Drakafic: Dastam râ begir.
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Battlehymn Republic
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Notes:
1. This is all happening in 1936.
2. There are generally two kinds of Drakian units in the area of the Arabian Peninsula. Really sucky garrison units run by blacklisted sorts of officers, and highly elite units commanded by Security Directorate professionals like Beth's.
3. Because of the border tensions with the USSR that erupt into a series of border battles in this time period, several years before the invasion of the USSR, equipment is being concentrated in Central Asia. That means that not only are the Drakian troops in Arabia second-line Janissaries but they're also underequipped.
4. The reason for that is basically that with the border conflicts in Central Asia combined with the major recovery/buildup cycle which is to last for roughly fifteen years, the Draka are at a low point in their secondary theatres as they stockpile, prepare, and generally ready themselves for the Big Push while simultaneously launching those probing attacks.
5. Wabar is real in every detail except that obviously a city has never been built there, though the methods of building it are not all that different from those used to build Petra, and the water collection not altogether different, either. The Bedouin are helped by Gunpowder, however, which the Nabateans did not have.
1. This is all happening in 1936.
2. There are generally two kinds of Drakian units in the area of the Arabian Peninsula. Really sucky garrison units run by blacklisted sorts of officers, and highly elite units commanded by Security Directorate professionals like Beth's.
3. Because of the border tensions with the USSR that erupt into a series of border battles in this time period, several years before the invasion of the USSR, equipment is being concentrated in Central Asia. That means that not only are the Drakian troops in Arabia second-line Janissaries but they're also underequipped.
4. The reason for that is basically that with the border conflicts in Central Asia combined with the major recovery/buildup cycle which is to last for roughly fifteen years, the Draka are at a low point in their secondary theatres as they stockpile, prepare, and generally ready themselves for the Big Push while simultaneously launching those probing attacks.
5. Wabar is real in every detail except that obviously a city has never been built there, though the methods of building it are not all that different from those used to build Petra, and the water collection not altogether different, either. The Bedouin are helped by Gunpowder, however, which the Nabateans did not have.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
Posted for the Duchess - she wrote this, not me, so don't give me credit.
Part Six: Across the 'Rub al-Khali
The horses had long been abandoned. They had been left to their own devices; the bedouin could not stand to shoot such animals, prized by Muhammad and praised by Allah. They were in the sea, now, the dry sea. They had not seen firm ground in a week, and only the occasional track of gazelle gave hint that any sort of animal could, and did, survive in this incredible clime. A few had been shot earlier on, but none now, though the hardy shrubs that they ate still in places clung to the leeward side of the dunes. Even those were thinning and the sight of them was a welcome break from the intense monotony of the place which seemed to coexist simultaneous to its harsh and pristine beauty.
The camels continued staunchly without water for a week's travel, but today they would have to be watered, or else risk their death from pushing them to exertion. There was enough water to force-feed the camels fully once more for another week of travel—two weeks if they were willing to sacrifice some of the animals by pushing them to the extremity of their endurance. What happened after that was known only to Henry St. John Philby and his men.
They were nothing if not efficient. Though blood was forbidden for consumption by the Quran, they all knew that it was not for Elizabeth. She had consented readily, and so, forgoing her portion of the rations for the past few days, had subsisted off of a sort of blood soup made from that which had been drained from the veins of the gazelle. Puran had watched in concern as Elizabeth seemed to grow even more emanciated over the journey, but there was little that could be done. She herself, at least, had more to lose—and had most certainly seen all that fat worn away in this endless weeks in the desert.
In the day, the desert drifted away in that tan monotony. At night it loomed dark and black, the dunes impossibly high around them, the stars in the sky their only succor, a beautiful and intense and immensely full canopy of those pricks of light. The sounds of the camels, always beasts willing to complain and test their masters, provided an interruption from the absolute isolation of the place that at times became welcome. A week adapting to riding the camels had left Puran as sure of herself in controling their tempermental ways as she had been with horses. Certainly the discomfort of so long in the saddle had long ago passed away, and the change in style of riding was if anything a break for the constant sameness of the journey that had gone before.
Deprivations blended into each other. The desert had imposed impossible hardships upon them and they had survived every one of them. al-Wabar seemed like a dream of the future, a promised escape from the monotony of the present, but it didn't seem to make the deprivation any harder to endure. Puran had found herself inured to it, toughened physically to a fine edge. All the fat, as it were, had been burned away in the desert and what was left was sinew, both physical and mental. Dreams, it turned out, required a great deal of sacrifice to approach reality.
They pressed on through the night, navigating by the stars. Elizabeth and Puran rode side-by-side, an occasional glance from the elder woman carrying with it an affection framed in starlight, those quiet looks under the canopy of the night as significant as any words. St. John Philby rode on ahead of them by a half-length. Elizabeth did not mind, seeming resigned, and yet as caring as she had ever been to Puran. It was very odd, perhaps a little uncomfortable for the young woman to think about. Perhaps it was just Elizabeth's health. Her condition was absolutely terrible, eating as little as she could, drinking as little as she could, seeming to survive more on willpower than anything else.
And yet... And yet... Even through the hunger-pangs, the pitted dryness of their skin and the desperate feeling that lingered in the throat, the need for more water, the body giving itself over gradually to the desert.. There was a sense of longing inside of Puran, a childlike eagerness at what she was seeing. The dream was painful but it was still a dream to be lived. One could not live until they had seen the sun push above the dunes in the perfect stillness of the desert morning, until they had seen the infinite space laid out around them, of the great expanse of sand that was lifeless, and yet traveled by the living. It was surely true that in its own way this was the most beautiful place on earth.
