Sheba
Page 16
Cunningham slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “What do we do?”
Kane shrugged. “There isn’t any choice—we start walking.”
“But the nearest water’s at Shabwa, and that’s at least forty miles away,” Cunningham said. “It’s impossible—especially for Ruth.”
Kane went across to the truck, leaned inside the cab, and unscrewed the compass from its fixing. When he turned, his face was grim. “There aren’t any ifs or buts about it. We walk, and we walk now. With luck, we can cover maybe twenty or twenty-five miles before daylight. If we don’t, we’re finished.”
Cunningham’s shoulders sagged and he turned to his wife. “I got you into this. I want you to know that I’m sorry.”
She touched his face gently and smiled. “There’s no place I’d rather be.”
They might have been alone as they stood there, staring into each other’s eyes, and Kane turned away quickly and went to speak to Jamal.
16
A THOROUGH SEARCH OF THE CAMP PRODUCED PLENTY of food, but only one aluminum water bottle. When they left at midnight, Kane carried it slung over one shoulder.
Split four ways, its contents were virtually useless, but they had no choice and he was determined it should not be used until the last possible moment.
He led the way at a fast pace, using the compass regularly to check on direction. It was bitterly cold, and he felt quite fresh and full of energy. It was ironic to think that within another six hours they would be exposed to the merciless rays of the sun. How long they would be able to keep going after that was anyone’s guess.
It was the woman who was going to be the problem. He paused to consult the compass again and looked back over his shoulder. Jamal was close behind, with Cunningham and his wife thirty yards in the rear.
Kane started forward again, trying to follow the easy way through the dunes. On several occasions this proved impossible, and they were forced to toil up the steep side of some sand mountain, every step an effort.
After some two hours, they came out of the dunes and moved down toward a vast, flat plain that disappeared into the distance, hard-baked and strewn with gravel. Kane paused to take a bearing and Jamal came up behind and tapped him on the shoulder. As Kane turned, the Somali pointed back.
Cunningham and his wife were a good two hundred yards away, and Kane sat down in the sand and waited. As they approached, he stood up to meet them, but Ruth Cunningham slipped down to the ground with a heavy sigh. “I feel as if I’ve walked twenty miles.”
“I’m afraid we’ve only done eight or nine at the most,” Kane told her. “We must cover at least twenty-five before the full heat of the sun hits us or we don’t stand a chance.”
“It’s all right for you,” Cunningham said, “but Ruth can’t stand the pace. You’re going too fast.”
She quickly placed a hand on his arm. “Gavin is only stating the obvious, John. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.”
“I know it’s tough,” Kane said, “but it’s got to be done.”
Cunningham stood up. “Well, what are we waiting for?”
It took them almost three hours to cross the plain, and they moved rapidly on its hard-baked surface. Ruth Cunningham was doing much better, and when they passed out of the plain and moved into the sand dunes on the other side they were bunched closely together.
Kane felt no fatigue at all, and his long legs, toughened by years of hard living, strode effortlessly over the ground. His mind was not on the present, but on the morning and what it would bring. He pushed the thought away from him and tried to think of other things.
It was then that he remembered that Alexias had done this journey before them and without a compass. He started to go over the manuscript again in his mind, trying to recapture again that vivid image of the man which had come to him after reading it for the first time.
He must have been tough, that much was obvious. Leather and whipcord and an unyielding will. A man who believed in his destiny and in his ability to conquer all obstacles. And yet, were those things enough? There must have been something else. Something which had brought him walking out of the desert on his own two feet when, by all logic, he should have died. A woman, perhaps, waiting for him back home?
It was a question to which there could be no answer, and he paused to check on their direction again. It was almost five o’clock, and he sat down and waited for the others to catch up to him.
Ruth Cunningham looked white and drawn in the pale light of the waning moon, and her husband seemed anxious. He gently eased her down beside Kane, and Jamal opened a knapsack and took out dates and boiled rice, which he handed round.
Ruth Cunningham tried to wave her share away, but Kane took it from the Somali and held it out to her. “You must keep up your strength.”
She smiled wanly and put some of the boiled rice into her mouth. Cunningham said, “How far do you think we’ve come?”
Kane shrugged. “Twenty to twenty-five miles. We made good time across the plain.”
Cunningham looked up into the vast bowl of the sky. “It seems to be getting lighter.”
“Dawn in an hour,” Kane said. “We’ve got perhaps another hour after that before the sun really starts giving us trouble.”
“And then what?”
Kane shrugged. “We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”
He got to his feet and started forward again, and when he glanced back over his shoulder from the top of the next dune they were trailing close behind him, walking strongly.
They covered another seven or eight miles before the sun slipped up over the edge of the horizon, a blood-red disc whose heat warmed them pleasantly, chasing the cold of the night from their bones.
Kane increased his stride, his eyes on the horizon, watching the sun rise into the heavens with something like despair in his heart. For the first time it occurred to him that it was useless, that what they were attempting was impossible. If they were still walking at noon, it would be a miracle.
The sun was an orange ball of fire, and its rays burned their way into his skull. He pulled the ends of the headcloth across his face, leaving only the eyes free as a slight breeze lifted dust from the ground.
