Empires of Sand

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  Stopping at the site where Paul had made bread, a Targui dismounted and examined the ground, seeing traces everywhere of the Frenchman’s passage. Satisfied that he was on the right track, he mounted again and prompted his mehari to its feet. The Targui felt no chill, his shesh and robe and the camel beneath him keeping him warm. He was quite comfortable, his feet resting on the camel’s neck. He could go all night if necessary. “Bok bok.” The sound carried little farther than the camel’s ears. The animal turned obediently to the nudge of the rider’s foot, to take them north.

  * * *

  Paul walked on for two hours. The wind began an hour after dark, a strong, unwelcome visitor from the east, noisy and cold. The moon was not yet big enough in its cycle to light the desert. He reckoned he had made five or six kilometers—not bad for a night march in difficult terrain, he thought, but negligible in the vastness he needed to cover. As the moon dipped toward the horizon, he decided to find a place to spend the night, before the moon disappeared altogether and left him in blackness.

  He found a large boulder, hollowed out on one side, nestled in a bed of sand and pebbles. He set down his load of food and water and collapsed onto the ground, using the bag for a pillow, his eyes closing in fatigue. Within ten minutes he knew that no sleep would come. The wind was too cold, blowing around the edges of the boulder. He had only the clothes on his back for warmth and no brush for a fire. He would have to make a shelter.

  In the waning moonlight he gathered flat rocks, stacking them on top of each other in a semicircle stretching out from the hollow. He knew better than to pick up rocks casually, better than to stick his hands underneath to lift them, without moving them first with his boot. El Madani had warned him to check, always to check. Fatigue and the dark and his hurry for warmth made him careless. He was nearly done, his wind wall knee high. He was putting up the last row, the rocks making a sharp hollow sound as he piled them in their arc, trying to fit them together as tightly as their shapes permitted, so that no wind would get through.

  The big scorpion was sluggish, but not immobile in the night air. It reacted instinctively to the intrusion, its tail full of lightning, and striking just as quickly – around, forward, and up, until it found the warm flesh of danger and planted its poison. It withdrew and scurried backward, more slowly than it would have during the day, but still quick, and retreated into the protection of another rock.

  Paul felt the fire and knew instantly what it was, the burning searing its way up his hand and wrist and into his arm, the realization of his stupidity flashing to his brain. He jumped back with a loud cry, clutching his hand to his stomach and bending over it, praying that it hadn’t really happened. But it had, the fire paralyzing his hand. He made his way into his shelter and dropped heavily onto the bed of sand, not feeling his head strike the rock; not feeling, for the moment, the cold on its wings of wind, flying through his wall as though it didn’t exist. He felt nothing but the fire.

  The poison worked quickly. He huddled on his side in the sand, drawing his knees up to his chest in a fetal position, cradling his hand. The wind howled like another living presence in the little space, intrusive and abrasive and rude, and seemed to intensify his agony. He shivered and moaned. His armpit began to swell. He longed for the dead Doctor Guiard, for his medical supplies and help. He cursed himself for abandoning the Targui’s cloak, an act of foolish anger. He tried to concentrate through his torment, to force his mind into the refuge of warmer, gentler surroundings: anything, anywhere, to get away. But his mind refused. Wild fire and bitter cold slammed the door of his escape.

  Lying on his side became unbearable. He tried sitting up and rocking, his legs folded underneath. He concentrated on the motion, finding comfort in its sway, slowly at first until that stopped working, then faster, the break in rhythm a respite, until faster didn’t work either, then slowing once again, lengthening the motions, exaggerating them, until his face touched the rock wall before him. When that stopped working he tried his side once more, writhing slowly in the sand, as if to dig himself a grave and be gone.

  He talked to himself, finding comfort in the sound of his voice.

  “Damn it’s cold, oh God, God help me. DeVries, you are a fool, a stupid insane fool, try flexing the arm it will help, Oh Jesus, holy Mother Mary that’s worse please make it go away, don’t let me freeze to death Father just stop it and make this night be over, please God, let it be day, make it stop hurting, please make me, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee… ”

  His teeth clenched until he thought they’d break. He rambled through them, his voice a whimper in the shrieking wind.

