The Monsoon (97 page)

There were even gold sandals on his feet. The man was a dandy.

Damn me, but I know him. Dorian’s sense of recognition grew stronger, and he racked his memory to try to put a name to him.

The command party drew up at the foot of the dunes, well out of musket shot of Dorian’s men on the ledge, and the Turkish commander lifted a telescope to his eye and peered up at the mouth of the pass.

He completed a leisurely survey of the cliff face, then lowered the glass and spoke to his officers, who were grouped obsequiously behind him. Immediately they wheeled away, and began to give orders to the squadrons of waiting troops.

There was another burst of activity. They were doing exactly what Dorian had anticipated: within a short while hundreds of heavily armed men were climbing the slope on both sides of the mouth of the pass.

They were keeping well out of musket shot of the little group of defenders, but Dorian knew that when they reached the ledge they would creep in, then try to rush the entrance to the pass.

“Al-Salil! The dung-eating Turks are coming up to us again.”

Dorian’s lookouts on the cliffs above called their observations down to him. From their vantage-points they could see more than he, and they warned him when the first of the enemy reached the ledge and began to move along it towards the centre.

“Shoot any who come within range,” Dorian shouted back, and immediately a fusillade of musket shots echoed along the cliffs. The Soar were firing down upon the ledge, and the Turks were returning their fire. Occasionally there came a scream as a man was hit, but the shouts from the lookouts warned that the enemy were gradually working into a position from which they could launch their first assault on the mouth of the pass.

Even though he was distracted by action all around him, Dorian kept watching the gold-bedecked Arab who rode beside the Turkish general. At last a train of baggage camels came up from the rear, and from these were offloaded a painted leather tent. Twenty men unrolled it, set it up on the white plain and spread rugs and cushions in its shade. The Turkish general dismounted and went to take his place on the rugs. The Arab dandy couched his camel also, and clambered down awkwardly from the saddle. He followed the Turk to the tent, and now Dorian could see the breadth of his shoulders and the swell of his belly under the woollen robe. He had not taken more than a few paces when Dorian noticed the limp: he was favouring his right foot. It was enough to jolt his memory. He remembered their fight on the steps of the old tomb in the garden of the zenana at Lamu, and the fall that had broken that foot.

“Zayn!” he whispered.

“Zayn al-Din!” it was his old enemy from childhood days, now costumed like a prince of Oman and riding at the head of an army.

Dorian felt all the old hatred and antagonism return in full flood. Zayn was the enemy once again. But what is he doing here, hunting his own father? Dorian puzzled.

Does he know that I am here also?

He tried to make sense out of this strange, unlooked for circumstance. Zayn had been at the court of Muscat for so long that he would have been caught up in the cOnvOluted maelstrom of royal intrigue, probably trained and encouraged by his uncle the Caliph.

Unless Zayn had changed greatly from the boy Dorian had known, he would have taken readily to the conspiracies of the court. It was clear that he had become another pawn of the Sublime Porte. Perhaps he was at the centre of the capitulation of Oman to the Ottoman.

“You traitorous swine,” Dorian muttered, staring down at him with loathing.

“You would sell your country and your people, even your own father. What was the price?

What reward have the Porte offered you, Zayn? The throne itself, as their puppet in Muscat?” Zayn al-Din took his seat beside the Turkish general in the shade of the tent fly, and a slave placed a cup in his hand. He sipped from it, and Dorian saw that he had grown a thin, straggling beard but that his cheeks were smooth and plump. He stared up directly at Dorian, who pulled off the headdress and shook out his shining gold curls. The cup slipped from Zayn’s fingers as he recognized him.

Dorian waved gaily at him. Zayn made no reply, but seemed to CrouAi a little lower, hunching down like a bloated toad. At that moment there was a sudden heavy burst of firing along the cliffs on the right, and Dorian turned away to bolster the defence on that side of the pass.

“Beware, alSalil,” one of the lookouts called.

“They are coming!”

“How many?” Dorian shouted back, and dropped behind the rock with Ahmed.

“Many!” came the reply.

