The Triumph Of The Sun

“Naturally, sir.”

“There is one message for General Gordon, and another for David Benbrook, the British consul. The messages are not to be confused. It may seem to you that they are contradictory, but pray do not let that trouble you.”

“Yes, sir.” Penrod divined that Baring trusted Benbrook well enough because he lacked brilliance. Just as he trusted Chinese Gordon not at all because of his brilliance.

“This is what you are to convey to them.” Baring spoke for half an hour without consulting any slip of paper, barely pausing to draw breath. “Have you got that, Ballantyne?”

“I have, sir.”

One of the fellow’s assets is his appearance, Baring thought. No one can readily believe that behind those whiskers and those wonderfully pleasing features is a mind that can assimilate such a lengthy, complicated message at the first recital, then deliver it accurately a month later. “Very well,” he said flatly. “But you must impress on General Gordon that Her Majesty’s Government has no intention whatsoever of reconquering the Sudan. The British Army now making its way up the Nile is in no way an expeditionary force. It is not an army of reoccupation. It is a rescue column of minimal strength. The objective of the desert column is to insert a small body of regular first-line troops into Khartoum to bolster the de fences of the city long enough for us to evacuate all our people. Once this has been achieved we intend to abandon the city to the Dervish and come away.”

“I understand, sir.”

“As soon as you have delivered your messages to Benbrook and Gordon you are to return northwards and join Stewart’s relief column. You will act as guide, lead him across the bight of the Nile to where Gordon’s own steamers are waiting at Metemma to take them upriver. You will attempt to keep in contact with me. The usual codes, mind.”

“Of course, Sir Evelyn.”

“Very well, then. Major Adams of General Wolseley’s staff is waiting for you on the second floor. I understand that you are acquainted with him.”

“I am, sir.” Of course Baring knew that Penrod had won his VC by rescuing Samuel Adams from the bloody battlefield of El Obeid.

“Adams will give you a more detailed briefing, and provide you with the passes and requisitions you will need. You can catch the Cook’s steamer this evening and be in Assouan by Tuesday noon. From there you are on your own. How long to Khartoum, Ballantyne? You have made the journey many times before.”

“It depends on conditions in the Desert of the Mother of Stones. If the wells are holding I can cut the great S-bend of the river and reach Khartoum in twenty-one days, sir,” Penrod answered crisply. “Twenty-six at the outside.”

Baring nodded. “Make it twenty rather than twenty-six. Let yourself out.” Baring dismissed him, without offering to shake hands. He was lost in his despatches again before Penrod reached the door. It was not important to Baring that people liked him. Only that they did their job.

Colonel Sam Adams was delighted to see Penrod again. He was walking with only a single stick now. “The sawbones tells me I’ll be playing polo again by Christmas.” Neither mentioned the long ride back from the battlefield of El Obeid. All that needed to be said on that subject had been said long ago, but Adams glanced admiringly at the bronze cross on Penrod’s chest.

Penrod composed a cipher telegraph to the intelligence officer with the vanguard of the Desert Column that was assembling at Wadi Haifa eight hundred miles up the Nile. Adams’s adjutant took it to the telegraphist on the ground floor and returned with the confirmation that it had been sent and received. Then Colonel Adams invited Penrod to lunch at Shephard’s Hotel, but Penrod begged a prior engagement. As soon as he had his travel papers he left. A groom had his charger at the gate and it was less than half an hour’s ride along the riverbank to the Gheziera Club.

Lady Agatha was waiting for him on the Ladies’ Veranda. She was just twenty and the youngest daughter of a duke. Viscount Wolseley, the commander-in-chief of the British Army in Egypt, was her godfather. She had an income of twenty thousand a year. Added to this, she was blonde, petite and exquisite, but an enormous handful for any man.

“I would rather have the French clap than Lady Agatha,” Penrod had recently overheard a wag remark at the Shephard’s bar, and had been undecided whether to laugh or call the fellow outside. In the end he had bought him a drink.

“You are late, Penrod.” She was reclining in a cane chair and pouted as he came up the steps from the garden. He kissed her hand, then glanced at the clock over the garden entrance to the dining room. She saw the gesture. “Ten minutes can be an eternity.”

“Duty, I am afraid, my lovely. Queen and country.”

“How utterly boring. Get me a glass of champagne.” Penrod looked up, and a waiter in a long white galabiyya and tasselled fez appeared as miraculously as a genie from the lamp.

When the wine came, Agatha sipped it. “Grace Everington is getting married on Saturday,” she said.

“A mite sudden?”

“No, actually, just in time. Before it begins to show.”

“I hope she enjoyed the chase.”

“She tells me no, not at all, but her father is being beastly and says she must go through with it. Family honour. It is to be quiet and discreet, of course, but I have an invitation for you. You may escort me. It might be fun to watch her making an ass of herself, and of him.”

“I am sorry to say it but by then I shall be far away.”

Agatha sat up straight. “Oh, God! No! Not again. Not so soon.”

Penrod shrugged. “I was given no choice.”

“When are you leaving?”

“In three hours’ time.”

“Where are they sending you?”

“You know better than to ask.”

“You can’t go, Pen. The reception at the Austrian embassy is tomorrow evening. I have a new dress.” He shrugged again. “When will you come back?”

“That is blowing in the wind.”

“Three hours,” she said, and stood up. The movement attracted the gaze of every man on the veranda. “Come!” she commanded.

“Lunch?” he asked.

“I think not.” Her family kept a permanent suite at Shepheard’s, and Penrod rode beside her open gharry. As the door to the suite closed she pounced on him, like a kitten on a ball of wool, lithe, playful and earnest all at once. He picked her up easily and carried her through to the bedroom.

“Be quick!” she ordered. “But not too quick.”

“I am an officer of the Queen, and an order is an order.”

Later, she watched him as he dressed again while she lay stretched full length, languid and replete, inviting his appraisal. “You won’t find better than this, Penrod Ballantyne.” She cupped her hands under her breasts. They were pale and large in comparison to her girlish waist. She squeezed out her nipples, and he paused to watch her. “You see? You do like it. When will you marry me?”

“Ah! May we apply ourselves to that question at some later date?”

“You are an utter beast.” She combed her fingers through the mist of strawberry curls at the base of her belly. “Should I pluck myself here? The Arab girls do.”

“Your information on that subject is probably more accurate than mine.”

“I heard that you like Arab girls.”

“Sometimes you are amusing, Lady Agatha. At other times you are not. Sometimes you behave like a lady, and at others not at all.” He slung his dolman over his shoulder and adjusted the chain as he turned to the door.

She flew off the bed like a wounded leopard, and he only just had time to turn and defend himself. She went for his eyes with her sharp,

pearly talons. But he seized her wrists. She tried to bite his face, small white teeth clicking together an inch from his nose. He bent her backwards so she could not reach. She kneed at his groin, but he caught the blow on his thigh and turned her round. She was helpless in the circle of his arms with her back to his chest. She pressed her firm round buttocks into him, felt him swelling and hardening, and gave a breathless but triumphant little laugh. She stopped struggling, sank to her knees and lifted high the twin half-moons of her buttocks. She wriggled her thighs apart so that the nest of pink curls peeked out between them. “I hate you!” she said.

He dropped down behind her, still booted and spurred, his sabre belted at his side. He ripped open the front of his breeches, and she screamed involuntarily as he transfixed her. When he stood up again she collapsed and lay panting at his feet. “How do you always know what I want you to do? How do you always know what to say, and when to say it? That terrible name you called me a moment ago was like chilli powder on a sweet mango it took my breath away. How do you know these things?”

“Some might call it genius, but I am too modest to agree.”

She looked up at him. Her hair was tangled and her cheeks were flushed rosily. “Call me that again.”

“No matter how richly you deserve it, once is enough for now.” He went to the door.

“When will you come back?”

“Perhaps soon, perhaps never.”

“You beast. I hate you. I truly hate you.” But he was gone.

Three days later Penrod stepped off the fast steamer at the Assouan jetty. He was wearing tropical khaki uniform without decorations or regimentals. He had exchanged the busby for a pith helmet with a wide brim. There were at least another fifty soldiers and officers within sight who were dressed almost identically, so he excited no attention. A ragged porter in a filthy turban seized his kit-bag and ran ahead of him into the maze of streets of the old town. Striding out on long legs Penrod kept him in sight.

When they reached the gate in a nondescript mud wall at the end of the narrow, twisted alley, Penrod tossed the porter a pi astre and retrieved his bag. He tugged the bell cord and listened to the familiar chimes. After a while there were footsteps beyond the gate, soft and faltering, and a voice quavered, “Who is it that calls? There is nothing here for we are poor widows and deserted by God.”

“Open this gate, you houri of Paradise,” Penrod replied, ‘and swiftly, before I kick it down.”

There was a moment’s stunned silence, broken at last by a wild cackle of laughter and a fumbling at the bolts. Then they were shot back and the gate creaked open. An ancient head, like a turtle’s but partly covered with a widow’s veil peered round the jamb. The gaping grin exposed two crooked teeth widely separated by an expanse of pink gum. “Effendi!” The old woman squealed, and her entire face puckered with wrinkles. “Lord of a thousand virtues.”

Penrod embraced her.

“You are shameless,” she protested with delight. “You threaten my virtue.”

“I am fifty years too late to pluck that fruit.” He let her go. “Where is your mistress?”

Old Liala glanced significantly across the courtyard. In the centre of the garden a fountain splashed into a pool in which Nile perch circled tranquilly. Around its border stood statues of the pharaohs: Seti, Thutmose and great Rameses, lifted from their tombs by grave-robbers back in the mists of time. It never failed to amaze him that such treasures were displayed in so humble a setting.

Penrod strode across the courtyard. His heart beat faster. He had not realized until that moment how much he had been looking forward to seeing her again. When he reached the beaded curtain that covered the doorway he paused to regain his composure, then jerked it aside and stepped through. At first she was merely a dim, ethereal presence, but then his eyes adjusted and her shape emerged from the cool gloom. She was slim as a lily stem, but her robe was shot with gold thread, and there was gold at her wrists and ankles. As she came towards him, her bare henna-painted feet made no sound on the tiles. She stopped in front of him and made obeisance, touching her fingertips to her lips and her heart.

“Master!” she whispered. “Master of my heart.” Then she hung her head and waited in silence.

He lifted the veil and studied her face. “You are beautiful, Bakhita,” he told her, and the smile that blossomed over her features enhanced that beauty a hundredfold. She lifted her chin and looked at him, and her eyes glowed so that they seemed to light the dimmest recesses of the room.

“It has been only twenty-six days, but it seems like all my life,” she said, and her voice quivered like the strings of a lute plucked by skilled fingers.

“You have counted the days?” he asked.

“And the hours also.” She nodded. Roses coloured the waxen perfection of her cheeks, and the long lashes meshed over her eyes as she glanced away shyly. Then her eyes crept back to his face.

“You knew I was coming?” he accused her. “How could you when I did not know it myself?”

“My heart knew, as the night knows the coming of dawn.” She touched his face as though she were blind and trying to remember something with her fingertips. “Are you hungry, my lord?”

“I am famished for you,” he replied.

“Are you thirsty, my lord?”

“I thirst for you as a traveller thirsts for the waterhole when he has been hunting seven days in the desert under the relentless sun.”

“Come,” she whispered, and took his hand. She led him into the inner room. Their angareb stood in the centre of the floor and he saw that the linen upon it had been washed, bleached and smoothed with a hot iron, until it shone like the salt pan of Shokra. She knelt before him and removed his uniform. When he stood naked she rose and stepped back to admire him. “You bring me vast treasure, lord.” She reached out and touched him. “An ivory sceptre, tipped with the ruby of your manhood.”

“If this is treasure, then show me what you bring in exchange.”

Naked, her body was moon pale, and her breasts bulged weightily, the nipples as large as ripe grapes, wine dark and swollen. She wore only a slim gold chain round her waist, and her belly was rounded and smooth as polished granite from the quarries above the first cataract.

Her hands and feet were decorated with fine acanthus-wreath patterns of henna.

She shook out the dark tresses of her hair, and came to lie beside him on their mattress. He gloated over her with his eyes and fingertips, and she moved softly as his hands dictated, raising her hips and twisting her shoulders so that her bosom changed shape and no secret part of her body was hidden from him.

“Your quimmy is so beautiful, so precious, that Allah should have set it in the forehead of a ravening lion. Then only the valiant and the worthy might dare to possess it.” There was wonder in his voice. “It is like a ripe fig, warmed in the sun, splitting open and running with sweet juices.”

“Feast to your heart’s content upon the fig of my love, dear lord,” she whispered huskily.

Afterwards they slept entwined and their own sweat cooled them. At last old Liala brought them a bowl of dates and pomegranates, and a jug of lemon sherbet. They sat cross-legged on the angareb facing each other and Bakhita made her report to him. There was much for her to relate, great and dire news from the south, from Nubia and beyond. The Arab tribes were all in a state of flux and change, new alliances forged and century-old ties broken. At the centre of all this turmoil sat the Mahdi and his khalifa, two venomous spiders at the centre of their web.

Bakhita was older than Penrod by three years. She had been the first wife of a prosperous grain merchant, but she was unable to bear him a child. Her husband had taken a younger woman to wife, a dull-witted creature with broad, childbearing hips. Within ten months she had given birth to a son. From this positron of marital power she had importuned her husband. He had tried to resist her, for Bakhita was clever and loyal and with her business acumen he had doubled his fortune in five short years. However, in the end the mother of his son had prevailed. Sorrowfully he had spoken the dread words: lTalaq! Talaq! Talaq! I divorce thee!” Thus Bakhita had been cast into that terrible limbo of the Islamic world inhabited only by widows and divorced women.

The only paths that seemed open to her were to find an old husband with many wives who needed a slave without having to pay the head price or to sell herself as a plaything to passing men. But she had honed the wiles of a merchant while serving her husband. With the few coins she had saved she bought shards of ceramics and chipped, damaged images of the ancient gods from the Bedouin and from the orphans who scratched in the ruins, the dry riverbeds and nullahs of the desert, then sold them to the white tourists who came up the river on the steamers from the delta.

She paid a fair price, took a modest profit and kept her word, so soon the diggers and grave-robbers brought her porcelain and ceramics, V religious statuettes, amulets and scarabs that, after four thousand years, 5 were miraculously perfect. She learnt to decipher the hieroglyphics of the ancient priests on these relics, and the writings of the Greeks and Romans who came long after them; Alexander and the Ptolemy dynasty, ; Julius Caesar and Octavian who was also Augustus. In time her reputation spread wide. Men came to her little garden to trade and to talk. Some had travelled down the great river from as far afield as Equatoria and Suakin. With them they brought news and tidings that were almost as precious as the trade goods and the relics. Often the men talked more than they should have for she was very beautiful and they wanted her. But they could not have her: she trusted no man after what the man she had once trusted had done to her.

Bakhita learnt what was happening in every village along the course of the great river, and in the deserts that surrounded it. She knew when the sheikh of the Jaalin Arabs raided the Bishareen, and how many camels he stole. She knew how many slaves Zubeir Pasha sent down to Khartoum in his dhows, and the taxes and bribes he paid to the Egyptian governor in the city. She followed intimately the intrigues of the court of Emperor John in high Abyssinia, and the trade manifests in the ports of Suakin and Aden.

Then one day a small ragged urchin came to her with a coin wrapped in a filthy rag that was like no coin she had seen before or since. It filled the palm of her hand with the weight of fine gold. On the obverse was the portrait of a crowned woman, and on the reverse a charioteer wearing a laurel wreath. The surfaces were so pristine that they seemed to have been struck the previous day. She was able to read the legend below each portrait readily. The couple on the coin were Cleopatra Thea Philopator and Marcus Antonius. She kept the coin and showed it to no one, until one day a man came into her shop. He was a Frank and for a while she was speechless, for in profile he was the image of the Anthony on her coin. When she recovered her tongue, they talked for a while with Bakhita veiled and old Liala sitting in close attendance as chaperone. The stranger spoke beautiful poetic Arabic, and soon he did not seem to be a stranger. Without knowing it she began to trust him a little.

“I have heard that you are wise and virtuous, and that you may have items to sell that are beautiful and rare,” he asked at last.

She sent Liala away on some pretext, and when she poured another thimble of thick black coffee for her guest she contrived to let her veil slip so that he could glimpse her face. He started, and stared at her until she readjusted it. They went on speaking but something hung in the air, like the promise of thunder before the first winds of the khamsin.

Bakhita was gradually overtaken by an overpowering urge to show him the coin. When she placed it in his hand he studied the portraits gravely, then said, “This is our coin. Yours and mine.” She bowed her head in silence and he said, “Forgive me, I have offended you.”

She looked up at him and removed the veil so he could look into her eyes. “You do not offend me, Effendi,” she whispered.

“Then why do your eyes fill with tears?” ?,

“I weep because what you said is true. And I weep with joy.”

“You wish me to leave now?”

“No, I wish you to stay as long as your heart desires.”

“That may be a long time.”

“If it is God’s will,” she agreed.

In the years that followed that first meeting she had given him everything that was in her power to give, but in exchange had asked from him nothing that he would not give freely. She knew that one day he would leave her, for he was young and came from a world where she could never follow him. He had made her no promise. At their first meeting he had said, “That may be a long time,” but he had never said, ‘always’. So she did not try to exact a pact from him. The certainty of the ending added a poignancy to her love that was sweet as honey and bitter as the wild melon of the desert.

This day she sat with him and told him all she had learnt since they had last spoken twenty-six days before. He listened and asked questions, then wrote it all out on five pages from his despatch notebook. He did not need to consult a cipher for he had learnt by heart the code that Sir Evelyn Baring had given him.

Old Liala covered her head with her widow’s cloak and slipped out into the alley carrying the despatch tucked into her intimate undergarments. The sergeant of the guard at the British military base knew her as a regular visitor. He was under strict orders from the base intelligence officer, so he personally escorted her to the headquarters building. Within the hour the message was buzzing down the telegraph line to Cairo. The following morning it had been deciphered by the signals clerk at the consulate and the en clair text was on the consul general’s silver tray when he came in from breakfast.

Once she had sent Liala to the base with the report, Bakhita came back to Penrod. She knelt beside his stool and began to trim his sideburns and moustache. She worked quickly and, with the expertise of long practice, had soon reduced his fashionable whiskers to the ragged shape of a poor Arab fellah. Then she turned to his dense wavy curls and the tears slid down her cheeks as she hacked them away.

“They will soon grow again, my dove.” Penrod tried to console her as he ran his hand over the stubble.

“It is like murdering my own child,” she whispered. “You were so beautiful.”

“And I will be beautiful again,” he assured her.

She gathered up his uniform from where it lay in the corner of the room. “I will not let even Liala touch it. I will wash it with my own hands,” she promised him. “It will await your return, but never as eagerly as I.”

Then she brought the cloth bag in which she had kept his stained and ragged clothing from his last journey to the south. She wound the filthy turban round his cropped head. He strapped the leather purse round his waist and tucked the service revolver into the light canvas holster, then slipped the curved blade of the dagger into its sheath beside the Webley. They would not show under his dirty galabiyya. Then he strapped on a pair of rough camel-hide sandals and was ready to leave.

“Stay with God, honoured lady.” He bowed obsequiously and she was amazed at how easily he had made the transformation from swaggering Hussar to humble peasant, from effendi to fellah.

“Return to me soon,” she murmured, ‘for if you perish, I shall perish with you.”

“I shall not perish,” he promised.