  Fever came with sweat that evaporated in the wind and deepened the chill. It raged inside him, bringing convulsive shivers. He opened his eyes and saw the north sky, watching the Dipper creep in its slow arc to empty itself over the horizon. It had never moved more slowly. He despaired for the night’s end, for the handle seemed to have stopped moving altogether, its contents frozen.

  He screamed, a rough and ragged scream that built from the belly and rose through his chest. Everything was swollen, useless, his hand puffed up until the skin stretched red and shiny and he thought it would burst. Just breathing was torture, but the worst of it was the shivering, which seemed to exaggerate itself down his arm into his hand.

  I’m going to die. I want to die. Please God let me die.

  The screams came and went, tapering off into sobs, angry bitter choked sobs, his throat thick. His back ached from his twisted posture. His legs cramped. He reveled in the sensation because it was a different pain and kept his mind off the other, and he almost laughed with relief. But then the cycle of pain and fever and cold began again, violent eruptions shaking his entire body, beginning deep inside, working outward, traveling down his arm once again, to be amplified in his hand.

  Outraged, desperate, sweat dripping from his brow, salt stinging his eyes, he smashed his swollen hand against the rocks, knocking them down, and scourged it in the sand until the sharp pebbles drew blood, and screamed and cried again at the new agony, while the stars still crept too slowly through God’s forsaken night.

  At last the cycles lost their sharp edges, and he drifted in and out; the fatigue fought and clawed at his brain to take over. His eyes grew heavy. His screams died to soft whimpers, and the stars faded from his sight, his body rocking, rocking into the night, and at last relief washed over him, great waves of blessed relief, and he slept.

  * * *

  The world came slowly into focus. There was darkness, but he was no longer outside. He started to sit up but fell back again, dizzy. He groaned. His head ached horribly. He opened his eyes and saw a rock ceiling above his head, reflecting the flickering light of a fire. He was warm at last; the cold had gone.

  Slowly, it dawned on him. A fire, a cave. He blinked, and shook his head to clear it. Above him he began to make out a figure. I am not alone. The shape wavered, as if he were seeing it through a pool of water. Gradually his vision cleared. White cotton, blue robes. A shock raced through his body.

  Tuareg!

  His hand flew for his pistol. The Targui caught it and held it easily. Paul struggled fiercely to get up.

  “Paul, stop it! It is I, Moussa!”

  “The hell you say! Get away!” Paul struggled weakly, half-delirious, his body racked with pain.

  “I know you, Paul deVries! I thought it was you, from your hair, and I know it now for sure, from your eyes! And you know me!”

  “Take away your mask, Devil!” Paul gasped, still trying for his gun.

  “It is not a mask! It is I!”

  “No!”

  “Yes! We found a skull, beneath St. Paul’s! We named him Fritz. I hit a Prussian with my slingshot. Here, look, I still have it – and even the knife you gave me, the night I—” Moussa fumbled in his robes, but by then Paul knew it was true.

  “Moussa! By God, it is you!” Paul was so relieved he wanted to cry. He pulled himse
lf to a sitting position and tried to hug his cousin but gasped in pain when he lifted his arm. Moussa helped him back down. “Careful. You aren’t strong enough to be moving yet.”

  Paul didn’t recognize his own hand. It was bruised and purple, swollen to twice its normal size, the fingers all puffed and shiny like some grotesque balloon. It wouldn’t move properly when he willed it. The skin was ragged, scabbed and oozing. Near the wrist there was a cloth bandage stained dark with blood.

