Flashman on the March fp-12 Read online

  It was the first time since arriving in Napier’s camp that I’d had a decent spell for reflection, and by rights I should have had two foods for thought: one, how on earth I was going to keep a whole skin in the trials ahead, and two, a pleasant daydream in which I showed the imperious Madam Uliba that while she might command in emergencies, she’d take orders from Flashy when it came to thrashing the mattress. But I couldn’t give proper attention to either, because as we rode through the still dark, frozen by the biting wind despite our cloaks, I felt a growing unease that I couldn’t place. You might say my predicament was cause enough, but ’twasn’t that; unknown danger ahead is one thing, but this was close and imminent, instinct telling me that out there, beyond the shadowy rocks outlined in the moonlight, there was an unseen menace keeping pace with us.

  The knight riding rearguard felt it too. Twice he spurred out on the flank, and once approached Uliba-Wark, but got no change, seemingly, for he rode back past me shaking his head. Soon after I heard his hoof-beats cease, and saw he was sitting motionless, head turning as he listened for… what?

  When a good scout shows wary, I have conniptions. I couldn’t ask him what was up, so I galloped forward to Uliba and demanded what ailed him.

  “He fears for my safety,” says she, “and it makes an old woman of him.”

  “He don’t look like a grandmama to me,” says I. “And I ain’t one either—but I know when I’m being dogged!”

  “If there were enemies abroad they would have fallen on us before now, not when we are within two miles of the citadel!” scoffs she. “Besides, there is nothing to be seen or heard.”

  I might have quoted Kit Carson’s wisdom that it’s when you don’t see or hear the bastards that they’re waiting to drygulch you, but I didn’t need to. At that very moment came the bark of a baboon out in the dark to our left, another bark sounded ahead, Uliba’s head came up in alarm, the Ab who was riding point gave a blood curdling scream, and the knight came tearing up from the rear, yelling in Amharic. Something told me he wasn’t suggesting that this would be a capital spot for a picnic, and I didn’t need Uliba’s command to put my head down and my heels in and go like billy-be-damned. The leading Ab was toppling from his horse, and as I thundered past him he was floundering on the rocks, howling, with an arrow between his shoulders.

  I slid down my screw’s flank, hand on bridle, foot cocked over the saddle, Cheyenne fashion, and not before time, for above me shafts were buzzing like angry hornets, one smacked quivering into the saddle beside my leg, and here was Uliba alongside, crouched low and pointing ahead, and on my other side the knight was galloping full tilt, yelling at her, possibly “I told you so!” in Amharic. It occurred to me briefly that I was in the company of like minds, for neither of them had so much as checked to ask after the arrow-smitten Ab, who was still bawling the odds behind us. Ahead was a narrow gully, and as we swept into it the knight reined his horse back on its haunches and leaped down, sword in hand. He slipped his shield on to his left arm and yelled to Uliba, his teeth bared in a savage grin, shaking his sword in salute.

  “On!” cries Uliba fiercely, and she must have been gratified by my prompt obedience. We raced up the gully knee to knee, and then it was down a rocky scree, with our beasts slithering and stum bling, and on to level ground, while faintly behind us the clash of steel mingled with yelling voices, one of them raised in what sounded like a war-cry.

  She didn’t check until we’d covered a good half-mile, and then turned to look back. The first dawn light was coming over the ground, but there was no sign of movement at the distant gully.

  “Who are they?” I cried. “Not Theodore’s people?”

  She gave a little grimace of disgust, drawing the shell-embroidered cloak close about her. “No. One of my suitors and his jackals. They must have been lying in wait while another tracked us and signalled our approach. Sarafa was right, after all.”

  “Your escort… who stayed behind?”

  She nodded. “He will hold them for a while. He is a very expert swordsman.” Suddenly her voice was weary. “He will be glad to die for my sake.”

  Well, there’s one born every minute, but old Colonel Tact muttered something about devotion and greater love and similar tarra-diddle, only to be shocked by the most brutal valedictory I’ve ever heard in my life, and damned if she didn’t brush away a tear as she snapped it out.

