The Sleeping Sands (35 page)

‘Yah Mohammed! Yah Allah! Yah Ali!’ came the cry again. Layard felt that he could pick out just a few distinct voices. As alien and strange as encountering them in that forsaken place was, Layard felt that they were somehow familiar. He waited.

Around the corner marched an odd-looking troupe of men, chanting and blowing long tuneless blasts on buffalo horns. Exhausted as he was, Layard knew three of them at once as the three dervishes he had met at the Sufi’s house in Isfahan. The fourth and most bizarrely costumed fellow also seemed familiar, though he could not at that moment place him. Layard shouted out a greeting and the men rushed towards him, crying out in joy.

‘Brother dervish, you are well!’ called out the tall black dervish, striding up and slapping Layard on the back.

‘I suppose you will be wanting to share our food and wine?’ grumbled the old dervish, ‘I shouldn’t expect you’ve managed to keep back any of yours.’

‘Of course not,’ scoffed the albino, ‘our brother has foresworn earthly delights so as to cleanse his body and mind to receive spiritual enlightenment.’

‘My word, it’s Mr Layard, isn’t it?’ exclaimed the fourth. ‘So you are the one we have been seeking.’

Layard peered at the man, whom he now perceived to be a fellow European, though dressed in the most barbarous rendition of Eastern costume he had ever seen. The face was familiar yet still Layard had no recollection of how he knew it – nor of how he could have forgotten such a striking individual.

‘I’m sorry,’ stammered Layard, ‘I don’t seem to-‘

‘Oh, but where are my manners?’ cried the man, ‘George Lackland, at your service.’

He bowed, deeply, causing his tall conical felt hat to topple into the dirt. Scooping it up, he added, ‘we were introduced briefly at Sir Charles Wherry’s residence in Damascus but I fear you were too much diminished by your recent privations to have paid me much attention.’

‘Lackland,’ said Layard, glancing briefly at the black dervish, who winked and grinned a broad gold-capped smile in return, ‘of course. I’m sorry I momentarily forgot. What brings the four of you here?’

‘Time enough for that later!’ snapped the ancient dervish. ‘Let us make camp for the night and get some food into our bellies.’

Fed and fuelled by a flask of strong arak, produced by the oldest of their number, Layard and his companions talked long into the night. Layard asked the dervishes of his location. They explained that he had travelled from the naphtha spring towards the road to Kala Tul – as if drawn back to the mountain castle by instinct. Welcome as this news was, what interested Layard far more was that the company had news of Mehemet Taki Khan and his family.

‘We have often relied on the charity of the Khan,’ explained the albino dervish, ‘so we naturally sought him out when we came into his territories.’

‘An unwholesome, blasted country it is too,’ interrupted the ancient, ‘naked of man and beast and riddled by plague. Why, if I had realised it was you we were destined to seek in this blighted wilderness, I would have stayed in Isfahan!’

‘Shut up you old goat, and drink some more arak!’ laughed the black dervish, picking up the albino’s story. ‘As my brother indicates, the country is empty – but we at last found news of the Khan when we came to the edge of the marshes.’

‘He had waited for news of you,’ explained the albino, cutting back in. ‘when his brother returned to the marshes, he brought news of the hue and cry that had been raised against you. Au Kerim had been surprised by a troop of serbázes and had been forced to flee from Shuster. When you failed to return, the Khan despaired of ever rescuing his son. He has retreated to the Ch’ab stronghold of Fellahiyah, where he makes ready to surrender to the Matamet.’

‘When we left Fellahiyah, the Khan had ordered Au Kerim to return to Shuster to search for you,’ said the oldest dervish, swigging at his flask. ‘His orders are that if he does not find you and the boy, he is to negotiate the surrender of Mehemet Taki Khan.’

‘It seems, Mr Layard,’ observed Lackland sunnily, ‘that the fate of nations has somehow become interwoven with your own destiny. How thrilling that must be.’

‘You are a fool if you think the fate of the Khan brings me anything but sorrow,’ snarled Layard. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’

‘Ah, yes,’ chirped Lackland, ‘I had almost forgotten. Signs and omens my dear Sir. I have been much beset these past weeks by signs and omens – haven’t barely been able to move for ‘em.’

‘What signs?’ demanded Layard angrily.

