The Tower (23 page)

Jobert listened numbly. When he turned the old man was standing behind him.

‘My God, what was that?’

The old man’s head dropped but he didn’t say a word.

‘Please,’ said the officer, ‘tell me how such a melodious song can become such a frenzied scream.’

‘What you hear is the song of Altair, the bride of Rasaf. One day long ago, while she was journeying through the desert to her father’s oasis, she was captured by the men without a face . . .’

Jobert started and his mind was suddenly filled with nightmarish images of figures carved into stone, faceless beings with a Gorgon on their chests.

‘Rasaf suffered terrible wounds and lost many men to free her, but he brought her back in this condition. She recognizes no one. She doesn’t even know who she is. Every once in a while, towards evening, she goes up to the castle bastions and raises her song . . . her cry of despair. Rasaf is hopelessly in love with her and can’t resign himself to her fate. He awaits the day in which the light of knowledge will shine from the desert, so he can take her there and heal her.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Jobert. ‘What is this light?’

‘Where are you going?’ asked the old man.

‘South.’

‘Then perhaps you will see it, but you will have to venture into the Sand of Ghosts . . . If you do, beware the people of the sands.’

‘Do you mean . . . the Blemmyae?’

The old man nodded his head deeply. ‘They hide in the sand like scorpions and when they catch up with you it is too late. If you should capture one of them, remember that you must never remove the black cloth that hides his face. Don’t do it for any reason.’ He fell still for a few moments, then raised his gaze again to the castle bastions. He waited until the screaming had softened into a heartbroken lament, then turned to Colonel Jobert.

‘Turn back, if you can,’ he said, ‘and forget Kalaat Hallaki.’

R
ASAF SAT OPPOSITE HIS
bride as her maidservants prepared her for the night. They undressed her, lowered her into a large tub of bronze and poured perfumed water over her dark limbs. When they had bathed and dried her, they laid her down on her bed and gave her a potion to drink, then left.

Rasaf remained there in contemplation, his fiery, tear-filled eyes caressing her face and body, but the woman was as cold and still as a statue.

‘The day is drawing closer,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘When the moment comes I will bring you before the light that gives knowledge and you will go back to being what you once were . . . the way you were, my love.’

He sat on the bed next to her, holding her hand until he saw her close her eyes, until he heard the soft, regular sound of her breathing as she gave herself up to sleep. He left then and walked down the long corridor that ended in a staircase that led up to the bastions. The sky was full of stars and the galaxy was suspended over the oasis, as light as a sigh. The constellation of the Scorpion glittered before him like a crown of diamonds over the Sand of Ghosts.

Just then he saw a cloud of white dust approaching the oasis from the north. A man in uniform jumped on his horse and rode off at a gallop in that direction.

Rasaf turned to the commander of the guard patrolling the battlements. ‘Who are they?’ he asked.

‘Soldiers of the desert. They’ve asked for food and water. They want to cross the Sand of Ghosts.’

‘Do they know what awaits them?’ asked Rasaf.

‘They do,’ replied the commander.

Rasaf scanned the shadows to estimate the strength of the squad that was just joining the man on horseback. ‘Give them what they need,’ he said, and walked away.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, Colonel Jobert reviewed his column and ensured that all containers had been filled with water and that the foodstuffs had been well packed and sealed to protect them from dust, then gave the order to depart.

The old man was sitting by the spring and he watched them ride off. They hadn’t listened to his advice; they were very obstinate men indeed.

The column left the oasis and Jobert saw the green fields gradually dry up as they proceeded south, until the vegetation disappeared completely and was replaced by an endless sweep of burning sand. The topographer who rode at his side took a map from his saddlebag, with the intention of marking the features of that unexplored land, in order to establish topographical points to be used as reference, but the expanse just became flatter and more empty, disturbed only by the rolling surface of the dunes.

