The Saracen: Land of the Infidel by Robert Shea (best fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

he wished he had a camel to ride.

Their training troop had never traveled this far south, and Nicetas had been a fool, Daoud thought, to go hunting in unknown and dangerous country with only a pony to ride. No wonder he had not come back yesterday. Probably, the sun had killed the pony, and Nicetas was crouched in some wadi waiting to be rescued.

I should have gone with him.

But they had been friends, and more than friends, for two years, and from time to time each needed to be alone. They both understood that. And so, when the naqeeb Mahmoud gave them a day of rest after the trek down from El Kahira, and Nicetas said he wanted to go out alone to get himself a pair of antelope horns, Daoud simply hugged him and sent him on his way.

Daoud felt the murderous heat of the noon sun on his head through his burnoose. Ten times hotter here than at El Kahira, now a hundred leagues to the north. The wind filled the air with red dust, and he had wrapped a scarf over his nose and mouth. Only his eyes were exposed, looking for Nicetas.

Antelope horns! Not even a lizard could live in this desert.

He should get into the shade, but he did not want to stop searching. If Nicetas were hurt and lying out in this sun, it would burn him to death. Daoud saw a line of sharp-pointed hills off to his left. There was shade there, and Nicetas would try to reach shade. He tapped his pony's shoulder lightly with his switch and turned its head toward the hills.[223]

Nearly there, he saw what looked like a black rock half-buried ahead of him. Could it be a body? For a moment his heart hammered. No, it was too big. His pony floundered on through the sand till they reached the dark shape.

It was Nicetas's pony, dead. Windblown sand half covered it, but he was sure of it. Nicetas's pony was black.

Daoud swung down from his horse, looping the reins around his wrist so it could not run off, and knelt to examine the dead pony. He brushed away sand from the forehead. Three white dots; he knew those markings well.

He scooped sand away from the dead pony and found an arrow jutting out of the chest. In spite of the fiery sun his body went cold. Wild Sudanese were said to prowl this desert.

He jerked on the arrow. It had gone in deep, and the head must be broad. It took him long to tear it free.

The head was wedge-shaped and made of steel, with sword-sharp edges. Sudanese tribesmen had no such arrows. Even Mamelukes had only a few. Each Mameluke carried two or three, to use against a well-armored opponent.

"Oh, God, help me find Nicetas," he prayed.

Nicetas was out there somewhere. Daoud pushed out of his mind the thought that he might be dead.

Was this punishment for their sin of loving each other, he wondered as he mounted his little horse. God frowned on men lying with men, the mullahs said, but everyone knew that men, especially young men far from women, often took comfort in one another.

He pulled his burnoose farther down over his eyes to shade them better against the sun. He wanted water, but he would not let himself drink until he had reached the hills. He might find Nicetas there, and Nicetas might need the water.

The hills thrust abruptly out of the sand in long vertical folds. Half blinded by the glare, he could see only opaque blackness where the sun did not strike them.

He thought he saw movement in one shadow. He kicked the pony, driving it to struggle faster through the sand, keeping his eyes fixed on the spot.

A deep crevice sliced into the hillside. Daoud rode into it cautiously. Whoever killed Nicetas's mount might still be somewhere about.

Once out of the sun, he slid down from the saddle. He saw no water, but there was a dead tamarisk, its branches like supplicating[224] arms, at the mouth of the crevice. He tied the pony to a limb and moved, slowly, deeper into the shadow.

He looked down at the floor of the crevice, paved with drifting sand and tiny pebbles. He felt a pain in his heart as he saw a trail of dark circular spots, each about the size of his hand. It could be a wounded animal, he told himself.

Then he saw a palmprint, the same dried color, and the pain in his heart sharpened.

He saw the movement again, at the far end of the crevice. A figure lay with its legs stretched out before it, its back propped against the brown stone. Pale hands were clasped over its stomach.

He heard a low, moaning sound, and realized it was coming not from Nicetas but from his own mouth.

Daoud ran and fell to his knees beside him. The half-open eyes widened and the amber gaze turned in his direction. The Greek boy's face was reddened with dust that clung to his sweat. His lips, partially open, were so dry and encrusted they looked like scabs. Daoud put his hand on Nicetas's cheeks. His face was burning.

Now the hurt in Daoud's heart was like death itself.

I am going to lose him.

But this was no time to wail and weep. He must do everything he could. It might yet be God's will that he save his friend.

Let him live, oh God, and I will never sin with him again.

"I knew you would come." The voice was so faint Daoud could barely hear it above the wind whistling past the mouth of the crevice.

Daoud sprang to his feet and ran to his pony to get his water bottle. He untwisted the stopper over his friend's mouth.

The Greek boy shook his head. "I cannot swallow. Just pour a little in my mouth to wet it." Daoud saw deep red cracks in Nicetas's lips. The water trickled out the corners of his mouth and streaked his dusty cheeks.

A hundred half-formed thoughts crowded Daoud's mind. His eyes burned, and pain pounded at his chest.

All he said was "What happened to you?"

"It was Kassar," Nicetas whispered. "He got me with his first arrow. Then he shot the pony and it fell on me. He rode me down. He took my bow before I could get free."

