That is my mother bleeding, he thought, his anger mounting. They tried to kill my mother.
Lufti burst into the tent. “Hamdullilah! You are safe, sire, and your mother too! But they have killed Sala. They cut his throat and killed his goats. I have—aieee!” He saw the body on the floor and took a step back. “Oh-oh-oh, Iblis has been busy tonight!” The devil was everywhere, and Lufti knew he would need more amulets to counter this horrible night, many more, and that he would have to pay the marabout, pay him many times, to remove the spirits. “The camels are gone from their lower grazing area, sire,” he continued, his eyes riveted on the naked blood-soaked body. “I… I have not yet had time to see the upper.”
“They will have them all by now,” Serena said. She leaned back on her mat to still the burning in her leg. She grasped their situation before the others did. The camp was nearly defenseless but for Moussa. Slaves were useless with weapons. There were no other nobles nor any vassals to help. All of them had gone days earlier, gone to war with the Kel Ajjer. So cunning, the Shamba, to choose this time. She trembled at the thought that her son had to carry this burden himself. He is not ready! Oh yes, he wore the weapons and the veil, but he was a boy, a child. In her mind he would never be ready. She had lost Henri and couldn’t bear the thought of losing him too.
Since childhood she had lived with razzias, the great awful sport men used to test their virility and that normally had accepted rules. It was not something to think about. It was the way of things. But now she looked at the razzia through a mother’s eyes, and nothing looked the same. There was only fear.
And if it was not the Shamba it would be the Kel Ajjer or the Tebu, or a scorpion or a storm. She could not hide her son away, could not protect him. There was no choice. There was only Moussa, and—
“The amenokal!” she said suddenly. “Please! See to him quickly!”
“Stay with her,” Moussa said to Lufti. “Tend to her leg.” Serena squeezed his hand tightly. He left and strode quickly across the compound. He called out at the amenokal’s tent.
“Abba?”
There was no response. He pushed back the mats covering the entrance and saw there was no one inside. He continued swiftly up the path, his sword drawn and ready. He found the amenokal just a few steps farther. He was just a dark shroud in the black night, stooped over, holding his sword. Near him, sprawled on his back, was another body.
“Abba?”
The amenokal held up a hand. Moussa heard his rasping breath. He was winded and ill, but not wounded. “He ran straight into me,” he said at length. He held out a dagger. “He tried to prick me with this.” Moussa heard the note of humor and pride in his voice.
“Come, Abba, let me help you,” Moussa said, reaching for his arm. The amenokal waved him off.
“I am unhurt, Moussa. You must go. Quickly. There will be others. They will have the best of our camels by now, from the upper pastures by the well. They’ll keep to the rocks as long as possible to make it harder for you to follow. Take Lufti, for his eyes. He knows much of what you do not. They’ll have left one of their number to guard their backs. Watch for him as he watches for you.”
“Yes, Abba, of course, but—”
The amenokal held up his hand again for silence. “You are always so quick to talk, Moussa. Never quick enough to listen. We are the only two Kel Rela here, and I cannot go. I would only slow you, and speed is your ally. So it is in your hands alone, this thing. When the Kel Ulli arrive I will send them to join with you, but I have no idea when that will be. There is no time to wait. Speed is everything.”
“Eoualla, Abba. I understand.”
“There will be many of them to your one.” It didn’t matter, of course. Were there five or twenty Moussa would be expected to bring them to account for their raid, even if his own life was forfeit. He accepted this without thinking.
“Your life will depend on your wits, Moussa, not on your strength. You must remember what the lowly ostrich did to your mighty mehari. That is what you in turn must do to the Shamba.” It was the first and only time the amenokal had referred to the incident. It was not a rebuke.
“Do not try to follow them in the rocks. They will be expecting that. Go around, quickly. They will follow the Gassi Touil, through the great dunes. Meet them, do not follow them. Come now. There is something you must have.” The amenokal stepped over the body of Baba and returned to his tent, beckoning Moussa to follow. Inside he lit a torch. From its honored place on top of a wooden brace he withdrew a long packet. Carefully he pulled away the outer leather wrapping, and then the layer of cotton inside. The rifle was as shiny as the day Henri, the Count deVries, had presented it to him. Moussa took care of it and saw to its cleaning. He was the only one besides the amenokal who ever fired it. The amenokal treasured it, but after twenty years still couldn’t hit a large mountain with it.
