Far from the choking jungles of the south, the land opened wide and unforgiving. The trees thinned until they disappeared altogether, giving way to immense windswept plains where dry grass bent beneath the sun and the pale breath of the desert shimmered along the distant horizon. Here the air did not suffocate with humidity; it pressed down dry and relentless beneath an enormous sky, leaving anything that moved exposed for kilometres.
Across that openness advanced another enemy column.
French colonial troops marched in measured order over the plain, their dark blue tunics and red trousers dulled beneath layers of dust while red fezzes drooped in the heat. Much of the fighting strength consisted of the Tirailleurs Sénégalais, African soldiers recruited from across French West Africa and placed beneath European officers. Rifles rested against their shoulders, ammunition belts crossed their waists and, to many of them, the uniform itself carried considerable prestige.
France paid them, though by European standards the wages were almost laughably small. A month's colonial pay might have vanished in a single day in Paris on food, tobacco and the ordinary expenses of city life, but few of these men had ever seen Paris or had any reason to judge their wages by Parisian prices. In their own villages and colonial markets, where money circulated differently and necessities cost far less, the same handful of francs could seem generous. The army also provided food, clothing and the visible prestige of serving as a soldier of one of the world's great empires. For many, that was enough.
White officers rode along the flanks and behind the ranks, cleaner and better supplied than the men beneath their command. Their clipped French orders passed through African sergeants and became something immediate and unquestionable: keep formation, maintain pace, watch the ridges. Behind the soldiers trudged the porters, bent beneath ammunition crates, food sacks, tents and tools, almost invisible beside the army whose survival depended upon their labour.
The plain around them appeared empty, but it was not.
Beyond the low ridges to either side, hidden below the crests and folds of the country, Fulani horsemen had been shadowing the column for some time. They had watched the French advance, counted the soldiers, marked the officers and waited until the long formation had placed itself exactly where escape would become difficult.
Then a horn sounded.
Its low note rolled across the grasslands and seemed to hang over the plain. Heads lifted throughout the column. Men turned toward the ridges.
"Ambush!"
Dark shapes rose against the sky.
Fulani cavalry poured over both heights in great flowing lines, hundreds of horsemen descending together as though the hills themselves had released them. Rifles flashed from saddles while other riders lowered long spears and leaned forward over their horses' necks. They did not advance with the measured rhythm of infantry. They came at speed, gathering momentum with every stride until the thunder of hooves rolled across the earth.
French officers shouted for formation, and the Tirailleurs responded quickly. The marching column folded inward, ranks turning outward toward both approaching ridges as rifles came up and bayonets flashed into place. Men stood shoulder to shoulder, breathing hard beneath the sun while the cavalry raced toward them from both sides.
"Ready!"
The ground trembled beneath their boots.
"Fire!"
The first volley crashed across the plain.
The front of the Fulani charge seemed to disintegrate. Horses screamed and collapsed headlong into the grass, throwing riders over their necks or crushing them beneath their own weight. Men spun from saddles with bullets through chests and faces. One horse rolled sideways beneath the animals behind it and vanished beneath a storm of hooves.
Yet the charge scarcely slowed.
The spaces left by the dead filled immediately.
"Reload! Fire!"
Another volley tore into them. More riders fell, more horses went down in clouds of dust and blood, but still the Fulani came. Their own rifles now cracked from the saddle, and men in the French ranks jerked backward as bullets punched through throats, cheeks and chests. One Tirailleur folded around a shot through the stomach. Another lost the back of his skull and collapsed between the men beside him.
The distance vanished.
The officers scarcely had time to shout again before the cavalry struck.
The impact destroyed whatever order remained. Horses smashed bodily into the ranks, breaking ribs and throwing men beneath their hooves while spears drove through uniforms and flesh with the momentum of the charge behind them. Bayonets stabbed upward into horses and riders, and rifles fired at such close range that muzzle flashes scorched clothing and skin.
One Tirailleur was skewered through the chest and lifted screaming from the ground before the rider twisted his spear and flung him aside. Another disappeared beneath a horse, his skull bursting against the hard earth as a hoof came down upon it. A Fulani rider took a bayonet through the belly, slid from the saddle with his intestines spilling after him and was trampled almost immediately beneath the next wave.
The French formation buckled and then simply ceased to exist. What followed was slaughter.
The porters threw down their burdens and ran across the open plain, but there was nowhere for men on foot to escape cavalry. Fulani riders swept after them without distinction. Rifles fired into backs at close range. Spears entered between shoulder blades and burst from chests. Men were dragged from the grass and cut down where they stood. Some seized stones, knives or tools once they realized that flight and surrender offered the same end.
None were spared. Every porter the riders caught was killed.
Tirailleurs who abandoned their weapons fared no better. Horses overtook them within moments, and long spears punched through fleeing bodies before being torn free as the riders continued onward. Those who stood their ground fought viciously, firing point-blank into horses, dragging riders from saddles and stabbing upward with bayonets even as hooves smashed men into the earth.
Soon the plain became a butcher's yard.
