Retaliation (11 page)

“Ezer was originally built by the miners. It was the Nagada of its time. There are empty mine pits off to the west.” She gave him a don’t you know anything? look. “Farm clans take over locations when the diggings run out. Nothing could grow here until the golden quartz was gone.”

The caravan climbed a well-defined trail to the town gates. Coming closer, they could see that most of the buildings were in near-ruinous condition cannibalized to provide repairs for the farmers’ homes and gra-naries. The walls were well maintained, however. They were needed to provide protection from dust storms-and nowadays, from human predators.

Guards met them at the gate. Most carried staffs, and he saw the hilts of knives on others. But a few carried rifles.

There was a brief ceremony of welcome. The local Elder’s daughter, a pleasant, homely girl, presented Daniel with a gourd of water. Then came a guided tour of the town. Daniel was surprised to find a Humvee in the central square. A medical team was ex-amining children and treating ills.

“I didn’t realize you guys made house calls,” Daniel said as he was introduced.

The Navy corpsman just shrugged. “The colonel sends us far and wide.” Daniel looked hungrily at the big four-wheel-drive vehicle. It could probably make the trip back to Na-gada in a quarter of the time it had taken to get here. But his hopes of a lift were cruelly dashed when the corpsman mentioned his next destination-an enclave even farther away.

There really wasn’t all that much to see in the town. Somewhat to the local Elder’s embarrassment, the gra-naries were all but empty. Ezer had cashed in early on the flood of Susan B. Anthony dollars coming from Nagada. But the people seemed to live well, and the children appeared a bit less pinched than their counterparts in the big city.

Faizah took Daniel to the gates again, and they looked down at the croplands and the river below.

“Ezer is the collection point for crops up and down the river,” she said. “The food is barged here, then stored for the Nagada caravans.” “Just like ancient Egypt back home,” Daniel said. “Even to building the town on infertile land.”

The farmer’s daughter gave him a scandalized look. “Who’d waste good soil by building a house on it?”

Faizah offered to take Daniel down into the fields. The local Elder let them go.

A field was a field, after all.

Daniel wouldn’t have minded a little welcoming feast and a chance to wash the desert grit off himself.

But he followed Faizah down the dusty trail. Soon they disappeared into green shoots of head-high grain.

Faizah sighed, kicking off her sandals and digging her feet into the soft, dark earth. “I’ve missed this,”

she admitted with an embarrassed smile. They wandered along through the profusion of growing things until Daniel began to worry that they would get lost.

Faizah laughed at the idea. “It can’t happen,” she assured him. “Just follow the irrigation ditches, and they’ll either lead you to the river, or to the edge of the fields.”

They must have been heading close to the river, because the irrigation ditches were becoming larger and larger, until at last they stood on the banks of a respectable canal.

Faizah looked back and forth through the green fields. They hadn’t seen anybody in more than a mile.

“This is something else I’ve missed,” she said, a sparkle in her eye.

She shrugged, and the shawl fell from her shoulders. Ever the gentleman, Daniel went to pick it up. His hand had just landed on the garment when Faizah’s robe slithered to her ankles.

Daniel jumped back so quickly, he almost went crashing through a couple of rows of grain. “Fa-Faizah,” he stammered. He tried his best not to stare as the golden girl stepped forward, extending a toe into the water to test its temperature. From the rear her body was a symphony of tautness and softness, planes and curves.

Another theory proven, Daniel thought numbly. An-cient Egyptians didn’t use bathing suits.

“Mmmmmm, just right,” she said, glancing mis-chievously over her shoulder.

Daniel suddenly realized that the loudest sound in the area was his breathing.

With a smooth, sinuous move Faizah dove into the water. She disappeared beneath the surface, then burst up, doing a lazy backstroke. She grinned like a naughty child at the quick revelation of her body beneath the water.

Daniel’s breath caught in his throat.

Impishly, she dove under the water again, giving him a flash of a delectable rear end. Faizah reappeared at the edge of the canal, directly at his feet. Her short black hair, now wet, clung close to her head like a seal’s or otter’s pelt. She was treading water at chest level. Her dark nipples seemed just to float on the sur-face, standing out against the olive skin gleaming with wetness.

“It’s much more comfortable in the water,” she said. “You seem to be sweating up there.”

