We stopped once, on the height of the great shallow bowl, which encloses Klima, to look back. We saw Klima white in the light of the three moons. Then we continued our journey.
19 The Wind Blows from the East; We Encounter a Kur
I heard Hassan cry out.
Through the sand, I plunged toward him.
He stood on the side of a dune, in the moonlight. There was a flattish, large expanse of rock, exposed by the wind, below him.
“I saw it there!” he cried. “I saw it.” He pointed to the flattish extent of rock. The wind swept across it. I saw nothing. I “It is madness,” said Hassan. “There is nothing there. I am mad.”
“What did you see?” I asked.
“A beast,” he said. “A large beast. It stood suddenly upright. Its arms were long. It looked at me. Then it was gone.” He shook his head. “But it could not have been there. There is nowhere for it to have gone.”
“You describe a Kur,” I conjectured.
“I have heard of them,” said Hassan. “Are they not mythical, creatures of stories?”
“Kurii exist,” I said to him.
“No such beast could live in the desert,” said Hassan.
“No,” I said, “such a beast could not live in the desert.”
“Strange,” said Hassan, “that I should imagine a Kur here, in the Tahari.”
I went to the rock, and examined it. I found no sign of a beast. The wind whipped the nearby sand. I could not discern footprints.
“Let us continue our trek,” said Hassan, “before we both go mad.”
Shouldering again the water, I followed Hassan.
Yesterday we had finished the food. Yet did we have water. Hassan saw five birds overhead in flight.
“Fall to your hands and knees,” he said. “Put your bead down.” He did so, and I followed his example. To my surprise the five birds began to circle. I looked up. They were wild vulos, tawny and broad-winged. In a short time they alighted, several yards from us. They watched us, their heads turned to one side. Hassan began to kiss rhythmically at the back of his band, his head down, but moving so as to see the birds. The sound he made was not unlike that of an animal lapping water.
There was a squawk as he seized one of the birds which, curious, ventured too near. The other vulos took flight. Hassan broke the bird’s neck between his fingers and began to pull out the feathers.
We fed on meat.
We had been twelve days on the desert, when I detected, suddenly, in a moving of the wind, the odor.
“Stop,” I said to Hassan. “Do you smell it?”
“What?” he asked.
“It is gone now,” I said.
“What was it that you smelled?” be asked.
“Kur,” I said.
He laughed. “You, too,” be said, “are mad.”
I scanned the dunes about us, silvered in the light of the moons. I shifted the water bag slung over my shoulders. Hassan stood nearby. He moved the bag of water he carried to his left shoulder, it falling before and behind.
“There is nothing,” he said. “Let us proceed.”
“It is with us,” I said. “You were not mistaken, days ago, when you saw it.”
“No Kur can live in the desert,” he said.
I looked about. “It is with us, somewhere, out there,” I said. Somewhere.”
“Come,” said Hassan. “Soon it will be morning.”
“Very well,” I said to him.
“Why do you hesitate?” he asked.
I looked about. “We do not trek alone,” I told him. “There is another who treks with us.”
Hassan scanned the dunes. “I see nothing,” he said.
“We are not alone,” I told him. “Out there, somewhere, there is another, one who treks with us.”
We continued our march.
The march of Hassan had as its object not Red Rock, northwest of Klima, but Four Palms, a Kavar outpost known to him, which lay far to the south of Red Rock.
Unfortunately Four Palms was farther from Klima than Red Rock. On the other hand, his decision seemed to me a sound one. Red Rock was a Tashid oasis under the hegemony of the Aretai, enemies of the Kavars. Furthermore, between Klima and Red Rock lay the regions patrolled by the men of Abdul, the Salt Ubar, who had been known to me as Ibn Saran. Beyond this, though Four Palms lay farther from Klima than Red Rock, its route, it seemed, would bring one sooner out of the dune country than the route to Red Rock, and into the typical Tahari terrain of rock and scrub, where some game might be found, occasional water and possible nomadic groups not disposed to hostility toward Kavars. All things considered, the decision to attempt to reach Four Palms seemed the most rational decision in the circumstances. There was much risk, of course, attendant on either decision.
We had no choice but to gamble. Hassan had gambled wisely; whether or not he had also gambled well would remain to be seen.
I followed Hassan, he orienting himself by the sun and the flights of certain birds, migrating. We-bad, of course, no instruments at our disposal, no marked trails, and we did not know the exact location of Klima with respect to either Red Rock or Four Palms.
We gambled. We continued to trek. The alternative to the gamble was not security but certain death.
A consequence of Hassan’s plan was that we were actually moving, generally, south and west of Klima, in short, for a time, deeper into the most desolate, untraveled portions of the dune country, far even from the salt routes.
I realize now that this was why the beast was pacing us.
“We have water,” I said to Hassan, “for only four more days.”
“Six,” he said. “We may live two days without water.”
We had come to the edge of the dune country. I looked out on the rugged hills, the cuts, the rocks, the brush.
“How far is it now?” I asked.
“I do not know,” said Hassan. “Perhaps five days, perhaps ten.” We did not know where we had emerged from the dunes.
“We have come far,” I said.
“Have you not noticed the wind?” said Hassan.
“No,” I said. I had not thought of it.
“From what direction does it come?” asked Hassan.
“From the east,” I said.
“It is spring,” said Hassan.
“Is this meaningful?” I asked, The wind felt much the same as the constant, whipping Tahari wind to me, no different, save for its direction.
We had been fourteen days on the desert when the wind had shifted to the east.
“Yes,” said Hassan. “It is meaningful.”
Two Ahn earlier the sun’s rim had thrust over the horizon, illuminating the crests of the thinning dunes. An Ahn earlier Hassan had said, “It is now time to dig the shelter trench.” On our hands and knees, with our hands, we dug in the parched earth. The trench was about four feet deep, narrow, not hard to dig. It is oriented in such a way that the passing sun bisects it. It affords shade in the morning and late afternoon; it is fully exposed only in the hours of high sun.
Hassan and I stood at the edge of the ditch, looking eastward. “Yes,” said Hassan. “It is meaningful.”
“I see nothing,” I said. Flecks of sand struck against my face.
“We had come so far,” said Hassan.
“Is there nothing we can do?” I asked.
“I will sleep,” said Hassan. “I am weary.”
I watched, while Hassan slept. It began in the east, like a tiny line on the margin of the desert. It was only as it approached that I understood it to be hundreds of feet in height, perhaps a hundred pasangs in width; the sky above it was gray, then black like smoke; then I could watch it no longer that I might be blinded; I shielded my eyes with my hands; I turned my back to it; I crouched in the ditch; the wind tore past above me; there was sand imbedded in the backs of my hands; in places, where I dislodged it, there was blood. I looked up. The sky was black with sand; brush, like startled, bounding tabuk, leaped, driven, over my head; the wind howled. I sat in the ditch. I put my head on my arms, my head down, my arms on my knees. I listened to the storm. Then I slept.
Toward night Hassan and I awoke. We drank. The storm raged unabating. We could not see the stars.
“How long does such a storm last?” I asked.
“It is spring,” he said, shrugging, in the manner of the Tahari. “Who knows?”