The camels huffed onward, over loose sand. The only trail which would ever exist here was the one above them, the lights which led them onward. Travel by night under those circumstances, nevermind the threat from the air in the day, became a perfectly natural act. It was as if the desert reversed the normal trend of human history; you work and travel in the day, and shelter from the uncertainty and danger that comes with the dark. In the desert, those fears were steadily stripped away, and Puran found herself thinking of the desert nights as the only sort of safety that she had ever known. In the day, there was thirst and sunstroke, sand-blindness and death from above. In the night, there was that comfortable, impossibly brilliant canopy of stars above, the earthy sound of the camel beneath her body, and always, always, the reassuring silhouette of Beth to her side.
Somehow, if one was to survive the 'Rub al-Khali at all, it seemed as though they, at some intangible point, stopped merely surviving there. They began to thrive there, in a spiritual way, even as physical toils wore them down. Kilometer after kilometer passed beneath the padding feet of the camels. The ride, at first unpleasant, became so repetitive as to destroy the discomfort—it was just another fact of the desert. At last, Puran reached for her canteen, the last swallow of water in it until they camped. Her skill had been impossible a month before; she drank without losing a drop even as she rode upon the camel. It refreshed and reinvigorated beyond all proportion, as though fresh water in the desert was endowed with some kind of magical property.
As she lived her eyes skyward and drained the canteen, Puran felt that surge of pleasant coolness through her. Her eyes opened just a bit wider, and as her head lowered and she replaced the canteen, a smile touched her lips. “I will share some of my food with you when we stop today, Beth.”
“You don't need to do that,” Beth replied quietly. Her voice was much more composed than Puran's, ironically, more used to speaking with little water upon her tongue. “I am getting enough for myself, and you should not let yourself weaken, my dear.”
“Even the Spartans ate bread with their blood soup,” Puran answered. She expected no reply, and that expectation was satisfied. Puran did not press; she had done what she could.
“Philby told me something last night,” Elizabeth spoke again after a while, her voice slow enough that the man ahead might not hear her. “He said that he believes this desert was once filled with lakes and rivers, and had much life in it, and was inhabited by ancient man. His evidence... Is convincing.”
Puran nearly wanted to shout. Shock provided her with energy that the lack of food otherwise denied her. “How could.. How could what is alive, become this?”
“Perhaps it is God's way of showing us that This To, Shall Pass Away.”
Puran understood, then, when Beth said that. She remained silent for a while, trying to think of a way to politely put it to the woman. In one sense she was rather afraid of speaking wrongly, still, and this issue seemed a very deep on. “Draka don't like to think that, do they?”
“No. No we don't. You..” A faint gesture all around. “One Caliphate follows another. Sassanids follow Achaemenids on the Persian throne. One Chinese Dynasty is succeeded by another. A few hundred years of brutal foreign occupation means nothing; another age will come, it always does, no matter how much suffering is involved in the death of the old and the birth of the new. But we Draka see ourselves as invincible. This desert.. Is the fossil of a living land. If the very life of the soil can pass away, what of a people? When we have been defeated there will be nothing left... I can see our farms crumbling away to sand.”
Puran looked on with a worried, pensive expression. It seemed as though Beth were still so wedded, trapped in her past, and sometimes it did frighten her so. “If it comes to pass, you will still live, and we will still have each other.”
The faintest hint of gray washed over the black of the stars, obscuring them slightly. Dawn was coming. Ahead, Philby barked out the order in Arabic for the column to halt. They had made good time that day, and Beth repeated it to her Druze, comforted by the familiarity of a military thing. Then she reined in, herself, Puran staying close beside her, their camels complaining loudly for a moment, stamping their feet, before they settled down. The sky brightened swiftly, and they had to move with some haste in establishing their camp.
For a minute, though, Beth remained in the saddle, looking out to the brightening sky. Then she turned to Puran and offered a weary smile. “You're right. We'll have each other, and we'll have the desert. It is not a bad place, after all.”
Puran was not sure which desert Beth was speaking about. But it didn't really matter, did it? The two dismounted and began to prepare their tent and the concealments for their camels for that day. Beyond, in the eastern sky, the sun rose and its flame threw the desert into a harsh and splendid relief.
Riyadh was a bizzare, frightful place. There was really no reason for anyone to be there at all. A single brave (or insane) plantation owner controlled the arable land; he had enough food for his family and to sell to the garrison, but little else, and slaves were constantly escaping or being found in the midst of plots, even the most docile ones brought up from the police zone. A few manufactures of certain trinkets and goods existed within the city walls; none were really profitable. It seemed as though the climate of seething rebellion and backstabbing treachery which permeated the whole land was infectious. In a way, it was.
Riyadh was the great coup of all the bedouin. Any man who wanted to prove himself in these dark days would try to bring back the severed genitals of one of the soldiers stationed there. Many were of course caught and were tortured to together, sometimes impaled and sometimes flayed alive, salt being rubbed into their bodies as the flesh was stripped away while they still lived. But many times, as well, the only evidence that one of the bedouin had snuck into the city was a mutilated corpse. This desert war, far from the minds of the contented citizens in more pacified realms, had gone beyond the description of 'no quarter'. It had become a sort of sadistic nightmare in which the desert winds stripped away the humanity of every combatant. Living beings were reduced to caricatures of evil, and there was no relief in sight.
Long ago the Dominate had abandoned trying to pacify the bedouin—this was now a war of extermination, one that was fought over a vast expanse of worthless desert. It seemed mad to every outside observer. There were few bedouin; they could have settled in the British protectorates easily enough and abandoned their harsh way of life. But that way of life was their whole existence, and its destruction was threatened by the mortal foes of their religion. The Draka, on the other hand, fought wars of conquest for the sake of conquest. Their whole meaning was wrapped up in taking and holding ground, in driving their enemies before them and slaughtering and enslaving them. They could not yield Riyadh, and the bedouin could not let them hold it.
