Mayne snapped his head back. A bullet had zinged overhead and slapped into a boulder, ricocheting off into the plain. He turned and squinted, and could just make out one of the riders with his rifle levelled. He had fired mounted on his camel, from perhaps eight hundred yards; he was good. Not even the best of the Egyptian army marksmen who had gone over to the Mahdi were that proficient, and they only had Remingtons. Mayne recalled being with the soldiers above the cataract when the sharpshooter from the opposite bank had found their range; he remembered the distinctive whine of the Remington bullet, at about the same range. It was a lighter bullet than the Martini-Henry, .43 rather than .45 calibre, and made a different noise. The Martini-Henry was the rifle of the British army, the best service rifle in the world, one they did not even let their Egyptian allies use and which the Mahdi had not yet been able to capture. Yet the bullet he had just heard was unquestionably from a Martini-Henry. He had that cold feeling in his stomach again. Who were they?
Two of the riders broke off to the right, and he watched them slowly pick up speed as they brought their camels to a gallop, whipping them hard as a cloud of dust rose behind. Mayne cursed under his breath. They were heading towards the hill of Abu Klea behind the square, cutting off their planned escape route. That left only one choice, the dried-up torrent bed between the opposing armies. He swiftly calculated the distances. The ground ahead of them was flat and unimpeded, and they would be able to run fast. They were perhaps two thousand yards now from the British square, and the gap between the armies was no more than eight hundred yards. If they ran now, they would be targeted by sharpshooters from either side, and by their pursuers. But if they waited until the moment the Mahdists began their charge, when all eyes would be on the opposing armies, they might have a chance of getting through. And their pursuers would know that if they followed, they would be caught up in the maelstrom as the armies converged.
Another bullet tumbled by and ploughed into the dust ahead them. He gripped the bag with the rifle on his back and crouched down ready to run, watching Charrière do the same. Suddenly, the only meaningful time was measured in seconds. The Mahdi army must launch their attack now.
Then he heard it. A low noise, different from the stomping of feet, different from the drumbeat, a shrill, insistent chant, ten thousand men in unison: La illaha la illa ras Muhammad – there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet – repeated over and over again until it became like the rushing of a mighty river.
A great flash swept the front line as a thousand spears were brandished. The standards of the emirs were lowered like lances. The chant was lost in a rumbling that shook the earth, a pounding of feet that set Mayne’s teeth on edge. The dervish army was like a coiled spring, ready to strike.
His heart was thumping. What happened next would take place with terrifying speed: the two armies were like beasts bent on death or victory, warily sniffing out their opponent’s weaknesses and strengths, tensed for a pounce that when it came would be of appalling savagery and violence. And he knew they might not make it to the gap in time to get through. They might be running headlong into a wall of death.
A trumpet sounded, high and shrill. He looked at Charrière. Now.
18
Mayne ran forward as fast as he could, crouching low, his right hand behind his back clutching the strap on his rifle case, his left arm extended and ready in case he should trip over one of the black clinker rocks that were strewn on the desert floor. Charrière was slightly ahead and to the left, loping more than running, his Arab robe tied up around his waist and the long sheath of his knife poking out below. Ahead of them lay the gap between the British and the dervish lines, and in the centre of that the low torrent bed that was their objective. Already Mayne could see that it was shallower than he had hoped, that to run along it would leave them exposed to fire from both sides. They would either have to risk it or get down on their hands and knees and crawl, an option that was rapidly closing given the speed of the dervish advance.
A bullet whistled between them, ploughing into the gravel ahead. He dared not look behind for fear of tripping over, but the accuracy of the fire showed that their pursuers had kept within range. They zigzagged, keeping low, jumping into gullies and using any natural cover they could find. They were no more than three hundred yards away now, and the noise was suddenly overwhelming. The clap of the mountain gun was followed by the drone of the shell and then a krump as it burst in the Mahdist lines, throwing up bodies and limbs in a haze of red. The Gardner machine gun erupted in staccato fire, shooting over the heads of the crouching infantrymen, and then stopped abruptly, evidently jammed. He could hear the bullets now from the Mahdist sharpshooters zipping and droning overhead, and saw khaki forms in the British line fall back and crumple. The dervishes surged forward, keeping phalanx formation behind the emirs on camelback. The gap was narrowing alarmingly, now no more than two hundred yards, but still the British held their fire. They were close enough now to hear the hoarse goading and swearing of the soldiers, the grousing of camels, the sergeants and corporals bawling at their men to remain steady, to fire only in volley when the order came. A bullet zapped by dangerously close, not from their pursuers but fired from the square by some clear-eyed British marksman who thought he had seen two fanatical Arabs running at them from the north.
Mayne grabbed Charrière and pulled him to a halt. It was no good. They were not going to make it. It had been a calculated gamble to go for the gap, but it had closed faster than he had hoped. To continue that way now would be to run straight into the jaws of death. He dragged Charrière into a low gully in front of a boulder, protected from the rear, and they crouched down together, panting hard. They could not run around the rear of the square, as the soldiers there would be ready for an attack on that side and would gun them down instantly; nor could they try to run through the dervish line, as they would be trampled. They were going to have to veer left, to ride the tide of the dervish advance and head straight into the side of the British square, in the hope that the troops would stem the tide long enough for them to get through to the other side and safety. Their chances were vanishingly small, but it was better than certain death. Once inside the square, they would aim for the far left corner: Mayne had seen it fall back and open to let the skirmishers in, a risky move on the part of the officer in charge of that section of the line that could have put the entire square at jeopardy. He had a sudden image of Burnaby, of self-imposed heroic duty, of how such a man in his perfect milieu might make a pact with death to save his men; but all that mattered now to Mayne was that the disorder in the line at that point might allow them an escape route if they survived that far.