by Paula Guran
Nobody had anything to say to this, so they trudged on. Twenty minutes further the road turned right. Round the corner two eyes gleamed at them: the rear lamps of the car.
El-Akkad launched into a run, calling out Bille’s name and adding choice imprecations. But he broke off abruptly, and by the time the others reached him he was standing, his mouth open. Bille was there, in the driving seat, but he was not moving, and his head leant back at a bizarre angle. From the front it was clear his throat had been cut—more than cut, ripped from chin to breastbone. Blood had pooled and congealed in his lap in an oval sheet, and stalactites of red dangled into the footwell.
It was horrible.
Suyuti broke the silence. “At least we won’t have to walk the rest of the way.”
“Did a wild beast do this?” el-Kafir el-Sheikh asked. “Did a wolf do this?”
“If it was a wolf why didn’t he finish him off ? Or drag him away.”
“Maybe,” said el-Akkad, “the wolf was interrupted. By something worse than a wolf.”
“Whatever happened, it does not make me wish to stand around here,” said Gurbati. “Here, Tawfiq—help me move him. I’ll drive.”
“And put him—where?”
“In the back seat, I suppose.”
“Don’t be absurd!” said Suyuti. “I’m not sitting squashed up against a corpse all the way home.”
“Why did he stop?” el-Kafir el-Sheikh wanted to know. “Why not just drive straight through—if it was a wolf, surely you’d try and run it down, not stop and let the beast jump you!”
“Why not read one of your rune tablets,” Gurbati sneered, “and bring him back to life—then you can ask him yourself.”
“That was uncalled for,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh returned, stiffly.
“We cannot bury him,” said Suyuti. “The tools are back at the dig. And if we just leave him by the road, then wild animals will surely devour his body.”
“Ugh!” el-Akkad cried, recoiling from the car. “His clothes are full of blood.”
“It’s true,” said Gurbati, in a hollow voice, poking a gloved finger at the body. “To touch him is to—it feels, it feels . . . It is repulsive. It’s like a hot-water-bottle, full of . . . ugh!”
5
The four agreed to pitch Bille’s body straight out of the automobile, to lay a coat down where he had been sitting and drive straight off. “It’s unfortunate for Bille,” Suyuti said. “But our hands are tied.” It was not a pleasant business: when el-Kafir el-Sheikh put his hand to the corpse’s shoulder and felt the fluid under the man’s jacket shift and squelch, it took a prodigious effort of will not simply to snatch his hand away again. But with a concerted effort the corpse was pulled over the low windshield and on to the hood, and from there it was an easy enough business to slide him off on to the turf at the side of the road. Then Gurbati fussed for a while about arranging his coat over the bloodstained seat. But finally they all got into the automobile and started off.
Almost at once it started raining again. “Shall I stop?” Gurbati asked. “We could put up the roof.”
“This shower will pass in a minute,” was Suyuti’s opinion.
“It’s easy for you to say,” Gurbati complained, his teeth clacking. “You’re all still wearing your coats.”
The rain fell steadily, more than drizzle but less than a full shower. El-Kafir el-Sheikh shivered and jerked in his seat. The shower showed no signs of ceasing, and water began filling the front and rear footwells, so Gurbati announced—shouting, to be heard over the downpour—that he was stopping to put up the roof. But no sooner had he done so, and stepped out of the car, than the rain stopped completely.
“Put the roof up anyway,” Suyuti instructed. “Now that we’ve stopped.”
On cue, a wolf’s cry—loud, musical, mournfully sustained but at the same time intensely frightening—sounded in the white air. The fog made it impossible to know whether the beast was far away, or near by. “Get back in the car!” el-Akkad yelled, although Gurbati needed no prompting. He leapt back into the driving seat and started the engine.
They bounced and jarred a half-mile or so further on, but when the road curved right Gurbati drove straight on. The passengers all hallooed in fear, and the driver stomped on the brakes, but he wasn’t prompt enough to stop the car colliding with the broad black pillar of a roadside tree. “What are you playing at!” Suyuti yelled at him. “You stupid Dom—you’ve crashed us.”
“The wheel is slippy and these gloves don’t grip,” Gurbati snapped back.
