and breed bulls, Ibrahim removed from his cartridge belt the paper Kasli had written for him. He was memorizing the English letters painted on Miriam’s house. G-O-D B-L-E-S-S T-H-I-S H-O-U-S-E. Those letters and the green cross, the Christians’ symbol.
Kasli and his fellow deserters trudged on foot alongside the murahaleen, who regarded them with the special contempt horsemen reserve for those who cannot ride. When the time came, however, the Nuban turncoats would become passengers in the saddle, mounting up to ride double into the attack.
The radio carried by the militiaman alongside Ibrahim hissed, a voice came out, and the radio operator answered.
“Ya! Ibrahim,” he said. “It is Colonel Ahmar. He will soon be ready to begin shelling. He wishes to know when you will be ready.”
This was the first time Ibrahim had been issued a radio. He found it an annoyance. The colonel was always calling him about one thing or another. “Tell him soon.”
Today was the Christian Sabbath. Kasli had said the rebel soldiers would be relaxed, the townspeople would be not in their fields but drinking marissa in their houses. No one would be expecting an attack from the ground in the rainy season. Still, the colonel was not taking any chances. According to Kasli’s intelligence, the rebel garrison was unassailable. Except for a single narrow gap, it was locked on all sides by steep, well-defended ridges. To seize the garrison, the ridges would have to be taken first; to take the ridges, the defenders would have to be decoyed into leaving their positions. This was to be accomplished, inshallah, by Ibrahim’s murahaleen. They would attack New Tourom, which was on ground suitable for cavalry. The town was very important to the rebel commander—so Kasli had spoken—and he would rush men to meet the threat against it, creating breaches in the ridges’ defenses. The second column—the militia infantry marching a few kilometers away on Ibrahim’s left—would pour through the breaches and seize the ridges, then swoop into the valley and destroy the garrison.
The murahaleen would be given their usual license to loot and to capture women and children. No other prisoners would be taken, except for two—the rebel commander and his foreign wife. They were to be turned over to Kasli, who had asked for the privilege of executing them. That was to be his reward for his services.
Ibrahim was curious to see the foreign woman. Kasli had talked about her a good deal—a spy for the Americans, he’d said. What the Americans had to do with anything, Ibrahim didn’t know, but he intended to talk the Nuban out of executing her and give her to him. An American woman would be a very valuable prize, fetching a high ransom.
Clouds were forming, high clouds like horse-tails, portents of a storm. Hamdan noticed them too and frowned. As cattlemen, they prayed for rain; as fighters, for dry weather. They heard an odd sound in the distance, a ringing. Kasli came over and said it was made by the bell of the Christian church in New Tourom.
“We are close enough. You should make ready now.”
At Ibrahim’s arm signal, the riders wheeled out of the wadi, spurring their mounts up the bank and onto a rolling plain behind a low ridge, rocky and treeless. The town, Kasli informed him, was beyond the ridge, less than one kilometer away. Hidden by the rise in the ground, the murahaleen formed into battalions according to lineages and clans. Ibrahim’s lineage, the Awlad Ali, were in the foremost ranks. He looked back and was moved by the sight—mounted warriors massed on the plain, Kalashnikovs braced butt-first on their thighs, the manes of brown, black, and white horses ruffled by the breeze, talismans flapping from rifle barrels. He turned to the radio operator. “Tell the colonel we are ready.”
As he waited for the shelling to begin, he knew the battle would not follow the tidy plan—he had been in too many fights to believe otherwise—but if God were with him and the Brothers, they would prevail. The muted crack of mortars came from his left. The bombs burst atop the ridge, close enough to shower dirt and rocks on the murahaleen. Horses shied and whinnied. Barakat, accustomed to such noises, remained steady.
“Ya Allah!” he said to the radio operator. “Tell those fools they almost hit us!”
In a nervous voice, the militiaman delivered this message. A long silence preceded the next reports of mortars. Ibrahim heard the bombs thudding somewhere to his front—on the town, he assumed.