by Paul Kenyon
"Here they come," Le Sourd said. "Our prey."
9
The doors swung open. Chains clanked. They staggered, blinking, into the sunlight, a horde of gaunt, hollow-eyed men in rags.
Under the prodding of the soldiers' guns, they lined up in front of the halftracks, reeling clumsily in the neck chains that fastened them together. The stronger men supported those who looked weak or sick. There were perhaps fifty of them all told.
The Baroness whirled on Le Sourd. "Who are they?" she demanded.
"Rebels," he said. "Criminals. Scum."
"And the Emir intends to hunt them? Like animals?"
He sighed. "Baroness, be reasonable. These men are under sentence of death. Some of the forms of execution in Ghazal are… unspeakable. This is quicker. And there's always the chance of their getting away, isn't there? The Emir is being merciful."
"Merciful? Sending dogs and hawks after them? And those filthy hyenas! And that gang of foppish cutthroats!"
He glanced in alarm toward the Emir. "Keep your voice down!" he hissed. "Are you mad?"
"Is the Emir? Are you?"
He grabbed her arm. His grip was surprisingly strong. "Listen," he said. "This is a very primitive country. Practically biblical. The Emir is the law. Absolute law. And today his whim is to execute the condemned this way. It wasn't more than a few centuries ago that your ancestors and mine flocked to public squares with picnic baskets to watch men being disemboweled, having their flesh torn off with red-hot pincers. The Emir is trying to entertain his guests, including you. He simply wouldn't understand it if he thought you disapproved."
"But you're going to join in the hunt, aren't you, Octave?"
"Why not? And so are you."
"You are mad, darling."
He gave her arm a twist. "In a few minutes the Emir's gunbearer is going to come over and give you a hunting rifle. And you'd better take it. It would be dangerous not to."
"Dangerous, darling?"
He let go of her arm. He shrugged. "Suit yourself. You're going to be out there in the desert. Some of those men are dangerous. They've been known to double back, out of desperation, and attempt to waylay members of the hunting party. And then, of course, there are the hyenas. It isn't true that they're merely scavengers. Did you know that? When they're hungry enough, they'll attack creatures who aren't dead or helpless. Men are among their favorite prey." His eyes followed the line of her cheek. "And women, of course. They go for the face, did you know that? Almost invariably. Take it off like a butcher with a meat cleaver. Often that satisfies them. They go away. The victim often survives."
She looked over at the miserable rabble by the trucks. Soldiers were moving among them, unlocking the iron collars. One by one, the men were shooed out into the desert. Some of the stronger ones — prisoners who hadn't been in the dungeons for too long — were out of sight among the dunes within minutes. Others dragged themselves over the sands with agonized desperation. You knew they weren't going to make it.
"How much of a headstart do they get?" the Baroness said.
"About an hour."
"Let's see — a saluki can cover that distance in about ten minutes."
"First the hawks have to find them."
The Emir came over with his gunbearer. He was happy and excited, his face flushed. "Ah, dear Baroness," he said, "this will be something new to you. You've never hunted men before."
"Not with dogs and falcons," she said.
Le Sourd presented an amused, slightly bored face to the Emir. "The Baroness has a few qualms, your Highness," he said.
The Emir's expression grew earnest. "Ah yes," he said. "Women are tender-hearted. That's what makes them so charming. My dear Baroness, there's only one remedy. You must stop thinking of those wretches as men. Think of them as animals."
"That'll make it easier," she drawled.
"The Baroness is an animal lover, too," Le Sourd said slyly.
The Emir gave a tolerant laugh. "My dear, what are we to do with you?" He turned to the gunbearer. "El tofang," he said.
The gunbearer, a little, grinning, walnut-brown man in a long aba and fez, held out a beautiful leather gun case and unlatched it. Nestled inside was a gleaming Weatherby Magnum hunting rifle with a scope.
Le Sourd gave her a meaningful look. She took the rifle out of the case.
"Have you used one before?" Le Sourd said.
"Oh yes," she said brightly. "Daddy used to take me hunting when I was a girl."
