The Amulet of Power - Mike Resnick [39]
“Where’s the village?” she asked when they were done. “All I see is sand.”
“South.”
“How far of a walk?”
Omar looked at her uncomfortably.
“I know that expression by now,” she sighed. “Out with it, Omar.”
“I spoke earlier about the danger to my family if you knew the name of the village and revealed it. The same is true if you know the location. Lara Croft, I will not try to force you—indeed, I doubt even the three of us could force you to do anything you did not wish to do—but I ask, with the greatest respect, that you allow yourself to be blindfolded and led into the village.”
“If anyone else asked me such a thing, I would laugh in his face,” said Lara after a moment. “Or spit in it. But you have earned my trust and respect, Omar. All of you have. When you first approached me aboard the Amenhotep, I didn’t fully believe you were telling me the truth. Now that I know you, I am almost ashamed of my doubts. You may blindfold me. I trust you.”
Hassam stepped forward with a strip of rag torn into a blindfold, but Omar raised a hand to stop him.
“Lara Croft,” said Omar, his eyes glistening, “it is I who am ashamed. You will not enter my village blindfolded. You will enter as Lara Croft, a trusted and honored guest.”
“But Omar,” Hassam began.
“She has saved our lives three times already,” said Omar. “They belong to her. I say no blindfold.”
“No blindfold,” Hassam agreed with a nod, letting the blindfold drop to the sand as if it were unclean.
They began walking south. There was too much equipment to carry, so they left the saddles and other heavy items behind; Omar said that men from the village would fetch it all later. After about a mile, Lara glimpsed the village in the distance. It was composed of mud and brick houses, shaded by doum palms, and surrounded by narrow cultivated fields. A half-dozen domestic cattle and eight small goats grazed on some brush near them, while some twenty camels stood in a fenced enclosure at the far end of the village.
“Even in my village,” said Omar, “we must remain on guard.”
“Then perhaps I should stay disguised,” Lara suggested.
“Your disguise will fool no one who gets within five feet of you,” said Omar. “No, we will introduce you as yourself. But we must tread carefully. My people are conservative and set in their ways.”
“I don’t want to make anyone here uncomfortable,” said Lara. “I’ll follow your lead, Omar.”
A few people came out of their homes and stared at the approaching party. Then more and more appeared, and finally, when they recognized Omar, a number of them began waving, and one small girl raced up and threw her arms around the small man.
Omar exchanged greetings with the village folk and began speaking to them so rapidly that Lara, whose knowledge of local Sudanese dialects was far more limited than her Arabic and more than a bit rusty, couldn’t follow the gist of the conversation. At one point, hearing her name mentioned and seeing the eyes of the villagers dart toward her in curiosity, she nodded deeply but said nothing. Finally, Omar turned to her.
“We will spend the night here, and leave on camels in the morning,” he announced. He pointed to a small hut. “You will sleep there. We will dine at sunset.” Suddenly he smiled. “I told them we would prefer not to have fish, cooked or otherwise.”
Lara thanked her hosts in Arabic, which was spoken throughout the Sudan, then walked over to her hut, entered it, gratefully got out of her robes, and lay down. She awoke two hours later when the smell of cooking meat came to her nostrils, and she realized that she was even hungrier than she had thought. She searched the hut for a mirror, curious to see what traces of her injuries still remained, but her search yielded nothing.
There was a knock at the door.
“Are you ready for dinner?” called Omar from outside.
“One minute,” she said.
While she was sleeping, her dirty robes had been taken away and replaced with clean ones. Though she hated the idea of wearing the confining garments again, which did a good job of concealing her weapons while making it difficult