Ortho sat on the bare hillside and watched his horses coming in. They
came up the gully below him in a drove, limping from their
hobbles—grays, chestnuts, bays, duns and blacks, blacks predominating.
It was his ambition to command a squadron of blacks, and he was chopping
and changing to that end. They would look well on parade, he thought, a
line of glossy black Doukkala stallions with scarlet trappings,
bestridden by lancers in the uniform white burnoose—black, white and
scarlet. Such a display should catch the Sultan’s eye and he would be
made a Kaid Rahal.
He was a Kaid Mia already. Sheer luck had given him his first step.
When he first joined the Makhzen cavalry he found himself stablemates
with an elderly Prussian named Fleischmann, who had served with
Frederick the Great’s dragoons at Rossbach, Liegnitz and Torgau, a
surly, drunken old _sabreur_ with no personal ambition beyond the
assimilation of loot, but possessed of experience and a tongue to
disclose it. In his sober moments he held forth to Ortho on the proper
employment of horse. He did not share the common admiration for the
crack askar lances, but poured derision upon them. They were all bluster
and bravado, he said, stage soldiers with no real discipline to control
them in a tight corner. He admitted they were successful against rebel
hordes, but did they ever meet a resolute force he prophesied red-hot
disaster and prayed he might not be there.
His prayer was granted. Disaster came and he was not there, having had
his head severed from his shoulders a month previously while looting
when drunk and meeting with an irritated householder who was sober.
Ortho was in the forefront of the disaster. The black Janizaries, the
Bou Khari, were having one of their periodic mutinies and had been
drummed into the open by the artillery. The cavalry were ordered to
charge. Instead of stampeding when they saw the horse sweeping on them,
the negroes lay down, opened a well-directed fire and emptied saddles
right and left.
A hundred yards from the enemy the lancers flinched and turned tail, and
the Bou Khari brought down twice as many more. Ortho did not turn. In
the first place he did not know the others had gone about until it was
too late to follow them, and secondly his horse, a powerful entire, was
crazy with excitement and had charge of him. He slammed clean through
the Bou Khari like a thunderbolt with nothing worse than the fright of
his life and a slight flesh wound.
He had a confused impression of fire flashing all about him, bullets
whirring and droning round his head, black giants springing up among the
rocks, yells—and he was through. He galloped on for a bit, made a wide
detour round the flank and got back to what was left of his own ranks.
Returning, he had time to meditate, and the truth of the late (and
unlamented) Fleischmann’s words came back to him. That flesh wound had
been picked up at the beginning of the charge. The nearer he had got the
wilder the fire had become. The negroes he had encountered flung
themselves flat; he could have skewered them like pigs. If the whole
line had gone on all the blacks would have flung themselves flat and
been skewered like pigs. A regiment of horse charges home with the
impact of a deep-sea breaker, hundreds of tons.
The late Fleischmann had been right in every particular. The scene of
the affair was littered with dead horses and white heaps, like piles of
crumpled linen—their riders. The Bou Khari had advanced and were busy
among these, stripping the dead, stabbing the wounded, cheering
derisively from time to time.
Ortho had no sooner rejoined his depleted ranks than a miralai
approached and summoned him to the presence of Sidi Mahomet himself.
The puissant grandson of the mighty Muley Ismail was on a hillock where
he could command the whole field, sitting on a carpet under a white
umbrella, surrounded by his generals, who were fingering their beards
and looking exceedingly downcast, which was not unnatural, seeing that
at least half of them expected to be beheaded.
The Sultan’s face was an unpleasant sight. He bit at the stem of his
hookah and his fingers twitched, but he was not ungracious to the
renegade lancer who did obeisance before him.
“Stand up,” he growled. “Thou of all my askars hast no need to grovel.
How comes it that you alone went through?”
“Sidi,” said Ortho, “the Sultan’s enemies are mine—and it was not
difficult. I know the way.”
Mahomet’s delicate eyebrows arched. “Thou knowest the way—ha! Then thou
art wiser than these . . . these”—he waved his beautiful hand towards
the generals—“these sorry camel cows who deem themselves warriors. Tell
these ass-mares thy secret. Speak up and fear not.”
