Crumbled by the shells, the Dervish horde hesitated, then came on again in a final despairing struggle. The angry sound of their voices was now a roar, blood-curdling in its volume and intensity. Though their fire was wild and mostly going high over the zariba, a few men were hit and reeled out of the line, and an officer’s charger crumpled to its knees, blood pouring from its nose across the sprawling man’s tunic and breeches. Then, at around five hundred yards, the forward march changed to a run. For a moment the Dervishes were obscured as the wind dropped and the smoke from the Egyptians’ Martini-Henrys drifted across the front, so that it seemed they might just break into the line. Peering forward into the smoke, waiting for it to lift, General Goff saw it disperse at last to reveal only a few men still struggling forward in a group round a banner, until finally they, too, were sent sprawling to the sand.
It seemed to be over and Kitchener, worried as always about the cost, was calling for a cease fire and complaining about the waste of ammunition. A few bullets still whistled into the zariba from a group of riflemen who had gone to ground behind a small ridge in front, but there was no real danger now. The guns had smashed the attack before it had even got going, and an army of almost twenty thousand had shattered itself against the disciplined fire. At least six thousand men lay in front, dead or wounded, sprawling and still, or trying painfully to crawl away. The cloud of white flags had all disappeared.
‘There’s more to come. We’ve only been approached so far by the wings of their army.’
The General turned as his chief of staff spoke. Lord Ellesmere, he remembered with a sudden strange switch in time, had been a mere boy with a shocking case of acne when he’d first met him. He had turned out, however, to be a handsome man and a splendid chief of staff with the traditional asset of all good chiefs of staff – a memory like an elephant. He was now noted as one of the cleverer men in the army and his promotion had not been acquired simply because his father was an earl.
‘Where are they, Ned?’ the General asked.
‘I gather the main mass is still hidden behind the hills, sir, waiting its opportunity to see us off.’
‘Who says?’ the General growled.
‘It came from the 21st Lancers. Churchill, I think. The Sirdar thinks he’s talking nonsense.’
‘I don’t,’ the General said. ‘That young man has a strange habit of being right.’
But nothing seemed to come of the rumour and Kitchener began to study the city to the south. A few minutes later a galloper approached from where Gatacre was stalking up and down, a lanky shape like a stork with nerves. It was Robert, and the General eyed him warily. He had summed up his elder son long since. Robert’s idea of living was to inherit wealth and live off it for the rest of his days, if possible adding to it by marrying into the Cosgro family.
Since the Cosgros had lain across the General’s path throughout his life, brooding, difficult and stupid, it wasn’t a thing he looked forward to.
‘They come in bunches of a dozen,’ he had often said, ‘and there isn’t much to choose between any of ’em.’ Old Cosgro, the present Lord Cosgro’s father, had been a bit like Kitchener, arrogant with his inferiors, obsequious with anyone who might help him up the ladder. Claude, the second baron, had served with the General in the 19th Lancers, and was as fat, lazy and stupid as all the Cosgros with that streak of malicious meanness in him that always made them dangerous. Aubrey, his younger brother, had been broken by the General in Zululand for cowardice. It didn’t make for friendly relations.
‘Hello, Robert,’ the General said briskly, far from willing to be warm because the business had come into the open as they had camped at Atbara.
Nobody had been very happy at Atbara. The weather had broken and the wind had shifted and, on the river, sails had been lowered and the boats anchored as clouds of dust began to drive over the camp, making the night hideous and existence miserable. Then, as rain had begun to fall and they were all covered with a coating of mud, soaked and shivering as boats were dismasted and clothing and tents were whirled away, it was typical of Robert that he had picked the worst possible time to put forward his wish. His face rock-hard, the General had stared at him with contempt.
‘You’re a damn fool, boy!’ he had snapped. ‘Nobody but a fool would marry into
that
family. The girl’s father’s a fool, her mother’s a fool, her brother’s a fool, and until he did away with himself her uncle was a fool, too.’
Robert’s manner now was one of sullen wariness as he confined himself carefully to delivering his instructions, a square young man, blunt-featured without the intelligence in his face that Dabney had.
‘From General Gatacre, sir,’ he said. ‘The Sirdar wishes the cavalry to reconnoitre the Surgham Ridge and the ground between the zariba and Omdurman. He’s worried the Dervishes will get into the city and dig themselves in. They’re to prevent it.’
