I missed the attack of the Banu Safr, as I had missed the drake taking its initial prey, because I was not out with the camels in their pasture. But even at a distance I heard them: the shrill yells, the bellowing of the camels, the crack of gunfire.
At the time I was sitting in front of our tent, with one of the scruffy guard dogs (so different from the graceful salukis) sniffing around my feet. I was attempting to sketch the night hunting of the drake, as much from imagination as from the few visual observations I had been able to make. At the sudden outburst of sound I twitched in my seat, nearly dropping my pencil. “What is that?” I asked no one in particular—for everyone who spoke Scirling was elsewhere.
Shahar came outside to stare in the direction of the noise, biting her lip. I repeated my question in Akhian, but did not understand what she said in reply until she mimed shooting a gun, grabbing something, and running away. The Akhian government has made great strides in curtailing the raiding ways of their nomadic tribes, but they have not stamped them out entirely; and the rebellious tribes are the most prone to breaking that edict.
I made an abortive move toward the camel tethered alongside our tent, but Shahar grabbed my sleeve to halt me. From her flood of words I understood that I was being an idiot—and she was right. What good could I do, riding unarmed toward a battle? But Suhail had gone out to view the herds, and Andrew had gone with him, for curiosity’s sake.
Certainly I was not the only one lunging for an animal to ride. Virtually every man in camp was mounting up, with weapons in hand, and they quickly thundered out to join the fray. But a raid is, by its nature, over very quickly: before long men were flooding back into camp, the remaining camels in tow, minus the ones that had been taken.
Suhail and Andrew were among those who returned. My relief, however, was short-lived. “We’re going after them,” Andrew said breathlessly as he dismounted. “If we can get the camels back before the thieves reach their own territory—”
“We?” I repeated, my voice sharp. “Andrew, you are not going with them.”
“Why not?”
My foremost reason was that I did not want to risk him, and did not trust him not to risk himself… but I did not say that. (I do, however, write it here, which I suppose means that now Andrew will know the truth.) “Do you think Colonel Pensyth will thank you for involving yourself in a matter of internal strife between two Akhian tribes?”
“Fine words, coming from you,” Andrew said with a snort.
I gave him a quelling look. “Besides which, you cannot keep up with them. On a horse, yes; but they are saddling camels, which you barely know how to ride. Do you know their tactics? The tricks raiders use to conceal their trail? Will you be anything more than one more gun, when they catch the thieves at last?” Softening, I added, “I know you are a soldier, Andrew. And it chafes, sitting idle while others deal with a problem. But look—they are not taking everyone, not even all of the fighting men.”
Indeed, the group that was collecting supplies and loading them onto their camels was quite small, barely a dozen riders. One of them, I saw, was Suhail.
I did not properly hear Andrew’s first, muttered response. Only when he raised his voice and said, “Very well, Isabella—I won’t go,” did I turn and take his hand in mine. “Thank you,” I said. “I have quite enough to worry about as it is.”
Tom appeared then, a rifle in his hands and two more slung under his arm. “Dear God, not you, too,” I said involuntarily.
He ignored me, going to where Suhail and the others were preparing. I drew close in time to hear him say, “These may be of use to you.”
Looking about, I saw that most of the pursuit party were armed only with bows and lances. Some had rifles, but less than half; and Suhail was not among them. He looked at the gun Tom was proffering and said, “Your colonel sent those with you for your own use.”
“And today my use is to give it to you,” Tom said. “You’ve bloody well got more need for it than I do at the moment. Just bring them back when you’re done.” He extended the rifle further, almost forcing it into Suhail’s hands, then leaned the other two against the side of Suhail’s camel, which gave him a grumpy look.
“Your ammunition—”
The word was not even out of Suhail’s mouth when Tom dug two cardboard boxes out of his back pockets and handed them over. Suhail grimaced. “I was going to say, you have a limited supply, and should conserve it. We don’t need guns to deal with these Banu Safr dogs.”
“But they’ll help,” Tom said. “Good hunting.”
Suhail did not argue further. I watched, hands knotted tightly about each other, as the retaliatory party mounted up. Of course he had to go: he represented his brother here, and would lose a great deal of face if he hung back from battle. But I worried all the same.
The camp was quiet after they left. Several men had been injured during the raid, but they bore it stoically as their wives cleaned and bandaged their wounds. I tried not to pace as I calculated how rapidly the party might return. There were too many variables I could not account for: it depended on how determined they were, and whether they caught the raiders before they passed into Banu Safr lands. Our group might turn back at that border—or they might not, carrying their counter-raid into enemy territory. It would be brave, but a good deal more dangerous.
Either way, they would not return by nightfall. Andrew offered to help stand watch over the camel herds, lest a second party of raiders strike while the best warriors were gone; this was apparently a tactic employed by the more cunning nomads, though no one thought it likely here. I dressed for bed on my side of the tent we shared with Tom—an arrangement I had thought would be decried as inappropriate, given the absence of any other woman. (Certainly it had attracted censure during our previous expeditions, even when we were not sharing a tent.) But so long as the tent was officially Andrew’s, he had the right to give shelter to any guest he liked, even with his unmarried sister present.
Through the curtain that divided us, I addressed Tom. “Thank you for giving him the rifles.”
“You’re welcome,” Tom said. After a moment he added, “I would have given my left arm to go with them. These raids have been causing no end of trouble for the Aritat, and I suspect it’s because of us.”
The enmity between the two tribes went back a long way… but from what I could tell, it was not always so active as this. “I fear you may be correct.”
“I don’t know what to do about it, either,” Tom said. “This is about more than just our scholarly curiosity; there are governments involved. The caliph is the one who told them to gather dragons and eggs for us.”
I nodded, even though Tom could not see me through the thick goat-hair fabric of the curtain. “All the more reason for us to reach a point where we no longer need supply from the desert.”
Then I paused, thinking. My thoughts were interrupted shortly thereafter by Tom saying, “I recognize that kind of silence. What are you thinking about?”
I smiled ruefully. “I am thinking that we ought to have had this conversation before I dressed for bed, so that I could come to the other side of the curtain without being completely scandalous. But I am also wondering why the Banu Safr should care.”
“About the dragons? I’ve been considering that myself. They supported the old caliphate, you know, before the Murasids came to power. They may just be eager to interfere with anything the caliph is trying to do.”
Unlovely though it is to admit, I hoped Tom was right. That would mean Scirland’s involvement here was peripheral to this conflict, rather than central. We would merely be an excuse: the spark that lit the bonfire, not the fuel itself.