Returned

by Kimberley Griffiths Little

  Glancing around, I realized that the stampede was in disarray. Sariba soldiers were fighting the enemy from atop their steeds or from the ground if they’d fallen and were still alive.

  Men lay strewn everywhere.

  Tents were trampled into shreds. Camels were down with broken legs, horses mangled.

  To my left the remains of a fire pit oozed along the ground, its stones and embers scattered. My pulse throbbed hard along my temple.

  The Edomites who had been thrown off their animals scrambled to mount their camels again, often fighting against one of Horeb’s men for the animal.

  Dazed, but still astride my slowing camel, I glanced down at myself. I was entirely covered in brown filth from riding inside a cloud of dust. My teeth were gritty, my throat dry as sand.

  When I heard my name shouted, I whirled about, pulling hard at my camel’s neck to see what was happening behind me.

  “Archers!” It was Asher, wheeling behind me. “Stay low!”

  The Assyrians had organized on the far side of the camp and were launching arrows into the stampede. Immediately a dozen camels went down.

  Bending low to avoid a direct hit, I prayed my animal wouldn’t suffer an injury.

  But still the stampede continued, destroying everything and everyone in its path.

  I blinked back grit and tears while the greater part of the company continued to race through the camp. It wasn’t long before I found myself beyond Horeb’s camp. It took another half league to slow down the camels and calm them enough to stop.

  The agitated animals turned in circles, their eyes wide with fear and adrenaline.

  Somehow, I’d managed to follow Kadesh out of the fray, and Asher drew close when we reached the rocky foothills. I stared at the two men with ripped tunics, faces with so much grit they were almost unrecognizable. I noted that Kadesh had a bloodstain along his arm.

  “How bad is it bleeding?” I shouted above the madness we’d left behind at Horeb’s obliterated campsite.

  Kadesh shook his head dismissively. “It’s only an abrasion. We managed to keep more than half our camels in one piece. Only about fifty of our men are dead or wounded.”

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “There are still Assyrians and Nephish alive,” Kadesh said in a hard voice. “Our men are fighting hand-to-hand and we must return to help them.” He raised his voice, signaling with his arm to the men still on their camels that had managed to stay together in a makeshift group. “Swords out! Charge!”

  My gut leaped when my camel jerked forward to follow Kadesh. I placed a hand along her neck, awed by her strength and intelligence. Before I was mentally ready again, we were back in the middle of the enemy camp again. And the sight was beyond gruesome.

  Spread along the sloping sands were hundreds of Assyrian, Maachathite, and Nephish bodies. Each soldier still wore the uniform and colors of his individual tribe, tunics askew, swords buckled under mangled, lifeless forms. The onslaught of more than a thousand camels charging through camp was more than anyone could survive.

  My stomach was in my throat. But had Horeb survived?

  Kadesh wheeled around to me. “Jayden, return to the caves in the foothills. You shouldn’t witness any more of this.”

  “I want to remain with you. Where are you going?”

  “I intend to take Asher and find Horeb—either his dead body or arrest him if I find him alive.”

  I nodded shakily, finally closing my eyes to the scene of death everywhere I looked.

  “It’s almost over, Jayden,” Kadesh said, trying to comfort me. “I’ll send Basim to take you back to the city, but for now get away from the soldiers still fighting about the camp. It’s much too dangerous for you to be here in the middle of it.”

  Reluctantly, I turned my camel around, marveling that my camel knew exactly where to take me in the rocky foothills to hide. Soon we were ensconced behind a curtain of rocks, safe from the remaining troops of Horeb’s armies.

  Gulping down deep breaths while I perched on a boulder, I tried to calm my hammering heart. The sound of skittering rocks made me jump. When I whirled about, my ankle twisted on the loose shale. An instant later, Horeb loomed like a deathly specter before me.

  “Horeb,” I breathed. “Where did you come from—how did you get here?”

  I turned to run but his hands clamped down on my shoulders. He pushed me down to the ground and I stared up into his miraculously unsoiled face. A face without dirt or scrapes or any sign of struggle or fighting.

