The Book of the Seven Delights (22 page)

"They're on foot! Mount up and ride!" Smith yelled to her.

"Only if you do!" She broke open her gun, dumped the hot, spent cartridges, and loaded new rounds with shaking hands, vowing to actually aim at something this time. Her ears were ringing and the smell of burned gunpowder stung her nose. When Smith's gun was empty, Haffe pulled the rifle from Smith's saddle and threw it to him.

When Smith's firing halted, the contingent on the dune lurched up and charged and a second group dropped over the rock ledge in a flanking maneuver. Abigail jammed her boot into the stirrup and swung herself up onto her horse. Haffe was already mounted and crouching low in his saddle as he grabbed the mules' lead reins and bolted for the desert. She looked back to call to Smith and found him trapped behind that tree. Instinctively, she bent low in the saddle, pointed her gun, and fired at the Legionnaires rushing him. Two of them dropped to the ground and the others crouched to make themselves smaller targets. She could hear Gaston cursing and ordering them on, but that short delay had already allowed Smith to reach his horse.

"Go!" he shouted at Abigail, kicking his frantic mount into motion.

Abigail's horse reared slightly, then exploded under her and shot out across the sands after Haffe.

Gunfire exploded at their backs, but with every wild heartbeat they were yards closer to being out of range. Then she spotted the nose of Smith's horse at the edge of her vision and put all of her energy into catching up with Haffe. The shooting stopped as they raced away, but unless they quickly put miles between themselves and Gaston, all they had done was delay the inevitable.

They rode as fast as their horses hearts and the shifting sands would allow. It wasn't long before she learned to ride the troughs between dunes and when necessary, ride straight down the side of one instead of angling across it. The wind rose steadily. Her heart pounded and her lungs burned; her eyes felt gritty from the swirling dust. After a time they had to slow the pace and bring the loose ends of their turbans down across their faces in order to breathe, but they rode doggedly, heading south into a rising wind and worsening weather.

By midafternoon strong winds had begun to kick up loose sand that pelted them like rain. The horses lowered their heads and pushed on, fighting for every step in the swirling sands that battered their legs.

Haffe finally turned back to shout above the wind that they needed to take shelter and Abigail followed the alarm in his eyes to Smith, who was slumped in his saddle, looking as if he might be blown off at any minute.

She called to him and got no response. Dismounting, she hurried to help Haffe drag him from his saddle.

There was a blackened gouge in his turban and a grisly red flow of blood down the side of his head.

"Smith!" She shook his shoulders and pressed an ear tight to his chest to listen for a heartbeat, reporting to Haffe: "He's alive, but we have to find out how badly he's hurt."

The little Berber nodded and quickly retrieved the large canvas tarp from the mules to fashion a surprisingly effective lean-to against the side of a dune. Together they dragged Smith into it, and she quickly determined the blood had come from a single head wound. Bracing for the worst, she removed his turban and found a slash along the side of his head that ended on his forehead just above his patch-covered eye.

"Water… and my medical kit… from the bag with the lock on it," she shouted to Haffe above the wind.

He nodded and left to retrieve them.

"You'd better not quit on me, Apollo Smith," she whispered, fighting the grip of panic on her throat.

"We've got miles to go, you and me. Don't you dare die on me."

Steeling herself, she removed his eye patch and was surprised to find he seemed to still have an eye beneath a scarred eyelid. It didn't look so bad… she gently pushed open the lid and found a relatively normal looking sclera and iris inside. There were probably a number of ways to be blind if your eye was…

Just then, Haffe arrived with her medical kit and a lantern and she hastily lowered the eye patch and set to work removing Smith's upper garments and laying out the contents of her dispensary. She tore strips from his turban and wetted one of them to swab the blood from his wound… while trying to recall what she'd read about stitching lacerations.
Dr. Parker's Home Physician… Medicine… the 615's
. It was a long furrow of an abrasion, and as she cleaned it thoroughly with the stinging American antiseptic, Listerine, that she had brought from Boston, she thought he registered a bit of discomfort.

