Swords From the Desert (45 page)

Nadra left the trail and curled up in the thin shadow of some date palms. She was not tired, but for appearance's sake she drew the sandal from a slim, dusty foot and looked at it earnestly. Out of the corners of her dark eyes she watched the tribe go by.

They went swiftly, the camels pacing under their loads, the donkeys urged on by children with sticks. Her father rode by with the older men, carrying shields and bamboo lances, because the tribe, the Banu's Safa, was passing near the land of an enemy.

They were not rich, the Banu's Safa. Drought in the lowlands had forced them to seek new pastures for their animals at risk of their own lives. The camel packs and the donkey loads carried all their possessions-sacks of precious grain and wool, scraped hides, brass bowls and water jars, the chests of the women, and weapons captured in battle by the men.

Dust hung over the trail like a mist, dust in which flashed the horns of the cattle. Beside the trail the horse herd roamed, searching out the dry grass, and Nadra stared at it until she recognized the color of Yarouk's cloak. Yarouk, as usual, was taking more care of his gray mare than of her!

While the dust still hung about her like a veil, Nadra slipped down into a wadi and began to run back, beside the trail. Avoiding thornbush and devil rocks, she sped away, the silk head-veil caught by a silver pin, flapping in the wind gusts. Nadra was proud of that silk, and of the embroidery she had worked laboriously upon the breast of her gown. Other girls might embroider more skillfully but they had not her beauty.

She was going back for the two kids-those playful little goats without a mother; goats with brown, silky hair. Nadra had taken them for her own, tying a collar of scarlet thread about the neck of each one. They used to follow her and sleep in the shade of her father's black tent. Now they were missing, and Nadra felt certain they had been left behind at the last halting place.

None of the men, of course, would turn back for a girl's goats. Yarouk especially would mock her if she begged him. Nor would they let her take a horse. It was the duty of the nomad girls to care for the animals, not to use them-nor to speak boldly to the men, who could ride to hunt or to war as the whim struck them. They would not even let her go back while the tribe was within a day's ride of Sultan Ibrahim's castle. But no one in the tribe had seen her go.

When she was tired of running, the Arab girl walked swiftly until she came to the last halting place, a patch of gray, trodden grass. For a moment she searched the spot with her eyes. If enemies had been following the Banu's Safa, they would be nosing about this place now. But nothing moved except the tips of the brush on a rocky knoll. Nadra thought she saw a glint of brown, and she hastened forward.

In a gully behind the rocks she found the two bleating kids.

"Foolish ones!" she scolded in delight as they bounded up unsteadily and rubbed their heads against her hands. When she stooped to pick them up, she paused, listening. There was a rushing sound, not made by the wind in the brush.

"Ai! " The girl crouched, clutching her pets.

A black shape bounded into the gully, turned with a scattering of gravel, and vanished between swaying bushes with a rending snarl. It was a black panther, and Nadra breathed a prayer of relief, until she heard a thudding of hoofs and a crashing of brush.

She had not time to hide before the horse burst into the open space. Reined in, it went back on its haunches and its rider flung himself from the saddle. Nadra prepared to run desperately, when she discovered that the man was paying no attention to her. His eyes questing along the ground, he went after the panther among the overgrown rocks. And Nadra stared, amazed.

Even Yarouk, she thought, would not go after a fleeing black panther on foot. And this man was not like an Arab. For one thing he carried an iron shield as if it were straw; and on his head he had no more than a light steel cap, from which hair the hue of gold fell to his broad shoulders. True, his face was darkened by the sun-glare, but the eyes that flickered over Nadra were the blue of deep water. He carried thrust before him a light lance, and from his hip hung a long, straight sword. Nadra had never seen anything quite like him before.

When the stranger had vanished among the rocks, she inspected his horse, a powerful bay stallion. It was a fine horse, and the girl moved toward it eagerly. It would be a prize to delight her father-but, more than that, it would be safety for Nadra, who had no illusions about the fate of young women found in the desert without armed men to protect them.

The stallion, however, was on edge, with the scent of the panther and the sight of a robed woman carrying two goats. It wheeled away, snorting, when Nadra reached for the rein. And then a second man galloped up on a laboring pony, an armed servant of the first, apparently. Nadra dropped her goats and turned to flee, only to find the warrior of the tawny hair striding back toward her.

