He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [142]
“When did you learn Hindustani?”
“Last summer. I’m not very fluent.”
“Why did that fellow grin at you in such a familiar manner?”
“Well, I suppose we did get a bit familiar. Wrapped in one another’s arms, in fact.” His father gave him a critical look, and Ramses elaborated. “He boasted that he could put any man in the place on his—er—back, so I took him up on it. He taught me a trick or two, and I taught him one. What did the jemadar say?”
Emerson sucked on the stem of his pipe. “I am beginning to think . . . that we are on . . . the wrong track.”
Since he appeared to be oblivious of the pun, Ramses let it go. “Why?”
Emerson finally got his pipe going. “Those chaps and others like them patrol the area between here and the Canal by day and by night. The jemadar insisted nothing as large as a wagon could have got by them on this track. You know how sound carries at night.”
“They might have used camels along this stretch.”
“Camels make noise too, especially when you hope they won’t. Bloody-minded brutes,” Emerson added.
“I see what you mean.” Ramses lit a cigarette. “It’s become altogether too complicated, hasn’t it? Land transport from the Syrian border, transfer to boats or rafts, then reloading a second time for the trek across the desert, with the whole area under surveillance.”
“There are other routes. Longer but safer.”
“From the coast west of the Delta.”
“Or from Libya. The Ottomans have been arming and training the Senussi tribesmen for years. The Senussis hate Britain because she supported the Italian conquest of that area. They would be happy to cooperate in passing on arms to Britain’s enemies, and they have sympathizers all along the caravan routes, from Siwa westward.”
They smoked for a while in companionable silence.
“We may as well start back,” Ramses said.
“Since we’ve come this far,” Emerson began.
“Not your damned ruins, Father!”
“The place isn’t far. Only a few miles.”
“If we aren’t back by dark, Mother will come after us.”
“She doesn’t know where we are,” Emerson said with evil satisfaction. “It won’t take long. We can water the horses again on our way back.”
He knocked his pipe out and rose. Ramses hadn’t the courage to argue, though he was not happy about his father’s decision. The sun had passed the zenith and had started westward. The air was still blisteringly hot, and the flies seemed to have multiplied a thousandfold.
As he’d feared, Emerson’s few miles turned out to be considerably longer. Ahead and to the right, the imposing ramparts of the Araka Mountains stood up against the sky. Another, larger, range was visible to the north of the track. Finally Emerson turned south, skirting the steep slopes of one of the smaller gebels.
“There,” he said, pointing.
At first glance the heaps of stones looked like another natural outcropping. Then Ramses saw shapes too regular to be anything but man-made: low walls, a tumbled mass that might once have been a tower or a pylon. There was a long cylindrical shape too, half buried by sand, that could be a fallen column. Emerson’s eye couldn’t be faulted; this was no way station.
Ramses followed his father, who had urged his reluctant steed into a trot. He was ten feet behind Emerson when he heard the sharp crack of a rifle. Emerson’s horse screamed, reared, and toppled over. Ramses pulled Risha up and dismounted. He had not been aware of drawing his pistol until he realized he was holding it; avoiding the thrashing hooves of the wounded animal, he finished the poor creature with a bullet through the head and squeezed off a few random shots in the direction from which the firing had come before he dropped to his knees beside his father.
Emerson had jumped or been thrown off. Probably the former, since he had had time enough and sense enough to roll out of the way of the horse’s body. He lay motionless on his side, his arms and legs twisted and his eyes closed. Torn between the need to get him to shelter and the fear of moving him, Ramses carefully straightened his legs, feeling for broken bones. A change in the