The Monsoon (98 page)

“There they are. Hassan will not need them where he is going.” The Soar growled and cursed, and Dorian felt tears sting his eyelids. His voice choked as he shouted back, “I swear, in the name of God, that I will do the same for you one day.”

“Oh, my brother,” Zayn called back, “if this dog of a Soar is so dear to you, I will send him back to you. But before I do I wish to look at his liver.” There was another terrible scream, then Hassan was thrust out into the open and sent staggering down the passage towards the san gar He was naked, and between his legs was a dark hole, mushy with blood. They had ripped open his belly and his entrails dangled around his knees, slippery and purple. He reeled towards Dorian, his mouth open. He made a cawing animal sound, and his mouth was a blood-drenched cave. Zayn al-Din had cut out his tongue.

Before he reached the san gar wall he collapsed and lay wriggling weakly in the dust. Dorian leaped over the wall with the musket in his hand. He placed the muzzle at the back of Hassan’s head and fired.

His skull collapsed like a rotten melon. At the sound of the shot the Turks came pouring down the passage, like a wave of storm water.

Dorian jumped back over the wall.

“Fire!” he shouted to his men, and the first volley of musket-balls slapped like thrown gravel into the front rank of the attackers.

The fighting raged back and forth for the few hours of daylight that remained. Gradually the passage clogged with the enemy dead, they were piled almost as high as the rock wall, and a thick fog of gunsmoke filled the depths of the pass, so that the air was hard to breathe and they panted and gasped as they fired and reloaded. The smoke mingled with the metallic smell of blood and the gas from the torn intestines, and in the heat the sweat poured down their bodies and burned their eyes with its salt.

Using their own dead as an assault ladder, the Turks managed to climb over the top of the wall three times, and three times Dorian and his Soar hurled them back. As darkness fell there were only seven Arabs still able to stand beside him and all were wounded. In the lull between each attack, they dragged their dead and wounded back to where the camels were couched. There was no one to tend the injured men, so Dorian placed a waters king beside those who still had the strength to drink from. it.

Jaub, who was nicknamed the Cat, had had his right shoulder shattered by the blow of a battle axe and Dorian could not staunch the pumping arterial bleeding.

“It is time for me to leave you, alSalil,” Jaub whispered, as he struggled to his knees . “Hold my sword for me.”

Dorian could not refuse this last request: he could not leave this comrade of a dozen battles to the Turks. With ice in his heart, he set the hilt of the sword firmly in the sand and placed the point of the curved blade in the notch below the sternum, aimed up towards the heart.

“The blessing of Allah and his Prophet on you, my friend,” Jaub thanked him and fell forward. The blade slid full length and the point, smeared with blood, came out in between his shoulder-blades. Dorian stood up and ran back to the wall just as another rush of Turks came howling down the gut of the pass. They hurled them back at last, but two more of the Soar had gone down. I had hoped to hold them longer, Dorian thought, as he leaned heavily on the blood-soaked wall. I had hoped to give my father more time to raise the Awamir, but there are too few of us left and it is almost over now.

It was becoming very dark in the passage. Soon the Turks would be able to creep up to the foot of the wall unseen.

“Bin-Shibam,” he croaked to the man beside him, for his throat was swollen with thirst and strained with shout” bring the last waters king and the bundles of firewood from the camel loads. We will drink and light the night with our last fire.” The leaping flames lit the rock walls of the pass with a ruddy flickering light, and at intervals one of the Soar threw a burning brand over the wall to dispel the shadows in which the Turks might crawl forward.

There was a lull now. They could hear the Turks talking beyond the bend, and the groans of the wounded and dying were hideous, but still the next attack did not come. They sat in a small lonely huddle against the wall, drinking the last of the water and helping each other bind up their wounds. All of them were hurt, but although Dorian had been in the thick of the fighting all that day his injuries were the least grave. There was a deep cut on the back of his left arm, and a sword-thrust through the same shoulder.

“But I still have my right arm to wield a sword,” he told the man who was fashioning an arm sling for him from a length of rope from the camel tack.

“I think we have done all we can here. If any of you wishes to leave, take a camel and ride with my thanks and blessings.”

