The Salt Road (43 page)

The soldiers dutifully poked and prodded the bags. ‘No guns,’ one of them said at last.

‘Idiot,’ said the other, taking the rifle slung over the side of Atisi’s camel. ‘There’s this gun.’

Moonlight glinted on the antique stock, on the chased silver and the charms etched into it by an ancient smith. The soldiers passed it between each other, laughing. ‘That knackered old thing,’ one said, ‘hardly qualifies as a gun. It’d probably blow your head right off if you tried to fire it.’

A muscle twitched in Atisi’s jaw, but he said nothing and kept his eyes firmly on the ground.

‘So what about it, old man? Where are your documents?’

‘I have no documents.’ He stumbled over the word deliberately.

‘Everyone has documents.’

Atisi shrugged. ‘I don’t. I am just a poor old man separated from his caravan. One of my camels fell ill and they left me behind.’

‘On your own?’

Atisi met his gaze unwaveringly. ‘Alone.’

‘With friends like that!’ one soldier laughed.

‘Just let him go, Ibrahim. If you don’t we’ll have to file a report: it’ll take all night.’

‘What’s he got in those packs, anyway? Anything … useful?’

The other soldier grimaced. ‘Barley, bit of dried meat, dates and stuff. Miserable rations.’

‘No beer?’

Atisi shot him a contemptuous glance. ‘No beer.’

Ibrahim glared at him. ‘You’re a very lucky man. We don’t have time to waste on threadbare old nomads.’ He looked towards his two subordinates. ‘Take his gun, though.’

‘No!’ Atisi’s cry was fierce. ‘It was my grandfather’s.’

As he grabbed for the rifle the soldier who had hold of it swung it around with casual but deliberate force. It struck the old trader hard across the temple and he fell down with a groan.

At that moment Moushi let forth a bellow that split the night air: ‘A-wa-aaaagh!’ She lunged forward and Mariata was suddenly flung to the ground, catching her foot awkwardly in the saddlecloth and landing in a tangle of fabric, losing the reins. Thus freed, Moushi ran headlong towards her master, while the third camel, unnerved by this untoward turn of events, wrenched its head back and managed to free itself from the lead rope. Off it went across the road, lit garishly by the headlights of the jeeps, its legs splaying out at all angles.

Shots rang out.

For a moment she lay there, stunned, in the shadow of the rocks before a great fear gripped her. Images from the attack on her village, images that she had successfully fought down once that evening, now assailed her. She saw again the sudden invasion of the uniformed men, the flash of their gunfire ripping the night apart; Rahma with her robes on fire, the soldiers forcing Tana to the ground, lust and hatred painted on their dark faces by the leaping flames. Again and again she saw the dark stain spreading across Amastan’s beautiful wedding robe, and the mysterious wet darkness on her own hands as her father dragged her away from her husband’s body. Terror galvanized her. She crabbed sideways into a gap between the rocks, making herself impossibly small, and listened to the shouts of the soldiers and the bellowing of Atisi’s camels, the sounds melding into a single, incomprehensible noise that spoke only of violence and brutality. A scream began to well up inside her. Some part of her – the rational part that urged survival at all costs – knew she could not let it out; but another, wilder part was trying to prevail. Her eyes bulged with the effort not to cry out; she stuffed the corner of her headscarf into her mouth to stop the howl escaping. What was happening to the old man? Had they shot him? She did not dare look for fear of being seen. If they would do such a thing to a defenceless old man, what would they do to her?

Footsteps came closer, crunching on the loose stones; she heard voices just feet away.

‘What’s that over there?’

Mariata closed her eyes. But there was no escape inside her head. She saw Tana’s robe being torn apart by the soldiers, their hands grabbing at her breasts … Perhaps they would kill her, if she was lucky. The amulet pulsed between her fingers, hot in her palms, as if the little discs of red were burning into her skin.
Don’t let them see me …

A leg came into view, then a hand and a head with a cap on it. The figure bent and a hand reached out and picked something up. ‘An old leather bag. Must have fallen off the camel that ran away.’ The sound of objects falling to the ground. The boot pushed them around.

‘What’s in it?’

