Part 7 (1/2)

”To me, my brother,” Ali called softly.

Ben Akbar came at once and Ali replaced the saddle and bridle. About to take a swallow of water, he decided to wait until Ben Akbar could also have a satisfactory drink or until thirst became unbearable. In the latter event, they'd share the contents of the water bag.

Ali thought calmly of the journey before him. A novice attempting such a trip would invite his own death, and even an experienced desert traveler would find such an undertaking very precarious. However, Ali, who'd spent most of his life on the caravan routes, thought of it as just one more journey.

The merciless sun spared nothing. Waves of heat rolled along with monotonous regularity, as though the heat blanket were a mighty ocean beset by a steady wind. Ali turned his back to the sun's direct rays and watched Ben Akbar. He was hot and thirsty, and becoming hotter and thirstier, but so had he been before and would be again.

The sun was almost exactly where Ali had decided it should be when Ben Akbar raised his head and fixed his attention on the western horizon. It was the direction from which they had come, that from which pursuit should come. Ali turned to face the same way as Ben Akbar.

A few minutes later, they rode over a hillock and Ali saw them. They were a little group of the Pasha's crack troops, superbly mounted on magnificent _dalul_ and maintaining tight formation behind a tracker.

Ali reached up to fondle Ben Akbar's neck but kept his eyes on the riders. They were seven, including the tracker, and Ali knew at once why there were no more than seven and no fewer.

He was no ordinary outlaw, but a direct affront to all that Moslems held most dear. He must be brought to justice, and no effort would be spared to do so. Thus the tracker was the best to be found. The six soldiers were picked men. Finally, the seven _dalul_ were the very elite of the almost thirty thousand camels with the _Hadj_. There were no more than seven pursuers because there was not another _dalul_ to keep pace with these seven.

Ali did not have to ask himself if the seven _dalul_ were fresh or weary; their riders would know how to conserve their mounts. Ben Akbar had had less than four hours' rest.

Standing quietly beside Ben Akbar, Ali told himself that he had wanted and planned to have the pursuit take form in just this way, and he would not change now if he could. He himself might have ridden much farther in the hours that had elapsed since leaving Al Misri's camp, but he'd have done it at the expense of Ben Akbar. The test had to come, and it was better to meet it in this fas.h.i.+on.

The soldiers sighted him and urged their mounts from an easy trot to a swift lope. Ali waited until they were within two hundred and fifty yards, well beyond effective range of smoothbore muskets, before he turned to Ben Akbar and said quietly, ”Kneel.”

Ben Akbar knelt and Ali mounted. At ease in the saddle, he turned to watch the soldiers sweep nearer. A momentary doubt a.s.sailed him as a close-up inspection of their _dalul_ revealed the full magnificence of such animals. Ali put the doubt behind him and told Ben Akbar to run.

At home in a camel saddle as he seldom fitted in elsewhere, Ali did not waste another backward glance as Ben Akbar flew on. He knew what lay behind him, and that he could expect no mercy whether his back or his face was toward the pursuers. Wherever it struck, the blade of a sword would be equally sharp and bite as deeply.

After fifteen minutes, and the blade not felt, Ali knew he'd chosen wisely when he gave his very life into Ben Akbar's keeping. He still did not look behind him. _Dalul_ such as the soldiers mounted were not easily outdistanced, but there was a mighty vein of comfort in that very thought. Ben Akbar would never again be pursued by swifter _dalul_ or more skilful riders. If he won this race, he'd win all to come.

An hour and a half afterwards, Ali finally looked around. With less than a two-hundred-yard lead at the beginning of the race, Ben Akbar had doubled that distance between himself and the three swiftest pursuers.

The remaining four, in order of their speed, straggled behind the leaders. Ali slowed Ben Akbar so that his pace exceeded by the scantiest margin that of the three leaders.

When a cool wind announced the going of the day and the coming of the night, the nearest of the seven pursuers was a mere dot in the distance.

The bitter autumn wind that snarled in from the Mediterranean had sent a herd of tough, desert-bred goats to the shelter of some boulders and made them stand close together for the warmth one found in another.

Riding past on Ben Akbar, Ali gave the s.h.i.+vering herd the barest of glances and turned his gaze to the horizon. He missed nothing, a highly practical talent whose development had been markedly accelerated by necessity.

Behind lay an incredible journey. Eluding the soldiers, Ali rode on into the very heart of the Arabian desert. Always he sought the lonelier places, shepherd's or camel herder's camps and the smallest villages. At first his experiences had conformed strictly to what any solitary traveler might expect. As the news spread and Ali's ill fame became part of the talk at even the most isolated campfires, his fortunes changed accordingly.

He seldom met anything except cold hatred and outright hostility.

Normally it was accompanied by dread, not entirely a disadvantage since, whatever else they thought, trembling natives who recognized Ali feared to refuse him food and other necessities. He fought when he could not avoid fighting, but much preferred to run. Ben Akbar had shown his heels to more soldiers, tribesmen and just plain bandits than Ali could remember.

With an almost desperate yearning for anyone at all who'd exchange a friendly word, eventually Ali turned to his native Syria, where he hoped to find a friend. He found a hatred more bitterly intense than anything experienced elsewhere; every Syrian seemed to think that he must bear part of the shame for a countryman who had defiled the Holy City. Now Ali was farther north, in the land of the Turks and riding toward the port of Smyrna.

Rounding a bend that brought him in sight of the Mediterranean, Ali halted Ben Akbar and stared in amazement.

He was on the sh.o.r.eside wall of a u-shaped rock ledge that extended into the sea and formed a natural harbor. Some distance out, a great sailing s.h.i.+p that flew a foreign flag rode at anchor. Though he could not read it and had no more than a vague notion that it might be read, Ali could make out her name. She was the _Supply_.

Halfway between sh.o.r.e and s.h.i.+p, a scow propelled by oarsmen and carrying a kneeling camel that seemed to be strapped in position, was making toward the _Supply_. On the sh.o.r.e beneath Ali, a number of other camels were tethered. One had lain down, and eight Egyptian camel handlers seemed interested in making it get up again.