Dust hung thick above blood-soaked grass. Horses slipped upon torn bodies. Severed hands and arms disappeared beneath hooves. A wounded man crawled several metres with his abdomen split open before a horse crashed down upon his back and crushed him flat. Another was struck beneath the jaw by a spear that burst through the crown of his skull, leaving him twitching upright upon the shaft until the rider kicked the corpse loose.
At the centre of the carnage rode the man who had ordered the attack.
Lamido Umaru moved through the battle without the wildness of many of his warriors. He watched, chose his moment and struck with deliberate cruelty. In his hands rested a spear unlike the ordinary weapons carried around him, its steel brighter and finer, its balance too exact for the rough smithies of the interior.
He drove it through a French soldier's chest and ripped it free in a wash of blood. Another man rushed toward him with a bayonet, only for Umaru to turn the spear in a single motion and sweep the blade across his neck. The head spun away into the dust while the body stumbled two steps before collapsing.
Umaru raised the weapon overhead.
"Fulani!"
The answer thundered across the field.
"Fulani! Fulani!"
His horsemen drove through what remained of the resistance. A handful of French officers attempted to rally survivors and disappeared beneath spears and rifle fire. Porters still hiding in the grass were dragged out and killed. Wounded men were finished where they lay until resistance, flight and pleading had all ended in the same silence.
Eventually the firing became scattered and then stopped altogether. The wind returned across the plain.
Lamido Umaru rode slowly through what remained. French officers, Tirailleurs and porters lay together among dead horses, all distinctions of rank reduced to torn uniforms, broken bodies and blood darkening the earth. Some corpses remained recognizable. Others had been crushed beneath hooves or opened so completely that only pieces of men remained among the grass.
Umaru looked south.
Beyond the open country lay forests, rivers and, farther still, the wealthy lands of the Duala nearer the coast. His thoughts had already left the French dead behind and moved toward whatever might next be taken.
The spear in his hand belonged there.
Once, it had belonged to Njoh Bell.
Umaru turned the weapon slightly and watched sunlight travel along the German steel. He had taken it as a prize, and each time he held it he was reminded that the southern peoples possessed lands, wealth and princes of their own.
A slow smile spread across his face.
"One day," he murmured, gazing toward the distant south, "all of that will be Fulani."
His hand tightened around Njoh Bell's spear.
"It will belong to me."
Behind him his warriors shouted in triumph while ahead, in Umaru's imagination, there was only conquest.
Yet Greater German Cameroon was itself only one part of a continent increasingly consumed by the European war.
Farther west, German Togoland had already fallen. Its great wireless station had been captured and silenced, cutting one of the principal links between Berlin and its African possessions. Messages that once crossed enormous distances in moments now arrived slowly, imperfectly or not at all, leaving German commanders increasingly dependent upon their own judgment and whatever resources happened to remain within reach.
German South-West Africa presented an entirely different battlefield. There the jungle vanished and distance itself became the enemy: immense deserts and broken rocky country where columns could be seen from kilometres away and survival depended as much upon water and supply as upon rifles. German forces yielded ground from scattered strongpoints while South African troops pressed steadily forward with greater numbers and better access to reinforcement.
Yet the Germans did not fight alone. Among them stood Boer settlers whose hatred of Britain had survived the destruction of their republics. They knew the dry country, understood long-range shooting and remembered perfectly well which empire had once burned farms and imprisoned families in camps. From ridges and rocky ground, Germans and Boers fought together, firing patiently across immense distances and turning what had seemed likely to become a minor colonial operation into another stubborn campaign of thirst, endurance and marksmanship.
Across the continent in German East Africa, the war took yet another form. General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck possessed too few men to defend so enormous a colony in the European fashion, so he refused to try. His German officers and African soldiers moved constantly, striking where circumstances favoured them and withdrawing before superior forces could trap them.
The fighting there came in bursts rather than continuous fronts. Patrols collided along remote tracks, outposts were attacked and abandoned, and columns disappeared into the interior only to emerge again elsewhere. German forces probed toward British positions around the settlement of Mombasa while farther south Britain assembled troops, including units from India, for operations around Tanga in the hope of cutting into the German colony before Lettow-Vorbeck's scattered forces could grow stronger.
There was no single African war.
Jungle shaped one campaign, open grasslands another, while desert, mountains and distance shaped others still. Europeans had carried their conflict into the continent, but once there it became entangled with older rivalries, colonial grievances and ambitions that had existed long before anyone in Africa had heard the name Sarajevo.
Across jungle, plain and desert, Africa burned.
Yet the struggle there was only one part of a war growing wider by the day. Far beyond the African coast, across the open Atlantic, another confrontation was already approaching.
A vast convoy had departed Canada carrying grain, metals, ammunition, machinery and other supplies bound for Britain. Its crews sailed beneath the protection of powerful warships and with growing confidence that Germany's commerce raiders would think carefully before challenging so heavily guarded a prize.
They did not know that Germany had already accepted the invitation.
Somewhere beyond the horizon, the commerce-raiding fleet was moving to intercept them, and this time it carried reinforcements unlike anything Britain had yet encountered in battle. Ships concealed for years were finally being brought forward, their secrecy deliberately sacrificed for a chance to break the British escort and destroy the convoy behind it.
Across the Atlantic, steel was already moving toward steel.
The next great battle of the war was beginning to take shape.