Sheba. Part 34

Cunningham shook his head stubbornly. 'Got to rest.' He took a wavering step forward and started to buckle at the knees. As Kane grabbed him, his feet slipped in the soft sand and they went over the edge together, rolling over and over in a cloud of dust to the bottom.

Cunningham lay with limbs sprawled, and Kane dropped to his knees beside him and forced a little water between his teeth. Jamal appeared on top of the dune and moved down to join them. He laid Ruth Cunningham beside her husband and looked at Kane enquiringly.

Kane explained about the plane and something glowed briefly in the Somali's eyes. At that moment Cunningham groaned and sat up. 'Where am I? What happened?'

His voice sounded weak and lifeless as if it didn't really belong to him any more.

Kane lifted him to his feet and slipped an arm around his shoulders. 'Don't worry,' he said soothingly. 'We haven't got far to go now. Not far at all.'

He turned and nodded to Jamal, who picked up the woman again, and they started to walk.

It took them just over an hour to reach the plane, and by the time they were there, Cunningham had become a dead weight on Kane's arm. He lowered the Englishman to the ground and dragged him under the shade of the wing and propped his back against the side of the plane. He left Jamal to handle the woman and climbed into the cabin.

He found the jerry can with no trouble and his hands were trembling as he carried it out. Something swirled inside so he quickly pulled off the metal stopper and lifted the can to his lips. It tasted terrible, warm and brackish, but it was liquid and there seemed to be four or five pints of the stuff.

He crawled under the wings and poured a little of the water over Ruth Cunningham's face. She groaned and then her eyes opened slowly. The skin was stretched tightly over her flesh and her lips had cracked in several places. He gently raised her head and poured a little water into her mouth.

She coughed and some of it seemed to trickle down her chin, and then she seemed to come alive and her hands reached out for the can, forcing the opening against her lips as she took a long swallow.

She leaned back with a sigh and Kane moved across to Cunningham. The Englishman seemed more himself and managed a weak smile. 'Sorry I was such a nuisance. What happens now?'

Kane indicated the jerrycan. 'You'll find about four pints of water in there,' he said. 'It should keep you going through the rest of the day.'

Cunningham frowned slightly. 'What about you and Jamal?'

'We'll carry on,' Kane said. 'We haven't got any choice. You and your wife can't walk any further. If we stay here with you, we'll all die. If either Jamal or myself gets through, we'll get help to you as soon as possible.'

There was silence for a moment and then the Englishman smiled faintly. 'As you say, there really isn't any choice.' He held out his hand. There doesn't seem to be much more I can say except good luck and what the h.e.l.l are you waiting for?'

For a second longer, they clasped hands, and then Kane moved towards Jamal. He opened the water-bottle and swallowed half its contents. He handed it across to the Somali, who emptied it and tossed it away in one long easy throw. For a moment or two they looked into each other's eyes and then they started to walk. As they topped a small rise, Kane looked back once, and then he took a deep breath and plunged down the other side.

The sun was a living thing that had somehow become a part of him so that they were one, and marched as one. It was impossible to judge how much time had elapsed since they had left the plane, because time had ceased to exist and had no meaning.

A man couldn't walk in breastplate and greaves. It was impossible. Better to discard them. The helmet had gone a long time before and now he marched with only his sword to weigh him down, the short, stabbing sword of the Roman soldier, his riding cloak folded across his head to keep the sun from his brain. He had to keep going, had to get back to the General with his report. Duty came first, as it always must with a soldier, but there was another reason. The girl - the girl with the dark hair and milk-white skin and the mouth that was a cool well. Almost as cool as the sea off the Piraeus at Athens where he had swum as a boy, diving down into the green depths, twisting amongst the fishes, scaring them away in great glittering clouds and rising slowly to the surface in a spiral of bubbles.

He fell forward on his face. For a little while he stayed there on his knees like an animal, and then he was jerked to his feet and a hand slapped him across the face. Jamal held him steady, eyes staring anxiously inio his. Kane tried to speak and found that he couldn't. He nodded several times and started forward again.

The effort to march became a physical agony, a pain that blossomed, spreading through his entire body. And then it didn't seem to exist any longer. Now, there was only a small, burning core inside that refused to let him lie down and die.

