Jo rode in the middle of the camel train alongside Abdul-Malik and Najid and some irritating kid called bin Shatam, who they didn’t seem to be able to shake. She didn’t talk, her usual optimism blunted by what Abdul-Malik had said.
Lulled by the steady rocking and swaying of the camel, the interminable vistas of desert, Jo’s mind was free to wander. She remembered her first trip to the Middle East. Before Istanbul, before Kebiria. When she’d been around nine or ten, her uncle had been stationed out in Israel on government business. Jo’s mother had taken her and her brother out for two weeks to visit him. The sights and sounds of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem had captivated her. For all the modern buildings and advertisements which had sprung up, it was easy to imagine that she’d stepped back into a world she had only imagined at Sunday School. Amid the crumbling stone and mud-brick streets where now businessmen and housewives and rabbis hurried this way and that about their business, little Josie had imagined prophets and pharisees and cruel Roman soldiers.
She tried to remember the Arabs she knew must have been there. The Palestinians in the margins of her Biblical adventure. Things had been bad then, she knew now. But then, when weren’t they bad? Jo didn’t tend to follow current affairs – her life was quite exciting enough, thank you very much – but the lads around UNIT HQ had mates and relatives in the regulars. In the quiet times between occasions when the Brig and Mike and the Doctor called on them to risk life and limb for Planet Earth, they’d gossip about military matters and what wars might be brewing. Last time she’d been in her own time, they’d been saying things were taking a turn for the worse out there again. An endless treadmill of violence and hatred. As a kid, she’d run through the middle of it, smiling and giggling. She hadn’t even noticed.
All that begins here, she thought.
And the Doctor’s more interested in his latest run-in with the Master.
~~~
Afternoon came. The sun was tortuous; any skin left open to its remorseless onslaught felt like it could crackle and catch light at any instant. Lawrence called a halt. Leaving the army in the lee of a rock outcrop, he and his lieutenants rode to the brow of a high ridge. Beneath them, the gleaming arc of the Hejaz Railway sliced across the landscape.
‘We can’t ride all the way to Mada’in Saleh,’ Lawrence said. ‘The Turkish force there’s too strong. By the time we get there the men and the camels will be weak. We’ll be picked off easily.’
‘We took Aqaba,’ Auda replied gruffly, as Lawrence knew he would. Aqaba had been his proudest day. Since they’d captured the harbour stronghold, the old warlord took any suggestion that there might be a limit to his Howeitat’s military capabilities as an almost personal affront.
‘Yes,’ Lawrence agreed, ‘we took it. We took it by surprise. We shall take Mada’in Saleh the same way. But not from the backs of camels.’
The Doctor had been listening silently till now, lost in thought. ‘You mean to use the railway, I presume? You think it can work?’
‘I’ve spent the last few months sabotaging this railway, Doctor. As far as the Turks are concerned, my only interest is in blowing up trains, not riding them. They’ll be completely unprepared.’
‘You mean to capture a train?’ asked Ali. A grin was already playing across his face.
‘Audacious. But risky. It wouldn’t take much for the Turks to get wind of it.’
‘Our attack will have to be decisive,’ Lawrence agreed. ‘And swift. Speed is of the utmost importance. We mustn’t delay the train so long as to raise suspicions. And we can’t let any Turks get away to raise the alarm. ’
‘I hope you mean by taking them prisoner,’ the Doctor said firmly.
‘Of course. What else would we do?’
‘Prisoners eat food and drink water,’ grumbled Auda. ‘The Turks cut their prisoners’ throats. Maybe they’re the smart ones.’
‘You’re not fighting for the Turks any more. The British have somewhat higher standards,’ Lawrence snapped. ‘Auda, this attack must be orderly; one could even say surgical. No looting. No shooting up the train. Can you keep your men under control?’
Auda snorted to show what he thought of that question.
Lawrence turned to the Doctor. ‘You see what I have to deal with? These desert Arabs live in a world of bright light and dark shadow. They understand subtlety about as well as my camel understands Homer. Left to their own devices, they’d strip that train bare within the hour. They’re a brave people, one can’t deny, but they’re also greedy, barbarous and cruel. And yet,’ he added with a grin, ‘they’re quite my favourite race.’
The Doctor reacted uncomfortably. ‘Yes, well how about we save the anthropological observations for later and start doing something about stopping a train?’
‘Very well.’ Lawrence pulled a pocket-watch from his robes and checked it. ‘We have around an hour, by my reckoning. I suggest we begin blocking the tracks.’
~~~
Tanrım, thought Mülâzım-ı Sani Mehmet Çetinkaya, this is a bleak land! It was months since he’d been plucked from his post at İskenderun and set to guarding trains in the Hejaz. The great red-ochre wastes of rock and earth and sand had long since lost their novelty. The train carriages were close, stifling and smelly, even with all the windows open. They’d been plagued by a cargo of irritating stowaway flies all the way from Amman. The soldiers slouched uncomfortably around the boxcar. They looked tired and bored. Çetinkaya couldn’t blame them. There was nothing to do on these endless journeys except hope that each run wouldn’t be disrupted by enemy action. Every Turk on the railway had grown to fear the Englishman Lawrence and his gaggle of motley pirates. Their bombs were indiscriminate, striking civilian and military trains alike. The Arabs fell on the survivors without mercy. The carnage was swift and brutal; then they would melt away back into the wilderness like ghosts.