“Take this,” El Hadj Akhmed told him. “You will need it.” He offered it reluctantly, not because Moussa couldn’t use it, but because it was not the way the Tuareg fought. There was no honor in killing with guns. Guns were cowardly things, used by weak men who could kill from great distances, not knowing even whether they had killed for certain, or whom. A bullet was anonymous, impersonal. A bullet never flew with the same artistry as a blade. With the same result, perhaps, but never with the same inspiration. It was better that men fight up close, with swords and lances, knives and cunning, so that the victor might know he had fought well and won, and that the one defeated might know his master before he died.
But as the amenokal had feared, their enemies had attacked at their most vulnerable moment. He had planned for there to be no fewer than ten men including Moussa in the camp, but something had delayed the Kel Ulli. Moussa was alone, and the amenokal could do precious little to help. He burned with guilt that he could not go, but at that moment El Hadj Akhmed knew he would be more burden than benefit. His fever was high, his joints on fire.
The odds facing his nephew were long. Small and alone and only half-Tuareg, after all, he faced a task for which he was only partially prepared. Moussa had spent more than half his life among barbarians. His father and his vassal Gascon had taught the boy well, that much the amenokal had always seen. He could throw a knife, and his slingshot was a great novelty, the talk of the desert. His sword work was coming along under the tutelage of Abu Bakar, the master swordsman. Moussa was solid with the blade, a strong fighter. But he lacked finesse, just as he lacked the killer instinct of Mahdi.
Now the amenokal wished it were Mahdi he had kept behind, and not Moussa. Mahdi had been tested in battle many times, Moussa never once. He often found himself comparing the two boys. It was true that Moussa was his favorite. He hated to confess it to himself, never admitted it to others and tried never to show his preference in any way. It hurt him to feel that way about his own son. It felt wrong, yet it was so. Mahdi brought him so much pain.
Mahdi was eight when he first killed. The victim was a Tebu, a straggler from a raid who had fallen from his camel and broken something inside. Mahdi had been looking for a lost camel when he came upon the man, who was semidelirious and bleeding from his mouth, no longer able to keep up with his fleeing comrades. Mahdi did not know of the raid but recognized the stolen camel grazing near the fallen man. He knew the intruder to be a Tebu as certainly as if he had looked directly at the devil. It was enough for the slight boy with the angry eyes.
The Tebu saw Mahdi standing over him. Weakly he asked the child for water. Without warning or mercy Mahdi was all over him, his only weapon the staff he carried. Mahdi beat him until the staff broke, and after it broke began stabbing with the jagged end. He kept on long past the time the Tebu was dead, until one of the Tuareg giving chase came upon the scene. The man called to Mahdi to stop, but the boy was deaf with frenzy and had to be pulled away.
At the age of ten Mahdi fell into an argument with an adult slave from the next ariwan over access to a well. All children of the Hoggar, whether noble, vassal,
or slave, were expected to take a turn at tending the herds. Mahdi took his turns only grudgingly, and had been caring for a dozen goats. The slave had a larger herd and was watering the animals. Custom permitted him to finish first since he had arrived first, but Mahdi was not to be kept waiting.
“Make way!” Mahdi ordered. “I wish to water my goats!”
“Patience, little master,” the slave replied amiably. “All of God’s animals must drink. I am nearly finished.”
“Make way now, I say, or face the consequences!” Mahdi snapped, eyes flashing at the impertinence. He drew his slight frame erect and placed his hand on the hilt of the knife at his side.
“At your command, little lord,” the slave replied, smiling good-naturedly at the imperious child. But he moved slowly and in fact all his animals had finished drinking by the time he’d collected his things and prepared to return to the pastures. Mahdi glared at him as he departed. That night he brooded over the effrontery, which grew in his mind to a full-fledged insult.