The harbour master took only a glance at the military travel pass before he assigned Penrod to the gang of stevedores on the next ammunition ship to leave for the south. Penrod wondered again if the elaborate precautions he was taking to avoid recognition were truly necessary. Then he reminded himself that the owner of almost every black or brown face in the swarming docks was a sympathizer of the Dervish. He knew also that he was a marked man. His heroics at El Obeid had been widely discussed, for they were the one blemish on a perfect victory for the Mahdi and his khalifa. Bakhita had warned him that when his name was uttered in the souks along the riverfront it was with a frown and a curse.

The steamer’s cargo was made up entirely of military stores for the army, which was assembling at Wadi Haifa in preparation for the drive upriver. The loading continued all that night and most of the next day. It had been a long time since Penrod had indulged in such hard and debilitating labour. A pause to straighten an aching back or even the slightest hesitation invited the flick and snap of the kurbash whip from one of the overseers. It required all his self-restraint to grovel to the blows and not retaliate with a clenched fist. The ship settled lower into the water as the heavy ammunition cases were heaped on her decks. At sunrise as she left the wharf, pulled into the channel of the river and thrust her ugly round bows into the current she had less than two feet of free board.

Penrod found a space between the tall piles of crates and stretched out in it. He clasped his skinned knuckles and raw fingers under his armpits. He ached in every joint and muscle. It was almost twenty hours’ steaming against the stream to the port of Wadi Haifa. He slept for most of the voyage, and was fully recovered by the time they arrived early the next morning. Fourteen larger steamers were anchored in the main stream of the river. On the south bank was a vast encampment, lines of white canvas tents and mountainous piles of military stores. Boatloads of helmeted troops were being ferried out to the steamers by nuggars and small dhows.

Sir Evelyn Baring had explained the rescue-expedition plan in detail. This was the River Division of the double-pronged advance southwards. The flotilla was preparing to set out on the detour around the great western bend of the river. They would be forced to negotiate three dangerous cataracts along the way. The men going on board would have to tow the steamers on long lines from the bank through those boiling rock-strewn narrows.

Ahead of them, the Desert Column would travel swiftly across the bend of the Nile to Metemma, where Chinese Gordon’s four little steamers were waiting to carry a small detachment of hand-picked men to Khartoum, to reinforce the city until the arrival of the main relief column.

The ammunition ship moored against the riverbank and the porters were immediately roused to begin offloading. Penrod was one of the first ashore and again his travel pass, when displayed to the subaltern in charge of the detail, worked its small miracle. He was allowed through. He picked his way through the encampment and was challenged often before he reached the guard post at the entrance to the zareba that contained the Desert Column.

Its four regiments, commanded by General Sir Herbert Stewart, were drilling and exercising on the parade ground in preparation for the long trek across the loop. But it might be weeks or even months before they received the final marching orders from London.

The sergeant of the guard must have been forewarned of Penrod’s arrival for he did not quibble when the dirty Arab labourer addressed him in the idiom of the officers’ mess, and demanded to be taken to the adjutant’s tent.

“Ah, Ballantyne! I received the telegraph from Colonel Adams in Cairo, but I didn’t expect you for three or four days yet. You have made good time.” Major Kenwick shook hands, but refrained from mentioning Penrod’s unusual garb. Like most of the senior officers he was rather fond of this young scamp, but a little envious of his escapades. He seemed to have a knack of popping up whenever the bullets were flying and promotion was in the air.

“Thank you, Major. Do you know, by any chance, if my men are here?”

“Yes, damn it! And that sergeant of yours has helped himself to five of my best camels. If I had not been firm he would have made off with a whole troop.”

“I’ll be on my way, then, if you’ll excuse me, sir.”

“So soon? I rather hoped that we might have the pleasure of your company in the mess for dinner this evening.”

Penrod saw that he was eaten up with curiosity about this mysterious visitation. “I’m in rather a hurry, sir.”

“Perhaps we might see you in Khartoum, then?” The adjutant kept fishing resolutely.

“Oh, I doubt it, sir. Shall we agree to meet at the Long Bar of the Gheziera Club when this little business has been settled?”

Sergeant al-Saada was waiting for him at the camel lines. Many eyes were watching so his greeting was cold and dismissive, a measure of the wide social chasm between a sergeant in a regiment of the Queen, and a common fellah. They rode into the dunes, Penrod trailing behind him on the grey she-camel. His spirits surged as she moved under him: he knew at once that al-Saada had chosen a wind-eater for him. As soon as they were out of sight of the camp al-Saada reined in. As Penrod came up alongside him his forbidding expression split in a flashing grin, and he snapped his clenched fist across his chest in the riding salute. “I saw you on the deck of the steamer when she came round Ras Indera. You have travelled fast, Abadan Riji.” The name meant the One Who Never Turns Back. “I told Yakub you would be here in less than five days.”

“Fast I came,” Penrod agreed, ‘but even faster must we go.”

Yakub was waiting for them a mile further on. He had the other camels couched behind an outcrop of black rock. Their shapes were rendered grotesque by the waterskins they carried, like huge black cancerous growths on their backs. Each camel was capable of carrying five hundred pounds, but in the Mother of Stones desert each man needed two gallons of water every day to stay alive. As they dismounted Yakub hurried to greet Penrod. He went down on one knee and touched his lips and his heart. “Faithful Yakub has waited for you since Kurban Bairam.”

“I see you, Beloved of Allah.” Penrod smiled back at him. “But did you forget my pack?”

Yakub looked pained. He ran back, untied it from one of the camels and brought it to him. Penrod unrolled it on the baked earth. He saw that his galabiyya had been freshly laundered. Swiftly he changed his rags for the fine wool robe that would protect him from the sun. He covered his face with the black cotton headdress in the fashion of the Bedouin, and tied the black sash round his waist. He tucked the curved dagger and the Webley revolver into the sash over his right hip, and his cavalry sabre on the opposite hip to balance them. Then he drew the sabre from its plain leather scabbard and tested the edge. It stung like a cut-throat razor and he nodded approval at Yakub. Then he made a few practice strokes with the steel, cutting to both sides, lunging high and low, recovering instantly. The sabre felt good in his hand and seemed to take on a life of its own. In this age of breechloading rifles and heavy ordnance Penrod still revelled in the arme blanche.

Almost every Arab carried the long broadsword, and Penrod had observed their use of the blade in contrast to his own. The heavy weapon did not suit the Arab physique. Unlike the mailed crusaders from whom the heavy blade had been copied they were not big, powerful men: they were terriers rather than mastiffs. They were devils to cut and lunge, and the broadsword could inflict a terrible wound. But they were slow to recover their blade. They did not understand the parry, and they used their round leather shield almost exclusively to defend themselves. Against a skilled swordsman they were vulnerable to a feint high in the natural line. Their instinctive response was to lift the shield and to lose sight of the opponent’s point, and they would not see the thrust that followed the feint like a thunderbolt. At El Obeid when the square had broken and the Dervish had swarmed in, Penrod had killed five in as many minutes with that ploy. He ran the blade back into its scabbard and asked Yakub, “Is the Mother of Stones open?”

“There is water at Marbad Tegga.” In the Taka dialect, the well’s name meant Camel Killer. “Little and bitter, but just sufficient for the camels,” Yakub replied.

Yakub was a Jaalin Arab who had been driven from the tents of his people by a blood feud that started in a quarrel over dishonour to Yakub’s sister. Yakub was quick and expert with the blade and the man had died. However, he had been the son of a powerful sheikh. Yakub had been forced to flee for his life.

One of Yakub’s eyes gazed in a different direction from the other. The ringlets that dangled from under his turban were greasy and his teeth, when he smiled at Penrod, were yellow and crooked. He knew and understood the desert and the mountains with the instinct of a wild ass. Before he had been driven out of the tribe he had taken a knife wound that had left him with a limp. Because of this affliction he had been refused service in the armies of the Queen and the Khedive. Thus, with no tribe and no other master, Penrod was all he had. Yakub loved him like a father and a god.

“So we can still cut the snake?”

When Penrod posed a question of such weight, Yakub gave it all his respect and attention. He tucked the skirts of his galabiyya between his legs and squatted. With his camel goad he scratched a large figure S in the dirt, but the upper loop was smaller by half than the lower. It was a rough charting of the course of the Nile from where they stood to the mouth of the Shabluka Gorge. To follow the riverbank through this serpentine meandering would add many weeks to the journey. This, of course, was the route that the flotilla of the River Division would be forced to take. The Desert Division, on their camels, would cut across the great loop and regain the river at Metemma. This shortcut was well marked by the caravans of the ages and by the bleached bones they had left behind them. There were two wells along the way that gave the traveller just sufficient water to make the crossing. Once they reached Metemma they could follow the upper limb of the Nile, keeping always in sight of the river as it swung back west again, until eventually it settled once more on its southerly course and headed for Khartoum. It was a hard road, but there was a harder one yet. The caravan masters called it ‘cutting the snake’.

Yakub made a bold slash with the goad, drawing a straight line from their present position directly to the city of Khartoum. The line cut the S bend of the river neatly in half. It saved hundreds of miles of bitter, gruelling travel. But the trail was unmarked and to take a wrong turning meant missing the single well of Marbad Tegga, and finding instead a certain, terrible death. The well lay deep in the furnace-hot belly of the Mother of Stones, and it was well hidden. It would be easy to pass it by a hundred paces and never know it was there. The camels could drink the water, but its caustic salts would drive a man mad. Once they had watered the camels at Marbad Tegga it was still another hundred miles to the bank of the Nile at Korti below the fourth cataract. Long before they reached the river all the water in the skins would be finished. They might be twenty-four hours without a drop before they saw the Nile again, longer than that if the djinni of the desert were unkind to them.

Once they reached the riverbank, they must cross the river. At this point the current was swift, the stream was a mile wide and the camels were reluctant swimmers. But there was a ford known to few. Once they had crossed, drunk their fill and recharged the waterskins, they would be forced to leave the Nile again and face the Monassir desert on the other bank, another two hundred waterless miles. Yakub reiterated all this, drawing it all on the earth with his goad. Penrod listened without interruption: although he had cut the snake three times before and won through to the river crossing at Korti, there was always something fresh to learn from Yakub.

When he had explained it all Yakub announced, “With the fearless and cunning Yakub to guide you, and angels to watch over you, perchance we may indeed cut the snake.” Then he rocked back on his haunches and waited for Penrod to make the decision.

Penrod had been considering the gamble while he was talking. He would never have attempted it without Yakub. With him to lead, the gains in time and distance to reach Khartoum were worth the gamble, but there was another even more telling consideration.

Bakhita had told him that the Mahdi and his khalifa were well aware of the British preparations to rescue Gordon. Their spies had kept them fully informed of the concentration of British regiments and the flotilla at Wadi Haifa. She said that the Mahdi had ordered a dozen of the most important emirs to leave the siege of Khartoum and take their tribes northwards along the river, to contest the way, to meet the enemy at Metemma, Abu Klea and Abu Hamed. She said that already both banks of the river from Khartoum down to the first great bend were swarming with Arab horsemen and camel troops.

“The Mahdi knows that he must stop the Franks before they reach the city.” She used the word that described all Europeans. “He knows that their army is small and poorly equipped with horses and camels. They say he has sent twenty thousand men northwards to meet the British and to hold the river line until Low Nile, when he can complete the destruction of Khartoum and send General Gordon’s head to his queen.” She had added, “Be careful, my dear lord. They have cut the telegraph lines to the north and they know that the generals in Cairo must send messengers to Khartoum to keep in contact with the general.

The Mahdi will be expecting you to try to win through to the city. His men will be waiting to intercept you.”

“Yes, they will be looking for us to cross the loop, but will they guard the road to Marbad Tegga, I wonder?” Penrod mused aloud. Yakub shook his head for he had no English. Penrod switched back into Arabic: “In God’s name, brave Yakub, take us to the bitter well of the Camel Killer.”

They mounted up on the high wooden saddles. Penrod checked the rifle in its scabbard under his leg, and the bandolier of ammunition tied to the crosspiece of the saddle, then prodded the grey camel. Groaning and spitting, she lurched to her feet.

“In God’s Name let us begin,” sang al-Saada.

“May He open our eyes to make the way clear,” Yakub cried. “And may He make the Camel Killer plain for us to behold.”

“God is great.” Penrod said. “There is no other God but God.”

Each led a pack camel and the water sloshed softly in the skins. At first, loose equipment squeaked or clattered to the rocking gait of the camels, but quickly they readjusted the straps and bindings that held the burdens. Once they stopped briefly and bled the air from the waterskins so that they no longer gurgled. When they went onwards it was in silence, a weird and unnatural silence in the void of heat and unfathomable horizons. The spongy pads of the camels’ feet fell soundlessly on the sands. The men wrapped their heads so that only the slits of their eyes showed and they did not speak. They slumped low on the tall wooden saddles and gave themselves over to the rhythm of the camels’ gait.

They followed the ancient caravan road across a level expanse of orange-coloured sand that glowed in the sunlight until their eyes ached with the glare. The way was only faintly marked by the pale bones and desiccated carcasses of long-dead camels, preserved by sun so that some might have lain there for centuries. The air they breathed scalded and abraded the lining of the throat. The horizon wavered and dissolved in the silver lake of the mirage. The camels and their riders seemed to hang in space and though they rode forward as soundlessly as wraiths, they seemed never to move against the shimmering background. The only point of reference was the tenuous outline of the caravan trail, but even that seemed not to be attached to the earth but to rise up before them like a drifting tendril of smoke.

Penrod let himself lapse into the mesmeric trance of the desert voyager. Time was suspended and lost all significance. His mind ranged free and he thought how easy it would be to believe, as the Bedouin did, in the supernatural powers that inhabited this otherworldly landscape. He dreamed of the jinn, and of the ghosts of lost armies that had perished in these sands. Though Yakub was only half a pistol shot ahead of him he seemed at times to be as distant as the mirage, fluttering like a sparrow on the wings of his robe. At other times he loomed gigantically on the back of his elephantine beast, swollen and elongated by the treacherous play of light. On they went, and silently on.

Slowly something began to appear before them, a mighty pyramid that dwarfed the man-made constructions of the delta. It quivered in the silver mirage, detached from earth, hanging inverted above the horizon, balancing on its point with the flat base filling the southern sky. Penrod stared at it in awe, and again his credibility was taxed as it shrank swiftly, disappearing to a dark spot, then began to grow again, this time with its pointed summit uppermost and its base anchored to the earth.

They rode on and now it assumed its true form, a cone-shaped hill with two smaller ones standing close behind it. In a clairvoyant flash Penrod perceived that natural features such as these must have been the model for those other man-made pyramids that had astonished mankind over the ages. The caravan trail ran straight towards them, but before they reached the first Yakub turned aside, leaving the trail on the left hand. He led them forward into a wilderness that was no longer marked by the faintest trace of man or of his passing. This was the hidden way to Marbad Tegga.

Penrod was lulled back into the hypnotic suspension of time and feeling, and the hours passed as the sun made its noon and began its fiery descent to earth. At last he was roused by the altered gait of his she-camel. He looked around quickly and saw how the landscape had changed. The sand was no longer orange but ashen grey and seared. On the horizon all around were heaps of volcanic ash and lava several hundred feet high, as though all the worlds of the universe had been cremated and their remains dumped in this infernal cemetery and covered by these forbidding tumuli. The breath of ancient volcanoes had charred the very desert. There was no vestige of vegetation or of any living thing, except the three men and their pacing beasts.

Penrod saw why his mount’s gait had changed. The earth was thickly littered with boulders and stones. Some were as large and perfect as round shot for heavy cannon, and others as small as musket balls. It was like the detritus of some long-forgotten battlefield. But Penrod knew that these were not the munitions of war. These rocks were the efflorescence left over from the eruption of the volcanoes. The liquid lava had been expelled into the sky in a deadly rain. As it fell back to earth it had cooled and solidified into these shapes. The camels were forced to pick their way across this dangerous footing, and their speed was much reduced.

The sun sank, and as it touched the earth it seemed to erupt in an explosion of green and crimson light, then fall away to give the world over to sudden night.

“Sweet night!” Penrod whispered, and felt his lip crack. “Blessed cool night!” They couched the camels and fed them a small ration of crushed dhurra meal, then checked their harness and saddles for any sign of galling or chafing. While the men laid out their prayer mats and prostrated themselves towards Mecca, Penrod walked out into the desolation to loosen his cramped muscles and stiff joints. He listened to the night, but the only sound was the evening breeze along the dunes, whispering with the voices of the jinn.

When he returned Yakub was brewing coffee on the tiny brazier. They drank three cups each, and ate dates with thin rounds of dhurra biscuit. They anointed their lips and exposed skin with mutton fat to prevent them flaking and cracking. Then they lay down beside the camels and slept. Yakub roused them after two hours’ rest. They mounted and went on southwards in the night.

The heavens were brilliant with stars, such a profusion that it was difficult to find the major navigational bodies in the silver dazzle. The air was cool and tasted sweet, but it was so dry that it baked the mucus in Penrod’s nasal passages into pellets hard as buckshot.

Hour after hour the camels paced on. At intervals Penrod swung down from the saddle and strode along beside his mount, to rest her and stretch his legs. They stopped again before dawn, drank hot, unsweetened coffee, slept for an hour, then remounted and went on with the sun coming up on their left hand. The first rays struck and they quailed beneath the tyranny, covering their heads.

The desert was never the same. It changed its character and aspect as subtly as a beautiful courtesan, but always it was dangerous and deceptive. At times the dunes were soft and fleshy, pale ivory as the breasts and belly of a dancing girl, then turned the colour of ripe apricots. They flowed like the rollers of the ocean, or writhed together as sinuously as mating serpents. Then they collapsed over jagged escarpments of rock.

The hours and the miles fell behind them. When they paused to rest in the shade of the waterskins, it was often too hot to sleep. They lay and panted like dogs, then went on. The camels groaned and bellowed softly when they were couched and again when they were forced to their feet to resume the march. Their humps shrivelled. On the fifth day they refused to eat the small ration of dhurra meal that Yakub offered on the straw feeding mats.

“That is the first sign that they are nearing the limit of their strength,” Yakub warned Penrod. “We must reach the well before dusk tomorrow evening. If we do not they will begin to die.”

It was not necessary to speak of the consequences for the men if the camels failed. The following morning, as they paused on the rim of a deep saucer of ground, Penrod pointed ahead. Along the opposite rim a frieze of gazelle stood in silhouette. They were as tiny and dainty as creatures in a dream, the colours of cream and milk chocolate, with lyre-shaped horns and white masked faces. After a moment they disappeared down the far side of the ridge as silently as if they had never existed.

“They drink at Marbad Tegga. We are close now.” It was the first time Yakub had spoken in many hours. “We will be there before sunset.” He squinted with satisfaction.

At noon the camels refused to couch. They grumbled and moaned and shook their heads. “They have smelt the water. They are eager to go to it,” said Yakub happily. “They will lead us to the well like hunting dogs to the quarry.” As soon as the men had prayed and drunk their coffee, all three mounted again and rode on.

The camels quickened their pace and moaned with excitement as the scent of the water grew stronger in their nostrils. When they stopped again in the late afternoon Penrod recognized the terrain ahead from the last time he had passed that. way It was a fantastic array of shale hillocks, sculpted by wind and the ages into a gallery of weird shapes and fanciful carvings. Some resembled marching armies of stone warriors, others were crouching lions, and there were winged dragons, gnomes and jinn. But above them all stood a tall, striking column of stone that resembled a woman in a long robe and a widow’s veil in an attitude of mourning.

“There is the Widow of Ahab,” said Yakub, ‘and she faces towards the well where her husband died.” He prodded his mount with the long goad and they started forward again, the camels even more eager than their riders.