“Ah,” Daniel said brilliantly. His tongue seemed slightly too large for his mouth, which was odd, since his skin suddenly felt a couple of sizes too small. He could feel every sand grain he’d picked up on the trek through the desert.

Maybe it was a case of sudden sunburn. Daniel felt warm, very warm. The skinny-dipper splashing in the water gave him a mock pout. “Come on,” she invited. “You’ll like it once you get in.”

Faizah smiled up at him, a young, healthy animal in her element. Her lips seemed a little fuller as they curved in an unspoken promise. Play your cards right, stud....

Daniel struggled with a welter of irrelevant thoughts. Sha’uri. Every farmer’s daughter joke he’d ever heard flitted through his head. Right, I “get in” with her, and a moment later, Farmer Geb turns up with his pitchfork. At last he managed to get his mind in gear with his mouth. “Uh, thanks for the invitation, Faizah. But I don’t think so. We have an idiom for trouble in English-to get in hot water. I think that’s what I’d be doing.” His voice was still hoarse as he spoke.

“Okay.” Faizah gave an entrancing shrug, then struck out in a side stroke. She disappeared under the water again, then climbed out of the canal, giving herself a good shake.

Daniel quickly scooped up her robe and stood hold-ing it. “Ah, that was so good!” his student said with her innocent smile. “You don’t know what you missed!”

“Probably not,” Daniel agreed, handing over her shawl.

Faizah’s hair had completely dried by the time they climbed back up to the town.

She spent the night with the local Elder’s slightly homely daughter. A caravan bound in for Nagada was leaving the next morning. Daniel, Faizah, and their mastadges joined the group. Soon Daniel was lurching along across the dunes as if the green fields (and Faizah’s pass) were just so many dreams. The reality was grit/sneezing, and the threat that he’d spend the rest of his life walking bow-legged. Then, to make things complete, a huge cloud of dust rose off in the direction they were headed.

Perfect, Daniel thought. A sandstorm is just what we need. His mastadge shied, disrupting the single-file progress, and soon Daniel realized why as a sound came to his less sensitive ears. A low mutter came from over the dunes in the distance. Most of the Abydans had never heard that noise before. But Daniel recognized them as diesel engines-large diesel engines. That sand wasn’t being blown-it was being thrown in the wake of a heavy patrol. Daniel’s suspicions were justified a moment later as an Apache helicopter cruised by in the distance.

Three of Skaara’s militiamen accompanied the cara-van. They’d gathered dubiously, their M-16s aimed against the possible threat. But they had seen gun-ships before and relaxed.

Unfortunately, most of the caravan had scattered, apparently thinking Ra himself had come back in one of his udajeets.

As they waited for the line to reform, Daniel and Faizah discussed the passing soldiers. “O’Neil moves quickly,” Daniel said. “He’s barely gotten the okay for patrols like this, and already he has people out here.” True to her politics, Faizah wasn’t pleased with what she saw as foreign interference.

“Somebody has to do something about the desert raiders,” Daniel said. “Those somebodies should be Abydans,” Faizah replied. “We shouldn’t have to depend on Colonel O’Neil.” She gazed off after the dust cloud, now dis-appearing off toward the horizon. “Besides, I don’t think it will do much good.

Those machines are too noisy. Any competent raider would hear them coming and just hug the sand until they went away.”

The mastadges were back together again, and the caravan master gestured for them to move off. For Daniel, the miles passed in the usual tedious agony. He was blowing his nose so hard, at first he missed the sounds of the gunshots. His first clue of trouble was something that went wheek! past his ear and shattered one of the poles sup-porting the sunshade on his howdah. The woolen awning flopped down, blinding him. From behind came a blast of a grenade. “Wha-?” He pushed the shade off his head and discovered a scene of pure chaos. One of the Abydan militiamen had been knocked off his mastadge, either by a lucky shot or the aim of the greatest native marks-man on the planet. One of the others had emptied his entire magazine into a sand dune. He was now having problems re-loading. The last rifleman was sending shots toward a howling mass of raiders who’d apparently material-ized out of the sand.

Bitterly, Daniel remembered Faizah’s assessment of the patrol. It looked as though she was right. Maybe O’Neil’s people would hear the sounds of distant gun-fire over their engine noise. But even if they came back, it would probably be too late.

