“Guns are no good,” old Corporal Ellison says, after being plied with whiskey, “because you can’t aim in the dark, and camels aren’t frightened off as easily as horses, or nomad bandits. Swords don’t work, because the camels are too tall, putting their rider far out of your reach. Landmines aren’t practical, and even if they were, a camel runs with its legs flailing in a thousand directions at once, and they never seem to step on them.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” a private interjects. He’s still young, he has only fought in a few minor skirmishes, and has yet to see real bloodshed. “That’s not how landmines work. No matter how much their legs flail, they’d still hit some.” He looks around at the sunburnt faces, their blank expressions baked on by the heat. “Wouldn’t they?”
Ellison shakes his head. “That’s what we thought, too. Around the time those poor bastards were dying at Lahij. The second time we tried to take Lahij, mind you. They attacked us that night. They got past our defenses, slaughtered us, and took off. Not one of them was hurt and not a single one of the mines went off. Not one. So we thought, they must have been duds. Send a few lads to dig them up, see why not.”
The enlisted men are silent now, staring at the corporal like children, transfixed by a bedtime story. They hardly blink as Ellison weaves his tale.
“Lost 30 something men in the night, and five more the next day, from our own landmines. I don’t know if it’s some magic that the Arabs use that we don’t know, or if the camels are just that damned lucky, but they’re slaughtering us out here.”
Private Beck, another old soldier who had been passed over for promotion three times, takes over the story. “The camels move too fast for creatures that size, and they cross the desert like crossing the road.” He spits into the fire. “They aren’t scared by the really dangerous places, where the armored cars sink and are buried by the winds, where the horses die of thirst and the men go mad from the heat.”
“And then there’s her,” the corporal begins, before being shushed.
The fire jumps and crackles. Their shadows are thrown out behind them as fluttering capes, dancing over the dunes like the phantoms of a child’s nightmare. The men pull their jackets tighter around them and shiver in the firelight.
“He’s right,” Beck says. “If not for her, we could do it. The Bedouin scatter if you give a real show of force, and the Arabs aren’t very organised as a people. If not for her, we would have won this blasted war.”
“Who is she?” a new recruit by the name of Copeland asks. “I heard-”
“Don’t believe anything that you heard,” another private interrupts. “Propaganda, spread by the Arab leaders. They’re just trying to scare us off.” He glares at Beck and Ellison. “You should be ashamed, spreading this nonsense.”
“No one’s paying you to listen,” Beck retorts, and makes a rude gesture.
The young man stands up and walks off in a huff. A few days ago he had been a proud soldier, eager to fight for King and Country. Now his uniform is filthy and his fine waxed moustache has wilted in the heat.
Ellison turns to the soldier who had been cut off. “What did you hear?”
Copeland licks his chapped lips and glances around nervously. “I heard she has a marking on her face-”
“She does,” Beck says. He inches closer to the fire. “Here.” He draws a finger over the scar that splits his face, dissecting his left eyebrow, scraping the lid, scoring across his nose and upper lip, before finally coming to a jagged rest at the angle of his jaw. “We match, her and I. Only hers is a blemish. White skin, dappled, like a horse’s coat.”
“I heard she’s cursed,” another soldier chimes in.
“If there’s a curse involved,” Ellison answers, “then we’re the poor fuckers under it.”
“They said it was a curse,” Beck says. He’s pulled some rations out of his pocket and chewing on something tough and brown. It might be a date, or a scrap of jerky, but at this point the soldiers will eat anything put in front of them.
“Who said it was a curse?” the young Copeland asks.
“Her Bedouin mercenaries.” Beck sprawls back against the sand.
Ellison takes this as a cue to carry on the story. “They captured Beck, you know,” he says, as if any of the boys had been here for more than five days. “Two years ago, outside of Medina. She came up on us at night. They always come at night.” He pauses dramatically, watching their frightened gazes shift to the darkened desert, until they realise he’s having them on. He laughs. “Really though, they do attack at night.”
“What happened?” a private asks.
“They attacked us, just they like always do. When they left, we were down fifteen men, and another five missing. We didn’t hear anything from those five for six months.”
“Eight months,” Beck says, still looking up at the sky.
“Right, eight months.” Ellison shrugs. “Whatever. The point is, after eight months, Beck here comes stumbling out of the bloody Nefud, missing two fingers and on the brink of death.”
The crowd glances at Beck, who obligingly lifts his left hand. He is in fact missing two fingers, the ring and pinky are only short stumps. He drops his hand back to the sand, and their attention shifts back to Ellison.
“He was delirious, rambling about cats in the desert, a secret citadel, and the powers of the girl who led the camel warriors.” Ellison smirks, and the crowd takes the cue and snickers. “After all, he’d just come out of the bloody Nefud. The hottest and driest part of this whole God-forsaken land. The natives even call it ‘God’s Frying Pan,’ it’s so damn hot. Of course we didn’t believe him.”
“But I was right,” Beck says quietly.
