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Copyright Oggbashan December 2010
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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Fort Vauxrein was the worst Foreign Legion posting in Algeria. It was originally built to protect an isolated water hole on a significant camel-trading route. It gradually lost its purpose as other water holes on the route failed, making the camel route impracticable.
No one came. No one passed the fort. No one challenged its hold on useless desert. The only people who came to the fort were replacements for its tiny garrison. The posting was for the Foreign Legions misfits, not its criminals, but those deemed incapable of becoming competent soldiers. In the 1930s it had become an embarrassment to the French authorities in Algeria.
The only officer was a superannuated Ensign. He wouldn't accept retirement because he had nowhere to go. The Legion had been his whole life once his aristocratic family had discarded him as unsuitable even for breeding stock. His only success in life was in persuading his superiors to keep Fort Vauxrein as a base for incompetence. He enjoyed reading in his library, drinking fine wine in moderation, and the luxury of sole command that had nothing to do.
The four sub-officers had shown, over and over again, that they had no leadership skills. The handful of the eighteen privates who knew how to load their rifles couldn't hit an elephant at fifty yards. The Legion had equipped them with the most useless and ancient rifles in their stores.
Fort Vauxrein had guns. Plenty of guns. They had been hauled over the desert in the mid-19th Century and carefully mounted to command all the approaches to the Fort. Apart from the test firing on installation, they had never fired a shot, and shot was all they fired – grapeshot or solid iron cannon balls.
The soldiers drilled with those cannon several times a week. Even they couldn't make errors with 18th Century muzzle-loading cannon. The fort's Commandant wasn't convinced. They loaded canvas cartridges filled with sand, rammed the cannon balls down the muzzles, stood with lit tapers and applied the taper to the touchholes. On Bastille Day and New Year's Day something would happen because they placed a small sprinkling of powder on the cannons' touchholes for the celebrations. The set of small flashes was Fort Vauxrein's firework display.
Once a quarter the garrison fired real cannonballs. The sand-filled cartridges were replaced by gunpowder-filled ones. The sub-officers made sure that no soldier stood in front of the muzzles, and one by one the Commandant ordered the cannon to fire. They fired half the cannon in the morning, stopped for the midday meal and a siesta, and fired the remaining cannon in the early evening. The sand dunes around the fort showed deep scars caused by the cannon balls. The next morning a detail had to collect all the cannon balls and bring them back to the fort for re-use.
The fort had only one asset. It had a resident cantiniere, Anne-Marie. She was the cook, the barmaid, the laundress, the supplier of small items such as tobacco and sweets, and the fort's whore.
No one knew how old Anne-Marie was. She had been a fixture even before the Commandant. She was a large, plump woman who admitted she had never been attractive even in the remote past when she was young. She had come to Fort Vauxrein long before the First World War because she knew she would be the only woman there. As the fort's cantiniere she would have no competition for her trading activities and her body. At any other fort or garrison she would not be the whore of choice.
Alone of all the fort's inhabitants, Anne-Marie had contacts with the local tribe. She traded with them, exchanging goods from the capital for fresh goat's milk, vegetables, meat and anything else that the fort needed. She exchanged information with the tribeswomen to their mutual benefit.
Each time she wanted to trade she would take a couple of loaded mules and ride the third. Some of the soldiers felt sorry for the third mule, carrying Anne-Marie's heavy body.
Anne-Marie was reputed to be the richest cantiniere in Algeria. The fort's garrison spent almost all their pay with her, either for goods or for sex. Twenty-three men's pay wasn't a fortune, but that pay over many years had built up to a considerable sum because Anne-Marie's prices weren't cheap.
Each man could have a night with Anne-Marie once a month, if he could afford it. Almost all of them did. The sub-officers could pay for more than one night a month. Anne-Marie went to the Commandant's bed every Sunday night.
Although her physical charms were very faded, her sexual skill in providing whatever each individual soldier wanted was legendary. After all, she had practised on generations of soldiers. For the past twenty years her skills were demonstrated in a darkened room. Anne-Marie, with the lights out, could be any soldier's dream partner. In broad daylight in the desert sun, she could be his nightmare.
The sub-officers and soldiers of Fort Vauxrein had one skill that they had brought to perfection through repeated practice. They could paint. They painted the buildings. They painted the fort's walls. They painted the rocks. They painted the fort's horse drawn carts, the sand-wrecked armoured car that would never move again. This palled after a time and they began to experiment with murals. The inside walls of the soldiers' quarters were painted with erotic scenes of imaginary women in lascivious poses.
The murals were painted time and time again becoming more erotic with every renewal. Any visiting officers were given a guided tour of the artwork and marvelled at what could be produced with the inspiration of the one elderly fat woman present in the fort.
Life at Fort Vauxrein had been the same, year in and year out, for dozens of years until two separate decisions were taken, far apart, but about the same time.
The French government decided that Fort Vauxrein should be abandoned to the desert. It was a convenient dumping place for useless soldiers but another place could be used. Resupplying Fort Vauxrein was expensive.
The local tribal chief had too many sons and his eldest son was worried about his inheritance being cut into too many small pieces for his brothers and half-brothers. The sons would become adult at twenty-one years. If one son inherited, any sons who were not adult at the time of the chief's death were likely to perish from 'childhood illnesses'. Any who were adult might have a 'hunting accident'. If the inheritance was divided then the process of elimination might involve civil war before one could become undisputed chief.
The son, known as Ahmed the Reckless for his propensity to rush in where fools feared to tread, challenged his father to declare that the eldest son should inherit the whole of the tribe's meagre assets and the large area of infertile land they controlled.
Ahmed's father had never been convinced that his eldest son would be suitable to lead the tribe. Ahmed was a lightweight, even by the standards of his tribesmen who were always close to starvation. He was shorter than the tribe's norm and lightweight in applied brainpower as well as body. Apart from being reckless, Ahmed had a chief adviser, Suleyman (known, but not to his face, as 'the Slimy') who had ambitions to be the real power behind the chief. Suleyman kept Ahmed's bed supplied with a succession of willing women eager to be the mother of a child in line for chief's son.
All the women knew they owed their chance to Suleyman, and reported exactly how Ahmed had responded to them, what his sexual preferences were, and anything Ahmed said that he shouldn't. One of Ahmed's repeated wishes is that some of the women would wear European clothing including underwear. So far Suleyman had been unable to meet that request but thought that it might be possible if Anne-Marie was approached through intermediaries.
The chief wanted to dash Ahmed's ambitions so that a more suitable heir could be appointed and didn't want Suleyman anywhere near the reins of power. The chief also knew exactly what his eldest son's sexual preferences were because the women reported discreetly to him as well as Suleyman.
The chief told his son that he would consider whether Ahmed was suitable to succeed as chief of the tribe if Ahmed would successfully complete a challenge that his father would set. If Ahmed failed – he would be passed over for another. If Ahmed declined the challenge – he would be passed over for another. Would Ahmed accept the challenge?
Ahmed instantly agreed. His father sighed. Ahmed was being reckless, again. He should have tried to find out the terms of the challenge before answering.
"Very well, Ahmed," the chief said. "I think you might need the help of your friend Suleyman. Both of you come at dusk. I will assemble the elders of the tribe and tell you, and them, the terms of your challenge."
Ahmed saluted his father and left to seek Suleyman. Suleyman was not pleased.
"What is the challenge? What will you have to do? You have no idea but you have accepted? Suppose your father asks you to fly to the moon. You have already accepted the challenge. You would fail and your status as presumed heir would be lost."