In 1863 the Emir of Inner Asir had sent the following message to the Drakian authorities in Aden Colony. In a sense it summed up the conflict which was still now going on, and had been almost ceaseless since the Draka first took Aden more than a hundred and twenty years prior. It read like this:
“I wish to rule my own country and protect my own religion. If you will, send me a letter saying whether there is to be peace or war. I intend to go from Abha to Jezan, I warn you of this, for I wish to fight with you. I like war, and God willing, I will take many rifles from you, but you will get no rifles or ammunition from me. I have no forts, no houses, no country. I have no cultivated fields, no silver, no gold for you to take. I have nothing. If the country were cultivated or contained houses or property, it would be worth your while to fight. The country is all desert and that is of no use to you. If you want sand and stone, you can get them in plenty. There are also many ant-heaps. The sun is very hot. All you can get from me is war--nothing else.
“I have met your men in battle before, and I have killed them. We are greatly pleased at this. Our men who have fallen in battle have won paradise. God fights for us. We kill, and you kill. We fight by God's order. That is the truth. We ask for God's blessing. God is with me when I write this. If you wish for war, I am happy; if you wish for peace, I am content also. But if you wish for peace, go away from my country back to your own. If you wish for war, stay where you are. Hearken to my words. If you wish to fight, I will give you back your cannon I have taken for ammunition for my rifles, for I have no need of them. If you do not want it, I will sell them to someone else. Bend me a letter saying whether you desire war or peace.”
It was a task unenviable even by the depraved standards of the Domination. A task which ultimately fell to George Resmo, Chiliarch in command of the Riyadh Garrison. He was guarded by three slaves from a long line of servants of his family at all times; in his last will and testament he had written that they were to be put to death, and promised to change it only if he should leave Riyadh on the end of his tour alive and well. Plots, treachery, and madness were everywhere here, and he knew he become quite paranoid over them, but it was not to be helped. Dueling being legal in the Dominate, it was by far a frequent occurrence here where tempers were short and danger and suffering omnipresent. Fights in the garrison were an unending plague, and it did not seem that even the constant supply of slave-girls and young boys could distract the men from the climate of conspiracy and death.
The one advantage to the whole place was that if you were looking for a man who could kept secrets and murder without hesitation, he would probably be here. Chiliarch Resmo was in need of such a man, and he had found him. The engineer of the locomotive RS-59—567 was such a fellow. His name was Theodor van Campden and his escape—bringing a locomotive intact out of the grand Arab trap of a few weeks prior—had caught a lot of positive attention for him. But there was something else on his record that the Security Directorate chief for Riyadh (an even more thankless post than Resmo's) had noted. He had served in the same battalion as the lunatic traitor, Elizabeth Rikkesgard, during the Great War.
He had a reputation ever since then for getting in fights, and generally for indiscipline. First he was assigned to a secondary posting—the Army Railroad Corps—an humiliating task for a Drakian warrior, and then to the worst spot one could be assigned to in that corps, the Riyadh Railroad. It seemed that a fair number of sturmgruppen veterans of the Anatolian fighting had ended up like that; a curious thing to be sure, and perhaps a bit disturbing. The mental legacy of the bloodiest conflict in human history affected even the Citizens of the Dominate. But now he would have a chance to rise in the world again; for George Resmo had a very special task for him.
He started down to the lower levels of the fortress-palace of Riyadh which had been taken from Ibn Saud fifteen years prior. As he did, the Security Directorate chief—Johnathan Connor—stepped out of his office to try and catch him before he headed downstairs. “Lookin' fer a little entertenment, sar?” A chuckle.
“Nae, tho we'll be gettin' some, bit it's fer business,” Resmo answered with a growl, reaching up to rub at his beard as his slave-guards hung back a bit, politely. Most Draka were clean-shaven, but here in the desert it seemed as though they took on more and more of the traits of the Arabs they fought, wearing flowing robes over their uniforms, and sewing neck-flaps onto their service caps or outright wearing kaffiyah.
“An' what's that, Sar? We've git a lotta stuff to deal with as i'tis, ah just got ah report that they've found t'camel piss in t'aviation fuel tanks agin, fer instance.”
“Demmit! Loki's fuckin' prick! We've gotta round't'bliddy clock guard on 'em!” Resmo swore violently and then started down the stairs. “Eh well. Just hafta deal withit letar. I'm meetin' with Theodor van Campden, 'cha really aught be dar, fer t'at matter.”
“Rought-o, sar,” Connor replied, following Chiliarch Resmo down. In the room below there was a slavegirl—probably Egyptian peasant stock, nicely full of hip and breast--dancing to drums and flute, bells on her ankles and wrists jangling as she rolled sensuously, wavy dark hair splayed out behind her and her breasts already bared, the pinkness of her nipples enticing even to a jaded eye like Connor's. A man sat with his legs folded before her, watching and drinking coffee, dressed in robes and a battered forage cap of indistinct origin.
“Theodor?” Resmo called out. The room was murky and dark, like all Arab buildings, with small windows and oil lamps that left a smokey, haunted sort of cast to the light in the place. But they held up well to rifle fire, were cool during the day and warm in the night, and most of all using them didn't require building material to be hauled in from somewhere else.
“Aye, t'at's me,” the man replied after a moment, looking up and offering no salute or recognition of the Chiliarch's rank.
Resmo sighed, but moved to sit beside the man, and Connor beside him in turn, sparing enough time for a lustful look to the dancing girl. “Ah've got a task fer yah, which could give yah some bliddy good credit.”
“Ahm listening.”
“Ah want yah t'kill Elizabeth Rikkesgard.”