“Aye. He was right.” The fire leaps and crackles again. Ellison sighs and stretches his arms above his head. “I’m an old man, lads. I’ve seen too much shit to believe in miracles. I’m off to bed now, to get as much sleep as I can before the nightmare begins again tomorrow. If you still have a stomach for ghost stories, ask Beck.”
Ellison picks himself up, dusts the sand from his trousers, and, swaying admirably little, trudges off to his tent. A few of the new men disperse as well, but seven of them remain, looking expectantly at Beck.
“I suppose that’s my cue, isn’t it?” he says, heaving himself into an upright position. “What do you bastards want to know?”
“What did you see?” All of the privates ask, with only some variation. “When you were with her?”
“They took me back to the citadel. That’s what she called it, the citadel. I spoke enough Arabic to understand that whoever used to live there, some priests or something, abandoned the place a few years ago.” His gaze falls upon the fire, but he seems to be looking much farther away. “Vast libraries. Rich gardens, all kinds of plants. And the water was pumped up from somewhere under the earth, and it was so cold, and so clear. There were cats everywhere. Ellison can make fun, but I know what I saw.”
Someone whispers from across the fire. “What about her?”
Beck smiles. “Oh, she was something else. Her name is Akila. They followed her fearlessly, every last one of them. Men from a dozen different tribes, enemies before the war and now united. By her. She’s amazing.”
The questions come faster now, falling like rain, not the few sparse drops they’re glad to see in the desert, but like the long steady downpours of home.
“How old is she?”
“Did they torture you?”
“What happened to your hand?”
“What happened to your face?”
“How many of them are there?”
“What does she want from us?”
“Do they use magic?”
“What about Diamurge?”
At the last question, Beck’s face changes. “Who told you about Diamurge?”
The young soldier, his face still spotty and with a few blondish scraggles of beard, glances around nervously. “My brother was fighting in Germany, sir. He saw it happen, sir. He said Diamurge was going to the desert next.”
What remains of Beck’s hand is clenched into a tight fist. “Oh, Diamurge is here, all right. A fucking chaos demon, sitting just behind her shoulder and whispering in her ear. I’d still have ten fingers if not for that Scottish fuck.”
A respectful hush falls over those assembled. Someone breaks it. “What does he want here?”
“He wants her, of course. She was from Al-Qadir, before our boys blasted it off the map. There’s some prophecy about it, you know. The girl from Al-Qadir. She’s supposed to be a famous warrior in every world she’s been born into. He came all the way from fucking Marnet just to get to her. And he got her.”
Another question comes, soft and secretive, hesitant to be spoken. “How did you survive? How did you escape?”
Beck’s good hand traces a loose pattern in the sand. “Even the desert is survivable if you have the right skill set, boys. Camel butter, locusts, and something to drink can go a long way.”
Nervous glances are exchanged at ‘something to drink.’ They’ve all heard of the lengths some men go to, trying to avoid thirsting to death. They hope to their respective Gods that they will never have to do that.
“Of course,” Beck continues, “No one believed me. I came back and tried to tell everyone. Of the lost citadel, of the camel warriors, of Gods-damned Diamurge, out there in the desert. But someone higher up decided it would be unwise. Said it would cause panic. That’s when they instituted the NOTAC policy.”
“No tack?”
“N. O. T. A. C. ‘No One Talks About the Camels.’ If you do, you get stuck on some shit detail back in Cairo, and no one tells you anything important.”
The soldiers laugh a little, and then realise from the hellfire in Beck’s eyes that he’s serious. The laughter vanishes like piss in the sand.
Then they hear it. A hideous braying, like donkeys being slaughtered. Like the enormous guns at Aqaba being turned to target your ships. Like heavy machinery being dragged over stone. And the thudding of thousands of two toed feet, many kneed monstrosities bearing down on them. The men are on their feet at once, calling out orders, shouting for help, screaming incoherently. Weapons are already in hands and they are all ready to kill.
As the camels reach the top of the hill, the soldiers can see her. A dark face like the Bedu attackers arrayed around her, but with a streak of white across her face like a galaxy. She draws her blade and charges. The men who had sat by the campfire see Beck striding towards her, unarmed and hands outstretched. Ready for an embrace or for crucifixion. They see him only a moment before he is swallowed by the onrushing tide of camels.
For a lot of the men, Akila’s famous face is the last thing they see, her sword is the last that they feel, and that horrible noise is the last thing they hear. No one saw what happened to Beck. No one saw a lot of the lives lost and bodies seeming to vanish into the night. Maybe they were taken and maybe they ran. Either way, the fate they are heading towards, somewhere in the desert, will be a painful, lingering death. The blade or bullet would have at least been quick. This happens at every attack.
The survivors, if there are any survivors, don’t talk about it.
* . * . *
Author's Note: This story should actually be called NOTAC 5. It is the fifth (and latest) draft of a story written for the Kidd Tutorial called No One Talks About The Camels, and I got sick of writing about Akila and Diamurge and the Citadel and the cats and even the camels, so I changed the POV, setting, time frame, cast, and most of the plot. For a taste of NOTAC 4, keep scrolling.
Private Beck will face Akila Ghali again in Aullivard.
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