Drakas! Read online

  Rimbaud looked at him. "That was another lifetime, monsieur. I am now just a merchant."

  "You come highly recommended by a friend," Gordon said. "He said that you are honest and trustworthy."

  Rimbaud shrugged. "I try, monsieur. What is it that you wish to purchase?"

  Gordon leaned forward. "A meeting," he said, "with the Mahdi."

  Desmond looked dismayed, but Rimbaud smiled, a quick flash of stained teeth in a sun-darkened face.

  "An expensive item, to be sure. And quite a dangerous one as well."

  Gordon stood. "I have money enough. And courage, as well."

  Rimbaud smiled his enigmatic smile. "No doubt, monsieur. When do you wish to leave?"

  "As soon as possible."

  Rimbaud suddenly stood. He seemed to Gordon, even on such slight acquaintance, to be a quick and decisive man. "Then we should leave."

  Gordon arose. Desmond looked back and forth between the two of them.

  "Right," Gordon said. "I just need to fetch my kit."

  "Just a moment," Desmond said. "Shouldn't you . . . I mean, you haven't reported to Merarch Quantrill yet. And . . . there were those . . . difficulties . . . last night. Surely you should inform the merarch—"

  Gordon silenced him with the full force of his cold blue eyes. "I'm not a member of your command. Certainly, I shall call upon the merarch at his convenience. When I can."

  "He'll be angry," Desmond blurted. "You don't know him. He can get very angry!"

  Gordon shrugged, and turned to Rimbaud. "Come, sir."

  "Difficulties?" Rimbaud asked as they left the room. "If it is not impertinent, may I enquire about these difficulties?"

  "Oh, it was nothing much," Gordon said. "Some one tried to kill me last night."

  "I see. Considering the nature of our journey, perhaps you'd better get used to that."

  Gordon smiled. "You forget, monsieur. I have been in the Sudan before."

  * * *

  April 27, 1883

  Khartoum, en route to El Dueim

  My Dearest Augusta:

  I write this in the dark on a dhow rocking on the currents of the White Nile, so please forgive my hand if it is not as legible as it usually is.

  I found Khartoum little changed. The weather is still hot. The streets are still dusty. The Palace is unimproved. The people are still largely the same. As a whole, the country hasn't prospered in my absence. I say this with all due humility. Oh, some segments of the population have grown wealthier. The slavers are back and are pursuing their filthy trade in the open. The Draka, I am sure, will close them down eventually. Not, I am also sure, out of moral repugnance, but because in the Draka view it should be the state that profits from the bondage of human beings, but they have one or two little matters to take care of before they can turn their attention to such mundane problems as slave traders.

  In these matters I shall probably play some small role, though I have had second thoughts about working with the Draka. Some seem to be among the lowest elements of humanity I have ever had the displeasure to run across. Ah well—we are all simple men and imperfect before the Eyes of Our Lord. I shouldn't judge them, for some day like all men they will stand naked before the greatest Judge of all and He will accord them their proper position in all eternity.

  By the way—I should be remiss if I didn't mention my traveling companion. I've had to journey to El Dueim, a small hamlet, a mere trading post some 110 miles south of Khartoum, situated on the banks the White Nile. No great air ship to carry me to my destination this time, but a humble dhow, much like those that have sailed the Nile for the past several millennia. (This particular dhow, by the way, is so venerable, leaky, dirty, and smelly that it may have been sailing the Nile, itself for the past several millennia.)

  My guide, astonishingly, is a Frenchman who has spent some years in the region as an itinerant merchant. His name is Arthur Rimbaud. It seems that as a younger man he was a poet of some note. Actually, I am unfamiliar with his name, but, knowing how poets feel about that sort of thing, have not told him that. I have not prodded him to recite any of his verses, and oddly enough he has not volunteered any. That seems strange, for a poet. Have you ever heard of him?

  Your Dear and Loving Brother,

  As Always, In Christ,

  C.

  iv.

  El Dueim had a sense of impermanence about it, no doubt because most of it was washed away almost every year by the flooding of the White Nile. The hamlet's structures were flimsy huts of wattle, mud, and reed. The piles and wharves leading up from the banks of the river were ramshackle. Gordon marveled that he and Rimbaud didn't plunge through their rotten planks at their first footstep.