Part Six: Across the 'Rub al-Khali
The horses had long been abandoned. They had been left to their own devices; the bedouin could not stand to shoot such animals, prized by Muhammad and praised by Allah. They were in the sea, now, the dry sea. They had not seen firm ground in a week, and only the occasional track of gazelle gave hint that any sort of animal could, and did, survive in this incredible clime. A few had been shot earlier on, but none now, though the hardy shrubs that they ate still in places clung to the leeward side of the dunes. Even those were thinning and the sight of them was a welcome break from the intense monotony of the place which seemed to coexist simultaneous to its harsh and pristine beauty.
The camels continued staunchly without water for a week's travel, but today they would have to be watered, or else risk their death from pushing them to exertion. There was enough water to force-feed the camels fully once more for another week of travel—two weeks if they were willing to sacrifice some of the animals by pushing them to the extremity of their endurance. What happened after that was known only to Henry St. John Philby and his men.
They were nothing if not efficient. Though blood was forbidden for consumption by the Quran, they all knew that it was not for Elizabeth. She had consented readily, and so, forgoing her portion of the rations for the past few days, had subsisted off of a sort of blood soup made from that which had been drained from the veins of the gazelle. Puran had watched in concern as Elizabeth seemed to grow even more emanciated over the journey, but there was little that could be done. She herself, at least, had more to lose—and had most certainly seen all that fat worn away in this endless weeks in the desert.
In the day, the desert drifted away in that tan monotony. At night it loomed dark and black, the dunes impossibly high around them, the stars in the sky their only succor, a beautiful and intense and immensely full canopy of those pricks of light. The sounds of the camels, always beasts willing to complain and test their masters, provided an interruption from the absolute isolation of the place that at times became welcome. A week adapting to riding the camels had left Puran as sure of herself in controling their tempermental ways as she had been with horses. Certainly the discomfort of so long in the saddle had long ago passed away, and the change in style of riding was if anything a break for the constant sameness of the journey that had gone before.
Deprivations blended into each other. The desert had imposed impossible hardships upon them and they had survived every one of them. al-Wabar seemed like a dream of the future, a promised escape from the monotony of the present, but it didn't seem to make the deprivation any harder to endure. Puran had found herself inured to it, toughened physically to a fine edge. All the fat, as it were, had been burned away in the desert and what was left was sinew, both physical and mental. Dreams, it turned out, required a great deal of sacrifice to approach reality.
They pressed on through the night, navigating by the stars. Elizabeth and Puran rode side-by-side, an occasional glance from the elder woman carrying with it an affection framed in starlight, those quiet looks under the canopy of the night as significant as any words. St. John Philby rode on ahead of them by a half-length. Elizabeth did not mind, seeming resigned, and yet as caring as she had ever been to Puran. It was very odd, perhaps a little uncomfortable for the young woman to think about. Perhaps it was just Elizabeth's health. Her condition was absolutely terrible, eating as little as she could, drinking as little as she could, seeming to survive more on willpower than anything else.
And yet... And yet... Even through the hunger-pangs, the pitted dryness of their skin and the desperate feeling that lingered in the throat, the need for more water, the body giving itself over gradually to the desert.. There was a sense of longing inside of Puran, a childlike eagerness at what she was seeing. The dream was painful but it was still a dream to be lived. One could not live until they had seen the sun push above the dunes in the perfect stillness of the desert morning, until they had seen the infinite space laid out around them, of the great expanse of sand that was lifeless, and yet traveled by the living. It was surely true that in its own way this was the most beautiful place on earth.
The camels huffed onward, over loose sand. The only trail which would ever exist here was the one above them, the lights which led them onward. Travel by night under those circumstances, nevermind the threat from the air in the day, became a perfectly natural act. It was as if the desert reversed the normal trend of human history; you work and travel in the day, and shelter from the uncertainty and danger that comes with the dark. In the desert, those fears were steadily stripped away, and Puran found herself thinking of the desert nights as the only sort of safety that she had ever known. In the day, there was thirst and sunstroke, sand-blindness and death from above. In the night, there was that comfortable, impossibly brilliant canopy of stars above, the earthy sound of the camel beneath her body, and always, always, the reassuring silhouette of Beth to her side.
Somehow, if one was to survive the 'Rub al-Khali at all, it seemed as though they, at some intangible point, stopped merely surviving there. They began to thrive there, in a spiritual way, even as physical toils wore them down. Kilometer after kilometer passed beneath the padding feet of the camels. The ride, at first unpleasant, became so repetitive as to destroy the discomfort—it was just another fact of the desert. At last, Puran reached for her canteen, the last swallow of water in it until they camped. Her skill had been impossible a month before; she drank without losing a drop even as she rode upon the camel. It refreshed and reinvigorated beyond all proportion, as though fresh water in the desert was endowed with some kind of magical property.
As she lived her eyes skyward and drained the canteen, Puran felt that surge of pleasant coolness through her. Her eyes opened just a bit wider, and as her head lowered and she replaced the canteen, a smile touched her lips. “I will share some of my food with you when we stop today, Beth.”
“You don't need to do that,” Beth replied quietly. Her voice was much more composed than Puran's, ironically, more used to speaking with little water upon her tongue. “I am getting enough for myself, and you should not let yourself weaken, my dear.”
“Even the Spartans ate bread with their blood soup,” Puran answered. She expected no reply, and that expectation was satisfied. Puran did not press; she had done what she could.
“Philby told me something last night,” Elizabeth spoke again after a while, her voice slow enough that the man ahead might not hear her. “He said that he believes this desert was once filled with lakes and rivers, and had much life in it, and was inhabited by ancient man. His evidence... Is convincing.”
Puran nearly wanted to shout. Shock provided her with energy that the lack of food otherwise denied her. “How could.. How could what is alive, become this?”