“Wait!” Penrod shouted urgently, and when Yakub and al-Saada looked back he stopped them with a peremptory gesture. He turned his own camel into a shallow wadi that hid them completely. They followed him unhesitatingly. They had to wrestle with the camels to force them to couch, goading and twisting their testicles before they sank down,

bellowing in protest. Then they hobbled them with rawhide ropes so they were unable to rise again. Al-Saada stayed to guard them, and make certain they did not try to break away to reach the water. Then Penrod led Yakub to the top of the ridge and they found a vantage-point among the shale hills. Penrod lay stretched on his belly and panned his field-glasses over the rugged ground beyond the Widow of Ahab. Yakub lay beside him, squinting hideously into the sunset. After a long wait he muttered, “There is nothing but the sand and the rocks. You saw a shadow, Abadan Riji. Not even a jinn would inhabit this place,” and he began to stand up.

“Get down, imbecile,” Penrod snapped. They were silent and unmoving for another half an hour. Then Penrod handed Yakub the field-glasses. “There is your jinnee.”

Yakub stared through the lens, then started and exclaimed when he picked out the distant shape of the man. Sitting in the shade at the base of one of the shale monoliths, he had been invisible. Only the pinprick of reflected light on the blade of the sword he was honing had alerted Penrod to his presence. Now he came to his feet and walked out into the slanting sunlight, an alien shape in the brooding landscape.

“I see him, Abadan Riji,” Yakub conceded. “Your eyes are bright. He wears the patched jibba of the Mahdists. Is there more than one?”

“You can be certain of it,” Penrod murmured. “Men do not travel alone in this place.”

“A scouting party?” Yakub hazarded. “Spies sent to wait for the soldiers to come?”

“They know that the well of the Camel Killer is too small and the waters too bitter to supply a regiment. They are waiting to intercept messengers carrying despatches to Gordon Pasha in Khartoum. They know there is no other road. They know that we have to come this way.”

“They are guarding the water. We cannot go on without water for the camels.”

“No,” Penrod agreed. “We must kill them. None must escape to warn those men of our passing.” He stood up and, using the cover of the hillock, went back to where al-Saada waited with the camels. They dared not brew coffee while they waited for night to fall, for the smell of the smoke might carry to the enemy and betray their presence. Instead they drank water sparingly from the skins, and sharpened their blades as they ate the evening meal of dates. Then the Arabs spread their mats and prayed.

Darkness fell hot and heavy as a woollen cloak over the hills, but Penrod waited until Orion the Hunter was at his zenith in the southern sky before they left the camels and went forward on foot, Penrod leading with the Webley in the sash at his waist and the bared sabre in his right hand. They had done this many times before and they moved well separated but always in contact. Penrod circled downwind of the spot at which they had last seen the Dervish sentinel, and was grateful for the evening breeze, which covered any small sounds they might make as they closed in. He smelt them first, the smoke of their brazier, the sharp odour of burning camel dung. He snapped his fingers softly to alert Yakub and al-Saada, and saw them crouch obediently, dark blobs in the starlight behind him.

He crept forward again, into the wind, keeping the smoke directly ahead. He stopped when he heard a camel belch and grumble softly. He lay flat against the earth and peered ahead, waiting with the patience of the hunter. His eyes scanned slowly over the broken ground in front of him, picking out every rock and irregularity. Then something changed shape and his eyes flicked back to it. It was small, dark and round, not twenty paces ahead. It moved again and he recognized it as a human head. A sentry was sitting just over the lip of a shallow nullah. Although it was after midnight the man was still awake and alert. Penrod smelt Yakub beside him, the odour of sweat, snuff and camels, and felt his breath warm in his ear. “I have seen him, and it is past time for him to die.”

Penrod squeezed his arm in assent, and Yakub slithered forward silently as a desert adder. He was an artist with the dagger. His shape merged with the rocks and star shadows. Penrod watched the sentry’s head, and suddenly another appeared behind it. For a moment they became a single dark patch. Then there was a soft exhalation of breath and both heads sank from view. Penrod waited but there was no outcry or alarm. Then Yakub came out of the nullah with his peculiar crablike limp. He sank down beside his master.

“There are five more. They are sleeping with their camels in the bottom of the nullah.”

“Are the camels in harness?” He needed not have asked. The men were warriors and would be ready to jump into the saddle and ride the moment they were roused.

“The camels are saddled. The men sleep with their weapons beside them.”

“Is there another sentry?”

“I did not see one.”

“Where is the well?”

“They have not been foolish enough to camp beside the water. It is three or four hundred paces in that direction.” Yakub pointed to the right end of the hidden nullah.

“So, if there is another man he will be there, watching the water.” Penrod thought for a few moments, then snapped his fingers again. Al-Saada came to crouch beside them.

“I will wait between the camp and the well to watch for another sentry. The two of you will go in and make a place in Paradise for these sons of the Mahdi.” Penrod tapped each of them on the shoulder, an affirmation and a blessing. They were better at this kind of close work than he was. He was never able to suppress his squeamishness when he had to kill a sleeping man. “Wait until I am in position.”

Penrod moved out swiftly to the right. He reached the rim of the nullah and looked down into it. He saw the body of the man Yakub had killed lying under the lip. The man’s knees were drawn up to his chest and Yakub had covered his head with his turban to make it appear that he had fallen asleep at his post. Further on, the men and animals on the floor of the nullah were a dark huddle, and he could not tell one from another. Yakub must have crawled in close to count them. He moved into the shadow of a boulder from where he could keep an eye on the nullah and cover any approach from the direction of the well.

He felt his nerves tingle as, first, Yakub and then al-Saada slipped over into the nullah below him. They blended with the mass of men and animals, and he could imagine the bloody knife work as they moved swiftly from one sleeping man to the next. Then, suddenly, there was a ringing scream and his nerves jumped tight. One had missed his stroke, and he knew it was not Yakub. There was instant confusion as the quiescent mass of bodies exploded into violent movement and sound. Camels lurched, bellowing, to their feet, men shouted and steel clashed on steel. He saw a man spring on to the back of one of the animals and burst out of the camp, riding up over the far wall of the nullah. Another Dervish escaped from the melee and bounded to the bottom of the nullah; he had gone only a short way when a figure raced after him in the unmistakable crablike style that covered the ground with deceptive speed. The two disappeared almost at once.

Penrod was poised to run down into the nullah and join in the fighting, when he heard footsteps behind him and stayed low. In the starlight he saw another figure running towards him from the direction of the Widow of Ahab. This must be the second Dervish sentry. He was carrying his sword in his right hand and his shield on the other shoulder. When he was too close to escape, Penrod jumped into his path. The Dervish did not hesitate but charged at him, swinging with the long blade. Penrod parried easily, steel resounding on steel, and feinted at his head. The Dervish lifted his shield to counter the blow, and instantly Penrod sent his blade home, a classic straight thrust into the centre of his chest so that the blade went clean through, and shot out two hands’ span from the back of his ribs. With almost the same movement he cleared and recovered his blade, and the Dervish dropped without a cry.

Penrod left him and raced down the bank into the nullah. He saw al-Saada stooped over a fallen body, slashing with his dagger across his victim’s throat; black blood sprayed from the severed artery. Al-Saada straightened and looked about him, but his movements were sluggish. Three corpses were lying where they had slept.

“Botched! Two have got away,” Penrod snapped angrily. “Yakub has chased one, but the other is mounted. We must go after him.”

Al-Saada took a pace towards Penrod and the blood-smeared dagger fell from his hand. He sagged slowly to his knees. The starlight was bright enough for Penrod to make out his expression of surprise.

“He was too quick,” al-Saada said, his speech slurred. He took his other hand away from his chest and looked down at himself. The blood from the wound under his ribs darkened his robe to the knees. “Chase him, Abadan Riji. I will follow you in a little while,” he said, and toppled on to his face. Penrod hesitated only a moment as he fought his instinct to aid al-Saada. But he could tell by the loose-limbed way in which he had fallen that he was already beyond any help that he could give, and if he allowed the Dervish to escape his own chances of getting through to the besieged city would be seriously threatened.

“Go with God, Saada,” he said softly, as he turned away. He ran to the nearest Dervish camel and mounted it. With his sabre he cut free the knee halter. The camel reared on to its feet and plunged into a gallop that carried them up over the rim of the nullah. He could just make out the shadowy shape of the other camel flitting ahead, like a moth in the starlight. Within a few hundred paces he had adjusted to the pace of the animal beneath him. It seemed strong and willing, and it must have been well watered and fed during the vigil at the Marbad Tegga. He used his body to urge it forward, like a jockey pushing for the post. A quick glance at the stars confirmed what he already knew: that the fugitive was heading directly south towards the nearest point on the Nile.

They covered another mile, then Penrod realized that the Dervish had slowed his camel to a trot. Either he had been wounded in the skirmish, he was unaware that he was being followed or he was saving his mount for the long and terrible journey that lay ahead if he hoped to reach the river. Penrod urged his own camel to its top speed, and closed the gap swiftly.

He was beginning to think that he might still come up with the Dervish before he realized his danger, but suddenly he saw the pale flash of the man’s face turned back over his shoulder. The moment he spotted Penrod he lashed out with his goad and urged on his mount with sharp cries. The two camels ran as though linked together, down through a dry wadi and up the stony ridge beyond. Then, gradually, Penrod’s mount began to exert its superior speed and stamina and closed in remorselessly. Penrod angled slightly across the enemy’s rear, planning to come in on his left, gambling on the chance that he was right-handed and would be least able to defend himself on this side.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, the Dervish swung his camel at a right angle from its track, and brought it plunging to a halt only a hundred paces ahead. As he swivelled on the high wooden saddle Penrod saw that he had a rifle in his hands, and was lifting it to level it at him. He had thought the Arab was carrying only his sword, and had not considered the possibility that there might be a weapon in the gun-scabbard behind the saddle.

“Come on, then, you eater of pork!” Penrod shouted, and reached for the Webley tucked into his sash. The range was too long for the weapon, and the back of a running camel was not a steady platform from which to fire, but he must try to spoil his opponent’s aim so he could get close enough for the blade.

The Arab fired from the back of the standing camel. Penrod knew from the muzzle flash of black powder and the distinctive booming report that he faced a Martini-Henry carbine, probably one of those captured at El Obeid or Suakin. A fraction of a second later the heavy lead bullet tore into flesh and the camel stumbled beneath him. The Dervish whirled away, bowed over the carbine as he tried to feed another cartridge into the breech. Riding hard Penrod came up on his left-hand side with the sabre at cavalry point. The Arab realized he could not reload in time and let the carbine drop. He reached over his shoulder and drew the broadsword from the scabbard strapped across his back. He stared across at Penrod, and started back in the saddle with the shock of recognition.

“I know thee, infidel!” he shouted, “I saw thee on the field of El Obeid. Thou art Abadan Riji. I curse thee and thy foul, three-headed God.” He aimed a heavy cross-bladed cut at the head of Penrod’s camel. At the last moment Penrod checked his beast and the stroke went high. The blade lopped off one of the animal’s ears close to the skull and the camel shied to one side. Penrod steadied it, but felt it stumble as the bullet wound in its chest began to weaken it. The Dervish was just beyond the reach of his sabre and although he thrust at him he could not touch him. His camel groaned. Suddenly its front legs collapsed, and it went down in a tangle. Penrod kicked his legs clear and landed on his feet, managing to stay upright.

By the time he had recovered his balance the Dervish on his camel was a hundred paces ahead and drawing away swiftly. Penrod snatched the Webley revolver from his sash and emptied the magazine after the dwindling shapes of rider and camel. There was no thumping sound of a bullet strike to encourage him. Within seconds they had dissolved into the darkness. Penrod cocked his head to listen, but there was only the sound of the wind.

His camel was struggling weakly to regain its feet, but suddenly it emitted a hollow roar and rolled over on to its back kicking its huge padded feet convulsively in the air. Then it collapsed and stretched out flat against the earth, its head thrust forward. It was breathing heavily and Penrod saw twin streams of blood spurt from its nostrils each time it exhaled. He reloaded the Webley, stooped over the dying animal, he pressed the muzzle to the back of its skull and fired a single shot into its brain. He took another few minutes to search the saddlebags for anything of importance, but there were no maps or documents, except for a dog-eared copy of the Koran, which he kept. He found only a bag of dried meat and dhurra cakes, which would supplement their frugal rations.

He turned away from the carcass and set off along his own tracks back towards Marbad Tegga. He had covered barely half a mile when he saw another camel and rider coming towards him. He knelt in ambush behind a patch of jagged black rock, but as the rider came up he recognized Yakub and called to him.

“Praise the Name of Allah!” Yakub rejoiced. “I heard a shooting.”

Penrod scrambled up behind his saddle and they turned back towards Marbad Tegga. “My man escaped,” he admitted. “He had a rifle and he killed my mount.”

“My man did not escape, but he died well. He was a warrior and I honour his memory.” Yakub said flatly. “But al-Saada is dead also. He deserved to die for his clumsiness.”

Penrod did not answer. He knew there had been little love lost between them, for although they were both Muslims, al-Saada was an Egyptian and Yakub a Jaalin Arab.

In the bank of the nullah beyond the enemy camp Penrod found a deep cleft in the rocks and laid al-Saada in it. He wrapped his head in his cloak and laid the captured Koran on his chest. Then they piled loose shale over him. It was a simple burial but in accord with his religion. It did not take long, and neither spoke as they worked.

When they were done, they hurried back to the Dervish camp, and set about making preparations to continue the journey. “If we go swiftly we might still pass through the enemy lines before the alarm is spread by the one who got away.”

The captured camels were all fat, well watered and rested. They transferred their saddles to them, and turned loose their own exhausted animals to find the water in Marbad Tegga, then make their way to the distant river. In the Dervish waterskins they had more sweet Nile water than two men needed. Among the provisions they found more bags of dhurra meal, dates and dried meat.

“Now we have supplies enough to win through to Khartoum,” Penrod said, with satisfaction.

“They will expect us to head for the ford of the river at Korti, but I know of another crossing further to the west, below the cataract,” Yakub told him.

They mounted two of the fresh animals and, leading three others loaded with bulging waterskins, rode on southwards.

They rested through the middle of each day, lying in the meagre strip of shade cast by the animals. The camels were couched in direct sunlight, which would have brought the blood of any other man or beast to the boil but they showed no discomfort. As soon as the tyranny of the sun abated, they rode on through the evening and the night. In the dawn of the third day, while the eternal lamp of the morning star still burned above the horizon, Penrod left Yakub with the camels and climbed to the top of a conical hill, the only feature in this burnt-out, desolate world.

By the time he reached the summit, day had broken, and an extraordinary sight awaited him. Two miles ahead, something white as salt and graceful as the wing of a gull glided across this ocean of sterile sand and rock. He knew what it was before he lifted the field-glasses to his eyes. He stared at the single bulging lateen sail, which seemed so out of place in such a setting. He wasted a little more time revelling in the sense of relief and accomplishment that settled over him: the white wing of the dhow sailed upon the waters of the Nile.

They approached the river with the utmost caution. While the terrors of the Mother of Stones were behind them, a new menace lay ahead: men. The dhow had passed out of sight downstream. When they reached the riverbank it was deserted, revealing no sign of human habitation. Only a flock of white egrets flew eastwards in an arrowhead formation, low across the steely waters. There was a narrow fringe of vegetation along each bank, a few clumps of reed, scraggy palms and a single magnificent sycamore tree with its roots almost planted in the mud at the edge. An ancient mud-brick tomb had been built in its shade. The plaster was cracked and lumps had fallen out of the walls. Faded coloured ribbons fluttered from the spreading branches above it.

“That is the tree of St. al-Maula, a holy hermit who lived at this place a hundred years ago,” said Yakub. “Pilgrims have placed those ribbons in his honour so that the saint might remember them and grant any boon they seek. We are two leagues west of the ford, and the village of Korti lies about the same distance to the east.”

They turned away from the riverbank so that they would not be seen by the crews of any passing dhows and made their way westward through wadis and tumbled hillocks until they reached a tall stone bluff that overlooked a long stretch of the Nile. For the rest of that day, they kept their vigil from the summit of the cliff.

Although the Nile was the main artery of trade and travel for an area larger than the whole of western Europe, not another vessel passed, and there was no sign of any human presence along this section of the banks. This alone made Penrod uneasy. Something must have disrupted all commerce along the river. He was almost certain that this was what Bakhita had warned him of, and that somewhere close by a massive movement of the Dervish armies was under way. He wanted to get across into the wastes of the Monassir desert as soon as possible, and to keep well away from the banks until he was opposite the city of Khartoum and could make a final dash into Gordon’s beleaguered stronghold.

When the angle of the sun altered, it penetrated the water, and the darker outline of the shallows was just visible. A submerged spur of rock pushed half-way across the stream, and from the opposite side an extensive mud bank spread out to meet it. The channel between the two shallows was deep green but narrow, less than a hundred and fifty paces across. Penrod memorized its position carefully. If they used the empty waterskins as life-buoys, they could swim the camels across the deeper section. Of course, they must cross in darkness. They would be terribly vulnerable if they were caught in midstream in broad daylight, should a Dervish dhow appear unexpectedly. Once they had reached the far bank they could refill the skins and press on into the Monassir.

In the last hour of daylight Penrod left Yakub with the animals on the heights of the bluff and went down alone to examine the bank for tracks. After casting well up-and downstream he was satisfied that no large contingents of enemy troops had passed recently.

As darkness fell Yakub brought down the string of camels. He had emptied the last of the water from the skins, blown them up and stoppered them again. Each camel had a pair of these huge black balloons strapped to its flanks. They were roped together in two strings so that they would not become separated in the water.

The camels jibbed at entering the water but Penrod and Yakub goaded them down the bank and out on to the spur. As they headed into the middle of the Nile the water rose until it reached the men’s chins, and they had to cling to the camel harness. The long legs and necks of the beasts allowed them to cross almost to the far side before they lost their footing and were forced to swim awkwardly. But the waterskins buoyed them up, and Penrod and Yakub swam beside them, urging them on and pointing their heads in the right direction, taking care to keep clear of their driving front legs below the surface. They swam them to the mud bank on the far side, and when they had regained their footing led them out on to dry ground. Quickly they refilled the waterskins and gave the camels their last drink for many days.

The crossing had taken longer than Penrod had bargained on, and the eastern sky was already paling before they were ready to leave the Nile, the skins filled tight and the camels’ bellies swollen with water. Before they set out they tried to obliterate their tracks from the riverbank, but with that number of heavily laden animals and working in darkness it was impossible. They had to take a chance that the wind and the river waters would wipe away their tracks before they were discovered by Dervish scouts.

However, a dark premonition of evil rode on Penrod’s shoulders as they headed out into the Monassir desert. After a few hours’ travel the feeling grew so pervasive that he knew he must sweep the back trail to reassure himself that their crossing had not been discovered. He picked out the fleetest, most willing animal from their string by now they knew each beast well by temperament and capability. He sent Yakub ahead with the others while he returned along their back trail. When he was still some miles from the river, he left the trail and headed for a line of low hills he had noticed earlier that overlooked the river. He couched and tethered his mount below the skyline, then crept forward. As he neared the crest of the hill he dropped to his belly, slithered up behind an outcrop of rocks and peered down into the valley of the Nile. His heart jumped against his ribs, and his nerves whipped tight at what he saw below him.

A small party of Dervish scouts was dismounted on the near bank of the Nile, and it was obvious that they had discovered the spoor as it emerged from the water. Through the field-glasses he studied the enemy intently. There were six of them. He thought that one might be the man he had chased from Marbad Tegga, but he could not be certain. They were all lean, hard desert Arabs, probably of the Beja tribe. They wore the gaily patched jib has of the Mahdists, and carried the distinctive round targes and long-sheathed swords. They were leaning on the shafts of their spears and animatedly discussing the tracks on the bank. One turned and pointed south along the run of the spoor, and they all looked in the direction he had indicated. They seemed to be gazing directly towards the spot where Penrod lay.

