“The Russians won’t harm him. When they’ve concluded an agreement with us, they’ll suspend combat and leave Akulgo, and they’ll send him back. They swore they would. But if you don’t give them Jamal Eddin, he’ll die with you in the attack, Imam. And if you leave your other sons unprotected, they will become their slaves. You said so yourself. The giaours will make them serfs and soldiers and send them far from our mountains to be killed in their service. Not to mention our wives, who will be thrown to their battalions. Allah does not order you to give up the fight, he ordains you to continue. Listen to him, as you always have. Live, Shamil, and save your people!”
A tormented Shamil fell to his knees among the stones. He had sent his guide and mentor, Sheik Jamaluddin al-Ghumuqi, to stir the loyalty of the Chechen reinforcements with his eloquence. Now he was alone and isolated in his doubt.
His face in the dust, he prayed fervently, “Almighty God, you asked Abraham for his firstborn, and when he was ready to sacrifice him, you spared him.”
But he was already wavering, and his thoughts turned from Abraham to the prophet who had grown up far from God, the child captured by pagans.
“Almighty God, you delivered Moses from the pharaoh and his dogs, bringing him back to you. If I give Jamal Eddin to the infidels, take him under Your protection. You are the best of all guardians.”
Jamal Eddin watched his father from afar, not moving a muscle. He did not dare approach him. He did not dare question him. He did not even dare to offer his help anymore.
The guide of all the believers of the Caucasus was suffering because of him. This was more terrifying than his nightmares, when the imam leaned over him to question him with a kindly look. Jamal Eddin searched within himself for a way to ease his father’s pain.
He wanted to cry out, in the words of Isaac, “Do what has been asked of you.” But the words stuck in his throat.
He felt guilty.
“You’ve said nothing, Yunus. What do you think of the advice they’ve given me? Should I give up my son?”
Asked in public, here before the council, the answer to his question had the weight of a verdict. Yunus was the most pious of all the naïbs, and the most loyal. His peers respected his word.
Up until now, Shamil had intentionally avoided asking his opinion. He knew that his friend was not particularly articulate, and he feared that the weight of Yunus’s judgment might be weakened by interminable and vain discussion. He had saved his question for the end.
Deliver the son of Allah’s prophet into the hands of the giaours? Yunus could only be revolted by the very thought of such infamy.
In addition, his meeting with General Grabbe had given him the opportunity to judge the man. It was clear to him that the Russians didn’t give a damn about making peace with the inhabitants of Akulgo. Peace? What a joke! A peace that had cost them three thousand soldiers was far too bitter a pill to swallow. They had no intention of retreating. What the general had wanted from the outset was the head of the imam, the heads of his naïbs, and the heads of all who were close to him. To be done with the murids, once and for all.
Offering Jamal Eddin to General Grabbe would be not only stupid, but dangerous as well.
Shamil repeated his question, “What do you think?”
His son’s tutor answered with another question. “Who will take him down to the camp?”
The question was like a knife in Shamil’s heart. The sacrifice, then, was certain. He rose without a word.
“If you want me to accompany him to the camp of the infidels, I will. And I’ll stay with him, to take care of him there,” Yunus concluded somberly.
“I want only what God dictates.”
“It would be preferable for us to carry out the will of the Lord together, instead of you doing it all alone, as you seem ready to do!” Barti Khan interjected furiously.
“Then prepare yourselves to die with me tomorrow. We will withstand the attack and fight until Allah decides the outcome of the battle.”
With his back to the cliff, Akbirdil caught his aggressor by the hair and beheaded him in one stroke. The Russian’s body scarcely wobbled; he stood there straight for an instant before collapsing on top of the pile of headless cadavers. The buttons and stripes of the uniforms shone like blots of sun, golden accents glinting against the white of cartilage and vertebrae in the lake of blood.
Akbirdil sent the head rolling down among the legs of the soldiers attacking him. They tripped on the incline, sliding on the blood-soaked stones.
Despite his disapproval of this new carnage, old Barti Khan went about it methodically and with a vengeance. His musket wedged between the forked branches of a staff, he was holding the suspension bridge by himself. He waited for the Russians to cross the abyss, arriving at his level one by one. Economizing his powder, he aimed directly at a spot between the navel and the genitals. Of all wounds, this was the most painful and the most humiliating. Hit in the lower abdomen, the Russians fell back.
Over a thousand fresh cadavers were strewn over the two promontories.
Standing on the ramparts, Yunus pushed back the enemy with his lance. His blows seemed haphazard, but he mutilated the infidels with carefully aimed thrusts. He sent the pike deep into the ear, then pulled it out like a siphon to perforate the spleen or the bladder. The throbbing of a young recruit’s viscera left the shaft of his weapon vibrating. He jerked it free from the entrails.
Bugles blew everywhere as officers gave the command to charge. The soldiers, paralyzed, the blood drained from their faces, refused to budge. In these last months of siege, they had seen too many of their comrades fall on this trail in futile attacks. Too many dead, too much effort to take this pile of rocks. They had lost faith.
Looking up to the promontory far above, they saw a group of children helping a colossus of a man—Shamil in person!—turn three high-caliber pieces of ordnance to aim them in their direction. Three immense mouths of fire, taken from the gunners whose throats they had slit. They watched as the balls were loaded and the fuses lit—and they understood. The remnants of General Grabbe’s army felt no compunction whatsoever as they scattered far and wide.
Evening was not far off. Akulgo held. Akulgo would hang on.
Until the next attack. Until tomorrow.
Grabbe would attack at the first light of dawn.
Shamil strode down to the village in long steps.
“Allah did not want us to be defeated today. Allah is with us.”
An immense sensation of relief lifted his spirits. “The murids did not fail,” he thought to himself with pride. “The naïbs fought valiantly.”
His joy was short-lived.
When they had taken the cannons a while ago, a thought had crossed his mind, one he now had the calm and silence to consider at length. The Russian artillery could not have come this far up without the complicity—no, the betrayal!—of the Caucasian tribes.
Not for a moment did he doubt his counselors, Barti Khan, Hadj Ibrahim, or any of his companions. Despite any disagreements they might have, he knew they were incorruptible. He believed in the loyalty of the Christian deserters too. The Poles would rather be cut up into little pieces than be retaken by the Russians. No, he did not question the honor of the inhabitants of Akulgo.
But the Montagnards of the neighboring auls, the believers of Irganai, Untsukul, Ashilta, and Ansal, those he had counted on to bar the way before the cannons, they hadn’t lifted a finger. Worse still, it was the Montagnards of Ghimri who had led Grabbe’s mortars over the trails. Ghimri had facilitated his passage through the mountain passes and the rivers, Ghimri had shown him all the secret shortcuts.