Witch of the Sahara

Chapter 1A WOMAN ON HORSEBACK Trooper Podolski, of the French Foreign Legion, turned his back to the wickedly cold desert wind blowing from the distant Atlas Mountains, and peered again to the East to see if there was any red sign of day. He wished he was back in the barracks in Dini Salam where he could have wrapped himself in a woolen blanket. Dini Salam was both a breeding ground for flies and an oven, where the Sahara sun mercilessly scorched you, but it was still better than this lonely desert that wanted to finish you off with its heat during the day and then to make you shake from the cold at night. Podolski wondered what on earth had made him angry at the Russians. If he hadn’t have got angry with them because they had occupied his homeland, Poland, he wouldn’t have to be standing guard in the cold wind on this god-forsaken sand dune. Here, however, at his lonely outpost, he made a gesture with his hands, a gesture of acceptance. For what did it help to dwell on this now? He was in the French Foreign Legion and that was the end of it. The French Foreign Legion must guard the Sahara and its inhabitants. “Cursed Doelaks,” sighed Podolski out loud. “If they didn’t get it into their heads to raid caravans, I wouldn’t have had to stand here now. They must just shoot the whole bunch of them, then there would be an end to this nonsense,” Podolski said bitterly. He felt a slight tingling down his spine and quickly swung around, carefully peering into the dark, trying to see if he could spot an enemy creeping up on him. However, it was still too dark to see well. So, he drew a circle around him on the ground with the bayonet that he had attached to his Lebel rifle. Then he quickly swung the firearm around him again. Because the Doelaks were worse than cats, silent, virtually invisible when the light was faint and totally deadly. Podolski thought of that horrible night at the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, when the Doelak assassins cut the throats of all a Legion’s regiment’s sentries before they knew what was happening. But trooper Podolski found nothing. There was only the thin whistle of the wind blowing through the sparse scrub and desert grass growing here and there on the crest of the dune. If only the day would come, yearned Podolski. If only one could see. He couldn’t understand why the commander in Dini Salam had not yet sent a proper expeditionary force against the Doelaks. They should have been wiped out long ago. But the ways of the commanders of the Legion were beyond understanding. All they did each time was to send a small group of Legionnaires to protect each camel caravan. Several caravans, together with their guards, had been eliminated by the bloodthirsty Doelaks just the previous week. Podolski’s musings suddenly stopped and he felt utterly cold there where he stood, even colder than the touch of the dawn wind. Could that have been the whinny of a horse? He could have sworn that he had heard something. Something not far, perhaps behind the next dune, which now grew like a big black whale in the dark before him, as the day moved slowly out from behind the earth. Podolski immediately loaded the Lebel, doing it slowly and silently as they had been taught. He suddenly wondered how many hours he had spent in the awful sun on the parade ground, just to learn how to silently load a Lebel. There was only a very slight click sound when he slid the bolt open and then closed it. He stared at the dune in front of him, concentrating intensely on its dark crest. Then he turned slowly around in a circle, exploring the area around him. His trained ears looking for the slightest noise... But there was just the hissing of the wind and nothing more. Perhaps he only imagined he heard something. Perhaps his nerves were too tense. If only it would become day, a day so clear you can see an enemy’s eyes! Podolski completed the circle and then stared eastward again from where the saving light of the day would come. And then trooper Podolski, formerly of the Polish army and now an ordinary private in the Foreign Legion, suddenly stiffened as if he had been shot through the heart. No longer aware of the singing wind. No longer feeling the Lebel in his cold hands. Not knowing whether to breathe. Because in front of him, on the crest of the red dune, black against the first thin glow of the day, stood a rider. Black as a statue. A still silhouette, threatening and motionless. Podolski swallowed heavily, moving his tongue over his dry lips. “Doelak,” he whispered in the wind, almost choking on the word, so dry was his throat. He glanced around him quickly, concentrating fervently. He imagined that every shrub and clump of grass was an enemy, with the dreaded curved short dagger and the equally dreaded curved sword in their hands. When Podolski looked east again, he saw others. They appeared on the crest like dark shadows next to the first rider. And still they came, one after another, until they all stood mounted on the crest. The Polish trooper waited no longer. He jumped up and sprinted back to the camp, that the few Legionnaires had pitched in a circle around the camel caravan… He ran hunched over to a small tent on one side of the camp. The camp was still quiet. Everyone was still asleep with one or two snoring so that Podolski imagined the Doelaks could hear them up on the dune. Here and there a camel sighed satisfied. Podolski entered the small tent and shook the sleeping man lying on the cot bed by the shoulder. “Sergeant, mon Sergeant,” said Podolski. “Doelaks, at four hundred paces eastward.” The young sergeant Lazarre almost pushed the anxious Pole over as he jumped out of bed. “How many?” he urgently asked as he grabbed his revolver’s holster and hurriedly belted