“There will be no prisoners today,” he said. “On either side.”
Grimly they disappeared in opposite directions, and were soon lost to view in the rocks.
Tamrit watched them coming.
* * *
Tamrit knew nothing of the tactics of war. He was accustomed to night attack or frontal assault. His men were out-maneuvered within moments of Paul’s attack, flanked on both sides and from above by tirailleurs who had climbed into position and rained murderous fire down on them, killing three of his riflemen before they’d had a chance to fire a single shot. The fourth musket misfired, and the two men with carbines had to scramble to safety when they saw they themselves were in exposed positions.
Nothing happened the way Tamrit thought it would. He watched his surprise evaporate, and then saw the Frenchman with a half-dozen men, surging furiously atop their meharis through the gorge toward his position. Tamrit screamed orders at his men, who fell yelling on the attacking force, the wild warriors of Islam swinging their swords as the grim tirailleurs fired at them point-blank. Some of Tamrit’s men had pistols, which they fired with little effect. The noise was deafening and the still air of the gorge filled with smoke and screams and the panicked cries of the camels. The two forces surged through each other’s ranks, and the firing all but stopped as men grew afraid to hit their own companions. The battle became a ferocious hand-to-hand struggle.
It was a thicket of death and Paul was in the middle, sword in hand, the sweat and dirt mingling in muddy streaks that poured down his brow and into his eyes as he attacked and parried and attacked again. It had all happened with furious speed, precisely as he had hoped. He was wounded twice, each time more blood than substance. The wounds seemed only to fuel his intensity as he pressed forward with a ferocity unmatched by any man there. He saw two of his tirailleurs killed in the howling crush of swordsmen, a third mortally wounded. But the rest of his men were fighting well, taking a heavy toll of their own.
Finally he saw the man he sought. His back was toward him, but Paul knew him at once by his air of command. The man was shouting orders.
Tamrit.
Paul drove his mehari through the melee, knocking down one of his own men but too intent to notice. Tamrit turned and saw him coming, his litham covering all his face except for his eyes, eyes that Paul could at last see were cobalt, eyes that were unwavering as he drew his own pistol, an ancient weapon. The two men moved toward each other, the rest of the battle forgotten, a noisy abstraction, their attention riveted on each other. Their mounts moved together and Paul was upon him, sword raised. At that instant Tamrit fired straight at his adversary’s face.
With a searing flash the powder detonated, but the old gun misfired. The ball glanced off Paul’s forehead, ripping a gash in his skin. The impact knocked him from his mehari to the ground. Paul lay stunned, burned and nearly blinded by the powder. Tamrit drove his mount forward, trying to trample him, but Paul’s own camel was in the way and in the confusion would not move. Tamrit pounded at the beast with his empty pistol, cursing, and drew his sword to strike it. Paul recovered his breath sufficiently to roll out of the way. He found his sword. Eyes burning, blinking furiously, everything a fog, he struggled unsteadily to his feet, rising up just next to Tamrit’s leg. Tamrit saw him too late. Paul drove his sword up with all his force, straight up through Tamrit’s midsection.
Tamrit took the blade with a contentment no European would ever understand. Death in the name of Allah was victory, not defeat. With a cry he toppled over, falling directly on top of Paul. On the way down Tamrit tried to stab him but missed. He could not yell, but Paul heard him choke out the words as they both went down. “Allah akbar!” Allah is great!
Staggering but fiercely determined, Paul forced himself back to his feet. He stared through burning eyes at the hated creature at his feet, a creature still alive and mumbling devotions to his God and clutching at a belly that was on fire. Paul picked up Tamrit’s greatsword and lifted it high on the memory of Remy, on the memory of them all. His head pounding with the passion of his vengeance, he brought it down with all the force he could summon. He brought it down once more and Tamrit went still. That couldn’t be all, Paul raged. It wasn’t enough. Long after there was nothing left to kill, he brought it down again and yet again, an awful sound rising in his throat as blind frenzy wielded the heavy blade.