“Too many On this side, the cliffs formed a jagged buttress that turned back upon itself so that they could not see more than twenty paces along the open ledge, but they could hear the voices of the men beyond the corner of the cliff and their footsteps as they pressed forward, the clatter of a bronze shield on rock, the creak of leather thongs on breastplate and scabbard belt.

“Steady!” Dorian called softly to his men.

“Wait for them. Let them come close.” Suddenly, a rank of Turks charged around the corner of the cliff, straight at them. The ledge was only wide enough for three at a time, but others pressed close behind them, right on their heels.

“AVah akbar!” they howled.

“God is gread’

There was a tall pockmarked man in the front rank, with a steel Saracen helmet on his head, chain-il ma covering his torso and a double, bladed battle-axe in his hands. He jumped out ahead of his comrades and singled out Dorian, locking eyes with him and charging straight at him with the axe held in both hands above his head.

He was an arm’s length away. The muzzle of the long jezail almost touched his face as Dorian fired. The ball hit the Turk in the throat, and he dropped to his knees clutching the wound-A severed artery Pumped out blood between his fingers in thick glutinous jets, and he fell forward on his face.

Dorian dropped the empty musket and snatched up the loaded one that lay at hand and cocked the hammer.

Another man jumped over the dying Turk and Dorian shot him in the chest. He went down kicking and twitching on the rock ledge.

Dorian threw down the empty musket and drew his sword. He stepped forward to block the ledge. Ahmed was on his right and Salim on the left, their shoulders touching.

The enemy came at them in a mob, three at a time but with others close behind, ready to step into the gaps left by the men who fell.

Dorian loved the feel of a good blade in his hand. This weapon he held now had been a parting gift from the Prince when he had sailed from Lamu. It was of Damascus steel, limber as a willow wand and sharp as the tooth of a serpent.

He killed the first man who came at him cleanly, lunging under the rim of his helmet into his dark eye, skewering the eyeball like a sheep’s kidney on a kebab, and sending the steel on into his brain.

Recovering swiftly, Dorian disengaged the blade and let his victim drop. Then the others rushed forward behind their bronze shields, and there was no longer space nor pause for fine swordplay.

Shoulder to shoulder in the pack and surge, they hacked and stabbed and shouted, swaying back and forth and side to side, across the narrow ledge.

The warning cry from the Soar lookouts in the cliff face was almost drowned by the shouting, the clatter of steel on steel, the trampling and shoving.

“On the left side and the frond” Dorian heard it, and cut down another man before he jumped back from the fight, letting Mustapha, who was behind him, move up into his place in the line.

He looked about him and saw that, while he had been fighting on the right, the Turks had launched a series of attacks at every other point. Five of his men were fighting desperately to hold the far side of the entrance, where the enemy were pressing forward along the ledge.

At the same time two hundred Turks were coming directly up the sand slope to their front. In the few moments that it took him to make this appraisal, two of his men were killed. Salim had half his head cut away by the swing of an axe blade and Mustapha took a sword thrust through the lungs and dropped to his knees” belching bright gouts of blood.

Dorian knew he could not afford these losses, and the Turks coming up the slope had almost reached the ledge.

The men he had placed in the cliffs had not waited for his order but were scrambling down to join the fighting. He was grateful when they jumped the last ten feet onto the rock beside him. By now both his flanks were buckling under the pressure, and at any moment a wave of the enemy would come roaring over the front of the ledge.

“Back to back!” Dorian yelled.

“Cover each other! Back into the pass.” They formed a tight, defensive ring, and the Turks bayed around them as they fell back quickly into the mouth of the pass, but they lost more men to the flashing blades and musket-balls fired at close range.

“Now!” Dorian gave the order.

“Run!” They spun round and pounded back deeper into the pass, dragging their wounded with them, while the enemy jammed in the entrance, obstructing each other by their numbers as they tried to pursue.

Dorian was in the -lead as they raced round the bend in the rock passage and he shouted to the six men behind the walls of the san gar “Hold your fire! It is us!” The rock wall of the san gar was chest high and they had to scramble over it. The men waiting behind the wall helped to drag the wounded over the top.