it on. “A good forty, there could be more. I didn’t wait,” Podolski said. “Mon dieu!” Lazarre said out loud, sticking his kepi on his head while rushing out of the tent. “Wake up your comrades,” Lazarre commanded Podolski, “but don’t fret. Maybe those heathens haven’t seen us yet. Could be that they are passing us by?” But the young sergeant knew that he was being optimistic. Doelaks are among the best spies in the world and it would be a miracle if they passed by a caravan that lay here in the open between two dunes. Podolski roughly shook the other Legionnaires awake. Some protested and moaned at the invasion but they all immediately got to their feet and grabbed their Lebels. Lazarre himself got in among the Arab hawkers and roused them quietly. Some camels protested loudly and Lazarre felt as if he could hit their big mouths with the butt of his revolver. Whilst the camp was silently waking up, some of the other sentries came running in. “Form a circle!” commanded Sergeant Lazarre hoarsely in a stage whisper. “Number off so long.” Forming a circle was the only tactic to use there in the open when the Arabs would far outnumber the few Legionnaires. As the men form a circle, they numbered off. Then the even and odd numbers would take turns to fire, alternately, in order to maintain a constant gun fire. In this way, some soldiers could load while the others continued to fire their weapons. This tried-and-trusted tactic of the Foreign Legion was so well known to the men that they were prepared in seconds. Around the Arab hawkers and their pack animals, knelt the thin line of Legionnaires with the Lebels in their hands. In the middle of the circle stood Sergeant Lazarre, his heavy Luger revolver ready in his right hand, while still giving orders to the Arabs. Some he sent in between the Legionnaires to take up position with their outdated ancient muzzle loaders. Others he ordered to tie the camels together and to restrain them. It got light quickly, because here in the Sahara the day comes suddenly, just like the night. By now there was a bright red band in the East, and one could see better. One could even make out shrubs on the nearest dune, when moments earlier they were still veiled by the dark. “The odd numbers will fire first,” ordered Sergeant Lazarre. “It will be rapid fire and make every shot count. We are fifteen and they are probably more than fifty. I will fire the first shot with my revolver, this will be your sign to fire the first volley. Mes amis, this morning you must shoot like you’ve never shot in your miserable lives, otherwise the vultures will soon come to play between you. I know you can. Remember, you are soldiers of the Foreign Legion. Long live France!” Lazarre’s head rings. This is not his first skirmish with the Doelaks. He knows them. He has seen their torture. He has seen men staked out on the hot sand, how their nails were torn out... how their tongues were split... how their eyelids were cut off... “Mes amis, we must win,” he says, and it is a funny, urgent command and his voice sounds unsteady. “This morning we cannot lose, you know what awaits us.” “Mon Sergeant,” said Schmidt, a German with a big red face, pointing upwards. Lazarre looked up and what he saw filled him with resentment and fear. High above the dunes, the first vultures circled, insensitively and boldly, as if preparing for the outcome of the battle. “Vultures have good noses,” said Podolski, and the laughter went like a ripple through the little circle of men. Lazarre closed his eyes and once again he was grateful for the courage of these desert fighters, some of them urchins from the streets of many cities, some of them men weighted by conscience. Scoundrels, murderers and yet some who had innocently fallen by the wayside, but all braver than brave, all almost completely without fear. “Those cursed bald necks are knocking on the wrong door,” Lazarre said encouragingly, and he looked back at the wheeling birds. “Where do you shoot a Doelak, mon Sergeant?” asked someone. “Between the eyes, mon ami,” replied the sergeant confidently while playing with the trigger of his revolver. “Silence!” Lazarre said suddenly. Above the whirring of the wind they could hear it; the sound of many hooves beating on sand. “Here comes the heathen,” said Levy, a Jew who had fled from Tel Aviv. “Rifles ready!” spat the order from Lazarre’s mouth. Above the whirring of the wind, there was the single clash of steel, as the bolts of the Lebels were quickly pulled back and snapped closed again. The clash of the rifle bolts was still floating on the wind when the first Arabs appeared on the crest of the dune nearest to the East. Their white mantles bulging and flapping in the wind the Doelaks sat firmly seated on the backs of their horses as only a proud Doelak can. “Mon Sergeant,” whispered, Petacci, a small thin Italian, suddenly from behind Lazarre, “Look there!” The sergeant swung around to see a whole line of Arabs appear behind them on the top of another dune. A cold shudder went down the Frenchman’s spine. He felt that amazing sense of powerlessness that one feels when you know you’re lost. In those few seconds between him and death, he thought diligently of a way to survive, but he came up empty. He found himself only able to stare in terror at the vague glint of the first light on the Arabian scimitars, those curved thin steel blades they held aloft so proudly. But he didn’t have much time for fear. There were still some dreadful moments that he could fill with courage. “Mes Legionnaires, ready!” bellowed Lazarre while pulling back the hammer of his revolver. The next moment, more than two hundred Arabs came thundering down from the dunes onto the small circle of men, their fingers twitching on the triggers of their rifles.