She turned to look at the prisoners still streaming across the sands. The desert was reddish here, this far inland, the ruddy color of the central plateau. The dunes were higher and steeper, with windswept curves. The fast starters were gone, except for an occasional dark head bobbing up for a second. And here and there was other cover: scrubby vegetation clawing at the sands. Of course the hawks wouldn't have any trouble spotting them from the air.
A crackly noise came from a loudspeaker mounted on one of the halftracks. Le Sourd looked pained and reached in his shirt pocket to adjust one of his hearing aids. A wailing voice came from the speaker's cone: the call to prayer.
The Emir dropped like a stone to his knees. Somehow there was a prayer rug underneath him. The little dwarf had streaked out of nowhere. Penelope looked in the middle distance. The magnetic dwarf from Somaliland was there, pointing toward Mecca like a human weather-vane.
The rest of the hunting party were at their devotions, taking their cue from the Emir. They bobbed in unison to the muezzin's phrases. Penelope and Le Sourd stood, uneasy and conspicuous through it all.
The Emir picked himself up, the two dwarfs helping him. One of them brushed off the Emir's robes with a long whiskbroom. The Emir kicked him absentmindedly. The little man smiled and bowed and scurried away.
Tension grew during the next hour. The young men checked and rechecked their weapons. The horses pawed the sands impatiently. The royal falconer called over the cadgers and began selecting birds for the first foray.
The Emir glanced at his watch. "Sa-a," he said.
There was a cheer, and the men were springing into their saddles. The falconer presented a bird to the Emir, who had drawn on a leather gauntlet. He stroked the falcon and spoke to it softly, then pulled off the little plumed hood. He shouted, "Khali balak!" and tossed the bird into the air.
Penelope followed the falcon's flight upward. The bird ascended in spirals and seemed to hover motionless for a moment, high above. Then it spotted its quarry and darted like an arrow toward the west.
Now it was the salukis' turn. The kennel master and his assistants struggled with the hysterically yapping dogs. They were beside themselves with excitement. The Emir had already thrown the second and third birds into the air, and the silky, skeletal hounds were fixing on them with the incredible long-range vision of the desert hunter.
The dog handlers began slipping leads: two dogs to a bird. The salukis gave a joyous cry and began streaking across the desert. They were out of sight in an incredibly short time, ignoring the scattered, emaciated men who hadn't made it.
Penelope sat the white stallion, one hand resting on the stock of the rifle in its saddle holster. The Emir was galloping after the salukis. Le Sourd rode up to Penelope on his horse, a handsome bay.
"Good hunting," he said.
There was a mounted soldier on either side of Penelope. They carried submachine guns slung across their backs. She urged El Fahda forward. The glorious white stallion quivered and set off at an easy canter. The soldiers kept pace with her.
"What's all this about?" she shouted to Le Sourd across the intervening space.
"They're there to protect you!" he called with a little sardonic smile.
"Machine guns don't seem a very sporting hunting weapon," she said.
"They won't use them unless they have to," he said.
He was off then, hurrying to keep up with the Emir. She thought he looked rather more eager than he'd pretended.
Up ahead, soldiers were mo
ving among the prisoners who'd fallen by the wayside, clubbing them to death as they tried to crawl away. It all was very impersonal, like processing cattle for loading. Penelope watched with cold anger as a starved-looking man with welts across his bare back tried to lift himself off the ground and plead with the Arab soldier who was standing, legs wide, above him. The soldier, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip, raised his rifle butt impassively and smashed the man's skull like a rotten melon. Farther on, one straggler, raised to a final desperate effort, was on his feet, sprinting. A puffy white figure on a black mare veered and took off after him. It was Sheik Zakar, a glittering scimitar held high. He caught up with the fleeing man, keeping pace with him while he swung his sword like a polo club. The man looked up at the blade, his face disbelieving. The sword whizzed toward him and the head sailed off into space, the mouth still open. It hit the ground and bounced. The headless figure ran on a few more steps, legs pumping, before it fell twitching to the ground.
The soldiers escorting Penelope watched avidly. Penelope pressed her lips together. There was nothing she could do. Nothing. The men were dead anyway.