‘Ah, they mean little to the uninitiated,’ said Lackland, airily, ‘a broken twig here, an eagle’s cry there – whispers in the desert winds. But, to an adept and one who has walked alone in the wilderness; they speak volumes. Part by part, I pieced together a message that I must deliver, though until today I had no idea to whom I should deliver it.’

‘Enough of this,’ said Layard, rising in irritation, ‘my friends are on the verge of capture and defeat – I don’t know why I am even listening to you.’

‘Brother, you would be wise to listen to Mr Lackland,’ said the black dervish, ‘he has walked through the same dark places you must visit.’

‘What, then is this message?’ said Layard, tersely.

‘The fate of those you love will be in the hands of the One upon Whom the State relies until the very day you find that which you seek,’ recited Lackland. ‘But the thing you seek brings with it a price.’

‘A price?’ asked Layard.

‘Death’ came the reply.

Layard resolved that night to return to Shuster and meet Au Kerim. He felt that no matter what, he should attempt to postpone any surrender to the Matamet. The dervishes agreed to lead Layard to Shuster and to do what little they could to assist with an attempt to free Hussein Kuli.

The first problem was the question of mounts. On foot, the party would take several days to reach Shuster and time was fast running out. The dervishes solved this problem in a pragmatic fashion. After half a day’s march, the company came upon a small settlement of nomads. The dervishes marched up to the largest tent, chanting, ‘Yah Mohammed! Yah Allah! Yah Ali!’ and announced that they had been sent there by Allah to bless an offering of horses that would bring eternal glory to the giver. The nomads, being of a practical nature, politely suggested that the dervishes might be mistaken and that, indeed, it may have been another tribe who were destined to make the offering. Not wishing to offend the holy men, they kindly offered to share with them a meal of flat bread and sheep’s milk in front of their tent. At sight of the offer the oldest dervish started leaping about, blowing on his buffalo horn. The black dervish jumped up and, with apparently superhuman strength ripped the tent from its mooring, so that it collapsed upon the nomads, whom the albino dervish began to belabour with his iron mace.

Lackland, who had already sat down in anticipation of the meal, remained seated on a carpet, picking at the now abandoned dishes and explaining the dervishes’ actions to Layard.

‘The people here believe all dervishes to be under the protection of Ali,’ he said between mouthfuls, ‘so they won’t harm them. In fact, if these nomads raise a finger against our companions, there is a good chance their neighbours will turn against them. It will not be long before our hosts see the error of their ways and embrace their duty to Allah.’

Lackland proved right. By the time he had eaten the last morsels of the meal, the headman of the camp had promised to give up five fresh horses, if only the dervishes might leave with his blessing. Upon hearing this, the oldest dervish blew an even louder and longer blast on his horn and then shouted angrily at the headman, insisting that the wretch had so displeased Allah by his impious lack of charity that he must now hand over a skin of wine too. Within a few minutes, the party was on its way, well mounted on fresh horses.

‘It is good to see the faithful treading a path of righteousness – even in these troubled times,’ observed the oldest dervish, taking a swig from his wineskin as they rode towards Shuster.

The news at Shuster was troubling. While Layard, Lackland and his brothers waited on the outskirts of the town, the albino dervish went alone to seek news. He returned two hours later, accompanied by Saleh the Lur, who quickly appraised Layard of the situation.

‘Au Kerim Khan has been captured,’ he told Layard. ‘He came to the canals near the town, asking for news of you among the Shusteris. One of the Matamet’s spies saw him and led a group of ferrashes to seize him. He is held in a house with Ali Naghi Khan and Shefi’a Khan. The Matamet tries to maintain the illusion that they are willing guests, so they are quite free to move about the house, but they are watched all the time and their weapons and horses have been denied them.’

‘And the boy?’ asked Layard, anxiously.

‘Hussein Kuli is well,’ said Saleh, ‘and still in house of Au Mohammed Zamaun.’

‘And his idiot tutor?’

‘He has fled, Effendi,’ Saleh spat meaningfully into the dirt.

‘The plague has returned to Shuster,’ he said, frowning, ‘before even the first victim had died, that coward had packed his things and ridden away on the Khan’s fine horse.’

‘The plague?’ asked Layard, ‘has it spread so far then? How bad is it?’