  “You did more damage to your hand than the scorpion did,” Moussa said. “You must have smashed it on the rocks.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “The scorpion was quite poisonous. It might have killed you. I had to open up the wound. I put something on it. You’ll feel miserable for a few days. You need water and rest. You look horrible.” Paul’s hair hung in limp strands over his wet forehead, still flushed with fever. Dark circles set his eyes deeply in his haggard, ashen face. Moussa shook his head. “But you look wonderful just the same. It is good to see you. Good to hear French again. Merde, how often I’ve thought of this moment.”

  “And I.”

  “I thought you’d have sense enough to outwit a scorpion. They’re more stupid than a chicken, you know. You should be embarrassed.”

  Paul laughed weakly. “I wish it had been a chicken. I’d rather have had a meal than what I got.”

  “I’m fixing something for you.” Moussa moved to the fire and squatted. Paul could see a teapot steaming, and a lizard on a spit, its skin blackened. It smelled delicious. Paul looked at his cousin in wonder.

  “I didn’t know if you were alive! You never wrote!”

  “Of course I did. A dozen times I wrote, a dozen times a dozen. I sent the letters off every time a caravan passed by. I never heard back.”

  “I never got any of them. I wrote, too.” Paul gathered his strength and pulled himself up to a sitting position. He looked around. They were in a large natural sandstone cavern with a domed ceiling. There were paintings on the walls, ancient drawings of antelope and elephants and crocodiles, eerily illuminated by firelight. Stains from the smoke of old fires had obliterated some of them. There was an arch near the fire, a doorway, and beyond it the blackness of night. Gradually Paul saw more detail. Other paintings, brightly colored ones. Trees, a forest. Birds. People had once lived in the cave. There were shelves carved into the walls, and flat stones that had served as benches.

  “What is this place? It is remarkable. It must be ancient.”

  “There are others like it all over the plateau. This used to be – never mind just now. Rest easy. There is tea. We can talk.”

  Their voices echoed softly off the walls, the words pouring out in torrents to fill the voids. The count’s death, the flight of the balloon, the voyage across the sea and the desert, the victory of the Prussians, the Commune, St. Cyr. There was so much to say, such hurry to say it. A sea of words awash in old memories as questions were answered and mysteries solved, and they hurriedly filled the deep places of wonder they had both had over the years. They laughed and remembered and finished each other’s sentences and felt all the warm rush of friendship they’d missed for so long. They drank their tea, cup after cup, the hot liquid restoring in Paul a measure of strength, and they ate slices of lizard meat, and the night passed outside the cave as the hours and years flew by.

  “Your mother is well?”

  “She hasn’t changed a bit since you last saw her, except that she thinks of herself as la comtesse deVries now. There’s no one to tell her otherwise. She spends the deVries money like water and still tries to tell me how to dress in the morning. Busy all the time doing absolutely nothing. She was sure you had all died. Oh, I cannot wait to tell her!”

  “I guess she is the countess now, at that. My mother will never go back.”

  “But what about you? It is yours, you know, the château and the land, and all the money in the world. Still there, waiting for the Count deVries. What my mother hasn’t spent, anyway, and God knows she spends quickly. Lord, she wanted me to be count, thinking you dead. Can you imagine?”

  “Better you than I. I have everything I desire right here. I want for nothing.” Moussa shrugged. “Besides, can you see their faces at the Hôtel de Ville if I were to appear like this?” His hand swept over his robes and he laughed. “Do I look like a count? Surely they would call the gendarmes on such an apparition.”

  And with that gesture, it was as if a spell broke. Paul fell silent and looked down into his tea, as the world outside the cave overtook the giddy heights of reunion. He was ashamed, laughing so easily after so much blood had been spilled. He had forgotten himself, becoming Paul instead of Lieutenant deVries.

  He looked up at his cousin, his smile now uneasy, uncertain.

  “I wonder how you have changed, Moussa, and it is impossible to see. I ask you once again to take off that hideous veil. Why do you hide yourself from me?”

  Moussa’s hand went absently to the material. “It is almost a part of me now. I wear it always. I don’t think about it anymore.”

  “Well, I do. Please don’t wear it in front of me. It makes you – it makes you one of – them.”