He ducked behind the rocks while he assessed his situation. It seemed obvious that the man he had chased from Marbad Tegga, even if that was not him down there, had reached the river ahead of them. He must have spread the warning to the forward elements of the main Dervish army coming down from the north. Perhaps one of the commanding emirs had sent this scouting party ahead to reconnoitre the river crossings and intercept them. Penrod could tell at a glance that these were aggagiers, the finest Dervish warriors. He and Yakub were outnumbered by three to one, and the Dervish were on the alert. He put out of his mind any notion of a fight. Their only salvation lay in flight.

Now he switched his attention from the men to their mounts. Each rode a handsome horse. They had only one pack camel to carry the leather bags of small gear, food and ammunition, but there were no waterskins. Obviously they were a swift scouting party, but because they carried no water they were confined to the narrow strip of ground a few miles each side of the river. They were not equipped for a deep foray into the Monassir. To intercept Penrod’s caravan they would have to ride hard round the great loop of the river and try to get ahead of them on the riverbank opposite Khartoum. That journey was almost two hundred miles longer than the one that faced him and Yakub. He felt a great wave of relief as he realized that even the swiftest horses would not be able to cut them off before they reached their goal.

“I leave you to the mercy of Allah,” he murmured, in sardonic blessing, then wriggled back from the skyline to return to his mount and catch up with Yakub. Then an unexpected stir among the men below made him pause. Quickly he refocused the field-glasses. Two of the aggagiers had run back to the single pack camel and forced it to kneel. They unstrapped some equipment from the animal’s back. One of the Arabs squatted cross-legged with what appeared to be a writing tablet on his lap. He wrote with great concentration and care.

The other man took down a small crate from the camel’s load and removed the cotton cover that protected it. He opened a trapdoor in the lid and reached inside with both hands. Penrod quailed as he saw a small birdlike head bobbing and weaving between the man’s fingers. The writer laid aside his pen, carefully folded his message and stood up. The other man proffered the creature he held, and they were busy for a moment longer.

Then the scribe stood back and nodded. With both hands the other tossed the sleek grey pigeon high into the air. The bird exploded into flight, its wings clattering softly as it rose higher and higher above the river. All the Arabs watched it, heads thrown back. Their faint cries of encouragement reached Penrod even at that distance.

“Fly, little one, on the wings of God’s angels!”

“Swiftly to the bosom of the Holy Mahdi!”

Up and up the pigeon climbed, and then it described a series of wide circles in the sky, a speck against the blue, until at last it found its bearings and shot away in a straight, swift line, headed into the south across the loop towards the Dervish city of Omdurman.

Penrod watched it out of sight, longing to see the knife-winged silhouette of one of the desert Saker falcons towering above it, then beginning the deadly stoop, but no predator appeared and the pigeon vanished.

Penrod ran down the back slope of the hill and sprang into his camel’s saddle. He turned its head in the same southerly direction as the pigeon had taken and urged it into the pacing gait that it could maintain for fifty miles without rest. But the pigeon would reach Omdurman before nightfall, while he and Yakub still had at least two hundred and fifty miles to ride. He knew now what a terrible gauntlet they had yet to run before he could reach Khartoum and deliver his despatch to Chinese Gordon.

Osman Atalan marched in the horde of worshippers towards the great mosque of Omdurman. Over his head floated his personal banner, which had been awarded to him by the Mahdi. It was worked with texts from the Koran, and it was carried by two of his aggagiers. All around him throbbed the massive copper war drums. The ombeyas bleated and brayed, and the crowds shouted praises to God, to the Mahdi and his khalifa. The heat clamped down upon the moving mass of humanity and the dust rose in a cloud from the trampling feet and hung over their heads. As they approached the outer wall of the mosque the excitement built up steadily for they knew that today the Mahdi, the light of Islam, would preach the word of God and his Prophet. The Ansar began to dance. Once they had been called Dervish, but the Mahdi had forbidden the use of that name as demeaning.

“The Holy Prophet has spoken to me several times and he has said that whosoever calls my followers Dervish should be beaten seven times with thorns and receive a plague of stripes. For did I not give a proud name and a promise of Paradise to my own true warriors who triumphed on the battlefield of El Obeid? Did I not decree that they be known as my Ansar, my helpers and partisans? Let them be known only as Ansar, and let them glory in that name.”

The Ansar danced in the sunlight, whirling like dust devils, faster and faster, spinning so that their feet seemed barely to touch the earth, and the ranks of worshippers that pressed around them ululated and shouted the ninety-nine beautiful names of Allah: “Al-Hakim, the Wise. Al-Majid, the Glorious. Al-Haqq, the Truth…” One by one the dancers were overtaken by holy ecstasy and fell to the ground, frothing at the mouth and twitching until their eyes rolled back in the sockets and only the whites showed.

Osman entered the gates of the mosque. It was a vast enclosure open to the sky, and surrounded by a twenty-foot-high wall of mud bricks. It was eight hundred paces square and the whole expanse was packed with the kneeling ranks of jibba-uniformed faithful. At the far end of the mosque an opening was screened off by a rank of black-robed Ansar, the Mahdi’s executioners.

Osman made his way slowly through the crowds towards this space. The ranks of kneeling figures gave way to him and called his praises as he passed, for he was the foremost of all the great emirs. In the first row of worshippers his aggagiers spread out his prayer mat of fine dyed wool. Beside it they piled the six great tusks that they had taken in the hunt in the Valley of the Atbara. Osman knelt on the mat and faced the narrow gate in the wall, which led to the private compound of the Mahdi.

Gradually the wild hubbub of the worshippers descended to a hum, and then to a charged, expectant silence. This was shattered by a ringing blast on an ombeya and through the gateway appeared a small procession. At the head were the three khalifas. In appointing these men as his successors the Mahdi had simply followed the precedent set by the first Prophet Muhammad.

There should have been a fourth khalifa, Al Senussi, the ruler of Cyrenaica. He had sent an emissary to the Sudan to report to him on this person who claimed to be the Mahdi. The man had arrived while the sack of the city of El Obeid was in full swing. He had watched in horror the massacre, the pillage, the torture, the children being chopped into pieces by the Ansar. He did not tarry to meet the Mahdi and fled from the carnage to report back to his master the inhumanities he had witnessed.

“This monster cannot be the true Mahdi,” Al Senussi decided. “I want no truck with him.”

Thus there were only three khalifas, of whom Abdullahi was the first. Compared to him the other two were of no significance. Abdullahi led them to the prayer mats that had been laid out for them on the raised dais. When they had taken their places there was another expectant pause.

The ombeya shrieked once more and the Mahdi’s sword-bearer entered through the gateway. He carried before him the symbol of the Mahdi’s temporal powers: a sword with an extraordinarily long, bright blade. Its gold hilt and guard were worked with jewelled stars and crescents, and the steel was inlaid in gold with the double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, beneath which was the legend “Vivat Carolus’. It was not an Islamic relic but must once have belonged to a Christian crusader. It was an heirloom that had been passed down over the centuries until it had become the sword of the Mahdi. Behind his sword-bearer came the prophet of God himself.

The Mahdi was dressed in a spotlessly clean and beautifully quilted jibba. On his head he wore a gold casque with chain mesh cheek pieces that might once have belonged to one of Saladin’s Saracens. He began a slow, dignified progress through the congregation of kneeling worshippers. Their ranks opened before him, and sheikhs, warriors, priests and emirs crawled forward to kiss his feet and proffer gifts.

They held up handfuls of pearls and gold jewellery, of precious stones and beautifully wrought objects of silver. They laid bolts of silk and pure gold embroidery at his feet. The Mahdi smiled his angelic smile and touched their heads in acceptance of each gift. While his Ansar followed behind him and gathered up the offerings, the Mahdi preached to them.

“Allah has spoken to me many times, and he has told me that you should be forbidden to wear fine clothes and jewellery, for this is conceit and pride. You should wear only the jibba, which marks you as a lover of the Prophet and the Mahdi. Therefore it is right and wise that you should deliver these trinkets and fripperies into my keeping.”

Those close enough to hear the words shouted them aloud so that all might hear and know the wisdom of the Mahdi, and others further on repeated them so by the end they had been shouted to the furthest reaches of the vast enclosure. The worshippers praised God that they should be allowed to hear such wisdom.

They lifted up leather bags of gold and silver coins and poured them at his feet, glittering piles of Maria Theresa dollars, gold mohurs and English sovereigns, the currency of the Orient and the Occident. Osman Atalan crawled forward under the weight of the largest of the six tusks and his aggagiers followed him with similar offerings. The Mahdi smiled down on Osman and stooped to embrace him.

The watchers hummed with amazement at such favour bestowed.

“You know that these riches cannot buy you a place in Paradise. If any man hold back treasures and does not bring them to me freely and of his own accord, Allah will burn him with fire and the earth will swallow him. Repent and obey my words. Return to me all that you have taken for yourselves. The Prophet, grace be upon him, has told me many times that any man who still keeps the spoils of looting in his possession shall be destroyed. Believe the revealed word of the Prophet.”

They shouted again with joy to hear the word of God and his Prophet and the Divine Mahdi, and shoved their way to the front to deliver up their treasure.

Once the Mahdi had completed his progress round the mosque he returned to the dais and took his seat on his silk prayer mat. One at a time, his three khalifas knelt before him and offered their gifts. One clapped his hands and his grooms led in a black stallion that shone like washed obsidian in the sunlight. Its saddle was carved from ebony, while its bridle and reins were of gold lace, tasselled with the feathers of marabou and eagles.

The second khalifa offered him a royal angareb bed, whose frame was cunningly carved of ivory and inlaid with gold.

Abdullahi was the khalifa who knew his master best. He offered the Divine Mahdi a woman, but no ordinary woman. He led her into the enclosure himself. She was cloaked from head to ankles, but her outline beneath the silk was as graceful as that of a gazelle, and her bare feet were elegantly shaped. The khalifa opened the front of her cloak, but held it so that she was screened from all eyes other than those of the Mahdi. She was naked under the cloth.

The Mahdi leant forward on one elbow and stared at her. She was a lovely child of the Galla who, at fourteen years, had eyes as dark as pools of oil, and skin as smooth as butter. She moved like a newly woken fawn. Her breasts were small and girlish, but shaped like ripe figs. Every hair had been meticulously plucked from her sex, so that the pink tips of her inner lips peeked out at him shyly from the plump little cleft. This emphasized her tender age. The Mahdi smiled at her. She hung her head, covered her mouth with a tiny hand and giggled coyly. The Khalifa Abdullahi covered her again and the Mahdi nodded at him. “Take her to my quarters.”

Then he rose, spread his arms and began to speak again.

“The Prophet has told me many times that my Ansar are a chosen and blessed people. Thus He has forbidden you to smoke or chew tobacco. You shall not drink alcohol. You shall not play a musical instrument except the drum and the ombeya. You shall not dance, except in praise of God and his Prophet. You shall not fornicate, nor shall you commit adultery. You shall not steal. Behold the fate of those who disobey my laws.”

He clapped his hands, and from the side gate his executioners led in an elderly man. He was barefoot and dressed only in a loincloth. His turban had been stripped off and his unwashed hair was a dirty white. He looked confused and hopeless. He had a rope round his neck. When he stood in front of the dais one of the executioners jerked it and threw him to the ground. Then four surrounded him with their whips poised.

“This man has been seen smoking tobacco. He must suffer a hundred blows with the kurbash.”

“In the Name of God and his victorious Mahdi!” the congregation assented, with a single voice, and the executioners laid on together.

The first stroke raised a red welt across the man’s back, and the second drew blood. The victim writhed and shrieked as others followed in quick succession. At the end he moved no more and they dragged him out of the gate through which he had entered. Behind him the dust was damp with his blood.

The next offender was brought in at the rope’s end, and the Mahdi gazed down on him with a mild and benign smile. “This man stole the oars from his neighbour’s dhow. The Prophet has decreed that he shall have one hand and one foot cut off.”

The executioner standing behind him swung his broadsword low and hard, and lopped off the right foot at the ankle. The man collapsed in the dust and as he put out a hand to save himself, the executioner stood on it to pin it to the ground, then hacked down and cut through the wrist bone. Quickly and expertly they cauterized the stumps by dipping them into a small pot of boiling pitch from the brazier. Then they tied the severed hand and foot around the man’s neck and dragged him out through the side gate.

“Praise the justice and mercy of the Mahdi,” howled the worshippers. “God is Great and there is no other God but God.”

Osman Atalan watched from his seat in the front rank of the mosque. He was amazed by the wisdom and perception of the Mahdi. He knew instinctively that new religious orders are not forged by granting luxurious indulgences but by enforcing moral austerity and devotion to the word of God. No man who witnessed the rule of this prophet could doubt that he wielded the authority of God.

The Mahdi spoke again: “My heart is as heavy as a stone with sorrow, for there is a couple in our midst, a man and a woman, who have been taken in adultery.”

The congregation roared with anger and waved their hands above their heads, crying, “They must die! They must die!”

They brought in the woman first. She was little more than a child, a waif like figure with stick-thin arms and legs. Her hair had come down in a tangle over her face and shoulders, and she wailed piteously as they tied her arms and legs to the stake below the dais.

Then they led in the man. He also was young, but tall and proud, and he called to the woman, “Be brave, my love. We will be together in a better place than this.”

Despite the rope round his neck he strode forward towards the edge of the dais as if he wished to address the Divine Mahdi, but the executioner pulled him up short. “No closer, thou foul beast, lest your blood soil the raiment of the Victorious One.”

“The penalty for adultery is that the man suffer beheading,” said the Mahdi, and his words were repeated and shouted across the wide enclosure. The executioner stepped up behind his victim and touched the back of his neck with the blade of the sword, marking his aim. Then he drew back and struck, and the blade fluted through the air. The girl at the stake screamed in despair as her lover’s head seemed to spring from his shoulders. He stood a moment longer as a bright stream fountained into the air, then cascaded over his torso. The Mahdi stepped back fastidiously but a single drop splashed the skirt of his white jibba. The dead man fell in an untidy tangle of limbs and his head rolled to the foot of the dais. The girl wailed and struggled with her bonds to reach him.

“The penalty for the woman taken in adultery is that she be stoned,” said the Mahdi.

The Khalifa Abdullahi rose from his cushion and went to the girl at the stake. With a strangely tender gesture he swept the hair back from her face and tied it behind her head, so that the believers could see her expression as she died. Then he paced back to the pile of stones that had been placed ready to hand. He selected one that fitted neatly into his hand and turned back to face the girl-child. “In the Name of Allah and the Divine Mahdi, may they have mercy on your soul.”

He hurled the stone with the strength and speed of a spearman, and it caught the girl in the eye. From where he sat Osman Atalan heard the rim of the socket crack. The eye popped out and hung by the vine of its nerve on her cheek, like some obscene fruit.

One after the other the khalifas the emirs and the sheikhs came forward, took up a stone from the pile and threw it. By the time Osman Atalan took his turn the front of the girl’s skull had been crushed and she was hanging lifelessly against her bonds. Osman’s stone struck her shoulder but she did not move. They left her hanging there while the Mahdi finished delivering his sermon.

“The Prophet, grace and eternal life be upon him, has said to me on many occasions that he who doubts that I am the true Mahdi is an apostate. He who opposes me is a renegade and an infidel. He who wages war against me shall perish from this life and be destroyed and obliterated in the next world. His property and his children shall become the property of Islam. My war against the Turks and the infidel is by the order of the Prophet. He has made me privy to many terrible secrets. The greatest of these is that all the countries of the Turks, the Franks and the infidels who defy me and who defy the word of Allah and his Prophet shall be subdued by the holy religion and law. They shall become as dust and fleas and small things who crawl in the darkness of night.”

When Osman Atalan returned to his tent in the palm grove beside the waters of the Nile and looked across at the fortress of the infidel, he felt exhausted in the flesh as though he had fought a mighty battle, but he was as triumphant in the spirit as though the victory had been granted to him by Allah and the Divine Mahdi. He sat on the precious carpet of silk from Samarkand and his wives brought him a gourd of sour milk. After he had drunk, his principal wife whispered to him, “There is one who awaits you, my lord.”

“Let him come to me,” Osman told her. When he came he was an old man but straight of limb with bright young eyes. “I see you, Master of the Pigeons,” Osman greeted him, ‘and may the grace of Allah be with you.”

“I see you, mighty emir, and I pray the Prophet to hold you to his heart.” He proffered the grey pigeon he held gently against his breast.

Osman took the bird from him and stroked its head. It cooed softly, and he untied the silk thread that held a tiny roll of rice paper to its scaly red leg. He smoothed it against his thigh and as he read it he began to smile and the weariness slipped from his shoulders. Carefully he reread the last line of the tiny script on the note.

“I have seen his face in the starlight. Verily, it is the Frank who escaped your wrath on the battlefield of El Obeid. The one who is known as Abadan Riji.”

“Summon my aggagiers and place the saddle on Sweet Water. We ride for the north. Mine enemy has come.” They scurried to do his bidding.

“By God’s grace we do not need to search the length and breadth of the Monassir Desert,” he told Hassan Ben Nader and al-Noor, who stood outside the tent with him while they waited for the grooms to bring their horses. “We know when and where he crossed the loop, and there is only one place to which he can be headed.”

“It is two hundred and fifty miles from where he crossed to where he aims to reach the river here opposite Khartoum,” said al-Noor.

“We know he is a tough warrior for we all saw him at El Obeid. He will travel fast,” said Hassan Ben Nader. “He will murder his camels.”

Osman nodded in agreement. He knew the type of man he was hunting. Hassan was right: this one would have no qualms about riding his camels to death. “Three days, four at most, and like a little fish he will swim into our net.” The groom brought Sweet Water to him and she whinnied when she recognized Osman. He fondled her head and gave her a dhurra cake to crunch while he checked her bridle and girth. “He will keep well away from the bank of the river until he is ready to cross.” Osman was thinking aloud with the mind of the chase. “Will he cross south of Omdurman or to the north?” he mused, as he came back to the mare’s head, and before any of his companions could speak he answered himself: “He would not cross to the north, for as soon as he entered the water the current would push him back and away from the city. He must cross to the south so that the flow of the Bahr El Abiad,” he used the Arabic name for the White Nile, ‘will carry him down to Khartoum.”

A man coughed and shuffled his feet in the dust. Osman glanced at him. Only one of his aggagiers would dare question his words. He turned to the most trusted of his men. “Speak, Noor. Let your wisdom delight us like the singing of the heavenly cherubim.”

“It comes to me that this Frank is as wily as a desert jackal. He may reason as you have just done and, knowing your mind, decide to do the opposite. He may choose to cross far to the north, then swing wide towards the mountains and cross the Bahr El Abiad rather than the Bahr El Azrak.”

Osman shook his head. “As you have said, he is no fool and he knows the lie of the land. He also knows that the danger for him will not be in the empty desert but on the rivers where our tribes are concentrated. You think he will choose to cross two rivers rather than one? No, he will cross the Bahr El Abiad to the south of the city. That is where we will wait for him.”

He swung up easily into the saddle, and his aggagiers followed his example. “We move south.”

They rode into the cool of the evening, and a long veil of red dust spread behind them. Osman Atalan was in the van, with Sweet Water striding out in a flowing canter. They had covered only a few miles when he reined in the mare, and stood in the stirrups to survey the terrain ahead. The tops of the palm trees that marked the course of the river were just visible on the left, but on the right stretched the great void of the Monassir, which after two thousand miles would give way to the infinite wastes of the Sahara.

Osman swung down from the mare’s back and squatted at her head. Immediately his aggagiers did the same. “Abadan Riji will circle out wide to the west to keep well clear of the river until he is ready to make the crossing. Then he will come out of the wilderness, and in the night try to slip through our lines. We will lay our net thus and thus.” He sketched out the lines of his pickets in the dust and they nodded their agreement and understanding as they watched. “Noor, you will take your men and ride thus and thus. You, Hassan Ben Nader, will ride thus. I shall be here in the centre.”

