Falconer's Quest (29 page)

The sun was a blazing orb directly in front of them. They were no longer walking south, but west now, and a sliver toward north. The heat was all consuming, and they seemed to have moved into a blazing lake of fire. Still they continued on.

Night came in desert suddenness. Falconer saw no more than the next step and trusted others to guide his feet. The reasons for their forward speed were no longer clear. Instead, a jangle of images came and went in his fevered brain. He was back upon the fortress wall. Then he was down in the dungeon tunnels. He was trapped inside a cell of his own. The sky overhead was filled with a river of sparks. The fire raged to his left, his right. Still they walked.

The moon rose, though Falconer did not lift his head to study it. The desert beneath his feet became a shade of pewter and felt cool through his boots. They turned and headed north. Falconer knew because the moon’s silver shadow shifted.

“Wait here.”

The words were spoken by Wadi. Falconer was too drained to comment over the silent man having spoken twice in the same day. Or perhaps it was not the same day at all. Falconer dropped to the desert floor. He felt as much as saw the girl slip into his lap. Someone handed him a waterskin. Falconer drank, then fitted the nozzle to the girl’s mouth. He realized her lips were chapped and broken. He wanted to tell her to use salve upon them before they blistered. But he was asleep before the words were formed.

He had scarcely drawn a single breath of slumber before someone was nudging him. He wanted to protest, to beg them to leave him be. But his mind obeyed against his body’s silent protest. He lifted Kitty from his lap into the saddle. She whimpered. He agreed.

Only then did he realize that he could see her. And not by silvery moonlight.

Dawn had come.

A sliver of his mind awoke him enough to understand why Soap and Wadi and Nebo were urging them forward. He saw them force a weakly protesting Byron onto the mule’s saddle blanket. He wanted to tell the man that they had to be hidden before daylight arrived. They were in bandit country. They must find a place out of sight. But he discovered he could not speak. Though his mouth worked, the words did not come. So Falconer did the only thing he could think of. Which was to wind the horse’s reins around his left wrist and begin walking.

Aimed straight north now, they headed toward hills that rose like ocher teeth. The desert was rock strewn and slanted. The horse stumbled on the rocky slope, but caught itself and did not fall. The stallion whickered a soft protest, no doubt as weary as the men. Falconer tried to remember the last time he had known a decent night’s sleep. Was it two nights ago? Three? It did not matter. He had the strength for one thing only, making the next step. And the one after that.

They climbed more steeply now. Wadi moved up beside him. Pointed ahead and to the left. Falconer nodded, though he could not truly say he saw what Wadi indicated. His task remained the next step.

The sun now was strong. When had it risen? How long had they walked in full daylight? Falconer could not say.

Then the horse neighed, a single sound, and pulled upon the reins so that Falconer realized the beast was moving ahead of him. Which could only mean one of two things. Either the horse smelled water. Or…Falconer could not think of the other reason.

Then they entered a place of shade. The gloom fell upon Falconer like a wash of comfort and ease. The rock beneath his feet was gone, replaced by sand, whose coolness rose around him and entered his bones. He breathed a great sigh and lifted his gaze. The cave was a hollow running back fifteen full paces. The walls were laced with the strands of ocher and orange and black of a wind-carved grotto. Falconer stood in a stupor of fatigue and watched Wadi pull the lass from the horse. He accepted a waterskin from a man he did not see. He drank. He cast himself down upon the sand.

He breathed once. And was gone.

When Falconer awoke, the night was a desert collage. The moon painted the empty reaches with a smooth, silvery brush. The hills were pearl monuments with faces of impenetrable shadow. The wind came and went in regular breaths, as if the earth itself slumbered quietly. Falconer moved to crouch by the saddlebags, and ate and drank his fill. As he started to rise, he noticed that Byron’s eyes were partly open. He regarded Falconer in the manner of one trained to be wary.

Falconer slipped over and knelt beside him. The man groped his way up slightly, so that he reclined against the cave’s back. Falconer asked, “Have you eaten?”

“My belly feels tight as a drum.”

“That is very good. We will need to push hard when we leave. Store up as much now as you possibly can. Especially water.”

Byron mumbled something, the words almost emerging, then slipping away unformed.

“Say your piece. I am your father’s friend and ally. Perhaps someday you might choose to see me the same way.” When Byron still did not speak, Falconer went on, “Well, then. When you’re ready. There is something I wish to say to you. Now is as good a time as any. Back in the dungeon I said…well, I said something.”

Byron’s words were a soft moan. “That all this is my fault.”

“Aye. And I want to apologize for speaking as I did.”

“But it’s true.”

Though Falconer wanted to deny it, to try and ease the evident pain, he could not weave a falsehood into this moment. “Byron, we all make mistakes. I have made errors that make your own vanish like shadows at midnight. No, don’t protest. What I tell you is harsh and cutting truth. But this I know, and this I want to leave with you now. Our Lord can do miracles. If you allow, God will take these misdeeds and the wounds they have caused you and others, and weave them into a cloak of hope and purpose.”

Byron wiped his eyes. “That is impossible.”

“No. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but you are wrong. I could give you examples from my own life. But I don’t need to. It has already happened. To you. In the here and now.” Falconer pointed at Kitty. “Had you not been imprisoned, we would never have known of this young one’s abduction. I tremble at the thought of what might have happened to her had we not been drawn in to look for you.”

Falconer watched Byron’s gaze move over and digest the thought of having aided in her release. “No matter what you carry, no matter how foul the burden, God will heal your wounds and turn your dross to gold. I stand as living testimony of this miraculous power.”

Falconer rose to his feet. “Come join us, if you have a will.”

When Byron remained seated against the cave wall, Falconer turned and started for where the others sprawled by the entrance. He had the sense that these men had been speaking of him.