  The hamlet, such as it was, was dwarfed by the camp on the surrounding floodplain. Thousands of natives were bivouacked around the small settlement, so confident of their safety that they hadn't built even a token zarada, a barrier of sharp scrub thorn usually built around encampments in the region, to protect themselves.

  Gordon was impressed by what he saw. The Mahdi's men were usually called dervishes by outsiders. Dervish, which actually means "poor" in Arabic, was a term more properly applied to a class of Moslem friars who'd taken vows of poverty. Commonly called whirling dervishes, there were actually any number of dervish types—dancing, howling, singing—who sought to achieve mystic union with the divine through the constant repetition of simple physical acts until they fell into a trance. These friars were also fierce fighters, loyal until death, although such authentic dervishes made up only a portion of the Mahdi's army.

  "Actually," Rimbaud explained to Gordon as they made their way through the camp, "the Mahdists call themselves `ansar.' "

  " `Helpers,' " Gordon said. "As the people of Medina who gave aid to Mohammed during his exile called themselves."

  Rimbaud nodded. Gordon could distinguish representatives from numerous Sudanese tribes in the camp. Beside the authentic dervishes, there were Bedj tribesmen from the Red Hills, Arabs of the northern desert, and animist Nuer from the Sudd, the great swamp that constituted the southern third of the territory.

  There were thousands of tribesmen, tens of thousands of them. Gordon and his guide had arrived at the camp early in the morning, and breakfast was being cooked over a myriad of campfires. The ansar awaited their food, ful, or mashed fava beans, a Sudanese staple, with general good patience. If the Mahdi was smart (and he was that, Gordon figured) he fed them regularly. That alone would be enough to keep most of them happy. These men didn't ask for much for their undying loyalty. They were fierce fighters, loyal to the death, but as they passed among them Gordon didn't see many modern weapons.

  Most of the ansar were armed with the traditional sword and spear. Some carried nothing more lethal than cudgels or hard-wood sticks. A few guns were visible—some ancient Arab-style flintlocks and a couple more rifles of rather outdated European manufacture. These were spoils, no doubt, from recent battles with the Draka.

  Rimbaud appeared to be rather well known. No one stopped them. He was challenged, or rather greeted, by a few who seemed to have some authority over the teeming rabble, but some muttered words from him always seemed to suffice for their passage.

  "The first stage of the journey is over," Rimbaud said as they made their way through the camp. "Now we must take the road to El Obeid. Though the Mahdi has a tent here, he actually spends most of his time in the city."

  Gordon was familiar with El Obeid, which, after Cairo, was the most populous city in Egypt-Sudan. It had naturally fallen to the Draka when they had originally annexed the region. But the Draka had only left a token garrison while making Khartoum their headquarters. They had chosen Khartoum because it was more central to the entire region and also because it was located at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, thus controlling to some extent all river traffic. It was also more easily defendable than El Obeid.

  The hand of the Draka had fallen rather lightly on El Obeid, which was the historic capital of Kordofan
, the richest and most important Sudanese province. As such it was also the region's economic center, the heart of the gum, ivory, and slave trade. Other than replacing native economic concerns with their own, the Draka let things go on as they had for centuries. The capture of El Obeid had been the Mahdi's first great victory, as well as the impetus for Hicks's disastrous probe south from Khartoum.

  The actual trading post at El Dueim was the best-built building in all of the hamlet, so naturally had been taken as the camp's general headquarters. It stood higher up on the river valley, out of the floodplain that would be swept clear by the White Nile's yearly floods, and was made of sun-dried brick and timber. Next to it was a corral made of thorn bush that held a score of rather thin and tired-looking horses. Hobbled camels grazed freely on the sparse grass beyond the corral. A dirt road, more of a track really, ran west and south, into the interior to El Obeid.

  Half a dozen men lounged around the front porch of the headquarters' building, under the half-fallen ramada that almost sheltered them from the already sweltering sun.