Penrod drove the camels at a pace that not even the hardiest men and beasts could keep up for long. They covered the ground at eight miles an hour, and kept it up for eighteen hours without rest, but it taxed even their endurance to the limit. Both men were also exhausted when he called the first halt. They rested for four hours by his pocket watch, but when they tried to rouse the camels to go on the oldest and weakest refused to come to his feet. Penrod shot him where he lay. They distributed the water that the dead beast was carrying among the other camels, then mounted up and went on at the same pace.

When they reached the end of the next eighteen-hour stage of the march Penrod calculated that they had roughly another ninety to one hundred miles to go to reach the Nile ten miles south of Khartoum. Yakub agreed with this estimate, although his calculations were based on different criteria. They had broken the back of the journey, but it had cost them dear. Thirty-six hours’ hard going, and only four hours of rest. When they tried to feed them, the camels refused to eat their meagre ration of dhurra.

Once the six camels were couched Penrod went to each waters king and lifted it to judge the remaining contents. Then he pondered over the equation of weights and distances and the condition of each beast. He decided on a deliberate gamble. He explained it to Yakub, who sighed, picked his nose and lifted the skirts of his gcdabiyya to scratch his crotch, all symptoms of doubt. But in the end he nodded lugubriously, not trusting himself to voice approval.

They selected the two strongest camels and took them out of sight of the other four weaker animals. They watered them from the skins they carried, pouring the sweet water into leather buckets. The animals’ thirst seemed unquenchable, and they sucked down bucketful after bucketful. They drank almost thirty gallons each. The change in their condition was startlingly swift. They rested them another hour, then fed them all the rations of dhurra that their companions had refused. The two chosen beasts devoured it gluttonously. Now they were strong and alert again. The resilience of these extraordinary creatures never failed to amaze Penrod.

When the four hours of rest ended they led the two camels back to where the other four lay listlessly. They forced the used-up animals to their feet. Now when they began the next stage of the journey the two pampered animals carried nothing but their saddles. Between them the exhausted camels carried all the remaining water and equipment as well as the two riders. One collapsed after three more gruelling hours. Penrod shot it. He and Yakub drank as much of the water from its skins as their bellies would hold. Then they shared the rest between their two strong beasts.

They pushed on at the same pace, but within another ten miles the remaining two weaker beasts went down in quick succession. Half-way up the slip-face of a low dune one fell as though shot through the brain, and half an hour later the other groaned and its back legs gave way. It knelt to die and closed the thick double rows of lashes over its swimming eyes. Penrod stood over it with the Webley in his hand. “Thank you, old girl. I hope your next journey is less arduous.” And he put her out of her misery.

They allowed the surviving camels to drink what they could of the water, then drank themselves. What remained they loaded up. The two camels were strong and willing. Yakub stood beside them, and studied the terrain that lay ahead, the outline of the dunes and the shape of the distant hills. “Eight hours to the river,” he estimated.

“If my backside lasts that long,” Penrod lamented, as he climbed into the saddle. He ached in every nerve and muscle, and his eyeballs felt raw and abraded by the sand and the glare of sunlight. He abandoned himself to the pacing gait of the beast under him, the legs on each side swinging in unison, so that he pitched and rolled in the saddle. The desolate landscape fell away behind them, and the dunes and bare hills were so monotonously similar that at times he had the illusion they were making no progress but repeating the same journey endlessly.

Still clinging to the saddle, he slipped into a dark, leaden sleep. He slid sideways and almost fell off, but Yakub rode up alongside him and shook him awake. He lifted his head guiltily, and looked at the height of the sun. They had been riding for only two hours.

“Six more to go.” He felt lightheaded, and knew that at any moment sleep would overtake him again. He slipped to the ground and ran beside his camels’ head until the sweat stung his eyes. Then he mounted up again and followed Yakub through the shimmering wasteland. Twice more he had to dismount and run to keep himself awake. Then he felt the camel under him change its pace. At the same time Yakub shouted, “They have smelt the river.”

Penrod pushed up alongside his camel. “How far?”

“An hour, perhaps a little longer, before it will be safe for us to turn eastwards and head straight towards the river.”

The hour passed slowly, but the camels paced on steadily until they saw another low ridge of blue shale appear out of the heat haze ahead. To Penrod it seemed identical to hundreds of others they had passed since they had crossed the loop, but Yakub laughed and pointed at it: “This place I know!” He turned his camel’s head and the beast quickened its pace. The sun was half-way towards the western horizon, and their shadows flitted ahead over the barren earth.

They came up over the ridge, and Penrod stared ahead eagerly for a glimpse of greenery. The wasteland was unrelieved and unrelenting. Yakub was undismayed, and shook his lank curls in the hot wind, as the camels ran on across the plain.

Ahead another low shale bank seemed to rise no more than head high above the level ground. Yakub brandished his goad and leered across at Penrod with a satanic squint. “Place your trust in Yakub, the master of the sands. Brave Yakub sees the land as a vulture from on high. Wise Yakub knows the secret places and the hidden pathways.”

“If he is wrong brave Yakub will have need of a new neck, for I will break the one on which he balances his thick skull,” Penrod called back.

Yakub cackled and pushed his mount into a cumbersome gallop. He reached the top of the bank fifty paces ahead of Penrod, stopped and pointed ahead dramatically.

On the horizon they saw a line of palm trees stretched across the landscape, but it was difficult to judge the distance in the flat, uncertain light. The bunches of palm fronds on each long hole reminded Penrod of the ornate hairstyles of the Hadendowa warriors. He estimated that it was under two miles to the nearest grove.

“Get the camels down,” he ordered, and jumped to the ground. Surprisingly he felt strong and alert. At first sight of the Nile the weariness of the journey seemed to have left him. They took the camels behind the ridge and couched them out of sight from the river plain.

“In which direction lies Khartoum?” Penrod asked.

Without hesitation Yakub pointed to the left. “You can see the smoke from the cooking fires of Omdurman.”

It was so faint on the horizon that Penrod had taken it for dust or river haze, but now he saw that Yakub was right. “So we are at least five miles upstream of Khartoum,” he observed. They had reached the precise position he had aimed for.

He went forward cautiously and squatted on the high ground with the field-glasses. He saw at once that he had overestimated the distance to the riverbank. It was probably closer to one mile than two. There was no cover on the river plain, which was flat and featureless. It seemed that there was some cultivation under the palm trees, for he made out a line of darker green below the untidy fronds. “Probably dhurra fields,” he muttered, ‘but no sign of a village.” Again he checked the height of the sun. Two hours until dark. Should we make a run for the river before sunset, or wait for darkness? He felt impatience building in him, but he held it in check. While he considered the choice he kept the binoculars to his eyes. The riverbank could be far beyond the first trees of the grove, or it might be right there at the edge.

Movement caught his eye and he concentrated on it. A faint shading of pale dust was rising from among the palms. It was moving from left to right, in the opposite direction of Omdurman. Perhaps it was a caravan, he thought, following the road along the riverbank. But then he realized it was moving too fast. Riders, he decided, camels or horsemen. Suddenly the dust cloud stopped moving, hung for a few minutes at the same point, then gradually settled. They have halted in the grove, right between us and the riverbank. Whoever they were they had made the decision for him. Now he had no alternative but to wait for darkness. He went back to where Yakub sat with the camels. “Mounted men on the riverbank. We’ll have to wait for darkness when we can sneak past them.”

“How many?”

“I’m not certain. A large band. Judging by the dust there are maybe twenty or so.” There was little water left in the skins, no more than a few gallons. With the river in sight they could afford to be profligate so they drank their fill. By this time it was slimy with green algae and had taken on the taste of the crudely tanned leather, but Penrod drank it with relish. What they could not consume they gave to the camels.

Then they inflated the empty skins. This was a laborious job: they held each skin between their knees and blew into the nozzle, holding it closed between breaths by clamping a hand over the opening. When each skin was full and tight they stoppered it. Then they strapped them to the backs of the kneeling camels. All was ready for the river crossing, and Yakub looked at Penrod. “Yakub the tireless will keep watch while you rest. I will wake you at the setting of the sun.”

Penrod opened his mouth to refuse the offer, then recognized the sense of it. The elation was wearing off, and he realized that, without sleep, he was nearly at the end of his tether. He knew, too, that Yakub was almost indefatigable. He handed him the field-glasses without protest, stretched out on the shady side of his camel, wrapped his scarf round his head and was almost instantly asleep.

“Effendi.” Yakub shook him awake. His voice was a hoarse whisper. With a single glance at his face Penrod knew that there was trouble.

Yakub’s squint was hideous, one eye fixed on Penrod’s face but the other roved and rolled.

As Penrod sat up his right hand closed on the butt of the Webley. “What is it?”

“Riders! Behind us.” Yakub pointed back along the way they had come. Far out on the sun-seared plain a tight bunch of horsemen was coming on fast. “They are on our tracks.”

Penrod snatched the field-glasses from him and stared back at them. They wore the jibba. He counted nine. They were covering the ground at a canter. The leaders were leaning forward in their saddles to watch the ground ahead.

“They were waiting for us,” said Yakub. “It was the pigeon that warned them.”

“Yes! The pigeon.” Penrod leapt to his feet. He took a last glance at the height of the sun. It was squatting wearily on the horizon and little daylight remained. The camels were ready to run, eager for water, and lunged to their feet at the first touch of the goad.

Penrod leapt into the saddle and pointed his mount’s head at the distant line of palm trees. He used the goad and it lumbered into a gallop. From behind he heard the distant thud of a rifle shot and a bullet ricocheted off the stony ground in a puff of dust and chips, but it was fifty yards out on the left. Even at such long range it was poor shooting, but the Dervish favoured the sword and the spear above the gun. They considered any expertise in the use of firearms to be effete and unmanly. The true warrior killed with the blade, man to man.

Within seconds the camels had crossed the ridge and were screened by the shale bank from further enemy fire. Penrod knew that they were no match for a good horse over the short run, but he pushed his on with cries of “Ha! Ha!” the sting of the goad and urgent movements of his body. Yakub was lighter, though, and his mount drew gradually ahead.

As they raced for the edge of the palm groves Penrod searched for any sign of the horsemen he had spotted earlier. He hoped they might have ridden on towards Omdurman, and left their path open to the river. Even the best of us needs a little luck, he thought, then heard faint but excited cries from far behind. He looked back under his arm, and saw the nine horsemen sweeping over the shale bank they had just crossed. They were strung out but riding hard. There were more shots, but they flew wide. The palm groves drew closer, and he felt his confidence burgeoning. They had a clear run to the bank of the Nile.

“Come, Effendi, watch Yakub and you will learn how to ride a camel.”

The little Jaalin tribesman laughed with delight at his own sense of humour. Both their animals were extended in full gallop, and Penrod ducked as loose pebbles flew back from the pads of the camel in front of him and flicked past his ears.

Suddenly there was a different sound of gunfire, much sharper and clearer. The band of riders he had seen earlier raced out of the grove. They must have been halted and resting among the trees, but now they had been alerted by the shots of the pursuers. All of them wore the jibba of the Dervish and were armed with spear, sword, targe and rifle. They were on a converging course, racing in from the right along the edge of the grove to cut them off from the river. Penrod narrowed his eyes as he judged their speed and the distance to where their paths would cross.

We will make it, but with little to spare, he decided. At that moment a heavy Boxer-Henry .45 calibre bullet struck Yakub’s camel in the head and killed it instantly. It dropped onto its nose and the long legs flew over its head as it tumbled. Yakub was thrown high, then struck the hard ground heavily.

Penrod knew that he must be either killed or knocked senseless. He dared not stop to help him. Baring’s messages were more important than the life of one man. None the less he was filled with dismay at the thought of leaving Yakub to the mercy of the Dervish. He knew they would give him to their women to play with. The Hadendowa woman could castrate a man, then flay every inch of skin from his body without allowing him to lose consciousness, forcing him to endure every exquisite cut of the blade. “Yakub!” he bellowed, with little hope of any response, but to his astonishment Yakub clambered shakily to his feet and looked about groggily.

“Yakub! Make ready.” Penrod leant out sideways from the saddle. Yakub turned and ran in the same direction, to lessen the shock as they came together. They had often practised this trick in preparation for just such a moment on the battlefield or the hunting ground. Yakub was looking back over his shoulder to judge his moment. As the camel swept by him he reached up and linked arms with Penrod. He was jerked clean off his feet, but Penrod used the momentum to swing him back over the camel’s croup.

Yakub grabbed him round the waist and stuck to him like a tick to a dog. The camel ran on without check. The moment Penrod was sure that Yakub was secure he twisted in the saddle and saw that the closest Dervish was only two hundred yards out on their right flank. He rode a magnificent cream mare with a flowing golden mane. Although he wore the green turban of an emir, he was not a greybeard but a warrior in his prime, and he rode with the menace of a couched lance, slim, supple and deadly.

“Abadan Riji!” To Penrod’s astonishment the emir challenged him by name. “Since El Obeid I have waited for you to return to Sudan.”

Then Penrod remembered him. His face and figure were not easily forgotten. This was Osman Atalan, emir of the Beja.

“I thought I had killed you there,” Penrod shouted back. The emir had chased him as he carried the wounded Adams out of the broken square, just as the Dervish charge overwhelmed it. Osman had been riding another mount, not that lovely mare. Penrod had been up on a big strong gelding. Even burdened with Adams it had taken Osman a good half-mile to catch him. Then they rode stirrup to stirrup and shoulder to shoulder, as though riding each other off the ball in a game of polo, Osman slashing and hacking with that great silver blade, and Penrod meeting it with parries and stop hits, until his moment came. Then he feigned a straight thrust at Osman’s eyes. The Dervish threw up his targe to catch the point, and Penrod dropped his aim and hit him, driving hard under the bottom rim of the targe. He had felt his steel go well in. Osman reeled back in the saddle and his mount had swerved aside, breaking out of the trial of strength.

Looking back under his arm as he carried Adams away, Penrod had seen that Osman’s mount had slowed to a walk, and that his rider was hunched over and swaying. He had thought he was probably mortally wounded.

But that was clearly not the case, for now Osman shouted, “I swear on my love of the Prophet that today I will give you another chance to kill me.”

Osman’s men rode close behind him and Penrod saw that they were as dangerous as a pack of wolves. One of the aggagiers aimed his carbine and fired. The black powder smoke erupted from the muzzle and the bullet parted the air so close to Penrod’s cheek that he felt its kiss. He ducked instinctively, and heard Osman shout behind him, “No guns! Blades only. I want this one for my sword, for he has tainted my honour.”

Penrod faced ahead, giving all his concentration to wringing the utmost from the camel under him. They rushed towards the palm grove, but behind him he could hear the thunder of hoofs riding to a crescendo. As they rode past the first trees of the grove, he saw that he had been mistaken; this was not a field of dhurra but a dense stand of second-growth palmetto. The long needle spines could stab through the hide of a horse, but not that of a camel. He turned his mount’s head and it charged straight at the thicket.

He heard the hoofs closer behind him and the hoarse breathing of a horse at full gallop, then saw the mare’s golden head appear in the periphery of his vision.

“Now is your chance, Abadan Riji!” Osman called, and pushed the mare alongside the camel. Penrod leant across the narrow gap and thrust at his turbaned head, but Osman swayed back and kept his targe low, sneering at Penrod over the rim. “The fox never comes twice to the snare,” he said.

“You learn swiftly.” Penrod conceded, and caught the great crusader sword on his own slim blade, turning it in the air so that it flew past his head. He steered the camel with his toes against its neck into the thicket of spiny palmetto. The camel crashed through, but Osman turned aside, breaking off his attack rather than lame or cripple the mare.

He galloped furiously round the edge of the thicket while the camel ran straight through. He had lost at least a hundred paces as he came back into the camel’s tracks and rode hard to catch up with it again.

Penrod saw the wide expanse of the Nile directly ahead, a shimmering luminescence in the fading light. The camel bounded forward under him as it, too, saw the river. Penrod carried the sabre in his right hand, with the goad and the reins in the left. “Yakub, take my pistol!” he said softly. “And for the love and mercy of Allah, try this time to aim fair and shoot straight.”

Yakub reached round his body and pulled the Webley from his sash. “The remarkable Yakub will slay this false emir with a single shot,” he cried, took deliberate aim and closed both eyes before he fired.

Osman Atalan did not flinch at the crack of the shot: he came on swiftly, but he had seen how close they were to the riverbank. He swung the mare in across the camel’s rump, and stood in the stirrups with the long sword poised.

Penrod saw that he had changed his attack, and that he meant to cripple the camel with a deep cut through the hamstrings. With a stab of the goad and a hard tug on the reins he swung the beast’s shoulder into the mare. Standing off balance in his stirrups Osman could not respond swiftly enough to counter the turn, and the two animals came together with the impetus of their combined weights. The camel was almost twice the height of the mare at the shoulder, and half again as heavy. She reeled and went down on her front knees. Osman was thrown on to her neck.

With the skill and balance of an acrobat he retained his seat, and kept a grip on his sword. However, by the time the mare had found her feet again, the camel had pulled too far ahead for her to catch up before it reached the riverbank.

As he raced towards it Penrod had only a moment to survey the river before him. He saw that the bank was a sheer drop of ten feet and that the water below it was green and deep. It was at least a mile across to the opposite bank and three large islands of reeds and papyrus were floating down in stately procession towards Khartoum in the north. That was all he had time to observe. With Osman and his aggagiers racing up behind them he urged the camel straight to the top of the bank.

“In God’s Name!” shrieked Yakub. “I cannot swim.”

“If you stay here the Dervish women will have your balls,” Penrod reminded him.

“I can swim!” Yakub changed his mind.

“Sensible Yakub!” Penrod grunted, and as the camel hesitated he stabbed hard into its neck with the goad. It leapt outwards so violently that Yakub lost his grip on the Webley as he snatched at a handhold. With a gut-wrenching sensation they dropped to hit the water with a splash as high as the bank above their heads. The aggagiers reined in their horses and milled about on top of the bank, firing down at the two men floundering on the surface.

“Stop!” Osman shouted angrily, and knocked up the barrel of al-Noor’s carbine. His intervention came too late, for a bullet fired by one of the others hit the camel and damaged its spine. The terrified beast swam desperately with its front feet, but its paralysed back legs anchored it so that it turned in small circles, bellowing and hissing with terror. Despite the crippling injury it rode high in the water, buoyed by the inflated waterskins.

“You think you have cheated me yet again,” Osman shouted across the water, ‘but I am Osman Atalan, and your life belongs to me.”

Penrod guessed immediately from the emir’s tone of false bravado that, like most desert Arabs, he could not swim. For all his wild courage on land, he would never expose himself and his beautiful mare to the attack of the jinn and the monstrous Nile crocodiles that infested these waters. He would not follow his enemy over the bank into the swift green river.

For a minute longer Osman wrestled with his chivalrous instincts, his passionate desire for single combat, to avenge himself on his enemy with the sword. Then he gave way to expediency, and made an abrupt, eloquent chopping gesture with his right hand.

“Kill them!” he ordered. At once his aggagiers jumped to the ground and lined the top of the bank. They aimed volley after volley at the group of bobbing heads. Penrod seized Yakub by one arm and dragged him behind the struggling camel, using it as a shield. The current carried them swiftly downstream and the aggagiers followed, running along the bank, and keeping up a hail of carbine fire. All the time the current was carrying them away from the bank and the range was opening. At last a lucky shot struck the camel in the head, and it rolled over like a log in the water.

