know. It might be asserted that I was grievously neglecting my guard watch, but I think the Karauna would have approached and struck unseen, even if I had been more attentive. Something struck the back of my head, so hard that the black night around me went even blacker, and when I was next conscious of anything, it was of being painfully dragged by my hair across the grass and sand.
I was dragged to where the camp fire was being rekindled, but not by any of us. The intruders were men to make the earlier visiting Mongols look like elegant and polished court gentlemen by comparison. There were seven of these, and they were filthy and ragged and ugly and somehow, though they never smiled, they kept their snaggle teeth always bared. They each had a horse, a small one like a Mongol horse, but bony and ribby and pustular with sores. One other thing I noticed about those horses, even in my dazed condition: they had no ears.
One of the marauders was making up the fire, the others were dragging my companions to it, and all of them were babbling in a high voice another language new to me. Nostril alone seemed to understand it, and he, though also having been knocked about and yanked from his bed and consumed with terror, took the pains to translate and shout to us all:
“These are the Karauna! They are mortally hungry! They say they will not kill us if we feed them! Please, my masters, in the name of Allah, get busy and show them food!”
The Karauna dumped us all beside the fire and then began frantically scooping up water from the spring with their hands and dashing it down their throats. My father and uncle obediently hurried to get out the food stores. I still lay on the ground, shaking my head, striving to get the pain and darkness and buzzing out of it. Nostril, trying to look properly and obsequiously busy, and doubtless half scared to death, nevertheless kept shouting:
“They say they will not rob or kill
Mainly concerned with the havoc inside my head, I dimly supposed that he was urging me, too, to show some life and activity. So I struggled upright and bestirred myself to pour some dried apricots into a pot of water to soften. I heard Uncle Mafio also shouting:
“We must comply,
I finally caught the message he and Nostril were trying to impart. Aziz was not among us. When the Karauna swooped down, they had seen four tents, had dragged four men out of them, and now had four captives dutifully scurrying at their command. It was because I had taken down Aziz’s tent. When they plucked me from mine, Aziz might have come along, attached, but he had not. And he must have realized what was happening, so he would stay hidden, unless … . The boy was brave. He might try some desperate expedient … .
One of the Karauna roared at us. His thirst quenched, he seemed delighted to see us slaving for him. Like a victorious conqueror, he thumped his chest with his fists, and bellowed quite a long narrative, which Nostril translated in a quaver:
“They have been so hotly pursued that they were near dead of thirst and starvation. They several times opened the veins of their horses to drink their blood for sustenance. But the horses got so weak that they desisted from that, but at last cut off and ate the horses’ ears. Ayee, mashallah, che arz konam? …” and he tailed off into another spate of praying.
The confusion also diminished, as the seven Karauna ceased to mill about the spring, and let their mistreated horses get to it, and came to where we had laid all our food around the fire. With bared teeth and guttural growls, they indicated that we should all stand aside, well out of range to interfere. The four of us backed away, and the Karauna fell slavering upon the provender, and in the next moment there was confusion confounded. Three more horses came plunging suddenly out of the darkness, bearing three howling riders swinging swords.
The Mongol patrol had returned! I might better say, the Mongols had all the while been lurking somewhere nearby, and not even I, the camp guard, had suspected it. They had known that we would be an irresistible bait to the Karauna, and simply had waited for the bandits to walk into the trap.
But the Karauna, although taken unawares and unmounted and with their attention fixed upon the food before them, neither surrendered on the instant nor fell before the flashing swords. Two or three of the dirty brown men magically turned bright red before our eyes, as blood spurted from the cuts given them by the Mongols. But they, like the not immediately wounded others, whipped out swords of their own.
The Mongols, having leapt in on horseback, could make only that one flailing slash before their mounts carried them a little way past the fray. Not turning their horses, they slid from their saddles to continue the fight on foot. But the Karauna, in their avidness to feed, had not tethered or hobbled or unsaddled their own mounts. They must have been mightily tempted to stand and fight, with the food all laid out for them, and they being seven against three. Probably only because they were weak with hunger—and knowing that three well-fed Mongols were their fighting equal—they bounded astride their pitiful horses and, beating their blades down on the swords of the Mongols now afoot, put spurs to their horses and surged out of the firelight in the direction from which they had dragged me.
The Mongols considerately hesitated long enough to glance around at us, and ascertain that we were not visibly injured, before they caught their own horses, vaulted to their saddles, and were off in hot pursuit. Everything had happened in such a furious tumult—from the moment I had been clouted to this sudden quiet fallen on the oasis—that it might have been a simum desert storm that had swept down and embroiled us and swept on past.
“Gesu … ,” my father breathed.
“Al-hamdo-lillah … ,” prayed Nostril.
“Where is the boy Aziz?” Uncle Mafio asked me.
“He is safe,” I said loudly, to be heard above the ringing still going on in my head. “He is in my tent.” And I gestured toward where the dust of the horses’ departure was hanging in the air.
As soon as he could get some clothes on, my uncle went running off in that direction. My father saw me rubbing my head, and came and felt of it. He remarked that I had a palpable knot there, and told Nostril to put a cup of water to heat.
Then my uncle came running back, out of the darkness, shouting, “Aziz is not there! His clothes are, but he is not!”
Leaving Nostril to bathe my head and bind a poultice of salve about it, my father and uncle went to beat the bushes for the boy. They did not find him. Nor did any of us, when Nostril and I joined them, and we did a methodical back-and-forth pacing of the entire oasis. Consulting together, we tried to reconstruct what must have happened.
“He would have left the tent. Even undressed and in this cold.”
“Yes, he would have known they would loot it soon or later.”
“So he sought a safer place to hide.”
“More likely he was creeping close, to see if he could aid us.”
“Anyway, he was in the open when the Karauna suddenly fled.”
“And they saw him and snatched him up and took him with them.”
“At the first opportunity, they will kill him.” It was Uncle Mafio who said that, and he said it in the voice of one bereaved. “They will kill him in some bestial manner, for they must be furious, thinking we arranged that ambuscade.”
“They may have no opportunity. The Mongols are close behind.”
“The Karauna will not kill the boy, but hold him hostage. A shield to ward off the Mongols.”
“And
“Let us not weep until someone is hurt,” said my father. “But whatever the outcome, we must be there. Nostril, you stay. Mafio, Marco, mount up!”
We laid the sticks to our camels. Since we had never pressed them before, the beasts were so startled that they did not think to complain or balk, but went at a stretch-out gallop, and maintained it. The movement made my head seem to pound upon the neck-top of my spine with an excruciating beat, but I said nothing.
On sand, camels run faster than horses can, so we caught up to the Mongols well before dawn. We would eventually have met them in any case, as they were leisurely returning toward the oasis. The dry fog having settled to the ground by then, we saw them at some distance in the starlight. Two of them were walking and leading the
