Blood and Sand Read online

  “Raiders driving off most of the Second Squadron’s horses. The guards must have been asleep!”

  Man after man was swinging into the saddle, voices all round them calling down curses on the raiders’ heads. Thomas held his mare close to the shadow-paleness of Sara’s flank as the captain heeled her into a gallop and headed along the northern perimeter of the camp. It was not the first time that he had seen action since he joined the Bedouin cavalry, for the long patrols had not been uneventful; there had been that brush with tribesmen for possession of a water-hole; there had been the day when they came on a band of Mamelukes raiding one of the frontier villages … But it was the first time that he had ridden out beside ibn Hussein in pursuit of raiders; and a sweet fierce joy was on him not quite like any that he had known before.

  The drum of horses’ hooves was swelling behind them as they swept the plundered lines of the Second Squadron; and men on foot came running, shouting agonised curses and excuses, to point out the distant dust-cloud faintly visible in the first light of dawn and the last light of the sinking moon. A few knelt, jezail at shoulder, still firing at the dust-cloud now far out of range. Abu Salan, the leader of the Second Squadron, came crashing up with a handful of his men mounted on their few remaining horses.

  The captain cried to him. “We cannot both be out of camp at the same time, that thou knowest, bide in command here till I return.” And as the man flung up his hand in acceptance of the order and reined back with a blind and stricken face, headed on at full gallop out into the desert, Thomas half a length behind.

  Not much over a mile and the sun-baked dusty plain gave them over to the sand of the desert proper, slowing alike their own speed and the speed of the reivers far ahead. The light was growing, the sky brimming with it like a cup, and the broad track of the raiding party became as clear to follow as a paved road, until at last, cresting a great curved dune, they caught sight through their speeding sandstorms of the quarry they hunted. The blurred torrent of stolen horses flowing up the slope of the next dune far ahead, the mounted raiders, at least twenty of them, in the rear and on the flanks. Distant shouting and shots to urge on the hindmost horses came back to them. There were probably more reivers further forward at the horns of the drive which were already over the skyline.

  Following the captain just ahead, Thomas pulled his head cloth across his face until only his narrowed eyes were left unguarded to the sand, and settled down to ride as he had never ridden before.

  The sun was up and beginning to cast their shadows out before them like rippling banners along the slopes of the great dunes. They were gaining on the raiders; there could not be more than four hundred yards between them. The sound of shouting came back to them more strongly on the wind, together with a ragged scatter of shots. But snatching a glance over his shoulder, Thomas realised that, mounted as they were on the two best horses in the squadron, they had far outdistanced the foremost of the troopers following behind. Zeid had done the thing forbidden in all the drill manuals: in a charge never get more than half a length ahead of your men. Well, so far as he, Thomas, knew, the drill manuals did not cover the pursuit of horse-raiders. He laughed and set to work to narrow the gap between himself and Zeid, that the captain should not come up with the enemy without at least one trooper at his shoulder.

  Bulbul was the swiftest and most sure-footed mount he had ever ridden; he leaned forward along her neck, sang and shouted to her words of endearment and encouragement in French and Arabic and the broadest of Lowland Scots. “On wi’ ye, ma bonnie burd!” And she laid back her ears to catch the love-tones, and leapt forward in response. Inch by inch they were overhauling the grey mare until the bay’s head was level with Zeid’s knee, and once again Thomas was riding half a length behind.

  Suddenly four of the rear-guard, who had been riding the last slope with their chins on their shoulders, checked, and wrenched their horses round to charge the leaders of the pursuit before the main body of troopers could come up. Zeid turned in the saddle to see how far his men were behind him, and at last Thomas drew level.

  “You take the two on your side, I’ll handle the others,” Zeid shouted.

  “Aywa, Sidi!”

