With lightning speed, Graham kicked out, catching the man on his right behind the calves. The raider toppled. Next he lunged upwards, grabbing the man's scimitar. In one expert stroke the man fell silent, scarlet gushing from him. Graham struck the Bedouin on his left, killing him, too.
Alone now, the sheikh stared at Jillian's enraged, naked husband, scimitar in hand. Bloodlust shone in Graham's eyes. Terror shone in the sheikh's. He had made a grave mistake.
The sheikh yanked up his trousers, turned and ran. Graham gave chase. In a minute he was upon him, his sword glinting in the sun.
The sheikh's high shriek was suddenly cut off. Savage, angry grunts issued from her furious husband. Jillian cried out as he continued to strike. Again. Again. Again. Dark blood flowed into the sands, a sluggish stream.
"Graham, stop it Stop it! He's dead. He's dead!"
Panting, Graham lowered the reddened scimitar. Blood had spattered his naked body. He dropped the sword, put a hand to his head.
"It's over, my love," Jillian said softly. "He won't hurt you. No one will, ever again. Come to me."
She held out her arms and he embraced her in a crushing hug. Warmth trickled onto her naked shoulder. Jillian cried out in alarm.
"Your head is bleeding."
She ran to her nearby rucksack, grabbed a towel and ran back. Her shaking fingers held the cloth over Graham's wound.
He said, "We've lost camels, and I don't know how badly they hurt Solomon. We have to find him." He winced at her gentle touch.
She anxiously examined the laceration. "The bleeding's slowed, but I'll have to clean it."
He studied her. "We should put some clothing on first."
Flustered, she glanced at him, feeling horribly shaken. "Oh, Graham, he would have... You were going to let him..."
His mouth tightened. Then he glanced down and smiled. "I wouldn't advise walking naked through the desert. There are some parts of me that wouldn't do well with a sunburn."
Tremendous love for her husband rushed through Jillian, feeling like warm sunshine after a dark, dreary night. He jested after nearly suffering his worst possible nightmare? All for her.
And then she realized the deep inner strength of this man she'd married. This man who truly did love her. Enough to sacrifice himself for her.
Jillian struggled for words. Her mouth worked. Graham touched her cheek.
"Don't say anything. All I ask is for you to give me another chance, Jilly. I love you. I'd die for you."
"Or worse," she whispered.
He nodded. "Or worse."
A somber look covered his face. "Thank you, Jilly. Thank you for saving me. In more ways than one. Do you remember when we saw the pyramid in Giza?" At her shaky nod, he continued. "I told you it represented new life for the pharaohs, and you were just like the pyramid. New life, for me. Your strength gives me strength." Jillian grasped his hand, the momentary rush fleeing her, leaving behind shaky disbelief. She shuddered as she glanced at the Bedouin bodies. "What will you do with them?"
"Leave them for the jackals," he said roughly. "And the desert wind. We need to keep moving if we want to live. We have little water and I don't intend to die out here."
Chapter Twenty-five
At noon two days later, Graham collapsed. Jillian screamed. She slid off her mount and ran to his side. Her husband lay on the sand, prone. He raised his head and moaned.
"My head, it hurts."
She gently examined the healing purplish bruise on his head. The blow must have injured him more than she'd realized.
"Graham," she called. "Graham!"
A deep groan rumbled from his throat. "Must... find help. I think we're lost."
They had recovered two of the Bedouins' camels and a weakened Solomon, who had suffered a gash to his hind leg and limped. The other camels had run off. Graham had not expended precious energy running after them. Now Jillian wished he had. Yesterday one of their two camels had collapsed and died. The other was weakening fast. The iron water tanks were empty, their contents spilled onto the sand.
Graham promised they could make it. But as time wore on, Jillian had begun to wonder. The trail he followed meandered, plus the sun's position seemed wrong. But what did she, an Englishwoman, know of desert travel and following camel tracks in the sand? He was an experienced desert traveler, and, doubting herself, she had said nothing. Now she sorely regretted not speaking her mind.
Jillian glanced up. All she could see was a wide horizon of burning white sand. Disoriented from his injury, Graham had surely miscalculated their route and gotten them lost. Lost in the desert, with only half a goatskin of water.