  "Sabah il-kheer," Rimbaud said, greeting one or perhaps all with a graceful good morning and a sketchy salaam.

  They returned the greeting with various interest and grace. Rimbaud, it seemed, was a familiar figure accorded a certain, but not excessive, respect.

  "My friend and I have business in El Obeid, and need horses . . ." Rimbaud began, but his voice faltered and ran down to nothing as he looked down the road.

  Gordon followed his gaze to see a white cloud in the distance, billowing on the early morning breeze. It was too far to see details, but clearly a moderate-sized body of horsemen was approaching the camp.

  Rimbaud looked at Gordon and spoke in English. "Perhaps we may be in luck. Perhaps our business comes to us."

  Most of the men on the porch stood and joined them as they looked down the trail, shading their eyes to better see the riders. It was not long before the excited call of "Mahdi! Mahdi!" started to rise up in the camp.

  "It's him," Rimbaud said after a moment. "I can see his personal flag. The men with him are the mulazamin, a picked force drawn from tribal leaders. They are his personal bodyguard."

  The news of the Mahdi's approach swept through the camp like fire raining from the heavens. His faithful abandoned their cook pots and merged in a swarming mass where the trail ended before the headquarter building. The horsemen approached at a brisk gallop and, just before Gordon was sure there was going to be a terrible collision, the Mahdi and the fifty or so men of his bodyguard braked abruptly, horses rearing and snorting, flags waving, men cheering and moaning, "Mahdi! Mahdi! Mahdi!" in unison.

  The Mahdi leapt down to the ground while the horses of his bodyguard still pranced nervously, excited by the noise and the swarming crowd. Some of the mulazamin unlimbered rifles and fired in the air to add to the general din and confusion. These men, Gordon noted, were all well armed, and their rifles were all of Draka manufacture, which made them the finest in the world. They evidently had gotten the pick of the loot from Hicks's ill-fated expedition.

  Gordon could see the Mahdi quite clearly. He was tall, dark skinned, and slim. His eyes were black, his teeth white with a prominent gap between the front uppers. There was a certain air about him, an aura of strength and confidence. His smile energized the crowd as they all reached out to touch his simple white linen jibbeh. His robe was the only one that was pure white. All the other Mahdists who wore robes had variously colored patches sewn onto them, signifying the impure state of their wearers. Only the Mahdi could wear immaculate white, for he was the only man among them without sin.

  The Mahdi threw his arms out wide and began to speak. At first his words seemed unremarkable to Gordon. He spoke the usual stuff about Allah and paradise and fighting to the death and victory over the infidel Draka—but his voice was deep, resonant, magical. Men heard that voice and believed him, implicitly and utterly. Men heard that voice, saw his eyes, and loved him, immediately and totally.

  Gordon, too, felt it. The Mahdi's charisma was overwhelming. His physical beauty was astounding, but there was a depth to him, an apparent spirituality that Gordon had rarely encountered in the world.

  "Quite a figure," Rimbaud said, "is he not, monsieur?"

  Gordon took his eyes from the Mahdi who, deep in his oration, laughed wildly one moment, then, recalling the sacrifice of his loyal helpers, wept like a baby. The Sudanese tribesmen, watching their leader cry, bowed their heads and cried with him.

  "Yes," Gordon. "Yes. Of course. One would expect such . . . charisma."

  Rimbaud spit out a chewed wad of chat, took some fresh leaves from his pouch and tucked them in the fold between his lip and jaw.

  "Would one?" he asked quietly, looking at Gordon speculatively.

  He knows! Gordon thought to himself. He can feel the . . . attraction I feel. Am I so transparent? How could I let my emotions be so apparent? Perhaps the Frenchman does have a poet's sensitivities, but, still, damn the frog!

  The crowd was parting as the Mahdi turned to the headquarters building. The Mahdi suddenly caught sight of Gordon, and stopped, puzzled. Dark eyes looked into blue. A spark of something passed between them, a recognition, perhaps, and Agag came roaring from the hidden cavern in Gordon's soul which was his dark home.

  He knows me! Agag said. Fifteen years has not dimmed the fame of Charles George Gordon even in this dark and ignorant land. He knows who I am!

