We finally reached the hills and made our camp that first night as the last of the sun went from the sky. The pipes gave out a squeal as Mac dropped his pack at the side of the fire. The men and I ate some dried biscuits and got some tea brewing—the Lieutenant didn’t join us, staying in his tent, where we could see him bent over, writing up his report. The plan was to get a couple of hours sleep then walk up into the hills before the morning sun got too high in the sky but the trouble started almost as soon as we got our heads down after a smoke.
I’d put Jennings on guard—stout lad, never gave me any lip. I’d served with him in the Sudan on two previous campaigns—I’d seen him stand up against arrows, spears, rifle fire and cavalry charges. So I knew there was something far wrong when he screamed—high pitched, like a boy more than a man—full of fear and pain, his terror carrying far over the small camp in the still desert air.
He was still screaming when I got to the spot where he should be—only he wasn’t there—the screams were now coming from higher up in the hills, getting farther away by the second until fading completely somewhere high above us. I tried to make out a landmark we might use to begin a search but there was only a dark, looming cliff face and no distinguishing features.
Even then some of the lads were keen on mounting a search party but the lieutenant put the mockers on that idea.
“Blundering around in the dark isn’t going to get us anywhere. There’ll be a moon in an hour—we’ll go then—and we’ll all go together.”
I was forced to agree with his decision, although that hour, spent as it was breaking camp then smoking round the remnants of the fire, was one of the longest I have ever spent. At every lull in conversation I listened, expecting a cry from a returning Jennings. But all I heard, echoing in my head if nowhere else, was the memory of the screams and the pain I could hear in them.
I’ll give Timkins one thing—he was right about the moon coming up. That was about the last thing he got right that night.
Once there was light, of a sort, we examined the ground where Jennings had been keeping watch. We found his Lee Enfield—bayonet still attached, no blood on the blade and a round in the breech. When they had got him, they’d done it fast. There were only scuffle marks on the sand and surrounding rocks—nothing to indicate the identity of any assailant. All we had was the fact that his screams had faded higher up the hill.
“Right, lads,” Timkins said, taking the lead. “Let’s find our Corporal Jennings.”
At that stage, we were only too happy to comply. We followed—of necessity taking single file due to the almost precarious nature of the cliff path—heading upward, always up.
It proved to be hard going, steep and precipitous in places and it had me wondering just how someone—anyone—could have got Jennings—a big man—up this path while subduing him at the same time. I still hadn’t seen any tracks, nor had I spotted any indication that anyone apart from us had passed this way. Despite the cold desert night, I was starting to work up a sweat and my calf muscles screamed in agony with every step. From a distance the hills hadn’t looked too daunting but now that we were among them I was wishing we were still back on the sand—it might have been soft but at least it was mostly level.
We kept going up, until even the young lieutenant was forced to admit that tiredness was getting the better of him and allowed us a stop on a ledge for a breather and a smoke.
I ended up next to Mac again and he was still complaining.
“What’s that stupid bugger Jennings got himself into this time? Remember when he thought he was in love with that dancing girl in Cairo? Or the lass who turned out to be a boy in Valletta? I’m betting it’s something like that again, just you wait and see.”
I remembered both tales well—and both had ended in raucous laughter, not pained, wild screams. I held my peace—I’d learned early that a sergeant who shared his worries with the men wasn’t much of a sergeant at all. I smoked a Capstan and looked down over the desert—the lights of our encampment in the oasis of Farafra glittered on the horizon—it was what passed for hearth and home during our tour and looked ever more enticing by the minute. It was a struggle to turn back and face the hill—but Jennings was still up there somewhere and we don’t leave our men behind.
We climbed again and as it turned out we were nearer our goal than we might have thought. The trail opened out—I was just behind the lieutenant so was among the first to see it—the path led across a flat area between high cliffs into a long, dark narrow valley. Unlike the sight of our home over the desert sands, this did not look the least bit enticing at all. The hairs at the back of my neck rose in the long familiar tingle of dread—I’d been a soldier long enough to recognize a possible ambush when I saw one.
“We should take this slowly, sir,” I said to the lieutenant, keeping my voice low so the men wouldn’t hear. “I don’t like the look of it at all.”
“Nonsense,” the lieutenant said, loud enough for the men—and anybody else in that damned valley—to hear. “We are on the Queen’s business and we shall do as we damn well please.”
And with no further ado he started to stride away from me along the path and into the valley. I waited for ten seconds to see if anybody would shoot him for me before I followed.
We found the city a minute later.
The moonlight, such as it was, did little to light this end of the valley but it was enough to show us that the buildings that filled the whole west end were of great age—and great magnificence. A crescent outer wall stretched across forty yards of valley floor and was half as high again, with only a single high arched passage as entry. Behind that we saw that a city of high turrets and magnificent balconies marched away upwards the canyon, gaining height until the tallest of them were level with the highest walls at the top of the canyon.
The outer wall was of the same sandstone we were used to seeing on the small local buildings in the towns but these were blocks ten, twelve feet or more square, aligned so seamlessly it was difficult to see where they were joined. The outer surface of the wall was covered, ground to as high as we could see in the gloom, with fine miniature carvings that at first glance seemed to depict scenes of battles of antiquity but would have taken someone with more intellect—and patience—than I to unravel. At that moment I was only interested in getting the squad off the valley floor and under some cover, to a spot where ambush wouldn’t be quite so easily accomplished.
Lieutenant Timkins, seemingly without a care in the world, was already making his way in through the archway. I left two men at the entrance gate—Jock Benson and Andy Hynd, stout lads the both of them and able to keep each other alert—and herded the rest of the squad inside.
The arch was more than fifteen feet tall and the wall through which it passed was about the same thickness, a testament to the solidity of the vast structure. We walked along the short corridor and inside the entranceway to the city itself. Dust lay underfoot—our footprints showed clearly—as did something else—strange scuffed marks, similar to those I had seen at the spot where Jennings had been taken—there were a great many of them, covering all the ground I could see in the dim light.
We found the lieutenant trying to light a wall sconce with his tinderbox. MacLeod managed it rather more quickly, using up half a dozen of his safety matches in the process but finally we had the sconce—and several others on opposite walls-lit, providing more than enough light to illuminate the interior of this entrance hall. A wide left-hand corridor opened out into some kind of temple.