Riders of the Pale Horse (34 page)

She looked at Wade. The campfire behind them cast half her face in the softest golden hues. “Are you afraid?”

It took him a while to answer. “I've been frightened for so long, I guess I've grown used to it.”

“I don't think I could ever grow used to fear—or want to,” she replied, then asked, “Would you tell me the whole story of how you came to Jordan?”

Because she asked with the tone of a friend, because they shared the exquisite aloneness of an empty desert night, because their fear was a bond between them, he told her. All of it.

She watched him intently while he talked, her gaze large
and solemn, so quiet that Wade did not notice her shivering until he was almost done.

He interrupted himself with, “You're cold. Why didn't you say something?”

“I'm fine, really. Please don't stop.”

But he was already up and moving toward the camp. He returned with a heavy blanket, which he flipped open and draped around her shoulders. “It's amazing how cold it gets out here at night.”

As he settled back down, Allison lifted the edge toward him. “Come share.”

Wade slid closer and allowed her to drape the blanket around his back.

“Okay, now finish your story.”

He did so, acutely aware of her warmth and the memory of her touch on his shoulder. He spoke, but scarcely heard himself. He was too full of her closeness and the night and the scent of her.

“So you used the church's money and followed them down here,” Allison said when he fell silent. “Amazing. And you're sure it was the same man behind you in the Aqaba souk? What was his name?”

“Barton Robards—Rogue. And yes, I'm sure.” Once again he was chilled by the memory of Rogue's words. A knife. He pushed the thought away by telling her the whole story of Alexis.

After a silence, Wade heard a new tone. With the voice of a woman-child, Allison asked him, “Did you leave a girl behind in—whatever that city was called?”

“Grozny.” And because of the vulnerability in her voice, and because of the night and the stars and the wind, Wade found the courage to speak from the yearnings of his heart. “I've never had someone I really, you know, loved.”

She backed off far enough to inspect his face. Wade turned to meet her gaze, although it was hard. With a wisdom that transcended his feeble words and her own awkwardness,
Allison's gaze opened, filled with compassionate understanding. And slowly, ever so slowly, she drew closer to him, stopping now to study his eyes, finding the reassurance she sought, moving closer, closer still, until her lips met his.

Wade awoke to a desert choir in full performance.

Donkeys brayed. Camels groaned. Goats bleated. Desert sparrows relished the power the echoes gave their chirps. Behind his tent a group of men chanted their morning prayers. Other voices murmured and called and even sang in their desert tongue. Baby goats cried like a band of hungry young children.

He rolled from his bedding, looked around, saw that all the other men of his tent were up and started with their day. He combed back his hair with his fingers, tucked in his shirt, flipped open the tent cover, and blinked in the glare.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.” Wade squinted and saw Allison approach with a smile and a glass of tea. “I was just coming to wake you up.”

Gingerly he accepted the steaming glass, grasping it around the rim. “How long have you been up?”

“Oh, hours.” She smiled. “Truthfully, about fifteen minutes. Mahmoud wants to tell us something. He's waiting in the main tent.”

Wade sipped his tea, struggled to find the proper way to say what he wanted to express. “Our talk last night was, uh, really...”

“Me, too.” The touch she gave his arm was as soft as her gaze. “But we probably should save the rest for later. Mahmoud looked like a man in a hurry.”

At their approach Mahmoud rose and offered them a formal greeting, to which they nodded in thanks, then he waved them to seats. His father blessed them with a toothless grin and chanted words they could not understand.

Mahmoud gestured with hands to the side of his head,
asking how Wade had slept. Wade leaned forward and patted the stones lining the tent's central fire. Like a rock. The old man cackled with delight, then heaved his chest full with a deep breath. The desert air. Wade nodded his agreement and sipped at his tea. It was good to be alive.

By the tent's outer corner an older woman sat where she could remain in the shadows, yet still watch the children play. She combed shreds of thick goat's hair with a pair of wire brushes, then gathered the strands and spun them into black thread on a portable spindle. Beyond her, children laughed and squealed and rolled a pair of inflated goatskins back and forth between them. The children were beautifully bright, their intelligent faces so full of character that they looked more like miniature adults than children. Then Wade heard the sloshing liquid inside the skins, and realized they were making curds from goat's milk.

Mahmoud brushed the sand before him flat and smooth, then drew a line and pointed to the eastern hills. He made a humping motion. Up and over to the other side. The old man nodded and spoke a running commentary as Mahmoud drew a slit running partway through the line—a narrow passage leading to the mountain's other side. Here he drew a circle, then pointed around him. A camp.

Next Mahmoud pointed to his own truck, pointed at the sun, drew a wavering line toward the sun. Then he pointed higher in the sky, drew another wavering line from a different direction. A third time the finger raised to point directly overhead, then a third line drew in toward the camp. Wade nodded and spoke to Allison, “I think he means he watched trucks come in yesterday at different times, from different directions.”

“A meeting point,” Allison said, slightly breathless with the sudden excitement.

Again Mahmoud pointed at his truck, then showed an open palm. Five vehicles. He then tapped the nearest stone, hands held over his head, squinted, looked around, shrugged. This
time Wade looked confused; Mahmoud repeated the gesture. Then Allison understood. “He's saying the chasm has ledges so that the camp can't be detected from above.”