  Rimbaud was between them, smiling a strange smile. He bowed deeply and greeted the Mahdi, then gestured with both hands to Gordon.

  "This is Gordon Pasha," he said in Arabic. "In times past Governor-General of Sudan. He seeks an audience with you."

  The Mahdi was young, perhaps thirty. He would have been a boy when Gordon had traversed the Sudan armed only with his riding crop and dagger, a crescent-bladed jambiyah, crushing the bandit clans, destroying the slavers, building forts and settlements throughout its desolation. At first, when Rimbaud spoke, there was a blankness on the Mahdi's face and Gordon's heart sunk. Inwardly he raged at his demon, flaying it with bitter words, calling it a fool, a liar, a charlatan.

  The Mahdi no more knows me than he knows who the Prime Minister of England is, he told Agag bitterly.

  But then the Mahdi's expression changed. Comprehension lit his eyes.

  "Of course!" he said. "I remember—when I was a boy you did great things for the people of the Sudan. You broke the injustice of the Turk. But then . . . but then you left."

  "I had to," Gordon felt compelled to say. And indeed he had. The most powerful man in Sudan was nothing to the bankers and ministers who really called the tune.

  The Mahdi smiled and the effect was dazzling, like the sun to a man who had been locked in a cold, dark dungeon for half a year.

  "And well you did—for you have left it for me!"

  He laughed again, and all those who heard it laughed with him, just happy that he was happy. And Gordon laughed as well. Lord help me, he thought. He could not help but laugh, too.

  "The pleasure is mine, Gordon Pasha," the Mahdi said, "to meet a man of such renown. How may I serve you?"

  The Mahdi had that quality about him, Gordon mused, that would make men follow him to Hell—and once there to shield him from the fires with their own bodies. Gordon himself couldn't help but fall under the Mahdi's spell. Had he, he wondered, at this advanced age at last found the man whom he could willingly serve?

  "By listening, my lord, to what I've come to say. By thinking, my lord, at what I'm about to offer."

  The Mahdi laughed aloud. "That doesn't sound so difficult. Come!" He put his hand lightly on Gordon's shoulder, and rather than repelling him the Mahdi's touch seemed to warm his flesh. "Let us retire to my tent and you can tell me this great thing you have come to say. And I shall listen."

  They went together, Rimbaud trailing, and the bodyguards following after them.

  * * *

  April 28, 1883

  El Dueim, Camp of the Mahdi


  My dearest Augusta:

  I fear that I shall burst with pride! Agag, it seems, has finally won our little battle and is in full control of my faculties. But, really, I'm not wasting time worrying about that. Instead, I am happy as I ever could be, glad to know that I am useful in the world again and have succeeded easily where others would very easily have failed.

  It will doubtless be some time before I can post this letter, as I am now in the camp of the man known as the Mahdi (which means "The Guided One" in Arabic), the man who was leading the Sudanese rebellion against the Draka. I say "was" advisedly, because I have managed to enlist him to the Draka side. I have gotten him to sign a treaty to join the Domination of the Draka, to accept a place in it for himself and his people, rather than continue an armed rebellion which, I convinced him, would ultimately prove to be useless.

  The Mahdi is an intelligent man, as well as handsome, charismatic, and virtuous. I am happy that I was able to bring him together with the Draka. Otherwise I would most certainly witness his utter destruction at the hands of a more numerous and technologically superior foe.

  There are, however, certain elements among the Draka who most certainly will not welcome this development, so my job may not be quite done. Soon, though, I am quite convinced that everything will be in order and I shall be able to get on with the task I came to Africa for. In the meantime, pray for me as I certainly do for you and our family every night and day.

  Your loving brother,

  C.

  v.

  Gordon and Rimbaud stood together in the hot night on a ramshackle pier overlooking the rushing waters of the White Nile. The breeze off the river lent a touch of coolness to the evening, but the clouds of voracious mosquitoes made Gordon eager for the relative safety of the Mahdi's big white tent.

  "Once you reach Khartoum, go by camel," Gordon told the Frenchman. "A steamer would be faster, but it may be more dangerous."