Penrod drew the dagger from his sash, and cut loose one of the inflated skins from its saddle. “Hold here, brave Yakub,” he gasped, and the terrified Arab seized the tag of rawhide rope. They abandoned the camel’s carcass, and Penrod swam them slowly out across the current towards the middle of the river.

As darkness dropped over them, with the suddenness of the African night, the shape of the Dervish on the bank faded away and only the muzzle flashes of their rifles still showed. Penrod swam with a gentle sidestroke, kicking with both legs, paddling with one hand and towing Yakub with the other by the scruff of his neck. Yakub was clinging to the skin bladder, and shivering like a half-drowned puppy. “There are crocodiles in this cursed river so large they could swallow a buffalo, horns and all.” His teeth chattered and he choked on a mouthful of water.

“Then they would not trouble themselves with a skinny little Jaalin,” Penrod comforted him. A huge dark shape loomed out of the gloom and bore down on them. It was one of the floating islands of papyrus and reeds. He caught a handful of reeds as it drifted by, and dragged himself and Yakub up on to it. The vegetation was so densely matted and intertwined it could have supported a herd of elephants. It undulated softly under their feet as they crawled across it to the side nearest Khartoum. They squatted there, regaining their strength and gazing across at the eastern bank.

Penrod was worried that, on such a moonless night, he might not see the city when they reached it and stared into the darkness until his eyes ached. Suddenly he thought he could make out the ugly square shape of Mukran Fort, but his eyes were playing tricks and, when he stared at it, it dissolved. “After such a journey, it would be the height of stupidity to sail past Khartoum in the night,” he muttered, and then his doubts were dispelled.

From downstream there came the crash of artillery fire. He leapt to his feet and peered through the papyrus stems. He saw the brilliant orange muzzle flashes of cannon demarcating the Omdurman side of the river. Seconds later the shells burst on the east bank and illuminated Khartoum’s waterfront. This time there was no mistaking the stark outline of Mukran Fort and, beyond it, the consular palace. He smiled grimly as he remembered the nightly artillery bombardment by the Dervish gunner, whom David Benbrook had dubbed the Bedlam Bedouin. “At least he has not run out of ammunition yet,” he said, and explained to Yakub what they had to do.

“We are safe here,” Yakub demurred. “If we stay here the river will push us in time to the bank and we can walk ashore like men, not swim like iguanas.”

“That will not happen until you reach the Shabluka Gorge, where this raft will surely be destroyed. You know well that the gorge is the lair of all the most evil river djinni.”

Yakub thought about that for a few minutes, then announced, “Brave Yakub fears no jinnee, but he will swim with you to the city to watch over you.”

The skin bladder had leaked half its air, and they blew it tight again while they waited for the raft to reach the most advantageous point. By then the moon had risen, and although the Dervish bombardment had petered out, they could make out the city skyline clearly, and even see a few small cooking fires. They slipped into the water. Yakub was becoming more courageous by the minute and Penrod showed him how to kick with his legs and help to drive the bladder across the current.

After a laborious swim Penrod felt the bottom under his feet. He let the bladder go and dragged Yakub ashore. “Fearless Yakub defies all the crocodiles and jinn of this little stream.” Yakub posed boldly on the bank and made an obscene gesture towards the Nile.

“Yakub should close his fearless mouth,” Penrod advised, ‘before one of the Egyptian sentries puts a bullet in his defiant backside.” He wanted to get into the city secretly. Apart from the danger of being shot by the guards, any contact with the troops would result in him being taken immediately to General Gordon. His orders from Sir Evelyn Baring were to deliver his message to Benbrook first, and only then to report to Gordon.

Penrod had spent months in Khartoum before and after the disaster of El Obeid, so he was intimately aware of the layout of the de fences and fortifications, which were concentrated along the riverfront. Keeping well outside the walls and the canal, he worked his way swiftly around the southern outskirts. When he was almost opposite the domed roof of the French consulate, he approached the canal bank. Once he was certain that it was clear, they waded across, the water only chin deep.

When they reached the other side they lay up in the palm grove to wait for the patrol to pass. Penrod whiffed the smoke of Turkish tobacco before he saw them. They sauntered past along the footpath, rifles trailing, the sergeant smoking. It was behaviour typical of the slovenly Egyptian troops.

As soon as they were gone he dropped into the drainage ditch that led to the outer city wall. The ooze stank of raw sewerage, but they crawled through the tunnel, past the back wall of the French consulate and into the old town. Penrod was perturbed at how easily they had got through. Gordon’s de fences must be stretched to breaking point. At the beginning of the siege he had commanded seven thousand Egyptians, but that number must have been much reduced by the attrition of disease and desertion.

They hurried through the deserted alleys, stepping round the bloated carcasses of men and animals. Even the appetite of the crows and vultures was inadequate to the task of devouring such an abundance. The stench of a city under siege assailed his nostrils, death and putrefaction. He had heard it called the cholera bouquet.

Penrod paused to pull his pocket watch from its pouch and held it to his ear. It had not survived the dousing in the river. He looked at the moon, judged that it was well after midnight, and hurried on unchallenged through the deserted streets. When they reached the gates of the consular palace there was still lamplight in a few windows. The sentry at the front gate was asleep, curled like a dog in his box. His rifle was propped against the wall, and Penrod took charge of it before he kicked him awake. It took some time and a great deal of argument with the sergeant of the guard, but despite his appearance and the smell of sewerage that wafted from his robes Penrod was able at last to convince him that he was a British officer.

When he was led to David Benbrook’s office, the consul was reading by lamplight. He looked annoyed by the intrusion, as he removed the reading glasses from his nose and stood up. He was dressed in a velvet smoking jacket and had been poring over a sheaf of documents. “What is it?” he snapped.

“Good evening, Consul.” Penrod saluted him. “I’m sorry to trouble you at this time of night, but I’ve just arrived from Cairo with messages from Sir Evelyn Baring.”

“God bless my soul!” David stared at Penrod in amazement. “You’re English!”

“I am, sir. I have had the pleasure of your previous acquaintance. I am Captain Ballantyne of the 10th Hussars.”

“Ballantyne! I remember you well. As a matter of fact we were speaking about you just the other day. How do you do, my dear fellow?” After they had shaken hands David held his handkerchief to his nose. “First thing is to get you a bath and some fresh clothes.” He rang for the servants. “I am not sure that there will be hot water at this time of night,” he apologized, ‘but it should not take long to get the boiler going.”

Not only was the bathwater scalding, David Benbrook even produced half a cake of perfumed soap from Paris and lent Penrod a razor. While he shaved David sat on the lid of the commode across the tiled bathroom. He seemed oblivious to Penrod’s nudity, and scribbled notes in a little red leather bound book, as Penrod repeated Baring’s long and involved message. Then he questioned Penrod avidly about General Stewart’s preparations for the rescue expedition. “Hasn’t even left Wadi Haifa yet?” he exclaimed, with alarm. “By Gad, I hope we’ll be able to hold out until he gets here.”

David was of almost the same build as Penrod. Even a pair of his boots fitted as though they were made for the younger man. Penrod had considerably less girth, but he belted in the trousers and tucked in a freshly ironed white shirt. When he was dressed David led him back to his study. “I cannot even offer you brandy to wash it down,” he said, as a servant placed a beautiful Sevres plate before Penrod. On it sat a small portion of dhurra cake and a lump of goat’s milk cheese no larger than the first joint of his thumb. “Hard commons, I’m afraid.”

“Very nourishing, sir.” Penrod nibbled the dhurra.

“Damned pleased to have your despatches, Ballantyne. We’ve been completely in the dark here for months. How long did it take you from Cairo?”

“I left there on the nineteenth of last month, sir.”

“Damn me, but that was good going.” David nodded. “Now, tell me what the London newspapers are saying.” He was eager for every scrap of news that Penrod could tell him.

“They are quite openly reporting the bad blood between General Gordon and Mr. Gladstone, sir, and public opinion is strongly on General Gordon’s side. They want Khartoum relieved, the General rescued, and the savages taught to mind their manners.”

“What is your opinion, Captain?”

“As a serving officer I do not allow myself an opinion on such matters, sir.”

“Very wise.” David smiled. “But as a member of the public, do you think that the Prime Minister has shown lack of resolve?”

Penrod hesitated. “May I speak frankly, sir?”

“That is what I am inviting you to do. Whatever you say will remain between us. You have my word on it.”

“I think that Mr. Gladstone has shown neither cowardice nor indecision in refusing to send an army upriver to save the life of General Gordon, as most of the British public believes. The general had only to embark on one of his steamers and come home. I believe that the Prime Minister did not feel justified in involving the nation in costly and risky operations here in the heart of Sudan merely to vindicate the personal honour of one man.”

David drew a deep breath. “My goodness me! I asked for your frank opinion and I got it. But tell me, Ballantyne, don’t you think that there is not some personal resentment in Whitehall for an officer whose rash and intractable actions have brought so much odium upon them?”

“It would be remarkable if that was not the case. It is clearly demonstrated in the despatches from Sir Evelyn that I deli verd to you.”

David considered Penrod seriously. He was not just a pretty fellow, he thought, he had a thinking head on his shoulders. “So you would oppose the despatch of Wolseley’s force to our relief?”

“Oh, never!” Penrod laughed. “I’m a soldier, and soldiers thrive on war. I hope to be in the thick of it, even if it doesn’t make good sense, which is apparent, and if matters turn nasty, which is highly likely.”

David laughed with him. “War seldom makes good sense,” he agreed. “It is refreshing to hear a military man say it. But why has Gladstone changed his mind, and agreed to send an army?”

“The expressed desire of the nation is a force to which Mr. Gladstone has always acceded. I understand from Sir Evelyn Baring that the Prime Minister was advised that only a single brigade would be needed for the expedition. Only after he had reluctantly taken the decision, and announced it to the nation, did the war ministry ask for a much larger force. It was too late then to reverse the decision so the relieving army has become not a single brigade but ten thousand men.”

The hours sped away as they talked until the grandfather clock in the corner chimed again. David stared at it in astonishment. “Two o’clock, upon my soul! We’ll have to give you a few hours’ sleep before you meet Gordon. I imagine you’re in for a torrid time with him.”

The servants were waiting up for him but David dismissed them and personally showed Penrod to one of the guest suites. The night was so sultry and he was so tired that he could not bother himself to don the thick flannel nightshirt that David provided. Instead he stripped naked and before he crawled beneath the single sheet he placed his dagger under the pillow. Then he went out like a candle in a high wind.

He awoke without a change in his breathing, and was immediately aware that someone was in the bedroom with him. While he feigned sleep, he tried to remember where he was. Through his eyelashes he saw that the curtains were drawn and the light in the room was muted. It was still early in the morning. He moved his hand infinitesimally slowly under the pillow until his fingers curled around the hilt of his dagger. He waited like a coiled adder for the strike.

There was a light footstep beside his bed, and someone coughed softly, nervously. The small sound gave him direction and he launched himself off the bed. He bore the intruder to the floor, held him by the throat with one hand, and with the other touched him with the point of the dagger. “If you move I will kill you,” he whispered ferociously in Arabic. “Who are you?”

Then he became aware that his captive smelt of rosebuds and the throat he held was silken smooth and warm. The body under him was clad in taffeta bodice and skirts and there were marvelous protuberances and hollows under the fine cloth. He released his hold and sprang to his feet. He stared down in astonishment and consternation as his captive sat up. It took him some seconds to grasp that he had assaulted and threatened a young woman with shining blonde hair. And that sitting on the floor, with her skirts in disarray around her, her eyes were at the same level as his naked groin, her gaze was fixed upon an object that happened to be a part of his anatomy seldom exposed to public scrutiny.

Still gripping the dagger, he spun round to grab the sheet from the bed. Before he could wrap it round himself he realized that he was offering the reverse view to the young woman. Haste made him clumsy, and he fumbled until at last, modestly covered, he faced her again.

“I am mortified, Miss Benbrook. I had no idea it was you. You startled me.”

Her pale cheeks were slowly suffused with a rosy blush, but she was still panting for breath, as though she had run a distance. The effect this had on what lay beneath her bodice was riveting. “If I startled you, sir, then you have no idea how you have alarmed me. Who are you and what are you doing Her hand flew to her mouth as she recognized him, despite his unflattering new haircut. “Captain Ballantyne!”

“Your servant, madam.” His bow was spoilt by the need to retain a grip on both the dagger and his sheet. She scrambled to her feet, stared at him a moment longer with wide eyes, then fled from the room. He stared after her. He had forgotten how pleasing she was to the eye, a condition not at all spoilt by her confusion and dismay. Then he grinned. “That alone was worth the journey,” he said to himself.

He whistled as he shaved and dressed, then winked at himself in the mirror and said aloud, “Perhaps next time she will recognize me more readily, now that she has more to remember me by.” Then he went down the stairs.

David was already seated at the breakfast table, but apart from the white’ robed servants he was alone. “Have some of this.” He placed a spoonful of an amorphous pale green substance on Penrod’s plate. “The taste is execrable, but I have it on excellent authority that it is highly nutritious.”

Penrod peered at it suspiciously. It looked like green cheese. “What is it?”

“I understand that it is the curds of papyrus and reed weeds, made by my daughters. We eat a lot of it. In fact, since the official rations were reduced to one cup of dhurra corn a day, we eat little else.”

Penrod put a morsel cautiously into his mouth. “My compliments to your daughters. It is very palatable.” He tried to sound convincing.

“It’s not bad really. Try it with Worcester sauce or Gentleman’s Relish. You will soon grow accustomed to it. Now, shall we go and call upon General Gordon?”

General Gordon turned from the window through which he had been staring across the river at the enemy emplacements. He stared at Penrod with that disconcerting blue gaze as he saluted. “At ease, Captain. I believe you made the journey from Cairo in record time,” he said.

How did he know that? Penrod wondered, and then it was obvious. We have the boasting of the fearless Yakub to thank.

In silence General Gordon listened to his report and the messages he had brought from Sir Evelyn. When he had finished speaking, Gordon did not reply immediately. He paced up and down the long room, finally stopping to stare at the large-scale map of the Sudan that was spread on the table under the windows. The view from them was unrestricted: the glass panes had been blown out by shrapnel from the Dervish artillery across the river, but Gordon had taken no steps to fortify his headquarters or to protect his person. He seemed to be concerned only for the safety of the city and the well-being of its people.

“I suppose that we must be grateful to the Prime Minister for coming to the rescue of the populace, even though he is several months too late,” he remarked at last. Then he looked up at Penrod. “The only consolation for me is that now I have at least one British officer on my staff.”

At those words, Penrod felt the first chill breeze of unease blow down his spine. “My orders from General Stewart, sir, are to return to Wadi Haifa as soon as I have delivered my despatches to you. I am seconded to the new Camel Corps with orders to assist in guiding them across the loop of the Nile to the assault upon Metemma.”

Gordon thought about that for a moment, then shook his head. “If General Stewart has not yet left Wadi Haifa it will be months before he reaches Metemma. You will be more useful here than sitting at Wadi Haifa. Besides, there must be hundreds of other guides qualified to bring the Camel Corps across the loop. When the rescue column reaches Abu Hamed, I shall reconsider. But in the meantime I need you here.”

He said it with such finality that Penrod knew argument was futile. His dreams of action and glory were shattered. Instead of riding into the city at the head of his corps after fighting his way up from Metemma, he was now sentenced to the dreary monotony of the siege.

I must bide my time, and choose my moment, he decided, and did not let his expression betray his true feelings. “It will be an honour to serve under you, General, but I would appreciate having those orders in writing.”

“You shall have them,” Gordon promised, ‘but now I must bring you up to date with the situation here, and our immediate and most pressing problems. Take a seat, Ballantyne.”

Gordon spoke quickly, almost with agitation, flitting from subject to subject, chain-smoking cigarettes from a silver case. Slowly Penrod began to understand the enormous strain under which he had been working, and to gain an inkling of the terrible loneliness of this command. He sensed that before his arrival, there had been nobody Gordon could trust to share with him some of the burden. If Penrod was not an equal in rank, at least he was an officer of a first-line British regiment, and as such was worth a dhow full of Egyptian staff officers.

“You see, Ballantyne, I have here the responsibility and duty without full control. I am daily afflicted not only by the incompetence of the Egyptian officers but by their unconscionable behaviour and total lack of morality or sense of duty. They wilfully disobey orders, if they think they can escape the consequences, they neglect their duties and spend most of their time with their concubines. Unless I chivvy them they seldom bother to visit the front-line de fences I am aware that they conspire and intrigue with the Dervish in the hope that they may win advantage when the city falls, which they are convinced it will. They steal from their own men. The troops fall asleep at their posts, and in their turn steal from the populace. I suspect that large quantities of dhurra have been stolen from the granary. The women and children of the city spit at me and revile me in the streets when I am forced to reduce the rations yet again. We are down to a cupful of grain per person per day.” He lit another cigarette and the flame of the match fluttered in his cupped hands. He puffed rapidly, then smiled coldly at Penrod. “So you can imagine that your assistance will be welcome. That is especially true since you are so well acquainted with the layout of the city.”

“Of course you may rely on me, General.” Despite his cold, almost messianic gaze, Penrod wondered how close Gordon was to breaking point.

“I am going to delegate to you the following responsibilities at the outset. Until now Major al-Faroque has been in charge of the storage and distribution of food. His efforts have been at best pathetically inadequate. I suspect, though I cannot prove it, that he knows something of the missing grain. You will take over from him immediately. I want you to let me have an inventory of all the available supplies as soon as possible. Under the rule of martial law, you have the power of seizure. You may commandeer any stores you need. Any transgressions are to be treated with the utmost severity. You may flog or shoot looters and black-marketeers without reference to me. The troops and the populace must be forced to accept the unpleasant laws you will make them fully aware that the alternatives are even worse. Do you understand that?”

“Of course, General.”

“Do you know a Ryder Courtney?”

“Only in passing, sir.”

“He is a trader and merchant of this city. I was obliged to requisition a shipment of his dhurra. As a mercenary without an altruistic bone in his body, he resents it. He has his own compound within the city, and behaves as though he is independent of all authority. I want you to make the true position clear to him.”

“I understand, sir,” said Penrod, and thought sourly, So now I am no longer a Hussar but a policeman and quartermaster.

Gordon was watching his expression, and saw the reaction, but he went on unruffled: “Among other enterprises, he owns and operates a large river steamer. At present it is undergoing repairs in his workshop. Once it is serviceable again, it will be useful in future military operations and possible evacuation of our populace, should Stewart’s column fail to arrive in time. Courtney also has horses and camels, and much else that will be vital to us as the Dervish noose tightens around us.” Gordon stood up as a signal that the meeting was at an end. “Find out what he is up to, and what he knows of the missing dhurra, Ballantyne. Then report back to me.”

Penrod knew of Ryder Courtney’s reputation: David Benbrook had spoken of him and even Sir Evelyn Baring had taken note of him. It seemed that he was a resourceful and formidable character. If Penrod was to carry out Gordon’s orders he would gain nothing by marching up to the front gate of Courtney’s compound and announcing himself and his intentions. First, he thought, a little scouting expedition is called for.

He left the palace gardens by the river gate. It was unguarded, and he made a note of that. He moved swiftly along the waterfront, to prevent warning of his arrival being telegraphed ahead. At the first redoubt of the de fences the sentries were recumbent, resting weary limbs and eyes. Penrod had heard of Gordon’s swift justice, and he had no wish to precipitate a massacre and decimation of the Egyptian garrison, so he used cane and boot to remind them of their duty.

