And then they were through and among the camels. They stumbled beneath the first beasts’ legs, crouching down and slithering through the faeces and urine as they made their way forward. The din of battle was muffled for a few moments but then intensified as they came towards the other side and out into the melee again, dodging among screaming and shrieking men, hearing the thwack of blades on flesh, the whine and whistle of bullets and the thuds as they found their mark. Mayne slipped in a pool of blood and fell face to face with a British soldier lying on his back with a fearful wound to his head; his eyeballs had protruded from their sockets and burst, the liquid glistening like bloody tears on his face. ‘Water,’ the man croaked, reaching for him blindly. ‘Water.’ Before Mayne could think of acting, Charrière had heaved him up and dragged him on. A bullet nicked his arm and ricocheted into Charrière’s shoulder, lodging in the flesh. Charrière flicked the bullet away with his knife and then stood facing two dervishes who ran at them screaming, their spears levelled. He pulled the spear from the hands of one of them, reversed it and ran the man through until he was nearly embracing him, then pushed the body away as it went limp. Mayne drew his revolver and shot the other man, the gun jumping back in his hand as he fired; then he picked up a Martini-Henry rifle and slammed the butt into the man’s neck as he went down. A few yards ahead of him Charrière had found another sword and was slashing and stabbing, cutting a path through the mass of dervishes, allowing space for a British sergeant to order a ragged volley at point-blank range that dropped a dozen of them in one go. Mayne ran behind, crouching low, sensing the British soldiers on his left and the dervishes to the right, and the two sides closing together again behind him in the shrieks and yells of hand-to-hand fighting.
As they approached the far edge of the square, Mayne saw a huge man propped with his back against a rock, surrounded by dead dervishes, his tunic drenched with blood. He blinked, wiping the sweat from his eyes, and stared again. It was Burnaby. He had taken a fearful spear thrust to the neck, a gash wide enough to put a hand through that had somehow missed the jugular but had sliced deep into his windpipe. Above his thick thatch of dark hair the top of his skull had been sliced clean off by a sword, exposing his brain. His left arm was twisted horribly under his back, but with his right hand he was fumbling to load the massive four-barrelled howdah pistol on his chest, spilling the big .577 rifle cartridges out of a pouch on his belt. His eyes were strangely askew, but they flickered with recognition as Mayne came over to him. ‘I say, Mayne old chap.’ His voice sounded strange, reedy, and the gash in his throat frothed as he spoke. ‘Nearly took you for Johnny Arab in that attire. You couldn’t help me, could you? Trying to load this damned thing. I’m afraid that dervish bowled me over an awful crumpler.’
Mayne knelt down and reached for the cartridges. He and Burnaby had been to the same school, and that peculiar expression was one he had used himself countless times on the playing fields, holding his cricket bat with the wicket knocked out behind him. For a second it seemed a perfectly normal thing to say out here, where war for a man like Burnaby was simply a continuation of the contests of his youth. It was a thought that instantly evaporated when he looked again at Burnaby’s horrific wounds. He grasped the barrel of the pistol and dropped four cartridges into the breech, then snapped it shut and clamped Burnaby’s hand around the grip, putting his finger on the trigger. ‘I say, Mayne,’ said Burnaby, his voice weaker. ‘You couldn’t light me one of my cigarettes, could you? Really could do with it now.’ He seemed to be struggling for words, and Mayne knelt down. Burnaby’s voice was now little more than a whisper, and his neck was seeping bloody froth. ‘Listen here, Mayne. You know I work for Wilson too. I know your true mission. Watch your back. Don’t trust anyone. Anyone. Now, out of my way.’
Mayne had blocked out the battle for the last few seconds, but threw himself sideways just in time to see a half-naked dervish rush at them, his spear held high. Burnaby raised the pistol with a wobbly hand and fired. The round hit the dervish square in the face, blowing his head backwards in a haze of blood and brain. Burnaby suddenly jerked back and blood erupted from his nose. He had been hit in the forehead by a spent bullet that had caved in his sinuses and lodged in the bone of his forehead. The force of the blow had knocked him unconscious, and his head was lolling, his eyes half open and sightless and his breathing coming in terrible rasps. The bullet had been a small mercy, but not enough. There was only one thing Mayne could do for him now. As he pulled out his revolver, he saw a soldier who had detached himself from the melee and was hurtling towards him, bellowing for him to stop, his bayonet poised. Mayne remembered Burnaby’s comment about his desert attire; to the soldier he would look like a Mahdist about to finish off their beloved colonel. There was a shriek from in front, and another dervish came hurling forward. Mayne wrenched the howdah pistol from Burnaby’s hand and fired all three remaining barrels in quick succession, the massive recoil kicking the gun high above him each time. The rounds hit the dervish in the centre of his chest, blowing his heart out and leaving a hole large enough to see through. The man fell in a gory heap on Burnaby, whose eyes were now glazed over in death. Mayne sprang back to face the soldier, dropping the pistol and raising his Webley, but before he could aim it and shout a warning that he was British, the other man had tumbled backwards as a bullet struck him.
Mayne turned and ran forward, slipping over the gore from a man’s abdomen and driving his right knee painfully into the ground, then picked himself up and leapt over the stacked wooden crates that formed the edge of the zariba. He saw Charrière waiting, then glanced back, hearing his own rasping breath, the pounding and ringing in his ears, the shrill whistling he experienced after gunfire. Hearing those things, he realised that something was different. The shooting and shrieking had stopped. And then he saw a most incredible sight. The dervishes had turned and begun to walk silently out of the billowing gun smoke in the direction they had come, their spears and swords held down. The ferocious energy that had propelled their advance had suddenly been expended, and the British had stood their ground. He was astonished by the dignity of their departure, by its utter disjunction from the savagery of a few moments before; it was as if they were mere tribesmen again, no more than people passing through, a timeless imprint of humanity in the desert that made the battle seem just a passing storm. The last of them disappeared out of sight, and for a moment the British troops slumped and exhausted in the zariba seemed agape with disbelief, stunned into immobility. It had been less than fifteen minutes since the dervish charge had begun. Fifteen minutes.