"Head wounds bleed a lot. Maybe it looks worse than it is," she said, mostly to herself. "We'll have to keep it clean and bandaged, and hope for the best." She placed gauze over the wound and secured it with strips of his turban.

The wind intensified, sometimes rumbling like a distant locomotive, sometimes howling like a wounded animal. Sand pelted the tarp and invaded every vulnerable pore of the oiled cloth and every unsecured crack and opening. They could literally taste dust. Their only consolation was that Gaston and his men were caught in the same storm and were probably faring no better.

"The horses!" She looked to Haffe, whose eyes were big and bright in the dimness of their battered shelter.

"Horses smart," he said, tapping his temple. She glimpsed a flash of large white teeth. "Close eyes. Arse to wind." His confidence in the animals' survival instincts allowed that worry to fade.

Then the meager daylight began to go. In the closing darkness she listened anxiously to Smith's breathing and wondered if she were somehow marked for disaster. She'd never felt so alone or so vulnerable…

adrift on an ocean of sand… at the mercy of raging forces of nature.

With a lump developing in her throat, she threaded her fingers through Smith's and closed her eyes, praying that her longing and determination would somehow travel through the warmth of that contact to call him back to her.

"I need you, Smith. Wake up. Please," she whispered, trying not to think about what would happen if he didn't. She looked at Haffe, unable to hide her desperation. "I can't do any more for him. When the storm breaks, we'll have to turn back to Ouarzazate and get him some help."

Haffe nodded gravely and extended a hand… almost patting her arm before remembering himself.

"Rest, Merchant ma'am." He gave her a wan little smile. "I watch."

Nodding miserably, she curled up beside Smith and listened anxiously for each of Smith's ragged breaths until fatigue claimed her. The darkness softened and the roar of the wind gradually faded in her consciousness.

It seemed like mere minutes later that she awakened with a start to a strange, dusky light coming from the opening at the front of the shelter. Haffe was gone and she crawled over to the canvas opening to look for him. Through the haze of dust she could see him swathed and bent against the wind, leading the horses and mules back toward the shelter. Though caked with dirt, the animals appeared to have weathered the sandstorm with no ill effects. She drew back inside and checked Smith, finding him still unresponsive.

"Come on, Apollo," she whispered, wishing she could will some of her strength and health into him

"Wake up." On impulse she bent to brush his lips with hers and stroked his cheek. "Please, wake up."

Moments later Haffe scuttled into the shelter with a bag of food and two canteens. Hunger was the farthest thing from her mind, but at his urging, she made herself eat some of the flatbread and wash it down with water.

"How long do you think it will be before the wind dies enough for us to go on?" she asked, unsure just how much of it he understood.

"Sand cut. Like knife." He shook his head. "Stay here."

"But we have to get him to better shelter and some proper medical treatment. He could be dying—"

Smith groaned and for the first time in hours, moved of his own volition.

"W-who's"—his voice rasped as he turned his head slightly—"dying?"

"Smith?" She lurched over him and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Oh, thank God." His half-focused gaze caused relief to erupt in her, making it hard to breathe for a moment. She stiffened and blinked until a potentially catastrophic wave of emotion subsided. "We thought you were—how are you feeling? Can you move? Can you see? How many fingers am I holding up?"

"I can see well enough to know you're not holding up any. My head hurts." He explored his bandaged temple, and his hand stopped abruptly on the part of the bandage just above his eye patch. "How bad is it?"

"Now that you're awake and back to being 'SOS Smith,' I'd say it's probably not so bad." She kept him from his bandage. "A bullet grazed your head and you lost some blood. Then we ran into a storm. We're waiting for the wind to die down so we can take you back to Ouarzazate."

"Why Ouarzazate?" He moved his limbs stiffly, taking inventory.

"We have to get you some medical help," she said, pushing his shoulders back down when he tried to rise.

"What makes you think we'd find any in Ouarzazate?" he said hoarsely.

"But your head—"

"Hurts like a sonuva buck," he said, grimacing as he tried to raise his head. "But it won't hurt any less on the way back to Ouarzazate. Or any more if we go on from here."

"You can't be serious. You're a long way from being on your feet."

