The Bride Price (33 page)

The two men dozed under a tall
saf,
obviously sated from a meal. The youngest member of the party, a boy, stood guard, leaning against a palm tree. His eyes were turned westward, watching for pursuers. He, too, drowsed in the heat, lifting a lethargic hand occasionally to brush the flies away from his nodding head.

Grimly Sharif drew his sword, breathed a prayer, and leapt into camp with a bloodcurdling shout. He kicked the leg of one of the sleeping Bedu. The groggy man scowled and lurched to his feet. Instantly the scowl turned to a grimace of fear as the man groped at his side for his sword. Before he could utter a cry, Sharif’s sword whistled through the air and caught the man in the neck, nearly severing it. A gurgle was the only sound that broke the stillness. The other man was now awake and on his feet. Drawing his sword with an angry bellow, he charged at Sharif.

Their swords clashed against the sky. Helplessly the adolescent sentinel watched as Sharif efficiently dispatched the man with whom he fought, then whirled on him.

The boy backed up a step as Sharif advanced on him menacingly. The sheik’s sword was poised for a powerful blow and his gray eyes were two dangerous points of flint when he asked, “What have you done with the women?”

“The old one d-died,” the boy stammered, “but the two younger we left in the desert.”

“To die as well?” Sharif roared. “Was it not enough you broke the rules of
ghazzi
and raided my camp by night? Now you kill women?”

“We did not kill them, I swear by Allah.”

“Do not defile the name of God with your foul mouth. They are as good as dead, abandoned in the Rub al Khali. Where did you leave them?”

“About two hours’ ride to the south. But it was not my doing. I swear...” His voice trailed off. “Here, I wish to surrender to you.” He offered his sword to Sharif.

Sharif hesitated. What the boy requested was within the rules of
ghazzi.
But he thought of the still bodies lined up on the sand outside his tent—Fatmah, Nassar, Sa’id, even the dog that had trailed Bryna’s steps.

“It is too late,” he said, and brought the sword down. The boy’s head rolled across the sand and landed, its surprised eyes looking up at him.

“Blood for blood,” the sheik murmured sadly. “A death for a death.”

Unwilling to waste time, Sharif dug a single grave and rolled the bodies into it. After covering it with sand, he washed the taint of the dead from his body, then went to fetch the men’s camels.

The beasts were rested and in good condition. By rights the men’s possessions were now his. He saddled two sturdy-looking beasts for the women. Then he transferred his own saddle to the back of a strong black camel. After readjusting his clothing to ease the ache of his wound, he wrapped his kaffiyeh tightly around his face. Leaving the rest of the dead men’s goods at the oasis, he rode south, leading his camels.

For two hours Sharif rode into the heart of the Empty Quarter, keeping an anxious eye on the horizon. The sky to the east was ominously yellow, a sign of an impending sandstorm, and static electricity charged the air. As the wind whipped at his robes, he leaned into it, praying he could reach the women before the storm’s full fury howled around them.

At last he spotted them, two distinct spots in the desert sands under the odd yellow glare of the noonday sun. His eyes, anxious in his veiled face, swept the vacant campsite. Bryna and Pamela lay on a dune near a mound of sand that was obviously Latifeh’s grave. When he called out, Bryna sat up sluggishly.

Leaping to the ground before his mount had fully halted, the Arab hurriedly couched the camels in a tight circle, leaving only enough space for the three humans to lie down. Nostrils closed and third eyelids protecting them against the wind-borne sand, the beasts offered the best protection the humans could hope for against the rapidly approaching sandstorm.

Sharif scooped Pamela into his arms and urged Bryna to follow. Dully she obeyed. He laid the women in the middle of the circle of camels, then he lay between their prone bodies and spread his thick cloak over them just as the fury of the sandstorm exploded around them, blocking out the sun.

The wind howled and cutting pieces of sand beat against Sharif’s back. Shielded by the oddly uncomplaining camels, the three people huddled for hours, unable to move. Sharif wished he could give each of the women a drink from the water skin lashed to a saddle nearby, but he could not move against the raging wind. He comforted himself that he had reached them before the storm because surely they would have been killed.

