Seize the Fire (47 page)

Hours later, the moon rose, silvering the white washes of mineral salts that covered the barren ground. The huge body of men and animals moved along in eerie, shuffling silence, broken only by the occasional quiet conversation between the Bedouins as they scouted up and down along the column. Olympia had drifted in and out of light sleep, kept in place by the tall back of the camel's saddle. She woke up once to find that Sheridan held the braided rope attached to her mount's halter, leading the dromedary beside his own.

"Sorry," she muttered, embarrassed to think she must have dropped it in her sleep.

"It's all right." He spoke softly, more easily than he'd spoken to her for a long time. Olympia glanced at him. The moonlight washed his figure, turning his white cloak to a dim glow, lighting only his mouth and jaw beneath the shadow of the
kufiyah.

They rode in silence for a while, bathed in the sterile moonlight and the warm, sharp scent of sweat and camels. On the horizon, the distant black mountains seemed to float above a faint halo of mist.

"Do you feel different," he asked suddenly, "now that you've killed a man?"

She looked toward him. The question ought to have seemed brutal and abrupt, but the tone wasn't. It was odd—almost hesitant.

She let the camel rock her along for a few steps and then answered honestly, "I just try not to think about it."

"Yeah," he said, and sounded strangely melancholy. "Yeah."

She was close enough to touch him. She wanted to, but she was afraid. She tried once again to think of what Julia would do, but imagination failed her. She felt stupid and helpless, paralyzed in her chubby ineptitude.

"I wish I were dead," he said hollowly.

The despair in his voice touched a place in her that responded instantly, without thought or logic; it simply went past all the longing and hesitation and fear of rejection into the action. She put out her hand and rested it on his arm—one moment of contact—and then the motion of the camels broke it. "Sheridan," she said gently, "tell me what's wrong."

"I'd like to." His head was lowered, his face completely hidden from her.

"Tell me."

His words were almost a whisper. "I'm afraid to tell you. You'll despise me. You won't understand." He raised his face to the sky and said in a painful rush, "How could you understand?"

She said nothing. She wanted to argue, to claim that she would understand anything. But life had humbled her lately, and she kept the declaration to herself.

The wooden saddles creaked in awkward rhythm. She watched the silvery, shadowy ground move past beneath the camel's feet.

"I'm not real," he said suddenly. "I mean—I don't feel…I don't know; I can't explain it…I'm not alive. I walk around and I talk and I eat and I'm dead. I'm not here." He took a deep, ragged breath.
"I'm not here."

She looked at him, confused by the words, torn by the anguish in his voice.

"I never could go home," he said, speaking faster, as if a dam had fractured and the words were pouring from the break. "I wanted to go home, I wanted out of it so much—God, I despise the navy; what's the point? We haven't got a war, we haven't got an enemy worth the name, and still we have to—" He made a peculiar noise, halfway between a breath and a sob. "Damn 'em all; they sit up there at Whitehall smoking their pipes and getting fat and tell me to stop the slavers—so I chase slavers, and I catch 'em, and the bastards abandon ship and set fire to it to destroy the evidence."

He stopped. Silence reigned.

Then he whispered, "Those people chained in there…I can still hear it; I can still hear it; I can still hear it…"

Olympia held onto the saddle. There was a shivering in the pit of her stomach. She waited without speaking.

He kept his head down. "I wanted to go home after that." His voice wavered. "So I went on half pay. I thought—what the devil, even being destitute would be an improvement on this nonsense. And I went back, but you know, hell, I don't have a home; I don't know what made me think—"

He broke off. In the moonlight, the camels rocked relentlessly forward in their long-limbed gait. He paused for a long time, and then when the words came, they came in a gush again, as if he'd tried to hold them back but could not.