"I'll be on my arse in a saddle—feet won't figure into it." He made tasting motions and grimaced. "Did I eat half of the Sahara? I could really use some water…"

There was no doubt about it; he was awake and fully, annoyingly himself. As the day wore on, he wanted whiskey to dull the pain. She gave him headache powders. He demanded whiskey to slake his thirst. She gave him water. He insisted on having a mirror to see his injury; she declared that was one of the things he had made her discard on the way to Marrakech. When the powders took effect and he turned his back to sleep, she offered up a terse prayer.

"Thank God."

It was the middle of the next day before the wind abated enough for her to leave their shelter and have a look around. With the sun directly overhead she had difficulty orienting herself when she climbed to the top of a nearby dune.

Wind-sculpted drifts of sand stretched as far as she could see, unbroken by smoke from fires, lines of camels, vengeful Legionnaires, or tracks of any kind… not Abu Denaü's tracks leading south, nor their own leading from the north. The storm had scoured every trace of human movement and activity from the landscape. She stalked back down the dune.

"We're lost."

Haffe crouched in front of the shelter by a hollow in the sand.

"No, no. Follow caravan."

"Look for yourself. There aren't any tracks."

"Camel tracks." He said adamantly holding up two flat, brownish clumps and grinning. "We follow."

"Dear God," she muttered, staring at those sand-crusted chunks of camel dung and feeling herself teetering on the brink of full-blown hysteria. "We're escaping an ambush… forging across the Sahara…

risking life and limb to look for a priceless archaeological find… guided by
camel droppings
."

A rusty sounding laugh from behind her caused her to turn.

"The latest in nomad navigation." Smith was crawling out of the shelter. "Little wonder they spend most of their time wandering around the desert."

"Thank heaven you're up." She hurried to his side and insisted he lean on her. "Any chance you could try the astrolabe and find out where we are?"

When he said he could probably manage, she snagged her map and astrolabe and helped him to the top of the closest dune. Then he looked down at the arm she hadn't yet removed from his waist.

"So, I take it you're glad I didn't die."

"Just protecting my investment." She blushed, feeling her lips heating suddenly and her skin coming to life… and she started to withdraw.

"Yeah?" He trapped her against him and pulled her closer.

Flustered by an impulse to raise her mouth to him, she shoved the astrolabe and map into his hands and ducked out of his arms.

"Imagine how it would sound to the old boys at the British Museum: 'We reached the Great Library by following a trail of camel dung.' Find us a direction, Smith. And pray that the 'Apollo' in you gets it right."

An hour later, fortified with bread and goat cheese and Haffe's sweetened tea, they set off in the direction Smith identified. Each time they crested a dune, she rose in her stirrups to look around, and each lime the landscape was barren as far as she could see in all directions. The storm had blown away both their tracks and the caravan's. In this contrary land, every bit of fortune seemed to come with a nullifying bit of disaster attached.

The next two days brought only more of the same: searing sun and endless plodding through freshly sculpted drifts of sand. Weighed down by goggles, turban, and burnoose, with the sun burning her cheeks and sand burning her feet through double-soled boots, Abigail felt alien and unwelcome in the desert. But by sunset of the second day, she had given up wasting energy on such musings. She had more pressing things to think about… like the way Smith managed to stay upright in the saddle, though it clearly cost him a great deal.

Just at sunset on that second day, Haffe spotted a rare outcropping of rock and they decided to make camp beside it. After she and Haffe erected a shelter with the tarp and helped Smith inside, she removed his bandage to check his head. He was too exhausted to put up more than a token protest when she mixed him another headache powder, and insisted he drink water and sleep.

As he dropped like a stone into unconsciousness, she exited the tent and quickly encountered Haffe's anxious expression.

"No more tracks," he said, gesturing to the last nugget of camel dung lying on a burlap bag by his feet.

She had lost track of the last time she'd seen him dismount to pick up one of those smelly little way markers.

"We're completely off the caravan trail?" Her heart sank when he nodded. "Then we're on our own out here. Lost."

"Not lost." He smiled and waved at the sand all around them. "In desert."