Laura Kinsale (9 page)

He watched the water drip, and walked, lost in savage desolation and utter solitude. The long inhuman reaches of the desert, where his body found the limits of what it could endure, and his soul came near to peace.

He had longed for it, with a longing that was terrible. And yet even here, he was looking for something that he could not find.

All of his life, he had been looking. He did not know what for: not a horse, though there was a fine edge of pleasure in that added risk; it was not to spite his father, for that interference had merely driven him to a desert of rock and sand instead of ice. Sometimes he thought he found it in the evening, when they stopped to rest and the red sands turned violet and indigo, flooded with light like a frozen tossing sea, and he turned from that glory to where Selim cooked homely balls of flour in the bottom of the fire, and burned his fingers retrieving them from the ashes.

Sometimes he thought he found it in the morning, when he rose and walked to the top of a sand hill, and grew drunk on the pure clear arch of the sky and the silence. Sometimes he thought he found it in a dry mouth and a thimbleful of water swallowed in the shadow of his patient camel, and sometimes in the grumbling roar of the beast herself as she complained of rising to start again, as his body complained that it was too much, too hard, he was too hot and dry and weary to go on. And yet the camel went, and so did he.

He thought he found what he was looking for, in moments that came and vanished, that he could not hold on to. Even the endless labor of plodding in line behind Selim and the Shammari, his feet burning through the woolen socks that were all he could wear in the sands—he prayed for it to end, and he wanted it to go on forever.

They made their devotions in the last of light, and settled to rest until moonrise. Arden lay in the blessed cooling air, staring up at the stars. Bin Dirra’s voice seemed raucous, echoing back from nowhere, asking questions that Selim answered with short mutters.

A grim wraith, Selim. Almost uncomfortably beautiful, with the exasperating habit of sleeping very close to Arden. At first it had annoyed his rest—though he knew that any Bedui abhorred solitude and would expect to share his tent, he was not prepared to share the very blanket he slept upon. He had spent night after night retreating by inches, only to wake and find Selim pressed against his back again, until they reached the limits of the tent. Finally, on the verge of ordering the boy to sleep outside, which would have drawn questions and attention, the ridiculous nature of the skirmish struck him.

He had surrendered to the inevitable, reconciling himself to Selim’s proximity by thinking of the boy as something like a dog, that must always have one paw in contact with its master. But with that light touch on him in his sleep, he dreamed of women with irksome and inconvenient frequency. He had looked forward to the extremity of the red sands, where he knew that physical hardship would taunt him with visions of water and food instead. Which it had, except that now he dreamed of water and food and women.

Six camel marches to Jubbeh, and four beyond that to Hayil, Bin Dirra said, Allah willing. The water was a problem. Bin Dirra thought they had just enough, if they were careful, even with evaporation and the drip. There were wells at Shakik, but that would mean a sidetrack of three days, and the water was two hundred feet down, requiring more rope than they had, unless they met some Bedu who could draw for them. In the winter, the tribes wandered on good grazing in the nefud, but there had been no rain for two years, and summer was upon them now, killing all it touched. To hope for Bedu at Shakik was to bet against long odds. Better to make straight for Hayil, and replenish the water at Jubbeh, where there was a village and wells worked by camels.

Six days. In the morning Arden rigged a bowl beneath the sweating water skin, to catch the drip, and Bin Dirra laughed in white-toothed delight. At the end of the day there was a mouthful of sand and dirty water in the bowl, smelling of camel. Arden offered it to Selim, who shook his head and went on unloading the other camel.

Bin Dirra refused it, too. “It is yours, O Father of Ten Shots! Drink!”

The Shammari stood grinning at him as Arden upended the bowl. The water tasted vile, but it was cool and wet. As he lowered the bowl, Bin Dirra grinned and took a step backward.

Selim cried out, and at the same moment Bin Dirra shrieked. The nomad looked down, and for an instant it seemed that Selim was attacking him viciously with a camel stick and dagger.

The Shammari stumbled back, screaming, and Arden saw the horned adder writhing at his feet, trying to slither away from the blows of the camel stick. He dropped the bowl and grabbed his pistol from the saddle.

“Yallah!”
He flung Selim out of the way. At close range his shot took the head from the snake and left a twitching carcass.

Bin Dirra sat down in the sand, panting, holding his foot. Arden seized the length of cord he had used to tie the bowl and dropped to his knees beside the Shammari. He tightened it about the man’s leg above the bite. It was not out of humanity that he scored the skin and bent to suck—it was because he knew now that if the Shammari died, their chances of survival shrank from a knife’s edge to nothing.

He spat blood, and found the bowl shoved under his face, full of water. He rinsed his mouth and bent again, and again, praying that he had no open cut in his parched lips. He worked until the leg was swollen and Bin Dirra began to shudder and faint.

Arden raised his head. Selim held the Shammari up by the shoulders, staring at Arden with great frightened eyes. He lifted the bowl and rinsed his mouth again and again, not even sparing water, but still the revolting taste of blood and bitter venom seemed to stick on his tongue, nauseating him.

“Damn,” he muttered. “Damn, damn, damn.”