  “You weren’t even there,” I said hoarsely. “You’re clean.”

  “I recognized the sound of a stampede long before my foreign men did.”

  “How did you get to these caves?”

  “I’m not a fool. I left my tent when I saw the fires and the charging camels.”

  “You watched the entire assault from behind these rocks?” I tried to grasp what he was telling me. “You left your men alone?”

  “There wasn’t much I could do to stop it. Their fate was out of my hands.”

  “You could have warned them . . .” my voice trailed off. I was sickened by his pure selfishness and lack of integrity. “You lured three armies into the desert to fight for you, and you left them to die in the stampede, knowing—seeing—it was coming.”

  “My queen,” Horeb said, snatching at my hand to bring me to my feet. “You and I can now claim ourselves King and Queen of Sariba. We have only to get your father to draw up the marriage contract and spend a week in the marriage tent to make it official. It’s all very simple now.”

  “You’re insane,” I whispered.

  Laughing triumphantly, Horeb pulled me against him, sweat and leather scenting his skin. He stared down at me. “Jayden, you’re rather dirty after your stampede attack.” He tugged me along a narrow trail, knowing I had no recourse but to follow him. “Every time your foreign lover attempts to best me, you fall into my lap. The gods’ eyes are upon us. They’ve chosen our union.”

  He spoke in even tones, as though trying to confuse me with a show of feigned kindness, but I knew that he could turn on me in an instant. If Horeb killed me, Kadesh wouldn’t even know I was dead among the foothills. Not until he returned to the palace and I wasn’t there.

  Before I could reach for a weapon, Horeb sliced through my waist sash, catching my sword before it fell to the ground. I shrieked when he lifted my skirts and ripped away the dagger hidden there. With a strong arm, he threw my weapons far down the small ravine of rocks where they clanged away out of sight. The knives were useless to me now.

  Next, he slid his hands up and down my limbs and hips to make sure I had no other weapons. “Please, Horeb,” I pleaded. “Let me get my camel. We can’t walk back to your camp.”

  He shook his head. “We’re not going back yet. We’ll wait until Sariba has departed with their dead.”

  “My mouth tastes like dirt. I need my water pouch.”

  He eyed me and I crafted my expression to be as innocent as possible. All I had to do was incapacitate him for a few minutes to get away. I could never fight him on my own, even though he’d stolen away from his camp before he had a chance to put on armor. The stampede had been effective, if gruesome.

  “Get your water,” he said gruffly, standing over me to watch my every move.

  I nickered to my camel, heart thudding against my ribs so hard I swore the entire valley could hear it. My camel trotted over, and I reached for my water pouch, taking a long draw while my other hand stole inside my supply knapsack where I’d fastened my sling.

  Hope surged as one of the smooth stones I’d packed slipped into the sling’s pouch as easy as water. When I returned the water pouch to my knapsack, I maneuvered the leather strings of the sling and began to whirl the weapon above my head.

  All at once, I snapped the sling, and the stone sailed across the rocks, hitting Horeb squarely in the forehead.

  He let out a cry of surprise, but it was cut off when he fell forward,
hitting the ground with his knees. But he didn’t go down. I hadn’t knocked him out; I’d only make him more angry.

  Time seemed to stop. I watched him blink his eyes, dazed, and then he hauled himself to his feet, an angry red mark on his forehead. I’d been so eager to take him down, I hadn’t managed to get the sling at the highest speed it needed to incapacitate him.

  Quickly, I dug into my knapsack and fumbled for another stone, but Horeb roared and charged me, taking me down to the earth so fast it knocked the wind from my lungs. I gasped for air, throat burning.

  “That’ll teach you to attack me.”

  I kneed him next, and then we were grappling on the dirt, rocks slamming into the back of my head, sun scorching my eyes. My arms and legs burned as I fought and kicked and tried to wriggle away, screaming all the while.

  It was the oasis pond attack all over again. Horeb tore at my dress and then pressed his thumbs into my throat to make me pass out and stop fighting him.