She was picking her way through a field of corpses now, a Utter of smashed heads and sprawling limbs: some hacked off. The hyenas had had their meat cut up for them. One poor wretch was still alive. He lifted his head toward Penelope in an agonized appeal; he'd seen her woman's figure. One of her guards grinned, an engaging grin, like a man catching sight of a friend, and sent a burst of automatic fire thudding into him.
And then she was out in the open desert, the carnage behind her, the Land Rovers and halftracks lined up like toys in the distance. El Fahda snorted joyfully and began to stretch his legs. She let out the reins a little. The two soldiers whipped their horses and struggled to keep up.
She leaned forward and whispered into the stallion's ear. "Good boy, Fahda. Keep it up, beautiful."
Up ahead, a black speck fluttered against the blue of the sky. A falcon. It was circling over the same spot. Another bird flapped to join it. They dive-bombed, over and over again, then took up their wheeling circles.
"Go, boy!" Penelope yelled, and the white horse loosened up into a gallop that swallowed distance in magical gulps. The wind was in her face, an exhilarating tonic. She whipped off her cap and slapped it against El Fahda's rump, her long hair streaming behind her like a black pennant. Behind her there was a shout: "Istanani! Istanani!" She looked back over her shoulder, grinning. The two soldiers were at least a hundred yards behind her, and the gap was widening.
She topped a red dune then, and looked straight down into horror. There was a little cluster of hunted prisoners — four of them. Two lay writhing on the ground. The other two were staggering about in circles, blinded. They had no eyes, not even sockets — just a pair of ragged holes where the falcons had torn out their eyes. A pair of salukis was harrying them. The dogs circled, barking and snapping, holding the men at bay as if they'd been antelope. They'd been trained not to finish their prey, but one of the dogs had become overexcited and had left toothmarks in their calves and thighs. A trio of hunters had ridden up, laughing. They conferred, and one of the men made a series of graphic gestures. The other two slapped him on the back, and he rode forward, grinning, a sword held low.
Penelope kicked El Fahda with her heel, and the big white horse began sliding down the loose sand of the slope, struggling to keep his footing. She was halfway down when she saw the hunter bring his sword up neatly between the blinded man's legs. It was a powerful swing that lifted the victim's feet off the ground and sent the blade slicing upward as far as the navel. There was a ghastly scream, and the blinded man slid down, spread-legged in an obscenely exaggerated dancer's split. His guts, bloody ribbons, were spilling out between his thighs, collecting in a glistening heap on the sand. The sword raised again and split the skull in half.
The hell with the mission! Penelope kicked at the stallion again, her hand scrabbling beneath her riding habit for the Bernardelli VB. She was going to kill the bastards. Maybe she could get away with it, hiding the bodies. Maybe not. It would be quicker to ride into them with the automatic than to check to see if the Weatherby were loaded and sighted. The big horse hit the bottom of the slope and shot forward.
But it was too late. The other two hunters had already lifted their rifles, casual as target-shooters, and picked off the three remaining prisoners. By the time she rode up to them, they were patting one another on the arms and shoulders and congratulating themselves.
It wasn't worth blowing whatever remained of her cover now. She pulled up among them, tucking her hair back into the jockey's cap, her expression blank. The three men looked embarrassed, fidgeting like schoolboys. They weren't embarrassed about what they'd done. They were titillated by her unveiled face, her figure in the tight riding clothes, her shamefully free ways.
"Tehibi teegee mayahnah?" one of them said boldly.
"Join you?" she said. "I think not. You boys are having too much fun by yourselves." She looked back over her shoulder. Her two soldiers were sliding down the sand dune on their horses, waving at her and yelling for her to wait. She blew them a kiss and slapped her horse again. He began loping forward. The cries behind her grew fainter.