Calling Ellesmere forward, the General began to dictate his message, making it as clear as possible because he wasn’t sure of the Lancers’ experience. Experience had a habit of filtering down through the generations and the 21st were too new to the game and so far had not been blooded in battle. The officers were resentful of the motto the rest of the army had given them – Thou Shalt Not Kill – and were too anxious to win themselves a battle honour. In his concern, he was painstaking, remembering only too well how a badly-worded message had destroyed the Light Brigade, and very nearly himself, at Balaclava.
Robert was still alongside and, in an attempt to heal the breach between them, the general turned to him. ‘Would you like to take it to the 21st?’ he asked.
‘Of course, sir.’
‘Make it clear to them they’re not to get themselves into trouble. They’re not to become heavily engaged. They’re only to reconnoitre the Surgham Ridge and the ground beyond.’
Robert was frowning, his mind on his own problems, and for a moment the General wondered if he were listening.
‘You have that clear?’
‘Of course, sir.’
The 21st were standing by their horses and, as the firing continued to die away, the General saw his son approach the colonel. There was a brief conversation and an outstretched arm, then he heard shouts and saw the regiment mount.
As they started to trot forward, patrols broke away, ready to gallop towards the high ground, while the regiment followed in a mass – a square block of men on small horses – in Christmas tree order, hung all over with water bottles, saddle bags, picketing gear and tins of bully beef, all jolting and jangling together, all the polish of peace gone, soldiers without glitter.
The firing had died away completely now and the army had relaxed. As the Lancers passed close to the General, they were in files, dusty-brown figures with flaps of cloth attached to their sun helmets so that they looked vaguely like Arabs. Two patrols had pushed ahead of them, moving among the dead and dying of the first attack and the limping riderless horses that galloped aimlessly about.
The crest of the ridge was unoccupied and southward towards Omdurman the plain was covered by a broad stream of fugitives, wounded and deserters flowing towards the city, blurred by the mirages the heat threw up so that some of them seemed to be staggering in mid-air or wading through pools of water. As the heliograph started to flash from the ridge to give the numbers, the main attack developing to the north came to a complete halt and the General and his staff trotted forward. The horsemen on the ridge resumed their advance, then, as a spattering of fire came to the ears of the men on the plain, they saw the Lancers’ advance guard check their forward movement, turn and gallop back to the main body.
‘What the devil are they up to?’ The General’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t say the damn fools are exceeding instructions.’
From where he sat his mount in the sand dunes, Dabney watched his brother near the Colonel. He was holding on to his horse, which was caught by the stir and movement and was curvetting briskly, and was gesturing towards the Dervishes. As orders came back, the patrols cantered ahead again and the regiment began to move forward after them. As they went, they passed Robert slowly riding back, his brows down, his face set and sullen.
‘What’s in it for us, Robert?’ Dabney called.
‘Action,’ Robert called back. ‘You’re to go for the enemy.’
The first patrol was back within minutes to say the plain looked safe from the other side of the hill. A moment later the other patrol galloped back.
‘There’s a shallow khor about three-quarters of a mile to the south-west,’ Dabney heard the officer say.
‘Practicable?’ The Colonel’s head turned.
‘Yes, sir. It’s between us and the fugitives in the plain. There’s a group of Dervishes drawn up in front.’
‘How many?’
‘About a thousand, sir. Hadendoas, I think.’
Martin smiled. ‘I think four hundred horsemen ought to be able to deal with them,’ he said.
As they cantered forward, Dabney peered ahead. ‘I’d have said there were a lot more than a thousand,’ he observed to Churchill. ‘And more being pushed in all the time.’
As they left the ridge, the scattered parties of Dervishes melted away and only a simple straggling line of men in dark blue waited motionless a quarter of a mile to the left front. There seemed to be scarcely a hundred of them. The regiment had formed line of squadron columns now and continued to walk forward. The firing from the ridges had stopped and there was complete silence that seemed twice as intense after the recent tumult of battle.
Straining to see through his glasses, General Goff turned. Robert had just reappeared and was waiting by his father, brooding again over the argument they’d had at Atbara. Several times he’d tried to push it from his mind but always it kept coming back. He’d known all along what his father’s view of his wish to marry a Cosgro would be, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so firm. When he’d mentioned it to his mother, she’d hummed and hahed and offered warnings but, though he’d known full well that she also hadn’t approved, she’d not noticeably demurred.