  Thomas urged his mare forward again, taking hurried stock of his opponents as they closed at a gallop, the left-hand rider swinging his jezail from his back as he rode. Thomas waited to the last instant, then as the long muzzle came up, dropped him with a pistol shot, seeing with a kind of detached interest, something like a small red flower appear between the man’s eyes as he flung up his arms in an odd disjointed way and pitched from the saddle.

  He thrust the pistol back into his waist-shawl, and drew his sabre.

  With the raider’s wild-eyed horse plunging on past him, he wheeled Bulbul in a tight left-hand half-circle across the path of the second man now thundering towards him, then at the last moment swung her back to drive in his attack from the unexpected side. The raider, taken by surprise, his blade already started on the blow that should have taken Thomas’s head from his shoulders, had to change direction when it was already too late, and his stroke, with little power or control behind it, flew wide.

  Thomas, with a yell as savage as any war-shout of the tribes, delivered a crashing backhand cut as he passed. He felt the jar of it all up his own arm as the blow landed true between the man’s neck and shoulder, hurling him from the saddle.

  Thomas checked the mare and turned her back on her tracks. After the wind of their going, the heat seemed to settle round him like a swarm of flies. The second rider lay where he had fallen, face down, his blood fountaining crimson into the sand that supped it up.

  It was the first time that he had ever killed with a sword; rifle, jezail and pistol were different, there was no actual contact in the killing. With the blade it was as though he had felt the life go out, shared a little in the dying. For that instant they had been linked together, he and the horse thief, in a one-ness, a consummation as potent as that of love-making, before they went their separate ways. And in Thomas’s belly there was a strange mingling of sensations; awe and exultation and a kind of angry desolation, above all a strong desire to go away somewhere and be sick.

  He stooped from the saddle to clean his sword by stabbing it again and again into the sand.

  A short way off, Zeid was cleaning his own sword in the same way. Four bodies lay in the sand, and the foremost troopers were coming up in a dun-coloured cloud of their own making.

  Thomas rode across to the captain and saluted before sheathing his blade.

  Zeid’s face lit into his slow silken smile. He leaned across from the saddle and flung his arm round Thomas’s shoulders. “Four clean kills,” he said. “Now for the rest of the hunting.”

  The shadows were long again and the western sky kindling with the fires of sunset, when they rode into camp. They had had their hunting. They carried captured weapons, and drove more than forty horses won back from the raiders. They had killed a dozen more men. Only a handful of well-mounted tribesmen each leading a stolen trooper-horse had got clear. A mood of triumph was upon them. And for Thomas there was something else; for no very good reason, a sense of comradeship with the men he rode among, that he had not known before.

  “It was a good hunting,” Zeid said as they rode in past the quarter-guard. “Of such things are the Brotherhood made. Of such things and others beside.”

  Before the commander’s tent, when, having left their mounts at the horse-lines, they came up through the camp together, they were greeted by the sight of two pairs of horses, certainly not cavalry mounts, tethered there and before each a kind of trophy of swords and daggers, a couple of battered jezails and, in the case of the right-hand pile, a slender bamboo lance tasselled with black ostrich feathers. Evidently the two men whom Zeid had bidden to take the captured horses back to camp from the scene of that first skirmish had brought with them the rest of the spoils of war, and they had been meticulously divided to await the return of their rightful owners. />
  Thomas’s Sudanese orderly stood by the nearest pile, grinning, “Thine, Effendi.”

  Thomas grinned back. “As thou sayest.” He touched each of the mares on the forehead in token of acceptance and ownership, then took up the sword of his second opponent and stood looking at it. It was no Arab weapon, but straight-bladed with a cross hilt; the sword, unless he was very much mistaken, of a European knight. Memory flicked back to the working drawings and illustrated histories of such things which he had pored over in the armourer’s shop in Edinburgh, and told him that the quillons suggested French workmanship — thirteenth century. He had heard of Crusader swords lovingly cared for in Arab families, handed on from warrior father to warrior son, but had not thought ever to hold one in his own hands.