Later the slave brought three goats to Mahdi’s ariwan in payment of his master’s land rent. Mahdi saw him and his pent-up anger exploded, and he fell all over the surprised man with a flurry of curses and fists. The slave easily kept the boy at arm’s length and did not strike back. The amenokal himself had to pull Mahdi apart from the slave, who fell to the ground as he made abject apologies. “I am sorry, Lord, I appear to have angered your son. I did not mean it.” Accustomed to his son’s temper, the amenokal nodded and dismissed them both.
A few days later the slave had not returned to his own ariwan with his herd. A search was mounted and the body was found, its throat cut. Mahdi denied knowing anything about the death. But the amenokal had looked deeply into the eyes of his son and knew the truth of it.
The years had done nothing to soften the boy. In a fight he was frightening, even to another Tuareg. There was a fire inside him that few men had, a fire that must one day burn out of control and consume everything near it. But fire properly channeled had its use. Mahdi was a killer, ruthless and cunning, born to the desert. No Arab stood a chance against him. He would not rest, the amenokal knew, until the heads of the Shamba were sundered from their bodies.
But it was not to be. Mahdi was gone, and the amenokal could not quickly provide either the finesse or the killer’s instinct that Moussa required. Lufti would make up for some of the imbalance. The slave was quick and wise in the little things, the desert things, to which one needed to be born, the things the Shamba would use against them, the things that Moussa might miss. The gun, he hoped, would make up the rest. Moussa was the only one who could use the gun anyway. When they hunted together, Moussa with his hawks and the amenokal with the rifle, it was Moussa’s hawks and Moussa’s aim that found food.
Moussa looked at the rifle and shook his head. “It is not right, Abba, to fight with a gun. I have heard you say it myself, many times.”
“Yes, it is true. You have also heard me say that a jackal without friends does not confront a lion. There are times when one reality must overtake another. This is such a time. Take the gun.”
Moussa was secretly relieved. He knew what guns could do. But he promised himself he would not use it if he did not have to.
“Give them no quarter,” the amenokal said finally. “They will give you none.”
“No, Abba. No quarter.”
* * *
They left quickly in the twilight before dawn, gathering only the barest of necessities for the chase. Water bags, food pouch, weapons. They hurried through the camp, past the others who had assembled from the tents. He felt their eyes upon him as he walked, the inexorable press of their expectations. He was Ihaggaren; his shoulders carried their burdens. He would recover their camels and avenge the boy Sala. Moussa strode purposefully past them, robes flowing, holding himself tall and straight and noble. He was too proud to be afraid.
The camels were all gone. They had known all along that it would be so, but they looked for strays just the same. It was a good grazing area, for the grasses were thick and the few camels kept there could not wander too far, so it took them only a moment before they knew. Lufti didn’t hesitate.
“We must run to the ariwan of the Kel Ulli, sire. They will have mounts for us,” he said. The camp was two valleys away. One day, by foot.
Moussa hesitated, unsure. He wanted to go back, to talk to the amenokal, to ask. He had never made such decisions by himself. What would Abba do? His head pounded with the pressure of it. The first rays of the sun streamed over the horizon. The new day had begun.
“Sire?” Lufti looked at him expectantly, urgently. “We must hurry, quick-quick. We are losing time.” Moussa knew it was up to him, and him alone. He could not go back to ask. Not now, not ever again.
He was Ihaggaren.
“Yes,” he said. “We must hurry,” and together they were up over the rocks and gone.
CHAPTER 19
It was late afternoon of the day following the raid. Abdul ben Henna squinted at the sun and weighed the odds and decided to abandon his brother and first-born son to their fate.
Stealing the camels had been almost too easy. He and Bashaga and their forty camels had reached the meeting place with surprising speed, and soon after them Kadder had appeared alone with the rest of the camels taken from near the camp. Abdul’s heart soared as he saw the coup had been complete, barely skipping at the news his son brought.
“There were shouts,” he told them. “The alarm was raised. Hammad and Baba were still in the camp, among the goats. I did not wait to see what became of them.”