Daniel skidded off his mastadge, going for the rifle lying half under the dead militiaman. Maybe it was a hopeless gesture, but he had to try to defend Faizah. He was just pulling the dead man aside when the gunfire suddenly surged in intensity. Daniel glanced around to discover that new players had sud-denly surged out of the sand. A dozen riflemen in the chocolate-chip cammies of American soldiers were fir-ing with deadly effect into the raiders. Most of the bad guys either went down or ran away at the surprise intervention. A few ran on into the caravan, trusting that the soldiers wouldn’t fire at friends. One raider, hefting a club with what looked like a railroad spike sticking out of it, headed straight for Daniel Jackson.

Actually, Daniel couldn’t be sure that he’d been picked as a target. Maybe he was just an obstacle on the guy’s route to the riderless mastadge he’d left. Either way, it looked as if he might be leaving his brains smeared over the desert sands.

A mastadge suddenly burst from the churning mass of the caravan. Faizah crouched low over the ungainly beast’s prehensile neck, urging her mount to greater speed.

The charging raider saw her and turned with a two-handed grip on his club. Daniel fumbled the M-16

out of the sand. Please, don’t let it be jammed, he prayed.

There was no time to shoot. Faizah was on the guy. At the last second she pivoted her mount slightly.

The raider’s club stroke missed. The mastadge hit him with its shoulder. The guy went down.

Then came a gruesome crunch! as the mastadge’s rear leg trampled the guy. Daniel rose shakily from his knees, the rifle held loosely in his hand. He watched as Faizah reined in her panicky mount. The girl’s usually mobile face was frozen and hard, a grim mask in the harsh sunlight. Odd. He’d seen that face somewhere before.

Daniel looked up, still a little dazed. An Apache gun-ship-probably the one that had flown by before-came sweeping down out of the sky, strafing the dunes where the caravan raiders had run for their lives.

One of the riflemen who’d broken the raiders’ at-tack-probably the sergeant who commanded the squad-approached the caravan. He held out empty hands and shouted in pidgin Abydan that he was a friend.

Leaving the others to deal with the skittish mastadges, Daniel stepped out to greet the soldier. “Not just a friend,” he called, “but just in time.” The noncom’s face went from astonishment at being answered in English to recognition and concern. “Dr. Jackson! Are you okay?” “One of the militiamen guarding the caravan is dead. I don’t know about any other casualties.” He reso-lutely didn’t look at the raider Faizah had trampled. “At least on our side.”

Astonishingly, no one else had gotten shot. Sergeant Ingraham, the commander of the ambush party, wasn’t surprised. “The locals don’t have the ammuni-tion for target practice,” he said. “And even if their barrels aren’t fouled with sand, enough grit gets in to screw up the rifling grooves. The damn things just don’t shoot straight.”

“I thought I heard a grenade behind us,” Daniel said. Ingraham shrugged. “That was supposed to goose you forward into their arms,” he said. “But they didn’t want to damage the merchandise.” The sergeant explained that his men had been dropped off by the mechanized patrol Daniel had spotted earlier. “We’d gotten reports of bandits oper-ating in this area, so we really had our eyes out. These clowns figured they’d break their teeth on us, so they hunkered down. But the chopper spotted them, and we put on a big parade past them while my squad marched into position. I’m sorry we wound up using your caravan to draw them out.”

By now the rest of the heavy patrol had chugged into view. Daniel had a brief discussion with the offi-cer in charge and secured a lift on a Humvee back to Nagada. The officer was already getting on the radio requesting that a message about Daniel’s return be forwarded to Kasuf.

Daniel stewed for the whole bumpy ride. After the adrenaline of the fight wore off, he felt vaguely sick. It had been a case of kill or be killed, and he’d been will-ing to shoot any of the raiders. But Faizah, having to trample that guy-he noticed that she was un-characteristically quiet as they jounced across the dunes.

Daniel began to get angry. They had been damned lucky that those Marines had turned up when they did.

But they shouldn’t have to depend on O’Neil’s people. Faizah was right about one thing. Abydans should be working to solve this problem. And he was going to make sure the process started in Nagada.

When they arrived at the city gates, Daniel saw a delegation drawn up, awaiting him. Sha’uri, Kasuf, and a gaggle of the city’s Elders were on hand. It looked like a combination of “Hail the Conquering Hero”