Katherine's advice came back to haunt her. "If you're struck in the heat and later have a headache and disorientation, stop and rest. It could take three to five days to clear."
Three days of rest when they barely had two days' worth of water? Jillian acted quickly. She unfurled a blanket on the hot sand and rolled Graham onto it. Next she erected a small tent to shade him from the broiling sun. She touched his cheek, feeling the skin hot beneath her fingers.
Rescue was on the way. Surely the Khamsin could find them. The Bedouin could track a camel in a sandstorm. But they were running out of water. By the time their rescuers arrived, she and Graham could be dead. She knew what she must do.
She had to leave him, had to go alone and find her way back to the main trail of Darb Asylt and leave a sign for their rescuers to follow. Jillian thought frantically. The raiders had stolen her compass when she was first captured. She sucked in a breath. Jabari and Ramses had taught her how to find her way in the desert. Her sense of direction was excellent. She must finally believe in herself. No choice left. Stay here and die of dehydration, or try to find the caravan route and leave a sign for the Khamsin.
All around her lay open terrain. No landmarks. They had wandered south, but she wasn't sure which direction to head. If she could find her way north, Jillian felt confident she could find the caravan trail. But which way was north?
She remembered what Ramses had explained. With a twinkle in his amber eyes, he had said, "Jillian, my friend tends to get lost. He has the sense of direction of a blind camel. I'm entrusting you to show him the way, should this happen."
Then the Khamsin warrior had proceeded to show her how to figure out direction by using the sun.
Recalling his words, Jillian fetched the camel crop and spade and dug a small hole. She plunged the crop into the hole. The long pole made a distinctive shadow on the rough ground. She marked the spot with one of the wood matches. This was west.
Next she fished a hair ribbon from her rucksack and tied it to the crop's bottom, and drew in the sand with Graham's blade a circle exactly the radius of the shadow the pole cast on the ground. Jillian retrieved one of the wooden matches and marked the spot on the circle of the shadow. Consulting the little watch pinned to her robe, she waited fifteen minutes.
Jillian checked the shadow and marked the new position. Then she drew a straight line between the two marks. East-west. Standing, she positioned the west mark to her left. West to her left, north to her front. Her eyes scanned the horizon, looking for markers. A distant clump of rock hovered ahead to the northeast. Of course. The route.
Hesitating, she glanced at the resting camel. Weakened from blood loss, Solomon might die if she took him with her. If she left him here, as a last resort for Graham, for life... The thought was too terrible to bear.
Gulping back tears, she gave the camel a reassuring pat and went to her rucksack. She scribbled a note on the back of the map tracing, and tucked it beneath Graham's sleeping body. Then Jillian emerged from the tiny, makeshift tent. Squinting at the burning sun, she wrapped the emerald scarf about her face, leaving only a slit for her eyes. She took one quarter of the water, leaving the rest for Graham, kissed his cheek and mounted the last Bedouin camel.
Ramses had told her a man could live without food for weeks, without water for only three days. With dogged determination, her throat parched and
dry, she pushed on. Jillian rationed the water she'd brought with her, taking only sips. She navigated at night by studying the stars as Jabari had taught her.
Late the second day, she came upon the unmistakable signs of camel tracks leading in an east-west direction. The caravan route. She slid off the camel, licked her parched lips and began piling stones into a cairn, forming an arrow pointing in the direction she had come. Her bones ached and her throat cried out for water. When she finished, despair flooded her. How would the men know it was them? She needed another marker. Her scarf.
Jillian tore off the emerald garment. It hung from her fingers, fluttering in the wind like a flag.
Her scarf, the one Graham had purchased in the souk in Cairo. "Green as the quiet grasses in an oasis, quiet pools of refreshment." He had given a self-mocking grin at his poetry. He had told her she should always wear jewel colors to complement her spirited nature. "You're not gray, Jilly. You're flame, the energy of roaring fire. You're verdant grasses. You're the deep blue of a turbulent ocean. But you're not the gray of silence anymore."