After all this time! Daoud thought. Kassar had said nothing, done nothing, since the day Nicetas beat him at casting the rumh.

Two years Kassar had waited.[225]

He bent forward to take Nicetas in his arms, but the Greek boy shook his head. "Do not move me. It will hurt too much."

"Where are you hit?"

"In my back. Still in me. I broke off the shaft."

Why was I such a fool, to think we were safe?

"It can't be a very bad wound."

Nicetas closed his eyes. "Bad enough that he could use me for his pleasure and I could not fight him off."

A dizzying blackness blinded Daoud. His skull felt as if it were going to burst.

"By God and the Prophet, I will kill him."

"I want you to."

"Did he do any more to hurt you?"

"Yes, he got me here." He parted his hands and raised them from his stomach. His white cotton robe was caked with black blood, and there was a tear in the center. The wound was not wide, but Daoud knew that it must be very deep.

"He made sure to use his rumh, you see."

"Because that was how you beat him."

Daoud wanted only to hold Nicetas and cry, but he sensed that what would most comfort the Greek boy would be talking about what happened to him.

"After the rumh, I lay very still and held my breath. He thought I was dead. He left me lying there with the pony. Took my weapons and my water bottle. I crawled here. In the sun. Yesterday afternoon. I bled and bled."

He is going to die, Daoud thought. He did not want to believe it. For a moment he was angry at Nicetas. Why had he been such a fool as to come out here alone? And then at himself. Why had he let him go?

And then at God.

Why did You let this happen? Do You hate us because we love each other?

"I knew you would come for me, Daoud. I stayed alive to greet you."

Daoud took Nicetas's hand. "I will take you back."

"No. Bury me out here. Let him think you never found me. Bide your time, as he did. Give him no reason to fear you. He fears you already, or he would never have done it this way."

"Before the year is out, you will look down from paradise and see him burning in hell."[226]

"I'm sorry. I was never strong enough to be a Mameluke."

"No. You are strong."

"Not strong enough to live," said Nicetas, so faintly Daoud could hardly hear him. "Good-bye, Daoud. Remember the Greek I taught you. You may meet someone else who speaks Greek."

"I will never meet anyone like you." The tears spilled out over his eyelids, and he did not try to brush them away. The hand he held squeezed his, weakly, then relaxed.

Daoud bent forward and touched his mouth to the split, dust-coated lips. No breath came from his friend's body. A curtain of shadow swept before his eyes, and he thought he was going to faint.

He thrust himself to his feet as Nicetas's head fell to one side.

He threw his arms over his head and screamed.

Arms still upraised, he dropped to his knees.

"Oh, God!" His voice echoed back from the walls of the crevice. "God, God, God!"

The pain in his heart was as if a rumh had impaled it. He felt that he must die, too. He could not bear this loss. Never to see his friend smile again, never to hear his laughter. That body he had loved, nothing now but unmoving, empty clay.

He looked over at Nicetas, hoping to see a movement, the flicker of an eyelid, the rising of the chest. Nothing. Daoud would never again look on in admiration as the Greek boy rode wildly, standing in the stirrups shooting his arrows at the gallop or casting his spear unerringly at the target. They would never, as he had dreamed, ride side by side into battle.

Daoud crumpled to the ground in the position of worship, his forehead pressed against the sharp, broken stones. But he was not worshiping. He simply did not have the strength to hold himself upright.

It seemed hours later when he at last stirred himself. Sobbing, he carried Nicetas out to a place near the mouth of the crevice, where the sand had drifted in, and with his hands he dug there a grave. All along the base of the hillside were many loose brown stones, chipped away by the eternal wind. With bleeding hands he piled the stones high over Nicetas's body, but tried to make the pile look like a rock slide, so that no one would know someone was buried here. He knelt, weeping and talking to Nicetas's spirit, until the sun was low in the west.

[227]

As Nicetas had told him to do, Daoud had pretended, when he came back from the desert, that he had no idea what had happened to his friend. The naqeeb had declared that Sudanese tribesmen or wild animals must have gotten him. Daoud was not alone in his grief. Many of the boys in the troop had liked Nicetas.

Even Kassar had said words of sympathy, his face expressionless and his slanted eyes opaque. Daoud held in his rage, a white-hot furnace in his heart, and in a choked voice he thanked Kassar.

At first he went about in a daze, unable to think. He told himself that in spite of his dissembling, Kassar would be on guard. He would have to choose a time to take his revenge when Kassar would be preoccupied. And Daoud himself must be alert at all times. Kassar might not be satisfied with killing only Nicetas. In spite of these warnings to himself, Daoud's mind remained numb. He was, he told himself, like a mall ball, hit one way by grief, the other way by rage, unable to take control of his destiny.

That thought of mall gave him the beginning of a plan.

He let three months go by from the day he found Nicetas. His plan was very simple. It left much to luck, and it might fail utterly—Kassar might anticipate what he was going to do and turn the moment against him, killing him and claiming he was defending himself. Kassar's friends might thwart Daoud.

He would have only this one chance. If he failed, he would be dead or crippled. Or worst of