Falconer's Quest (30 page)

The Arab joined Falconer in the mouth of the alcove. To Falconer’s mind the shadows around them did not seem nearly enough cover. A horse shifted its weight and whickered softly. He heard Soap murmur to it and pat a flank.

Wadi hissed. A quick sound, barely more than a sigh of wind.

A desert figure stepped into view at the mouth of the cave. The man’s robes drifted about his feet. He carried a rifle in one hand. He peered into the shadows. He knelt and studied the dust. He rose to his feet. Falconer felt the air trap in his lungs. The man did not move.

Hours passed. Eons. Or so it felt to Falconer.

The man moved on.

They remained motionless. Even the horses seemed to be holding their breath. Nothing moved outside except the heat, rising in constant waves.

Wadi crouched and crept forward, holding fast to the western wall, where the gloom was most dense. He arrived at the cave entrance and dropped to his belly. He crawled forward.

His hand rose in a flicker of motion.

Falconer crept forward to join him.

The desert floor was empty. The hunter on foot was nowhere to be seen.

Wadi muttered, “They circle back, attack from above, or they go on.”

Falconer whispered, “Do we go or stay?”

He shrugged eloquently. “We leave, they could see us. We stay, a chance we safe.”

“A chance.”

The Arab shot him a quick grin. “Good to make peace with God of all heaven.”

Falconer realized what the man intended. “I will go,” he said firmly.

Wadi’s smile grew broader as he shook his head. “You trained to melt into desert floor?” He did not wait for a reply. “If I not return in hour, run.”

Wadi was back before the sun had shifted ten degrees. Falconer had no idea how long that was in minutes, for the day was stretched taut. One moment the cave mouth was empty. Then Wadi was dropping down from the roof overhang. Before Falconer could raise a challenge, Wadi said, “I here.”

Falconer offered him a waterskin and waited to ask, “What did you find?”

“They move ever further west.” He drank again. “But there are other parties. Some bedu, some soldiers. They scour the desert like ravenous wolves.”

Falconer pondered this long and hard. Finally he rose and moved back to the rear alcove. “You can come forward. But stay quiet and well back from the entrance.”

Soap emerged first. “There are more?”

“Aye.”

“What will—”

“Rest and ready yourselves,” Falconer replied. “We leave at moonrise.”

Falconer watched from the cave opening, resting but not sleeping. Nor were any of the others, as far as he could tell. The hours crawled by. They were alert and moving about the cave long before the first shard of moon appeared beyond the hills. When all was made ready, Falconer stepped to the rearmost portion of the animals’ alcove. Byron and Kitty had remained there since the hunters had appeared. Falconer could see only their forms, so tight against the stone they clung. He saw a faint gleam reflecting off Kitty’s gaze and knew her eyes were again enormous with fear.

Falconer knelt in the sand before them. “There are two things you must remember through all that comes. The first is this. Kitty, your mother awaits you on the journey’s other end. Byron, your stepfather stands beside her. Or kneels, for I am certain the both of them are praying as fervently as they know how. They await you both with outstretched arms. The second is this. I will guard your safety with my life. Do you believe me?”

Byron whispered, “Yes.”

“Kitty?”

“I’m so afraid.”

“I know, lass. But safety lies beyond these hills. It is our job to be strong for the both of you.” He rose to his feet and held out his hands. “Come.”

Chapter 35

Even the animals seemed subdued as they crept from the cave. With scarcely a breeze, the night held a breathless quality, as though the moon-washed rocks, the brush and sand, shared their apprehension.

Wadi took the lead, being careful not to move so far ahead as to lose sight of Falconer. Falconer acted as a connecting point between Wadi and the others. Soap, the whalers, Byron, and Kitty all rode. Nebo and Bernard brought up the rear. The going was hard but their pace steady. Falconer had to trust Wadi’s instincts, as he saw no real trail. The crescent moon rose to become a sky-borne lantern.

Falconer knew they had reached the summit when the twin monoliths came into view. When Falconer had first spotted them from the ship’s quarterdeck, he had thought they were natural outcroppings. As he approached them now, however, he saw they were both round and manmade, with huge bases as wide as six men holding arms.