  “He loved my body. And I loved his. And he is dying not for any love of me, but because he made oath to my husband to guard me with his life.” She jerked her reins, wheeling her mount. “Come! Even Sarafa cannot hold them forever.”

  Her domestic arrangements were no concern of mine, but I confess I found it singular that her lover should give his life for an oath sworn to a husband for whom she’d said she didn’t care two straws. Deep waters here, evidently, but of less immediate moment than the halloo which was breaking out behind us as a little cav alcade of riders came scrambling down the distant scree. Sarafa had plainly handed in his dixie, and we were off like the wind towards a rocky crest a mile away.

  When we’d covered about half the distance I stole a look back and was relieved to see we were holding our own, and I was just demanding of Uliba how far it was to her citadel when I felt my horse stumble, and knew that she’d gone lame. Uliba let out a cry of dismay as the screw staggered, and even as I swung clear, landing on all fours, the thought was in my mind: will she ride on and leave me as she left Sarafa and the unfortunate arrow-fancier?

  She didn’t, wheeling and calling to me to mount behind her, which was dam’ sporting and completely useless, since they’d have run us down in a couple of furlongs—they were coming on like the Heavy Brigade, yelling in triumph, half a dozen robed figures brandishing their lances, sure now of a capture and kill.

  “Down, sultana!” cries I, drawing the pistol Napier had given me, and seeing what I was at she slipped from the saddle and down beside me as I took cover in a clump of rocks. I was hoping to God our pursuers had no firearms, but even if they had we’d no choice but to make a stand. It was a piece I’d never handled before, an American Joslyn .44 with five shots in the cylinder, any one guar anteed to stop a rhino in its tracks. My immediate aim was to stop a horse, for I’m no Hickok and knew that if I let them come near enough to shoot a rider, and missed him, they’d be all over us.

  So I rested the long barrel on a rock, waited with my heart thumping, sighted on the foremost horse, took the pressure, and let fly at thirty yards. The beast went down like a stone, screaming, her rider flew head-first into a boulder and with any luck cracked his skull, and his mates hauled their wind with cries of alarm and sheered off out of range.

  “Kill them!” Uliba was blazing with rage. “Shoot the swine! See there—the one with the lion scarf! That is Yando, Gobayzy’s toad! Kill the bastard, I say! Kill him!”

  “Not at this range,” says I. “Keep a grip of that bridle, will you? We’re going to need that screw!”

  They didn’t have firearms, fortunately, and seemed to be at a loss until their leader, Yando, sent forward a reluctant scout to see how their fallen companion had fared. The fellow came on in little runs from boulder to boulder, while I lay doggo, calming Uliba’s demands that I blow him to damnation. When he reached the fallen body I tried a snap-shot which missed but struck splinters from a rock beside him; he scuttled off in panic, and they made no further sortie, but started shouting at us, and Uliba got to her feet and called back. From the spirited exchanges which ensued, in Amharic, between her and Yando, a burly brute with a hectoring manner, I gathered he was making an informal proposal which she was declining in grossly insulting terms, for from cajoling he passed to threatening and concluded in a veritable passion, jumping up and down, stamping, and hurling his fine lion robe to the ground. I decided to try a long shot at him, and missed again but winged one of his companions, to Uliba’s delight.

  That discouraged them, and presently they rode off, Yando shouting what sounded like a mixture
of pleas and menaces.

  “They will return,” says Uliba. “Yando dare not go back to Gobayzy with a tale of failure. We shall have them round my citadel before night, so the sooner we are within the walls the better.”

  She rode her horse and I led my lame screw, and as we went I demanded and got an explanation of our recent stirring encounter. She gave it straight-faced matter-of-fact, as though it were an account of everyday social activities among the smart set—which I guess it was, Abyssinian style.

  Her husband, she reminded me, was held prisoner by King Gobayzy of Lasta, who had lustful designs on her and had threat ened to have hubby dismembered at length unless she placed herself at his majesty’s disposal. This she had declined to do, so Gobayzy had ordered Yando, a local petty chief, to abduct her. But Yando too had designs on her, and these being troubled times, with Gobayzy at sporadic war with Theodore, had decided to take her for himself, possibly passing her on to Gobayzy later or fobbing him off with some fiction. Hence Yando’s ambush, foiled by resourceful Flashy. Whether her husband remained whole and intact or not, she forgot to mention.