There was no air to draw into his lungs, only the fiery breath of the sun, searing the flesh and cracking the lips, turning his throat into a dry tunnel of dust.
He began to think about the water bottle, and his fingers went to it. As he plodded on, he looked down at it, imagining the coolness of the water inside, its wetness, the feel of it trickling down his burning throat and spreading throughout his body. He pushed the bottle round to the small of his back where he couldn’t see it any longer and started the slow climb up the side of a large sand dune.
When he reached the top, his limbs were tired for the first time and he paused, trembling with effort, feeling the sweat trickling from every pore in his flesh, draining his body of the liquid needed to live.
He shaded his eyes and gazed before him, and suddenly he caught a flash of scarlet as the sun sparkled on something in the distance. It was the wrecked Rapide in which he and Ruth had crashed four days previously.
He was filled with a sudden wild hope. The plane had carried a jerrycan filled with water. Allowing for the lapse of time and the great heat, there was still a good chance that some of it remained.
It occurred to him with something of a shock that he had not checked on his companions for a considerable time. He turned to look back and saw Jamal at the bottom of the sand dune, Ruth Cunningham cradled in his great arms. Cunningham was struggling up the steep slope and his eyes burned feverishly in his swollen face.
He fell on his knees a few feet away from Kane and passed a hand slowly across his face. Finally, he forced himself upright, and when he spoke his voice seemed to come from a great distance. “We’ve got to rest.”
Kane tried to moisten cracked lips. “We must keep moving.”
Cunningham shook his head stubbornl
y. “Got to rest.” He took a wavering step forward and started to buckle at the knees. As Kane grabbed him, his feet slipped in the soft sand and they went over the edge together, rolling over and over in a cloud of dust to the bottom.
Cunningham lay with limbs sprawled, and Kane dropped to his knees beside him and forced a little water between his teeth. Jamal appeared on top of the dune and moved down to join them. He laid Ruth Cunningham beside her husband and looked at Kane inquiringly.
Kane explained about the plane and something glowed briefly in the Somali’s eyes. At that moment Cunningham groaned and sat up. “Where am I? What happened?”
His voice sounded weak and lifeless as if it didn’t really belong to him any more.
Kane lifted him to his feet and slipped an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “We haven’t got far to go now. Not far at all.”
He turned and nodded to Jamal, who picked up the woman again and they started to walk.
It took them just over an hour to reach the plane, and by the time they were there Cunningham had become a dead weight on Kane’s arm. He lowered the Englishman to the ground and dragged him under the shade of the wing and propped his back against the side of the plane. He left Jamal to handle the woman and climbed into the cabin.
He found the jerrycan with no trouble, and his hands were trembling as he carried it out. Something swirled inside so he quickly pulled off the metal stopper and lifted the can to his lips. It tasted terrible, warm and brackish, but it was liquid, and there seemed to be four or five pints of the stuff.
He crawled under the wings and poured a little of the water over Ruth Cunningham’s face. She groaned and then her eyes opened slowly. The skin was stretched tightly over her flesh and her lips had cracked in several places. He gently raised her head and poured a little water into her mouth.
She coughed and some of it seemed to trickle down her chin, and then she seemed to come alive and her hands reached out for the can, forcing the opening against her lips as she took a long swallow.
She leaned back with a sigh and Kane moved across to Cunningham. The Englishman seemed more himself and managed a weak smile. “Sorry I was such a nuisance. What happens now?”
Kane indicated the jerrycan. “You’ll find about four pints of water in there,” he said. “It should keep you going through the rest of the day.”
Cunningham frowned slightly. “What about you and Jamal?”
“We’ll carry on,” Kane said. “We haven’t got any choice. You and your wife can’t walk any further. If we stay here with you, we’ll all die. If either Jamal or myself gets through, we’ll get help to you as soon as possible.”
There was silence for a moment, and then the Englishman smiled faintly. “As you say, there really isn’t any choice.” He held out his hand. “There doesn’t seem to be much more I can say except good luck and what the hell are you waiting for?”
For a second longer, they clasped hands, and then Kane moved toward Jamal. He opened the water bottle and swallowed half its contents. He handed it across to the Somali, who emptied it and tossed it away in one long easy throw. For a moment or two they looked into each other’s eyes and then they started to walk. As they topped a small rise, Kane looked back once, and then he took a deep breath and plunged down the other side.
The sun was a living thing that had somehow become a part of him so that they were one, and marched as one. It was impossible to judge how much time had elapsed since they had left the plane, because time had ceased to exist and had no meaning.
A man couldn’t walk in breastplate and greaves. It was impossible. Better to discard them. The helmet had gone a long time before, and now he marched with only his sword to weigh him down, the short, stabbing sword of the Roman soldier, his riding cloak folded across his head to keep the sun from his brain. He had to keep going, had to get back to the General with his report. Duty came first, as it always must with a soldier, but there was another reason. The girl—the girl with the dark hair and milk-white skin and the mouth that was a cool well. Almost as cool as the sea off the Piraeus at Athens where he had swum as a boy, diving down into the green depths, twisting amongst the fishes, scaring them away in great, glittering clouds and rising slowly to the surface in a spiral of bubbles.