“Perhaps it is God's way of showing us that This To, Shall Pass Away.”
Puran understood, then, when Beth said that. She remained silent for a while, trying to think of a way to politely put it to the woman. In one sense she was rather afraid of speaking wrongly, still, and this issue seemed a very deep on. “Draka don't like to think that, do they?”
“No. No we don't. You..” A faint gesture all around. “One Caliphate follows another. Sassanids follow Achaemenids on the Persian throne. One Chinese Dynasty is succeeded by another. A few hundred years of brutal foreign occupation means nothing; another age will come, it always does, no matter how much suffering is involved in the death of the old and the birth of the new. But we Draka see ourselves as invincible. This desert.. Is the fossil of a living land. If the very life of the soil can pass away, what of a people? When we have been defeated there will be nothing left... I can see our farms crumbling away to sand.”
Puran looked on with a worried, pensive expression. It seemed as though Beth were still so wedded, trapped in her past, and sometimes it did frighten her so. “If it comes to pass, you will still live, and we will still have each other.”
The faintest hint of gray washed over the black of the stars, obscuring them slightly. Dawn was coming. Ahead, Philby barked out the order in Arabic for the column to halt. They had made good time that day, and Beth repeated it to her Druze, comforted by the familiarity of a military thing. Then she reined in, herself, Puran staying close beside her, their camels complaining loudly for a moment, stamping their feet, before they settled down. The sky brightened swiftly, and they had to move with some haste in establishing their camp.
For a minute, though, Beth remained in the saddle, looking out to the brightening sky. Then she turned to Puran and offered a weary smile. “You're right. We'll have each other, and we'll have the desert. It is not a bad place, after all.”
Puran was not sure which desert Beth was speaking about. But it didn't really matter, did it? The two dismounted and began to prepare their tent and the concealments for their camels for that day. Beyond, in the eastern sky, the sun rose and its flame threw the desert into a harsh and splendid relief.
Riyadh was a bizzare, frightful place. There was really no reason for anyone to be there at all. A single brave (or insane) plantation owner controlled the arable land; he had enough food for his family and to sell to the garrison, but little else, and slaves were constantly escaping or being found in the midst of plots, even the most docile ones brought up from the police zone. A few manufactures of certain trinkets and goods existed within the city walls; none were really profitable. It seemed as though the climate of seething rebellion and backstabbing treachery which permeated the whole land was infectious. In a way, it was.
Riyadh was the great coup of all the bedouin. Any man who wanted to prove himself in these dark days would try to bring back the severed genitals of one of the soldiers stationed there. Many were of course caught and were tortured to together, sometimes impaled and sometimes flayed alive, salt being rubbed into their bodies as the flesh was stripped away while they still lived. But many times, as well, the only evidence that one of the bedouin had snuck into the city was a mutilated corpse. This desert war, far from the minds of the contented citizens in more pacified realms, had gone beyond the description of 'no quarter'. It had become a sort of sadistic nightmare in which the desert winds stripped away the humanity of every combatant. Living beings were reduced to caricatures of evil, and there was no relief in sight.
Long ago the Dominate had abandoned trying to pacify the bedouin—this was now a war of extermination, one that was fought over a vast expanse of worthless desert. It seemed mad to every outside observer. There were few bedouin; they could have settled in the British protectorates easily enough and abandoned their harsh way of life. But that way of life was their whole existence, and its destruction was threatened by the mortal foes of their religion. The Draka, on the other hand, fought wars of conquest for the sake of conquest. Their whole meaning was wrapped up in taking and holding ground, in driving their enemies before them and slaughtering and enslaving them. They could not yield Riyadh, and the bedouin could not let them hold it.
In 1863 the Emir of Inner Asir had sent the following message to the Drakian authorities in Aden Colony. In a sense it summed up the conflict which was still now going on, and had been almost ceaseless since the Draka first took Aden more than a hundred and twenty years prior. It read like this:
“I wish to rule my own country and protect my own religion. If you will, send me a letter saying whether there is to be peace or war. I intend to go from Abha to Jezan, I warn you of this, for I wish to fight with you. I like war, and God willing, I will take many rifles from you, but you will get no rifles or ammunition from me. I have no forts, no houses, no country. I have no cultivated fields, no silver, no gold for you to take. I have nothing. If the country were cultivated or contained houses or property, it would be worth your while to fight. The country is all desert and that is of no use to you. If you want sand and stone, you can get them in plenty. There are also many ant-heaps. The sun is very hot. All you can get from me is war--nothing else.
“I have met your men in battle before, and I have killed them. We are greatly pleased at this. Our men who have fallen in battle have won paradise. God fights for us. We kill, and you kill. We fight by God's order. That is the truth. We ask for God's blessing. God is with me when I write this. If you wish for war, I am happy; if you wish for peace, I am content also. But if you wish for peace, go away from my country back to your own. If you wish for war, stay where you are. Hearken to my words. If you wish to fight, I will give you back your cannon I have taken for ammunition for my rifles, for I have no need of them. If you do not want it, I will sell them to someone else. Bend me a letter saying whether you desire war or peace.”
It was a task unenviable even by the depraved standards of the Domination. A task which ultimately fell to George Resmo, Chiliarch in command of the Riyadh Garrison. He was guarded by three slaves from a long line of servants of his family at all times; in his last will and testament he had written that they were to be put to death, and promised to change it only if he should leave Riyadh on the end of his tour alive and well. Plots, treachery, and madness were everywhere here, and he knew he become quite paranoid over them, but it was not to be helped. Dueling being legal in the Dominate, it was by far a frequent occurrence here where tempers were short and danger and suffering omnipresent. Fights in the garrison were an unending plague, and it did not seem that even the constant supply of slave-girls and young boys could distract the men from the climate of conspiracy and death.