Nadra darted to one side and fell heavily. The stranger had thrown his light lance, butt end first, in front of her. And before she could gain her feet he had lifted her bodily. Feeling the clasp of steel-like fingers under her knee, the girl lay passive, panting.

"Look, Hassan," he laughed. "I have lost a panther and caught a girl."

"Eh, master-"the attendant shook his head-"the panther would be less dangerous."

They both spoke Arabic, but the one, noble-born, who held her, did not speak it as her own people.

"0 man," she besought him softly, "do not dishonor me."

Alan, Sicur de Kerak and baron of the marches, had little mercy in him. He rode with a loose rein to hunt or to war. They who followed him had more wounds to lick than gold to count. It was said of him that never had he turned his back upon quest or quarrel.

He had grown up on the border, where were the outposts of the crusaders who held Jerusalem. It was the land of Outremer-Beyond the Sea. Sir Alan had never set foot within hall or hamlet of Christendom in Europe-all his days he had lived here, in Beyond the Sea. Many a night had he watched for the gleam of moonlight upon helmets. And so in time he had been sent to hold Kerak, the easternmost castle of the crusaders, the farthest watch post beyond the Jordan-a tower and a walled courtyard on a rocky height that the Arabs called the Stone of the Desert. It was his duty now to watch the caravan track to Mecca, to send word of any rising of the foe, and to hold Kerak safe if he could. If an attack came, he need expect no aid. Meanwhile, he amused himself with hawk and hound and riding after antelope.

In spite of the protest of Hassan ibn Mokhtar, his sword-bearer, an Arab of the Hauran who had eaten his salt, Sir Alan had gone out that morning without other guard, along the southern trail.

Now he looked down at the frightened girl in his arms, scrutinizing the smooth forehead under its tangle of dark hair, and the quivering lashes of the closed eyes.

"And why not?" he laughed.

"Because," she whispered, straining her head away from him, "I am daughter of a rail of the Banu's Safa. If harm comes to me, my father will hold blood feud against thee until the shame be finally ended with thy life."

"0 girl, have I no enemies? Yea, Sultan Ibrahim and others have sworn to take my life, yet I live."

"Then, by Allah, take ransom for me."

"What talk is this?" Sir Alan smiled. A strange girl who, found wandering in the desert afoot, spoke of ransom like a baron taken in battle.

"True talk." Nadra made up a tale without any hesitation. "Wait, and in an hour or so will come a kaid of the tribe who will bring a gray mare. A swift mare, worth more than that charger of thine. The mare he will give thee for me."

"And what name will he have, this noble squire?"

"Yarouk, son of Yahiya."

"And what robe will he wear?"

"A white robe, with a blue cloak."

"Now I see well that I have caught a true houri of fairyland, who knoweth the secret of what is to be!" Laughing he unclasped the silk veil and drew it from her face.

Among her own people, Nadra was not particular to keep her face covered. The tribe had never visited a strange city, and in the desert the better-looking girls liked to be admired. But never had a man snatched the veil from her. Swiftly her hand dropped, closed upon the hilt of the hunting knife in Sir Alan's girdle.

Before either of the men could move to prevent, she struck with the knife, beneath her captor's arm. And she cried out angrily. The knife blade jarred against chain mail under the knight's surcoat. The next moment he gripped her wrist and took the weapon from her.

"0 she-panther! 0 witch, destroyer of men!" Hassan exclaimed furiously. "Set her loose, lord, or give permission that I slay her. If you keep her captive, we shall eat nothing but trouble."

"Nay," replied Sir Alan, "first we will drink."

They led the horses down the gully to a second clearing. Here, hemmed in by rock nests and brush, were a well and the shade of a few poplars. When the horses had drunk, Hassan loosed their girths and tethered them among the trees. But he tied Nadra firmly about the knees with a long rope.

It was past the middle of the day-the shadows told her that-and the hot air quivered above the baked ground. By now, Nadra thought, the caravan of her people would be hours away. And Yarouk would be searching out grazing for the swift gray mare that was like the very blood of his heart to him. Once on a moonlit night Yarouk, the kaid, the young warrior, had sung outside her tent-"O heart of my heart"-Nadra knew every word of that song. But she had waited for his wooing, so that every man of the tribe should see the warrior sitting at her feet, beseeching her. She had waited ...