  “So; that is a prize worth the having,” said Zeid’s voice in his ear.

  “Aye,” Thomas said softly, almost worshipfully, his gaze not lifting from the great sword in his hands. And then, “Is it permitted that I make a gift of it to Colonel D’Esurier? He would value it as greatly as I.” It was good to have something to give, good to be able to express gratitude in tangible form, after having owned nothing but his own soul, and not too sure about that.

  “Assuredly it is permitted,” Zeid said, “and it would be permitted also, if it seems to you good, that you should make a gift of the other sword to Ahmed Agha.”

  Thomas looked up in surprise, “The general must have many swords, all of them richer than this one.”

  “Of a certainty. But nevertheless, as an expression of gratitude, I think it might well have its uses …”

  “This is all a new world to me,” Thomas said after a moment.

  “Therefore I offer guidance.”

  “And I accept it.” After all, Thomas supposed, he did owe thanks to the Turkish general, especially in the matter of Bulbul, though he had a feeling that in Zeid’s mind the expression of gratitude was very much a means to an end. “As to the horses —” he began, and checked. He had been going to say, “Abu Salan will have more need of them than I, since his squadron is still short of mounts.” But he realised suddenly that while his whole attention had been taken up with the Crusader blade, the leader of the Second Squadron had joined them. He caught the look that passed between the two men, and knew that presently there would be a calling to account between them; but not here, in the view and hearing of other men; and sympathy for Abu Salan twinged within him.

  “I have no need of them,” he said, “and no cavalry camp can have too many remounts.”

  He saw his askari’s disappointed face, and laughed. “Nay, Juba, do I not ride the best horse save one in all the squadron? What should I be wanting with more?” He took up the jezail and tossed it to him; it was better, he knew, than the man’s own. “Here, take this to console thee.” And he saw the grin split Juba’s dark face as he caught it.

  “The giving of gifts is a fine Bedouin custom,” said Abu Salan unexpectedly, “but you should keep something yourself, for a battle trophy.”

  Thomas heard the difficult generosity in the other’s tone, and responded as best he could with a rueful grin as he stooped and picked up the last weapon in the pile, a long Sudanese knife. “I keep this. A good dirk always comes in useful, and I lost mine along with all else, at El Hamed.”

  Later, in the commander’s tent, the unpleasant things which had to be said between Zeid ibn Hussein and the leader of his Second Squadron safely said and done with in decent privacy, Thomas came in from his duties and found Zeid squatting beside the hearth and the place full of the scents of coffee and cardamom seeds. “Coffee, but I think we will forgo the lesson for tonight, I doubt if the wits are very clear in your head or mine. And other lessons you have studied today in any case.”

  Thomas sat down, stretching himself wearily. “The importance of giving gifts to the right people?”

  “Is that never done among your own folk? One sword was given from the heart, let that content you … I was thinking, also, that you have begun to make a friend of Abu Salan, whose friendship is well worth the having, when you might very easily have made an enemy.” Zeid tipped coffee from one to another of the waiting pots, and checked, looking up in the act of setting out the two little brass cups, as though coming to a sudden decision.

  “Did you hear what they were saying down at the horse-lines?”

  “I heard something, but I am not sure that I understand,” Thomas said guardedly.

  “They were saying that you were of the stuff of the Warriors of the Prophet, and a sad thing it was that you should be an Unbeliever and therefore damned.”

  5

  “No one will seek to persuade you,” Zeid had said over the coffee pot a few evenings later. “In certain parts of Arabia, it would be another matter. Here in Egypt, no. Yet we should be glad, all of us who wish you well, if you should feel the call to embrace Islam.”

  The wall of silence which had existed between them on that one subject until the day of the raid, seemed since then to have dissolved away.