‘Just the usual worthless old rubbish these people carry with them. Some candles, a bit of string, a couple of stones, a filthy old rag, a cigarette lighter and an old knife.’

‘A knife? Any good to us?’

‘It’s covered in their magical symbols.’

‘It’s just words, you superstitious fool. Words aren’t magic.’

‘Even so, I’m not picking it up. I’ve heard about Tuareg knives with curses carved on them. Knives that have come alive in an enemy’s hand and slit his throat before he could even blink.’

‘For God’s sake. Here, let me see.’ A second figure came into view. He bent, his back to Mariata. There was a pause as he examined the spoils. ‘It’s blunt. What a piece of shit.’ The knife clattered to the ground again. ‘Seems he was alone, after all.’

‘Why’d the second camel have a saddle on it, then? Tell me that if you’re so clever.’

A pause. ‘You’ve seen how these camels behave. How’d you like to be left in the desert without another saddled mount if your own got spooked and bolted?’

His companion’s acknowledgement of this logic was grudging. ‘Let’s get back. This place is enough to spook anyone. Could have sworn I heard something breathing a minute ago.’

Mariata held her breath.

‘Everyone knows the desert makes odd noises. Rocks get hot during the day and cold at night: they break apart, shed their skins. That’s probably what you heard.’

The other man contested the point, but the voices were moving away, and soon she could not make out their words. A few minutes later the jeeps roared to life again, the beams of their headlights slid away, and an eerie silence descended. After a very long time Mariata extracted herself from her hiding place and crawled out into the open, dreading what she might find.

Moushi lay bloodstained and unmoving by the side of the road, but there was no trace at all of Atisi ag Baye, nor of the other two camels. It was as if the djenoun had swallowed them whole. Mariata stared around, but in every direction she saw the same thing: emptiness. Empty darkness, barely touched by a moon that had drifted behind a curtain of cloud.

Why had she done nothing to help the old man? Now he was gone, possibly dead, and she had done nothing but hide herself like a craven coward. He told you to stay hidden, a voice reminded her, but still she felt ashamed. Numbly, she picked up the fringed leather bag that Tana had given her, the last vestige of her previous life. It was empty, its contents thoughtlessly scattered by the soldiers, but after a few moments of frenzied search she retrieved the whetstones, the skein of cord, the three candles and the knife that had placed such superstitious fear in the heart of the soldier. A glint of moonlight a little way away led her to the Cross of Agadez. She found the bundles of herbs scattered here and there, and at last what she thought might be the flints: but how to tell, amidst a million other sharp-edged stones? She was mildly surprised to find the silver cylinder the soldiers had called a cigarette lighter lying in the dirt. She dropped it back into the bag and it fell with an audible clunk that sounded unnaturally loud in the silent darkness. But where was the scrap of indigo cloth? Suddenly it became vitally important that she find it. She ran her hands through the dust, amongst the stones, without a thought for the creeping scorpions that lurked there, as if her whole life, and that of the life growing inside her, depended on her finding it. It took many long minutes, but at last she found it impaled on a thorn bush. She pressed it to her face, taking in its faint, musty, unmistakable scent, and then she kissed it and stowed it carefully away.

Then, sitting back on her heels, she stared bleakly out over the road towards the south. Out there lay the Tinariwen, the many deserts, a thousand miles of the primal unknown: a wilderness of rock and dust offering neither shelter nor sustenance; sands studded with the bones of the long-dead – the lost legions, the ancestors, the unwary invaders; wave upon wave of dune-seas and mighty ergs; wells known only to the expert
madugus
who led the caravans; rivers that ran so far below the surface that no trace of their waters showed themselves to men. And all this belonged to no one but the demons of the wastes: the Kel Asuf. There was now nothing to act as a buffer between her and the desolation: she had no guide, no camel, no supplies. Out there lay only madness and despair.

Behind her, however, lay the known. Even on foot and alone it would be relatively easy to retrace the journey she had made thus far with Atisi from Imteghren. Once back there in the hands of her stepmother she would be forced to marry the damned butcher, be his second wife and slave; but she would live and so would her child. There was no choice.

Mariata stood up and slung the leather bag over her shoulder. Then she set her face resolutely to the south and started to walk into the unknown.