"I hated 'em all!" he exclaimed. "I hated their starched collars and their beaver hats and their stupid smart-ass aristocratic assistants who came in at noon because they'd been waltzing half the night with Lord Somebody's daughter and whoring like billy-o the rest. I found out the facts. I found out medals don't buy the time of day, not when it comes to getting a position you can live on. I found out you don't tell a duke's son that he doesn't know a halyard from a hole in the ground, even if he doesn't and it's going to drown a ship full of decent sailors. I found out the only paying post I was fit for was kept lover to any ladylike trollop who'd birthed enough little barons to earn her diamonds. So I did that, because it seemed better than sleeping in a gin palace. Those stupid sluts; I hated them, too—the way they'd try to tell all their friends what a hero I was…and they'd ask me what it was like—they'd ask me if I was ever afraid—and did it hurt very much to be shot—" He laughed bitterly. "God, they were idiots. They'd ask how many ships I'd sunk and how many men I'd killed hand to hand…as if I kept a damned running account. They always wanted to know how it felt…" His voice had begun to shake. "But I never told them. They didn't want to know the truth. Not really."

Olympia twisted one of the saddle's silken tassels between her fingers, wondering how many of those same questions she'd asked him herself. She knew a little of what the truth was like now—she remembered that white robe crumpling, splotched with crimson. She wondered if the man she'd shot had been a father, if he'd been cruel or kind—and then quickly retreated from the thought. She was glad she'd never seen his face.

But to save Sheridan's life, she would have done it again.

In the dim light, she saw him gaze out over the stark landscape. He shook his head and muttered, "I'm a friggin' failure at civilization. I spend half my life trying to get there, and when I do, I just walk around wanting to strangle somebody."

She thought of how he'd seemed to change when they left the island and boarded
Terrier
. "Is that what's wrong?" she asked softly. "Civilization?"

"No. It's me. I'm what's wrong." He sounded tense. "I shouldn't hate them; I've got no reason to be angry. They're just…normal. It's normal to live the way they do. They don't feel strange; they don't have dreams or see things. They don't—" His voice took on a peculiar note. "They don't…want to do the things I want to do."

She bit her lip, sensing the strain in him nearing a break. "What things?" she murmured.

After a hesitation, he whispered, "You won't understand."

She saw him turn his face away from her. "What things?" she asked again, as gently as she could.

For a long time he didn't answer. Then, low and rapid, he said, "I want to fight. I wish we'd be attacked, so I could fight. I'd feel better if I could kill somebody." He made a queer, anxious moan. "Maybe they'd kill me. That would be better…that would be good."

"Sheridan—" Olympia put her fist to her mouth. "Why?"

"I knew you wouldn't understand."

Her heart Was heating so hard it made her voice quiver. "Explain it to me."

Again a silence, so long that she feared she'd lost him.

"I feel so strange!" he burst out. "I should have died. It's not right that I'm alive. They all died—all my men. All my friends." That low moan escaped him, a wordless sound of agony. "Oh, God, I'm going to hurt someone. That's the only time I'm real now. I want to kill somebody."

The words drifted in the still desert air—so simple, and so terrible to comprehend.

"I knew it was here," he said. "It got out—I let it out, there at Aden…"

She remembered the way he'd looked up at her over the bodies of dead men, his eyes a ghostlike calm amid the violence. No fear, no disgust, no reason—only the bright gray flame of destruction.

He whispered furtively, "That's me; that's what's real—I want that back, but I can't have it. I can't have it, can I? No—I can't; I don't want to hurt anyone. But I'm dead, I'm dead…I don't know what to do…"

She was aghast. Distantly, she recognized that she ought reasonably to be afraid for herself, listening to what he was saying, that he wanted to kill someone—but it was Sheridan she was terrified for. He would turn this on himself. She had a clear and dreadful vision of him gazing down the barrel of a pistol in his cabin aboard
Terrier.

"I don't know what's happening to me," he mumbled. "I don't understand."

Olympia didn't understand either, but she knew when it had begun. She'd become engaged to Francis, and she would never forget Sheridan's face when he heard it. Somehow—though he'd denied it and said it wasn't her fault—something inside him had gone dreadfully wrong from that moment.

"Sheridan," she asked shakily, "do you want to kill me?"

"No!" The single syllable held absolute horror. He turned to her, grabbed her shoulder. "Not you—I swear—dear God, Princess—never you; I'd never hurt you!"