At the end of the second day, the atmosphere became darker, and dust clouds appeared on the horizon, swirling and writhing and swelling at the top like mushrooms. There were just a few at first, but as the column advanced they seemed to multiply until they created a bizarre forest of changing, dancing shapes which gave an unsettled, eerie look to the landscape.

‘The Sand of Ghosts,’ murmured Captain Bonnier. His face was ashen, his jaw clenched.

‘What we’re seeing is a common enough natural phenomenon, Captain. And a manifest explanation for the name that the inhabitants of the oasis have given to this territory. The whirling dust looks like . . . spirits, frolicking at the horizon . . .’ Jobert fell silent for a few moments as the atmosphere became even more oppressive, then he spoke again. ‘I would say that it’s quite an interesting effect, and that it might prove very educational to study the meteorological causes behind it.’ He turned to the topographer. ‘What do you say, Patin?’

His subordinate gave a faint smile, without a clue about how to answer. When he saw that the colonel was awaiting his reply, he said, ‘Well, Commander, I would say that the phenomenon may be caused by an unusually large quantity of rising air currents that the particularly strong radiant energy tends to force upwards, given the total lack of natural obstacles . . .’

‘What are you saying, Patin!’ objected Captain Bonnier. ‘We’ve crossed the desert thousands of times under every possible and imaginable meteorological condition and we’ve never seen anything like this. I think we should turn back. We have no hope of surviving in such an environment, if we insist on continuing in this direction.’

Jobert turned towards him with an irritated expression. ‘I didn’t ask for your opinion, Bonnier, and our mission is precisely to continue in this direction, in order to discover once and for all what is happening here . . . Those dust devils may even be part of the problem. We will proceed with all the required caution, we will not unnecessarily expose ourselves to danger, but we must seek to understand what it is we are up against.’

Captain Bonnier did not open his mouth again and thus their journey proceeded in complete silence, but he continued to glance around nervously, as though danger was threatening from every side.

The terrain they were covering was bleak and unchanging, and Jobert realized that they would soon no longer be able to continue during the day, given the intolerable heat. As soon as the sun appeared on the horizon, streams of fire poured over the dunes and stony ground and, before an hour had passed, the air caught fire as well, becoming a scorching plasma that burned their throats and nostrils and took their breath away. And the dust demons continued to twist and turn on the horizon, as if the column had not advanced by a single metre.

‘Are you still convinced of your meteorological theory, Patin?’ asked Captain Bonnier.

Patin did not answer, and Jobert held his tongue as well. The soldiers followed without saying a word, because their throats were parched and because their fatigue was so great that they had no energy for anything else.

The night of the third day, Jobert called his men to a halt right after dusk and personally assigned the sentries to their posts as the others arranged their beds and prepared to eat a very meagre evening meal. Captain Bonnier, who was always so attentive to every feature of the territory they were crossing, failed to see – in the darkness that descended almost immediately over their camp – the scorpion carved on a rock jutting out of the ground. Nor did he see, half-buried under the dunes, the bones and weapons of ancient soldiers corroded by the wind and sand.

It was nearly two in the morning when Captain Bonnier’s sleep was disturbed by the sensation of having heard a suspicious sound. He saw a strange glow off in the distance, a reddish light like that cast by a fire, burning behind the dunes that blocked their view to the south. He realized that the sentries had seen it as well and were about to wake the colonel. He signalled for them to stay at their posts and crept close to Jobert himself.

‘Commander, look. Down there.’

Jobert jumped up and went to a small rise in the ground to be able to see the strange phenomenon better. ‘What could it be?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Captain Bonnier. ‘Maybe some kind of refracted light . . . I can’t think of anything else.’

‘Yes, perhaps you’re right, Bonnier, a phenomenon caused by refraction. Calm the sentries, will you, and let’s get back to sleep. We’ll sound reveille an hour before dawn. Beginning tomorrow, we’ll proceed for three hours in the morning and three hours towards evening. During the day we’ll build a shelter and remain at rest in the shade to save on water and energy. The daily ration of water is four litres a head. If we don’t find a well in three days’ time, we’ll turn back.’