The wind lifted into his face, blowing aside his head-cloth and the sun cut sharply against the unprotected flesh, and then he was on his face in the sand and Jamal was lifting him again. Later, he was lying across the Somali's broad shoulders, and he frowned and shook his head, trying to think clearly, but it was no good. Nothing was any good now, and he lapsed into a dark vacuum of heat.

There was sand in his mouth and his fingers clawed at the ground, but this time no hand lifted him in its strong grip. This time he was on his own. Utterly and finally alone, andjamal had gone.

He would never get back to that girl now, the girl with the white limbs and the cool mouth, the girl he had needed all his life to fuse with his being so that they became a single ent.i.ty, existing together, savouring life to the full in the only way it can be savoured - together.

Was he Gavin Kane or was he Alexias the Greek, centurion of the Tenth Legion, and who was the one with the white arms and the cool mouth? There was no answer. No answer on top of earth.

The water spilled across his face with the shock of a physical blow, trickling down into his mouth, causing him to cough violently. A strong hand raised him and his teeth gripped the metal rim of a water-bottle. He swallowed greedily and doubled over as cramp twisted his guts.

He opened his swollen, red-rimmed eyes and found Jordan supporting him across his knees. In the background a truck was parked.

Kane opened his mouth and managed to speak. 'Back there in the desert,' he croaked. 'Ruth Cunningham and her husband. You'd better get to them quick.'

Jordan nodded rea.s.suringly. 'Don't worry about a thing. It's all been taken care of. Two of my men have already gone for them in my other truck, with the big

Somali to guide them.' He grinned. 'That Jamal is quite a guy.'

But Kane heard no more. His eyes closed as his body twisted in a great shuddering sigh of relief and darkness flooded over him.

SEVENTEEN.

HE OPENED HIS EYES slowly. For a moment his mind was a complete blank and he struggled up on one elbow, panic moving inside him, and then he remembered and lay back with an audible sigh of relief.

He was lying on a camp bed underneath a low awning suspended on four poles. Two trucks were parked near by and there was a tent pitched several yards away.

As Kane moved, Jamal, who was squatting at the end of the bed, got to his feel and leaned over him. As their eyes met, a huge smile appeared on the Somali's face, and Kane held out his hand silently.

Jamal took it and the smile faded from his face. For a brief moment, there was a feeling between them that had not existed before, and then he turned away and crossed to Jordan, who was bending over a spirit-stove in the centre of the camp.

Jordan came towards Kane, a pot in one hand and a plastic cup in the other. 'Coffee, sir?' he said with a grin.

Kane swung his legs to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. He felt curiously weak and light-headed, and somehow, everything was touched with a slight tinge of unreality and blurred at the edges.

He swallowed some of the coffee and shivered as it burned its way down into his stomach. 'I have a feeling I shouldn't really be here.'

Jordan nodded. 'That's putting it mildly.'

Kane peered out from under the awning. They were camped in the foothills of the mountains, and the desert rolled into the distance before them. 'Where are we?'

'About ten or twelve miles from Shabwa,' Jordan answered. 'I made camp here in a hurry because I didn't know what shape Cunningham and his wife were in.'

'How are they?' Kane asked quickly.

Jordan offered him a cigarette. 'Slightly dehydrated, but otherwise okay. I've given them both a sedative. They're asleep in the tent.'

Kane drew the smoke from the cigarette deep into his lungs. 'Lucky for all of us that you met up with Jamal. What were you doing so far out in the desert?'

'I've been looking for you for the past three days,' Jordan said. 'When Marie failed to return in the truck she'd borrowed, the driver waited until the following morning, and then came and told me. I found the plane yesterday, but no sign of the truck. I figured it must have broken down somewhere on the return journey.

We were doing our best to search the area between here and the plane when we came across the Somali.'

Kane glanced across at Jamal, who squatted by the spirit-stove, eating boiled rice from a bowl, closely watched by Jordan's men. 'I guess we owe our lives to him.'

'You can say that again,' Jordan said, 'but how about filling me in on this whole thing? Where have you been since the plane crashed, and what's happened to Marie?'

Briefly and with as much economy as possible, Kane told him of the events of the past four days. When he had finished, Jordan shook his head. 'Skiros a n.a.z.i - it's the most fantastic thing I ever heard.'