He went on along the line of fortifications and gun emplacements that had been erected since his last visit to the city. It was evident that these had been planned by General Gordon, for they had been laid out with a soldier’s eye and understanding of terrain. He inspected the field guns, and though he was no artilleryman, he picked out the deficiencies in care and handling of the weapons. The shortage of ammunition was painfully apparent. When he questioned them, the gunners told him they were not allowed independent fire but had to wait for orders from their officers before they were allowed to send a single shell across the river. The Dervish on the opposite bank were under no such limitation, and morning and evening they indulged in uninhibited barrages, which made up in enthusiasm for any lack of accuracy. Usually the middle of the day was calm and peaceful while both sides rested from the heat of the sun.

Penrod moved quickly past the harbour, where he noticed a white river steamer with most of her machinery stripped out and spread on the stone wharf for repair. Her hull and superstructure were peppered with shrapnel hits. A gang of Arab workers was busy patching and painting over the damage. A white engineer supervised them, encouraging his crew with a chorus of oaths and imprecations that carried clearly across the water in the accents of the Glasgow docks. It was obvious that it would be weeks, if not months, before the steamer was ready to sail. Penrod moved on along the river frontage of the Blue Nile towards Fort Burri and the arsenal.

As he picked his way through the alleyways, which were almost clogged with shell debris and filth, brown faces looked down at him from the windows and rickety balconies that almost met overhead. Women held up their naked infants so that he could see the swellings and bruising of scurvy, the skeletal limbs. “We are starving, Effendi. Give us food,” they pleaded. Their cries alerted the beggars, who hobbled out of the gloomy depths of the alleyways to pluck at his clothing. He scattered them with a few shrewd cuts of his cane.

The guns on the parapets of Fort Burri covered the north bank of the Blue Nile, and the Dervish fortifications facing them. Penrod paused to study them, and saw that the enemy were taking few precautions. Even with the naked eye he could see figures across the river moving about in the open. Some Dervish women were washing their laundry on the riverbank and spreading it out to dry in full view of Fort Burri. They must have realized how perilously depleted was Gordon’s stock of shot and shell.

Behind Fort Burri stood the squat and ugly blockhouses of the arsenal and the munitions store. General Gordon was using them as the city granary. There were sentries at the entrance and at each revetment that supported the crumbling walls. From what Gordon had told him, even those guards and the repairs to the walls had been no match for the ingenuity of Ryder Courtney or the Egyptian officers, or whoever was to blame for the depredations in the granary. However, this was not the time to visit the arsenal or to conduct an audit of the stores. That would come later. Penrod was headed towards the sprawling complex of Ryder Courtney’s compound, which lay a short way beyond, almost on the canal that defended the city from an assault out of the southern desert.

As he approached he saw that there was unusual activity in progress on the canal banks behind the walls of the compound. This puzzled him, so he left the road and followed the towpath that ran along the embankment. At first he thought that the many men working in the canal were constructing some form of fortification. Then he realized that women were carrying bundles on their heads from the embankment into the rear gate of Courtney’s compound.

As he came closer he saw that a huge raft of river weed almost blocked the canal. It was similar to the mass of vegetation on which he and Yakub had escaped from Osman Atalan the previous day. Dozens of Arabs swarmed over the raft, clad only in loincloths and armed with scythes and sickles. They were cutting the papyrus and river weed and tying it into bundles for the women to carry away.

What the devil are they up to? He was intrigued. And how did that raft of weed get into the canal so conveniently placed for Courtney to harvest? Then the answer occurred to him. Of course! He must have captured and roped it in the main river, then used muscle power to drag it up the canal. They warned me that he is crafty.

The workers hailed Penrod respectfully, invoking Allah’s blessing on him. They looked impressed when he returned the greeting in fluent, colloquial Arabic. Although he wore no uniform, they knew his name was Abadan Riji, and that he had ridden off Osman Atalan and all his most famous aggagiers to reach Khartoum. Yakub had seen to it that all the city knew of their heroics.

When Penrod followed the line of Sudanese women through the rear gate of the compound, no one challenged him. He found himself in a large walled enclosure, which swarmed with activity. The women piled their bundles in the centre and returned to the canal for the next load. Another team was seated in groups, chattering as they picked over the cut stems and sorted them into piles. They discarded all the dead and dried-out material, and chose only that which was still green and succulent. This they sorted into the various types of vegetation. The largest heap comprised the common papyrus, but there was also water-hyacinth, and three other types of grass and reed. The nymphaea was obviously the most prized plant for it was not piled on the dusty ground like the papyrus and hyacinth but carefully packed into sacks and carried away for pulping by another team of women. They were working over a long line of stamp mortars “that usually crushed dhurra into flour. The women worked in unison, thumping the heavy wooden pole they used as a pestle into the bowl-shaped mortar, pounding the water-lilies with a little water into pulp. They sang as they swayed and rocked to the rhythm of the swinging poles.

Once the contents of the mortars were reduced to a thick green paste, another party of women collected it in large black clay pots, and carried it through the gate of a second enclosure. Penrod was interested and followed them. No sooner had he stepped through the gate when, for the first time, he was challenged in a peremptory treble. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

Penrod found himself confronted by too young females, neither of whom stood much taller than his belt buckle. One was dark brunette and the other was golden blonde. One had eyes the colour of molten toffee, while the smaller girl’s were the bright blue of petunia petals.

Both gazed up at him with a severe expression and pursed lips. The taller child had her fists on her hips in a pugnacious attitude. “You’re not allowed in here. This is a secret place.”

Penrod recovered from his surprise, gallantly lifted his hat and bowed deeply. “I beg your pardon, ladies, I did not mean to trespass. Please accept my apologies and allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Penrod Ballantyne of Her Majesty’s 10th Royal Hussars. At present I am on the staff of General Gordon.”

Both girls’ expressions softened as they continued to stare at him. They were unaccustomed to being addressed in such polite terms. Furthermore, like most other women, they were not impervious to Penrod’s charms.

“I am Saffron Benbrook, sir,” said the taller girl, and curtsied. “But you may call me Saffy.”

“Your servant, Miss Saffy.”

“And I am Amber Benbrook, but some people call me Midget,” said the blonde. “I don’t really like the name, but I suppose I am a little shorter than my sister.”

“I agree entirely. It is not a fitting name for such a lovely young lady. If you will permit me, I shall address you as Miss Amber.”

“How do you do?” Amber returned his bow with a curtsy, and when she straightened up she found herself in love for the first time. It was a sensation of warmth and pressure in her chest, disturbing but not altogether unpleasant.

“I know who you are,” she said, just a trifle breathlessly.

“Do you, indeed? And, pray, how is that?”

“I heard Ryder speaking to Daddy about you.”

“Daddy, I presume, is David Benbrook. But who is Ryder?”

“Ryder Courtney. He said you had the finest pair of whiskers in Christendom. What happened to them?”

“Ah!” replied Penrod, his face suddenly touched with frost. “He must be a noted comedian.”

“He is a great hunter and very, very clever.” Saffron rushed to his defence. “He knows the name of every animal and bird in the world -the Latin names,” she added portentously.

Amber was determined to wrest back Penrod’s attention from her twin. “Ryder says that the ladies find you dashing and gallant.” Penrod looked slightly better pleased, until Amber went on innocently, “And that you agree wholeheartedly with their opinion.”

Penrod changed the topic. “Who is in charge here?”

“We are,” the twins chorused.

“What are you doing? It looks very interesting.”

“We are making plant curds to feed our people.”

“I would be most grateful if you could explain the process to me.” The twins seized upon the invitation and competed vigorously for his attention, interrupting and contradicting each other at every opportunity. Each grabbed one of Penrod’s hands and dragged him into the inner courtyard.

“When the most succulent leaves are crushed, then they have to be filtered.”

“To get rid of the pith and rubbish.” There was no longer any thought of safeguarding secrets.

“We strain it through trade cloth from Ryder’s stores.”

“We have to squeeze it to get out all the goodness.”

Pairs of Sudanese women were pouring the green pulp into lengths of printed cloth, then twisting it between them. The juices dribbled into the huge black cast-iron pots, which stood on three legs over the smouldering cooking fires.

“We measure the temperature Saffron brandished a large thermometer importantly.

‘ and when it reaches seventy degrees,” Amber cut in, ‘the protein coagulates ’

“I am telling it,” said Saffron, furiously. “I am the oldest.”

“Only by one hour,” Amber retorted, and gabbled out the rest of the explanation. “Then we sieve off the curds and make them into bricks and dry them in the sun.” She pointed triumphantly at the long trestle tables laden with square blocks set out upon them in neat rows. This was what Penrod had eaten for breakfast, and he remembered David’s warning that there was precious-little else.

“We call it green-cake. You can taste some if you like.” Amber broke off a morsel and stood on tiptoe to place it between his lips.

“Scrumptious!” Penrod exclaimed, and swallowed manfully.

“Have some more.”

“Excellent, but enough for now. Your father says it is even tastier with Worcester Sauce,” he said hurriedly, forestalling delivery of the next mouthful, which was already on its way in Amber’s grubby little hand. “How much green-cake can you make in a day?”

“Not enough to feed everybody. Just enough for ourselves and our own people.”

The efficacy of the green-cakes was apparent. Unlike the rest of the malnourished populace, none of the inhabitants of the compound was showing signs of starvation. In fact, the twins were blooming. Then he remembered his brief meeting with their elder sister that morning.

Nothing wrong with her either. He smiled at the memory, and the two children took it as a sign of his approval and smiled with him.

Penrod realized that he now had staunch allies in the Courtney stronghold. “You really are two very clever young ladies,” he said. “I would be most obliged if you were to show me around the rest of the compound. I hear that there are all sorts of fascinating things here.”

“Would you like to see the animals?” cried Amber.

“The monkeys?” said Saffron.

“The bongos?”

“Everything,” agreed Penrod. “I would like to see everything.”

It was soon apparent that the twins were the favourites of everyone and that they had the run of the Courtney compound. They were particular friends and intimates of AH the animal-keeper. It was only with the greatest difficulty that the old man prevented himself grinning with delight as soon as he laid eyes on them. They led Penrod from cage to cage, calling to the animals by name and feeding them by hand when they responded.

“They didn’t like the green-cake at all when we first tried to feed them with it, but now they all love it. Just look how they gobble it up.” Amber pointed.

“What about dhurra? They must like that too?” Penrod set a bait for her.

“Oh, I suppose they do,” Saffron cut in, ‘but there isn’t enough for the people, let alone the animals.”

“We only get a cupful a day,” Amber confirmed.

“I thought your friend Ryder had plenty of dhurra and that he was selling it.”

“Oh, yes! He had a whole boatload. But General Gordon took it all from him. Ryder was furious.”

Penrod was grateful that the girls’ innocent disclosures virtually guaranteed that, despite the general’s suspicions, Courtney was not guilty of the theft of grain from the arsenal. He had no reason to feel any warmth for the man, especially after his remarks about Penrod’s whiskers and his good opinion of himself, but he was an Englishman and it would have been distasteful for Penrod to have to confirm Gordon’s suspicions.

“I would very much like to meet your friend Ryder,” he suggested tentatively. “Would you introduce me?”

“Oh, yes! Come with us.”

They dragged him from the menagerie, and across an inner courtyard until they reached a small door at the far end. The twins let go of his hands and raced each other to the door. They threw it open and burst into the room beyond. Penrod stepped up close behind them and, from the doorway, surveyed the room swiftly.

It was obviously both an office and the private living quarters of the owner of the compound. A massive pair of elephant tusks were mounted on the far wall, the largest Penrod had ever seen. The other walls were covered with magnificently woven Persian carpets, and dozens of murky yellowing photographs in dark wooden frames. More carpets covered the floors, and in a curtained recess, a large angareb bed was spread with golden leopard skins dappled with black rosettes. The chairs and the massive desk were hewn from polished native teak. The bookcases held rows of leather bound journals, and scientific books on flora and fauna. A row of rifles and muzzle-loading guns stood in a rack between the curves of the thick yellow tusks. Penrod’s gaze slid over this untidy masculine display, then riveted on the couple who stood in the middle of the room. Even the tumultuous twins were frozen with shock at the sight.

Man and woman were locked in a passionate embrace, oblivious to everything and everyone around them. Saffron broke the silence with a wail of accusation: “She’s kissing him! Becky is kissing Ryder on his mouth!”

Ryder Courtney and Rebecca Benbrook sprang apart guiltily, then stood, frozen, staring at the group in the doorway. Rebecca turned ice pale and her eyes seemed to fill her face as she looked at Penrod. He cut her a mockingly appreciative salute. “We meet again so soon, Miss Benbrook.”

Rebecca dropped her gaze to the floor and now her cheeks turned the bright crimson of live coals. “Her mortification was so intense that she felt dizzy and swayed on her feet. Then, with an enormous effort, she rallied. Without looking at either man she rushed forward and seized her little sisters by the wrists. “You horrible children! How many times have you been told to knock before you enter a room?”

She dragged them out of the open door, and Saffron’s voice receded in the distance: “You were kissing him. I hate you. I’ll never speak to you again. You were kissing Ryder.”

The two men faced each other as though neither had heard the sisterly accusations of betrayal. “Mr. Courtney, I presume. I hope my visit has not come at an inconvenient time.”

“Captain Ballantyne, sir. I heard that you arrived in our lovely city late last night. Your fame precedes you.”

“So it appears,” Penrod conceded. “Though for the life of me I know not how.”

“Simple enough, I assure you.” Ryder was relieved that there was to be no heavy-handed banter regarding the romantic episode that Ballantyne had witnessed it might have led to an outbreak of hostilities. “Your outrider, Yakub of the Jaalin, is the intimate friend of the nursemaid of the Benbrook twins and a stalwart of their household, a good lady by the name of Nazeera. Her busy tongue is one of her most apparent failings.”

“Aha! Now I understand. Perhaps you were even expecting my visit.”

“It comes as no great surprise,” Ryder admitted. “I understand that General Gordon, may all his enterprises flourish, has some questions for me regarding the dhurra missing from the arsenal.”

Penrod inclined his head in acknowledgement. “I see you keep yourself well informed.” He was appraising Ryder Courtney with a penetrating gaze, cloaked by a disarming smile as they sparred.

“I try to keep abreast of affairs.” Ryder was not at all disarmed by the smile, and his own gaze was just as shrewd. “But please do come in, my dear fellow. It is perhaps a little early, but may I offer you a cigar and a glass of firstrate Cognac?”

“I was convinced those two marvelous commodities no longer existed in this naughty world.” Penrod moved across to the chair Ryder indicated.

When their cigars were drawing evenly they regarded each other over their charged glasses. Ryder gave the toast: “I congratulate you on your speedy journey from Cairo.”

“I wish I were already on my way back.”

“Khartoum is hardly a spa,” Ryder agreed. They sipped the brandy and talked guardedly, still sounding each other out. Ryder knew Penrod by sight and reputation so there were no real surprises for him.

Penrod learnt swiftly that he had not been misinformed, and that Ryder was a formidable character, tough, quick and resilient. He was also good-looking in a rugged, forthright style. No wonder the lovely Miss Benbrook had shown herself susceptible to his advances. I wonder just how susceptible. It might be amusing to test her commitment to this fellow, man to man and hand to hand, so to speak. Penrod smiled urbanely, masking the glint of steel in his eyes. He dearly loved a contest, pitting his skills and wits against another, especially if a handsome prize were at stake. There was more to it than that. The nubile Miss Benbrook’s involvement with Ryder Courtney added a new dimension to the sharp attraction he had previously felt towards her. It seemed that, despite appearances, she was not made of ice, that there were depths beneath the surface, which might be fascinating to plumb. He was amused by his own choice of metaphor.

“You mentioned the missing dhurra,” Penrod broached the subject again.

Ryder nodded. “I have a proprietary interest in that shipment,” he said. “It once belonged to me. It was transported at great expense and no little hardship several hundred miles down the river, then commandeered, some might even say stolen, by the redoubtable Chinese Gordon the minute I landed it safely in Khartoum.” He fell silent and brooded on the injustice.

“Naturally you have not the faintest notion what happened to it once it passed out of your hands?” Penrod suggested delicately.

“I have made some enquiries,” Ryder admitted. Under his instructions Bacheet had spent several weeks pursuing them. Even the rabbit warren of ancient buildings and alleyways of Khartoum could not hide five thousand ardebs of grain indefinitely.

“I would be fascinated to known the results of those investigations.”

Ryder regarded the tip of his cigar with a frown of annoyance. The lack of humidity in the desert air desiccated the tobacco leaf and caused it to burn like a grass fire. “Did you hear if, by any chance, the good general has offered a reward for the return of the missing dhurra?” he asked. “Lord knows, he paid little enough for it on the first purchase. Six shillings a sack!”

“General Gordon has not spoken to me of a reward,” Penrod shook his head, ‘but I will suggest it to him. I would think that a reward of six shillings a sack might bring forth information, don’t you?”

“Perhaps not,” Ryder replied. “However, I believe that an offer of twelve shillings would be almost certain to produce results.”

“I shall speak to him at the first opportunity.” Penrod nodded. “Although that does seem a trifle steep.”

“None of his promissory notes, either,” Ryder warned. “It is common knowledge that the Khedive has given him drawing rights of two hundred thousand pounds on the Cairo treasury. A few gold sovereigns would sing sweeter than all the paper canaries ever to come out of the forest.”

“A sentiment most poetically expressed, sir,” Penrod commended him.

Rebecca sat in her secret place in a hidden corner of the battlements in the consular palace. She was hidden by an ancient hundred-pounder cannon, a monstrous rusting relic that had probably never been fired in this nineteenth century, and would certainly never be fired again. She had covered her head and nightgown with a dark woollen cloak, and she knew that not even the twins would find her there.

She looked up at the night sky and could tell by the height of the Southern Cross above the desert horizon that it was well after midnight, but she felt as though she would never be able to sleep again. In a single day her whole existence had been thrown into uproar and confusion. She felt like a captive wild bird, battering its wings against the bars, bleeding and terrified, falling to the floor of the cage with heart racing and body trembling, only to launch itself at the bars again in another futile attempt to escape.

She did not understand what was happening to her. Why did she feel this way? Nothing made sense. Her mind darted back to that morning when, as soon as she had seen the twins bathed and dressed, she had begun her weekly housekeeping inspection. As soon as she entered the blue guest suite she had seen the strange figure occupying the four-poster bed. She had not been informed by the staff of the arrival of any guests and Khartoum under siege was the last place to attract casual visitors. Knowing this, she should have left the bedroom immediately and raised the alarm. What had made her approach the bed she would never know. As she stooped over the sheet-covered figure, it had launched itself at her with the suddenness of a leopard dropping out of a tree on its prey. She found herself borne to the floor by a stark naked man with a dagger in his hand.

Remembering that terrible moment, she bowed her head and covered her face with her hands. It was not the first time that she had seen the male body. When Rebecca turned sixteen her parents had taken her on a tour of the capital cities of Europe. She and her mother had gone to see Michelangelo’s David. She had been struck by the statue’s unearthly beauty but the cold white marble had invoked in her no troublesome emotions. She had even been able, unblushingly, to discuss it with her mother.

Her mother often described herself as emancipated. At the time Rebecca thought that this merely meant she smoked Turkish cigarettes in her boudoir and spoke frankly of the human anatomy and its functions. After her suicide Rebecca realized that the word had deeper significance. At the funeral in Cairo she had overheard some of the older women whispering together, and one had remarked tartly that Sarah Benbrook had made David a cuckold more often than she cooked him breakfast. Rebecca knew her mother never cooked breakfast. Nevertheless, she looked up the word ‘cuckold’ in her father’s dictionary. It took her a while to work out the true meaning, but when she did she had decided that she did not want to be emancipated like her mother. She would be true to one man for life.

Rebecca had next seen the male body only last year. David had taken her and the twins with him on an official visit to the upper reaches of the Victoria Nile. The Shilluk and Dinka tribesmen who inhabited the banks of the river wore no clothing of any description. The girls recovered from the first surprise when their father remarked that it was merely custom and tradition for them to adopt the state of nature, and they should think nothing of it. From then onwards Rebecca looked upon the enormous dark appendages as a rather ugly form of adornment, rather like the pierced lips and nostrils on the tribes of New Guinea that she had seen illustrated.

