“Here life has death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.”
“That's beautiful, Mr. Swinburne,” Sister Raghavendra whispered.
The sun climbed and the heat intensified.
Three hours passed.
They were too tired to dream.
Herbert Spencer's polymethylene-wrapped canister-shaped head slowly turned until the three vertical circles of his face were directed at the king's agent. He watched the sleeping man for many minutes. Very quietly, the pipes on his head wheezed, “Time, Boss, is that which a man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.” Then he looked away and sibilated, “But for us, only equivalence can lead to destruction-or transcendence.”
He sat, motionless.
“Wake up! Wake up! We're attacked!”
Herbert Spencer's trumpeting shocked them all out of their sleep.
“We're attacked! We're attacked!”
“What the devil-?” Trounce gasped, staggering to his feet.
“Grab your rifle,” Burton snapped. “Be sharp and arm to defend the camp!”
He winced, realising that he'd uttered the very same words back in '55 at Berbera; the day a spear had transfixed his face; the day his friend William Stroyan had been killed; the day John Speke had begun to hate him.
There was a thud, and Trounce went down.
A wild-looking man stepped over him and jabbed the butt of a matchlock at Burton's head. The king's agent deflected it with his forearm, lunged in, and buried his fist in his assailant's stomach.
From behind, an arm closed around the explorer's neck and the point of a dagger touched his face just below the right eye.
“Remain very still,” a voice snarled in his ear. Burton recognised the language as Balochi-a mix of Persian and Kurdish.
He froze, tense in the man's grip, and watched as brigands rounded up his companions. They were big men with intimidating beards and flowing robes, wide blue pantaloons, and colourful sashes around their waists. They were armed with matchlocks, daggers, swords, and shields.
Herbert Spencer-who they obviously regarded as some sort of exotic animal-was surrounded and roped. With his enormous strength, he yanked his captors this way and that, throwing them off their feet, until one of the bandits raised a gun and fired a shot at him, at which point Burton, afraid that his friend would be damaged, called, “Stop struggling, Herbert!”
The brass man became still, and his attackers wound him around and around with the ropes then bound him to a tree trunk.
“Goat ticklers!” Pox screeched from somewhere overhead.
Burton was dragged over to the others. The two women were pulled aside, and, with their arms held tightly behind their backs, were forced to watch as the men were lined up and pushed to their knees.
“I say!” Swinburne screeched. “What the dickens do you think you're playing at? Unhand me at once, you scoundrels!”
A heavily built warrior strode over. He sneered down at the diminutive poet and spat: “Kafir!”
“Bless you!” the poet replied. “Do you not have a handkerchief?”
The big man cast his eyes from Swinburne to Honesty, then to Trounce, Burton, and Krishnamurthy.
“Who leads?” he demanded.
“I do,” said Burton, in Balochi.
The man moved to stand in front of him.
“Thou has knowledge of my language?”
“Aye, and I say to thee that there be no majesty and there be no might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great, and in his name we ask for thy mercy and thy assistance, for we have suffered severe misfortune and have a long journey before us.”
The Baloch threw his head back and loosed a roar of laughter. He squatted and looked into Burton's eyes.
“Thou speakest very prettily, Scar Face. I am Jemadar Darwaas. I lead the Disciples of Ramman. Who art thou?”
“Some call me Abdullah the Dervish.”
“Is that so?” Darwaas pointed at Herbert Spencer. “And what is that?”
“It is a man of brass. A machine in which a human spirit is housed.”
“So! A whole man in a whole mechanism this time! Like Aladdin's djan?”
“Like that, aye. He is concealed within material that protects him from the sand, for if grains of it got into him, he would die.”
While he spoke, Burton took stock of the men into whose clutches his expedition had fallen. He judged there to be about sixty of them-all hardened desert warriors-marauders from Belochistan a thousand miles to the northeast.
“Thou art a storyteller, Abdullah.”
“I speak the truth.”
“Then I would cut through the material and look upon this miraculous brass man of thine.”
“In doing so, thou shall kill him,” Burton advised, “and what would he then be worth?”
Jemadar Darwaas grinned through his beard. “Ah,” he said. “Now, O Abdullah, thou art truly speaking my language! He has value, eh?”
“The British government would pay a substantial ransom for him, and for these others, too,” Burton said, indicating his companions with a jerk of his head. “Especially for the women, if they are unharmed.”
Darwaas grunted. He drew his dagger and held it up, examining its sharp point. His eyes flicked from the blade to Burton's dark eyes. With a fluid motion, he stood, paced away, and began to speak in low tones with a group of his men.
William Trounce leaned close to Burton and whispered, “What was all that about?”
“I'm trying to talk him into holding us for ransom.”
“Why do that?”
“Because it'll buy us some time,” the king's agent replied.
Less than half an hour later, the brigands finished setting up their camp on the edge of the oasis, and the two women were taken to it and placed in a guarded tent.
Darwaas returned to the remaining captives, drew his scimitar, and levelled the point at Burton's face. “Thy people will be held until the British consul in Jeddah pays for their release,” he said. “But thee, Abdullah the Dervish, thee I shall fight.”
“Fight? For what purpose?”
“For no purpose other than I desire it.”
The Jemadar ordered his men to clear a circular area. The prisoners were dragged to its boundary and the bandits gathered around. Burton was yanked up and pushed forward. A warrior threw down a scimitar. It landed at the explorer's feet, and he bent, picked it up, and noted that it was a well-balanced blade.
Sir Richard Francis Burton was a master swordsman, but he much preferred fighting with a point than with an edge. The point demanded skill and finesse; the edge required mainly strength, speed, and brutality, though there were also a few techniques associated with it, in which, fortunately, he was well schooled.
He held the blade, narrowed his eyes at his opponent, and sighed.
Before leaving the wreck of the Orpheus, he'd attached to his belt a leather holster, and in that holster there was a very odd-looking pistol. It was green and organic-actually a eugenically altered cactus-and it fired venomous spines that could knock a man unconscious in an instant. His captives had not removed it, and he wished he could draw it now, for he would far prefer to render the leader of the Disciples of Ramman senseless than to hack at him with a blade. Sword cuts, unless they were to the head, neck, or stomach, very rarely killed quickly. Instead, they condemned the victim to hours-even days-of excruciating agony, often followed by infection and a lingering death. He knew, however, that the moment he went for his gun, matchlocks would be jerked up and fired at him.
Jemadar Darwaas stepped closer and brandished his scimitar. “How didst thou come by that scar on thy face, Abdullah?” he asked.
“A spear,” Burton responded. “Thrust by an Abyssinian.”
“Didst thou kill him?”