He had spoken in English, but Bin Dirra was in no case to notice. Selim said nothing. Arden stood up. He looked around at the desert, at endless, trackless waves of sand.

Five days now to Jubbeh. Five days, and if they missed it by one mile, there was nothing to save them.

Before he lost his senses, Bin Dirra had muttered that they must find the rocks of Ghota. When they could see the rocks, they could locate Jubbeh.

By firelight, Arden had slit the bottom of his shaving kit and unfolded the maps hidden there, but in all of them, as he had already known, the nefud was a blank. There was no location for Jubbeh or the rocks of Ghota. He had taken surreptitious compass readings as they traveled. He knew that Bin Dirra had trended south-southeast, but the guide’s line had been so erratic and their pace so uneven that Arden could only guess at their present location.

Selim sat beside Bin Dirra, holding him as he thrashed in anguish, his leg swollen and discolored horribly. Finally, late in the night, the Shammari had fallen into a deathly stupor. Arden did not think he would be alive in the morning.

He refrained from drinking, to save the water, and looked on their dinner of bread and dates with loathing, unable to eat for thirst and the sickening aftertaste in his mouth. He tried to lie down and sleep, but he kept listening to Bin Dirra’s labored breathing, expecting it to cease. Whenever Arden looked over toward the Shammari, he could see Selim sitting motionless beside the dying man.

Finally Arden gave up on sleep. He rose, walking out into the clear starlight beyond the camels.

He stood looking southeast.
Continuous Desert of Pure Red Sand,
the maps said laconically, and no more.

Stars, and the desert. Where the stars stopped, the black desert began. That was all he could see. He felt Selim come up behind him and stand silently.

“I can find the way,” Arden said.

He turned. The boy’s face was barely visible in the starlight. Arden thought it was full of doubt.

“I promised I would take you to England,” he said. “And I will.”

He thought the boy would say
Inshallah,
God willing, the Arab’s devout remark on any future.

“I know that you will,” the boy said quietly. “I brought you water.”

Arden was so thirsty that he could have drunk the whole bowl in one breath. “Save it,” he said. “We have to make it last.”

“This is mine,” Selim said, holding out the bowl. “I will drink camel’s milk.”
 

“No.”

“It will be better if you listen to me in the matter of water and food, my lord. I have seen what the Europeans do. They deny themselves until they cannot bear it, and then they squander more than they need, because they cannot judge.”

Arden hesitated. Then he took the bowl, and found that it contained only a few swallows. He drank, the musty camel-taste like ambrosia on his tongue, and then Selim offered him the bread and dates he had been too thirsty and nauseated to eat for dinner. They seemed somewhat more edible now.

They could not linger, though Bin Dirra lay in a coma all night. Before dawn, they tied him to the largest of the camels, laid his kuffiyah over his head to shade him, and set off as soon as there was light enough to read the compass.

Arden plotted their compass course, but it was Selim who ranged ahead and back, scouting the dunes for the easiest way, up along the crests of some, creeping around the foot of others, and finally, when there was no other choice, leading them in a toiling climb straight over.

On the first day, Arden began to think they would do well enough, as long as they did not miss Jubbeh. But by the second, the shape and outline of the sand began to require that they climb more and more often, or else go dangerously far out of his compass reckoning. Arden had to lead both camels, while Selim scouted—as the beasts grew weary, moaning and roaring, he labored to drive them on through the blasting heat. He reached the place that Selim finally chose for their camp with a shaking exhaustion inside him that he was loathe to admit.

Bin Dirra was still alive. His leg was blackened and swollen, his face mottled. As the night fell, the Bedui began to hallucinate, calling out wildly. Selim sat beside him, trying to make him drink. Arden rested, dutifully swallowing the food ration Selim gave him. It was like chewing wood. He was so tired that he fell asleep sitting up.

He dreamed that an angel came and hovered over him, singing. It was the loveliest sound he had ever heard in his life. Like a sweet, soaring hymn in a cathedral. He woke some time in the night, his cheek pressed to warm sand, and saw by the faint light of the coals that Selim was dribbling water into Bin Dirra’s mouth.

The Shammari’s half-conscious moans woke Arden at dawn. As he breakfasted on the musty dates and camel’s milk that Selim gave him, he dug a vial of laudanum out of his kit and put three drops in the sick man’s water.

Selim picked up a load to struggle with it to the camels, but Arden lifted the burden from the boy’s arms. “Did you sleep at all?” he demanded harshly.

“Oh yes,” the boy said. “I was accustomed to serve my mistress all night.”

Selim seemed so at home in the desert, milking the camel and going barefoot in the scorching sand, that Arden had almost forgotten he was anything more than a thorough Bedouin. Lady Hester had been notorious for sitting up at all hours, making querulous demands on her servants. Arden thought of the nights he had sat up with her, drinking the tea and eating the food she ordered. He wondered suddenly if Selim had been one of those flitting, cringing servants who had bowed before him then.

The idea angered him. He determined that the boy should not have to shoulder so much of the work, and ordered him to sit down. Arden finished the loading himself. Selim sat obediently, drinking milk. Another realization struck Arden: he had not seen Selim eat bread or dates for two days.