She came upon little scenes of butchery twice more. The bodies of an old man and a young boy lay in a small declivity, sticky with half-dried blood, gaping holes where their eyes had been. The old man had been gutted, and both had been castrated: trophies for the Emir's friends. The hunters already had departed. One of the Emir's hawks had remained behind to have a snack. It was tugging at a loop of intestine that protruded from between the old man's fingers where he had tried to hold his guts in. The hawk looked at Penelope and gave a shriek, then lifted its wings and flapped awkwardly away, the glistening length of gut dangling from its beak. A mile farther on, there was a body lying on its face, arms outstretched. This one had been shot cleanly in the back of the head. One of the hunters was nearby, standing beside his horse, reloading. He looked up as Penelope galloped past. She was out of sight a minute later.
She rode, trying to make the wind of passage wash away the uncleanness of what she'd seen. The great white horse beneath her seemed to want to run too. He flung himself across the sandy waste, his long neck straining, his hooves pounding. She felt the piston blows jar the length of her spine, making her flesh vibrate. She was a part of this primeval creature and the vast elemental landscape that he was flying across and the impossible blue bowl of the sky with that glowing copper circle pasted against it.
There, dark scraps against the transparent blue, were a half-dozen soaring shapes, wheeling in agitated circles. One of them swooped down, was lost behind a dune and came fluttering upward again, trailing feathers. Another hawk folded its wings and plunged toward the same place. It hurtled upward again almost immediately. It looked as if it had something in its claws.
The Baroness drew the long Weatherby out of its scabbard and lifted it to her shoulder, holding onto El Fahda with her knees, guiding him by gentle pressure. He was magnificent; a part of her, loping toward that distant spot.
She released the safety and sighted through the cross hairs of the scope, her whole body compensating for the rise and fall of the horse's gallop. One of the birds was suspended motionless, its neck extended, picking its own target. She squeezed the trigger, and the Weatherby leaped against her shoulder.
The bird was still there. Cursing, she put her eye to the scope and tried again. The Weatherby gave its authoritative crack once more. The bird was still there, a black shape against the sky.
Was the Weatherby improperly sighted? It was hard to believe, here in this primitive country where hunting was a way of life, and where servants didn't make mistakes if they wanted to stay alive. And she was used to the Weatherby Magnum. Here in this windless landscape, she found it hard to believe that she'd missed twice.
She ejected a bullet and looked at it.
A blank. They'd given her blanks!
; She was still streaking toward that hidden spot behind the dune, the white stallion thundering on. She holstered the rifle and leaned across his neck, her hand opening up the secret Velcro seam in the flare of the jodhpurs. Her fingers closed on a plastic bulb.
She was flying over the ridge, and she saw them. Two men, one rolling in agony, the other still on his feet. Her mind took an instant photograph of him: he was a lean, wiry young man in the shreds and tatters of an olive uniform. In his hands he held the long branch of a desert shrub, a brush of dry foliage at one end. That was what had saved his eyes so far. He brandished it at the swooping birds. She could see the long bloody score marks along his forearms. He must have been very quick and agile, but he wasn't going to be able to hold out for more than a few moments longer. The birds had given up dive-bombing him. They were fluttering around his head and shoulders, all six of them, waiting for that one split-second of inattention that would allow one of them to dart at his face.
He was a cool one. His face contorted in despair as he heard Penelope's approaching hoofbeats, but he didn't take his eyes off the birds. By God, he was admirable, expecting to die momentarily from a shot or a sword thrust, but determined to go down fighting.
At the sound of the stallion's hooves, the hawks exploded into a fluttering cloud that hung for a moment just above the head of the man wielding the branch. In that frozen second she could see the startling white shape of Hakim, the Emir's favorite hawk, in the center of the cloud, bigger than the others.
Penelope drew the Spinneret. Its tulip head opened up automatically to form a flaring nozzle. She squeezed the bulb and a white mist spurted out of the miniature shower-head.
It solidified almost immediately, drifting like a cloud of milkweed over the flapping birds. The silvery net enfolded them. They fell to the sand, an ugly squawking ball of feathers tangled in a spider's web.
The young man stared at the birds in astonishment. He glanced at Penelope, saw that she wasn't one of the Emir's men and that the Weatherby was holstered. His jaw firmed with sudden determination. He lifted the branch and started beating the birds to death.
