of action after the long, dull, heart-draining days. He lifted up his voice to them: “We go to meet our brothers who follow the Amir Ibrahim and to crush the heretics between us” —as though he cared about all the heretics in the world. We go to save Tho’mas! There was no time for more. “Sound the ‘Advance’,” he ordered the bugler beside him. The call crowed through the morning air.
The head of the column swung forward, rank after rank behind him. The black and gold of his personal standard lifted and spread on the wind of their going. They broke from a trot to a canter, then as the bugle sounded again, into full gallop.
The speed of their movements had taken the screen of Wahabi horsemen by surprise. Some knots fell aside from their path, others tried to bar their way to the hills, and were ridden over or hurled back. Tussun’s bugles were still sounding the charge. “Tho’mas! Tho’mas I am coming. Hear me! I come!”
But the wind blew the calls back towards the south.
34
The sun was not yet over the skyline, but the eastern sky was brightening behind the dark etching of thorn scrub that clothed the dunes, and in the morning twilight colour was already seeping back into the world. Thomas and his two squadrons had left the high hills behind them, and since the stop for morning prayer they had been pushing on through low sand-hills. It was strange territory, for the winter thrust northward had never brought them so near to El Rass, which according to the scouts was less than an hour’s ride away. So near, and yet …
Thomas, riding at the head of his little column, flanked by his bugler and his standard bearer, was remembering the far-off outline of a horseman pricked against the sinking moon, that they had glimpsed from last night’s camp. Maybe it was no more than a wandering Bedouin. Maybe it was not even that; the scouts had found nothing; maybe they had simply begun to see things, catching the vision from each other, as one could do sometimes after hard riding in the desert. And certainly the past days and nights had been hard enough … They had taken on an odd dreamlike quality now in Thomas’s mind, and a fevered dream at that, of struggling desperately for speed through precipitous mountain ways and over loose slipping sand, of heat and flies and exhaustion; but they had made it, and in reasonable fighting trim. And to Thomas the sudden silver spray of birdsong from among the oleanders of the dried-up wadi bed to their left seemed to answer to something spent but triumphant within himself. “Hold, Tussun my brother. Hold fast, I come, I come.”
But the scouts and the small advanced guard were falling back in a hurry over the low sand-ridge ahead.
He shouted the order to halt, his voice jarring on the morning silence of the desert, and rode forward, followed by Daud and Jassim Khan.
At the foot of the slope he came together with Nassyr el Badr. The tribesman reined his horse back on its haunches, hooves driving deep into the sand. “Many hundred of Wahabi horsemen at the far end of the plain yonder! Less than a mile ah
ead — many more horse and camel men coming down from the higher ground on three sides —”
The scouts had come up; one of them nodded, “At least a thousand cavalry and as many camel men, more coming up.”
“No chance to fall back,” another put in. “They have scouts on the ridges.”
No mere wandering Bedouin, then. For a moment the breath tightened in Thomas’s throat. He let it go again, carefully. “Is there any other route that we can take to get by them unseen?”
The rim of the sun was blipping up over the rim of the eastern dunes, and already the shadows of men and horses lay long over the sloping sand.
“No,” Nassyr was quite certain. “The only other possible track is three times longer, through the foothills, and they could block it long before we made El Rass.”
“The plain ahead, then, is it wider than this? How is the surface for horses at speed?”
“Much wider, and firmer ground.”
“So, then, the first thing would seem to be to gain it.”
Thomas sent off his orders to call in the flank and rear-guards and form them up in their own troops, then turned to his bugler. “Sound the ‘Advance’, Daud, and keep on sounding it. The wind is from the north-west, and if Allah wills it, the sound may reach Tussun Pasha.”
They burst over the low ridge and down into the plain beyond. Praise be to Allah, it ran south and they would not have to fight with the rising sun in their eyes. Nor would the enemy. There, less than a mile ahead, in a wig horseshoe arc, the Wahabi force was already advancing. Well over a thousand horsemen by now, and behind them twice as many camel-mounted infantry, and even as Thomas looked, narrowing his gaze into the growing light, hundreds more camel men were swarming in over the slopes to east and west, lengthening the arms of the horseshoe.