  “Also there is this,” he had added, playing with the ears of the brindled saluki bitch who was seldom far from his heels. “You were marked on your forehead at birth to be a soldier and I think to lead other soldiers. Allah gave you the gift, and no man should deny the gift that Allah has bestowed upon him. If you were a Muslim there would be no rank in the Egyptian army closed to you by reason of your foreign birth. As a Christian, you may rise to command two squadrons of irregular horse and a desert outpost; no further.”

  “That might be far enough,” Thomas had said, and left the matter lying there.

  It was after that that he took to the desert, walking and riding by himself in his off-duty times, thinking long thoughts, and for the first time in his life, looking into his own soul. He wished that Zeid had not said that about his army prospects. It confused everything, because to change one’s faith for the ambitions of this life would surely be as bad as to change it from fear of death.

  The thought went round and round in his head as though the choice was one that he was actually going to have to make — which was daft, because of course it could not be more than a few months before the British prisoners were repatriated and his time with the Egyptian army came to an end, and he would be away back to his own (‘And how far will you rise, what glory are you like to win with the 2nd Battalion, 78th Highlanders?’ said a small ugly voice within him.)

  On an evening that seemed no different from any other, he had begged off from the customary Arabic lesson, and Zeid, taking one look at his face, had let him go. He was just back from a three-day patrol, and weary to his bones also. Thomas had gone off on foot — the men who saw him go glancing at one another with a light touch to the forehead, for to men born and bred to the great emptiness of the desert, this passion for solitary exercise was beyond comprehension — without any clear idea of where he was heading; but his feet took him as though of their own accord to a place to which they had taken him many times before, and which was the right and seemingly appointed place for that particular evening.

  A great sand bowl, where the shifting of a crescent-shaped dune had laid bare a gigantic sandstone hand, its forefinger longer than the height of a man. Just the hand and its own shadow in the emptiness, and nothing more.

  Egypt was so full of vast ruins, broken statues ten times the size of a man, half lost, half found in the drifting sands, that there was nothing strange about it, though it had given Thomas a shock of awe the first time he came upon it. It had grown familiar since then, and he sat down as one might sit down beside a friend; aware as he always was in that place, of contact with other times, other men, other faiths. A good place to think.

  He settled his back against the huge kind hand, his own hands round his up-drawn knees.

  With the fort and the oasis village out of sight beyond the dunes, he might have been alone in the world, companioned only by that potent shape of worked stone. A hawk must have used it as a perch since last he was there,
and slashed its signature of black and white mutes across the gigantic tawny forefinger, but now nothing moved save a winged speck circling high overhead. The emptiness of the place poured into him like water into the body of a man parched with thirst.

  Was there really so much difference between his own faith and that of Zeid? So much of the religion he saw practised about him seemed familiar to his Presbyterian upbringing: the simplicity and lack of ceremonial, the exclusion of graven images, the concept that no priesthood should come between a man and his God. Any Muslim of good character, he had learned, could lead the prayers in the Mosque, though in practice it was generally a teacher, a man who had taken it up for his life’s work.

  Again, as many times before, Thomas took out and looked at the samenesses. Again his mind went back to the Koran, lying in his quarters back at the camp, to the 18th Sura describing the coming to Miriam of the Angel Gabriel:

  “I am the messenger of your Lord, and have come to give you a holy sign.”

  “How shall I bear a child? I who am a virgin untouched by any man?”

  “Such is the will of your Lord,” he replied. “That is no difficult thing for Him. He shall be a sign to Mankind saith the Lord, and a blessing from Oneself. This our decree.”

  But before that came the 5th Sura: “Then Allah shall say, ‘Jesus, son of Miriam, did ever you say to Mankind ‘Worship me and my Mother and Gods beside Allah?’”

  “‘Glory be to you,’ he will answer. ‘How could I say that to which I have no right?’”

  Had Jesus ever actually said that he was the Son of God? Thomas was not sure, despite those Sunday afternoons in the back bedroom of the house in White Lion Wynd. He knew that Jesus had said he was the son of Man …