And now this infidel lord with the lion's mane sat by her, eating barley cake and drinking thirstily. She had turned aside from the goblet they offered her ... this Lord A-lan was a man of steel-steel-like the clasp of his fingers, and steel-bound his body. He was like the sword he bore, unyielding.

The brown kids leaped over her feet and thrust their heads against her. Nadra caressed them absently and refastened the veil about her head.

Then down the gully came Yarouk, leading the gray mare with a saddled pony.

"Salaam aleikum," he said, lifting his right hand to forehead and breast, so that even Nadra could see, when the blue cloak fell back about his shoulders, that he carried no other weapon than the ivory hilted dagger in his girdle. "I am Yarouk, son of Yahiya."

"Upon thee also be peace," responded Sir Alan courteously, taking note of the white headcloth and the graceful horse that followed the Aral). "Sit, eat."

"May Allah lengthen thy days." Yarouk seated himself carelessly a lance length from the knight. "Nay, I have no hunger. 0 lord, thou art far from thy tower."

"As thou art from thy ka fiila."

"By Allah, that is true. Yet this is not safe ground." Apparently he seemed not at all surprised to find Nadra lying under the trees; certainly he paid no attention to her. "I came back to look for some stray goats and a girl."

Toward the end of the morning he had noticed that Nadra had left the caravan. Hearing that she had been seen under the date palms, he took out a saddled pony and, riding the mare he had picked up her tracks in the wadi and followed them into the gully. Seeing the three at the well, he had pondered for a moment ... the caravan hours away, and Sir Alan clearly making only a brief halt at the well ... Nadra bound and impossible to reach without alarming the infidels ... Sir Alan he knew as the devil of the Stone of the Desert; no other crusader would be within three days' ride of this place.

So he waited, his dark eyes impassive, while Nadra's blood hummed in her ears.

"Here are the goats," said the knight. "Take them. But the girl is mine."

For an instant the Arab's lips twitched and the breath caught in his nostrils. "I say she is mine!"

Hassan, who had satisfied himself that no other tribesmen were coming after the lone rider down the gully, moved forward and put his hand on his sword hilt, waiting expectantly for new trouble to come. Sir Alan's blue eyes gleamed. "Inshallah, if God please. But now she is mine, and how will you alter that? Will you give that mare for the girl?"

For a moment the Arab warrior glanced at the mare's lifted head, with the long mane combed clean of thorns. "Yes," he said suddenly.

Sir Alan seemed not to hear. He thought of his bare room in the tower top, of the hours spent gazing into the fire while his men-at-arms rested over their cups and the hunting dogs crunched bones ... Nothing more than that to go back to, and at the end of it all in any case the slash of an arrow in his throat, or torture under the knives of his foes ... He had held her in his arms for a moment-in time she would forget her people. "And I also," he said, "prize the girl more than the horse."

The veins stood out upon Yarouk's bare arms. "Then let the sword be between us. Give me this one's sword, and we will try the judgment of Allah!"

Sir Alan smiled. "Nay, that would be no judgment between us! For if we cross swords I shall slay thee. Now go!"

He had no wish to kill the younger man. And he knew the frenzy of excitement that seized upon those nomads when swords were drawn. With Yarouk he had no quarrel; on the other hand he had no intention of giving up the girl.

"0 man," cried Hassan, "thou hast heard the command-"

"Be silent, thou!"

Yarouk leaned his elbows on his knees. His eyes were closed but the veins throbbed in his temples, and Hassan waited for a moment when he could spring at Sir Alan with his knife. There was silence about the well, except for the slow breathing of the three men and the rustling of Nadra's garments as she moved uneasily. The gray mare lifted her head and paced forward daintily to nudge Yarouk's shoulder with her nose.

As she did so, the Arab's expression changed. "Have you enemies who would seek you here, Lord A-lan?"

"That have I. This is the land of Sultan Ibrahim, who would like well to roast me over a fire-" the blue eyes gleamed-"as he did one of my men."

Yarouk edged closer to him. "Wallahi, speak softly or he may hear thee. There are men hidden in the rocks behind thee."