The Elusive Bride (12 page)

“Especially by those they seek to protect,” Girla put in.

“Especially if those are also ones they seek to impress,” Katun stated. After a heartbeat, she added, “With their prowess.”

Emily wriggled into her blankets. “I daresay you’re right. Good night.”

She laid her head down, tugged the blankets over her shoulder, and prayed the dark had hidden her flaming cheeks. Older women, it seemed, were incorrigible the world over. What was rather more interesting was that male behavior seemed equally universal.

W
hen she emerged from Anya’s tent, Emily discovered that most of the men of their party had decamped, leaving only a small number on guard.

She paused beside Arnia and Dorcas, where they sat on rugs helping some of the other women prepare the evening meal. “Where are they?”

She didn’t need to specify who “they” were.

Arnia snorted, an eloquent sound. She didn’t look up as she replied, “The major sent scouts out. They returned to report there was another band of Berbers, of the same tribe that attacked us yesterday, camped a little way ahead, and they have more cultists with them.”

“Naturally,” Dorcas said, slicing a cleaned yam into a pottery bowl, “our men were all keen to turn the tables and
attack the others before they can attack us.” She looked up at Emily. “That’s where they’ve gone.”

Emily frowned. “It’s almost like a game to them. A chess game, perhaps, but a game nonetheless.”

“Our men, their men.” Arnia shrugged. “All are warriors. They live to fight.”

“That is truth.” One of the Berber women nodded sagely. “Any fight is welcome to them, but they are happiest when they fight to defend us.” She, too, shrugged philosophically. “What would you? It is their role, so they are pleased to be useful.” With a gesture, she encompassed the circle of women happily preparing the meal. “As are we. We are not so different in that.”

Emily hadn’t thought of the matter in that light. After a moment, she nodded in acknowledgment, and moved on, strolling along the lake’s edge to where Anya and the older women—the dowagers—sat on rugs in the shade of a palm grove.

Anya waved her to join them. She sank down onto a rug next to Girla, whose fingers were busy knotting a fringe. Emily sat with her arms around her drawn-up knees. Resting her chin on them, she gazed out over the lake, gently rippling in the faint breeze, and let her mind wander.

After a time, Anya said, both voice and face serene, “If, as we must hope, our men return victorious, there will be celebrations again tonight.”

The other women nodded. Katun said, “They will expect it—it is their due, after all.”

That, Emily could understand, but…“Why is it that men seem to believe that protecting a woman somehow makes her…theirs?” She felt a blush heat her cheeks, but persisted. “They protect you, defend you from attack, and then growl and scowl if you do something they don’t like.” She glanced around the circle, saw no one laughing, not even smiling. All were listening, some nodding in understanding. “It’s almost as if once they’ve fought for you, they’ve won you—that after that they somehow, in some unspecified way, own you.”

Her heart may have made up her mind regarding Gareth,
but she hadn’t forgotten his dog-in-the-manger behavior over Cathcart, something she’d been reminded of only a few hours before, when they’d arrived at the oasis and Gareth had once again transformed into a bear, dispersing the young Berber men who had gathered around eager to help her from Doha’s saddle.

She didn’t like being treated in such a patently possessive way.

Katun heaved a huge sigh. “It is the bane all women must bear.”

Anya’s lips lightly curved. “All women whose men are warriors, at least.” The others nodded. Anya’s old eyes met Emily’s. “It is the price one pays to have a warrior as your mate. He will protect and keep you safe, but in return…” Her smile widened. “They are, in truth, such oddly vulnerable creatures, at least where their women are concerned.”

“Their woman becomes their one true vulnerability,” Girla offered, “so as warriors to the core, of course they guard her most fiercely.”

“From anything and everything—real or imagined.”

The others laughed and nodded at Katun’s bald statement.

“It is truly said,” Anya concluded, “that the true value a warrior places on his woman is revealed by the depth of his…what is the word?”

“Possessiveness?” Emily suggested.

Anya pulled a face. “I was thinking of protection, but possession? That is true as well, I suppose. It is the other side of the coin, no?”

Emily thought, then nodded. “Yes, you’re right. Where one ends and the other begins…with warriors, the line is blurred.”

On top of a dune some miles from the oasis, Gareth, Ali-Jehan, and Mooktu passed Gareth’s spyglass among them as, on their bellies in the sand, they assessed the strength of the band of Berbers and cultists gathered in the dip below.

“There are many more of your cultists than I had expected to see.” Frowning, Ali-Jehan lowered the spyglass. “If they had such numbers, why did they not make a better show against us yesterday?”

Gareth had been wondering the same thing. There were significantly more cultists than tribesmen below. He took back the spyglass, again assessed the numbers. “In light of what we’re seeing, I suspect yesterday was a feint—a battle they never expected to win, but one to make us feel they pose no real threat. That’s why the other Berbers left so abruptly—they were committed only while the cultists were there to see. Once the cultists fell, they didn’t need to remain.”

“So it was by way of a charade, in the hope we would…what is the phrase, let down our guard?”

Gareth nodded.

“There’s too many of them,” Mooktu murmured. “And those cultists down there—most have the look of assassins.”

Gareth had noted the same worrying facts.

Ali-Jehan frowned. “We might be able to take them, yet…” He waggled one hand. “With my mother and the other women in the camp”—he looked at Gareth—“and your women as well, I would prefer not to engage this group. I know my cousins the El-Jiri, and they are fierce warriors. If you say those others are also very able, then…”

When Ali-Jehan unexpectedly fell silent, Gareth glanced at him. “Can we avoid them?”