He fell forward on his face. For a little while he stayed there on his knees like an animal, and then he was jerked to his feet and a hand slapped him across the face. Jamal held him steady, eyes staring anxiously into his. Kane tried to speak and found that he couldn’t. He nodded several times and started forward again.
The effort to march became a physical agony, a pain that blossomed, spreading through his entire body. And then it didn’t seem to exist any longer . . . Now there was only a small, burning core inside that refused to let him lie down and die.
The wind lifted into his face, blowing aside his headcloth, and the sun cut sharply against the unprotected flesh, and then he was on his face in the sand and Jamal was lifting him again. Later he was lying across the Somali’s broad shoulders, and he frowned and shook his head, trying to think clearly, but it was no good. Nothing was any good now, and he lapsed into a dark vacuum of heat.
There was sand in his mouth and his fingers clawed at the ground, but this time no hand lifted him in its strong grip. This time he was on his own. Utterly and finally alone, and Jamal had gone.
He would never get back to that girl now, the girl with the white limbs and the cool mouth, the girl he had needed all his life to fuse with his being so that they became a single entity, existing together, savouring life to the full in the only way it can be savoured—together.
Was he Gavin Kane or was he Alexias the Greek, Centurion of the Tenth Legion, and who was the one with the white arms and the cool mouth? There was no answer. No answer on top of earth.
The water spilled across his face with the shock of a physical blow, trickling down into his mouth, causing him to cough violently. A strong hand raised him and his teeth gripped the metal rim of a water bottle. He swallowed greedily and doubled over as cramps twisted his guts.
He opened his swollen, red-rimmed eyes and found Jordan supporting him across his knees. In the background a truck was parked.
Kane opened his mouth and managed to speak. “Back there in the desert,” he croaked. “Ruth Cunningham and her husband. You’d better get to them quick.”
Jordan nodded reassuringly. “Don’t worry about a thing. It’s all been taken care of. Two of my men have already gone for them in my other truck with the big Somali to guide them.” He grinned. “That Jamal is quite a guy.”
But Kane heard no more. His eyes closed as his body twisted in a great shuddering sigh of relief and darkness flooded over him.
17
HE OPENED HIS EYES SLOWLY. FOR A MOMENT HIS mind was a complete blank, and he struggled up on one elbow, panic moving inside him, and then he remembered and lay back with an audible sigh of relief.
He was lying on a camp bed underneath a low awning suspended on four poles. Two trucks were parked nearby and there was a tent pitched several yards away.
As Kane moved, Jamal, who was squatting at the end of the bed, got to his feet and leaned over him. As their eyes met, a huge smile appeared on the Somali’s face, and Kane held out his hand silently.
Jamal took it and the smile faded from his face. For a brief moment, there was a feeling between them that had not existed before, and then he turned away and crossed to Jordan, who was bending over a spirit-stove in the center of the camp.
Jordan came toward Kane, a pot in one hand and a plastic cup in the other. “Coffee, sir?” he said with a grin.
Kane swung his legs to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. He felt curiously weak and light-headed, and somehow everything was touched with a slight tinge of unreality and blurred at the edges.
He swallowed some of the coffee and shivered as it burned its way down into his stomach. “I have a feeling I shouldn’t really be here.”
Kane peered out from under the awning. They were camped in the foothills of the mountains and the desert rolled into the distance before them. “Where are we?”
“About ten or twelve miles from Shabwa,” Jordan answered. “I made camp here in a hurry because I didn’t know what shape Cunningham and his wife were in.”
“How are they?” Kane asked quickly.
Jordan offered him a cigarette. “Slightly dehydrated, but otherwise okay. I’ve given them both a sedative. They’re asleep in the tent.”
Kane drew the smoke from the cigarette deep into his lungs. “Lucky for all of us that you met up with Jamal. What were you doing so far out in the desert?”
“I’ve been looking for you for the past three days,” Jordan said. “When Marie failed to return in the truck she’d borrowed, the driver waited until the following morning and then came and told me. I found the plane yesterday, but no sign of the truck. I figured it must have broken down somewhere on the return journey. We were doing our best to search the area between here and the plane when we came across the Somali.”
Kane glanced across at Jamal, who squatted by the spirit-stove, eating boiled rice from a bowl, closely watched by Jordan’s men. “I guess we owe our lives to him.”
“You can say that again,” Jordan said, “but how about filling me in on this whole thing? Where have you been since the plane crashed, and what’s happened to Marie?”
Briefly and with as much economy as possible, Kane told him of the events of the past four days. When he had finished, Jordan shook his head. “Skiros a Nazi—it’s the most fantastic thing I ever heard.”
“It’s true,” Kane said. “But it’s Marie I’m worried about. Ruth Cunningham says they’re supposed to be waiting at Hazar.”
Jordan frowned. “I passed through the place two weeks ago. There’s a tribe of Bedouins camped there—Bal Harith. Their chief’s called Mahmoud, a wizened old guy with a gray beard.”