Wadi signaled from the ridge’s far end. Falconer whispered, “We rest.”

As he approached the pillars, moonlight played upon the surface, causing the figures of the soldiers carved upon them to march in ghostly unison. Falconer traced his hand over the timeworn surface. They now were only monuments to some forgotten triumph, set upon hills whose name only bandits remembered. The empire was dust now, as were its warriors who had once thought themselves invincible.

Wadi found him there by the eastern pillar. He accepted the waterskin, drank deeply, then said, “We leave mounts.”

“The noise?”

Wadi nodded and drank again, then handed back the skin. “And trail. It steep. Narrow.”

Falconer walked over to where Sands rested upon the other pillar’s base. “Can you and your men walk from here?”

“To freedom?” Teeth flashed in the moonlight. “Barefoot the entire way.”

The descent was treacherous, particularly as Falconer again carried Kitty. Twice Wadi lost the trail entirely. Both times Falconer and the others waited in the best cover they could find, which was not much. The hillside was so steep his group was strung out single file. Falconer prayed no watcher lurked below to pierce the gloom or hear the falling pebbles.

Midway down they came upon a flat space that so resembled a terrace Falconer wondered if it had been hewn by man. Then he spied a fragment of wall where the hill swept in tightly, and he realized it had once been a fortress— maybe a watch station for whoever built the hillside monuments. The view explained the setting, for a waning moon behind them glistened upon the open sea. There was just enough light to make out the empty road below, a silver ribbon that stretched out in either direction.

He spied Nebo kicking at something in the dust and walked over. As he approached, he caught the scent of ashes. He watched as Nebo bent down and rubbed the charcoal between his fingers. Falconer asked, “How long?”

“Two days, or three.”

Falconer searched and asked the empty night, “Which direction do you think?”

Nebo rose and dusted off his hands. “Perhaps they move on to the caravanserai.”

“Perhaps.”

Neither expressed the other prospect, that the soldiers or brigands had found a watching place closer to the road.

Falconer’s group could have rested there for hours. But the moon was setting, and the waning light made the going even more difficult. No one protested as Wadi led off.

Falconer moved up alongside Byron, who limped and chose each step carefully. But he made no complaint and held to the pace set by the others. Falconer patted the young man’s shoulder and offered the only words of hope he could think of. “Your parents would both be proud of you this night.”

Byron looked up from the trail. His eyes glinted in the moonlight. “But you said it yourself. I caused this.”

“They have already forgiven you, Byron. The question now is, what will you do with their forgiveness?”

Byron’s gaze returned to the next step. And the one after. Finally he said, “I want to be more than I am.”

“It is a most worthy aim.”

“Will—” Byron hesitated, then finished—“will you speak more with me about prayer?”

“Aye, that I shall. As will they.” He patted the shoulder once more. “Very proud indeed.”

As Falconer moved forward to resume his place behind Wadi, Kitty said, “I can walk some.”

Falconer was tempted, but not for long. “Better you save your strength, lass, in case we all need to run later.”

“Are they chasing us?”

Falconer did not need to ask of whom she spoke. The child’s shiver said it all. “Remember what I said, lass. I will do everything in my power to keep you safe.”

The descent continued long enough to have Falconer feeling the weakness seep back into his muscles and bones. What the weakened bodies of Byron and the whalers were enduring, he did not want to imagine. Even though he could hear their rasping breath, they did not slow their pace, for the moon was almost gone, and it grew increasingly hard to see their way ahead. Even so, he knew they could not take much more. Just as he was ready to whistle and call Wadi back for yet another rest, the trail eased. Falconer did not allow himself to believe it at first. But the trail leveled off and then joined with the loose sand that signaled the base.

Wadi signaled and Nebo whistled, both men at the exact same moment. Falconer did not need to search for the reason.

Wadi pointed to their right, at a crevice that opened beside the trail. The shadows by now were so impenetrable Falconer could not tell if the crevice was five feet deep or a mile. Wadi scrambled down into it and disappeared. Two heartbeats later, he emerged and waved them forward. Falconer whistled his own urgent signal, still uncertain what the two guards had seen or heard.

