Where the Light Falls(128)

“Where are they going?” André asked, looking at one such camp, where a group of children had broken off stalks of papyrus reed and were using them to duel one another outside a cluster of tents.

“They are fleeing,” Ashar answered.

“Why?”

“They fear the Mamelukes more than the French.”

It was late morning, and the column paused for a water break. André and Ashar sat along the bank of the Nile, their canteens filled, awaiting the orders to resume the march.

“What are they like?” André asked. “The Mamelukes.”

“They are like the desert,” Ashar answered after a thoughtful pause. “Fierce. Unforgiving. Unrelenting.”

“But…how do they survive out here?”

“The desert is their home. It is what they know.”

“They have no permanent homes?”

“Some of the Mameluke chieftains have great houses in the cities, palaces adorned with women more beautiful than you could possibly imagine.” Ashar sighed wistfully, then looked back to the endless sand dunes stretched out before them. “But they are nomadic warriors. Horsemen. Their women and children move with them as they go.”

André picked at a reed, tying a bow with its stalk. “Are there many of them?”

Ashar nodded. “Beyond count.”

André whistled. Austrians and Prussians were a formidable enemy, to be sure, but a familiar one at least, their tactics and weapons like those of the French. These desert horsemen seemed to come from a place and time that none in their army had ever known. André eyed Ashar again, with that recurring sense that although he was familiar with his friend, he did not truly know him.

“The Mamelukes are a proud order,” Ashar continued. “And why should they not be? They were brought to this country by Egyptians to be our slaves. Within a few decades they went from slaves to becoming the masters of Egypt. Now they simply have a new enemy to slaughter.”

“Are we getting close to their territory?”

“My friend, look around.” Ashar raised his arms, embracing the entirety of the desert. “It is all their territory.”

André nodded, thinking a moment before he continued. “I have served under many generals in my time. Some were truly great; others were not. But this Bonaparte fellow is unlike anyone I have ever seen. He fears nothing and yields to no one. He moves his armies faster than many men would think possible. And the men who were with him in Italy seem to have some sort of”—André laughed in spite of himself, reaching for his words as he plucked a handful of river grasses—“some sort of inexplicable devotion to him, as though he were a god. I’m not sure how all of this will end, but I find myself thinking—believing—that as long as Napoleon Bonaparte leads this army, we will be victorious.”

Ashar held his friend’s gaze before turning his eyes back toward the flowing river. He cupped a pebble in his hand, which he now tossed into the water. “It will be up to God,” Ashar said, “and the desert.”





July 1798

After two weeks of marching, the camp pulsed with an unmistakable hum of excitement; word spread that evening, moving among the men in hushed but urgent whispers, that they had nearly reached Giza, the riverside city of pyramids just across the Nile from Cairo.

Ashar, with his seemingly endless knowledge of Egyptian lore, was the most sought-after man around the campfires that night, where he regaled the men with tales of the afterlife and the ancient belief that each soul crossed a river at the end of his days to dwell among the immortals.

André, like dozens of others, sat before his friend, listening. Tonight Ashar was describing to the soldiers a large monument, not far from the great pyramids, that bore the body of a lion and the head of a man. “We call him the Sphinx,” Ashar said, to dozens of rapt faces. “And he guards the Valley of the Kings from any who would seek to plunder the pharaohs’ wealth.”

“Major Valière?”

André turned at the sound of his name and saw one of the cavalry orderlies cutting through the camp. “Yes?”

“Major Valière?” The aide squinted, his face visible in the glow of the surrounding campfires. “The general has requested your presence at Commander Bonaparte’s briefing, sir.”

“Which general?” André asked.

“General Dumas.”



André recognized only Dumas and Murat among the officers assembled in Bonaparte’s command tent. The group numbered perhaps thirty, the commanders of various divisions and their aides clustered obediently behind them. General Bonaparte sat at a desk sprawled with maps, letters, and troop reports. He wore spectacles as he examined a parchment, undistracted by the growing murmur of the assembled group.