” This is a good place to die,” said the man beside him.

“The hour is of Paradise will be sad that we disregard their call,” another refused Dorian’s offer.

Then they all looked up in mild alarm as a pebble clattered down from high above, bouncing from wall to wall, striking tiny sparks from the rock.

“They have climbed the cliffs and are over our heads.” Dorian jumped to his feet.

“Douse the fire.” The flames would light them for the men high above to see their position. His warning came too late.

Suddenly the air around them was filled with a thunderous roar, like that of a great waterfall, and a bombardment of rocks came hurtling down upon them. Some of the boulders were the size of powder-kegs, others only as large as a man’s head, but there was no shelter from this lethal rain in the gut of the pass.

Three more men were crushed in the first few moments and the others struck down as they ran back along the passage to the camels.

Dorian was the only one to get through. He reached lbrisam’s side and threw himself into the saddle.

“Hut! Hut!” he urged her to her feet, but as she rose the bombardment of boulders ceased abruptly and the Turks swarmed over the wall behind him. They stabbed the wounded Arabs then, with barely a pause, rushed forward to surround lbrisam.

Dorian hit one of them in the chest with the lance, driving the steel head in deeply against the clinging resistance of living flesh, but the shaft snapped off in his hand and he hurled the stump into the face of another Turk and drew his sword. He slashed at the heads of the men who were trying to pull him down from the saddle, and drove Ibrisam back down the passage. She kicked out at the men who stood in her way, clashing her huge yellow teeth, biting all the fingers off one man’s hand and crushing another’s ribs with a single blow from her forefoot. Then she bounded forward and broke through their ranks.

Dorian clung to the pommel of the saddle with his good hand as lbrisam ran free, following the bends and convulsions of the pass. The bloodthirsty yells of the Turks dwindled behind them.

The pass ran a mile or more through the hills, a dry water-course formed when a softer stratum of rock had been washed out by storm-water over the millennia. Once they were clear of their pursuers Ibrisam shifted into that smooth-pacing trot that covered the ground swiftly and had given her the name Silk Wind.

Dorian fell into a trance from thirst) exhaustion and the stiffening pain of his wounds-The walls of the pass streamed past him endlessly, mesmerizing him further. Once he almost toppled from the saddle, but lbrisam felt him slump and came to an abrupt halt. This roused Dorian and he sat more firmly in the saddle when she went on.

Only then did he become aware that her gait was hampered, but he was confused and dazed, barely able to keep his seat. The effort required to dismount and check her condition was too much for him.

Once again he dozed and when he started awake he found that they had emerged from the far end of the pass and were out into the open country of the Awamir. He could tell from the height of the moon and the position of the stars that it was after midnight.

The night was icy cold, a cruel contrast to the burning heat of the day. The blood and sweat that soaked his robe chilled him further and he was shivering and light-headed.

lbrisam was moving strangely under him, her pace short and her back hunched. At last he summoned the strength and resolve to order her to halt and couch.

He tested the waters king that hung over her withers,

and found that it contained less than a gallon of the stinking water from Ghail ya Yamin. He took his thick woollen shawl out of the carrying-net and spread it over his shoulders. Still shivering, he examined Ibrisam to find the cause of her distress.

He saw at once that her rump was wet and shining in the moonlight, and discovered that she was scouring heavily. The liquid dung she was passing was dark red with blood. Dorian felt a plunge of dismay. His own injuries and misery forgotten, he palpated her sleek, smooth flanks but when he touched her belly, just forward of her back legs, she moaned softly and his hand came away wet and shining with blood.

A thrust from a Turkish lance had cut deep into her belly and ruptured her bowels. She was mortally wounded, and it was a miracle of love and determination that she had carried him this far. Dorian was so weak and sad that his tears welled. He untied the leather bucket from the load and filled it with the last of the water from the skin.

He drank half a pint of the filthy liquid, then went to kneel at lbrisam’s head.

“My brave darling,” he said, and gave her to drink of what remained in the bucket. She sucked up the water eagerly, and when it was finished she snuffled the bottom.