His father had turned to Ellesmere.
‘What’s happening, Ned?’ he demanded.
Ellesmere was talking to a handsome moustached officer of the Egyptian cavalry.
‘Haig here says there are Fuzzy-Wuzzies in a khor out there, sir.’
‘And what are the Lancers intending?’
‘It’s hard to tell, sir.’ Ellesmere lifted his glasses. ‘I think the Fuzzy-Wuzzies are there to check any further advance. They’re drawn up in line in front of them egging them on.’ Ellesmere paused and his voice rose. ‘Sir, I think the Lancers are going to charge them!’
‘By God, they’d better not!’ Robert’s thoughts were abruptly interrupted as his father swung round on him. ‘Did you tell them, sir, that I wished them to exercise caution?’
Robert’s face changed and the old man knew he’d forgotten in the irritation of the dispute between them. Directing a glare at his son, he turned to stare to his front.
‘I can see a flag beyond them, Ned,’ he said. ‘No, dammit, two! Jesus Christ and all His pink angels, Haig’s right! There
is
a ditch there and it’s full of Fuzzy-Wuzzies. God damn it—’ the General’s face was furious ‘—it’s the oldest trick in the repertoire!’
The men of the Lancers’ leading squadron had begun to wheel slowly and, breaking into a trot, were crossing the Dervish front in column of troops. Yelling and howling, waving swords and banners, the Dervishes were a mere three hundred yards away now and the blue-clad men were dropping to their knees to fire a ragged volley. Horses and men fell. A riderless animal bolted across the plain, its tail up like a flag, and a man struggled from under his dead mount and began to stumble back the way he had come. Bullets cracked and whined about Dabney’s head.
‘Left wheel into line!’
As the trumpet sounded above the noise of musketry, the sixteen troops swung and locked at once, without orders, into a long line. There was no hesitation. They were all eager and it seemed that no one waited for the trumpeter who was still blowing as he found himself at the gallop. As they thundered forward, the firing increased and the bullets started up sand and gravel. Feeling it sting his cheeks, Dabney bowed his head to shield his face.
The dark-clad men were still firing in a cloud of light-blue smoke, but the pace was fast and the sound of rifles was drowned by the thunder of hooves on the hard sand, so that it seemed the horsemen would sweep over the line without effort. Dabney had ridden in dozens of point-to-points and this felt exactly the same, with the line of Dervishes in front apparently no more dangerous than the last fence. In a surge of exhilaration, he clapped spurs to his horse and, lifting his sword, pointed forward. Behind him, the line of lances lowered to the Engage.
Then someone near him shouted and he saw they had blundered into a trap. Across their front a dry watercourse had appeared beyond a slight lift in the ground where the plain had seemed smooth and level, and rising from it, coming up like the devil in the pantomimes he had seen as a boy, was a densely-packed mass of white-clad men giving tongue in a high-pitched yell.
Suddenly he remembered what his father had said of the fighting in Zululand – how a fold of the ground had sometimes held a whole impi of warriors. The Dervishes, it seemed, were no less cunning. They were twelve-deep and stretched from one end of the regiment’s front almost to the other. There was no chance to check the charge as horsemen and flags appeared and warriors with spears sprang forward to form a cheval-de-frise.
It was Dabney’s first time in action and the excitement of the moment carried him forward. Spurring his mount savagely to force from it the momentum to take him across the ditch and out at the other side before he could be stopped, he assumed that, like all infantry before cavalry, the Dervishes would break and run at the last moment.
As the luckless men who had acted as bait were flung backwards by the shoulders of the galloping horses on to the heads of their comrades in the ditch, he found himself in mid-air and looking down on the black faces below. The Lancers went into the ditch like the breaking of a huge wave, and as the riflemen were swept away, the cavalrymen struck the mass of waiting Dervishes with a tremendous crash. Horses were bowled over under the shock and for a whole half-minute no one was concerned with killing, only with escaping from the tangle of struggling men and animals. Terrified chargers kicked and fought their way free. Shaken men, sprawling in heaps, struggled to their feet, and several unseated riders even had time to remount as the impetus of the rest of the cavalry carried them forward. But their pace had been reduced suddenly to a walk and as they scrambled out of the watercourse on the other side, dragging with them a mass of yelling infuriated Dervishes, they left a score of struggling figures behind, and as the mob of men and animals crumbled and separated the killing began.