Bonnier spoke to the sentries and tried to reassure them with a calm, controlled explanation. He lay down again but did not close his eyes. His nerves were tense, straining to pick up any possible sign of danger from that treacherous land. The only sound he heard, some time before dawn, was the strange twittering of an unknown animal, but he could see nothing in the thick darkness that rose beyond the camp.

The odd red halo at the horizon had faded away and was just faintly visible. Bonnier managed to convince himself that it must have been, as he had hypothesized, some strange phenomenon of light refraction and, overwhelmed by fatigue, he dropped off for a few minutes into a deep sleep.

He woke with a start to the anguished screams of the sentries, who had been attacked without warning by swarms of marauders. They were shooting out of the sand all around the camp, armed with scythes fixed to their forearms, which they wielded to inflict devastating wounds. Bonnier took one look at their hooded faces, the repugnant tattoos on their chests, their bizarre weapons and had no doubts. ‘The Blemmyae!’ he cried out.

Jobert was already in the middle of the camp, sabre unsheathed and pistol in hand. He was yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘Form up! Men! Quickly! Square off!’

But his men were unable to assemble because the enemy were everywhere, falling upon them from all directions. They faced their assailants one on one, but were often run through from behind as yet another enemy sprang from the sands.

Some of them realized that being on horseback might give them an advantage and rushed to mount their horses. Although the steeds had often been used in battle and were inured to the sound of gunfire, they reacted to those creatures as if they were surrounded by ferocious carnivores. They neighed loudly in terror, rearing and kicking, and bolted off.

Only about thirty of the men managed to draw up in a square formation around Jobert, including Captain Bonnier. Shoulder to shoulder in double file, the first kneeling and those behind them standing, they fired unceasingly at the enemy, picking them off with deadly precision, but the Blemmyae seemed to have inexhaustible energy and vitality. Shot once or even twice, they continued to advance, collapsing only when they were practically drained of blood. Some of them had circled around the other legionnaires who had been cut off from the formation and they lunged at them in packs, like beasts falling upon their prey. The screams of the victims were so bloodcurdling that Jobert, imagining that the monsters were tearing them to pieces alive, gave his men orders to shoot any comrade who was under attack or who had been snatched away from the formation.

The fight was unequal now and, although the ground around him was scattered with the bodies of the Blemmyae, Jobert realized he had only a few moments of life left to him. He reloaded his pistol constantly, fiercely determined not to be taken alive. The enemy were so close that he was using his sabre now. He had to run them through, repeatedly, from side to side, even after they’d been shot, before one of them would fall.

They did not cry out, not even when they were fatally wounded. A squeaking sound was all they ever made, more terrifying than the most excruciating scream.

Bonnier fell, his arms lopped off and his belly ripped open, and then Patin, decapitated by a single swipe of one of those lethal scythes. Jobert’s soul was filled with horror, his head was bursting and his heart pounding so hard he thought he would suffocate. He had never felt this way before, not even in the midst of the most furious battle.

One after another of his last soldiers fell, and he thought his time had come, but just then a burst of rifle fire tore through the air, and then another, and another. The desert resounded with a powerful cry and with the galloping of hundreds of horses. He turned slowly as if in a dream and saw a squad of horsemen wearing light blue
barrakans
with a purple standard at their head: the warriors of Kalaat Hallaki!

They attacked the Blemmyae frontally in such a close formation that there was no space between one horse and another, unleashing a barrage of firepower so intense that no corner of the desert that lay before them was sheltered from their shots. Jobert was miraculously unharmed while the troops passed to his left and right, driving back the enemy. When they were out of bullets they took their halberds in hand and strung the scorpion-men up like fish. They dragged them over the sand for metres and metres, waiting until they went into spasm to extract their blades. They killed every last one of them: no one escaped, no one surrendered or laid down his arms. The warriors then grouped around their leader, shouting and cheering. At a sign from him, they jumped onto their mounts and again rode back to where they had come from.