“There is nothing more I can do for you,” he told her, as he stroked her ears. She loved him to do that.

“You will be dead by morning,” he said, “and I with you, unless you can carry me a little further, for the Turks will follow closely.

Will you carry” me for the last time?” He stood up and called to her softly, “Hut! Hut!” She swung her head and looked at him with those great dark eyes swimming with agony.

“Hut! Hut!” he said, and she groaned, roared and heaved herself upright. Dorian dragged himself up into the saddle.

She went on at that cramped painful gait, following the tracks that the Prince and Batula had left through the broken hills and deep wadis. Dorian almost toppled again, but he rallied and used the empty carrying-net to tie himself into the saddle. He dozed, jerked awake and dozed again, slowly sinking into a coma. He lost all track of time, speed, direction, and they wandered on, the dying beast and the man.

An hour after dawn, just as the cruel flail of the sun scourged them once again, lbrisam went down for the last time. She died on her feet still trying to struggle forward.

With a last low moan, she fell heavily, throwing him from the saddle to sprawl on the rock-strewn earth.

Dorian crawled to his knees then dragged himself into the shade of Ibrisam’s carcass. He forced himself not to think about the death of his beloved beast, or the loss of so many of his men. He had to concentrate all his strength and wits on staying alive until Batula could lead the Awamir back to rescue him.

He saw the heavy tracks of many camels in the loose earth ahead of him, and realized that even in her death throes Ibrisam had still faithfully followed the route that Batula and the Prince had taken towards the oasis at Muhaid. That might yet save his life, for when they returned they would come back along their own tracks.

It was the rule of survival in the desert not to leave a place of safety and wander off into the wilderness, but Dorian knew that the Turks were following him. Zayn al Din would not let him go so easily.

The enemy must be close, and if they found him before Batula returned he could expect the same treatment that Zayn had given to the wounded he had captured at the Pass of the Bright Gazelle.

He must go on to meet Batula and he must try to keep ahead of the following Turks for as long as he had the strength to remain on his feet. He stood up shakily and looked down at the load that lbrisam.

had carried. Was there anything that might be of use to him? He unhooked the waters king shook it, then held it high with both hands, 2 the spout to his lips. A few bitter drops slid reluctantly into his mouth and he swallowed painfully, his throat already swelling.

Then he dropped the empty skin.

Weapons. He looked to what he had with him. There was his jezail in the leather scabbard, and the powder flask and shot bag. The butt stock of the musket was inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, the lock chased with silver. It weighed almost seven pounds, too heavy to carry. Leave it.

His broken lance had been left at the pass, and the sword would weigh him down, its weight would seem to double with every mile he walked. Sadly, he unbuckled the belt and let it drop. He kept the dagger, he would need that at the end. The edge was keen. He had honed it until he could shave the red-gold hairs from his own forearm with it. When the Turks closed in, he would fall on it, choosing a clean death, rather than emasculation and disembowelment.

He looked down at Ibrisam and said, “There is one last thing I ask you for, my darling.” He knelt beside her and slit open her belly with the dagger. From her stomach he took handfuls of the contents and squeezed out the liquid between his fingers and drank it. It was bitter with gall, and he had to control the urge to vomit it out again, but he knew it would give him the strength to survive a few more hours under the cruel sun.

He rebound his wounds, found that the bleeding had stopped, and that black scabs had formed. Then he tightened the straps of his sandals, and spread the shawl over his head to fend off the brutal sunlight. Without looking back at Ibrisain he struck out along the tracks of the Prince’s party, towards a horizon that was already wavering with the blue heat mirage.

An hour or so later he fell for the first time. His legs seemed to turn to water under him and he went down face first. His open mouth was filled with dry chalky earth, and he almost choked as he tried to spit it out. There was no saliva left in his mouth, and the dust was sucked into his lungs as he panted for air. He struggled into a sitting position, coughed and gasped. The effort saved him from sinking into coma. He wiped his face with the tail of his headdress and there was no spittle on his lips or sweat on his face. He forced himself back on to his feet. Though he lurched and staggered, almost fell again, he kept himself upright and some little strength returned to his legs.