Ortho spoke out. He said nothing about his horse having bolted with him,
that so far from being heroic he was numb with fright. He spoke with the
voice of Fleischmann, deceased, expounded the Prussian’s theory of
discipline and tactics as applied to shock cavalry, and, having heard
them _ad nauseam_, missed never a point. All the time the Sultan sucked
at his great hookah and never took his ardent, glowering eyes from his
face, and all the time in the background the artillery thumped and the
muskets crackled.
He left the royal presence a Kaid Mia, commanding a squadron, a bag of
one hundred ducats in his hand, and a month later the cavalry swept over
the astonished Bou Khari as a flood sweeps a mud bank, steeled by the
knowledge that a regiment of Imperial infantry and three guns were in
their rear with orders to mow them down did they waver. They thundered
through to victory, and the Kaid Saïd el Ingliz (which was another name
for Ortho Penhale) rode, perforce, in the van—wishing to God he had not
spoken—and took a pike thrust in the leg and a musket ball in his ribs
and was laid out of harm’s way for months.
But that was past history, and now he was watching his horses come in.
They were not looking any too well, he thought, tucked-up, hide-bound,
scraggy—been campaigning overlong, traveling hard, feeding anyhow,
standing out in all weathers. He was thoroughly glad this tax-collecting
tour was at a close and he could get them back into garrison. His men
drove them up to their heel-pegs, made them fast for the night, tossed
bundles of grass before them and sought the camp fires that twinkled
cheerily in the twilight. A couple of stallions squealed, there was the
thud of a shoe meeting cannon-bone and another squeal, followed by the
curses of the horse-guard. A man by the fires twanged an oud and sang an
improvised ditty on a palm-tree in his garden at Tafilet:
“A queen among palms,
Very tall, very stately,
The sun gilds her verdure
With glittering kisses.
And in the calm night time,
Among her green tresses,
The little stars tremble.”
Ortho drew the folds of his jellab closer about him—it was getting
mighty cold—stopped to speak to a farrier on the subject of the shoe
shortage and sought the miserable tent which he shared with his
lieutenant, Osman Bâki, a Turkish adventurer from Rumeli Hissar.
Osman was just in from headquarters and had news. The engineers reported
their mines laid and the Sari was going to blow the town walls at
moonrise—in an hour’s time. The infantry were already mustering, but
there were no orders for the horse. The Sari was in a vile temper, had
commanded that all male rebels were to be killed on sight, women
optional—looting was open. Osman picked a mutton bone, chattering and
shaking; the mountain cold had brought out his fever. He would not go
storming that night, he said, not for the plunder of Vienna; slung the
mutton bone out of doors, curled up on the ground, using his saddle for
pillow, and pulled every available covering over himself.
Ortho ate his subordinate’s share of the meager repast, stripped himself
to his richly laced kaftan, stuck a knife in his sash, picked up a sword
and a torch and went out.
The general was short of cavalry, unwilling to risk his precious
bodyguard, and had therefore not ordered them into the attack. Ortho was
going nevertheless; he was not in love with fighting, but he wanted
money—he always wanted money.
He walked along the camp fires, picked ten of the stoutest and most
rascally of his rascals, climbed out of the gully and came in view of
the beleaguered kasba. It was quite a small place, a square fortress of
mud-plastered stone standing in a gorge of the Major Atlas and filled
with obdurate mountaineers who combined brigandage with a refusal to pay
tribute. A five-day siege had in no wise weakened their resolve. Ortho
could hear drums beating inside, while from the towers came defiant
yells and splutters of musketry.
“If we can’t get in soon the snow will drive us away—and they know it,”
he said to the man beside him, and the man shivered and thought of warm
Tafilet.
“Yes, lord,” said he, “and there’s naught of value in that _roua_. Had
there been, the Sari would have not thrown the looting open. A sheep, a
goat or so—paugh! It is not worth our trouble.”
“They must be taught a lesson, I suppose,” said Ortho.
The man shrugged. “They will be dead when they learn it.”
A German sapper slouched by whistling “Im Grünewald mein Lieb, und ich,”
stopped and spoke to Ortho. They had worked right up to the walls by
means of trenches covered with fascines, he said, and were going to blow
them in two places simultaneously and rush the breaches. The blacks were
going in first. These mountaineers fought like devils, but he did not
think there were more than two hundred of them, and the infantry were
vicious, half-starved, half-frozen, impatient to be home. Snow was
coming, he thought; he could smell it—whew!
