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“Listen, I told you my damn story! You tell me your damn story!”
    The warrior horde was half a mile out, now; the roar of charging horses and screaming men would soon be deafening. O’Connell reflected, as if time were no factor, his voice soft, musical. “It was Paris, it was spring, and I was looking for a way to impress a young lady . . . and maybe I was looking for a little adventure.”
    He left out the part about being drunk.
    “I think you found it,” Beni said, nodding toward the front line, where Colonel Guizot had panicked.
    With an eerie detachment, O’Connell and Beni watched their commanding officer cut and run.
    “Congratulations,” Beni said with a smile. “You’re promoted.”
    There was no horizon, now: just a blur of Tuareg warriors, shrieking, waving their long, curved swords, brandishing Lebel rifles pilfered from the bodies of slain legionnaires.
    This must have been how Custer felt.
    “Damn it,” O’Connell said softly, to no one but himself. Then, with as commanding a tone as he could muster, he yelled, “Steady, men! Wait till you see the whites of their eyes!”
    “I can’t believe you said that,” Beni said, standing behind the corporal.
    Hooves pounded the sand; screams pierced the air. The Tuaregs knew about getting into firing range, too: They were raising their rifles, taking aim . . .
    “You are with me, right, pal?” O’Connell said, with a glance at his friend, still standing directly behind him.
    “Your strength gives me strength,” Beni said, clutching his Lebel with both hands.
    The Tuareg war cry now shifted into a birdlike whoop: “Ooo-loo-loo-loo, ooo-loo-loo-loo!”
    “That’s all, brother,” Beni said, backing away, and ran away so fast, his boots barely touched the sand.
    O’Connell allowed himself a wry smirk, drew a deep breath, said a quick prayer, and yelled, “Steady, men! . . . Steady . . .”
    Steeling himself, rifle in his hands, but not poised to shoot, O’Connell waited, ears filled with the ghastly cries, the pounding hoofbeats, waited one more moment, then yelled, “Fire!”
    And the kneeling legionnaires fired as if one, the sound of so many rifles reporting simultaneously like an explosion, a blast of firepower that blew dozens of Tuaregs off their mounts, dead before they hit the sand, their corpses becoming instant barricades over which other horses trampled and stumbled, beasts and riders going down.
    O’Connell, kneeling himself now, holding fire, thought, Good volley!, as the legionnaires quickly reloaded, here and there a man falling as a Tuareg bullet caught him.
    And O’Connell repeated his command: “Fire!”
    This time O’Connell joined the volley, the sound of which was more staggered, but again bullets yanked warriors from their steeds, and men and horses tumbled to the sand, creating chaos.
    Another successful volley! O’Connell thought, but he knew, he knew . . .
    The legionnaires remained two hundred men, and two hundred men—no matter how brave, however well-trained—facing two thousand, were still two hundred men . . .
    And the Tuaregs began firing. The noise of their weapons was not the unified thunder of the legionnaires’ two volleys, rather a rumbling, snapping, cracking, continuous hail of lead that ripped the air of the day, and the flesh of the Tuaregs’ foes; the native warriors, robes flowing, were terrible apparitions moving like the horsemen of the Apocalypse through the clouds of smoke that their own gunfire had fashioned.
    At least a third of O’Connell’s men fell under this onslaught, choking on dust and blood, twisting in pain and death.
    “Fire at will!” O’Connell shouted, retreating toward the pylons of the temple complex entry. “Seek cover!”
    Shooting on the run, the legionnaires headed toward the temple, boots slowed by the sand, but their bullets finding more purchase, sending Tuaregs spinning off steeds, crashing to the sand, small victories, tiny triumphs, in a great defeat. The