Ali-Jehan met his eyes, pulled a face. “No. The El-Jiri know my routes well, and they know the area around here as well as I.” He looked down at the camp. “Nearby is a fine place for an attack.”

Gareth hesitated. He and Ali-Jehan had got on well from their first meeting. They were much of a kind, warriors in more or less civilian guise, responsible for a band of civilians who traveled with them. They were of similar age and, Gareth judged, not all that dissimilar in character. With that last in mind, he ventured, “Is there any way we can contact
your cousins down there—some way that won’t alert the cultists?”

Ali-Jehan looked at him, then looked down at the camp, surveying the outer edges, the horse and camel lines. “Perhaps.” He turned back to Gareth. “Why?”

Gareth explained his thinking, his putative strategy. A smile slowly spread across Ali-Jehan’s face. At the end, he nodded. “This we will do.”

They scrambled back down the dune, then Ali-Jehan picked two men, two of his extended family, and carefully explained what he wanted them to do.

Gareth and Ali-Jehan resumed thir position on the dune, and watched, patient and still, while the two tribesmen successfully carried out their mission.

It was another hour before the leader of the El-Jiri Berbers walked into their midst. He and Ali-Jehan exchanged elaborate greetings at some length, then set formality aside and got down to business.

Gareth was introduced and joined them.

Half an hour later, the El-Jiri leader smiled—a gesture that foretold death for someone. He nodded to Ali-Jehan. “It is good. We will do as you say. I must return to my men and pass the word. You will see when we are ready.”

Ali-Jehan smiled a similarly chilling smile. “And then we will rid our lands of these minions of the snake.”

Gareth watched the two Berber sheiks take leave of each other, watched the El-Jiri leader stride off through the dunes.

The unrolling of his strategy had gone more smoothly than he’d thought. With luck, the execution would be equally successful.

Emily was standing chatting about the cook-pots when the men, who had been absent for most of the day, rode back into camp—victorious.

There was no need to wonder at the outcome of their day’s adventures—the whoops, the prancing horses, the face-splitting grins were declaration enough.

Other Berbers arrived with them, including a leader who Ali-Jehan took to introduce to Anya. Relegated as usual to the company of the women, Emily heard only that the newcomer was the sheik of the El-Jiri.

Puzzled, she exchanged a glance with Arnia, beside her. “Weren’t the El-Jiri the Berber tribe who attacked us yesterday?”

Arnia nodded. “It seems they turned against the cultists.”

This time, however, there were wounded. Emily went to help tend them. From those she helped care for she gained a better description of what had happened.

Assassins. The word made her blood run cold. She’d heard too many tales of the viciousness of the cult’s most hardened followers. As she understood it, there had been more cultists, mostly assassins, than all the Berbers combined, but with Gareth commanding a joint attack—quite how he’d managed to get the two normally bickering Berber tribes to work together she didn’t hear—but all together and well directed, they’d triumphed.

Half the cultists had died, and the other half…they were the El-Jiri’s reward.

When she clearly didn’t understand what that meant, the woman whose husband she was helping bandage leaned close and whispered, “The El-Jiri sometimes deal in slaves. A group of men trained to fight? They would be happy to have them to trade.”

Emily paused, mentally questioning how she felt about that. But she’d seen too much of the cultists’ handiwork to think it anything other than fitting.

When she was free again, the sun had sunk low, and it was time for the evening meal. As the dowagers had predicted, there was a feastlike atmosphere, with much wild talking, laughing, and backslapping among the men. The women…

Now she looked more closely, Emily saw not resignation so much as fond affection in the women’s glances, in the way they waited upon their men. Their defenders and protectors. She’d heard enough to realize that, the way matters
had stood before this afternoon, their caravan had been in grave danger of being attacked and overwhelmed when they attempted to move on.

The action of the afternoon had eradicated that threat. The men had indeed defended and protected them.

She saw Gareth across the fire and was conscious of a flaring desire to go to him, to congratulate him, to smile and fill his cup and offer him the sweetmeats being passed around.

But she and he weren’t married.

She wasn’t his—so he wasn’t hers.

She didn’t have the right to share his triumphs, to laud and celebrate, and make much of him, as the other women whose husbands had fought were doing with their men. Even Arnia, she noted, smiled and waited on Mooktu, sitting just behind him, leaning against the back of one broad shoulder as she ate from her own plate.

Emily slowly circled the fire. Her eyes returned to Gareth—and his found her as she paused by Anya’s side. He smiled, and she smiled back—honestly, joyously—feeling within her the same emotion that colored the married women’s eyes—but then Ali-Jehan asked him something and he turned to answer.

Emily sank to the rug beside and a little behind Anya.

A second later, the older woman reached out and, without turning her head, patted her hand. “They are difficult, our men, but they are worth it in the end.”

Her gaze fixed across the fire pit, Emily discovered she agreed.

Three days later, a single cultist, disheveled, dusty, bearing wounds that, untended, had festered, groveled on the flagstones of a small courtyard in a quiet section of old Cairo.

Uncle looked down on the bedraggled head of the man who had just reported the complete and utter defeat of the men he had sent to capture the major. One question burned in his brain. “What of my son?”

The man, forehead to the stones, visibly shook with
fear. “Gone,” he managed to gabble. “They’re all gone. All fallen.”

Uncle knew a moment of sheer madness, of keening devastation, but by sheer force of will he held it all within. “The Arabs we hired turned against us.” He still couldn’t take that in. In India, no one—
no one
—would dare betray the Black Cobra.

According to all precepts, he should ensure the offending Arabs were suitably dealt with—their children slaughtered, their women debauched and killed, a long slow death for the men. His vengeful soul cried out for that succor—he craved vengeance for his only son—but here, now, he didn’t have the time.