Laura Kinsale (8 page)

“A demon!” The Rowalla stared. “Haj Hasan, is it so?”

“It is so, by Allah,” Lord Winter said soberly.

“Wellahi!”
This news appeared to dampen the Rowalla’s enthusiasm for their company considerably. He began to ride a little farther from them, drifting ahead on a pretext of scouting.

Lord Winter waited until the Rowalla was well out of hearing. “Paltry fellow!” he murmured in English. “Floored at the first blow.”

“He would not dare cross the nefud sands,” she said sullenly. “He only wants a rifle. If you give it to him, he will find a reason to be gone.”

“I begin to see how fortunate I am in you, little wolf. That you come with me, under threat of the sands and a bride too.”

“I do not wish for a bride, my lord.”

“You confound me. I thought you would be eager. A beautiful girl, with eyes like the gazelle and lips like a rose—such a one does not tempt you?”

“No, my lord.”

“Not even for a camel?”

“Are
you
wed, my lord?” she asked pointedly.

He grinned, his light eyes amused. “A direct hit. You force me to confess that I am not.”

“I wish to be like you. I think girls are silly.”

“Indeed!” He rode along, looking at her with a strange quirk to his mouth. “I believe you must be younger than I thought.”

“I do not want to marry, my lord,” she insisted.

“Yes, we have established that point to our satisfaction. Rifles are as nothing to you, and camels and brides but dust in your mouth.” He smiled at her in a way that made her feel queerly agitated and uncertain. He had admirable strong hands, his fingers resting easily on the gun as he held the rifle upright in one hand, the stock against his knee. “But why the devil England?”

“It is green,” she said.

His brows rose. “I see.”

“Like a garden everywhere.”

“Who told you this? Lady Hester?”

“Is it not true?” She turned anxious eyes to him.

“I suppose it’s true enough the place is green. Extremely green. Suffocatingly green, some might say. But you could see trees in Damascus. You don’t have to go as far as England.”

“You have promised me!” she exclaimed. “I don’t care about the trees in Damascus!”

“Peace, little wolf! You’ll see all the British trees you can stand, you have my word on it. I’m only curious as to where you conceived this extraordinary desire to do so.”

She gave him a hot glance. “You desire to go to the Nejd in disguise, which is stupid and dangerous, and you are quite mad.”

“I’m in search of a horse.”

“What horse?” Zenia asked warily.

“She is called Shajar al-Durr. The String of Pearls.”

She looked suspiciously at the profile of the man who rode beside her. “Who does she belong to?”

“Ah, that is the question—who has her, and where is she? You were not born, little wolf, and I was just a boy when Ibrahim Pasha brought the army of Egypt to the Nejd, to take Mecca back from the fanatics and break the Wahhabi’s power. He captured their prince, ibn-Saud, and with him the greatest collection of horses that has ever lived in the desert—all the best bloodlines harvested from the Bedouin were gathered in ar-Riyadh, and when ibn-Saud lost his war, he lost his horses. Ibrahim Pasha demanded them as tribute, and took them back to Egypt.”

“Yes,” Zenia said, “I have heard of this. And Allah sent that the horses died in Egypt, because Ibrahim Pasha sinned in his covetousness and greed to take them from the desert.”

‘True. It was a tragedy for the breed, little wolf, verily. But when are the Bedu without stratagems, or bitterness among themselves? Not all of the horses were taken—some were hidden away, and a precious few were allowed to remain in the hands of the Muteyr tribe, who had made common cause with Ibrahim Pasha against the Saudi prince. Which did not make the Saudis happy, you may trust.”

Zenia made a gloomy murmur of assent. The old Wahhabi prince had been beheaded in Stamboul—and if some of the tribes had fought on the side of the Egyptians to bring him down, the blood duty for vengeance would endure for generations.

“Once Ibrahim Pasha and his Egyptians got Mecca back for the sultan, Ibrahim took himself off after bigger game,” Lord Winter said, “and so for the past twenty springs, the Saudis have been free to amuse themselves by taking their revenge of the Muteyr. They have relieved them of their precious horses, until the only few that remained were sent away for safety. Among them was the finest mare of the finest strain, the Jelibiyat.”

“Sent where?” Zenia braced herself for the worst.

“The sheik of the Muteyr committed his last mares to the hands of two of his most trusted men, and charged them to be taken to ibn-Khalif, on the island of Bahreyn.”

Bahreyn meant nothing to Zenia; she thought it was far across the desert in the eastern sea. “So we go to Bahreyn?” she asked dubiously.

“Nay. When the Jelibiyat mare left the Muteyr, she was heavy in foal to their best Kuhaylan stallion. When she arrived, she had no foal at her side, nor carried one, and her milk was dry. She had lost it, the sheik’s men said, on the journey.” He looked aside at her, the kuffiyah shading his face and making his eyes seem as bright as the blue sky within shadow. “But some say that is not so. Some say that she gave birth to a filly that lived to be
khadra barda,
snow-white, with a dapple marking like a string of pearls about her throat.”

“Some will say any foolish thing.”

“That is so, by Allah,” he agreed.
 

“Or follow any foolish mirage!”

He smiled slightly. “She is no mirage, little wolf. Abdullah ibn Rashid has her hidden in the mountains of Jabal Shammar.”

“Rashid!
The emir of Hayil and the Shammar?” Zenia made a moan of dismay. “My lord—you do not hope to buy her?”

“No,” he said, “I have no hope of buying her.”
 

“What do you intend to do?”

He said nothing. Zenia felt the hot air grow thick and unbreathable in her lungs. “My lord—please—” She could barely whisper. “You would not go to such risk only to see her.”

