Captain Nemo_ The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius - Kevin J Anderson [128]
“We’re supposed to be allies,” Nemo said, digging in his heels.
“We’re supposed to be a hospital,” Nightingale snapped. “We tend the wounded without regard to which flag they salute. This man is too badly wounded to go back to the battlefield.”
“Nevertheless,” the caliph said, squaring his shoulders. His bald guards put their hands on the hilts of their scimitars. “He does not belong here. It is simply a bureaucratic matter.”
Florence Nightingale sagged. Like Nemo, she was all too familiar with the paperwork and ineptitude that characterized this entire war.
“You have my guarantee he will receive the proper care and treatment,” the caliph said, his voice more pleasant. “But this man must come with me. I am a caliph -- Caliph Robur.”
At the far side of the room, a soldier shrieked in pain. Two nurses held him down while a battlefield surgeon did his best to saw off the man’s left leg, but the surgeon had trouble getting the serrated blade through the thick femur.
The caliph looked at Nightingale. His black eyes were impenetrable, and he stroked the pointed beard on his narrow chin while the amputee continued screaming. “You do have wounded to tend to, nurse. Why are you questioning my legitimate orders?”
In disgust, Nemo held up his hand to stop further argument. “I will go with him. It makes as much sense as the rest of this war.” Though troubled, Florence Nightingale seemed more concerned about the new arrivals. Nemo followed the Turk, limping slowly. He looked back at the busy nurses; already Nightingale had gone to work with the flood of new victims. . . .
Caliph Robur had a cart and driver waiting outside, and the bald guards helped Nemo climb in. He saw no other legitimate Turkish soldiers, none of the brave but ragged fighters from the battlefield. These men seemed to follow their own law, with no regard for the overall battles. Without speaking to Nemo again, they mounted their prancing horses and set off from the hospital as another funeral pyre poured a column of greasy smoke into the sky.
The cart jostled away from the Sevastopol fortress. Every bump in the road sent jarring pains through Nemo’s side. Weak as he was, he endured the rough ride. He did not know how he could be effective on the battlefield, even to perform the less physically challenging tasks of engineering.
Instead, the caliph took him far from the battlefield, into an even worse situation. . . .
vi
Under cloudy skies, Robur’s escort led the wobbly cart far from French and British military trenches. They proceeded in silence across the rocky terrain on narrow, rugged roads. In pain, Nemo propped himself up to watch as they approached the battle lines held by Turkish forces, then went beyond the main camp to their own settlement. Many of the Ottoman soldiers slept on the ground beside smoky campfires built out of scrub brush.
When he called out questions, demanding an explanation, the cart driver ignored him, as did the scimitar-carrying guards. Robur himself rode ahead out of earshot. He seemed aloof from the rest of the Turkish military.
In the center of the sprawling camp, the caliph and his generals had erected large multicolored pavilions that bore clan markings. Deep in the heart of the broad encampment, the driver halted the cart in an open area surrounded by the caliph’s private tents, which blocked the view from outside. Nemo saw with sudden dread a line of well-armed guards -- none of them wearing the uniform of the Turkish troops -- standing around a fenced enclosure.
The thirty men gathered inside the fence wore the uniforms of French, British, and Sardinian troops. “I am to be a prisoner of war, then?” Outraged, Nemo tried to stand up in the cart, but the pain in his ribs struck him like a bolt of lightning. “I am a French citizen. You have no right to hold me, or any of these men.”
Caliph Robur rode over and gestured for his guards to “assist” Nemo in dismounting from the