  I could see now what she had meant by referring to her “suitors", and how right she’d been to describe herself as an unsafe travel ling companion. Half Abyssinia seemed to be nuts on her, eager to abduct her, and happy to butcher her chance associates, such as myself—and this was the woman who was to guide me through hostile country and present me to her barmy half-sister whom she might well try to depose. By Gad, Speedy could pick ’em, couldn’t he just?

  In addition to which, she was the sort who abandoned lovers to their fate, and didn’t seem to care if someone dissected the man she’d sworn to love, honour and obey… but then again, she had a lovely figure, and such legs as the faithful imagine on the houris of paradise.

  And she was not without womanly sentiment. “God send that Sarafa died quickly in the fight,” says she. “If he was taken alive Yando will give him a thousand deaths because he was my lover.”

  I said Yando might not be aware of that, and she looked at me in astonishment. “Why, Sarafa will taunt him with it!” cries she. “He will throw it in Yando’s face!” She didn’t add “Wouldn’t you?” possibly because she thought the question superfluous.

  Once over the ridge we came in sight of the citadel, and it didn’t look any less sinister on second viewing, perched high on a rocky outcrop with a drop of hundreds of feet to the valley below. We reached it in half an hour, and I became aware that it was two towers joined together, six storeys high judging from the window spaces, the farther tower actually projecting out over the void beneath. It was a steep climb to the main door, and before we reached it the womenfolk of the tower were hurrying down to us, full of chatter and alarm, clamouring their questions at Uliba, but sparing a glance for the handsome stranger with the interesting whiskers. I’m not unused to female attention, as you know, but I don’t recall more brazen preening and ogling than I got from Uliba-Wark’s domestics. Plainly they were no strangers to the hayloft and the long grass.

  One reason for their shameless glad-eyeing soon became apparent: Uliba-Wark’s stronghold proved to be almost entirely devoid of men, the few there were being either grey-bearded dotards or small boys. Presumably the young ones were away at the civil wars, as conscripts or mercenaries, but I never found out, on account of not speaking the lingo. It’s a damned bore, as you know, for you stand like a tailor’s dummy while the world prattles about you, and worse for me, I think, because I’m used to slinging the bat (* Speak the language (Army slang, from Hind.).) wherever I am.

  They’re mighty strange places, these Abyssinian castles, not unlike our Border peels, with rooms piled on each other like so many boxes connected by stairs that are no better than ladders. Since from what Uliba had said we might have to withstand a siege, I was relieved to find that the main door was a massive affair which it would have taken artillery to breach, and the adobe walls were feet thick, with narrow windows well above ground level, offering a good field of fire. With my Joslyn and fifty rounds I could give a warm reception to anyone toiling up the path to our eyrie.

  If I’d had any doubts about Uliba-Wark’s importance, they would have been dispelled by the respect amounting to reverence with which she was treated. They fairly grovelled to her, not only the slaves, who made up half the citadel’s residents, but the free women and the two elderly men who seemed to act as stewards or chamberlains. She delivered a brisk speech to the assembled staff in the great ground-floor hall which seemed to be used as a common room, but what she said was Amharic to me, except at the point where she indicated me, and the whole gang turned in my direction and bowed. When she’d dismissed them I was con ducted to an airy chamber on the third floor, bone clean and well if sparsely furnished with a good charpoy (* Native frame-and-cord bedstead.) leather chair, table, wash-stand, rug on the floor and leather curtain on the arrow-slit window—I’ve stayed in country inns at home that were less decent and comfortable.

  To my disappointment I was attended by the village idiot super vised by a stout dragon with a moustache who must have been the only Plain Jane in the place, for the dollymops who’d been on hand at our arrival had been typical Ab, which is to say they’d ranged from comely to ravishing. I wondered if Uliba had decided I’d be safer with a fat crone; if so, it wasn’t a bad omen.