Seeing their leader fall, three of Tamrit’s men broke free from the battle and ran up the gorge, intending to regroup in the Tuareg camps where they might find help. Still holding Tamrit’s sword, Paul looked up and saw them fleeing. It was only a moment before he was after them, chasing them up the gorge on foot, following as they disappeared into a ravine. He tugged at his belt to get his pistol. He fired once wildly, his vision blurred, eyes caked with blood and sweat and dirt, and heard the roar of battle fade behind him as he entered the ravine. The men he chased were nowhere to be seen; they had disappeared into the rocks.
I have been here before, he told himself, remembering Tadjenout. Only then they were chasing me.
He tripped and fell hard. Dazed, he staggered to his feet. Blood streamed from the wound on his head. He wiped at it with his sleeve and moved through the rocks, firing at shadows and voices and anything that moved. Were they firing back, or was that his own gun, splintering rocks and roaring in his ears? He heard a shrill scream and found a man cowering between two rocks. The man looked at him terrified, pleading. He dropped his sword and held his hands out in front of him, as if they might shield him. Paul fired and a neat hole appeared in the man’s head, and he fell.
Paul’s hands were shaking and it was hard to see. He was dizzy, so terribly dizzy. He looked around through the smoke and saw that he had come near to a camp. He saw tents with red roofs, and the bloodlust rose in his throat. The red roofs meant he was among them at last, among the hated Tuareg, and he knew he would kill them all.
He moved as if through a dream, through the smoke and the smells and the frenzy, everything slowed down, everything eerie and quiet except his own heart, his heart sounding in his head like a cannon. And then a flash, a movement. Someone running? Small – a child? He couldn’t risk waiting to find out. He fired. He missed. He moved forward, his step unsteady. A knife flew through the air and hit him in the stomach, hilt-first, and fell harmlessly to the ground. A lance clattered next to him. He saw his assailant and fired again. The man fell. Paul saw he was dressed in Arab robes and his fury rose. Where are the Tuareg? They cannot hide! He could not wait for his men, whose guns he heard dimly, firing behind him. I will kill them. I will kill them all.
He began running in a crouch, making for the tent. Suddenly a man blocked his way, a man in a white robe who carried a sword. Paul straightened to meet him, but the man deflected his charge and knocked him down. The enemy – yet he didn’t strike out with his blade.
“Paul! Stop it!” Moussa yelled, but made no move to protect himself, no move to fight.
“You. Get out of my way, damn you,” Paul rasped, out of breath. “I’ll kill you too, if you don’t.”
Exhausted, Paul pulled himself to his feet. His gun had fallen somewhere. He couldn’t see it. He wanted to raise Tamrit’s sword to strike, only his strength was failing him and the heavy blade barely moved. Again Moussa knocked him down with a ringing blow. “Stop it! Enough!”
“It is not enough! Not until everyone…” Frantically he felt for the gun, one hand sweeping across the ground, the other wiping away the salt and sweat and blood that was blinding him. And then he had it. He raised it, his eyes pulsing with hatred. Moussa stood there, just waiting to die, and Paul knew he could purge himself if only he could finish, if only he could kill them all, if only he could get his balance. The world was spinning, everything moving and bouncing and out of focus. He wiped again at his eyes and tried to steady his shaking hand, the barrel of his pistol wavering wildly. Again a blow knocked him to the ground, only this time it was not Moussa who had struck it. Paul couldn’t tell w
ho it was, only that the blood was too thick in his eyes and he couldn’t see and he heard himself moaning like a bull, hurt and angry and ready to kill, but he couldn’t kill, he was half-blind and wounded and rolling on the ground.
And he knew his own death was at hand, that they had him now. A feeling of peace swept over him and he wasn’t afraid, not at all, but even if it was finished he wasn’t going to let them take him so easily. With a huge effort he pulled himself up, raising his gun once more.
Another figure stood before him.
He blinked and tried to clear his vision. He tried to fire but his hand wouldn’t move. Someone had it, someone was holding it. He cried out in fury, squeezing his finger. “Why won’t it work? Why can’t I kill you?” Tears welled in his eyes, tears of fury and frustration.
“Paul!”
A woman’s voice.