When the wind died, Sharif pushed himself up with effort, displacing the heavy sand that had piled on his back. Beneath him Bryna stirred, blinking sand-crusted eyes. He helped her sit up, bracing her back against the flanks of one of the couched camels. When Pamela did not move, Sharif brushed the sand from her face and examined her. One arm cocked beneath her head and the damaged side of her face buried in the sand, the dead girl looked like a peacefully sleeping child.

Silently Bryna took Pamela’s head in her lap while Sharif retrieved the water skin. Absently her hand went to the dead girl’s hair and stroked it. The movement stopped when Sharif brought water to her. He allowed her to sip, stopping her when she became too greedy. Bryna’s grasping hands followed the bag as he drew it away from her mouth.

He tilted Bryna’s chin so she looked at him. No glimmer of recognition lit her stunned eyes. “You must eat something if you are also to drink,” he told her kindly, handing her some dates.

She accepted them disinterestedly with her free hand, then the stroking motion began again with the other. She ate the dates, staring vacantly, while Sharif dug a grave for the dead girl.

He wrapped Pamela’s small limp body in a blanket and laid it in the grave. To his surprise, Bryna did not protest, even when he began to cover it. She sat motionless, staring off into the distance as if still watching for rescuers to appear on the horizon. Kneeling beside Pamela’s grave, the man quoted the Fatiha.

Then Sharif went to his wife’s grave and knelt for a moment there as well. When he finished, the sheik washed his hands in the sand and returned to Bryna. Looking at her closely, he noticed for the first time the blood that stained her
thobe,
and his face blanched. He took her hand and drew her up to stand beside him. Murmuring comfortingly, he lifted her
thobe
to reveal her legs. Blood stained either thigh, but none of it was fresh. Praise Allah, she did not seem to be injured. Swaying on her cut, blood-encrusted feet, she stared with vacant blue eyes at the horizon, unblinking despite the scarlet brilliance of the setting sun.

It was evident the girl could not ride alone on the camel he had saddled for her, but Sharif did not wish to stay in this place of the dead. He would take her to the oasis, where the deaths that had occurred were acts of righteous vengeance, not of evil as in this place. The sheik mounted his camel, lifting Bryna in front of him.

Through her thin dress, her body felt stiff and wooden against his. The girl said nothing, did not cry as they rode through the twilight. Finally she dozed, starting and jerking uneasily against his chest.

When they reached the oasis, Sharif dismounted and hobbled the camels near some sparse grazing. Then he carried the sleeping girl to a spot beside the pool. A wave of cold rage washed over him as he looked down at her, cradled in his strong arms.

Bryna’s head fell back limply, revealing a faint pulse under the ugly bruise on her temple. Her parted lips were cracked and swollen and crusted with dark blood. A purple bruise ran across her cheekbone and merged with gray smudges under her closed eyes. Her chest rose and fell unevenly as she breathed, the only sign that she lived.

She was burning with fever, Sharif realized. To immerse her in the pool would bring her fever down immediately, but night, so cold in the desert, was approaching, and she would be chilled in damp clothes. Instead he made a pallet for her and stretched her inert body on it. Then, tenderly, he removed her clothing and bathed her with cooling water.

The first swipes with the cloth removed the crusty layer of sand that had filtered into her clothes during the storm. Bryna lay motionless, unaware of his devoted care. The golden locket at the base of her slender throat glinted in the moonlight. Her smooth alabaster body looked as if it were carved from stone, but her skin, hot to the touch, was also soft. Momentarily Sharif wondered what it would be like to love such a woman, cursing softly as his manhood exhibited a life of its own. He must put those thoughts away if he was to tend her.

Gingerly he sponged her body and covered her with a blanket, then he went to unsaddle the camels. It was the first time in his life he had not tended the animals first.

While he gathered firewood, he heard Bryna cry out in a nightmare, and instantly he was back at her side. Tears seeped from her closed eyes, and her breathing was ragged. He allowed her to cling to him in her delirium until her fright had passed, then he built a small fire, cleansed himself in the pool, and prayed his evening prayers. While he ate, chewing slowly and thoughtfully, he watched her as she slept.