As the last of the Soar fell over the wall the enemy came roaring down the rock passage close behind him. The six men who had not taken any part in the fighting so far were desperate to join in: they had loaded all the remaining muskets and stacked them along the side of the cliff, and they had planted the long lances in the earth, close at hand for when the Turks breached the san gar

The first volley into the front rank of the Turks brought them up short, and there was confusion and dismay as those in front tried to retreat and their comrades coming up behind pushed them forward.

Another close quarter volley with the second battery of reloaded muskets tipped the balance, and the remaining Turks fled back down the passage to disappear around the bend in the rock. Although they were hidden by the curved rock wall, the voices of the Turks were ma ified by the surrounding walls, and Dorian could hear every word as they cursed the Soar and urged each other to attack again. He knew that there would be only a brief respite before the next assault.

“Water!” he ordered.

“Bring a waters king The heat in the pass was like a bread oven, and the fighting had been heavy and hot. They gulped down the foul, brackish liquid from the bitter wells at Ghail ya Yamin as though it were sweet sherbet.

“where is Hassan?” Dorian asked, as he counted heads.

“I saw him fall,” one of his men replied, “but I was carrying Zayid and I could not go back for him.” Dorian felt the loss, for Hassan had been one of his favourites. Now he had only twelve men still able to fight.

They had dragged back five of their wounded with them but others had had to be left to the mercy of the Turks.

Now they carried the five wounded back to where the camels were couched, then Dorian divided the survivors into four equal groups.

The wall of the san gar was wide enough for only three of them to man it at a time. Dorian positioned the three other groups behind the leading rank, after each volley they would fall back to reload and the other ranks would step up to take their turn. In this fashion he hoped to maintain a steady fire into the Turks as they came forward to the attack. He might be able to hold them off until dark, but he doubted that they could survive the night.

So few of the Soar were still on their feet, and the Turks had a reputation as terrible and doughty fighters. He knew they would be resourceful enough to find some strategy to thwart their best efforts of defence. All he could hope for was to buy time for alMalik, and in the end they would have to try to fight their way out with lance and sword.

They settled down behind the san gar in the hushed, heated air of the pass, husbanding their strength.

I would trade my place in Paradise for a pipe of kheef now.”

Misqha grinned as he wrapped a strip of filthy swear soaked cloth around the sword@ cut in his upper arm. The heady smoke of the herb made the smoker fearless and oblivious to the pain of his wounds.

“I will make one for you and light it with my own hands when we sit in the halls of Muscat,” Dorian promised, then broke off as somebody called his name.

“Al-Salil, my brother!” the voice echoed and resonated from the rock.

“My heart rejoices to see you again.” It was high-pitched, almost girlish.

Although the timbre had changed, Dorian recognized it.

“How is your foot, Zayn al-Din?” he called back.

“Come, let me break the other for you, to balance your duck waddle.” Out of sight behind the bend of the passage, Zayn giggled.

“We will come, my brother, believe me, we will come, and when we do I shall laugh while my Turkish allies lift the skirts of your robe and bend you over the saddle of your camel.”

“I think you would enjoy that more than I would, Zayn.”

Dorian used the feminine form of address, as though he were speaking to a woman, and Zayn was silent for a while.

“Listen, alSalil,” he shouted again.

“This is your blood brother Hassan. You left him behind when you ran like a cowardly jackal. He still lives.” Dorian felt a chill of dread blow down his spine.

“He is a brave man, Zayn al-Din. Let him die with dignity,” he called back.

Hassan had been his friend since the first day he had come to live among the Soar. He had two young wives and four little sons, the oldest only five years of age.

A terrible scream came down the passage, a scream of mortal agony and outrage, which descended into a sobbing moan.

“Here is a gift for you from your friend.” Something small, soft and bloody was lobbed around the corner of the passage. It rolled in the sandy earth and came to rest in front of the san gar wall.

“You are in need of another pair of balls, alSalil, my brother,” Zayn al-Din called.