She remained quiet under the cruel grip of his fingers. With sudden resolution, she said, "No…of course not. But you have a right to be angry with me. After what I've done. I said I loved you and trusted you, and then I turned to Francis."

"I have to protect you," he said intensely.

She bowed her head. "If I were you, I'd be furious at me."

His hand left her shoulder. "I have to protect you," he repeated. But a faint note of anxiety had crept into his voice.

"You're not angry?"

He hesitated.

"Sheridan? Are you angry with me?"

"Why are you asking me that? I'm tired of it," he said explosively. "I'm tired of hurting and killing people."

She shivered in the cool night air, struggling to make sense of it all. "You just said it would make you feel better."

"Somebody else!" he exclaimed. "The enemy. Not you. I'll protect you; Princess, I don't want to hurt you. Never. Never."

"Yes," she said honestly, "I believe that. I only want to know if you're angry at me."

"I told you I won't hurt you!" The agitation in his voice mounted. "How can you even think it?"

She looked at him intently. With slow thoughtfulness, she said, "They aren't the same thing. You can be angry without hurting and killing."

He didn't answer. She watched his silhouette and saw him put his hand to his temple.

"You can be angry with me, Sheridan," she repeated softly. "Do you understand? I won't be happy, but I'll survive it."

"My head aches," he said fretfully.

She almost pushed him. But a newly awakening intuition stopped her. She felt like a flower opening petals before a thunderstorm, sensitive to each shift and play of wind. It was a risk; she might end up torn and beaten—but the storm wouldn't dissipate; it could only grow until it broke with furious intensity. She would have to spread and bend, though it meant opening to enfold depths of pain and violence she'd never imagined.

She thought again of Julia, tried to imagine how she would act, what she would say and do to give him comfort. After a frowning moment, Olympia realized with a sense of wonder that Julia wouldn't do anything at all, except put as much cool distance between herself and the hazard as possible. Perhaps she'd been his lover, but she would not stand by him at peril to herself—Olympia felt that in her bones.

For the first time in her life, she was proud she wasn't Julia.

There in the desert moonlight, she came to the truth, and a sense of infinite calm spread through her. Julia was more beautiful, Julia was slender and sophisticated and everything Olympia was not—but she didn't love Sheridan. Olympia doubted she'd ever loved anyone. In fact, growing up with that icy perfection, Olympia knew that if Fish Stovall had never taken pity on a lonely child and spent those warm, silent hours with her in the Norfolk marshes, she would never have known anything about love or friendship or faithfulness at all.

She could turn away from Sheridan and this darkness inside him; she could say he was dangerous—that he had a killing demon in him that was struggling for control…but she'd met that same demon face-to-face on the bloody gun deck of
Terrier
and it had defended her—with unselfish, single-minded, savage loyalty.

Love might exist in strange shapes, and demand more than simple commitment. A wolf was not a lapdog, not after a lifetime in the wilderness—but still it might long for a hearth and home.

The moon was setting, silhouetting the bleak mountains in an unearthly glow. On a hill ahead, the dark shapes of camels stalked in slow rhythm across the silver disc of light and then disappeared into shadow beyond: so lovely and majestic and alien they were like a dream of an unknown world. Their own mounts reached the top by steady steps—and there, spread before them, was a valley of frosted light, the long column like faint smoke winding through it.

"I wish this night would go on forever," Sheridan whispered. "I wish I never had to live in the world again."

The ache in his voice made her throat close. Her camel swayed down the slope next to his. They took up the trail behind the others.

"Would you sing for me?" she asked.

He looked at her, but she couldn't see his face. They were in shadow now, the night pressing closer as the moon disappeared.

Softly at first, his voice hoarse and faintly uncertain as if he'd half forgotten the words, the melody of "Greensleeves" rose above the shuffle of sand. The quiet conversations around them hushed. As midnight enveloped them, his fine voice gained depth and rhythm, drifting out over the silent desert: sweet reminder of home and love sung in time to the camels' march.

They made camp in the dark, pitching tents for the few hours of rest before the pre-dawn signal to move again. Sheridan stayed with her of his own will, and when they were together in the tent, he did not call for the chibouk, but dismissed the servant girl and doused the lamp.