Wade asked Mahmoud, “Bedouin?”

Mahmoud balanced his hands in the air. He was not sure. Then he pointed to his chest and shook his head. Definitely not of his tribe. He pointed at Wade and nodded vigorously. “Foreigners in the camp,” Allison said.

Mahmoud stood.
“Jallah?”
We go?

Wade rose to his feet and Allison followed. “Jallah,” he agreed.

Before starting out, Mahmoud had them don old Jordanian army jackets—camouflage against prying eyes. He then brought out a pair of men's headdresses and insisted on fitting them both personally. The white-and-red-checked kaffiyeh was set on the head, held in place with a black thong twisted into a figure eight then folded into a double loop. Mahmoud pointed from it to the camel's hoofs, indicating that it was also used for hobbling the animals in an emergency. Then the kaffiyeh's two tasseled ends were crossed behind the head and tucked into the hoops.

By that time most of the camp had gathered to watch and see them off. They smiled and murmured approval when Wade was equipped and joined in delighted laughter when Allison's headdress was set in place. They laughed even harder when the camels were led up.

Mahmoud showed them how to mount the animals, sitting sidesaddle with their front leg cocked up and around the wooden saddle horn. The camels rose in stages, rocking like a small craft buffeted by heavy seas. They shared smiles as the Bedouins lifted hands and shouted
“Humdi-'lah”
in approval, their grins as bright as the sun.

Their passage over the desert took the better part of the day, a lurching journey over harsh and beautiful terrain. The
wind was a constant force. It buffeted. It probed. It etched. It moaned a sibilant voice into Wade's ears, teaching him of the desert in a tongue only his heart could fathom.

The wind and the sun and the camel's rocking had a stupefying effect. Wade's whole body swayed in time to the motion. He found it increasingly difficult to keep his eyes open. At one point he drifted off entirely, only to be startled awake by a tap from Mahmoud's riding crop. The Bedouin pointed at the ground in warning. It was a long way to fall.

They stopped twice for water and unleavened bread and olives and goat cheese. Mahmoud would not let them tarry long, however, and made his fingers walk up while pointing to a setting sun. They must climb the hills ahead of them before dark.

The desert shadows were already slanting when they entered a maze of interlocking chasms. Mahmoud motioned to his lips—from here on they should not speak. As the cliffs closed in around them, they were granted welcome relief from the sun. Wade soon understood why they had not taken the truck; the sandstone walls tightened so that he could touch both sides at once.

As the sky began to darken overhead, they entered a sand-bottomed cul-de-sac containing an almost empty pool and a single tree. When Mahmoud made his camel kneel, Wade sank gratefully to the ground and walked about loosening his sore muscles. He glanced at Allison. Her face was set in tired yet resolute lines.

While the camels slurped greedily at the pool's scummy water, Mahmoud pointed at one of the cul-de-sac's side walls and traced the upward passage they were to take. Wade immediately saw why they had raced the sun. Their climb would start on a crevice fashioned into irregular stairs, then continue along a slender walk that had crumbled in places, reducing it to narrow toeholds. From there a kind of rough rock ladder ascended another forty, perhaps fifty meters.

Wade swallowed hard and refused the urge to simply sit down and give up.

Mahmoud turned to Allison and motioned that she should stay with the camels.

Although her face had turned pale beneath its coating of dust, she whispered, “I'm going with you,” and pointed sharply first at herself, then at the wall.

Wade protested quietly, “Two of us—”

“Save your breath. I'm going, and that's all there is to it.”

Wade turned back to Mahmoud, who responded with an eloquent shrug. He then walked to the crevice and started to climb.

The steps in the crevice were waist high and far from level. Wade climbed with hands as well as feet. Because the stone had been shaped by sand and wind instead of by water, the rock was very porous and offered good grips.

Mahmoud stopped them at the top of the stairs. Wade leaned his back against the rock and looked out, up, across—anywhere but down.

“Are you all right?” Allison whispered.

“I don't have much of a head for climbing,” he admitted.

She bit down hard on a smile. “My pop would say this will either kill you or cure you.”

“Thanks a lot.”

Mahmoud hissed them to silence and started out along the ledge. Wade forced his muscles to unclench and followed. The ledge narrowed, then narrowed further, until they were progressing in a sideways crawl with their faces crammed up against the rock and their heels over the edge.

Then Mahmoud began to climb again, ascending the rock ladder. Wade clung grimly to the ledge until Mahmoud's boots were up above his head, then started up immediately. Anything was better than hanging on where he was.

One moment Mahmoud's boots were scrambling up above him, sending a shower of dust and stones down on his head with each step, and the next he was gone. Wade scrambled
up the last few rungs, grateful for the strong arms waiting to help him over the ledge, then he was up. Sitting in safety. Helping Allison over the cliff's edge. Willing his legs to stop their trembling. Breathing great gulps of desert air and feeling the wind on his face. Safe.

They sat upon the roof of their desert world. The sun's ruddy orb touched distant peaks and began to dissolve into another evening. A thousand hues of orange and red and violet and deep blue painted the sky. Besides their own rasping breaths, the only sound they heard was the wind. Wade looked about, waited for his stuttering heart to quiet, and gloried in the boundless view.