Others were grazing on the green growth that bordered it. Men were filling their waterskins, and some were bathing in the shallows.
Penrod picked out a spot on the bank that was well away from any of these people. They hobbled the camels and let them drink while they filled the waterskins and cut bundles of fresh grass. They turned the hobbled camels loose to graze, and built a small cooking fire. They roasted the trio of quail, golden brown and oozing fragrant juices. Then Yakub went to the cow camel and milked her into a bowl. He warmed the milk and they washed down with it a round of dhurra bread topped with a slice of the cheese, which reeked more powerfully than the goat that had produced it. They ended the meal with a handful of dates and apricots. It was tastier fare than Penrod had ever enjoyed in the dining room of the Gheziera Club. Afterwards they lay under the stars with their heads close together. “How far are we from the town of Abu Hamed?” Penrod asked.
With his spread fingers Yakub indicated a segment of the sky.
“Two hours.” Penrod translated the angle to time. “Abu Hamed is where we must leave the river and cut across the bight to the Wells of Gakdul.”
“Two days’ travel from Abu Hamed.”
“Once we pass the vanguard of the Dervish, we will be able to travel at better speed.”
“It will be great pity to kill the camels.” Yakub rose up on one elbow and watched them grazing nearby. He whistled softly and the cream-coloured cow wandered over to him, stepping short against her hobble. He fed her one of the rounds of dhurra cake and stroked her ear as she crunched it up.
“O compassionate Yakub, you will cut a man’s throat as happily as you break wind, but you grieve for a beast who was born to die?” Penrod rolled on to his back and spread his arms like a crucifix. “You stand the first watch. I will take the second. We will rest until the moon is at its zenith. Then we will go on.” He closed his eyes and began almost at once to snore softly.
When Yakub woke him, the midnight chill had already soaked through his woollen cloak and he looked to the sky. It was time. Yakub was ready. They stood up and, without a word, went to the camels, loosened the hobbles and mounted up.
The watch fires of the sleeping army guided them. The smoke lay in a dense fog along the wadis, and concealed their movements. The pads of the camels made no sound, and they had secured their baggage with great care so that it neither creaked nor clattered. None of the sentries challenged them as they passed each encampment.
Within the two hours that Yakub had predicted they passed the village of Abu Hamed. They kept well clear, but their scent roused the village dogs, whose petulant yapping faded as they left the river and struck out along the ancient caravan route that crossed the great bight of the Nile. By the time dawn broke they had left the Dervish army far behind.
In the middle of the next afternoon they couched the camels in the lengthening shadow of a small volcanic hillock and fed them on the fodder they had cut on the riverbank. Despite the severity of the march the camels ate hungrily. The two men examined them at rest but found no ominous swellings on their limbs or shale cuts on their pads.
“They have travelled well, but the hard marches lie ahead.”
Penrod took the first watch and climbed to the top of the hillock so that he could overlook their back trail. He panned his telescope over the south horizon in the direction of Abu Hamed, but could pick out no dust cloud or any other sign of pursuit. He built a knee-high wall of loose volcanic rocks to screen himself in this exposed position, and settled comfortably behind it. For the first time since they had left the Nile he felt easier. He waited for the cool of the evening, and before the sun reached the horizon he sat up and once more glassed the southern horizon.
It was only a yellow feather of dust, small and ephemeral, showing almost coyly for a few minutes, then dissipating and fading away as though it were merely an illusion, a trick of the heated air. Then it materialized again, and hovered in the heat, like a tiny yellow bird. “On the caravan road, fairly on our tracks, the dust rises over soft ground and subsides again when the trail crosses shale or lava beds.” He explained to himself the intermittent appearance of the dust cloud “It seems that al-Noor’s memory has returned at last. Yet these cannot be horsemen. There is no water. Camels are the only animals that can survive out here. There are no camels in the Dervish army that can run us down. Our mounts are the swiftest and finest.”
He stared through the lens of his telescope but could make out nothing under the dust. Still too far off, he thought. They must be all of seven or eight miles away. He ran down the hill. Yakub saw him coming and could tell from his haste that trouble was afoot. He had the camels saddled and loaded before Penrod reached them. Penrod jumped into his saddle and his mount lurched up, groaning and spitting. He turned her head northwards, and urged her into trot.
Yakub rode up alongside him. “What have you seen?”
“Dust on our back trail Camels.”
“How can you tell that?”
“What horse can survive so far from water?”
“When the aggagiers are in hot pursuit of either elephant or men, they use both their camels and their horses. At the beginning of the hunt they ride the camels, and also use them to carry the water. That is how they save the horses until they have their quarry in sight. Then they change to them for the final chase. You have seen the quality of their horses. No camel can run against them.” He looked back over his shoulder. “If those are the aggagiers of Osman Atalan, they will have us in sight by dawn tomorrow.”
They rode on through the night. Penrod gave no thought to conserving the water in the skins. A little before midnight they stopped just long enough to give each animal two bucketfuls of water. Penrod stretched out on the ground” and used an inverted milk bowl as a sounding board to pick up the reverberation of distant hoofs. When he placed his ear against it, he could hear nothing. He did not allow this to lull him into complacency. Only when they sighted the pursuers at dawn would they know how far they were trailing behind them. They wasted no time and padded on through the desolation and the hissing silence of the desert.
As the first soft light of dawn gave definition to the landscape Penrod halted again. Once again he was prodigal with the remaining water, and ordered Yakub to give each of the camels two more buckets and the remainder of the fodder.
“At this rate, we will have emptied the skins by this evening,” Yakub grumbled.
“By this evening we will either have reached the Wells of Gakdul, or we will be dead. Let them drink and eat. It will lighten their load, and give strength to their legs.”
He walked back a hundred yards and once again used the milk bowl as a sounding cup. For a few minutes he heard nothing, and grunted with relief. But some deep instinct made him linger. Then he heard it, a tremble of air within his eardrum, so faint it might been a trick of the dawn breeze sweeping over the rocks. He wetted his forefinger and held it up. There was no wind.
He lowered his head to the bowl, cupped his hands round his ear and closed his eyes. Silence at first. He took a deep breath and held it. At the outer reaches of his hearing there was a susurration, like fine sand agitated gently in a dried gourd, or the breathing of a beloved woman sleeping at his side in the watches of the night. Even in this fraught situation an image of Rebecca flared in his memory, so young and lovely in the bed beside him, her hair spread over them both like cloth of gold. He thrust away the picture, stood up and went back to the camels. “They are behind us,” he said quietly.
“How far?” Yakub asked.
“We will be able to see them clearly in the first rays of the sun.” They both glanced into the east. The sun cast a nimbus around a distant hilltop, as though it were the rugged head of an ancient saint.
“And they will see us just as clearly.” Yakub’s voice was husky and he cleared his throat.
“How far to the Wells of Gakdul?” Penrod asked.
“More than half a day’s ride,” Yakub answered. “Too far. On those horses they will catch us long before we reach the wells.”
“What terrain lies ahead? Is there a place for us to take cover where we might evade them?”
“We approach the Tirbi Kebir.” Yakub pointed ahead. “There is good reason why it is called the Great Graveyard.” This was one of the most formidable obstacles along the entire crossing of the bight. It was a salt pan twenty miles across. The surface was level as a sheet of frosted glass, unmarred by a single ripple or undulation, other than the broad indentation of the caravan road. Both its verges were outlined by the skeletons of the men and camels who, over the centuries, had perished along the way. The noon sunlight reflecting off the diamond white salt
