“Where’s Michael?” she asked now.
I looked around. It was a good question. If he had indeed gone for weapons, he should have been back out on the terrace by this time. But there was no sign of him.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“They’ve stopped their portable weapons,” Kensie said, “and they’re setting them up to fire. Still out of effective range, against walls like this.”
“We’d probably be better down behind the armor of our own embayments and ready to fire back when they
get a little closer,” said Ian. “They can’t hurt the walls from where they are. They might get lucky and hurt some of us.”
He turned to El Conde.
“If you’d care to step down into one of the weapon embayments, sir—“ he said.
El Conde shook his head.
“I shall watch from here,” he announced.
Ian nodded. He looked at Padma.
“Of course,” said Padma. “I’ll come in with one of you—unless I can be useful in some other way?”
“No,” said Ian. A shouting from the approaching soldiers that drowned out the band music turned him and the rest of us once more toward the plain.
The front line of the attackers had broken into a run toward us. They were only a hundred meters or so now from the foot of the slope leading to the walls of Gebel Nahar. Whether it had been decided that they should attack from that distance, or—more likely—someone had been carried away and started forward early, did not matter. The attack had begun.
For a moment, all of us who knew combat recognized immediately, this development had given us a temporary respite from the portable weapons. With their own soldiers flooding out ahead, it would be difficult for the gunners to fire at Gebel Nahar without killing their own men. It was the sort of small happenstance that can sometimes be turned to an advantage —but, as I stared out at the plain, I had no idea of what we might do that in that moment that would make any real difference to the battle’s outcome.
“Look!”
It was Amanda calling. The shouting of the attack-
ing soldiers had stopped, suddenly. She was standing right at the parapet, pointing out and down. I took one step forward, so that I could see the slope below close by the foot of the first wall, and saw what she had seen.
The front line of the attackers was full of men trying
to slow down against the continued pressure of those
behind who had not yet seen what those in front had.
The result was effectively a halting of the attack as
more and more of them stared at what was happening
on the slope. _
What was happening there was that the lid of El Conde’s private exit from Gebel Nahar was rising. To the Naharese military it must have looked as if some secret weapon was about to unveil itself on the slope— and it would have been this that had caused them to have sudden doubts and their front line of men to dig in their heels. They were still a good two or three hundred meters from the tunnel entrance, and the first line pi attackers, trapped where they were by those behind them, must have suddenly conceived of themselves as sitting ducks for whatever field-class weapon would elevate itself through this unexpected opening and zero in on them.
But of course no such weapon came out. Instead, what emerged was what looked like a head wearing a regimental cap, with a stick tilted back by its right ear . . . and slowly, up on to the level of the ground, and out to face them all came Michael.
He was still without weapons. But he was now dressed in his full parade regimentals as band officer; and the gaita gallega was resting in his arms and on his shoulder, the mouthpiece between his lips, the long drone over his shoulder. He stepped out on to the slope
of the hill and began to march down it, toward the Naharese.
The silence was deadly; and into that silence, striking up, came the sound of the gaita gallega as he started to play it. Clear and strong it came to us on the wall; and clearly it reached as well to the now-silent and motionless ranks of the Naharese. He was playing Su Madre.
He went forward at a march step, shoulders level, the instrument held securely in his arms; and his playing went before him, throwing its challenge directly into their faces. A single figure marching against six thousand.
From where I stood, I had a slight angle on him; and with the help of the magnification of the screen on the watch camera next to me, I could get just a glimpse of his face from the side and behind him. He looked peaceful and intent. The exhausted leanness and tension I had seen in him earlier seemed to have gone out of him. He marched as if on parade, with the intent-ness of a good musician in performance, and all the time Su Madre was hooting and mocking at the armed regiments before him.
I touched the controls of the camera to make it give me a closeup look at the men in the front of the Naharese force. They stood as if paralyzed, as I panned along their line. They were saying nothing, doing nothing, only watching Michael come toward them as if he meant to march right through them. All along their front, they were stopped and watching.
But their inaction was something that could not last —a moment of shock that had to wear off. Even as I watched, they began to stir and speak. Michael was
between us and them, and with the incredible voice of the bagpipe his notes came almost loudly to our ears. But rising behind them, we now began to hear a low-pitched swell of sound like the growl of some enormous beast.
I looked in the screen. The regiments were still not advancing, but none of the figures I now saw as I panned down the front were standing frozen with shock. In the middle of the crescent formation, the soldiers of the Guard Regiment who held a feud with Michael’s own Third Regiment, were shaking weapons and fists at him and shouting. I had no way of knowing what they were saying, at this distance, and the camera could not help me with that, but I had no
doubt that they were answering challenge with challenge, insult with insult.
All along the line, the front boiled, becoming more active every minute. They had all seen that Michael was unarmed; and for a few moments this held them in check. They threatened, but did not offer to, fire on him. But even at this distance I could feel the fury building up in them. It was only a matter of time, I thought, until one of them lost his self-control and used the weapon he carried.
I wanted to shout at Michael to turn around and come back to the tunnel. He had broken the momentum of their attack and thrown them into confusion. With troops like this they would certainly not take up their advance where they had halted it. It was almost a certainty that after this challenge, this emotional shock, that their senior officers would pull them back and reform them before coming on again. A valuable breathing space had been gained. It could be some hours, it could be not until tomorrow they would be able to mount a second attack; and in that time internal tensions or any number of developments might work to help us further. Michael still had them between his thumb and forefinger. If he turned his back on them now, their inaction might well hold until he was back in safety.
But there was no way I could reach him with that message. And he showed no intention of turning back on his own. Instead he went steadily forward, scorning them with his music, taunting them for attacking in their numbers an opponent so much less than themselves.
Still the Naharese soldiery only shook their weapons
and shouted insults at him; but now in the screen I began to see a difference. On the wing occupied by the Third Regiment there were uniformed figures beginning to wave Michael back. I moved the view of the screen further out along that wing and saw individuals in civilian clothes, some of those from the following swarm of volunteers and revolutionaries, who were pushing their way to the front, kneeling down and putting weapons to their shoulders.
The Third Regiment soldiers were pushing these others back and jerking their weapons away from them. Fights were beginning to break out; but on that wing, those who wished to fire on Michael were being held back. It was plain that the Third Regiment was torn now between its commitment to join in the attack on Gebel Nahar and its impulse to protect their former bandmaster in his act of outrageous bravery. Still, I saw one civilian with the starved face of a fanatic who had literally to be tackled and held on the ground by three of the Third Regiment before he could be stopped from firing on Michael.