Mayne scraped the ground noisily with his boot and climbed the parapet. The knot of soldiers inside jerked their heads towards him, clutching at their rifles. He cleared his throat. ‘Speaking of more brawn than brains, I thought this was meant to be a lookout post.’ It hurt to talk, the first time he had done so in hours, his throat dry and coated with dust. The subaltern stood up quickly, disconcerted, straightening his tunic. ‘We never thought an enemy would come from that direction, sir. I have two sentries in the rocks with their eyes trained on the cliff above the opposite bank. That’s where we saw the dervishes watching us yesterday.’
Jones stood up, like Mayne a few inches over average height, put his hands on his hips and looked Mayne up and down, then shook his head. ‘You look a sight, sir. Every bit of you. I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Don’t bother.’ Mayne let the saddlebag drop, pulled off his headdress and tried to push his fingers through his thick dark hair, and then through his beard. He looked at his hands and knew his face must be the same, layered with a dark orange crust of desert like the bedrock he had just been riding over. He hardly dared think of his odour; fortunately he seemed to have lost his sense of smell after a few hours on the back of the camel. He swallowed hard, trying to wet his throat. ‘The messenger reached us yesterday evening at the Kordofan wells; I’m due at Korti tomorrow afternoon for a conference with General Wolseley. That’s thirty miles downriver, and there are about six hours of daylight left. There’s no moon at the moment and even the voyageurs won’t paddle through the cataracts when it’s pitch dark. I don’t have time to wash and change.’
‘You mean you don’t want to, sir. You know the general’s going to send you out into the desert again, and you don’t want to lose that look. It takes a while to grow a convincing beard. A few days’ stubble is a dead giveaway, as none of the Arabs have it.’
Mayne said nothing, but unwound his headdress and scarf and stuffed them into the bag, then took off his hippo-hide belt and his robe. The robe had been another layer above his uniform and at first he had objected to it, but it had kept him cool while he was riding, the white cotton reflecting the desert sun. Beneath it he wore the standard attire of an officer in the desert campaign: a Sam Browne belt with a holster for his Webley-Pryse revolver, an ammunition pouch containing twenty rounds, a bag with his tinted sun-goggles, and a leather water bottle; and below that a grey serge jumper, yellow-ochre corduroy riding breeches, puttees wound up to his knees and brown ankle-length boots, all of it adapted from kit he had worn on the North-West Frontier of India. His pith helmet, dyed with Nile mud and acacia bark and with a cloth neck veil, was attached to the saddlebag. He would have liked to carry on wearing the headdress and scarf in this heat, but he needed to remain inconspicuous, keeping spying eyes from seeing anything singular about him. And there was another factor now too: the dervish sharpshooters who might be in the cliffs opposite. A headdress would show that he had been in the desert, probably gathering intelligence, and would suggest that he was an officer, so would make him a prime target. He did not want to invite a bullet before his mission had even begun.
Jones pointed to a khaki-coloured canvas roll-up the size of a cricket kitbag among their surveying gear on one side of the sangar. ‘I kept that beside me all the time, sir, as I promised you. Your special equipment.’
Jones knew what the bag contained, though not its true purpose. On the face of it, a sporting rifle was an unremarkable piece of gear for a British officer travelling abroad who might expect opportunities to hunt along the way; there were officers fired up by tales of African game who had brought with them entire arsenals, of every imaginable type and calibre. But Mayne’s gun was a make rarely seen on this side of the Atlantic, and he did not want to draw attention to himself. The wooden box inside the bag was sealed and weatherproofed so that it was not damaged in any way. He suspected that the time to test-fire and sight it in would be soon, perhaps immediately after his visit to Wolseley, so he would take it with him when he left the sangar for the river. He nodded his acknowledgement to Jones. ‘Is my boat ready?’
‘The bows were stoved in on a rock during the passage from Korti, and the sappers down below are patching her up. They’re going to signal me when they’re finished. Meanwhile Mr Tanner and Major Ormerod of the Canadian contingent have discovered something they thought you might want to see. They know about your interest in the ancient ruins, and they’ve come across some carvings in the cliff face below us.’
Mayne squinted at the ridge on the opposite side of the river. ‘I’ll stay up here, I think,’ he murmured. ‘If there are dervishes watching us, I’d rather try to do something about it than make myself a target at the base of that cliff. Judging by the difficulties I saw ahead in this cataract, the river column will probably still be camped here when I get back. Plenty of time then for exploring ruins.’
Jones looked at him shrewdly. ‘You’ve been away sometimes for weeks on end, and that’s just carrying out reconnaissance upriver. If General Wolseley wants you to go into the desert for him, then you’ll probably be away for a long time. We won’t be seeing you back here at this spot, sir, that’s my guess.’
Mayne pulled the Martini-Henry rifle out of the holster attached to his saddlebag, and picked up the cartridge box. ‘Then I’d better make the best use of my time while I’m here. My spotting scope and binoculars are in the saddlebag. Bring them to the parapet and we’ll see if we can’t spy out those dervishes of yours.’
‘You’re having something to eat and drink first, sir.’
Mayne grunted, then dropped into the sangar and leaned his rifle against the parapet. Jones was right. He was not yet ready for hard-tack biscuit and tinned bully beef, but he took the proffered leather mussak water bottle gratefully, wetting his lips and then swilling the water around his mouth as he had learned to do from the Dongolese, taking small sips before slaking his thirst. He left the bottle half full and passed it back, taking his first proper look at Jones, who was wearing regulation khaki but sporting a colourful bandanna under his helmet, its knotted end hanging down his back like a pigtail. Mayne recognised the cloth pattern of the Hudson’s Bay Company; it must have been given to him by one of the Canadian voyageurs recruited by Wolseley to navigate the boats up the cataracts. Unlikely friendships had formed among the motley crew assembled for this task.