David Gibbins - Pharaoh

The subaltern had slid down the sloping edge of the parapet on his back, and was now gripping the revolver with both hands, trying to control his shaking. ‘I’m going to watch the desert on this side. He could be distracting us while others sneak up from the east.’

Mayne looked at the subaltern, a terrified young man under fire for the first time, his back to the enemy, trying to convince himself and his soldiers that he was not a coward. Every soldier had to go through his trial by fire, and it was especially hard in the sangar, where there was nothing they could do except wait. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Corporal Jones, watch the southern flank.’

Mayne trained his telescope on the opposite cliff once more, seeing only the glare of the sun, then lowered it and turned over, his back against the parapet. Two of the soldiers were still crouched at the rear of the sangar, vulnerable to bullets that would be falling in an arched trajectory at this range, and he waved them urgently forward, making space so that they could squeeze up alongside him. Another bullet whined overhead and struck a rock, moaning like a spent firework as it tumbled off into the distance. The rock was only yards from where his camel stood in open view, munching away oblivious to the danger. He thought for a moment. Exposing himself would be an additional risk, but he was sure the marksman had not yet pinpointed the range well enough to shoot accurately. He would need to hit a visible target before he had done that, and repeat his point of aim. Mayne turned to Jones. ‘I’m going out. I won’t be long.’

Jones stared at him, horrified. ‘Where?’

‘The camel. Your camel. A good camel like that’s worth its weight in gold.’

Jones seemed incapable of response. Mayne crawled to the ancient masonry wall at the far end of the sangar, quickly vaulted over and ran below the ridge line of the cliff until he was some thirty yards away and about the same distance from the camel. He dropped below a slight rise in the plateau that put him out of sight of the opposite side of the river, then threw himself flat, hugging the ground, and crawled across on his elbows. Just as he came within range, the beast emptied its bowels in a vile spray, filling the air with a brown mist; then it bent its neck round, staring down at him with that expression of disdain and indifference unique to the camel. A bullet struck with a deadening thud somewhere in its midriff, only a few feet above Mayne’s head. He rolled over just as another whined by, and saw where the first bullet had embedded itself and flattened into the camel’s harness, the bone-dry leather already beginning to smoulder with the heat of the lead. He whacked the harness with one hand to extinguish it and swivelled round to kick the camel hard behind its front right knee, bringing it down with a groan on its forelegs. He quickly did the same to the hind legs, then took a coil of braided leather rope from the harness to hobble it. The camel was still vulnerable to falling bullets and ricochets, but at least it was no longer a visible target. He crawled back the way he had come, feeling the brush of air as another round buzzed past. The marksman was getting better; these seemed more like targeted shots. He reached the wall and leapt over, then quickly crawled up beside Jones and peered out through the embrasure in the parapet. Jones stared at him, wincing and going red in the face, then let out a loud exhalation. Mayne stared, alarmed. ‘Are you all right? Are you hit?’

‘No, sir.’ The voice sounded strangulated. ‘It’s you, sir. It was bad enough when you first joined us; now it’s a lot worse. That smell, sir. That stench .’

Mayne sniffed, smelling nothing, and then glanced at the sleeve of his tunic, seeing the spatter of brown. ‘Ah. Occupational hazard for the cameleer, I’m afraid. You’re going to have to get used to that, Corporal Jones.’

He positioned his rifle against the parapet and took a round from the ammunition pouch, examining it carefully and wiping around the narrow upper end of the brass case that clenched the bullet to ensure that it was free from dirt. He pulled down the lever of the rifle to open the breech, put the cartridge on the loading block and pushed it home with his thumb, then closed the breech with the lever. As there was no safety on the Martini-Henry, it was now cocked and ready to fire. He lay on his front, nestled against the edge of the embrasure, and slid the rifle out until the muzzle was resting on the parapet, invisible to an observer four hundred or more yards away; then he shouldered it and aimed along the sights, traversing across the stretch of ridge where he would have positioned himself had he been the sharpshooter, where the profile was broken up by jagged spurs and ridges that would provide good concealment. He relaxed, breathing in deeply a few times, focusing his mind, remembering how good he had always felt when he had a target in his sights and knew he could kill, how it had made him feel when he had first done it and all the grief and anger at the death of his parents and brother and sister had finally seemed to lift from him, if only for a precious moment.