Nebo asked, “The young lass still sleeps?”

“Aye.”

“The man, he woke once. He came out and looked at the desert for a time. He ate and he drank. Then he went back and slept.”

Soap offered, “He’s nothing but skin and rags and bones.”

Falconer and the others turned at soft footfalls in the cave sand. Byron approached hesitantly. Soap made room on his rocky perch and said, “Come rest yourself, son.”

When Byron was seated and had been passed the waterskin, Sands the whaler said, “They kept us in a cell for a time. Three months, best I could reckon it. When they let us out, I couldn’t get over a world without walls.”

“Or chains,” his younger brother said, and rubbed at the sore on his left ankle.

Falconer hefted the waterskin at Wadi’s feet and drank. Bernard turned to Nebo and said, “Now’s your chance. You may as well speak to him as you did to us. I too seek answers to the questions you formed.”

Nebo shifted on the bench beside Falconer. “Your manner with the two prisoners. It was…”

Falconer set the skin down on the earth between their feet. He settled his back against the wall. And waited.

“Curious,” Nebo finally decided. “The warrior—he plans and fights and leads. Then he gentles two frightened ones he never seen before. They know him not. Yet sound of his voice quiets fears, ease them to rest.”

Falconer waited until he was certain Nebo was done. “A man can only give to others what he has gained for himself.”

Nebo drummed deep in his chest, a distinctly African sound of agreement.

“Most of my life, I lived only with hate and fear. And pain so deep I could not name it,” Falconer added.

“And you fight,” Nebo said.

“I fought and won. Yet my victories were hollow. The prize only brought more of the same.”

“So you seek your God.”

“Jesus Christ is His name.”

“He speak to you, this Jesus?”

“Not in words. He did not need to.”

“Yet when you speak of Him, I hear call of one friend naming another.”

Falconer thumped his chest. “The love you find in me is His. The peace. The victory without anger. The ability to find hope even when I am immersed in the sorrow of loss. The prize beyond value. All His.”

Nebo straightened fully in his seat. A warrior coming to full alert. “I would know this God.”

From Soap’s other side, Wadi spoke softly. “And I.”

“And the Lord Jesus,” Falconer replied, “would know you both.”

Nebo asked, “What is the prize required of me?”

“There is none, if by prize you mean dowry or sacrifice.”

Wadi leaned forward to examine Falconer.

“It is required that you declare your realization that your ways have not brought you where you wish to go. That your choices have led to wrong paths and worse actions. That you ask Him to be the center of your heart and life.”

“This act.” Nebo stared into the soft gray of a very young daybreak. “It seem too small.”

“That is because, brother, the true act has already been made.”

Chapter 34

They waited through the day with the patience of men who had known other battles. They ate and drank everything they carried, storing fodder like desert beasts. Every time the two saved from the fortress dungeons awoke, they too were urged to eat and drink. Byron and Kitty did not join with them, but neither did they hold themselves apart. The men made them welcome in the calm, silent way of the desert.

The men talked without barriers between them. With the moonrise they would be leaving the cave’s safety and travel north. Between them and the sea was a region none of them knew and enemies they could not foresee. Beyond that lay the sea and no guarantee the ship would be there to meet them. The forces of Tunis would blame the ship for the attack and destruction of their port. And if any ships could be found to transport the Tunisian warriors, they would strike in return. All the risks remained unspoken, but they lay heavy upon the men. And this burden drew them tightly together as friends for life.

The whalers spoke of their cold-water home and of loved ones who had by now given them up for lost. Nebo spoke of a village burned by slavers and a home he still visited in his dreams. Wadi alone did not speak. Instead he listened, and twice the fierce warrior was seen using his burnoose to rub his face. Falconer spoke of his quest to free slaves, of the gold mine and of how it had helped finance the secret project, the Underground Railroad for slaves in America.

They prayed.

As the heat rose with the sun, they retreated into the cave. Before Wadi entered the cool stone recess, however, he used a branch to brush the sand upon the ledge, replacing any evidence of their presence with the random designs of wind and time. Nebo shook his head over his friend’s caution but said nothing.

By midafternoon, back in the cave where the animals were tethered, Sands, the whaler captain, was describing what it was like to hunt the world’s largest beasts. He stood to describe the power it took to hurl a harpoon. Rufus, his young brother, stood guard by the cave mouth. He turned and whistled once, a quick warble.

The cave instantly went silent. They watched as Rufus slipped deeper to the side into the wall’s shadow. With one finger he pointed to Falconer and motioned him forward.

Falconer and Wadi and Nebo moved forward at a crouch.

“There,” the young whaler murmured.

Falconer heard Wadi hiss an indrawn breath. Stretched out along the desert floor was a long train of camels and horses.

Soap moved up behind them. “Caravan?”

Falconer shook his head. “Two outriders ahead, two behind.”

“Bedu,” Nebo agreed. “Hunting.”

Wadi lifted one arm. He moved a finger along the descent to their left. Then the finger paused. Directing them to a stone, a cluster of desert sage.

Falconer saw it then. A flicker of motion.

Instantly he gestured to the others. Together they slipped back, all but Wadi, who took up the same branch he had used upon the ledge and began sweeping the cave floor. Back and forth, his motions almost unhurried despite the danger.

They gathered up their provisions and packs and bedrolls, Byron and Kitty watching in tense panic. Falconer could do nothing about that now. He pushed them deep into the alcove, behind the mules. He settled a waterskin between them, then hurried forward. Nebo and Soap and Sands had all taken hold of the animals’ reins. The men stroked their muzzles and gentled their flanks. Wadi continued his slow sweeping motions. Falconer resisted the urge to hiss at the man, to hurry him along. Wadi knew the danger better than he.