  “I am not comfortable without it.”

  “I am not comfortable with it.” Paul studied his cousin, and wondered to whom he was really talking. “Merde, Moussa. This is wrong, all wrong! We sit here talking as if nothing had happened out there. Gossip and old times, and all of them dead! Slaughtered. It was horrible, like some abattoir. My God, I never saw anything like it. They cut off—” His voice cracked.

  “I know, I saw. I got there after it was over. I could do nothing to stop it.”

  Paul’s head began to pound. “I need to know something, Moussa. And I need to know it now.”

  “Of course. What is it?”

  “Are you French or are you Tuareg?”

  “I am both. You know that.”

  “No, not in this. In this you cannot be both.”

  “I cannot help what I am. I am just Moussa.”

  “It is not enough! You cannot keep your hands clean of this by hiding between! Either you are a part of it or you aren’t! You must choose.”

  Moussa sighed. “It isn’t that simple.”

  “And why not? What is complicated in the choice between slaughter and peace? Between honor and dishonor? Or have you become a butcher yourself? Have you come so far from our world? Has this life so destroyed the person I knew?”

  “I am not the person you knew, that is true. I have changed. But I am still the son of Henri and Serena. And I am not a butcher. I had nothing to do with Tadjenout. I argued against it.”

  “So you knew it was coming.”

  “No! They talked about it, but it was one of many choices. I thought—”

  “Spare me this! You dodge so well, and serve yourself so smoothly. If you knew it was even a remote possibility and did nothing to stop it then it is the same as if you yourself held a sword!”

  “It is so easy for you to say that. You don’t understand.”

  “Then make me understand! Why didn’t you stop them?”

  “The amenokal sent me away, on other business. I was not here. He ordered me to go. And now I tell you this honestly, because it haunts me: I knew he was sending me away because he feared I might create trouble.”

  “You knew he was doing that, yet you left? You allowed yourself to be sent away?”

  “I didn’t believe they would do this. Never! Ahitagel himself told me as I was leaving that this would not happen!”

  “Are you so stupid? Don’t the Tuareg do this to everyone? I have heard what the Arabs and the Shamba say. What caravan ever passed this way without meeting death or disaster? And I thought they were exaggerating!”

  “It is not as simple as that. The Shamba have fought with us for centuries. The caravans are quite safe if they pay to pass through our land—”

  “There, you see? You say ‘fought with us.’ You say ‘our land.’ You mak
e your choice clear with every word!”

  “I am explaining the position of the Tuareg in the desert, Paul. I am not trying to play word games with you. The Hoggar belongs to the Tuareg, as France belongs to the French.”

  “Do the French massacre those who wish to travel through their land?”

  “My last memories of Paris – before they shot my father, anyway – were of French soldiers shooting at Prussian invaders. Or have you forgotten all that? Where is the difference?”

  “We are not Prussians, and we did not come to make war!”

  “Why did you come then, if not to put a railroad through land you do not own? By what right did Flatters ignore the amenokal’s letter that told him he was not welcome, to go another way?”

  “I don’t believe you. No such letter exists.”

  “Of course it does. I was there when it was written, more than a year ago.”

  “Then why did the amenokal send us four guides with an offer to lead us through the Hoggar? A man called Attici brought the letter. I heard it read. It was signed by Ahitagel and said we could pass. They led us all right, straight to Tadjenout! Do you expect me to believe the letter was a forgery? Or that this was all a mistake?”

  Moussa was caught short at that. He hadn’t known.

  Paul sneered at his silence. “I thought so. Treachery is how you deal, all of your kind.”

  “I didn’t know, Paul. You have to believe me.”

  “I have to believe nothing other than what I see before me. I see a man dressed like a savage, hiding from the truth behind a veil. I see a man who has made his decision.”

  “I have decided nothing. I have not been given the chance.”

  “I give you that chance now, to make a choice you must make. I want your help. To find the survivors and help them. And then to help me track down those responsible for the butchery, so that they can be repaid in kind.”