A pale haze blanched the east; a snow peak gleamed with ghostly light;
surrounding stars blinked as though blinded by a brighter glory, blinked
and faded out. Moon-rise. The German called “Besslama!” and hurried to
his post. The ghost-light strengthened. Ortho could see ragged
infantrymen creeping forward from rock to rock; some of them dragged
improvised ladders. He heard sly chuckles, the chink of metal on stone
and the snarl of an officer commanding silence.
In the village the drums went on—thump, thump; thump,
thump—unconscious of impending doom.
“Dogs of the Sultan,” screamed a man on the gate-tower. “Little dogs of
a big dog, may Gehenna receive you, may your mothers be shamed and your
fathers eat filth—a-he-yah!” His chance bullet hit the ground in front
of Ortho, ricocheted and found the man from Tafilet. He rolled over,
sighed one word, “nkhel”—palm groves—and lay still.
His companions immediately rifled the body—war is war. A shining edge,
a rim of silver coin, showed over a saddle of the peaks. “_G mare!_”
said the soldiers. “The moon—ah, _now_!”
The whispers and laughter ceased; every tattered starveling lay tense,
expectant.
In the village the drums went on—thump, thump; thump, thump. The moon
climbed up, up, dragged herself clear of the peaks, drenching the snow
fields with eerie light, drawing sparkles here, shadows there; a dead
goddess rising out of frozen seas.
The watchers held their breath, slowly released it, breathed again.
“Wah! the mines have failed,” a man muttered. “The powder was damp. I
knew it.”
“It is the ladders now, or nothing,” growled another. “Why did the Sari
not bring cannon?”
“The Tobjyah say the camels could not carry them in these hills,” said a
third.
“The Tobjyah tell great lies,” snapped the first. “I know for certain
that . . . hey!”
The north corner of the kasba was suddenly enveloped in a fountain of
flame, the ground under Ortho gave a kick, and there came such an
appalling clap of thunder he thought his ear-drums had been driven in.
His men scrambled to their feet cheering.
“Hold fast! Steady!” he roared. “There is another yet . . . ah!” The
second mine went up as the débris of the first came down—mud,
splinters, stones and shreds of human flesh.
A lump of plaster smashed across his shoulders and an infantryman within
a yard of him got his back broken by a falling beam. When Ortho lifted
his head again it was to hear the exultant whoops of the negro
detachments as they charged for the breaches. In the village the drums
had stopped; it was as dumb as a grave. He held his men back. He was not
out for glory.
“Let the blacks and infantry meet the resistance,” he said. “That man
with a broken back had a ladder—eh? Bring it along.”
He led his party round to the eastern side, put his ladder up and got
over without dispute. The tribesmen had recovered from their shock to a
certain extent and were concentrating at the breaches, leaving the walls
almost unguarded. A mountaineer came charging along the parapet, shot
one of Ortho’s men through the stomach as he himself was shot through
the head, and both fell writhing into a courtyard below.
The invaders passed from the wall to a flat roof, and there were
confronted by two more stalwarts whom they cut down with difficulty.
There was a fearful pandemonium of firing, shrieks, curses and
war-whoops going on at the breaches, but the streets were more or less
deserted. A young and ardent askar kaid trotted by, beating his tag-rag
on with his sword-flat. He yelped that he had come over the wall and was
going to take the defenders in the rear; he called to Ortho for support.
Ortho promised to follow and turned the other way—plunder, plunder!
The alleys were like dry torrent beds underfoot, not five feet deep and
dark as tunnels. Ortho lit his torch and looked for doors in the mud
walls. In every case they were barred, but he battered them in with axes
brought for that purpose—to find nothing worth the trouble.
Miserable hovels all, with perhaps a donkey and some sheep in the court
and a few leathery women and children squatting in the darkness wailing
their death-song. Ornaments they wore none—buried of course; there was
the plunder of at least two rich Tamgrout caravans hidden somewhere in
that village. His men tortured a few of the elder women to make them
disclose the treasure, but though they screamed and moaned there was
nothing to be got out of them. One withered hag did indeed offer to show
them where her grandson hid his valuables, led them into a small room,
suddenly jerked a koummyah from the folds of her haik and laid about
her, foaming at the mouth.
