* * *
The guard at the gateway thought he had heard or seen something – Ranklin couldn’t make out which. Now Hakim, and Ranklin beside him, were both peering. Visibility was still only half a mile but the mist wasn’t a sudden curtain, just a gradual fading out. The trench was just the faintest of dark lines where you might see a man upright and moving quickly, certainly not one lying still or crawling slowly. Ranklin could see nothing.
Hakim said: “They might be sending the ransom.”
Cracks, whines and thuds shattered the air around them. Earth jumped from the patch in front of the doorway. They heard the distant rattle of a machine-gun.
Abruptly behind a nice thick wall, Ranklin growled: “Ca, cen’est pas une rancon.”
Lady Kelso looked up as Ranklin came in, moving cautiously on the uneven floor in the flickering lamplight. “So it’s started.”
“Yes.”
“Do I understand one man’s been killed already?”
“Yes. They all flocked to the front wall to return fire and one got his- got shot in the head. The rest are being a little more cautious now.”
“But there’ll be others?”
Ranklin nodded. “I think there’s worse to come.”
She stood up. “Well, I didn’t come here to be Florence Nightingale and I haven’t any first aid kit, but I’ve tended a few bullet and sword wounds before. They either got better or they died,” she added matter-of-factly.
Ranklin nodded without knowing why. “I came to ask if you’re ready to go if we can find a way out.”
“I understand there’s a secret way-”
“Then for the Lord’s sake-”
“No. They can’t take horses that way, and Miskal can’t walk. And anyway, on foot won’t they hunt us all down?”
“Not if we act like brigands and not soldiers. In this country a handful of rifles could hold up a battalion. But not cooped up here.”
She said: “If you can get Hakim to go, I’ll stay here with Miskal.”
“For God’s sake-”
“I don’t think they’d harm us. Not if you’re free to spread the word.”
She wasn’t being brave. Not what men usually call brave. Just . . . matter-of-fact, perhaps. Making the best of each moment that arrived.
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.