by Paul Kenyon
"I'm quite prepared to shoot you if I have to," he said. "It's true that the sound will send me into convulsions. It's happened before. But I'll recover in an hour or two. You'll be dead. I'm a very good shot. One bullet is all I need."
Stalemate. He was terrified of pulling the trigger, and she couldn't reach him. But he had the edge. If she pushed it, he'd win.
"What happens now?" she said.
"We wait here a while. If you move, I'll shoot. Please believe that."
He reached down beside him and picked up a canteen. He took a long swallow from it without taking his eyes from her.
She knew what he had in mind. The desert sun was climbing toward zenith. It sucked water from the body at the rate of a pint in a quarter hour. Your blood became too thick for your heart to pump. Consciousness slipped from you before you had time to realize what was happening. When you were twenty percent dehydrated, you were dead.
She was damned if she was going to wait for it to happen.
"Octave, darling," she said, "I want you to listen very carefully."
She screamed.
It was her very best effort. It ran up and down the scale like a fire siren, delivered with the brass-lunged abandon of a Hollywood scarie. It would have won an Academy Award.
Le Sourd staggered, as if from a physical blow. His handsome face went white. He tried to keep his balance, flailing his arms like a windmill.
She scrambled up the slope of the tumulus on her hands and knees, sending down a shower of shale and gravel. She kept slipping back, but she managed to keep ahead of the avalanche. She reached the top while Le Sourd, looking disoriented, was still trying to point the gun.
She grabbed his ankles and pulled him down. She got an arm and a leg around him, and got the wrist of his gun hand in her grip. They rolled down the slope together, the sharp gravel cutting into them, in a choking cloud of ancient dust.
They were wrestling together at the bottom. His knee went into the pit of her stomach. He was no gentleman. She fought a wave of pain and let him have it in the kidneys with the heel of a clenched fist. He gasped at the shock. She'd killed with a freehand blow like that, but with less than a foot to swing, this one had only ruptured a few tubules.
His free hand was clawing at her face. She pinned his arm to his side with a one-handed embrace. He was trying to force his gun hand down toward her. She hung on to the wrist. He wasn't going to fire until he had the pistol digging into her flesh. He only had one shot.
To her horror, his wrist started to slip from her grasp. They were both glistening with perspiration in the 110-degree heat. His satyr's face smiled and he pulled his wrist free.
Desperately she whipped her arm around and hugged him for all she was worth. Both his arms were pinned against his sides. She didn't dare let go, not for an instant.
He squirmed and rolled, trying to throw her off. She squeezed him. She could feel his heart, beating against her breast. She clasped her fingers together to lock her grip.
But he was straining with the arm that had the gun, trying to work it backward within her grip. She tightened her embrace. He rolled, getting on top of her. His arm moved another inch.
He smiled again, goatishly. A spark of triumph flared in his violet eyes. His weight crushed her. She felt his arm slide a little farther.
And then there was something hard digging into the base of her spine. The gun barrel. It was the side of the barrel; she could feel the length of the steel cylinder along her buttock.
Now Le Sourd was levering the barrel, millimeter by millimeter, to get the gun canted toward her spine. If he fired now, she'd have nothing worse than a crease along her ass. He was making it, bit by bit. But if she let go of his arm and tried to grab, she'd be dead a minute sooner.
She drew him closer, encircling him with all her strength. His handsome face loomed above hers, the features taut with concentration. She raised her head and laid her cheek along his. His jaw felt waxy smooth.
She put her lips to his ear and shouted.
She felt him stiffen. The gun went off, searing her bottom. His whole body shuddered in a death spasm.
She rolled out from under him. His face had an expression of intense agony on it. His hair fluttered and a little brown bat flew out of it. It hovered uncertainly in the sunlight, then darted toward a dark opening in one of the grave mounds.
Penelope got to her feet and looked down at Le Sourd's corpse. She tried to imagine what it had been like for him, that lethal shout of hers traveling down his ear canal and compressing those sensitive organs next to his brain, but she couldn't. Maybe no one could, unless there were another Le Sourd walking the earth with the same gift.
She found the thing that looked as if it might be a phonon trigger in his pocket and took it with her. She retrieved his canteen and took a long, thirsty swallow. Then, her rear end burning from the bullet that had streaked across it, she limped back to where she had left El Fahda tied up. She poked a finger through the long rent in the fabric of the body suit and felt her abraded skin, wincing at the touch. It was going to be a long ride back, and she wasn't going to enjoy it.
"That was very nice, your Majesty," she sighed. "Do it again."
"You'll have to wait a few minutes," he said. "I'm supposed to wash first."
"Kings make their own rules."
"Kings are the prisoners of tradition."
Penelope stirred luxuriously on the silk sheets. Her body was suffused with a warm glow. It was better this way than on a scratchy army blanket.
Outside the palace windows was the sound of celebration, Ghazali-style. Exuberant tribesmen were firing off their muskets in high spirits. There was a vast encampment out there, roasting thousands of sheep that had been confiscated from the Emir's pens. There were bursts of wild music and laughing voices. It had been going on for three nights now.
So had this.
Amar returned from the bath and got back into bed with her. He looked dashing and carefree, like a Douglas Fairbanks character. The crowds loved him. It was easy to see why.
She reached up and pulled him down to her. Their lips met in a long, thirsty kiss.
She sighed. "Life is almost perfect," she said.
"Almost?"
"Don't give it a second thought, darling. Make me happy."
He did.
When he returned from the bath again, he propped himself on one elbow and looked fondly into her eyes. He was glowing, too. She'd made sure that he would be.
"What do you want more than anything in the world?" Amar said.
She told him.
* * *
The big chartered cargo jet was waiting on the runway when they pulled into the airport. Penelope left Harley to park the van and trailer and ran out onto the tarmac.
The jet was a giant C-5A transport that could only have been borrowed from the United States government. They'd even painted a Ghazali crescent on the tail. Its bulbous fuselage could transport 132 tons of troops and tanks and equipment more than 5000 miles nonstop. It was a lot of airplane for one horse. But then, El Fahda was a very special horse.
The enormous cargo door swung outward. The men inside lowered a ramp. The ramp was upholstered in red carpeting.
El Fahda emerged, led by a smiling groom in Arab costume. The white stallion caught sight of the Baroness immediately and neighed with pleasure.
Harley caught up with her and stepped to her side.
"Jesus!" he said in awe. "That's some horse!"
She took the reins from the groom. El Fahda nuzzled her, his enormous luminous eyes shiny. The Ghazali groom grinned. More Arab attendants spilled down the ramp and stood around, admiring the scene.
Harley said, "He looks like something out of Arabian Nights."
"He is," she said.
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