“Take them off then,” Suyuti ordered him. “Oh, you’ve broken the engine! I just know you have!”
Gurbati pulled the ignition lever, and the engine made a noise like a stick being run along a stretch of palings. But it caught, and came shudderingly to life. Gurbati backed the vehicle up, and hopped out to examine the front bumper. “Banana’d but not broken,” he announced. “Let’s get on. I’ve had enough of this place. Back to the hotel without further prevarication, I say.”
“Gloves off,” Suyuti repeated.
“Easy for you to insist on that,” Gurbati grumbled. “My hands will be carved from ice by the time we get back to the hotel.” But he did remove the gloves.
He took hold of the steering wheel and slowly rolled the car forward and around, until they were back on the road. “Maybe slower but more sure?” he said. “More haste less speed, after all. All.” The car wasn’t moving. “All,” Gurbati said again, in a higher-pitched voice. “All! A-a-a-a-all!”
“What on earth are you gabbling about?” Suyuti called. But Gurbati wasn’t speaking now; it was a cry of sharp pain, a howl. The vowel slid half an octave upwards, and Gurbati started thrashing in his seat, bucking and jerking.
“What’s the matter!” boomed el-Akkad, who was seated beside him. “What? What?”
“Steering!” Gurbati shrieked. “Wheel!”
“His hands are seared to it!” el-Kafir el-Sheikh cried, leaning forward. “Help me—” He and el-Akkad took an arm each, and pulled hard, but it took several tugs before they could dislodge Gurbati’s hands, and they came away in a spray of blood. By then it was too late. Gurbati slumped back, and a horrible, splashy noise replaced his screaming. Red slime spewed down his front. He stopped twitching.
The other three exited the car in a scrabble. The engine throbbed and throbbed, the gears in neutral. Because it seemed like the thing to do, el-Kafir el-Sheikh reached in and turned the motor off.
For a long time the three of them stood there, silently aghast, in that whited-out, chill space. El-Akkad consulted his watch. “Two forty-five,” he noted. “How far do you think it is from here to the hotel?”
Suyuti turned on him. “How can you be so callous?”
“I’m not getting back in that automobile,” el-Akkad returned, hotly. “It is cursed. This whole evil landscape is cursed! I’m walking back to the hotel, and then I’m getting on the next boat back to civilization.”
“You never liked him,” Suyuti spat. “You were envious of him. He had twice the intellect you did. And now look at him!”
“Envy?” scoffed el-Akkad. “Don’t be absurd.”
“It happened,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh said in a small voice, “when he took his gloves off.”
“What do you mean by that?” Suyuti snarled, turning on him. “Are you blaming me? Is it my fault?”
“You organized the trip,” el-Akkad said, accusingly. “You brought us all here. Ultimately, of course you’re to blame.”
“I only meant,” a conciliatory el-Kafir el-Sheikh explained, “that it was only after his bare flesh touched the steering wheel, that . . . ”
But the other two were not listening. “You are a disgrace to archaeology!” Suyuti yelled.
“At least I am an archaeologist! You’re just a jumped-up pen-pushing civil servant!”
“He was my friend—you never liked him. Petty professional jealousy!”
“I’m going back to the hotel,” el-Akkad fu
med. “And tomorrow I’m getting the boat and going home, whereupon I hope never to see you again.” He stomped off and was lost in the mist almost immediately.
“Come back here!” Mohammed Suyuti shrieked. “We are not leaving Gurbati’s body to be devoured by wolves! We are just not—leaving—him—here!”
His words were swallowed by the muffling fog. There was no reply. The whiteness and silence. El-Kafir el-Sheikh looked around. There was the car, the ground at his feet, and Suyuti’s form. But apart from that and a few black tree trunks like spectral versions of themselves, everything was milky and blank. Suyuti hid his face in his hands.
After a while, el-Kafir el-Sheikh asked: “I suppose we can’t trust the car.”
“No,” agreed Suyuti.
“And what about Gurbati? Shall we bury him?”
“I don’t suppose we can,” Suyuti replied, into his palms. “I don’t suppose that’s practical, without shovels. Poor Hussein!” He dropped his hands to his sides and stood up straighter. “Let’s put the roof up, at any rate. Maybe that will keep the wild beasts off his body.”