The one advantage to the whole place was that if you were looking for a man who could kept secrets and murder without hesitation, he would probably be here. Chiliarch Resmo was in need of such a man, and he had found him. The engineer of the locomotive RS-59—567 was such a fellow. His name was Theodor van Campden and his escape—bringing a locomotive intact out of the grand Arab trap of a few weeks prior—had caught a lot of positive attention for him. But there was something else on his record that the Security Directorate chief for Riyadh (an even more thankless post than Resmo's) had noted. He had served in the same battalion as the lunatic traitor, Elizabeth Rikkesgard, during the Great War.
He had a reputation ever since then for getting in fights, and generally for indiscipline. First he was assigned to a secondary posting—the Army Railroad Corps—an humiliating task for a Drakian warrior, and then to the worst spot one could be assigned to in that corps, the Riyadh Railroad. It seemed that a fair number of sturmgruppen veterans of the Anatolian fighting had ended up like that; a curious thing to be sure, and perhaps a bit disturbing. The mental legacy of the bloodiest conflict in human history affected even the Citizens of the Dominate. But now he would have a chance to rise in the world again; for George Resmo had a very special task for him.
He started down to the lower levels of the fortress-palace of Riyadh which had been taken from Ibn Saud fifteen years prior. As he did, the Security Directorate chief—Johnathan Connor—stepped out of his office to try and catch him before he headed downstairs. “Lookin' fer a little entertenment, sar?” A chuckle.
“Nae, tho we'll be gettin' some, bit it's fer business,” Resmo answered with a growl, reaching up to rub at his beard as his slave-guards hung back a bit, politely. Most Draka were clean-shaven, but here in the desert it seemed as though they took on more and more of the traits of the Arabs they fought, wearing flowing robes over their uniforms, and sewing neck-flaps onto their service caps or outright wearing kaffiyah.
“An' what's that, Sar? We've git a lotta stuff to deal with as i'tis, ah just got ah report that they've found t'camel piss in t'aviation fuel tanks agin, fer instance.”
“Demmit! Loki's fuckin' prick! We've gotta round't'bliddy clock guard on 'em!” Resmo swore violently and then started down the stairs. “Eh well. Just hafta deal withit letar. I'm meetin' with Theodor van Campden, 'cha really aught be dar, fer t'at matter.”
“Rought-o, sar,” Connor replied, following Chiliarch Resmo down. In the room below there was a slavegirl—probably Egyptian peasant stock, nicely full of hip and breast--dancing to drums and flute, bells on her ankles and wrists jangling as she rolled sensuously, wavy dark hair splayed out behind her and her breasts already bared, the pinkness of her nipples enticing even to a jaded eye like Connor's. A man sat with his legs folded before her, watching and drinking coffee, dressed in robes and a battered forage cap of indistinct origin.
“Theodor?” Resmo called out. The room was murky and dark, like all Arab buildings, with small windows and oil lamps that left a smokey, haunted sort of cast to the light in the place. But they held up well to rifle fire, were cool during the day and warm in the night, and most of all using them didn't require building material to be hauled in from somewhere else.
“Aye, t'at's me,” the man replied after a moment, looking up and offering no salute or recognition of the Chiliarch's rank.
Resmo sighed, but moved to sit beside the man, and Connor beside him in turn, sparing enough time for a lustful look to the dancing girl. “Ah've got a task fer yah, which could give yah some bliddy good credit.”
“Ahm listening.”
“Ah want yah t'kill Elizabeth Rikkesgard.”
DPDarkPrimus is my boyfriend!
SDNW4 Nation: The Refuge And, on Nova Terra, Al-Stan the Totally and Completely Honest and Legitimate Weapons Dealer and Used Starship Salesman slept on a bed made of money, with a blaster under his pillow and his sombrero pulled over his face. This is to say, he slept very well indeed.
SDNW4 Nation: The Refuge And, on Nova Terra, Al-Stan the Totally and Completely Honest and Legitimate Weapons Dealer and Used Starship Salesman slept on a bed made of money, with a blaster under his pillow and his sombrero pulled over his face. This is to say, he slept very well indeed.
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The Duchess of Zeon
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Part Seven: al-Wabar
Theodor didn't turn his eyes from the dancing girl, and remained silent for some time. When he spoke at last his voice held a particular disdain in it. “Go find yerself ah killah. I'm justa bliddy soldit, y'know, neht some kind of ahsassin fer t'Directorate.”
“Yah was trained t'speak Arabic fer infiltration duty in t'Great War, weren'tcha?” George Resmo asked sternly.
“Ahn' Turkish,” Theodor agreed with a moment of pride that brought his eyes away from the dancing girl. Servants brought wine for the Chiliarch and the Security Directorate chief, but Theodor waved them off. “More Kaffee.”
“Then y'can play aht bein ahn Arabist, yah?”
“S'not waht yah need t'get by in Yemen. T'Brits'll wahnder where you's from.” Theodor smirked, and affected a different, sterner accent, less the mangled droll of a Drakan voice: “What you really bloody well got in me is that ah can play at bein' ah Digger.”
“S'bliddy shame t'Aussies didnae join us when dey had t'chance,” Resmo muttered. “It'd hah made things s'lot easier.”
“Bunch'e prisoners an' Irish an' fanatics,” Conner countered. “Naht worth d'trouble, just fit to be serfs. Attitudes s'like that arh twenty years outta date, an' you'd dae well t'remember it.”