“Well, no, wolf cub,” he said apologetically. “I’m afraid I mean to steal her.”

“Cry mercy of Allah!” she gasped.

As if in echo of her words, a shout rose from the far hill, where the Rowalla came charging back on his camel, shrieking,
“Ghrazzu! Ghrazzu!
A raid,
yallah!
Fly!”

Hard behind him a band of riders crested the hill, shouting the shrill war cry of their tribe. Before Zenia could turn her mount, Lord Winter struck his camel full force, propelling it directly toward the oncoming
ghrazzu.
Zenia cried out in dismay, for an instant reaching to stay the unruly beast—and then realized that he had the rifle leveled, that he was riding into them on purpose, the camel breaking to a ground-eating gallop.

His first shot took the spear from one of the raiders’ hands. They came on, while Zenia gaped at Lord Winter, and then drove her camel after, screaming at the Rowalla to stop Haj Hasan while she fumbled for the powderhorn he had given her. She did not know the gun; she could not open the bouncing powderhorn while her camel galloped. She heard another shot as she finally grasped the horn and pulled the stopper.

She looked up in panic at the sound of gunfire. Lord Winter could not possibly have reloaded. But the
ghrazzu
had split, one rider down, and still he rode into their teeth with the rifle trained. Another shot. The fleeing Rowalla passed Lord Winter, yelling in a shrill wail. A fourth shot, and the nearest of the raiders was struggling to turn his mount away from the oncoming attack.

With a shock, she realized that all the fire came from Lord Winter’s rifle. The enemy wrestled their camels around, a moment of confusion about the fallen man, but Lord Winter fired again, twice and three times, and they abandoned any thought of rescue. As he topped the hill they were bolting at full gallop down the other side.

Zenia passed the loose camel and downed Bedui, her gun barrel trained on him, even though it was not primed. He had lost his spear, and seemed to have no firearm. His wide-eyed face stared up at her as she swept by, and he cried, “I am under your protection!”

She raised the rifle overhead, acknowledging it, and came loping up to where Lord Winter sat his camel at the crest of the hill. She was gasping through the cloth of her kuffiyah, not with effort, but with frenzy. As her mount jolted to a halt beside him, she looked at the foreign rifle in amazement.

He was mad, utterly and entirely mad. Their eyes met. She stared at him, panting, and at his incredible rifle that had fired ten shots without a pause before she had even been able to prime her weapon. He unslung it and released the cock.

He grinned at her. She had known that he would, the madman.

“My evil demon, wolf cub,” he said mildly, smiling with affection at the remarkable gun. “Mr. Samuel Colt of Connecticut.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The water skin tied on Selim’s camel was sweating. It was a sinister drip; perfectly steady. Arden marked his steps by the drops, one dark spot on the sand at a time, as the beast floundered up a dune in front of him.

Leading his own mount, Arden labored through the deep red sand. The Rowalla had deserted them four days ago, fleeing from the raid without glancing back. Selim had given Arden a pungent I-told-you-so look, which Arden had been so irreverent as to meet with a wink, but neither of them had greatly missed the Rowalla.

Arden had not meant to attempt the nefud sands before halting at the town of Jof to replenish their water and find a guide. But they had a guide already, fallen literally into their hands—the Shammar tribesman downed in the
ghrazzu.
Bin Dirra was utterly docile in surrender. Drinking Haj Hasan’s coffee and cursing his companions for deserting him, he had readily imparted the forbidding news that the Egyptians had garrisoned Jof and would certainly seize any strangers without “letters.”

Arden had letters—forgeries of several varieties, in fact—but no intention of risking arrest. At all costs, he must remain out of Egyptian hands. The last news had been of a great battle in the north; England had openly backed the Ottoman sultan to challenge the Egyptian general Ibrahim Pasha and his army, and Arden devoutly did not wish to be identified as an Englezy by any soldier belonging to Egypt.

Bin Dirra, lacking a camel and outraged at his own comrades for abandoning him afoot, had entreated Haj Hasan to let him lead them south by the direct route to Hayil, where he could lodge a complaint against his perfidious associates with the emir Abdullah ibn Rashid himself.

Bin Dirra claimed that he knew the way through the red sands perfectly. Arden, cautious, had looked this time to Selim, silently asking his opinion of the Shammari. The boy made Bin Dirra hold out his hands and swear by the life of his son that he was telling the truth.

Arden thought he was. He hoped he was. They filled the water bags in a range of rocky hills, where Bin Dirra shoved aside flat rocks to uncover secret basins, little pools of sweet rainwater.

So they had turned south into the nefud. And it was like walking knee-deep through the coals of a burning furnace, red walls rising on all sides to reflect back the fire.

For four days they had traversed the horseshoe-shaped dunes, with Bin Dirra feeling his way, making a cast up one hill and then trying another, as a hound would follow a very faint scent. To Arden, every dune and back-dune looked the same as the next.

Heavy sand was the hell of camels. In the hollows of almost all the huge curved dunes were skeletons. There were bones of camels and bones of men. Nobody ever got buried in the nefud sands; they only got scoured by the hot wind. Last night Bin Dirra had told a delightful little tale of how the Bedu had led a company of five hundred Egyptian soldiers into the nefud, pretending to guide them toward Damascus. The next well was just a little way, they had told the Egyptians. Just a little way further! Until the soldiers had fallen down to their knees, and the Bedu had drifted away, only lingering to snare a few horses and camels as they wandered from the dead men.

The story was not, Arden hoped, a hint. But he did not waste energy worrying over unrealized terrors. He had a compass concealed in his baggage, and the nefud was not endless. Their camels were in good condition. And they were committed now.