He hesitated, weaving, crying.
“Stop it! Paul! Do you know me?” He looked into her face, and it was swirling, everything was swirling, he was so dizzy. He struggled with his pistol, his hand shaking violently as he fought to understand. A woman. A Tuareg. Yes, he could kill her too.
“Get out of my way,” he croaked, his voice choked. “Stop hiding the murderers.”
“Paul! I know you, and you know me.”
He blinked, still trying to see the face. The voice was soothing, soothing and so familiar.
“Paul deVries, it is Serena. Your aunt, do you hear me? Stop it, do you hear? Do you kill so easily? Have you become such an animal?”
He surged against her, trying to get past, but she was strong and he was weak and she held firm.
“Must kill,” he whispered hoarsely. “All.”
She slapped him, trying to bring him to his senses. She let go of his pistol and he raised it again, but she ignored it now. “I am Targui, Paul. I was Targui when you knew me as a child, in Paris. I am Targui today. I am what you loathe. Do you hear me? I am what you hate!”
He shook his head, dazed and uncertain. It was all too much, all too confusing.
“Serena?” A Targui? Yes, of course. Does it matter? He tried to stay still, to think, but his hand was wavering and he couldn’t think.
“Moussa told me what happened to you. I am ashamed for it. But you have let it ruin you. You have become what you hate. You have become the very thing you set out to destroy!”
Still he struggled with it. He shook his head. She slapped him again, so hard he nearly lost his balance. “Paul! Do you see me? Do you hear?”
He tried to roar at her, but it was only a husky rasp. “Get away!”
Then she took his hand in hers and guided it, until the pistol barrel touched her cheek and he could feel the warmth of her breath on the back of his hand. “If you must hate so much, Paul, then you must shoot me first.”
His finger was perilously close to pulling the trigger. He saw the images of his nightmares – Remy, his arm twirling through the air, the butchers at Tadjenout, the poisoned dates and Floop, the flesh of the camel driver Djemel as his companions began to eat him.
And he saw Melika.
His head pounded with it all, and finally the visions all crashed down upon him and he fell to his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks. His pistol fell from his hand to the ground. He buried his face in her robe and cried like a baby.
CHAPTER 34
It was a delicate time for them both, the end of much and the beginning of much. They stayed together in the tent, moving slowly through the sunrises and sunsets, holding each other close while they tried to make their way through all that had happened. Anna did not approve. No Targui noble ever acted in such frontal fashion toward a woman. There were forms to be followed, customs to be observed. But Master Moussa, it was well known, had always been odd. And besides, he wouldn’t leave the tent.
Daia had nearly died in delivery, but after a long afternoon Anna had emerged with a proud smile on her weary face, holding a healthy baby girl.
“She is yours,” Daia whispered to Moussa when she could say anything at all. He sat down heavily, dumbstruck, looking in wonder at the tiny face.
“I did not know,” he said at last. “I thought the child Mahdi’s.”
“It was his price for your life. He said he would take the child as his own, if I would marry him. I had no choice, Moussa. He said he would leave you in peace.” The thought of her bargain brought tears to her eyes. “It had gone too far then. I did not dare to dream that… I did not think it possible that we—” She didn’t finish. They both knew.
They named her Tashi. He held her in awe.
Daia grieved for Mahdi at the same time she hated him for his deception. She understood only some of what had moved him, but she knew the heart of it. “He loved me too much.”
“That is not possible,” Moussa said, “for I love you even more.” His own words surprised him, but he was determined to make up for his past reluctance to open his heart to her. In the foggaras, when he thought he might never see her again, his mother’s words had haunted him. I don’t know how you can be so quick to show a camel your feeling for it, Moussa, and so slow to show a woman.
There was much to share and they talked until they were hoarse, trying to recover lost moments and precious thoughts. Sometimes reality mixed with fantasy in Moussa’s mind, and he thoroughly confused her with things that had happened only in his foggara dreams. He tested some of those dreams on her to see if they were real, or only his longings. To their delight, many of them were real.