However, when Penrod Ballantyne had leapt upon her that morning the effect had been devastating. Far from leaving her uninterested and rather pitying, she found emotions and feelings of whose existence she had never dreamed until that moment erupting into her consciousness. Even now in the darkness, with the cloak over her head and her face covered with both hands, she was blushing until her face felt as though it was on fire.

I won’t think about it ever again, she promised herself. “It’ was as fully as she allowed herself to describe what she had seen. Never. Never again. She even eschewed that description on the second attempt. Then immediately she found herself thinking about it with all her attention.

After that long-ago visit to Europe, Rebecca had overheard her mother discussing the subject with one of her friends. They agreed that a woman in a state of nature was beautiful, while a man was not, except Michelangelo’s David, of course.

“It wasn’t ugly or obscene,” Rebecca contradicted her mother’s shade. “It was … it was…” But she wasn’t sure what it had been, except very disturbing, fascinating and troubling. What had happened later between her and Ryder Courtney was connected with the first episode in some strange way that she could not fully understand.

Over the previous months she and Ryder had gradually become friends. She had realized that he was strong, clever and amusing. He had an inexhaustible fund of marvelous stories and, as Saffron had often remarked, he smelt and looked good. She came to find his company reassuring and comforting in the days of the siege, when death, disease and starvation gripped the city. As her father had observed, Ryder Courtney was a man of accomplishment. He had built up a thriving business enterprise and sustained it even though the world seemed to be falling apart. He took good care of his own people and his friends. He had shown them how to make the green-cake, and he could make her laugh and forget her fears for a few hours. She felt safe when she was with him. Of course, once or twice he had made physical contact with her a light touch on the arm when they were talking, or his hand brushing hers as they walked together. But always she had pulled away. Her mother had warned her often about men: they just wanted to ravish you, then leave you sullied for ever so that you could never find a husband. That was bad enough but, worse, ravishment was painful and, in her mother’s experience, only childbirth more so.

Then that very morning after her horrible experience in the Blue Bedroom when her emotions had been in turmoil, she had gone alone to Ryder’s quarters. She had never done that before. She had always taken at least one of the twins with her as a chaperone. But this morning she had been confused. She felt guilty about her strange and ambivalent thoughts of Captain Penrod Ballantyne. She was terrified that she had inherited the bad seed from her mother. She needed to be comforted.

As always, Ryder had been pleased to see her, and ordered Bacheet to brew a pot of the precious coffee. They had chatted for a while, at first discussing the twins and their lessons, which, since the beginning of the siege, had fallen sadly into default. Suddenly and unexpectedly, even to herself, Rebecca had begun to sob as though her heart would break. Ryder had stared at her in astonishment: he knew she was neither a whiner nor a weeper. Then her had put his arms round her and held her tight. “What has happened to you? I have never seen you like this. You have always been the bravest girl I know.”

Rebecca was surprised by how good it felt to be held by him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, but made no effort to pull away. “I’m being very silly.”

“You’re not silly. I understand,” he told her, in the deep, gentle tone he used when he was comforting a frightened animal or a hurt child. “It is getting too much for all of us. But it will soon be over. The relief column will be here before Christmas, mark my words.”

She shook her head. She wanted to tell him that it was not the war, the siege, the Dervish or the Mad Mahdi, but he stroked her hair and she quietened, pressing her face to his chest, his warmth and strength,

and his rich man-smell. “Ryder,” she whispered and lifted her face to explain how she felt to him. “Dear, dear Ryder.” But before she could say more he kissed her full on the lips. The surprise was so complete that she could not move. When she had recovered her wits sufficiently to pull away, she found that she did not want to. This was something so new and different that she decided to indulge herself a few moments longer.

The few moments became a few minutes and when at last she opened her mouth to protest, an incredible thing happened: his tongue slipped between her lips and stifled her protest. The sensation this produced was so overwhelming that her knees threatened to give way and she had to cling to him to hold herself up. The full muscular length of his body was pressed hard against her, and her protest came out as mewing sounds, like the cries of a newborn kitten seeking the teat. Then, to her consternation, she felt a monstrous hardness growing up between their lower bodies, something that seemed to have a life of its own. It terrified her, but she was powerless. Her will to escape evaporated.

A shrill high voice sundered the bonds that held her and set her free: “She’s kissing him! Becky is kissing Ryder on his mouth!”

Thinking about that moment now, she spoke aloud in the darkness under the great cannon: “Now even Saffy hates me, and I hate myself. It is all such a terrible mess, and I wish I could die.”

She did not realize how far the words had carried until a voice answered her from the darkness: “So there you are, Jamal.” The name meant the Beautiful One.

“Nazeera, you know me too well,” Rebecca murmured, as the plump, familiar shape appeared.

“Yes, I know you well and I love you more than I know you.” Nazeera sat beside her on the carriage of the cannon, and placed her arms round her. “When I found that you were missing from your bed, I knew I would find you here.” Rebecca rested her head on Nazeera’s shoulder and sighed. Nazeera was as soft and warm as a feather mattress and smelt of attar of roses. She rocked Rebecca gently. After a while she asked, “Now, do you still wish to die?”

“I did not mean you to overhear me,” Rebecca answered ruefully. “No, I do not want to die. Not for a while yet. But life is difficult sometimes, isn’t it, Nazeera?”

“Life is good. It is men who are difficult most of the time,” said Nazeera.

“Bacheet and Yakub?” Rebecca teased her. Nazeera’s admirers were no secret within the family. “Why don’t you choose one of them, Nazeera?”

“Why don’t you make a choice, Jamal?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.” Rebecca lifted her cloak off her head and stared at Nazeera, her eyes large and dark in the starlight.

“I think you do. Why is it that the day the beautiful captain returns to Khartoum you rush for safety to al-Sakhawi, and when you find out that he does not think of himself as just your old friend, you decide you want to die?”

Rebecca covered her face again. Nazeera knew nearly everything, and had guessed the rest. In a few words she had helped Rebecca understand her turmoil. Nazeera went on rocking her. She started to croon a lullaby, an old tune with new words: “Which one will it be? How will you choose, and who will it be?”

“You make it seem like a child’s game, Nazeera.” Rebecca tried to sound stern.

“Oh, it is. Life is just a child’s game, but often the games of children, like those of grown-ups, end in bitter tears.”

“Like poor little Saffy,” Rebecca suggested. “She says she hates me, and she won’t speak to me.”

“She thinks you have stolen her love from her. She is jealous.”

“She is so young.”

“No. She will soon be a woman and at least she knows what she wants.” Nazeera smiled tenderly. “Unlike some older women I know.”

Twelve shillings?” Ryder Courtney insisted. “There can be no misunderstanding ?” “Twelve shillings. The word of an officer and a gentleman.”

“That description might be debated,” Ryder grunted.

“Will you not carry a weapon?”

“Yes.” Ryder hefted the heavy ironwood club.

“I meant a sidearm or an edged weapon.” Penrod touched the sabre in its scabbard on his belt.

“In the dark it will not be easy to tell friend from foe. I prefer denting heads with a fist or a club. Not so irrevocable.”

They were stepping out, shoulder to shoulder, along one of the sordid alleys of the native quarter of the city. They both wore dark clothing. The sun had set little more than an hour ago, but it was already dark. Just enough daylight lingered for them to pick their way along. Bacheet was waiting for them near the Ivory Tower, one of the more notorious brothels of the most dangerous section of the city. He whistled softly to attract their attention, then beckoned them into the ruins of a building that had been destroyed by Dervish cannon fire from across the river.

The three found seats on the piles of masonry and shattered roof beams. The intermittent glow of Penrod’s cigar shed just enough light for them to make out each other’s features.

“Has Aswat arrived yet?” Ryder asked in Arabic.

“Yes,” replied Bacheet. “He came an hour ago, at sunset.”

“Who is he?” asked Penrod. “Who is responsible for this business?”

“I can’t be certain yet. Bacheet has heard his men call him Aswat but he wears a mask, to keep his face well hidden. Nevertheless, I have my suspicions. We will know for sure before the night is out.” Ryder turned back to Bacheet. “How many men with him?”

“I counted twenty-six. That includes six armed guards. They will work late tonight. They always do. There is a lot of dhurra, and the sacks are heavy to move about. Aswat divides them into two gangs of about twelve men each. When the curfew falls, and the streets are deserted, they carry the sacks to the customers in other parts of the city. Two of Aswat’s armed men who know the password of the night go ahead of each gang to make sure the road is clear of patrols. Two others bring up the rear to make sure they are not followed. Aswat waits at the tannery. It seems he won’t take a chance on the street.”

“How many sacks does Aswat distribute every evening?” Ryder asked.

“About a hundred and twenty.”

“So by now he has sold a few thousand,” Ryder calculated. “Probably less than three thousand left in his store. Do you know what he is charging for a sack?”

“At first it was five, but he has raised it to ten Egyptian pounds. He takes only gold, no notes,” Bacheet told him.

Ryder shook his head. “Chinese Gordon is getting another bargain. The going rate is ten pounds. “He is offering me but twelve shillings reward.”

“I’ll cry for you tomorrow,” Penrod promised. “Where is Aswat storing the stolen grain?”

“At the end of this street,” Bacheet explained. “He is using an abandoned tannery.”

“Who have you left to watch the building?” Penrod asked Bacheet.

“Your man, Yakub. He is a Jaalin. The most treacherous of all tribes. Even that slithering of snakes have driven him out from their nest. I do not trust Yakub at all. He has no sense of honour, especially with women,” said Bacheet, bitterly. It was well known that he and Yakub were rivals for the favours of the widow Nazeera.

“But he is a good man in a fight, is he not?” Penrod defended Yakub.

Bacheet shrugged. “Yes, if you do not turn your back on him. He is waiting behind the tannery, on the canal bank. My men are hidden in the courtyard of the Ivory Tower. The mistress of the house is a good friend.”

“She should be,” Ryder murmured drily. “You are one of her best customers.”

Bacheet ignored such a famous remark. “I chose this place to wait because from these windows we will be able to keep watch on the alley.” He nodded at the empty window openings. The glazing had been blown out by the shell blast, and the frames had been stolen for firewood. “It is the only way to reach the tannery.”

“Good,” Ryder said. “Two of your best men must follow the gangs. I want the names of all the merchants dealing with him. As soon as we have them we shall drop in on Effendi Aswat at the tannery.”

At that moment they heard the muffled tramp of feet. Bacheet slipped out through a shell hole in the rear wall to carry out Ryder’s orders. Penrod stubbed out his cigar and wrapped the butt in his handkerchief, then joined Ryder at the empty window. They stayed well back in the shadows so that they were not spotted from the alley. A group of dark, furtive figures moved past the window. The two guards were first: they wore khaki Egyptian uniform with a flowerpot fez. They carried their rifles, bayonets fixed, slung over the shoulder. The porters followed them, bowed under the heavy dhurra sacks. The two armed men of the rear guard followed a short distance behind.

When they had disappeared Penrod remarked, “Now I understand why you would not allow me to bring any of the garrison troops, and why you insisted that we use only your Arabs. Gordon’s Egyptians are in this up to their necks.”

“Deeper than their necks,” Ryder corrected him. Within a short time the unburdened porters and their escorts came hurrying back down the alley towards the tannery. Bacheet appeared again, with the suddenness of the genie from the lamp. “AH Muhammad Acrani, who has a house behind the hospital, has bought all twenty-four sacks of the first delivery,” he reported. They waited for the next delivery to pass the windows. It was after midnight before the heavily laden porters left the tannery for the sixth time and staggered down the alley.

“That will be the last delivery,” Bacheet told Ryder. “In God’s Name, it is time at last to catch the jackal while he is still gobbling up the chickens.”

“In God’s Name,” Ryder agreed.

When they slipped out of the rear of the shelled building, Bacheet’s band was waiting for them in the shadows of the rear wall, armed with broadswords and spears. None carried firearms. Ryder led them quietly down the alley, keeping close to the dark buildings on each side. The silhouette of the tannery rose against the star bright desert sky. It was a three-storeyed building, dark and derelict, that blocked the end of the alleyway.

“Very well, Captain Ballantyne. I think it’s time for you to go and find your man, Yakub.”

While they waited in the ruined building they had discussed the last details of the raid, so now there was no hesitation or misunderstanding. They had agreed that, as this was Ryder’s affair, he would make the decisions and give the orders. However, Yakub was Penrod’s man and would take orders only from him.

Penrod touched Ryder’s shoulder in acknowledgement and moved quickly to the enclosing wall of the tannery’s yard. The gate was closed and locked, but Penrod sheathed his sabre and jumped up to grab a handhold in a crack in the masonry. He pulled himself up with a single lithe movement, swung his legs over the top of the wall and dropped out of sight.

Ryder gave him a few minutes to get clear, then led Bacheet and the rest of the party to the high gate. He knew the layout of the building. Before the siege he had sent almost all of the hides he brought up from Equatoria to be processed by the old German who had owned the factory. The tanner had fled Khartoum with the first exodus of refugees. Ryder knew that the gate led into the loading yard. He tried it, but found it locked from the inside. It was unpainted, dry and cracked. He drew out his knife, whose point sank into the wood as though it were cheese.

“Dry rot,” he grunted. He ran the blade through the narrow gap between the edge of the door and the jamb, and located the staple of the lock on the far side. He “backed off a few paces, lined up, then stepped forward and slammed the flat of his right boot into the door. The screws that held the lock on the far side were ripped from the rotten wood and the gate swung open.

“Quickly now! Follow me.” Across the yard there was a raised loading platform with the main doors of the warehouse leading off it. This was where he had unloaded his bundles of raw hides for curing, and where he had collected the finished product. A broken-down wagon still stood against the platform. The entire place stank of half-cured leather. The glimmer of lamplight showed through slits in the boarded-over ground-floor windows, and beneath the main doors to the warehouse.

Ryder ran up the steps of the loading platform. Rats scurried into their holes as he crossed to the main door. He paused to listen and heard muffled voices through the woodwork. Gently he put his weight on the door, which eased open an inch, and peered through the gap. A

man was leaning against the door frame with his back turned to Ryder. He wore the long dark cassock of a Coptic Christian priest and the hood covered his head. Now he turned quickly and stared at Ryder with astonishment in his eyes.

“Ah, Effendi Aswat,” Ryder greeted him, as he lifted the ironwood club. “Do you have any dhurra for sale?” He swung the club with the power of his wide shoulders behind it, aiming at the cloaked head. It should have cracked on the priest’s skull, but the down stroke crashed into the top frame of the door above Ryder’s head with a force that numbed his wrist. The club flew from his grip and struck the cloaked figure a glancing blow on the shoulder that sent him reeling backwards with a howl of pain.

“To arms! Stand to arms! The enemy is on us!” the priest shouted, as he raced away across the open floor of the warehouse.

Ryder wasted a few moments retrieving his club from where it had rolled against the wall. As he straightened he glanced around the cavernous warehouse. It was lit by a dozen or more oil lamps hanging from the railing of the catwalk that ran round the high walls, just below the roof beams. In the dim light he saw that Bacheet had underestimated the strength of the opposition: at least twenty other men were scattered around the warehouse. Some were slaves, naked except for turbans and loincloths, but others wore the khaki uniforms and red fez of the Egyptian garrison troops. All had frozen in the attitude in which the priest’s cry had caught them.

The slaves were stacking mountainous heaps of sacks in the centre of the warehouse and the floury smell of ripe dhurra blended with the ancient reek of raw hide and tannin. An Egyptian lieutenant and three or four non-commissioned officers were overseeing their efforts. It took them all some moments to gather their wits. They stared, aghast, at Ryder as he advanced on them brandishing his club. Then, with warlike shouts, Bacheet and his Arabs burst in through the main doors.

The Egyptian non-commissioned officers came to life and rushed to where their rifles were stacked against the far wall. Their lieutenant pulled his revolver from its holster and loosed off a shot before Bacheet and his gang were upon them, swinging swords and thrusting spears. The shouting, hacking, cursing melee surged back and forth across the warehouse floor. One of the slaves threw himself at Ryder’s feet and clung to his knees, screaming for mercy. Impatiently Ryder tried to kick him away, but he clung like a monkey to a fruit tree.

At the far end of the long building Aswat was getting away. With the robes of his cassock billowing behind him, he jumped over a pile of loose dhurra sacks and darted to the foot of one of the vertical steel ladders that led up to the overhead catwalk. As he started to climb, his skirts flapped around his legs, hampering his movements. Despite this handicap, he climbed with agility. All the while he kept up cries of encouragement and exhortation to his men: “Kill them! Let none escape! Kill them all!”

Ryder tapped the clinging slave across the temple with the club, and he released his grip and crumpled to the floor. Ryder jumped over his inert body and ran to the foot of the ladder. He stuffed the club under his belt and leapt on to the first rungs, following the priest and gaining on him rapidly. He saw that beneath the skirts of his cassock the fugitive wore polished riding boots and spurs, and that his legs were clad in khaki riding breeches.

The priest reached the catwalk, and clung to the handrail, heaving for breath. He peered back down the ladder. His voice shrilled with panic when he saw Ryder coming up fast behind him. “Stop him! Shoot him down like a dog!” But his men were too occupied with their own problems to take any notice. He struggled with the skirts of his cassock, trying to hoist them high enough to reach the sidearm that bulged on his hip, but he could not free it. Now Ryder was almost on him and Aswat abandoned the effort. Instead he snatched one of the oil lamps that hung from the handrail. He lifted it high over his head. “Stop! In God’s Name, I warn you! I will burn you alive.”

The hood of the cassock fell off to reveal the khaki tunic of the Egyptian Army, with the epaulettes and scarlet tabs of a major on the shoulders. His curls were dark and wavy, lustrous with pomade. Ryder caught a whiff of a pungent eau-de-Cologne. “Major Faroque. What a pleasant surprise,” Ryder said cheerfully.

Al-Faroque’s expression was frantic. “I warned you!” he screamed. With both hands he hurled the lamp at Ryder, who flattened himself against the rungs of the ladder. As the lamp flew past his shoulder, it spun a meteor’s tail of burning oil through the air behind it. It struck the steel ladder near the bottom and exploded, spraying a sheet of fire over the closest stack of dhurra sacks. Rivulets of flickering blue flames poured over the under dry sacks, which caught swiftly and burned as brightly as candles.

“Don’t come near me!” al-Faroque yelled down at Ryder. “I warn you. Don’t He grabbed the second lamp off its hook, but Ryder was ready for it and pulled the club from his belt. The major threw with all his strength, sobbing with the effort as the lamp left his hand.

It flew straight towards Ryder’s face. He watched it coming and, at the last moment, swatted it aside. It spun down into the body of the warehouse, and burst over another stack of dhurra. The grain went up in a leaping conflagration.

Al-Faroque turned to run, but Ryder threw himself up the last few feet and seized him by the ankle. He squealed and tried to kick himself free, but Ryder held him easily and hauled him towards the edge of the catwalk. Al-Faroque grabbed on to the handrail, and clung to it, squealing like a pig being dragged to slaughter.

At that moment a pistol bullet, fired from below, grazed Ryder’s shoulder and struck the steel ladder six inches in front of his eyes. It left a bright smear of lead on the steel. The sting of the passing shot was so intense and unexpected that he slackened his grip on al-Faroque’s ankle. Al-Faroque felt him give, and kicked backwards. The rowel of the spur on his other riding boot ripped across Ryder’s temple, and knocked him off balance. Ryder let go of the man’s leg, and grabbed at the ladder rung before his eyes. Al-Faroque pounded away along the catwalk.