It was still pitch dark and drizzling gently when we set out, Miriam and I and a few others mounted, with the rest of those female crocodiles trotting behind. I didn’t reckon we’d gone far by sunrise, five miles perhaps, and then we were in a stony desolation of tall cliffs and deep ravines, rounding a mighty eminence of rock on our right hand and following a saddle that connected it to another towering flat-topped height a mile or so ahead, which came into full view as the dawn mist lifted and the sunlight struck it and turned it for a moment into a mountain of gold. I asked where we were.
“Selassie,” says Miriam, pointing ahead and then jerking a thumb at the cliff to our right. “Fala.”
These were the names I’d heard only yesterday, in Fasil’s room at Masteeat’s camp… yesterday, dear God, it seemed an eternity ago! I pictured that sand-table model and tried to match it to what I was seeing… yes, there below us was the road that Theodore had made for his artillery, winding between Fala and Selassie, with folk and carts moving along it, and gangs of what looked like men in chains. As near as I could judge we were coming from the southwest, and if you look at my map you’ll see what was about to come into my view as we rounded Fala.
Beyond the saddle, at the foot of Selassie, was a group of tents—or pavilions, rather, for they were larger and set apart from the camp of little bivouacs at the northern end of the long plain that I knew must be Islamgee. And at the far southern end of that plain, less than two miles from where I sat transfixed, was a great tower ing cylinder of black rock sprouting out of the plain like a column fashioned by some giant sculptor—and the reason I sat transfixed was that I knew what it was before Miriam said the word: “Magdala".
So there it was, the eagle’s nest, the stronghold where Mad King Theodore had held a handful of British and German cap tives for four years, his last outpost where he would be trapped with nowhere to run, for I didn’t doubt that Masteeat’s regiments would even now be marching to cut him off from that wilderness of peaks in the hazy southern distance. And there, below me on Islamgee, was his army—how many strong? Seven thousand, ten? Was he waiting there to meet Napier in the open, or would he retire into Magdala, pulling up the metaphorical drawbridge—gad, if he did, that rock would be a bastard to take by storm! Or might he even march to meet Napier, who must be close by now, surely… And on the thought I turned to gaze north-westwards, straining my eyes across that rock-strewn plain that stretched away across the Arogee plateau directly below us, five miles and more to a distant dark line running across our front, which I knew must be the chasm of the Bechelo. From it the King’s Road wound across the undulating land to Arogee and between Fala and Selassie to the very foot of Magdala.
Surveying that broken ground, bordered by hills and gullies, it struck me that Theodore could do a sight worse than choose the third course—advance beyond Arogee to lay ambushes in the rough country bordering his road; better that than being besieged in Magdala or meeting our people on the flat plain of Islamgee where they’d make mincemeat of him in open battle…
Miriam gave a cry of excitement and stood in her stirrups, shading her eyes and pointing—and as I followed her finger I felt that same wild thrill of disbelief giving way to joy that I’d felt in the garden of Lucknow when we’d heard, ever so faint on the morning air, the far whisper of the pipes that told us Campbell was coming. For it was there, through that shimmering heat haze and the last wisps of mist, on the lip of the plateau beyond the Bechelo… as though to a cue, the last actor was coming on to the stage, with no sound of pipes or rumble of gunfire, heralded only by tiny shining pinpricks of light barely visible in the dusty distance, and I’d ha’ given a thousand for a glass just then, for I’d seen ’em too often to be mistaken—lance-points catching the morning sun… But whose? Bengali Native Cavalry? Scindees? For instinct told me they must be ours, and now it was confirmed by eyes that were younger and sharper than mine.
"Farangil” cries Miriam, with an added oath. “On Dalanta! The Negus was right—those vermin of Dawunt and Dalanta should have been destroyed! They have lain down before your people! Aiee, they come! See there, they come!”
“How d’ye know they’re my people?”
I didn’t know, then, that Theodore had fallen out with the tribes on the Dalanta plateau, which lies north of the Bechelo river, slap across Napier’s line of march, and that the obliging niggers had cleared the way for us. [42] But I could read the consternation on Miriam’s pretty face.
“They can be no one else! We had word when they crossed the Jedda three days ago; now they are on the lip of the Bechelo, and once across the ravine…” She gave a disgusted shrug and spat, and I gazed towards salvation and concluded reluctantly that I daren’t try a run for it, not on a miserable Ab screw that was bound to founder within a mile. Besides, all I had to do was wait; Napier was far closer than I’d dared to hope, and even with the Bechelo chasm to cross, which I knew from Fasil’s model was three-quarters of a mile deep, he couldn’t be more than two days’ march away. I absolutely smacked my palm in delight, and Miriam cried out scorn fully:
“Ha! You rejoice at their coming? But what of their going, when the Amhara drive them like sheep back to Egypt?”
I knew she didn’t believe it, just from her sullen scowl. “If the Amhara are mad enough to try, they’ll find those sheep are wolves,” I told her. “They’ll eat your army of peasants at a bite… no, they’ll not need to, for their guns will blow your rabble to bits, and the elephants will trample the dead.” Unless Theodore has the sense to go to ground on that bloody rock, I might have added, but didn’t.
“Elephants!” She shuddered; they’re mortal scared of jumbo, you see, being convinced he can’t be tamed. She looked thoughtful, and as we rode on I guessed she was wondering how she’d fare in person if Theodore took a hiding. Sure enough, after a moment:
“Suppose your people triumphed… what would they do to Habesh?”
“To a pretty lass like you, you mean? I know what I’d do.”
“No!” cries she fiercely. “You would protect me!”
“Would I now? In gratitude for wanting me fed into the fire?”
“You were a prisoner then!” She rode closer, and said in a low tone, “Now, if your people triumphed, you could do me good… and I would be grateful.” Softly, with her knee against mine, if you please.
“My dear, you’re a girl after my own heart,” says I. “But what if your side won, eh? They won’t… but just suppose…”
“Then I would protect you from the wrath of Theodore! As I shall, even now.”
“I doubt if he’ll be wrathful with me just now,” says I. “Not with the British Army on his doorstep.”
She stared at me. “You do not know him! Oh, believe me, ras of the British, you know him not at all!”
In fact, she was wrong; I did know him, all too well—but I’d forgotten, you see. I thought of him as the well-spoken soldier I’d mistaken for a bodyguard—given to sudden bursts of temper over trifles, if you like, and didn’t care two straws about roasting an enemy, but that’s African war for you. But I’d not associated that man, who’d seemed to be sane enough, and a reasoning being, with the ghastly tales I’d heard of atrocities, of women and children massacred, of frightful tortures practised on countless victims… I’d forgotten Gondar, and that dreadful garden of the crucified. Yet that horror had been the work of the intelligent, earnest man who’d cross-examined me so briskly, and smiled and joked and dallied with the bonny bint riding beside me. It didn’t seem possible… until we rode down from the Fala saddle to the camp below Selassie. Then it became all too horribly plain.