“We've got enough trouble with t'sand-niggers, y'think white men are goin' t'be easier to conquer 'an 'ese fanatics? Idjit.” A pause, and a self-satisfied smirk: “We're both stuck here, Connor, an' I can speak ma'mind like any citizen—Ahn I ain't no nigger-lover like Beth, either, y'can be shure a'that. Kill all'eh damned things, I sah. Ain't people, jus' good fucks, ahn 'en only sumtimes.”
“Well, ah ain't gonna disagree that it'd beh easier just to shoot all dem sand-niggers 'an try to enslave 'em,” Connor replied at last, letting the issue of the insult drop. Riyadh didn't need its top commanders fighting duels on top of everyone else.
George looked back to Theodor, who's eyes had remained on the dancing girl during the whole regression. Then he followed his eyes there, and watched for a moment. The music had grown more erotic, a faster tempo, as the woman gyrated senuously, her breasts rolled and bounced as her body slithered and contorted to the music, displaying her delicious attributes as a mount.
The music built itself to a climax as the slavegirl continued to dance, her veils and scarves now filling off, those full, strong thighs unveiled, her dark and senuous flesh progressively revealed until, at last, in a crescendo of drums she stripped herself entirely nude and fell down into the splits facing the three, showing off absolutely everything to those watching men, silent, still, obediently waiting for another command.
“Dah yah wan'ter?” George asked after a moment of silence. “I'll give 'er t'ya tonight, an' iffin yah like her, yah can keep 'er from when yah get back. And I'll provide you all the expense coverage yah need.” A pause, and he took a breath: “Demmit, but iffin anyone knows where she'd go, it's you, Theodor.”
“The Hadhramut, an' then Injia,” Theodor said, abruptly very cold in voice, as if he was remembering long-off things. “She's wanted to visit Injia since 'er school-days in England, an' ah think that want would jus' be stronger now. Innyway, s'easier t'be a Sapphist there. No decency laws, as they'd just offind one group'r'another, so everything is t'custom. Ayup, she'll go't'Injia, an' prolly on a trading dhow. T'British ain't bad at spycraft, no-sir dey is not. Directorate idjits'll prolly send all dere men on liners and tradin' boats an' so on.
“Wellp, ah won't do that. I'll go wit some Gold Rands an'll bribe some pirates. Iffin she goes by a dhow we'll run her down, mebbe win, mebbe not. Need permission from t'guard t'let 'em land safely on't'coast ah Persia. Ah can kill'er, iffin she goes 'at way. Iffin not? Well, dey might send her by ah cruiser, ahn then ain't nobody gettin' her.” A shrug. “S'hard to kill old comrades, y'know. But mebbe iffin' I d'this I'll have enough money 'ahn fame to marry some proper dottir of a ranchin' man ahn buy a plantation in t'Mark fer a son r'two to inheirit. Ain't nuthin' else in life fer me t'look ferward to, not now, not after t'Anatolian campaign.”
A very soft voice there, as he concluded, and then added with a smirk. “Ah ain't declinin' yer offer fer t'girl, either, y'know.”
“Then take 'er, Theodor. Ah'll make all t'arrangements right now, ahn y'can leave whenever you're ready,” Chiliarch Resmo promised fervently. Theodor's evaluation was the best yet, and better still, both he and Connor knew that if the bastard actually pulled it off, they'd finally get out of the ass-end of the Dominate.
For more than three weeks they had been riding through the desert. Their water was very low now, and the camels were nearing the greatest extremity of their endurance. Most of the journey was simply dune after dune, a sea of rolling waves made up of sand. Each one seemed to increase the length of the journey greatly, making the labored and cautious ascent upon camel-back in the night, and then descending again, over and over, until it seemed more natural that one was traveling uphill or downhill than on flat ground. Philby led them, navigating by the stars alone, never once relinquishing his cool confidence as he guided the great force through The Empty Quarter.
This night seemed the same as all the rest. They were alone in the desert, a mass of dirty, exhausted, thirsty men—and two women—amongst a mass of dirty and thirsty camels, riding through the dark. Nothing seemed different, save that here in the middle of the Empty Quarter the dunes were a little less severe. There was still no water or shubbery anywhere, but from time to time Beth thought she could almost make out the remnants of the ancient watercourses and lakes which Philby had described, and at one point Puran had found a fossil in a clear spot between two vast dunes.
The Druze were becoming increasingly discontented with the distance of the journey. They were not nearly as used to the desert as the bedouin, even if their skills put most westerners in turn to shame. Frankly, they had become fearful of the whole enterprise, of their sworn enemies they were travelling with and of the magnitude of the desert. But every time they raised a murmur, Beth mustered herself and dissuaded them. Everything had held together, but the need for shelter, for a rest that had been denied them since the unceasing journey began so long ago in the Negev, was becoming overwhelming.
Puran felt it. Giving up part of her food ration to Beth she had grown weaker, far weaker over the past week, even as Beth seemed to gain a second wind from the extremity and strange beauty of this place, of this journey through the heart of the Empty Quarter. At last, the day before, Beth had simply refused any more of Puran's food and forced her to eat it; she was as much a judge of others in these conditions and herself, and Puran remained shamelessly envious of how well the elder woman held up to the strain of the deep desert.
Day was coming, and soon Philby would give the signal to bring the men to a halt. Another night spent camping in their tents, fearing perhaps a random sandstorm which would force them to spend hours and much energy digging out and great effort to protect the camels. Another night, wondering about the end of their journey. The sun was once more beginning to rise above the horizon, and with it the dangers of the day. Philby continued on, until the last of the stars had been obscured by the rising of the sun. He reined in for a moment and took a brief look toward the direction of the sky from which the sun rose, and checked his compass.
As that great flaming ball rose up into the air, a sliver of it casting down through the desert its red and orange brilliance, untarnished in the pristine air, Philby once again led them forward. Puran wondered why they hadn't stopped; she desperately needed the rest. But instead they continued onward, as the sun brightened the landscape and the day filled up the vastness of the dune sea. Puran, wearily shielding her eyes from its half-forgotten brilliance, looked to Beth—and saw her grinning.
