All Honourable Men (36 page)

Hakim came up to them. He glanced at his father, ignored Lady Kelso, spoke to Ranklin. “Snaipe effendi, do you claim to understand machine-guns? Why does it shoot so well at such range?”

Ranklin was about to start on the merits of a heavy tripod well embedded, then realised that wasn't the point. He took his big field-glasses from inside his coat. “Someone out there has a pair of these. Give these to one man with good eyesight, and I suggest you appoint
one
sharpshooter to fire back. Do you know the range to the trench?”

“Six hundred and eighty-five metres,” Hakim said with a hint of a smile. “We paced it when we got the new rifles.” His people might not be much help around the house, but they were very practical when it came to weapons.

Then, very faintly, came the sound of a bugle call. He and Hakim looked at each other, then ran for the stairs. The call itself was unintelligible, but it had to signal something. They had reached the open air when there was a distant
thud
and, a few seconds later, an explosion out to the east.

Ranklin made it to that wall in time to see a whiff of smoke
dissolving in the air perhaps a hundred yards off. After a while, the bugle called again.

“Artillery,” he told Hakim. “Controlled by that bugle. You must get your men into the cellar.” And when Hakim hesitated: “They can't shoot back at something they can't see. And they'll be bursting shells right overhead in a minute.”

Perhaps the simple, practical gesture of lending the field–glasses had been crucial in getting Hakim to listen to him; it may also have helped Hakim's authority. Now he herded his reluctant warriors downstairs. Ranklin stayed where he was; despite what he'd said, it would take several more shots to get the range.

The bugle sounded again, a long, unmusical message. About a minute later there was another
thud
and explosion, much louder, but this time to the west where a cloud of dust was settling beyond the edge of the ravine; the shell had fallen short, hitting the rock face a few feet down. And that had been “common shell”, high explosive, not shrapnel like the first. Two guns? – and firing different types of shell to make observing the results easier? The guns must be spaced well apart . . .

Hakim, standing a few steps down towards the cellar, had said something. Ranklin waved him quiet. “It's all right, I'm an Army officer.
Artilleur
.” Was that the right word? Never mind. They had to be dismountable mountain guns – brought in those boxes from Germany? Probably a bit lighter shell than the French 75's he'd commanded for the Greeks, say ten or twelve pounds. And low velocity, so that if you stayed alert, you'd always hear the gun before the shell arrived. Moreover, on this rocky ground, he'd have used only common shell, with its all-round effect; shrapnel was dangerous in only one direction, bursting in the air and spraying its bullets forwards like a flying shotgun. And air bursts were notoriously difficult to judge for range.

Was he just impressing himself with his own knowledgeable deductions? At least he felt more on a par with the enemy commander – Zurga, presumably – but the big difference
remained: Zurga had two guns and he had none. And Zurga wasn't hurrying, with minutes between each shot. Unfamiliar gun crews, perhaps, and taking time to get troops forward into that trench to mount the final assault. But they still had half the day.

The next shrapnel shell seemed to explode with just a large
pop
, right against the front wall. Ah! – he'd been hoping that would happen before they got the range right. He peeked around the gateway, saw smoke eddying at the base of the wall, and crawled towards it.

Firing shrapnel, you got a number of “grazes”, shells that hit the ground before the time-fuse burst them. Indeed, some gunners claimed you hadn't got the right range (given the variations in the fuses) unless there was one graze in every five shots. And there it was: a score mark ripped across the rock and earth before the wall. He took out the compass and sighted carefully back along it . . .

Machine-gun bullets clattered into the wall behind him. He cringed as flat as he could, and glanced back – and there was Hakim and another, standing in the gateway, laughing unconcernedly. If the Englishman could show his disdain for shot and shell by taking bearings on shell scrapes, then by God they weren't going to be outdone.

He screamed: “Get back!” and grabbed Hakim in a rugby tackle and tried to fling him through the gateway. The second burst of machine-gun fire arrived – accurately – and they all three collapsed inside amid screeching ricochets and stone fragments.

