Ortho ate his subordinate’s share of the meager repast, stripped himself to his richly laced kaftan, stuck a knife in his sash, picked up a sword and a torch and went out.
The general was short of cavalry, unwilling to risk his precious bodyguard, and had therefore not ordered them into the attack. Ortho was going nevertheless; he was not in love with fighting, but he wanted money—he always wanted money.
He walked along the camp fires, picked ten of the stoutest and most rascally of his rascals, climbed out of the gully and came in view of the beleaguered kasba. It was quite a small place, a square fortress of mud-plastered stone standing in a gorge of the Major Atlas and filled with obdurate mountaineers who combined brigandage with a refusal to pay tribute. A five-day siege had in no wise weakened their resolve. Ortho could hear drums beating inside, while from the towers came defiant yells and splutters of musketry.
“If we can’t get in soon the snow will drive us away—and they know it,” he said to the man beside him, and the man shivered and thought of warm Tafilet.
“Yes, lord,” said he, “and there’s naught of value in that roua. Had there been, the Sari would have not thrown the looting open. A sheep, a goat or so—paugh! It is not worth our trouble.”
“They must be taught a lesson, I suppose,” said Ortho.
The man shrugged. “They will be dead when they learn it.”
A German sapper slouched by whistling “Im Grünewald mein Lieb, und ich,” stopped and spoke to Ortho. They had worked right up to the walls by means of trenches covered with fascines, he said, and were going to blow them in two places simultaneously and rush the breaches. The blacks were going in first. These mountaineers fought like devils, but he did not think there were more than two hundred of them, and the infantry were vicious, half-starved, half-frozen, impatient to be home. Snow was coming, he thought; he could smell it—whew!
A pale haze blanched the east; a snow peak gleamed with ghostly light; surrounding stars blinked as though blinded by a brighter glory, blinked and faded out. Moon-rise. The German called “Besslama!” and hurried to his post. The ghost-light strengthened. Ortho could see ragged infantrymen creeping forward from rock to rock; some of them dragged improvised ladders. He heard sly chuckles, the chink of metal on stone and the snarl of an officer commanding silence.
In the village the drums went on—thump, thump; thump, thump—unconscious of impending doom.