SILK AND SECRETS (19 page)

She had just filled her waterskin when she heard a stealthy footstep behind her. Alert for trouble, she whirled around to find Habib half a dozen feet away.

In the darkness she could not see his expression, but there was no mistaking the malice in his voice when he spoke. “You take more than your share of water, Jalal. Is it because the Tuareg are thieves, or did you learn to rob the faithful from your ferengi master?”

“Thy tongue wags like an ass’s tail,” Juliet said in husky, crude Persian.

“At least I do not defile myself by serving a swine of a ferengi,” Habib jeered, moving closer to her.

“My master may be an unbeliever,” she said contemptuously, “but unlike you, he is an honorable man.” Lifting the waterskin, she started to walk around the camel driver.

Habib stepped into her path. “Khilburn is a ferengi swine, and serving him makes you a flea on a swine’s arse.”

Juliet stopped and regarded him steadily while she weighed the situation. She was neither helpless nor terrified, but she would certainly rather avoid a fight with a dangerous lout who loved brawling and hated anyone who was different. Unfortunately, it appeared that avoidance might not be possible.

Provoked by her silence, the camel driver snarled, “What’s the matter, little boy, frightened of me? Maybe you should call your ferengi to protect you.” He spat on the ground. “You are gutless sons of plague dogs, both of you.”

With a mental sigh, Juliet resigned herself to the inevitable, for if she did not deal with Habib now, she would undoubtedly have to do so later. And while he might outweigh her by forty pounds, he was stupid. “The Tuareg are warriors,” she said with cool deliberation. “We do not soil our hands with talebearing camel drivers who smell of dung.”

Her words were all the trigger Habib needed. With a roar, he launched himself at her. And as his hand swept through the darkness, a shaft of moonlight slid along the blade of his descending dagger.

Ross was preparing to roll up in his blanket, though he would not actually do so until Juliet returned from the well. As unobtrusively as possible, he kept a protective eye on her, and he suspected that she did the same for him. It was rather amusing; they were like a couple of maiden aunts with each other.

He was about to remove his boots when he heard a shout from the direction of the well. “Khilburn, come quickly!”

He froze. Was that Juliet’s voice? No, it sounded like Murad. Yet, for no rational reason, he was absolutely certain that Juliet was in danger. He leapt to his feet and pulled a burning brand from the fire to use as a torch.

Saleh had been drowsing in his blanket, but he snapped to wakefulness as other voices were raised. “Trouble, Khilburn?”

“Perhaps,” Ross said tersely. “I’ll find out.”

Moving as quickly as possible over the broken ground, he made his way to the well, which was attracting a growing crowd of men, several holding crude torches like his own. He could not see what they were staring at, but he easily recognized the ugly, unmistakable sound of metal shrieking against metal. Knives.

His blood like ice, Ross pushed his way through the bystanders to find a torch-illuminated killing ground. Wind-tossed flames threw wild, erratic shadows across the clearing as two crouching figures circled each other, daggers ready in their hands. It was an eerie echo of the scene that had taken place earlier with the Khivan officer, but darker and more violent.

It was also Ross’s worst fear come true. No, not the worst, for Juliet seemed unhurt. But even as Ross watched, Habib stabbed his long knife up toward her heart. With a movement quicker than the eye could follow, Juliet blocked his attack with her own blade, then disengaged, the tip of her dagger nicking the camel driver’s wrist.

For a moment Ross was paralyzed with fear and horror so profound that his vision darkened around the edges, eliminating everything but the image of Juliet and the danger that threatened her. Instinctively he started to step forward with the intention of throwing himself between the combatants. Then a firm hand grasped his forearm, halting him in his tracks. Eyes dazed, he looked down to find Saleh beside him.

The old man said softly, “No, Khilburn. Interference will increase her danger.”

Ross very nearly wrenched away, but he had just enough sense left to realize that Saleh was right: if he disturbed Juliet’s concentration, he might sign her death warrant. But standing helplessly by was the most excruciating experience of his life.

Juliet was much faster than Habib, and deftly fended off all the camel driver’s attacks while she waited with slit-eyed ferocity for the right opening. She had thrown off her mantle and in her dark robe and tagelmoust she was a shadow warrior, eerie, silent, and lethal. Habib was not silent, but snarled a string of insults and filthy oaths as he darted and slashed, his eyes shining with blood lust.