‘Not yet so bad, Effendi,’ replied the Lur. ‘There have been a few cases among the Matamet’s men, where the camp is crowded, and among the poorer people of the town. But the Shusteris remember not ten years back when 20,000 were lost to it. The town was one of the first to fall to the darkness that came to these lands – and once more it has come back on the heels of the Matamet.’

He spat again, emphatically.

‘Always the same, Effendi,’ he said, ‘men are found dead – their faces twisted in such horror. There are whispers among the tribesmen that the Matamet’s treachery at threatening to murder the Khan’s son has brought back the plague as a punishment.’

‘So the Shusteris are beginning to turn against the Matamet?’ asked Layard.

‘Some,’ replied the Lur, ‘and Au Kerim’s agents among the Bakhtiari have been at work. I could summon a force of fifty trusted men in a matter of hours if you plan to act.’

Layard’s plan was simple. As night fell, the dervish troupe marched noisily into town, proclaiming loudly that its populace were doomed due to their sinfulness and offering salvation to a few pious souls who might be saved by means of their incantations and amulets. With anxieties about the plague running high and the memories of its earlier devastation still clear in many minds; within a short while it seemed that half of the city’s population was thronging to the dervishes and the streets were quickly becoming clogged, chaotic and filled with fractious and increasingly angry people. Those serbázes, ferrashes and tribal fighters of the Matamet’s forces in the town who were not already caught up with the mob found themselves quickly having to control it. Under the cover of darkness and the general confusion, Layard entered the city to meet as arranged with Saleh and a group of about fifty Shusteris and Bakhtiari matchlock men. The Bakhtiaris also brought with them spare weapons and horses.

The dervishes led their procession further into the city, away from the houses where the Khan’s brothers and son were held. Saleh led half of the men, mainly Bakhtiaris to the house holding Ali Nahi Khan, Shefi’a Khan and Au Kerim, while Layard led a mainly Shusteri force against the house of Mohammed Zamaun. What guards had been posted at the house had been drawn away by the disturbance in the streets and Layard found that the household were unwilling to offer any resistance to a tall determined European at the head of twenty-five armed men. With no tutor to slow them down, albeit with much lamenting of the fate of his father’s mare, Hussein Kuli was quickly secured and saddled upon a fresh horse. Layard led the prince and his men to their prearranged rendezvous at a small city gate, the sounds of the dervishes and the riot they had instigated far in the distance. As they approached, above the general hubbub they heard the sounds of musket fire. There was a drumming of hoofs and Saleh and the Bakhtiaris came galloping up to the gate. All the time, the horsemen turning while in full gallop in true Bakhtiari fashion, to fire to their rear at the soldiers who were pursuing them.

‘Ferrashes!’ shouted Saleh, as he galloped up. ‘We have the captives, but a force of the Matamet’s men surprised us.’

Layard and his horsemen joined the Bakhtiaris as they thundered through the gate and raced into the night, spreading out as they ran. Their pursuers, now confronted with a force that had suddenly doubled, appeared to begin to loose the stomach for the chase, as their own horses seemed to slow markedly once they left the shelter of the city walls. Their shots became less frequent and gradually more distant. Suddenly exultant in victory and the frenzy of the mad race Layard found himself galloping alongside Hussein Kuli and Au Kerim Khan.

‘It is good to see you again, my friend!’ shouted Au Kerim, a wild smile on his face, as he turned to fire a pistol at the rapidly receding group of soldiers behind them. ‘You have brought hope to my people. With his son safe once more, my brother will take back Kala Tul.’

Layard turned to shout back to Au Kerim. At that moment the khan gasped and let loose his reins, slumping in his saddle and falling suddenly from sight. His horse charged on into the night. A stray bullet from the distant pursuers had found him. Hussein Kuli cried out and pulled sharply on his own reins, wheeling his horse and charging back to where a dark form lay unmoving on the ground. A few lengths behind, Layard, followed by Ali Naghi Khan, galloped up behind the prince, firing into the darkness in the general direction of the Matamet’s ferrashes, who could now be heard gaining upon them.

‘Uncle!’ cried out the boy, his face streaked with tears.

The boy was starting to dismount as Layard pulled up beside him.

‘No, my friend!’ shouted Layard, ‘you must get back to your father. I will see to your uncle.’

Layard sprang from his horse and ran to Au Kerim, who lay a few feet away.

‘Come, boy!’ shouted Ali Naghi Khan as he rode up, ‘we must go now. The Frank will tend to my brother.’