Emotion clogged her throat. She unwound the scarf and secured it to the stones, praying the Khamsin riders would see it before the desert wind carried it off and left only their bones bleaching under the sun's relentless lash. The endless wind slapped it like a Bedouin woman pounding dust from a rug. Would frayed tendrils remain a month from now, if no one came and she and Graham died out here?
The thought was too horrible to bear. Jillian fisted away sudden tears springing to her eyes. She blamed the wind and sun, and began the journey back to her husband. When the Bedouin's camel collapsed, Jillian struggled on alone, staggering back to Graham while the sun beat mercilessly down upon her.
* * *
Sick with worry, Graham scanned the horizon. The note Jillian left increased his anxiety. While he had slept, she'd been trying to find the caravan route to leave a marker.
He saddled Solomon and urged the beast on, groggily following her tracks. He wanted to race after her, but prudence checked him. Solomon was severely weak and limped. His wife's tracks in the sand were difficult to follow, and if he lost his head, he'd be wandering in circles, never finding her.
A lone figure appeared hours later on the shimmering horizon. Graham urged Solomon into a gallop. Dust kicked up behind him as he pushed the protesting camel on. Reaching her, he jumped off, grabbing his goatskin bag of water. Jillian lay prone upon the burning sands. He raced to her limp form. Deep, gasping breaths rasped from her parched lips. Dehydration had set in. But they had no water.
As he stared at her lying on the ground, the wind lifted a corner of her white scarf, licking her face and teasing out a tendril of flame-gold hair. Red hair, billowing from the force of the wind whistling across the desert plain. Just like in his nightmare.
Jillian's eyes fluttered open. Those green eyes, brilliant as glossy emeralds, stared at him, not in scornful challenge but with resignation. Her eyes closed as if it were too much effort to keep them open. She was dying.
"No, no, Jilly. Don't leave me," he moaned. The harsh yellow sun grated on his body, mocking his pain.
Graham threw back his head and screamed and screamed. His screams echoed over the barren plain, disappearing into the dust.
Chapter Twenty-six
The tent he erected on the sandy plain shielded his parched wife from the yellow sun's harsh embrace. Graham knelt beside her, his throat raw. The woman he had loved in the night, who'd coaxed him into facing his darkest demons, lay on a blanket. So dry. Her pale, delicate body was so dry. Squeezing his eyes shut, he saw her desiccating like a mummy, forever preserved, the moisture squeezed out, each precious drop of life drunk by the greedy sands.
His hand touched her hips, slightly rounded. She wasn't pregnant. He thought about her carrying his child, imagined her grunting and straining and sweating to bring it forth, just as they had grunted and strained and sweated in passion.
Gently, as carefully as Badra had done with her new son, he handled her, uncovering her body, tugging the grimy dress from her shoulders, removing the loose trousers and boots. Naked, she lay upon the blanket, her skin slightly shriveled.
There was no water left. None but in his own parched body. Graham licked his cracked lips, summoning saliva. He kissed her, his slightly moist lips to her dry ones, passing on his precious fluid. Harsh, ragged breaths labored in her chest. In. Out. Barely moving. Life slipping away from her, like water into the sand.
His parched mind began seeing her body as fruit. The small, delicate breasts in their roundness were apples. He imagined the tart sweet juice running between his lips, sharing, passing on moisture to her—to refresh, to give life.
Her navel was a pitted date, easing the ache of his dry throat, soaking the cotton in his mouth, refreshing his arid body. Wetting his fingers, he touched her belly, leaving twin tracks of moisture like footprints. He was passing on his moisture to her, willing her to absorb his life. His fingertips trailed her pale skin, that freckled skin dotted here and there like strategic geographic points on a map. He delved briefly into the tangle of red curls between her thighs, tunneled to the hollow his body had eagerly sought. Dry there, too, as the hot sands. He imagined the rosette of a dewy pomegranate half, its plump moistness beckoning him to sink inside and refresh his parched body and spirit.
Graham took an empty water bag, squeezed it over her parted lips. One last droplet fell onto her mouth. He pushed it with his finger past her lips onto her tongue.
