Sands of Destiny (11 page)

“Your answer?” El Morini seemed impatient. “Yes or no?”

“Kill them!” screamed the Hadji Hassan. The Mullah appeared beside the Sheik. “Kill them for the Glory of Allah!”

“Kill!” screamed the Arabs. “Kill!”

“Answer,” yelled the Sheik. “Answer or die!”

He paused, the shrieking Arabs paused with him and, before Corville could shout his defiance and touch off the fuse that would destroy the arsenal, the fort, and every living thing within it, the clear notes of a bugle echoed through the stillness.

“By God!” swore the legionnaire whom Corville had prevented from shooting the Sheik. “They have arrived!” Even as he spoke he pressed the trigger and El Morini, a startled expression on his face, clutched at a red stain on his burnoose, staggered, and fell.

Immediately all hell broke loose.

Corville couldn’t see the reinforcements but the attackers could and, as they stared at the long lines of marching legionnaires they knew that their dreams of conquest were at an end. Desperate, half insane with hate, they turned their full fury on the tiny group remaining in the fortress. Guns splintered the walls with bullets, swords hacked at the bodies of dead and wounded and, like a screaming mass of animals they hurled themselves against the final barricade.

Coldly Corville and the remaining Legionnaires cut them down with machinegun fire. It wasn’t battle. It was butchery and, as the reinforcements reached the fort, the attack broke and became a rout with tribesmen running from the long bayonets and spitting Lebels of the despised Ferengi.

“We’re saved,” sobbed Clarice, for now that the danger was past, she broke down and became all-woman. “We’re saved!”

Corville held her close to him for a moment, then, as the blue and scarlet uniforms of the reinforcements mounted the walls and came towards him, gently pushed her into the arms of Miss Carson.

Colonel Le Farge grinned like a pleased tiger when he saw the body of El Morini.

“Who did this?”

“A legionnaire, I don’t know his name.” Corville pointed out the man surrounded now by a bunch of cheering comrades. Le Farge called to him.

“Did you kill this man?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. You will receive promotion and extra wine.”

The legionnaire grinned, more at the promise of extra wine than promotion and returned to his friends. Corville gestured to Le Farge.

“‘How did you get here so soon?”

“Thank your sergeant for that, I had men all ready to leave as soon as I learned where they would be needed most and, when Smith arrived more dead than alive, we set out on a forced march.
Mon Dieu!
How we marched! We have made history, I think. A third of our number fell out along the way and I, for one, can’t blame them.”

“And Smith?”

“He came with us. He insisted and so I put him on a horse with two men to hold him on.” Le Farge stared over his shoulder. “Here he is.”

Smith, his scarred face anxious, sighed as he saw the young officer. Automatically he gripped Corville’s shoulders, then, seeming to remember himself, stiffened to attention and saluted.

“Your orders, sir?”

“Relax.” Corville smiled at the older man. “We have much to talk over, you and I. One day, perhaps, I can thank you for all you have done, but now....” He gestured towards the huddled dead. “Now we have work to do.”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant. I....”

He broke off as someone moved among the huddled shapes. It was the Mullah, Hadji Hassan and, as the tall man rose to his feet, he pointed a pistol at the young officer,
“Allah il Allah!”
he shrieked. “Dog of an unbeliever. Die!”

His finger closed around the trigger and flame spat directly towards Corville.

Smith moved. He threw himself forward just as the pistol fired and, as he smashed into the turbanned figure, blood streamed from his mouth as lead ripped into his body. Again the pistol fired, again, this time with a soggy sound, then the sergeant’s bayonet had lanced into the Mullah’s heart.

Smith was dying when they turned him over. He smiled up at Corville and, grasping the young man’s hand, forced himself to speak.

“Tell your mother,” he whispered, then choked as blood filled his throat. “Goodbye…son.”

“Goodbye, father.” For a moment Corville stared down at the silent figure and, when he straightened, his eyes were moist with unshed tears.

“He was a hero,” said Le Farge sombrely. “I had guessed, but it was not for me to say. And yet, even so, I am glad that you found him before it was too late.” His face hardened as he stared at the dead man. “Marignay has much to answer for. We shall catch him and, instead of the clean, heroic death of a bullet, he will die like the dog he is. Unless, of course, the Arabs, now that we have broken their dreams of power, kill him first. I think I should like that. They will have no love for him and he is one man I could wish to die beneath their knives.” He sighed and rested his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Your duty here is done. Leave your father to us who loved him. You have someone else to take care of now.”

He pushed the young man towards Clarice, standing beside the sobbing figure of Miss Carson, and as the young couple met, sighed again.

Corville would resign from the Legion now. He would take the news of his father’s death back to his mother, and, more than that, would take his intended wife too. Le Farge stared down at the dead and, as he stared, his arm lifted in salute.

“Adieu, mes camarades,”
he whispered. “One day perhaps, we shall meet to fight again.”

Over the fort the proud tricolour of France floated in the freshening breeze and, even as they notes of the bugle died away, men were busy at their work among the dead.

It was the way of the Legion.

English writer
E. C. Tubb
is internationally known, having been translated into more than a dozen languages. In a sixty-year writing career he published over 120 novels, and more than 200 science fiction short stories in such magazines as
Astounding/Analog
,
Authentic
,
Fantasy Adventures
,
Galaxy
,
Nebula
,
New Worlds
,
Science Fantasy
, and
Vision of Tomorrow
.

Tubb’s early science fiction novels were exciting adventure stories, written in the prevailing fashion of the early 1950s. Yet, from his very first novel, his work was characterized at all times by a sense of plausibility, logic, and human insight. These qualities were even more evident in his short stories, which were frequently anthologized.

By 1956 his output included adventure, detective stories, and westerns, but he remained best known for his numerous science fiction novels, of which
Alien Dust
(1955) and
The Space Born
(1956) were acknowledged classics. Tubb became famous for his long-running “Dumarest of Terra” series of novels, the galaxy-spanning saga of Earl Dumarest and his search to find his way back across the stars to the legendary lost planet where he was born—Earth. They eventually spanned 33 titles, the final one,
Child of Earth
, appearing in 2009. Equally well known were his
Space 1999
TV novelizations, and his “Cap Kennedy” novels. Some of his finest SF short stories were collected in
The Best Science Fiction of E. C. Tubb
(Wildside, 2003).

Tubb continued to write dynamic science fiction novels right up to his death in October, 2010.

The Best Science Fiction of E. C. Tubb

Sands of Destiny: A Novel of the French Foreign Legion