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CHAPTER SEVEN
Days later, they’d left yet another village where Tariq had a bath prepared for her. Where they’d shared a lodge for a badly slept night after the usual gathering in the village’s hall.
The caravan weaved through rocky hills elevating from the sandy ground. Big rocks on the way, made the caravan serpent around them. The sun already tilted towards the west when Tariq gave orders to settle camp. Too late to reach the next village or to pass the difficult terrain ahead. So, Tariq decided to stop, as a clearing opened among the rocks and the hills. He hoped it to be safe enough, the geographical setting not the friendliest, he worried.
She’d started to understand several words in Arabic and even managed to communicate with the women in the villages they’d overnighted. She understood, thus, when Tariq announced the setting for camp. And made her camel sit and dismounted, taking the sac and water skin with her. In a dark brown set of tunic, pantaloons and veil, she praised herself for being a quick learner with the language and camel riding. From each village they passed, Tariq got her new attires embroidered with local typical patterns, as she began to notice, and deemed beautiful.
Her sac, containing her new clothes, thudded on the tent’s rug in the exact moment Mustafa screamed: Thieves! The spot proved perfect for a raid, just as Tariq had feared. Her heart skipped to overdrive while she hurried to the tent’s entrance to peep through the canvas.
Up in the hills, men in white garbs, faces covered, lay on the ground holding muskets. They had horses, which meant they didn’t live far, since the animals needed ready available water, she concluded.
Tariq walked in large strides towards their tent. It opened brusquely and his hard gaze found her. “You stay here.”
She wished to argue the dry order, but he’d swivelled out in a half second. Did he think she was just a piece of merchandise to be moved and ordered? How annoying! She could help, she’d say. Her father had taught her to shoot varied types of fire arms, she huffed.
Lucinda peeped again and saw Tariq’s men taking muzzles, a model of riffle, and positioning themselves to fight. So Tariq’s artillery in better condition than the thieves’, she mused. This modern muzzle held a new technology in which fit several bullets. It did not require recharging after each shot like the older ones.
Without pondering twice, she decided to act. The clearing where they stood cramped, but the sun hadn’t set yet. The outlaws might detect her. The best way out should be to creep under the canvas, behind the tent. And that’s what she did. Clawing her way to the wooden crates, she grabbed a muzzle and a box of bullets. A heavy riffle which she’d learned to hold with the stock on her right shoulder. Heart thundering, she hid behind a tall rock, loaded her muzzle and got prepared. Alright, she knew how to shoot, out in the country, or in a fox hunt, maybe. But a war, a fight against people in the desert? Well, that was different. She could get shot. Tariq, too. Oh, dear! The possibility made her certain she must do this. And never asked herself why.
With his muzzle, Tariq used another rock as cover, and assessed the situation. Cold fear coursed him for the first time in his life. Obviously, this situation did not figure as strange for him, who grew up accompanying his father in caravans. But now he had a different factor to consider. Lucinda. He would never forgive himself if something happened to her. His heart raced at the idea. Life would be unbearable if she… He interrupted the train of thought. Protection of her became his priority. Just like during the storm.
Around him, his men stood in readiness. He spotted a dark brown cloth flapping in the wind. Damn woman! Delicate hands grabbed a muzzle as if it belonged to her. She could shoot? The newness of a woman being able to do it so unthinkable, blind rage and a red-hot fear for her safety shrouded his common sense. No time to go to her and put her in her place, literally and figuratively. Blast her! Gunpowder exploded on the other side, on the hills. His eyes snapped to the place from where the sound came. A shot of their own followed, and a scream from one of the covered-faces.
Their opponents lingered not too far way, Tariq observed. The man on the hill dropped the musket and lifted his bleeding hand towards his horrified eyes.
Tariq cast a glance at his men. Nothing. At her. Her muzzle in the act of lowering back on the ground, upstanding. She’d shot the man’s hand? He turned to the hills. Another shot, directed at him, missed.
He was going to repay the favour, but a second stampede crushed his ears, a new scream on the other side. The woman was impossible. Her strategy seemed to prevent the hill men to go on attacking, without harming anyone. A sharp mind, he’d give her that, even if he had an overwhelming impulse to go there and twist her delectable neck.
Not bad, Lucinda celebrated after the second shot. A cold shiver ran through her when she devised the shot directed at Tariq. She adjusted her veil about her face and kept her attention focused. A third shot from the hills ricocheted on her rock. The caravan men retributed around her. Quickly, she came from behind the rock, pointed her muzzle at the place it had come from and fired. A scream, a musket dropped and a bleeding right hand. One of the men shouted on the hills–a woman–she understood. Too bad, her mind declared, and hid back behind the rock.
A second man shouted up the rocks and the entire group mounted their horses and fled. Everyone in the caravan stayed put, waiting for the horses to disappear in the distance. When it was safe, everyone neared Tariq, celebrating the ridding of the danger.
Of course, nobody came to greet her. She put back the gun and bullets in the wooden box and walked back to the tent. Good the whole thing didn’t last much.
She had barely entered the tent when Tariq stormed in, tying the canvas. His expression hard, his cognac eyes darting fire. “What do you suppose you were doing out there?” He’d stopped, his legs apart, his arms crossed.
“Helping, naturally.” She strived to keep a detached tone, even if the sight of him would always shake her insides.
“Oh, a woman skirmisher.” She didn’t miss the too silky tone in his deep voice.
“Yes, my father taught me about guns.” With a shrug, she unwrapped her veil.
His perusal watched as the veil uncovered her dried-dates hair in a bun. “How liberal.” He drawled, his cognac beams darkening as if she had stripped all her clothing. Plus, her rebellious demeanour aroused him; the tableau robbed clear reasoning from his poor self.
“What’s wrong with that?” Undisguised defiance streaked her voice.
“I told you to stay here!” An edgy command. Her pepper-mint eyes squinted, chin up, arms crossed as his.
“And who are you to command me?” Her chin shot higher.
The question came all too rhetoric, but it intensified his already dark rage. “I am the leader of this caravan!”
“Well, you are not my father, you’re not my betrothed or even my—” She wanted to say ‘husband’, but the concept remained so foreign. Saying it out loud would be like opening Pandora’s box.
His eyebrows joined in irritation “You could have gotten hurt, stubborn woman!” Mentioning other men made his guts twist with something he couldn’t name. But the twisting had a sour tang.
“But I didn’t.” Her hands flew to her waist, making her breasts lift under her tunic. “And I sent them away.”