28

Outside the off-roader the world rattled by at a speed I would never have thought possible in such a rough wilderness. I pressed my face to the cold glass of the passenger window and stared out into a deep, uncompromising darkness. Only the pale beams of the dipped headlights sliced through the blackness, illuminating the immediate shapes of humps and hillocks of sand, strange giant plants, scatters of rock. Sometimes the wheels slipped sideways as if glissading on snow and the driver casually corrected them; but for the most part he kept a straight course, foot down on the accelerator as if he knew each metre of desert intimately, which I decided he probably did. It was the leader of the trabandistes who drove; in the back sat two of his men. They had taken Taïb in the second vehicle, which followed us at a distance.

Now that he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, I could make a more accurate guess at the age of this man. There were lines deeply incised around his eyes, and his eyebrows were shot through with grey. I estimated him to be anywhere between fifty-five and a very well-preserved sixty-five. Despite this, he looked fit and hard, a man at one with his environment, like a piece of wood long seasoned by the desert, every vital juice and drop of sap taken by the sun, forged in the heat till it was like iron. He also looked like a man to be feared: his gaze when he turned it upon me was as piercing and direct as that of a bird of prey.

‘Are you a rich woman, Isabelle?’

I stared at him, taken aback by such a direct question. ‘Why do you want to know?’

He smothered a joyless laugh. ‘I wish to know if your family will pay good money to get you back.’

‘Get me back?’ I echoed stupidly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If they are to have you back safely, maybe your family must pay a ransom for you.’

A ransom? The very thought seemed absurd, something from a fairytale. Who on earth would want to pay a ransom for me? But what had I thought was happening here, bundled into a car in the middle of nowhere by armed men, driven ever deeper into the desert at speed to some unnamed camp? Of course, my brain accepted dully, we were being abducted. Kidnapped. Held for ransom. ‘You mean we’re hostages?’

The trabandiste smiled thinly. ‘You could say that. I have not yet decided. And you have not yet answered my question. Isabelle Treslove-Fawcett. Forgive me – I am not entirely
au fait
with the nuances of British society – but does not a double family name like yours indicate that you come from … shall we say a higher echelon? From the richest level of that society?’

Now it was my turn to laugh bitterly. ‘I am very much afraid that you are out of luck. All my family are dead.’

‘All?’

He turned a curious face to me and for a moment I had the bizarre thought that I had seen those eyes somewhere before, and had to look away. There was something about the set of them that was strikingly familiar. A shiver ran through me. Might it be fear? Under the circumstances it seemed the most appropriate response, but if this was fear it was not the same sensation I had experienced at those times of my life when dread had gripped me: at the crux point on a tough climb; before an exam; or earlier in my life, waiting for the footsteps on the stairs … I pushed that thought away quickly: even in this clear and present peril it was the memory of those times that brought the sweat pricking on my palms.

‘There is no one who will pay to get
me
back.’

‘I cannot believe that, Isabelle. Not for a moment.’

‘My mother died of cancer when I was at university. My father a few weeks ago. I have no brothers and sisters.’

‘To lose a mother at such a tender age is always hard, and I am sorry for your latest bereavement.’ He paused, but, just as I thought he would leave the matter there, added, ‘But there is always someone who will pay. Are you not married?’

I turned away to stare out of the window. Somehow that vast and empty space outside the car was a lot less disturbing to me than the charged space within. Perhaps, I thought wildly, I should start lying if I were to save my skin. If there really was no one who could be coerced into paying a ransom for me, they would simply shoot me in the head and dump my body in the desert like so much ballast. But somehow I just couldn’t seem to lie. ‘No,’ I said flatly after a while. ‘I am not married.’

‘Your husband is dead too?’ he persisted.

‘I have never had a husband.’

He raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Such a handsome woman unmarried? That is a surprise.’

Handsome? It was not a term I’d ever associated with myself. ‘I’ve never chosen to take the opportunity.’

‘An unplucked rose,’ he said musingly. I hoped fervently he was not thinking what I thought he was thinking.

‘Well, I wouldn’t say that exactly,’ I said in my most clipped English accent.