O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [76]
“My head hurts,” I admitted.
“Of course.”
That seemed to be the extent of his concerns. We walked perhaps four miles altogether after leaving the town, with the rifle-bearing man trailing behind us, until Mahmoud touched my elbow and led me off the road into an almost imperceptible path through a thicket of some Palestinian cousin of the gorse, all spine and grab. At the bottom of it was a tiny mud hut; in the hut we found Ali. He greeted my arrival with a sour look.
“You brought him, then,” he said to Mahmoud.
“She has earned the right,” Mahmoud replied evenly. His deliberate use of the feminine verb ending was reinforced by the optional pronoun, to force Ali into a recognition of my identity, and my presence. The disgusted look on Ali’s face did not change, but he said no more, merely ladled us each a mug of soup from the pot. It was hot and tasted of meat and onions, and I was quite certain Ali had not cooked it.
“Thank you, Mahmoud,” I said. When my cup was empty, Ali filled it again with soup, laid a piece of flat bread on top, and carried it to the leather flap that served as a door. He knelt down to put it on the stones outside, and came back to the fire. A moment later we heard a faint scrape of shoe-leather on stone as the man out there picked it up and returned to his guard. Ali took out his knife and explored the point with his thumb.
“Ali,” Mahmoud chided. Ali flung his hands wide.
“Good,” he snarled. “Beautiful.” He stood up, stabbed the knife back into his belt, and began to kick dust over the coals. “I am infinitely happy. Let us go.” He snatched up a pack from the floor, grabbed a rifle from where it leant against the wall, and pushed past us out the door flap. Mahmoud picked up the second rifle and another pack and followed. I trailed in their wake, stumbling awkwardly down the rock-strewn hillside, trying to keep the bobbing kuffiyah ahead of me in sight.
I smelt the horses before I saw them. Five horses, all dark and each bearing only the padded cloth that Arabs often use as a saddle. Ali and Mahmoud were already mounted. Mahmoud threw me a set of reins, which I was relieved to find were attached to a proper bridle rather than the plain halter many Arabs used, and I struggled to mount the rangy horse (which laid his ears back and looked as if he would rather bite me than carry me) without benefit of pommel or block. The third man leapt without effort onto the back of one of the two remaining horses and kicked it to the head of the small column. My own mount determinedly followed his mates, with me in disarray on the saddle pad, struggling to get my heel across his back.
Once upright, my eyes were drawn to the riderless horse behind Ali, and I was struck by an illogical but powerful feeling of relief, as if the very presence of a spare horse warranted the eventual addition of its missing rider. My spirits rose a fraction.
We rode hard, at a pace across the uneven hillside that would have had me quaking in terror under normal circumstances, but now seemed merely part and parcel of the whole mad enterprise. An hour later the sky was lit with a faraway flash, and a rumble soon blended with the beat of our cantering hoofs. The storm stayed far to the north of us and added a nightmare quality to our journey, dazzle followed by blindness, but even at that distance, the thunder and the slight breeze served to conceal some of the noise we were making. A passage I had laboriously translated from the small Koran Mahmoud had given me ran through my mind: “It is He who causes the lightning to flash around you, filling you with fear and hope as He gathers together the heavy clouds.”
Our guide, or guard, slowed us to a trot that jarred my aching skull even more horribly than the canter had done. I was riding blindly now, hoping the headstrong animal under me would not carry me off a cliff, and soon we slowed to a walk, and then stopped.
I clung, panting, to the edge of the saddle pad, unaware of anything but the need not to fall off.
Mahmoud’s voice came from a place near my knee. “Take and drink.” I held