It was a coward’s tactic, to Çetinkaya’s mind. He’d heard the chatter among the ranks. Every day it seemed more and more of the army were buying into the legend of Lawrence that the Western newspapers had begun to put about. He was some sort of superhuman, the whispers said. A modern-day Musa, Salah ad-Din or Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah. The uncrowned King of Arabia. Such foolishness was to be expected of these köylüler and taşralıların. Mehmet Çetinkaya held himself studiedly aloof. As far as he was concerned, the Englishman was nothing more than a bandit. If they ever crossed paths, Lawrence would witness the mettle of a true Turk.
The breeze from the open windows lessened. The train was slowing.
‘Sir?’ asked one of the men, abandoning his backgammon and reaching for his rifle.
Çetinkaya ignored him, rattling open the door from the front of the coach to the engine. One of the stokers was waiting for him by the tender. Soot and smoke had stained the pits and lines of his sand-blasted face black. He doubted the man ever managed to free himself of the crazed grime-tattoo.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded. ‘Why are we slowing?’
‘The line’s blocked,’ the man said apologetically. His accent spoke of one of the northern vilayets: Kastamonu or possibly Trebizond. Çetinkaya briefly wondered what chain of bureaucracy had seen him dispatched all the way down here. ‘Some idiot Bedouin’s let his camels go to sleep on the tracks.’
Çetinkaya swore in disbelief. Taking a firm grip on a handhold he swung himself out to the side of the tender. In the distance he could just make out the low mounded shapes of a handful of camels sitting unconcernedly on the rails. A small clutch of peasants stood around them, watching the train approach incuriously.
‘Tanrı aşkına!’ Çetinkaya exclaimed. He pulled his pistol and fired off a couple of shots into the air. The engine-driver followed up with three long blasts on the train’s whistle. The Bedouin were too far off to be able to make out their expressions, but they didn’t seem any more inclined to move.
‘They’ve always been a lawless bunch down here,’ the stoker complained with a shrug. ‘Even before the war the Bedouin never really admitted any authority but their own. Now the Revolt’s got them all riled up with talk of independence. Every so often you get one who decides to make a nuisance of himself.’
Çetinkaya had encountered them himself. Usually young hotheads or stubborn old leather-skins. Too immature or world-weary to care much about the consequences of their actions. It was hollow bravado. Their recalcitrance didn’t last long once the guns came out. He checked and reloaded his pistol. He was going to shoot one of this bunch, he decided, whether they moved or not. It might improve his mood.
Çetinkaya hopped down from the footplate the instant the train ground to a standstill. He was yelling at the Bedouin before he even touched the sand, jabbing the air with his pistol to emphasise his point. One of the old men looked up for for a moment as if in puzzlement, and took a swig from a goatskin and went back to whatever he was doing. It didn’t seem to be very much. God knows how these people filled their days. A couple of women in niqabs got up and shuffled slowly over towards him. One of them, Çetinkaya decided. He’d shoot one of them.
‘Is something the matter, Mülâzım-ı Sani?’ asked the taller of the women. The menfolk didn’t seem concerned that she was speaking to him. Barbarians. It was the first time he’d heard one of these peasant bitches talk. Tanrım, they had strange-sounding voices. High, lisping and bizarrely-accented. Her Arabic was a strange and archaic dialect even by local standards.
‘What are you doing?’ Çetinkaya demanded. ‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?!’
‘The camels were tired,’ the woman complained. ‘They needed to rest.’
‘There’s hundreds of miles of empty, featureless desert that doesn’t have a railway on it that they could rest on! Why do they have to stop on these few feet of it? You’re not seriously telling me it’s more comfortable for them?’
‘Yes, well,’ said the woman, her voice suddenly dropping an octave and taking on a distinctly masculine timbre. ‘I have to admit you’ve got me there.’
Before Çetinkaya could react, the second woman had whipped a pistol from her drapery and trained it on him.
‘Hands above your head, if you’d be so kind.’
With her free hand she tore off her veil, revealing blond hair and a youthful, grinning white face.
‘Lawrence,’ Çetinkaya hissed. He slowly raised his hands.
As Lawrence disarmed him, his companion pulled off his own veil. He was older, his hair a fluffy cloud of grey. Çetinkaya had no idea who he was, but he was evidently as English as Lawrence was.
‘I have to say, that went rather well, I thought.’ He was beaming with self-satisfaction. ‘The Time Lord larynx is an immensely flexible tool. With practice and a little talent, it’s possible to become literally a man of a thousand voices.’
‘All of them your own, apparently,’ Lawrence observed dryly. ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself, Doctor. This is far from over.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ At that moment, one of Çetinkaya’s men finally seemed to wonder what was going on and emerged from the carriage to investigate. The older Englishman reacted instantly. With a ludicrous shout of Haiii!!’ he yanked the startled youth off the step by his arm, flipped him heavily on to the hard earth. The unfortunate Turk uttered an incoherent, winded grunt and slumped back, apparently out cold. A couple more men followed him out a second later, their rifles already raised. The Doctor dispatched one with similar efficiency. Lawrence felled the other with a left hook square in the jaw.