country which, as I’ve no doubt our croakers will have told you –’ he gave an amused snort ‘– is an impassable wilderness of unclimbable peaks and bottomless chasms in which certain disaster awaits if our supply should fail, or hostile tribes bar our way or lay waste the country, or Theodore himself engages us with overwhelming force, or any one of a hundred difficulties arises to bring us to a standstill.’
He paused to see how I was taking this, and gave one of his little tired sighs.
‘Well, Sir Harry, I can tell you that with your silver to pay our way, we’ll not fail of supply, if we move swiftly. The tribes …’ he shrugged, ‘are unpredictable and untrustworthy. Kussai of Tigre has thirty thousand warriors, and Menelek of Shoa and Gobayzy of Lasta each as many, but they will not trouble us unless we show signs of faltering or failure. Kussai offers us passage and assistance, and all three hope we shall depose Theodore. Then they will scramble for his throne.’
‘They’re mortal scared of him,’ put in Speedy. ‘Menelek besieged Magdala last year, but thought better of it. He and Gobayzy are still in the field with their armies, willing to wound but afraid to strike.’ He scratched his beard thoughtfully. ‘Can’t say I blame Gobayzy. He sent a message of defiance to Theodore last month, and Theodore gave his messenger the slow death – that’s half-cutting off the limbs at knees and elbows, twisting ’em to seal the arteries, and leaving the victim for the wild beasts. I’ve seen it done,’ he added, no doubt seeking to cheer me up.
‘Quite so,’ says Napier briskly. ‘It is of a piece with the atrocities he has been inflicting for years past on his southern provinces.’ He touched a spot on the map west of Magdala. ‘Gondar, where he has been repressing rebellion by wholesale slaughter, torturing tens of thousands to death, laying waste the countryside. Debra Tabor, which he has burned and whose inhabitants have suffered indescribable cruelties, crucifixions, mass burnings alive, and the like. He seems to have gone completely mad, for all Abyssinia is in a ferment against him, except for his army, and that is dwindling, we’re told, through constant desertions. At the moment he is leading it back to Magdala, but slowly, because he is carrying his heavy guns and like us is having to build his road as he goes, no doubt with the labour of rebels enslaved in Gondar.’
‘He always likes to have a few political enemies to slaughter from time to time,’ says Speedy. ‘He’ll execute ’em in hundreds along the way. Thank God our folk are in Magdala and spared that march! When I think of the torture and abuse they’ve suffered …’ His huge hands clenched on the spear lying across his knees, and he growled deep in his throat. ‘One o’ these days I’ll have a word with his majesty on the treatment of white prisoners!’
Napier received this with polite interest before resuming. ‘In any event, he will reach Magdala before we do. He may make his stand there. I hope and believe he will. But if he doubts his ability to withstand a siege, he may retire into the southern wilderness, taking the captives with him—’
‘Unless he’s chopped ’em first!’ grunts Speedy.
‘That, too, is a possibility,’ says Napier quietly. ‘Or he may march to meet us, and we must be prepared to fight him in the passes, perhaps even without our artillery if our transport should prove too slow. That would be a hard thing, but if we must we shall abandon guns, baggage, tents, porters, auxiliaries, and all the rest, and meet him with rifle and bayonet and sixty rounds a man, as we did against the Hassemezeia in the Black Mountain. God willing, we shall have done with him before the June rains, but if not we shall march and fight through them. And at need we shall follow him to the Congo or the Cape.’
They were the kind of words you’d expect to hear from a Brooke or a Custer, spoken with a heroic flourish and a fist on the table. Napier said them with all the fervour of a man reading a railway time-table … but I thought, farewell and adieu, Brother Theodore, your goose is cooked; this quiet old buffer with the dreary whiskers may not shout the odds, but what he says he will surely do. It remained to be seen what ghastly part he expected me to play in the doing. He touched the map again, drawing his finger in an arc south of Magdala.
‘Whether he flees, or is driven southward after we defeat him, that is where his line of retreat must be cut off. And that can be done only with native help – no, not Gobayzy or Menelek, who are not only untrustworthy but would certainly regard a request for assistance as weakness on our part, and might even turn on us. We must enlist a people who are implacable enemies of Theodore but have no political interest in his fate or, for that matter, in Abyssinia, which they regard simply as a source of plunder and slaves. They are the Gallas, of whom you may have heard. Speedy, you have the floor.’
‘Thank’ee, Sir Robert,’ says Speedy, and stood up, possibly to assist thought, for he stood frowning a moment, scratching his beard with his spear. ‘The Gallas,’ says he. ‘Aye. You remember the Ghazis in Afghanistan, Sir Harry? Well, the Gallas are cut from the same cloth – ferocious, cruel, mad as bloody hatters!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘No, I can give you a better comparison than the Ghazis – some fellows you know from the American West. Aye, the Gallas are the Apaches of Abyssinia! They seem to live only for raid and murder and abduction – the Lord alone knows how many youths and maidens they carry off each year and sell into Egypt and Arabia. You saw those burned villages and wasted fields on the way here? Those were Galla work. They are a monstrous crew, and as wicked and dangerous as any tribe in Africa. They loathe Theodore because they’re Mohammedans – so far as they’re anything – and he tried to Christianise ’em, mostly by fire and sword and massacre. He didn’t succeed, but he captured their great amba at Magdala, and made it his capital just so that he could keep an eye on ’em. And they’re waiting and praying for the day when they can tear him down!’
‘And with our arrival they believe that day may be coming,’ says Napier, and Speedy, who’d been going like a camp-meeting preacher, took the hint and sat down. ‘And we must convince them that it is at hand. They fear Theodore, with good cause, and they will not move against him unless they are certain that we are determined on his overthrow and will not rest until he is dead or our prisoner.’
So that was it. Flashy, ambassador extraordinary to a nation of bloodthirsty slave-traders, charged with the task of talking them into a war against a barbarian tyrant who was probably a good deal more civilised than they were themselves – that was what was about to be proposed, plain as print. Fortunately, it was impossible; there was something that Napier, in his eagerness to plunge me into the soup, had overlooked. Perhaps my relief showed in glad surprise which he misunderstood, for he nodded, with a glance at Speedy, who was gleaming in anticipation.
‘I see you read my mind, Sir Harry,’ says Napier. ‘Yes, it is a task for you, and you alone. I said no other man in the Army could play the part required – for it is a part, and one that you have played before, when you entered Lahore disguised as an Afridi horse-coper, when you smuggled Kavanagh out of Lucknow, when you spent months as a sowar of native cavalry at Meerut before the Mutiny.’ He was smiling again, no doubt at my ruptured expression. ‘But your unique fitness for the work aside, I know it is the kind of service that you have always sought, and excelled at, which is why, I am not ashamed to say, I thanked Almighty God in my prayers when the telegraph told me it was you who was bringing the silver from Trieste.’
It was no consolation to me that Speedy was regarding me with something like worship at this recital of my supposed heroics. Of all the godless suggestions! I tried to compose my features into the right expression of bewildered amused regret as I kicked his appalling proposal into touch.
‘But, sir, you’re forgetting something! Of course I’d do it like a shot, or any other useful work …’ Safe enough, thinks I, fool that I was. ‘… but I don’t speak Amharic, or any other local dialect, for that matter—’
‘But you do speak Arabic!’ cries Speedy. ‘That’ll serve your turn. There’s no lack of Arabic speakers up-country, especially among the Mohammedan Gallas, and Queen Masteeat is one of ’em.’
‘Queen who?’
‘Masteeat, Queen o’ the Wollo Gallas, the strongest – aye, and the most savage – tribe in the Galla confederacy.