“All right,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh said, and although he had a flinchy desire not to touch the automobile at all, he pulled his gloves tighter and helped Suyuti unpack the canvas roof from its rear compartment. It came out on unfolding metal struts, like an umbrella, and they pulled it to the front windshield, fixing it into place. “Do you want to say something?” el-Kafir el-Sheikh asked.
“I’m no imam,” was Suyuti’s reply. “And anyway: we can have a proper funeral later. After we’ve got home and sorted this sorry business out. We’ll have servants come retrieve the car tomorrow.” He leaned through the opened door, and when he stood straight again he was holding a pistol. “Here,” he instructed el-Kafir el-Sheikh. “It’s no good to him any more, but you may need it.”
“I haven’t so much as touched a firearm since national service,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh replied.
“There are wolves in the woods,” was all Suyuti said, and he slammed the door shut. El-Kafir el-Sheikh slipped the pistol into his jacket pocket.
They set off trudging along the road, walking through the silent and unchanging white. Dark trunks toyed with el-Kafir el-Sheikh’s peripheral vision, as if trying, and failing, to manifest into full presence only to fade into nothing again. The road squelched underfoot. His feet were soaked inside his shoes. His clothes, still wet, slapped and rubbed uncomfortably against his skin as he moved.
“Mohammed,” he said, shortly. “What do you think happened?” When the other man did not reply, he pressed. “To Gurbati, I mean. Back there.”
“He died,” Suyuti returned.
“But how? And that native boy, back at the dig. I have never heard of a form of tubercular infection so rapid in its pathology.” He was interrupted by a long, mournful, bassoon-like howl—far away or near by, it was impossible to say. Both men stopped, and in the absence of their squelching footsteps everything was perfectly quiet. There was another long lupine call, and then nothing. “We’d better hurry along,” was Suyuti’s opinion.
They picked up their speed.
“There must be a scientific explanation,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh pressed. “I mean, must be! But what? El-Akkad said—”
Suyuti broke in with a scornful barking laugh. “I consider him no longer my friend and colleague,” he said. “I’ll not even say his name. He fell into superstitious nonsense almost as soon as he arrived on these shores. Magic and nonsense and the worship of devils. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with these people? I’m no racist, Gamal, but they’re a primitive people, closer to apes than true men. Ancestor worship. Human sacrifice!” They squelched on for a while without talking. The road dipped down, and then climbed once again. There came a new drizzle, and soon enough it thickened into full rainfall.
One consequence of this was that the fog—finally—began to dissolve and vanish. The trees all around them came into focus, like a photograph being developed. Soon enough the fog was gone, the whiteness filled in with a retreating vista of trees. It was a development that gladdened el-Kafir el-Sheikh’s heart. The rain thrummed on to his head, and water was dribbling from his beard, but he felt somehow cleaner with it.
“Ah well,” he called to his companion. “One can only get so wet, and no wetter!”
Suyuti looked back, over his shoulder, and if he didn’t exactly smile then at least his scowl shrank away. He nodded.
Then he flew to the left, and rolled on the ground between the trees in a tangle of limbs and gray.
It took el-Kafir el-Sheikh a slow moment to comprehend what was happening, and then another moment to act. His limbs responded only slowly and sluggishly to his mental command. Suyuti was yelling. He came up, struggling, and the wolf covered him again. A snarl, a snap, and Suyuti’s yells shifted to throttled gulps.
E-Kafir el-Sheikh brought out from his jacket pocket Gurbati’s pistol, but slowly, and then he took aim. The beast had Suyuti by the throat. He could not afford to shoot at the creature’s head, for fear of hurting Suyuti. He took hold of his right wrist with his left hand. Then he stopped.
Slowly he turned his head.
A dozen feet away were four more wolves, and all of them were eyeing him.
El-Kafir el-Sheikh felt his lungs contract. His heart felt stiffer as it pumped, even as it began to gallop behind his ribs. He could not take his eyes from the four wolves. He heard a succession of ripping sounds, from the direction in which Suyuti lay. It was the noise of tearing flesh, audible even over the sound of the rain. But there was no space in his head to think about that.