During the night, Bryna’s fever broke and her blankets were drenched with perspiration. Sharif fetched his own rug for a new pallet and placed her on it, covering her with fresh blankets to keep her warm. Going to the belongings of the men he had killed in battle, he found another rug and a skimpy blanket and lay down on the ground next to the girl.

Despite his own exhaustion and pain, Sharif slept lightly, awakening at the first hint of dawn. When he awakened Bryna, she looked at him blankly. She still did not seem to recognize him, but at least she showed no fear. She seemed simply to have no will of her own. She was like a child as he dressed her. She cooperated, allowing him to brush the tangles from her hair.

He gave her a drink of water, then a piece of bread and some dates. At first she held the food in lax hands on her lap. Sharif tore off a piece of the bread and put it into her mouth. Mechanically she began to chew. Soon she raised the hand containing a date and ate, but she seemed oblivious of the fact that she ate at all. When she had finished, she patiently allowed herself to be led to the camels and pulled up in front of Sharif again.

They rode northward all day, stopping frequently so Bryna could rest. Today her body was not rigid. She nestled against Sharif’s chest and slept without fear.

The next day was much like the first, until they reached the edge of the Rub al Khali in the evening and Sharif began to see familiar landmarks.

During the ride to Riyadh, he worried constantly whether Bryna would ever be well again. What had her captors done to her? She did not seem to care whether she lived or died.

The man’s arms tightened around her as they rode. He cared, and because he cared, Bryna would live. She must. Because, Sharif admitted to himself at last, he loved her. He loved her as he had never loved another.

Sharif rode wearily through the fertile irrigated plain that surrounded Riyadh to the monotonous drone of water pumps, arriving in the city mere hours after his men returned from their successful raid. The Selims had ridden into the sheik’s huge city compound, singing a victory song and driving their herds, plus a dozen more camels, before them. Then the warriors had awaited their leader’s arrival as anxiously as the women and children. The women trilled and the men cheered when Sharif’s camel trotted through the arched gate.

The sheik was touched by their jubilation, but Bryna, slumped in front of him in the saddle, did not seem aware of the din that went on around her.

Dismounting, Sharif answered the questions with which his people bombarded him.

“Where is Latifeh and the Inglayzi?” a man called to him.

“Dead,” he grunted, striding purposefully toward the women’s quarters with Bryna in his arms. “But do not fear,” he called over his shoulder. “Their deaths have been avenged.”

“Praise Allah, blood for blood,” the fervent shout went up.

“What did those sons of dogs do to this poor girl?” someone else demanded.

“Yes, was she touched by those swine?”

“No,” Sharif shouted, swinging around in the doorway to the harem to face his people. With the girl held protectively in his arms, his bearing was proud, almost challenging. “I reached Bryna bint Blaine before they could harm her. Now she is home where she belongs, and no one will harm her again.”

Then the sheik closed the door on the celebration and took his love upstairs to await the hakim.

Sharif sat beside Bryna’s bed while she slept, peacefully now, although she often thrashed restlessly in the throes of a nightmare.

Alhamdillah!
how blessed he was to have found her alive, the man thought gratefully. He did not know what had occurred in the desert, but God grant that her mind should be untouched by the evil she had seen. Faisal, his hakim, seemed to think there was hope.

Somberly the sheik remembered the tense interview with his old friend a few days before. “You told the others this girl was not touched, Sharif,” Faisal had begun hesitantly, “but...”

“But I lied,” Sharif stated flatly. “I did not know whether they had harmed her, but I feared it was so.”

“I cannot tell. She does not seem to have been treated roughly, but she is not a virgin, Do not look so stricken, my friend. It is not unusual among women who have dwelt in the desert. It is a hard life.”

“Will...will she be all right?”

“I believe she will survive,” the doctor assured him. “She is a strong young woman. But, Sharif, she may never be the same again.”

“Was she driven mad?” the sheik asked fearfully.

“I do not believe so. But some things are as bad as madness. She may never have children. Only Allah can say.”

“I do not care,” he said, putting behind him years of training. Moslems were taught to desire children over all things. “You must help her. I love her.”

“That is as I feared,” Faisal said gently. “What will you do, Sharif? Marry her, knowing what you know?”