As Daia regained her strength and they found each other once again, sounds of laughter began issuing from their tent, bright sounds that mingled with the voice of Tashi, whose lusty cries rang through the mountains of the Muydir.
One evening Daia pulled an oilcloth wrapping from her pack and took from it the gift he’d sent her from the south. It was the book he’d bought from a trader, the book he couldn’t read himself. Moussa’s eyes lit up when he saw it, because he saw the pleasure she took from it.
“Let me tell thee a tale,” she said, and she read to him, stories of the fisherman and the genie, and Ali the Persian, and Sinbad the seaman, and the other enchantments of Scheherazade. By the light of the candle she read late into the night, Moussa resting on one elbow, watching her face, Tashi sleeping between them. Serena heard it, and thought of another woman reading to another man so many years ago, in the forests near the Château deVries. The sound of Daia’s voice was melodic. Serena closed her eyes and listened from her place by the fire, and let herself be carried away. It seemed to her as if something had become complete, as if a broken circle had been mended.
* * *
Serena saw to the care of Paul’s men, only a few of whom had survived the battle with Tamrit. She set up a small camp for them, away from the main Tuareg camp, as she sensed their discomfort. Even though she spoke Arabic and French better than they did and was taking care of their lieutenant, they eyed her with suspicion.
She tended to Paul in a tent of his own. He recovered quickly from the physical effects of his wounds, but for days he lay drained on his mat, his eyes bloodshot and hollow, his spirit sapped. He watched as she moved about the camp, and found her to be the same extraordinary woman he remembered. He thought of how much he had loved her as a child and shuddered at what he had almost done. When she brought him food he accepted it gratefully but with shame. “I don’t—” he started to say, but his voice cracked and he couldn’t finish. Even looking at her was difficult for him.
She touched his shoulder. “It’s all right,” she said. “You are with your family now. You need say nothing.” Later she heard him sobbing.
She tended him patiently and didn’t press him.
* * *
Abdulahi and Mahmoud grew anxious to leave for their homes in the north. “You should wait for a caravan,” Moussa told them. But Abdulahi snorted at that. “And have them sell us to the sons of Jubar Pasha?” he asked. “We will take the long way around In Salah, Sidi,” he said. “Life is lived long
er that way.”
“And above ground,” Moussa said. “Of course, you are right.” He gave them fresh camels and supplies. “I owe you my life,” he told the little man as they departed.
“Happily, as you are Targui, that means you owe me but little,” Abdulahi said. “I will miss you, Sidi.” They clasped each other. “There is no dragon so clever as a Tuareg.”
“Nor any dog so foul,” added Mahmoud, and the two men were gone.
A few days later a large caravan passed near Arak traveling southward, nearly three hundred camels laden with great bolts of cloth and bright beads from Italy, bound for Kano. Moussa sat with its master, an honest man who would not sell Monjo to a slaver, and arranged safe passage. Moussa gave Monjo money, weapons, and clothing for his journey. Monjo found it impossible to believe that after so many years he was going home to Sokoto in Hausaland, a free man. When the time came to leave he couldn’t find words. The big man took Moussa by the shoulders and hugged him, and then lifted him completely off the ground as if he weighed nothing at all.
Moussa was haunted with memories of the foggaras, of his own enslavement there. One afternoon he summoned Lufti and Chaddy. Carefully he poured them tea, ceremoniously filling their glasses three times. Chaddy squirmed as the master poured for his slaves. She never grew accustomed to his peculiar habits.
When they had finished the tea Moussa handed Lufti a paper that had been carefully lettered in Tifinar, Arabic, and French. Lufti took it in both hands and looked expectantly at Moussa, awaiting instructions. “Shall I deliver this, sire? To whom?”
“It is already where it belongs,” Moussa said.
“A riddle, then? But I cannot read.”
“It is your freedom,” Moussa said simply. It did not need to he written; it was enough that a nobleman said it. But Moussa wanted to record it, to give Lufti a paper to keep. He remembered trying to do this the day he met him, when the slave boldly cut the ear of his camel, but the old amenokal had forbidden it, telling his nephew he needed to be at least eighteen before tampering with the laws of man.
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