Abdul pondered the probabilities. Hammad and Baba might be dead, or prisoner, or on foot. The Angel of Death would come for them, or else the hand of God would deliver them. Abdul ben Henna would not interfere.
Malish, mektoub. Never mind, it is written.
He nervously scanned the rocks, searching for the blue death he knew would soon be coming. Already he could feel them watching, waiting, their eyes hidden in the shadows, their knives sharp. His stomach churned nervously.
“We will not wait,” he said, closing his heart. He drew an ancient flintlock, the oldest of the two weapons they carried, from his pack. He gave it to his brother, keeping the better firearm for himself. “Bashaga, you will stay to the rear, to watch our backs and gather strays. Do not fall far behind. Tonight we will stop for only one hour. We must put great distance behind us. If any of the camels falter, do not wait for them, do not goad them. Kill them at once.” Abdul would quickly sacrifice those who even began to stumble, lest he lose them all. And then he would deny the stragglers to his enemy by cutting their throats.
They moved off quickly to the north, along the trails and scree of the Hoggar, the camels roaring and grunting and jostling. For three days and nights they barely stopped to rest. Always the camels looked for pasture, and always the men looked over their shoulders. Abdul whipped his mount viciously, kicking, cursing, lashing the skin of his mehari until it bled, changing mounts frequently. He sweated and prayed and pushed, the dust choking, the days blazing, the nights frigid.
From a distance they were a superb sight, stretched out over the flat, moving in their timeless undulating rhythm, but up close they were beginning to suffer from their pace. The Amadror was a blast furnace that sucked their membranes dry and baked their brains and scorched the soft feet of the camels. On the fourth day they lost their first two, young Tibestis who could not keep up. Kadder cut their throats. Their blood had not stopped flowing before the rest of the column had moved on.
Abdul was heading for the wells of Tan-tan; they would arrive after five days of punishing travel. He would never have tried such a run were it not for the wondrous condition of the camels. Abdul marveled at it. The Tuareg might be dung in the anus of humanity, the abandoned of God, but as Allah was his witness they surely knew how to take care of their meharis! In Wargla he would give them a six-month vacation, where they could fatten on rich grasses and sweet water and recover
their strength. They would become the backbone of his new herds; their seed would spawn new generations that would be the pride of the Shamba.
The glorious visions danced before him in the heat shimmering off the flat. He saw himself with four wives and a score of sons and clothes made of silk, and he brought down his scourge on the bloody haunches of his mount to drive it on, to make it all come true.
* * *
“The spirits have been fed, sire, I have seen to it. You may rest easy now.”
Lufti had wandered out into the rocks to find the best place, where he carefully set the bowl of porridge alongside a small gourd of water. No matter how tired he might be, it was his nightly ritual, seen to faithfully and without exception. In the morning the food and the water would be gone. It never failed. “The Kel Had, the People of the Night, get most plenty thirsty, sire.”
“I was already resting easy, Lufti,” Moussa said through his exhaustion. His body ached with their efforts of the past days. He tolerated Lufti’s superstitions rather well, finding them amusing. “I think the spirits will leave us alone tonight.”
“Yaya, sire, of course they will. But only because I feed them.” His voice was defensive. “Forgive me, sire, but you should not doubt the effectiveness of my measures. Since becoming my master have you had seizures?”
“Never.”
“Have you been possessed, or taken ill in the head?”
“No.”
“Suffered the bite of a snake?”
“Not yet.”
“The fever of the pox?”
“I am free of it.”
“Well then, have you died?”
“No, of course not.”
Lufti held up his hands in triumph, at the glorious proofs of science. “Yaya, see then? It is because I have taken proper care that such ills have not befallen you.”
Moussa grunted noncommittally. “I thought your amulets took care of all that.” The slave wore an arsenal of amulets. They were pinned to his robes and turbandand hung from his neck. They contained eagle claws and lizard tails, scraps of the Koran, lions’ teeth, and wrinkled papers filled with magic squares. What little of worth that Lufti managed to acquire went to his payments to the marabouts for new and ever improved amulets, amulets that would prevent him from falling into wells, amulets that would stave off disease, amulets that would keep him from losing his virility, or his mind.
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