His whole chest trembling with his accelerated heartbeat, el-Kafir el-Sheikh rotated his body, bringing his pistol around until it was aimed at the four other wolves. He was thinking: How many bullets in this gun? He was thinking: How hungry are these wolves?
The four beasts stood, not snarling, barely even breathing; motionless in the curtaining rainfall. Can I scare them off with a gunshot? el-Kafir el-Sheikh asked himself. The rain would not help; it would muffle much of the bang. Still: what else could he do?
He pointed the gun at one wolf. The beast’s coat was a light gray streaked with black; its doggish eyes yellow as honey. El-Kafir el-Sheikh’s fingers refused to close on the trigger. He was frozen. “Are you hypnotizing me, old wolf ?” he said, his voice croaky. The rain was slapping the top of his head, and water running into his eyes. Words came to him, he wasn’t sure from where. “Your turn now,” he said. “My turn later.”
He fired.
The wolf made no sound, but it flinched back, its rear legs folding up. Then the creature fell over to the side. El-Kafir el-Sheikh pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened. He wasn’t thinking straight. He recocked the gun—a wolf was in mid-air, hanging right in front of him. El-Kafir el-Sheikh didn’t even have time to yell out in fear. It was as if the lines of rain were silver cords, suspending the bulky animal right there. He yanked the trigger, more on reflex than anything. The gun discharged a second time. The bullet went down the wolf’s throat, but its leap had enough momentum to carry it on. It collided with el-Kafir el-Sheikh, all wet pelt and seven-foot-long muscular body, more than enough to bowl him completely over. El-Kafir el-Sheikh rolled, came up on his knees, overbalanced and got up again. His heart was yammering and yammering. The wolf that had taken Suyuti had looked up in the middle of its feast. Of the other two, one was disappearing away, loping off between the trees. But one remained, its hunger more pressing than its fear. It lowered its head, keeping its yellow eyes on its prey.
El-Kafir el-Sheikh got to his feet and held out his arm. Two from two shots was lucky, but perhaps the gods of Jutland were favoring him; and there was nothing he could do except try again. But he was shaking now, shaking with both cold and fear.
He aimed as best he could and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
He looked at the gun. It had been beneath him when he rolled in the muddy turf. A chunk of brown earth had been packed i
nto the barrel, and the firing pin was clogged with dirt. He looked up at the wolf, and back at the gun. With shivering fingers he tried to pick away some of the muddy matter, but it didn’t seem to want to come out of the weapon. Suyuti had a pistol too, he thought. But Suyuti’s was underneath a feeding wolf.
He tried to remember what he knew about wolves. His nurse had read him fairy stories when he was a child, and many of those had been set in faraway forests filled with ogres and wolves. Could they climb trees? He felt the answer was yes; but then he found himself thinking—or was that bears?
The beast in front of him put out a paw and took a step in his direction, testing the ground, waiting for the pistol’s report. El-Kafir el-Sheikh held out the useless gun. “Back off,” he called. “Shoo away.”
The wolf took another step, closer still.
El-Kafir el-Sheikh could feel his resolve beginning to give way. He would crack, and turn, and run; and then the wolf would be on him in moments. He could not outrun it, he knew that. But his heart was going so hard and fast it felt like it would burst inside him.
He chucked the gun at the muzzle of the beast, and heard, or thought he heard, over the sound of the rain, a yelp of pain. But he wasn’t looking; he had turned and was sprinting away, a sort of struggling gallop over the soggy ground. “I don’t want to die,” he gasped. “Not to die—” A forked tree loomed out of the falling water, and he scrabbled up the shallower of the two trunks, up to a bough. But when he looked back he saw that the wolf was following him. It leapt halfway up the angled trunk, claws digging into the bark.
El-Kafir el-Sheikh yelled, scrabbled along a bough and was pitched off when the branch broke. The ground below was ferny, but he fell hard on to his shoulder. A bolt of pain shot down his left arm. When he got himself upright again it hung at his side. Every fiber of his being was desperate to run, to get away. He took three steps, got his feet tangled in something in the undergrowth and went down again. Up again, breathing hard and heavy, he ran a dozen broad strides.
Looking behind him, he saw the wolf disentangling itself from the tree, and leaping down in an insolently easy motion. It came trotting after him.