Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [146]
Carrying the binoculars, he felt his way along the turns of the dark passage, out into the open arcade, and came to a sudden stop, his heart hammering. The object lay on the floor, just inside the door. It looked like a dead animal, dark and huddled.
The slant of the rays of sunlight outside told him it was late afternoon. He had slept the whole day away. He couldn’t believe his own carelessness. He ought to have been alert and listening, ready to retreat into the underground passages at the first sound of someone approaching. Someone had got this far, at any rate. The object hadn’t been there the night before, they would have stumbled over it. And it wasn’t an animal.
When he investigated the contents of the bundle he felt even guiltier. Everything he had asked for was there. How they had got the things to him so quickly, without being detected, he couldn’t imagine. Standing behind one of the pillars, he moved the binoculars in a slow sweep of the valley, from one end of the road to the other. The only signs of unusual activity were around the small Isis temple, which was now surrounded by troops. Daria’s absence must have been discovered early that morning, if not before, so why weren’t they searching for her?
He tied the parcel again and carried it to Daria. They were finally able to drink their fill and eat hungrily of the bread and cheese. Ramses had a feeling he wouldn’t relish dates for a long time to come. She was like a different woman, her eyes tender and her laughter gently teasing. They did not speak of her past or their future, only of the moment. The light began to fade and the stars to come out, and they made love as if it were the first and the last time. When he woke her after a short sleep she reached for him and then drew away.
“We must go now?”
“Soon.”
Silently she began to dress, pulling the trousers on under her sleeveless robe. He stopped her when she would have put on the heavy stockings and bathed her feet again before he bandaged the deepest cuts. Neither of them spoke until she stood up and stamped her feet into the shoes.
“Do they hurt still?” he asked. “Can you walk?”
“I can walk.” Her voice was dry and hard. “Are you ready?”
“Almost.” Carefully he gathered the scattered evidences of their presence and tied them into a single bundle. The mice would take care of the food crumbs. He put on the hooded robe and helped her into the lighter, long-sleeved mantle his mother had provided. His hands lingered on her shoulders, but when she moved away from him he knew she was right to do so. They had had their time, and it was over.
“Ready,” he said. “Take my hand.”
He made the climb as easy as he could for her, roping her up the steeper slopes and letting her rest as often as he could. Her mute, hard-breathing endurance reminded him (why?) of the time he had climbed up a cliff face to help Nefret down when she hit a bad stretch. She had cursed him royally for taking hold of her.
He let out a soft laugh and tightened his grasp on Daria’s yielding waist. “You are thinking of her,” she said.
“I am thinking of how to go from here. It’s not far now,” he added encouragingly.
When he lifted her onto the ledge her knees buckled and she would have fallen if he had not kept hold of her. “Sit down and rest. It’s safe, there’s plenty of room.”
Not as much as he had thought. They were waiting for him, under the shelter of the low overhang.
“It’s all right, they are friends,” he said quickly. He had recognized Harsetef’s tall, lithe form. The other man was even taller. He came toward Ramses, walking unconcernedly along the very rim of the ledge and gripped Ramses’s arms in a soldier’s greeting.
“Welcome,” he said in a voice deepened by emotion. “Thrice welcome! You were a boy when you left me, and now you are a man.”
He was dressed like a common soldier, with no sign of rank, but Ramses knew him. “Tarek! You shouldn’t have come here, it’s too risky.”
“I do not ask my men to take risks I will not take. You have taken even greater risks to bring