“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jones muttered, tightening the bayonet over the lug on his barrel. “Just what I signed up for.”
“Good. I don’t see any more of the enemy actually on the parapet. They may have fallen back to the second wall, the one that leads into the fortress. If we keep our wits about us and abstain from unnecessary fire, we might achieve an element of surprise. Agreed?”
Wood and Le Mesurier nodded. Wood checked the chambers in his revolver and got up on his haunches. “I’m the senior officer here, so leading this assault should be my job.” The infantry officer nodded, raised his arm, and held it ready to signal his men to advance, his own revolver at the ready. Wood knelt up, peered round the boulder and put a hand on Jones’s shoulder. “Right, Jones. You’re with me. Let’s move.”
Ten minutes later Wood emerged scratched and grazed from the thorn thicket on top of the parapet. Bergin and Magner had hacked their way through easily enough, but there had been no time for finesse and there were many vicious thorns still to negotiate. He dropped down on the other side, taking cover next to the two Irishmen, and waited while Jones came up cursing and grunting behind. Ahead of them lay about seventy yards of dead ground between the two walls, much of it variegated and rocky like the slope below, but more level. The inner wall itself had clearly been built for show rather than defense; Theodore could hardly have expected any attacker to get this far. Wood scanned the ground, revolver at the ready, looking for the few final Abyssinian defenders they assumed must be here. The imminent fall of the fortress now seemed certain, but they had all seen the suicidal bravery of the Abyssinians on the battlefield the day before, and they were taking no chances.
The officer of the 33rd slid down beside Wood, one side of his face scratched and bloody. At that moment there was the whoosh of an incoming shell and a deafening detonation some twenty yards to the right. Three Abyssinians who had been concealed there were flung into the air like rag dolls, their limbs and heads flying away and hunks of flesh splattering all around. The officer turned to the man who had followed him through the hedge. “Get the colors up now,” he yelled. “On the parapet!”
He turned to Wood. “I’m not supposed to do this until we’ve taken the fortress, but it might stop our own side from shooting at us.”
The soldier did as instructed, raising a pole he had been carrying and unfurling the colors of the 33rd, a Cross of St. George with a wreath in the middle and a Union Jack in the corner. They waited for a few tense minutes, but no further shell came. All eyes were on the patch of ground where the shell had burst, near the path from the outer to the inner gateway. Suddenly an Abyssinian got up, yelling and ululating, sword in hand, and then another; both were instantly shot down.
The officer turned to Wood. “Right. An old-fashioned bayonet charge should finish the job.” He drew his sword and bellowed at his men. A pistol cracked from somewhere ahead, and he stumbled back, the bullet grazing his forehead.
The dozen men of the 33rd who had made it over the wall got up and charged forward, yelling and swearing, Wood following close behind. Two more Abyssinians appeared brandishing their weapons, one of them firing a flintlock pistol that sent a ball whizzing past Wood’s ear. The Abyssinian stumbled backward and fell, and Wood heard a string of Irish profanities as Bergin lunged at the writhing body with his bayonet. Another soldier barreled into the second Abyssinian, dropping his rifle and clutching the man’s head by the ears, smashing it again and again into a rock, bellowing himself hoarse. Wood could see that the Abyssinians had been well dressed, chieftains rather than foot soldiers, Theodore’s last loyal guard. The rest of the army seemed to have melted away.
The soldier who had smashed the man’s head was ripping the gold brocade from his robe; others were picking over the bodies ahead, several holding up shields and daggers as trophies. Looking back down to the outer entranceway, Wood could see that a route had been found around the boulders and the first of the main force were already through, their bayonets glinting. It could only be a matter of moments now before all resistance ended and Magdala fell.
He reached the path that led toward the inner gate, seeing that there was no door in this one to bar their way; through the passageway he could make out the thatched roofs of the houses on the plateau beyond. He and Jones advanced inside, hardly expecting further resistance now but still being cautious. Suddenly a man appeared in front of them, standing up from a cleft in the rock, a pistol held muzzle-down by his side. Wood aimed his revolver at the man’s chest, but he had recognized his face and did not fire. The golden mantle, the braided hair, the wispy beard, and the white robe were all familiar from the illustrations that had garnished newspapers the world over for months now; only the eyes were different, not wide open in some caricature of madness but somehow anchorless, the eyes of a man who no longer knew the measure of himself, who had lost all grip on reality.
King Theodore looked at Wood, the pistol still by his side, and spoke in English. “Your queen has destroyed me. But you will not have our greatest treasure. It is no longer here, and will never be yours.” Then he raised the pistol, put it in his mouth, and fired. A large chunk of skull and brains exploded from the back of his head and he collapsed on the ground.
Wood remained transfixed for a moment, watching the blood rapidly puddle around Theodore’s head, then reached down and picked up the pistol, the smoke still curling up from the muzzle. It was highly ornate, with etching on the lock plate and silver inlay in the grip, and had the king’s name on the escutcheon plate. He realized that it was one of the pair that Queen Victoria had sent to Theodore as a present, and that he had just witnessed the grotesque irony of the king using it on himself in the last desperate act of war against his erstwhile benefactor. He dropped the pistol beside the corpse, suddenly repelled. Someone else would claim it, for certain, but for now there were more pressing treasures to safeguard.
The officer of the 33rd came up beside him, his head swathed in a bandage. He stared at the corpse and then turned to the soldier who had hurried up behind him. “Get our Abyssinian. Tell him to call out that Theodore is dead. That should put an end to it.”
Moments later the chieftain’s son who had come along for this purpose with the storming party raised his voice and shouted, a high-pitched, penetrating sound that reverberated off the walls, repeating the same mantra again and again. Wood advanced past the corpse into the fortress, coming out among a cluster of thatched huts. In front of him was the gaping maw of Sevastopol, the huge mortar that Theodore had dragged up here at immeasurable cost in lives and energy and yet never fired, mute testament to the futility of the enterprise. To his left a group of emaciated Abyssinians stood with spears and shields on the ground in front of them; others were coming forward from the huts, dropping weapons and putting their hands in the air. Wood gestured to Jones, who advanced with his rifle raised and directed the men toward the others with his bayonet.
The rest of the storming party came streaming through the entranceway, the sergeant ordering several of them to take over from Jones in guarding the prisoners. The standard-bearer appeared with the colors he had brought from the parapet and now proceeded to mount them on the highest point he could reach above the gateway, making sure they would be clearly visible to the main force below. Seeing the red, white, and blue fluttering in the breeze, Wood knew that this really was it, that the game had been up the moment Theodore had put the pistol into his mouth.