Once they had sorted themselves out, the other Arab lay groaning with a bullet through the stomach. In a good field hospital he might –
might
– survive. Out here it was a slow death in a lot of pain.

When he had been carried to the cellar and Hakim had been persuaded to order all the others back down, Ranklin turned on him. “D'you want these Ottoman conscripts to defeat
your father
? D'you
want
him tried for treason? Or more likely, just executed here, like a dog, to be rid of him?” He over-rode the
indignant protests. “You've lost two men already and not caused the enemy a single casualty! Is that good? You have to be a great –” perhaps
soldat
wasn't much of a compliment: try “warrior” “–
guerrier
like your father, and you will defeat those
farmers
out there. But by being better
guerriers
than they. Now, let me see the map.”

It had got left upstairs but there were plenty of volunteers; Ranklin made them wait until the next shell had burst. With the map spread on the floor, he used the surveyors' own instruments to plot the bearing: 155 degrees. The gun could be on the edge of the plateau or down in the dry riverbed, further along than they'd had to go. His bet was the riverbed: up on rock, the gun would hop around with the recoil, needing elaborate relaying after each shot.

But to hit the wall of the ravine, the other gun must be on the far side of it, again in the riverbed but half a mile or more from the first – probably well out of sight of it. Dividing your guns was unconventional, but being able to fire on both sides of the monastery as well as the front was sensible. Zurga was no fool.

Perhaps Hakim was beginning to realise that now, and see the future as Zurga planned it: more casualties if he exposed his men, being overwhelmed by attacking troops if he didn't. The men crowding the cellar stared at him openly, waiting to see if their enemy or their leader was in control. This was where you needed discipline, not courage: even in an army the situation would be bad, but this brave mob could fall completely apart.

“
I
would post one man upstairs to watch,” Ranklin said conversationally. “A sensible one. Have him shout down that he's all right after every shell-burst. You'll know when they're going to attack: the bugle calls will stop, both guns will fire together – as fast as they can. The machine-gun, too.”

In a lamplit corner, Lady Kelso was carefully tearing the clothing from the newly wounded Arab's body. He screamed as the air reached the wound.

Perhaps the scream helped. Hakim gave out authoritative orders – and was obeyed. Lady Kelso came past to rinse her
hands in a brass bowl, leaving the water rust-red in the lamplight. “Is this the ‘worse' you expected?”

“Artillery. Mountain guns. I should have thought of them.”

“There's nothing to be done about them, I assume.”

“There
might
be . . .” Only two guns, too far apart to support each other if attacked . . .

She waited, but he was silent, thinking. She turned away.

“It's all right. Not asking questions is one of the things I'm best at.”

“Just providing answers.”

She paused, then said: “I suppose so . . . Too often, the answer used to be just me. But now . . .”

She went back to the wounded Arab as Hakim returned to ask: “And is that all we can do?”

“No. If you've really got a secret back way out, let me take half a dozen men and I might capture one of those guns for you.”

The pass that O'Gilroy found between the foothills and the Peak existed, but nobody had used it before because it was an unnecessary loop, the route up the tributary and then along the dry riverbed being flatter and easier. This way meant weaving around rocks and ducking under tree branches, but on the far side it could also mean the advantage of the high ground and O'Gilroy did know infantry tactics. Anybody who had fought the Boers, and lived, had learnt more than the Army taught.

They had barely started upwards when a faint noise brought their heads up. Bertie listened, then called: “Was that a Maxim gun?”

“Probly. They've got one.”

They plodded on, and were still below the crest when they heard the bugle sound, and the first gun went off. All seemed well distant and O'Gilroy scowled to himself; the detour seemed to have been a waste of time.

The bugle called again and a second gun fired – far closer. In fact, just over the crest. He dismounted, tied his horse to a tree, and went forward on foot. By the time he was over the crest, he had guessed at a pattern. The machine-gun had no part in it: it was firing random short bursts, probably replying to the single shots which must come from the monastery. But the bugle calls – from somewhere in sight of the monastery – were controlling the fire of the guns, themselves with no sight of the target.

