The Amulet of Power - Mike Resnick [30]
Lara mounted El Khobar. “Which way?” she asked.
“Lake Nasser is about twenty miles away,” answered Omar. “We’ll parallel it and then the Nile until we reach Khartoum.”
“And you say the first oasis is almost a two-day trek from here?”
“That is correct.”
“What’s to stop us from turning toward Lake Nasser at sunset, getting water to drink,” suggested Lara, “and then going back inland?”
“It would add many days to the journey, and the water would probably make you ill.”
“Why just me?”
“We have drunk from the Nile all our lives,” said Omar. “Those of us who don’t die from it—and very few do—develop a resistance to its diseases and impurities, a resistance Europeans and Americans do not possess. We will drink at the wells and the oases.”
“You’re the leader,” she said, more to bolster his ego than to agree with his assessment of her Western frailty. “Let’s get started.”
Omar urged his camel on, and the others fell into line behind him. After a few minutes Omar turned to them.
“This is wrong,” he announced.
They all stopped and stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“Hassam, you will ride on Lara Croft’s left. Gaafar, move your camel up and ride on her right. We must not allow her to be a sharpshooter’s target.”
“This is ridiculous!” protested Lara. “I don’t want anyone to have to take a bullet for me!”
“It is no problem,” Gaafar assured her. “You saved our lives a few minutes ago, so they now belong to you until we can return the favor.”
“Besides,” added Omar, “if Hassam or Gaafar is killed, we may still find the Amulet before the Mahdists do. But if you are killed, we have lost our best chance.”
Suddenly Lara smiled. “Now that sounds like a true leader’s reasoning.”
Omar returned her smile. “Perhaps I think better when I’m not being shot at.”
Gaafar and Hassam laughed aloud, and kept laughing.
“It wasn’t that funny,” remarked Lara after a while.
“Omar has been shot at more than any man you have ever met,” said Gaafar.
“And tortured,” added Hassam.
“Please,” said Omar uncomfortably. “Lara Croft does not wish to hear ancient history.”
“I think I’d find it very interesting,” she said.
“Some other time,” replied Omar with an air of finality.
They rode in silence for the next three hours. Then Omar signaled a halt, and they dismounted.
“The camels need rest,” he announced, “and we need food.”
“We haven’t abused them,” commented Lara. “They should be able to walk all day at this pace.”
“True.”
“Then why—?”
“Because if we travel at this pace with no breaks in our journey, we will reach the oasis at midday tomorrow, and it will be much safer not to arrive until dark.”
“You could have just said so.”
“I did not wish to distress you.”
Gaafar and Hassam broke out laughing again.
“All right,” admitted Omar. “I should know by now that you are not easily distressed.”
“So how long do we sit here?”
“Perhaps an hour, perhaps two.” He walked over to his camel, pulled his rifle out of its sheath, and brought it back with a cloth and some oil. “While we rest, I will clean the Eye of Amen-Ra.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Lara. “The Eye of Amen-Ra?”
“My rifle,” said Omar.
“Mine is Anubis, the Death Bringer,” added Gaafar. He pulled out a dagger. “And this is the Scalpel of Isis.”
“What do you call your pistols?” asked Hassam.
“I call them my guns,” said Lara.
“You have no names for them?” persisted Hassam, surprised.
“I think it’s a guy thing.”
“Do you carry a knife?” asked Gaafar.
“Sometimes,” she replied. “Not today.”
Gaafar walked to his camel and withdrew a dagger with an engraved handle from his pack. “Then I will present you with the Leopard’s Tooth.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said, testing its heft and balance. “Thank you.”
“You honor me by accepting it,” replied the large man. “And whenever you cut a Mahdist’s throat with it, you will think of Gaafar.”
“Well, let’s hope I don’t have to think of you too often,” she said.
The four of them fell to cleaning their weapons, and after an hour had passed they got up and began riding to the south again, always staying between twenty and