Shouts from the camp stopped me before I could decide one way or another. Brother took a step away, listening; then he ran to the top of the rise and a short way down the other side, his attention fixed on the commotion. That, no doubt, was Tom at work, and my heart ached to think what he might have done to cause so much noise.
But I would not let it be for nothing. Hiking up my borrowed skirts, I ran.
There was broken ground not far away, studded with scrubby trees, which might afford me sufficient cover to hide. Brother would search, or call for help; in time they would bring the salukis to run me down. I must make it to a camel or a horse before that happened, or my escape attempt would not get me even a half mile to freedom.
When I saw movement up ahead, I knew even half a mile had been sheer optimism.
There was a man among the rocks, armed and veiled against the dust: a guard, I presumed. I veered to the right, wincing as my bare feet slammed into the hard ground. Behind me I heard more shouts, Brother noticing my break for freedom. I ran for all I was worth, but it was not very much. I had not gone a hundred meters when Brother slammed into me from behind, knocking me down and driving all the breath from my lungs.
What followed was unpleasant. Brother dragged me back into camp—and I do mean dragged; he did not even permit me to regain my feet. Tom and I were both beaten soundly for our disobedience, him worse than me. When that was done, they threw us once more into the tent. I suspect that were it not for the security the tent offered, they would have staked us out in the dust, like the guard dogs.
Lying sprawled on the carpet, Tom spoke in a voice barely more than a whisper. “I’m sorry. But we had to try.”
“Quite right,” I said, trying to sound resolute. One of his eyes was swollen nearly shut. “Tom… do you think you can ride? Tonight?”
He lifted his head just enough to look at me, then put it down before anyone could notice. We had no chance to speak after that, but we knew one another well enough that we did not need to. The last thing anyone expected was for us to try to escape a second time, so hard on the heels of the first. There was good reason for that—we were in dreadfully bad shape to be attempting anything—but what could they do if we failed? Beat us a second time? It seemed they would not kill us, even when provoked. And while I did not relish the prospect of pain, I was more and more certain I did not want to be handed off to whomever had ordered our kidnapping.
Our second plan was no more complicated than our first, for we had nothing with which to complicate it. While Wife stood in the opening of the tent, calling out to a friend of hers across the way, I unhooked the lamp from its place on the central pole for long enough to spill a bit of oil on the knots of our tethers. That, I hoped, would speed the process of unknotting them, which we must try to do in the dark.
We had to wait until they were fully asleep. When at last their breathing evened out and stayed that way for a time, Tom and I turned our attention to the cords. He was better with knots than I, and had watched how Brother and Kidnapper undid our bonds; his slid free first, and then he bent to work on mine.
In the grand scheme of things, it was not much of a victory. Getting ourselves loose from the tent pole was only the first of many steps that must be completed before we could escape, and far from the hardest. But I took heart from it anyway as I stood, biting my lip when my abused feet took my weight.
Once more I felt a breeze upon my cheek.
This time I had no confusion as to the cause. The sensation was not from the direction of the front flap, and I was wide awake; I could see the paler spot where the back wall of the tent had opened, its seam cut apart, and someone was crawling through.
I did not know until much later that the nomads tell tales of this sort of thing; indeed, it is one of their favourite genres. I only knew that I thought, He is a madman.
The Aritat had indeed come after us, and Suhail had led them himself.
He paused just inside the slit, allowing his eyes to adjust to the greater darkness within. Tom took a step forward. Fearing he had not recognized that dim silhouette, I gripped his wrist to stop him. Tom’s breath hissed between his teeth, and for a moment all three of us froze, for fear he had roused our captors.
They, however, were quite accustomed to Tom’s small sounds of pain in the night. No one spoke or sat up, and after a moment Suhail parted the slit in the tent wall again. It may have been to confirm what he thought he had seen, or to usher us out. I took it as the latter.
Suhail stayed put while Tom and I crawled through the gap, then followed us out. His clothes were dun-coloured and his face whitened with ash; on a night like this one, with the moon bright in the sky, that was better camouflage than darkness would have been. Tom blended in a good deal better than I did in my borrowed clothes.
Leaving that camp was one of the most terrifying things I have ever done. The Aritat had not come in sufficient numbers to stage an assault—and any such attempt might have had dire consequences for Tom and myself. Instead we departed by what I presumed were the same means the Banu Safr had used to kidnap us, the chief difference being that Tom and I were on our feet.
Suhail led us, crouching in the shadow of one tent until he saw that the way was clear, then running for the next. Our path seemed tortuous, angling first one way, then another, in order to avoid guard dogs and camels couched alongside the tents. Partway through this I realized we were not alone: two other men of the Aritat were paralleling our path, and judging by the knives and rifles they held, both were prepared to kill anyone who stumbled across us. After that I could scarcely breathe.
Only when we left the final row of tents did my lungs begin to work properly. I knew we were not yet clear; if someone noticed us missing the camp would give chase. But we were past the point at which someone might accidentally stumble upon us—or so I believed.
He was not a guard, I think. I do not know who he was. He carried no rifle, and seemed utterly startled when we scrabbled up a narrow wash and came face-to-face with him.
The tableau lasted for only an instant. He stared at us, mouth open in surprise. Then a hand clamped over that mouth, for someone had risen up behind him; another hand passed over his throat, and blood fountained out in its wake, black in the moonlight.
Andrew held on a moment longer, until the man had stopped thrashing. Then, breathing quickly, he lowered the body to the ground. “Come on,” he whispered. “Before someone wonders where he’s gone.”
The sudden violence of it paralyzed me. But Suhail took me by the arm, heedless of propriety, and pulled me forward. Their camels were not far away. We mounted up, and were gone before the Banu Safr knew we had escaped.
I will not say much of that ride. It reminded me far too vividly of another desperate flight, which some of my readers may recall. (Tom was not half so badly injured as Jacob had been, but he could not stay on a camel without riding double; the resemblance was more than enough to upset me.)
Andrew stayed close beside me. My relief at seeing him warred with the unpleasant realization that my brother had indeed become a soldier; and this meant more than simply putting on a uniform and idling about in foreign countries. His clothes were stained with blood, which of course we could not stop to wash out. The man he killed belonged to an enemy tribe, one that had kidnapped and mistreated me in an effort to stop my work… but it was a long time before that memory no longer made me shake.
We rode pell-mell for Aritat territory, and if you have never been atop a galloping camel, you will have a difficult time understanding what that was like. When it moves at a trot or a pace, a good camel may have a remarkably smooth gait; at a gallop, it is about as stable as a bucking horse. We did not gallop the whole distance, of course, as that would have been a good way to kill our mounts. But we did so often enough for it to be exhausting—because of course we had to assume the Banu Safr were pursuing us. Suhail’s companions assured us that the enemy camels were poor creatures, with no chance of catching Aritat camels in the chase; but this was not so reassuring as it might have been.