He took another swig from the bottle. With the worst of his thirst now slaked, he could let the water linger in his mouth, and he tasted the mud of the Nile. It was always a risk drinking water from the river; it was less safe than water you had drawn yourself from a well, but safer than water offered to you by a stranger, water that might be tainted. In the desert, it was no slight on hospitality to refuse an offer of water from a passer-by, and to wait instead until the next well or cistern. The river water he was drinking had washed past Gordon, had drained something from Khartoum, though whether it was lifeblood or something malign, a seeping poison, he could not tell. He stared at the pool where Charrière had rescued the man, trying to see through the depths as a Mohawk would, to sense the shape of the riverbed. He had often wondered what it was like beneath, whether it still harboured any of the history that had passed this way or whether it was just a rush of blackness over a scoured bottom, everything cleansed by the annual flood that irrigated Egypt and kept the river uncluttered by human debris. Shaytan had told him that only when the river had been tamed would the land to the south ever be conquered by outsiders, or the forces unleashed by the Mahdi spill out to the north and threaten the world beyond. It was only the saying of an old Sufi mystic, but it held a kernel of truth, and that truth was the advent of new technology: just as plans were afoot to build a dam at Aswan to control the Nile, so railways were being driven ever further south into the desert from Egypt and the Red Sea that would allow an army to move in rapidly, and at the same time provide weapons and communication that would enable the jihadists to break free from their medieval world and spread their fire to places that many of those with the Mahdi today scarcely knew existed.
When he had first arrived in the Sudan, Mayne had been taken by the extraordinary clarity of the gorge, as if the water that had swept away the sand to reveal the carapace of rock beneath had also cleansed the air above the river, leaving it visible from a distance as a shimmering, glistening snake coiling its way through the desert from the lowering darkness to the south. In the early weeks, when he had little to do, he had occupied his time making sketches of the river column, sending them to the Illustrated London News, where they had been inked up and published as the work of an anonymous officer. Those images had given the British public what Wolseley had wanted them to see: visions of heroic endeavour, of soldiers and sailors and colonials working together for a noble cause, of the allure and danger of the desert beyond.
Then, the limpid air had seemed to extend far over the river to the south, magnifying everything and foreshortening the distance they had to cover, drawing them on in a fever of activity. Now he saw the illusion for what it was; it felt as if they had been seduced, lured deep into the desert by a promise on the horizon that was forever receding, as if in a bad dream. The air beyond the cataract was obscured by the same sand mist he had seen in the desert, and the silvery stream of clarity had been reduced to a bubble above the men and the boats, one that seemed to close in the further they went on; it was as if the light they had taken with them as they pressed south could no longer penetrate the dust and obscurity, and now only illuminated their own toil. He felt that if an ill wind from the south were to sweep over the scene and obscure it, he would look again and they would all be gone, swept from history like the ancient army of the pharaohs, whose traces only remained where they had carved their marks deep into the rocks of the river gorge.
‘Major Mayne, sir.’ Jones lay down beside him again. ‘The boat looks close to being ready. Seems your friend got there a bit faster than he might have liked.’
Mayne glanced towards the river. Charrière had made his way along the shore to the landing point where the boat had been repaired, and was now wading around it in the water, inspecting the hull. Mayne raised his telescope and peered along the cliffs yet again, still seeing nothing. He felt uneasy, but there was nothing he could do. With the whaleboats now assembling in greater numbers, a sharpshooter could have his choice of targets; with more troops coming into the camp, he might be waiting until more senior officers appeared. General Earle fortunately was out of the picture, having left to join Wolseley at Korti the day before. And it was always possible that there was no sharpshooter at all, that the movements they had seen among the rocks were mere tricks of the light or perhaps curious local tribesmen, not necessarily with anyone in their sights. Even if there were a danger and Mayne could make a difference, it was only a matter of time before they would scout ahead and see not just a solitary marksman but a horizon filled with dervish spears and banners. The soldiers in the sangar beside him who had only ever heard Corporal Jones tell of battle would soon experience the full horror for themselves. That was to be their war; his was to be another, far to the south. He knew that Jones could look after himself, whether in the thick of battle or more sensibly occupied in support work. He would have a word with Tanner before leaving to ensure that the corporal was attached to an engineer company, to keep him from being remustered as infantry when the time came for a fight.
He rolled against the parapet and stared back out over the desert. The pellucid light of the early morning when he had woken at the wells with Shaytan had given way to a dusty haze, a mist of sand that lay low over the desert floor; it seemed to cut off anything that rose above it, leaving the pyramidal outcrops he had seen earlier hanging in the distance like a mirage, and his camel standing fifty yards away partly disembodied, as if its head were peering above a diaphanous veil of red. It was a disconcerting effect, part reality, part mirage, but it was also alluring, and he could see how men had been tempted to ride off into the desert and disappear, caught in an embrace that only those who knew what they were seeking and had learned its ways could survive.
The heliograph flashed above the opposite bank, and he snapped back to reality. He turned to the river and saw that the boat was now being rowed out, tested by the sappers who had repaired it. He peered at the line of the cliff one last time. He could not wait any longer and he would have to take his chances. He retracted the telescope, put it in its case and slung it round his neck beside the binoculars, then handed the Martini-Henry rifle and the cartridge box to Jones. ‘Take this. It’s the most accurate rifle the engineer quartermaster could find for me when I arrived. It’s sighted for four hundred yards over the river.’
‘Nobody up here could take a shot like that except you, sir.’
‘Then you’ll need to keep your heads down.’ He stooped over and picked up the khaki bag that Jones had been looking after for him, checking that it was wrapped and secure.
Jones watched him, his voice hesitant. ‘So you really are leaving us for good, sir?’
Mayne paused. ‘I don’t know. But look out for me.’
‘Sir.’ The subaltern offered his hand, and Mayne shook it. ‘We’ll be on guard next time, sir. The next time a British officer appears out of the desert disguised as an Arab.’
Mayne turned to Jones. ‘That reminds me. My camel.’
‘Sir?’
‘I won’t be needing her again. She’s yours.’
Jones stared at Mayne, then out at the chewing, grunting form beyond the parapet, then back at Mayne, his face a picture of horror. ‘But sir.’
‘A little desert grass, some water. You’ll find she’s very loyal. Once you feed her, she won’t look at any other man. And if you get cold at night, hobble her and snuggle up tight. You won’t notice the smell after a while.’
The Irish soldier jostled Jones. ‘Go on, Jonesy. You was telling us how good you was with the Egyptian ladies in Cairo. Well, here’s one for you now, and a chance for you to show us what you’re worth.’