  Black dots swam before my eyes as I fought for air. Over and over, I kicked him, flailing my fists against his torso and shoulders. “Horeb—please!” I gurgled.

  I was losing strength, but it suddenly came to me again that he wasn’t wearing any armor. I stopped kicking and reached out to bring him closer. A smile came over his lips and his body lowered to mine. At the same moment, I slipped the dagger out of the holster on his hip.

  My words squeezed between my gritted teeth. “I’ll stop fighting,” I told him. “Let—me—breathe!”

  I forced myself to relax, and then Horeb loosened his stranglehold. I didn’t wait another moment. I shoved his dagger between his ribs as he lay on top of me, straddling me with his knees.

  Horeb gasped in shock and pain. Before he could fully grasp what I was doing, I wrenched the knife from his chest and thrust it into his neck. Blood spurted in a gush of red, spattering my own face and neck.

  “Jayden—” He tried to speak, but his whisper cut off with a gurgling sound when I shoved the knife in farther.

  I was still half-pinned beneath him, but he was quickly bleeding out.

  I heard someone screaming over and over again as I slowly heaved his weight off me. My skin was slick with blood and tears and when I glanced down at myself, it became quite clear that I was the one hysterically yelling.

  Finally, I pushed his head off my lap and scrambled away on my hands and knees. Horeb lay sprawled in a pool of red, his blood trickling into the hot sand.

  The sound of my own moaning frightened me. I was like a wild animal. My camel nudged at me, biting at my shoulder to get me to rise to my feet, but I couldn’t seem to move.

  The horror washed over me. Horeb’s death was on my hands, my arms, raindrops of his blood splattered across every shred of my clothing and skin.

  I’d killed him.

  Despite the blood seeping into the sand and the awkward angle of his legs, my mind couldn’t seem to take it in.

  Horeb was dead. He was dead. He couldn’t hurt me any longer. He hadn’t killed Kadesh. He wasn’t King of Sariba. He wasn’t King of the Nephish any longer.

  No more running. No more nightmares. No more terror.

  My shrieks turned into whimpers.

  I turned away, sobbing with revulsion and relief. Still holding Horeb’s knife in my fist. Gripping it with all my strength.

  I opened my fingers, and the handle was stuck to my palm with his blood. Hastily, I dropped it, wanting to throw up.

  Heaving over the sand, sweat pouring off my face, I recognized the dagger as a gift from Horeb’s father, Abimelech. A gift he’d received in his twelfth year from the same father Horeb had murdered when he learned that Abimelech planned to give the Nephish throne to me and Kadesh instead.

  I crawled toward a flat rock, gripping the rough edges, but I could not get my body to stop shaking. Rocking back and forth, I wished for endless buckets of water to take away all the blood and dirt and sweat.

  “My lady!” a voice called. Instinctively I crouched behind the stone to hide, not recognizing the voice, ready to run. Then I spotted Basim and two of his men. They galloped up on their horses. I was so relieved my legs gave out, and I sank to the dirt.

  Basim’s eyes roved over my bloody appearance, my tangled blood-matted hair, my empty sword sheath and missing dagger. “What happened, my lady? Are you hurt?”

  I shook my head, unable to even speak.

  The barrel-chested man dismounted and dropped next to me, his eyes examining my body for any life-threatening injuries. An instant later, he saw Horeb lying across the sand in a pool of red.

  “I killed him. I killed Horeb.” A tear slipped down my face and, unexpectedly, Basim reached out to wipe it away with a gentle finger.

  “Kadesh sent me to find you and take you back to the palace, but he believed you were on your camel at the edge of the camp. I’ve been searching for you. The rest of the foreign soldiers have surrendered to us.”

  “I saw them—so many men—tumbling and dying.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking I might just lie here for a while. It seemed easier than trying to stand.

  “Come, my lady, I need to get you home.” Basim lifted me up and set me on his horse. I gripped the leather halter so I didn’t slip off. One of his other soldiers rode my camel back to the stables. My hands ached, my wrists were still bruised, and every muscle in my body seemed to have turned to water.

  “How many of our men survived today?” I asked.