‘Sir, I’m going for ammunition.’ He heard the Irish soldier speak to the subaltern, and then a shuffling noise as the man crawled across to the stack of gear at the back of the sangar. He felt uneasy for a moment, knowing that the man would be vulnerable to a bullet on an arching trajectory, but he was in position now and did not want to lose his concentration, even to shout out a warning. The sun was dropping, and he knew he would only have one chance.

Suddenly there was a deafening metallic clang beside him. A bullet had smashed into the receiver of the rifle of the soldier next to him and ricocheted off in fragments, peppering the loose folds of his tunic but miraculously missing flesh. The soldier knelt up, stunned, head and shoulders above the parapet, and Jones screamed at him to get down, but it was too late. A bullet burst out from him in a spray of blood and shredded cloth, and he fell backwards with a neat black hole in the front of his neck, his eyes wide open and lifeless. Behind him Mayne heard the sickening thump of lead striking flesh, and then another a few seconds later, followed by a blood-curdling cry and a string of Anglo-Saxon curses. He kept focused on the ridge, his right forefinger feathering the trigger, panning the rifle in a tiny arc to cover the twenty or thirty metres of cliff where he thought the shooter would be. Another round whined overhead and crashed into the rock behind. The sharpshooter had got their range and was firing fast, dropping rounds into the sangar as quickly as he could work the lever of his rifle and reload. Mayne knew that this was his chance: there would be small movements in the rocks, moments of incaution as the shooter exposed himself, misplaced confidence that there could be nobody opposite to match his skill.

He sensed something different, a barely perceptible change in the light. He blinked, and it was still there. The sun had dropped . And then he saw it, a minuscule wobbly reflection among the rocks, the white of a headdress, a briefly elevated rifle barrel. He held himself steady, staring down the sights, both eyes open, focusing on the target. There was no wind, and he could aim dead-on. He adjusted infinitesimally to the left, an instinct, no more, and then slowly exhaled until there was nothing left, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle jumped and cracked, and through the smoke he saw the figure rise upwards as if standing, but then crumple sideways and hang head first over the ledge in front of him, arms dangling, blood gushing and splatting down the cliff and his rifle falling with a clatter to the rocks beneath.

He was conscious of a ragged cheer from the men by the river below. He barely felt the need to breathe, and when he did so it was as if he had taken a lungful of the strongest tobacco, leaving his heart pounding and the blood rushing to his head. It had been a long time since he had done that. He let go of the rifle and turned to look at the scene in the sangar. The man who had been beside him was lying on his back in a pool of blood, already coagulating and dotted with flies. The other two bullets had hit the same man, the Irish soldier who had gone back for more ammunition. He was lying on his back, surrounded by a group of men, with his trousers torn off, his legs drenched with blood and shaking convulsively. One round had ploughed into a calf, shearing off the muscle and leaving it curled up in a lurid yellow and red mass below his knee. The other had gone through both thighs and severed the arteries, leaving him bleeding to death in agony. The subaltern was propping his head up while the other men worked feverishly to staunch the blood, Jones holding his hand and feeding him dribbles of water from his bottle. The soldier was moaning and weeping, his face deathly grey and contorted, his lips saying something that only the subaltern could hear. Mayne could have told him that he had got the man who had shot him, but it seemed irrelevant. He swung open the loading lever on the rifle to eject the spent cartridge, and then closed it up and laid it beside Jones’ gear. He watched as the man’s face relaxed and his eyelids drooped, and his breathing became a rasping, snoring rattle, and then he was dead.