Clutching both goatskin bags, he emerged from the shallow protection of the tent into the glaring sun, the brightness hurting his eyes, threatening tears. No moisture should be wasted in the desert. He was a survivor. No tears in the desert.
Graham envisioned Jillian on the sand, its caress dry and hot upon her dying flesh, enveloping her like a lover. Her body, bleached dry and so alone, covered by sand as he had covered her body in the dark night, sand thrusting into her secret hollows, invading her sweetness, knowing her intimately, claiming her in ways he could not. He felt jealous of those hot, greedy sands. They would swallow her whole as he had always wanted to do, sinking into each cell, burrowing into her in ways he could not. Knowing her in ways he could not.
No. The sand would not claim her. "Jillian is mine," he roared. "Mine! I will not allow you to have her!"
The silence taunted him as the wind blew the shifting sands into his face. Words roared back, Then a sacrifice must be made.
His gaze fell on the camel lying near the tiny tent. Solomon. His friend in the desert.
I cannot. I must.
He remembered Solomon's birth, pulling the beast from its mother, naming him after the legendary king. He recalled the stubborn way Solomon resisted the harness. Taking dates from his hand. Nudging him as he slept once in the deep desert, warning him of the danger of marauders who desired to rob and slay him as he slept.
Solomon saved his life once. Now, again. Graham clutched his two empty water bags and removed his jambiya, stroked his thumb along the sharp edge. He approached Solomon, who raised his head weakly. Graham knelt beside the wounded camel.
Large, liquid eyes held his. Solomon lowered his head, butted it against Graham's thigh. Then he studied his master. Knowledge seemed to burn in his ageless, wise eyes.
No tears in the desert. Graham held up his knife to heaven, an offering to the hot wind, the burning yellow sun, the uncaring sands.
A short prayer and a swift stroke later, Graham held out one bag to catch the blood. Liquid was life in the desert. He drank the blood, forcing himself not to gulp. To sip slowly.
A single drop rolled down the camel's neck. Graham took his finger and captured it, bringing it to parched lips to taste.
When the blood was drained, he tied off the bag and set it down. As his Bedouin family had taught, he slit the animal's belly, found its paunch and drained the water into the second bag. Graham did all this with numb detachment, setting the liquid aside. In a few hours, it would be d
rinkable.
He took the bag of blood and went into the tent to bring life to his beloved.
* * *
Darkness surrounded her, dragged her down. Jillian let herself slip into it, wanting to slip away into blackness for good.
The commanding male voice had not allowed her to. It had urged her to drink the thick liquid she wanted to spit out. It kept forcing her to drink. She had drunk, fallen asleep, only to be awakened and forced to drink again.
Now a bevy of new voices rang in her ears. Distant shouts, Arabic words she didn't understand. She felt herself lifted, carried off into the scorching sun, then the blessed relief of shade. The hardness of ground was beneath her, cushioned by a thick blanket. The murmuring voices faded. Her body was an iron weight. So tired. Jillian struggled against opening her eyes.
"Shhhh," a different male voice crooned. "Drink."
Her lips parted as liquid was forced past. Jillian eagerly gulped the refreshment, then gagged on the salty-sweet taste. A firm hand closed her mouth.
"Swallow, Jilly," ordered the same deep voice that had not let her sleep, had forced her to drink earlier. A voice with authority. Jillian swallowed, then coughed.
"Good girl," it murmured. "Again."
A cool, wet cloth stroked her skin. She shivered and tried to pull away. The voice murmured reassuring words, crooned for her to remain still.
Why was she feeling so sick? Her head pounded like war drums. She just wanted to slip away and sleep forever.
"Don't you die on me," the deep voice ordered. "Don't you dare die. Not now. You're going to live. Fight it, Jilly."
The instinctive need to obey could not be pushed aside. It mandated she struggle against sinking deep into the peaceful sleep and leaving behind the pain. Deep inside, a spark flared and caught. As the cool, wet cloth caressed her naked flesh, Jillian began fighting to five.
Graham stared down at his wife as he stroked the damp cloth over her bare torso. A swath lay across her breasts and hips for modesty's sake. His anxious gaze sought Ramses.
The Panther & the Pyramid (Khamsin Warriors of the Wind) Page 27