Watching her controlled, graceful movements reminded Ross of a fact he had almost forgotten: as a girl, Juliet had learned fencing with her brothers. When she discovered that Ross was also skilled at swordplay, she had suggested that they might fence with each other, but he had flatly refused; he could not imagine brandishing a weapon at his wife even in sport.

But she was good, damned good, at the related skill of knife fighting. Taller than Habib, she had a better reach and was consistently able to ward off his attacks. In some strange way, Ross felt as if he were linked into her awareness, sharing her fierce focus, anticipating her enemy’s moves as she glided wary and light-footed over the broken ground.

Time and again Juliet could have killed Habib, for his wild lunges left him critically exposed, but she waited for an opening where she could cripple him without taking his life. But where, Ross wondered helplessly, would it end? This was no wrestling match; in a knife fight with a killer, any error could be lethal.

He glanced around the growing circle of onlookers, hoping to see Abdul Wahab, the only man with the authority to stop the fight, but the kafila-bashi had not yet appeared.

There was an ear-piercing shriek of metal against metal, followed by a collective gasp from the watchers. Ross snapped his gaze back to the fight. The long blades of the combatants were locked together hilt to hilt, a position in which Habib’s superior strength gave him the advantage.

As vividly as if he were inside Juliet’s skin, Ross felt her muscles strain as she tried to hold the camel driver’s dagger away from her, but inexorably the joined blades were being driven back toward her throat. She could not even kick out at him without risking a disastrous loss of balance.

When Juliet’s strength was forced to the very limit, the camel driver twisted his dagger with so much pressure that she had to drop her own weapon to save her wrist from being broken. As it tumbled, glittering in the torchlight, Habib gave a shout of triumph and lunged forward to administer a killing stroke.

Once more, only Saleh’s iron grip kept Ross on the sidelines; the next day, he would find faint bruising where the older man’s fingers had dug into his arm. But even if Saleh had allowed Ross to interfere, he could not have done any good. It was up to Juliet to save herself.

She reacted to being disarmed with a cat-swift retreat from Habib’s attack. Since it was impossible to retrieve her knife with the camel driver standing over it, she bent and grabbed the full waterskin behind her. With one smooth motion she opened it and tossed it at him, growling, “Cleanse thyself, swine.”

The onlookers roared with derisive laughter as Habib howled with rage and fell back, dragging his sleeve over his eyes to dry them. By the time his vision was clear again, his opponent had retrieved the fallen knife.

Furious at being an object of mockery, Habib lunged at Juliet like a maddened bull. She parried his knife thrust easily, but this time his strategy was different. Barreling into her like a battering ram, he knocked her to the ground, Habib landing on top.

Ross’s nails stabbed his palms from the force of his clenching fists. In close combat, Habib’s strength would overpower Juliet. Also, though at the moment it seemed of minor importance, he might yank off her veil or feel enough of her body to realize she was female. God only knew what would happen then, but Ross doubted that Habib would be overcome by sudden chivalry.

For a moment Juliet lay still, stunned by the force of her fall. Then she began struggling furiously to break free of her opponent. The combatants rolled across the ground in a cloud of dust as Habib tried to thrust his dagger past her guard. When he finally stabbed, she managed to deflect the blade from striking a vital area, but it slashed deeply into her upper arm. Juliet gave a sharp, quickly choked-off cry of pain that pierced Ross like another knife.

Then Habib made a mistake, though an understandable one. He lifted his weight a little above his opponent to get extra power, then smashed his knee between her legs in a blow that would have paralyzed a man.

The onlookers moaned with horrified sympathy, but Juliet was not incapacitated as much a man would have been. Taking advantage of Habib’s momentary imbalance, she managed to hurl his body off hers. He landed sprawling on his back two feet away.

Making what all the watchers assumed was a superhuman recovery, Juliet leapt to her feet. Then, in a flurry of perfectly judged motions, she ended the fight. First she kicked Habib, her booted foot knocking aside his knife before smashing into the same ultravulnerable spot he had attacked on her. He screamed and doubled convulsively around his genitals.