  Not having had a wink of sleep since our bivouac at Ad Abaga the night before last, I slept the day through, and it was evening when I was summoned to a spacious apartment on the second floor and had my first taste of formal Ab dining. What is the norm, I can’t say, because on later occasions I’ve lounged on cushions on the floor, and sat up at a table like a Christian, but Chez Uliba we reclined on charpoys, Roman orgy fashion, with a low table apiece. But what lent the meal a delightful charm was that the girls waiting on us wore nothing but little aprons of leather laces—I think they had brass collars and a bracelet or two as well, but I can’t say I took much note. You don’t, when your maise (* Mead.) is being poured by a lovely little Hebe who rests her bare poont on your shoulder as she stoops to your cup; how I resisted the temptation to turn my head and go munch, I cannot imagine.

  If you suppose, by the way, that I am unduly susceptible, you should read the recollections of J. A. St John, Esq., who travelled in Abyssinia in the 1840s and appears to have spent most of his time goggling at boobies, on which he was obviously an authority. He has drooling descriptions of slave-girls, and a most scholarly passage in which he compares Ethiopian juggs to Egyptian ones, and finds the former “more finely shaped and better placed"; the negro bosom he discounts as having a tendency to droop, which suggests to me that he never got the length of Zululand or Dahomey where the ladies give glorious meaning to the term double-breasted. That by the way. I admire the female form myself, but J. A. St John needed a course of cold baths if you ask me. [29]

  To resume. The meal consisted of two kinds of beef, the cooked variety which was roasted black with peppers, and the raw stuff which they call brundo—it’s not bad at all when served with chutney, but I didn’t try it at the time. There was fruit for dessert, and the inevitable tej dispensed from long-necked flasks by the bouncing boobies brigade, and all the sweeter for that.

  The two chamberlain chaps shared our nuncheon, as did two of the females, tawny languid ladies who weren’t domestics but more like companions to the mistress of the house, for they talked to her on equal terms, were well dressed and decked with costume jew ellery, and plainly thought no small beer of themselves. But then all Ab women do, with cause; the waitresses, whom I spent the time admiring because Uliba didn’t bother to translate the table talk for my benefit, showed no embarrassment at being looked at, the saucy little dears. Uliba, by the way, had discarded her tunic in favour of an exquisite saffron robe which looked like silk, worn toga-fashion with one bare shoulder and two huge hooped golden earrings under her braids.

  Just as the meal was ending there was a commotion in the room below, with female voice
s raised in anger, and presently one of the maids brought up the ladder-stair a girl who was the peachiest thing I’d seen so far, even in that company. She was tawnier than most, but with a long lovely Egyptian face and huge eyes which at the moment were disfigured by weeping. In fact, she seemed torn between grief and rage, sobbing into her cupped hands one moment, shaking her fists and raging the next, to the scandal of the women attendants and the wrath of the elders, all of whom contributed to the row, so that it was bedlam until Uliba snapped them into silence.

  She spoke sharply to the weeping girl, who answered sullenly at first, then furiously, stamping and giving Uliba what sounded like dog’s abuse, to which she responded with an icy anger which changed the beauty’s tune altogether, for she flung herself down by Uliba’s charpoy, wailing and smothering her feet with kisses. Uliba spoke to her quietly, and the wench rose, drying her eyes, but then suddenly rounded on me of all people, letting fly another stormy volley, at which Uliba lost her temper altogether, boxed her ears, and sent her squalling down the stair again. The ladies and elders withdrew, leaving the two of us alone while the pap-flashers cleared away the dishes.

  I was all agog to know what had ailed the girl. Uliba was still snarling in Amharic as she disposed herself on her charpoy again, but then she began to laugh while her tej cup was refilled, and informed me that the hysteric had been Sarafa’s woman, now presumably a widow, and consequently madder than a cut snake.

  “I told her he had stayed to front Yando’s fighters of his own free choice, and the insolent bitch swore that you should have stayed also, but she supposed that you had supplanted Sarafa in my bed, and so were precious to me!” She banged her cup down, angry and merry together. “Ha! And then, because it is not known whether Sarafa is dead or taken, she falls to pleading with me to bargain with Yando for his life. Bemout (* By my death!) Well she knows what price I’d have to pay, and when I refuse her she calls me a heartless whore that stole her man and left him to die because I had found a new lover! And this from a slave-girl, to me!”