The crevice was about fifteen feet deep and long enough that they could all remain hidden. Which was most providential. Because no sooner had they arrived at the base than Falconer heard the soft pad of footfalls, the soft chink of metal upon metal.

The moon was completely below the horizon, though the stars remained. Not enough light for their little group to find its way along an uncharted hillside, but more than enough for men to walk a familiar road. Soldiers or brigands, Falconer could not tell. He lay in the dust next to Wadi with Soap to his other side. Kitty’s face remained buried in the point where Falconer’s chin met his neck. They remained frozen and silent as men and camels and horses passed fifty paces away. In the fear-laced night, they seemed close enough to touch. Falconer counted thirty mounts. Muskets and scimitars sprouted from shoulders and saddles, a forest of danger and doom. Falconer thought he might have recognized their abandoned mounts among the others.

The minutes required for the caravan to pass seemed the longest of Falconer’s life. The final outrider passed so close Falconer could see the tassels dangling from the musket’s stock. From deeper in the crevice there came not a sound. No one breathed. The darkness covered them in a blanket so impenetrable the crevice itself went unnoticed, or so Falconer assumed, for the soldier did not even glance their way.

Soon after the force passed, the sky whispered of dawn’s arrival. The sea was close enough for faint brushstrokes of fog to slowly replace the stars.

Only with the dawn came yet another problem.

Faint tendrils of the mist drifted in from the sea. Not enough to blanket the road. But the shoreline, five hundred paces beyond the road, became indistinct. The sea was lost to them entirely.

Daylight arrived with remarkable swiftness. But the mist stubbornly refused to disperse. Likely the ship—if it was near—was facing the same veil on the opposite side. Falconer rested upon the crevice’s embankment, his eyes just above the level of the stones. The now-empty road was thirty paces straight ahead of him. The stretch from the road toward the shore was flat and empty. Neither shade nor refuge.

Soap occupied the position to his left. Softly Falconer asked the seaman, “Any chance of another storm? It could cover us while we cross to the water. Though whether or not the ship can see the monuments…” His voice drifted to a stop.

“Your nose is as good as mine.”

“Not in this desert, it isn’t.”

Soap breathed in deeply. “Rising mercury, is my guess. Clear as a crystal bell. More’s the pity.”

Bernard spoke from Falconer’s other side. “We can’t stay here much longer. The shadows will be lost in a half hour or less. We’re still too far from the coast.”

Soap responded for them all. “The ship won’t be able to identify the pillars. Which means they can’t find the place to land the longboat.”

“Captain Harkness will not let us down,” Bernard declared stoutly.

Falconer glanced over. The young banker was unrecognizable. A burnoose dangled loosely about his head and shoulders. The lower half of his face was lost behind a surprisingly thick beard. His eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot, lips cracked, hands as filthy as his clothes, which were far more dust-yellow than their original black. His dandified boots were ruined. One sole remained in place only because he had lashed a rope about the whole shoe.

“I never thanked you,” Falconer said.

Bernard blinked at him uncertainly. “Thank me? Whatever for?”

“For remaining at your station outside the fortress wall,” Falconer replied. “For not giving in to fear. For doing exactly as we had planned. For your strength and skill in a time of direst need.”

To Bernard’s other side, Nebo murmured, “I be wrong in my thoughts of you.”

Soap muttered, “As was I.”

Bernard’s head swiveled back and forth. “I suggest we perhaps discuss the matter at hand. We are far from the sea and the sun is erasing our cover!”

Falconer clambered to his feet. The road stretched out flat and empty in both directions. The fog was almost gone over the land and the shoreline but clung stubbornly to the sea. A hundred yards beyond the sea, the water was swallowed in a blanket of gray.

There was no sign of any boat. Nor of decent cover beyond where he stood.

Nebo asked softly, “What say you?”

Falconer glanced down. The crevice was utterly revealed, and all the people who crouched inside. “We go.”

Nebo scrambled up to stand alongside him. He frowned at the flat and utterly exposed shoreline. “Go to where?”

“Harkness promised he would find us,” Falconer said, offering Soap a hand. Then he crouched down so Kitty could climb on his back. “He did not say he would come if there was no storm, nor fog, nor enemy. We must trust him to have spoken the truth of what he would do.”