With her opponent beyond all thought of self-defense, it was simple for Juliet to lean over and hamstring his right leg with one precise cold-blooded slash. Suddenly it was over, leaving Habib in no condition to pick another fight any time soon.

Juliet stood over the moaning figure of the man she had defeated, her dagger still ready in her hand as she breathed in great wrenching gasps. So intensely was Ross absorbed in her struggle that he felt every rasping breath as if it were his own, just as he shared the fierce exultation of her triumph.

Then Abdul Wahab appeared, finally drawn by the sounds of fighting. “What is going on here?” he barked, his gaze going from one of the combatants to the other. “Who started this?”

Since neither Juliet nor Habib seemed disposed to explain, Murad spoke up. “Sir, I was returning from visiting a friend at another fire and happened to be near the well when the fight began.” He made an insulting gesture at Habib. “This son of a scorpion taunted Jalal. Ignoring him, Jalal tried to return peacefully to our fire, so Habib attacked without warning.”

“Is this so, Jalal?”

“Aye.” In her exhaustion, Juliet spoke in her normal voice, several tones higher than the one she used as Jalal. Ross was surprised that no one noticed that it was a female voice, until he realized that her demonstration of fighting skill had made it literally unthinkable that she could be a woman.

A Kurdish merchant spoke up. “When they fought, Habib was trying to kill. The Targui showed great mercy in sparing him.” A murmur of other voices confirmed the statement.

The kafila-bashi stared down at the camel driver. “You have gotten what you deserved,” he said coldly. “You will be left in Merv, for I will have no troublemakers in my caravan.” Judgment given, Abdul Wahab turned on his heel and stalked away.

Most of the onlookers began to drift back to their own campsites, voices buzzing in excitement as they discussed the fight. There was no question that Jalal had been the popular favorite. Even the two fellow camel drivers who lifted Habib to carry him back to their own fire did so with visible distaste.

Ross wanted to walk over to Juliet and wrap himself around her until his heart slowed its chaotic beat, but he did not. He doubted that she would find such behavior acceptable even if half the camp was not watching. Instead, he followed Saleh through the group that surrounded her. “You can congratulate Jalal tomorrow,” Saleh said, his voice cutting through the babble of voices. “Now his wounds must be tended to.”

By the light of his torch, Ross saw that blood was pouring from the slash in her upper left arm, soaking the sleeve of her robe, and dripping from her fingers onto the sand. Wordlessly he handed the torch to Saleh, then yanked off his turban and wrapped the length of fabric around her arm, using it as both tourniquet and bandage. Juliet was shaking and her skin had a clammy chill, and he guessed that she was suffering from shock.

Murad joined them, saying enthusiastically, “You were splendid, Jalal! As quick as a serpent, as deadly as a lion. Could you teach me how to use a knife like that?”

Before Juliet could reply, Ross said, “That’s a question for another day, Murad. Will you fetch some water for us? I don’t think Jalal is up to the task just now.”

Reminded of practical reality, Murad went to retrieve the empty waterskin. Since Saleh did not suffer from all of the complicated constraints that bound Ross, he took Juliet’s uninjured arm to steady her during the walk back to their fire.

As soon as they arrived there, Ross laid his sleeping rug by the fire so Juliet could sit near its warmth. Then he tossed on more fuel to brighten the flames. When she had settled down on crossed legs, Saleh knelt beside her and unwrapped the temporary bandage so he could assess the wound. Juliet drew her breath in sharply as he examined her, though he worked as gently as possible. The gash was about six inches long and ran diagonally along the outside of her upper arm. Even with the rough tourniquet placed higher up, it still bled.

When Saleh was done with his examination, he said in a troubled voice, “I think it should be cauterized.”

Ross swore under his breath and glanced at Juliet. For a second their gazes met. Then she turned her head away. He knew that she understood what was being proposed and had accepted the necessity, but Ross could not bring himself to do the same. He said to Saleh, “Surely cauterization is not necessary.”

“I would not recommend it if I did not think it needful. Habib was a filthy swine and his knife was likely tainted. There is a grave risk the wound will fester if it is not burned clean.”