The room was cramped, the men crowded and taken unawares; the old fury
whirled and shrieked and chopped like a thing demented. She wounded
three of them before they laid her out. One man had his arm nearly taken
off at the elbow. Ortho bound it up as best he could and ordered him
back to camp, but he never got there. He took the wrong turning, fell
helpless among some other women and was disemboweled.
“Y’ Allah, the Sultan wastes time and lives,” said an askar. “The sons
of such dams will never pay taxes.”
Ortho agreed. He had lost two men dead and three wounded, and had got
nothing for it but a few sheep, goats and donkeys. The racket at the
breaches had died down, the soldiery were pouring in at every point. It
would be as well to secure what little he had. He drove his bleating
captures into a court, mounted his men on guard and went to the door to
watch.
An infantryman staggered down the lane bent under a brass-bound coffer.
Ortho kicked out his foot; man and box went headlong. The man sprang up
and flew snarling at Ortho, who beat him in the eyes with his torch and
followed that up with menaces of his sword. The man fled and Ortho
examined the box which the fall had burst open. It contained a brass
tiara, some odds and ends of tarnished Fez silk, a bride’s belt and
slippers; that was all. Value a few blanquils—faugh!
He left the stuff where it lay in the filth of the kennel, strolled
aimlessly up the street, came opposite a splintered door and looked in.
The house was more substantial than those he had visited, of two
stories, with a travesty of a fountain bubbling in the court. The
infantry had been there before him. Three women and an old man were
lying dead beside the fountain and in a patch of moonlight an
imperturbable baby sat playing with a kitten.
An open stairway led aloft. Ortho went up, impelled by a sort of idle
curiosity. There was a room at the top of the stair. He peered in.
Ransacked. The sole furniture the room possessed—a bed—had been
stripped of its coverings and overturned. He walked round the walls,
prodding with his sword at suspicious spots in the plaster in the hopes
of finding treasure. Nothing.
At the far end of the gallery was another room. Mechanically he strolled
towards it, thinking of other things, of his debts in Mequinez, of how
to feed his starved horses on the morrow—these people must at least
have some grain stored, in sealed pits probably. He entered the second
room. It was the same as the first, but it had not been ransacked; it
was not worth the trouble. A palmetto basket and an old jellab hung on
one wall, a bed was pushed against the far wall—and there was a dead
man. Ortho examined him by the flare of his torch. A low type of chiaus
foot soldier, fifty, diseased, and dressed in an incredible assortment
of tatters. Both his hands were over his heart, clenching fistfuls of
bloody rags, and on his face was an expression of extreme surprise. It
was as though death were the last person he had expected to meet. Ortho
thought it comical.
“What else did you expect to find, jackal—at this gay trade?” he
sneered, swept his torch round the room—and prickled.
In the shadow between the bed end and the wall he had seen something,
somebody, move.
He stepped cautiously towards the bed end, sword point forwards, on
guard. “Who’s there?”
No answer. He lowered his torch. It was a woman, crouched double,
swathed in a soiled haik, nothing but her eyes showing. Ortho grunted.
Another horse-faced mountain drudge, work-scarred, weather-coarsened!
“Stand up!” he ordered. She did not move. “Do you hear?” he snapped and
made a prick at her with his sword.
She sprang up and at the same moment flung her haik back. Ortho started,
amazed. The girl before him was no more than eighteen, dark-skinned,
slender, exquisitely formed. Her thick raven hair was bound with an
orange scarf; across her forehead was a band of gold coins and from her
ears hung coral earrings. She wore two necklaces, one of fretted gold
with fish-shaped pieces dangling from it, and a string of black beads
such as are made of pounded musk and amber. Her wrists and ankles were
loaded with heavy silver bangles. Intricate henna designs were traced
halfway up her slim hands and feet, and from wrist to shoulder patterns
had been scored with a razor and left to heal. Her face was finely
chiseled, the nose narrow and curved, the mouth arrogant, the brows
straight and stormy, and under them her great black eyes smoldered with
dangerous fires.
Ortho sucked in his breath. This burning, lance-straight, scornful
beauty came out of no hill village. An Arab this, daughter of whirlwind
horsemen, darling of some desert sheik, spoil of the Tamgrout caravans.
Well, she was his spoil now. The night’s work would pay after all. All
else aside, there was at least a hundred ducats of jewelry on her. He
would strip it now before the others came and demanded a share.