  “Most of them, my lady.”

  “What will happen to—to Horeb’s body?”

  “I left one of my men with him. He’ll be taken to King Kadesh who is directing the aftermath of today’s battle.”

  We were quiet as we walked, and then I asked, “I trust you believe you made the right choice in your jail cell the day I visited you.”

  His eyes flickered over to my face. “I underestimated Sariba’s defense systems. And I underestimated its king and queen.”

  “Not yet queen,” I murmured, slipping in and out of a haze of exhaustion.

  We passed the temple, and, at the bottom of the forest hill, we finally approached the walls of the city. “The Sariba army is safe?” I asked again, knowing I probably wasn’t making much sense.

  “Battle-scarred and some wounded, but they’ll be fine. Eager to return home when the foreign camp is cleaned up and burned. In a few days, the sands will be clean again. It will be as though the war never happened.”

  He was trying to wash away the horror of this war, but I knew better. The pain of our soldiers’ deaths would never fade, especially for those who had lost husbands and fathers. But at last it was a war that was behind us. And now Sariba could begin the small steps toward recovery.

  “And where are the bodies of our enemy?”

  Basim’s hooded eyes were grave. “The desert battlefield is not a pretty sight, my lady. Our army is mostly recovering bodies, not rescuing them.”

  I suppressed a shudder. “Has there been any sign of Aliyah? I assume the women of the temple are safe?”

  “All is well at the temple, but I have no information about the goddess women,” Basim said, knowing I was asking about my sister Leila.

  “I need you to investigate her whereabouts. She hasn’t been seen since the night of the temple ceremonies. No, that’s not true. Kadesh told me she was on the battlefield with Horeb on the first day.”

  He nodded. “Yes, my lady.”

  “Oh, and Basim. Do you know where my father is?” I began to swing my leg off the horse, anxious to find everyone.

  Basim stopped me. “My lady, I’ll escort you into the city.”

  “I need to walk.” Despite my trembling limbs, I craved the steady ground beneath my feet.

  Understanding crossed Basim’s face when he nodded. “As you wish.”

  The terrain flattened when we approached the city. At the northern gates, I turned to my mercenary soldier, unable to keep the tremor out of my voice. “I’m sure you’re anxious to return h
ome. The land of Sa’ba needs you after the death of your queen.”

  “Before King Kadesh left for battle this morning, I requested his permission to be the one to take the news back to my king, the queen’s husband, and her children.”

  “Of course. As our ally, Basim—and her countryman—you should be the one. That will give you an opportunity to answer her husband’s questions and attend to his grief. The king and I will send mourning gifts and personal letters . . .” My voice trailed off. I was completely out of my league, comforting soldiers, giving instructions, taking care of wretched, heartbreaking tasks.

  For a queen who loved her people, I didn’t think it would ever be easy.

  I lifted my head, the sight of the beautiful city calming me. I was no longer a girl on the run, uncertain, frightened. Doubting every thought, each decision, with an erratic future.

  “Perhaps there is a way to take the queen back home and not have to dispose of her body here in Sariba,” Basim suggested.

  I turned to meet his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  He gave me a tender smile, incongruous on the visage of a hardened warrior. “There are Egyptians here in Sariba, are there not? The Egyptians know the ways of long-term embalming, and they have access to all the frankincense they need.”

  “You’re right,” I said with fresh admiration. “Taking the queen home would be the best gift we could give her family. Please, as soon as you know where King Kadesh is, tell him I must speak with him about this. The funeral pyre will be canceled. There are hundreds of other bodies to be burned tonight, and graves for their bones to be buried somewhere in the mountains of Qara.” I tried to swallow, but the day’s trauma had left my mouth dry, my chest hollow. “But deep inside the mountains, far from our own people’s homes and tombs.”

  Basim lowered his head respectfully. “This way, my lady,” he said, steering me through the gate.

  We walked until we saw General Naham standing across the sloping ground, a breeze ruffling his hair. Chemish crouched beside him and a wave of nausea almost knocked me over when I stared down at the bloodied body of Horeb.