The first gun was far off to his right. But the second was in the riverbed almost directly below him. It fired again and he placed it exactly. Looking down on it from behind, he was in an infantryman's dream and a gunner's nightmare.

* * *

The secret way started by going out of the back of the monastery by the rough-fenced paddock. The dozen horses there – nothing like enough for the whole band – were frightened by the explosions and would soon be hit by them. But what could anybody do? The next step, it seemed, was to climb down a well, an idea which didn't appeal to Ranklin at all. But it appeared that the wide, irregular-shaped shaft had been hacked down, centuries before, to intercept a small underground stream. So it led to a tunnel rather than just plunged below the local water table.

They swarmed down a knotted rope, sometimes crawling backwards down a slope of rock, sometimes dangling free and going hand over hand. It was perhaps thirty feet in all, one of those distances that doesn't sound much but is
enormous
when you're lowering yourself into increasing darkness and damp. And then he was standing calf-deep in freezing gushing water waiting for the last two men to come down and for one already there to get a storm lantern lit.

In fact they moved off before the last man was down, a devil-take-the-hindmost attitude that assumed each man could keep up and nobody was really in command. For the moment nobody needed to be: they were simply following the tunnel, stumbling and slipping on a downward path. But if any decisions came to be made, Ranklin realised he would have to start imposing his will. Without a common language that could be tricky, particularly if you were to do it in wheezes and grunts from the back of the queue.

Then he realised he could see – vaguely – where he was putting his feet, and another turn brought dull green light ahead: green because the outside world was blocked by a scrawny bush, perhaps growing naturally in the dampness, perhaps planted to hide the fissure through which the stream spilled down into the ravine.

They were still fifty feet up, but away from the spattering water there was enough fallen rock to make it relatively easy to scramble down. Or up, Ranklin reflected, but no invader could count on climbing that well.

With the monastery out of sight above, and the end of the machine-gun trench hidden behind a bend in the ravine, they splashed up it through a small stream to a smaller, steeper ravine in the opposite wall, spilling out a yet smaller stream. The Arabs went light-footed up it, making no pretence of slowing to his panting, puffing pace. And once they reached the top they would have to run perhaps a mile in a wide half-circle beyond sight of the machine-gun, to reach the dry riverbed and the gun.

Already he was breathing through his mouth; God knows what he'd be trying to breathe through in twenty minutes.

* * *

To O'Gilroy the firing seemed spaced-out and leisurely. But with nearly six hours of daylight left, Zurga could take his time and get it right. When O'Gilroy got back to Corinna and Bertie he had a firm plan in mind.

“Yeself, ye stay here with the horses,” he told Corinna. “Don't argue: we've only the two rifles so ye'd jest be a target up forward.” He turned to Bertie. “Would I be right in thinking ye'd rather shoot the fellers working that gun'n me?”

Bertie nodded docilely. “I feel much remorse that—”

“Forget that, feel like killing someone.” O'Gilroy took a handful of cartridges from his pocket; Bertie had been carrying his own rifle again, but empty. “Have ye ever shot a man before?”

“In thirty years of the East and deserts—” Bertie was quite incapable of answering Yes or No, and O'Gilroy cut him off.

“The feller ye spare, he's the one'll kill ye.”

* * *

Trotting across a rock-strewn slope just below a line of trees, Ranklin had heard through the surf-like roaring from his lungs the occasional thuds of gunfire and chirruping of the bugle.

Now it seemed to have stopped and, thinking back, he realised the last bugle call had been different. A few short notes and one long one. It sounded like the “still”.

Oh God: the guns had ranged. That had been the signal to stop, to stack ammunition to hand, and be ready for the final uncorrected bombardment of the attack – and they were still hundreds of yards short. He was too late for anything but revenge.