“Come here,” he said, dropping his sword.
The girl slouched slowly towards him, pouting, chin tilted, hands
clasped behind her, insolently obedient; stopped within two feet of him
and stabbed for his heart with all her might.
Had she struck less quickly and with more stealth she might have got
home. Penhale’s major asset was that, with him, thought and action were
one. He saw an instantaneous flicker of steel and instantaneously
swerved. The knife pierced the sleeve of his kaftan below the left
shoulder. He grabbed the girl by the wrist and wrenched it back till she
dropped the knife, and as he did this, with her free hand she very
nearly had his own knife out of his sash and into him—very nearly. But
that the handle caught in a fold he would have been done. He secured
both her wrists and held her at arm’s length. She ground her little
sharp teeth at him, quivered with rage, blazed murder with her eyes.
“Soldier,” said Ortho to the dead man behind him, “now I know why you
look astonished. Neither you nor I expected to meet death in so pretty a
guise.”
He spoke to the girl. “Be quiet, beauty, or I will shackle you with your
own bangles. Will you be sensible?”
For answer the girl began to struggle, tugged at his grasp, wrenched
this way and that with the frantic abandon of a wild animal in a gin.
She was as supple as an eel and, for all her slimness, marvelously
strong. Despite his superior weight and power, Ortho had all he could do
to hold her. But her struggles were too wild to last and at length
exhaustion calmed her. Ortho tied her hands with the orange scarf and
began to take her jewelry off and cram it in his pouch. While he was
thus engaged she worked the scarf loose with her teeth and made a dive
for his eyes with her long finger nails.
He tied her hands behind her this time and stooped to pry the anklets
off. She caught him on the point of the jaw with her knee, knocking him
momentarily dizzy. He tied her feet with a strip of her haik. She leaned
forward and bit his cheek, bit with all her strength, bit with teeth
like needles, nor would she let go till he had well-nigh choked her. He
cursed her savagely, being in considerable pain. She shook with
laughter. He gagged her after that, worked the last ornament off, picked
up his sword and prepared to go. His torch had spluttered out, but
moonlight poured through the open door and he could see the girl sitting
on the floor, gagged and bound, murdering him with her splendid eyes.
“_Msa l kheir, lalla!_” said he, making a mock salaam. She snorted,
defiant to the end. Ortho strode out and along the gallery. His cheek
stung like fire, blood was trickling from the scratches, his jaw was
stiff from the jolt it had received. What a she-devil!—but, by God,
what spirit! He liked women of spirit, they kept one guessing. She
reminded him somewhat of Schems-ed-dah back in Sallee, the same
rapier-tempering and blazing passion, desert women both. When tame they
were wonderful, without peer—when tame. He hesitated, stopped and
fingered his throbbing cheek.
“What that she-devil would like to do would be to cut me to pieces with
a knife—slowly,” he muttered. He turned about, feeling his jaw. “Cut me
to pieces and throw ’em to the dogs.” He walked back. “She would do it
gladly, though they did the same to her afterwards. Tame that sort!
Never in life.” He stepped back into the room and picked the girl up in
his arms. “Wild-cat, I’m going to attempt the impossible,” said he.
Even then she struggled.
The town was afire, darting tongued sheets of flame and jets of sparks
at the placid moon. Soldiers were everywhere, shouting, smashing,
pouring through the alleys over the bodies of the defenders. As Ortho
descended the stairs a party of Sudanese broke into the courtyard; one
of them took a wild shot at him.
“_Makhzeni!_” he shouted and they stood back.
A giant negro petty officer with huge loops of silver wire in his ears
held a torch aloft. Blood from a scalp wound smeared his face with a
crimson glaze. At his belt dangled four fowls and a severed head.
“Hey—the Kaid Ingliz,” he said and tapped the head. “The rebel Basha; I
slew him myself at the breach. The Sari should reward me handsomely. El
Hamdoulillah!” He smiled like a child expectant of sweetmeats. “What
have you there, Kaid?”
“A village wench merely.”
“Fair?”
“So so.”
The negro spat. “Bah! they are as ugly as their own goats, but”—he
grinned, knowing Ortho’s weakness—“she may fetch the price of a black
horse—eh, Kaid?”
“She may,” said Ortho.