Just a few minutes later, as it became bright enough that the riders of the Camels might see fully their path, much later into the day than they had traveled at any time before, Philby signalled the column to halt and swung around to face them, and spoke in Arabic in his clear, commanding voice: “We are three hours walk from al-Wabar! Dismount and water your camels, and then we shall make a dash for the city!”
There was a ragged cheer raised by the Druze. Puran felt an indescribable relief surging through her, and with it, disbelief. Three hours from freedom. The desert had been their escape; al-Wabar seemed to be their salvation. Simply a fortified town of less than two thousand people, it was still a free place, one that had never seen the Draka and, God Willing, never would.
“Just like him to race the last stretch. Brits.” Beth said almost fondly, as she dismounted and began to fill a canvas drinking bag for the camel with some of their last water, not stopping from taking a drink herself. “You'll want a swig of water, Dear,” she added almost as an afterthought—though it surely was not—to Puran. “Even an hour or so under the sun will take a toll on you in this state.”
“I understand,” Puran said with a voice that cracked through the words in a mixture of the dryness of her throat and the emotion that filled her, going through the task of watering the camel more slowly than Beth, thinking about all these things. “I.. I can't believe it,” she said at last.
“Then don't. Just ride—we've still got a ways to go, and we can celebrate once we're there.” Assuming we have the chance was unsaid. Beth in truth had little idea of what they were going to face, though of course the Druze provided a measure of security even in the worst case.
The order to mount up came soon enough, and Puran was ready just in time, her camel finishing off the water inside the canvas bag—which could be drawn up like a halter over the head—quickly enough, as the beasts are want to do. Then, back into the awkward camel saddle, and she took the time to carefully shift the scarf covering her head to best protect herself from the sun. After that, they were off one more time.
Quickly Philby drove his camel into a grotesque sort of trot that the animals were capable of, more of a crisp, lopping run, and somehow managed to keep himself ridgedly straight upright in the saddle the whole time. Now that they were traveling in daylight, the camels were still quite capable of this last dash, and they were quite safe in doing it; unless discovered, of course. But Philby understood that such gestures were important, and even the Ilkwan desired to return to the modest comforts of al-Wabar by this point.
Onward they rode, traveling through the dune sea at a refreshingly swift pace. al-Wabar was not seen, nowhere ahead; just endless dune after dune. This left some nervousness in Puran, a little doubt in her that denied that it could be really possible that she would in fact reach freedom. But she held it in, and rode on, enduring the rough, awkward pace of the camel, hope warring with doubt.
The desert was splendid from one's seat upon a racing camel. Bounding across the sand with ease, the marvelous beasts, however unpleasant their stride, shifted the monotony of the desert into something else. The dunes came and went, rolling under them, and each feature of the desert—made of shifting sand, and so impermanent—was revealed and concealed in turns of existance. Rushing through the desert brought a hot blast of wind against one's body, like being before a great blower next to a massive furnace. The sweat ran, but it seemed somehow less a trial than the still air, the breeze giving a sort of odd comfort despite the heat that came with it.
As with so much in the desert, it happened quite suddenly. One moment they were dashing through the terrain, as they had been for about an hour... And then at another moment they began to slow down. They began to slow down, and for Puran and Elizabeth and all the Druze alike, simply stared. Ahead of them, as they crossed the ridge of one great dune, al-Wabar was laid out before them. Three craters, each one smaller than the next, laid out almost like the pyramids. They reared out of a plain of rock in the midst of the sand, with sand piled up against their windward sides, making them like low mountains with their tops cut off.
The black rock was imposing, and yet concealing; here was an entirely natural feature of the terrain, without a single indication of any sort of human habitation at all. And yet Philby claimed there was a city inside, and looking at the glory of those craters in the midst of the dune sea, Puran did not doubt him. Her awe silenced her, leaving her to follow automatically as the last quarter-mile to al-Wabar was covered, reflexive, unable to think or do more than stare onwards in disbelief at her salvation.
They made their way down from the dune, and out onto the rough, blasted plain of melted sand and thrown up rock which formed a solid surface in the midst of all the shifting sand. The camels picked their way across this surface—blazing hot under the sun already—the men following Philby's direction toward the leeward side of the largest crater. Black rock reared up before them, and then, right beside the face of the crater, Philby dismounted and advanced, tapping at a particular spot on the side of the crater with his riding crop in a fixed signal. It was only then that Puran realized that the crater wall there had actually been hewn away, and the outline of a door of iron just large enough for a person to lead a camel through became visible.
It was opened, swinging inwards with great speed, to reveal a group of armed Arab men in their robes, grimly staring at Philby. A rapid conversation began, just outside of earshot. One of the men, an old fellow with a grizzled look and a gray beard, stepped out a bit and looked directly toward Beth. She saw the look, and held it firmly. No words were exchanged. Then the man looked back to Philby; they spoke swiftly for a moment, and he retreated inside.
Philby simply waited, as Puran and the Druze got more and more nervous at what might be transpiring. They waited in silence, the Ilkwan dismounting—though they did not—and seeming content with that wait, though a few ominously fingered their rifles, perhaps idly, perhaps in malice. It had surely been fifteen minutes before something happened. The crowd of guards at the gates began to part, and a single man in white flowing robes and kaffiyeh. As he reached the gate, he straightened and pushed aside a stray roll of fabric.
He was a white man, and he had a face that Beth recognized instantly, from the rare pictures of him in the early days before he had vanished. “T. E. Lawrence,” she called out to him, meeting his gaze firmly. No other introduction was needed. The hero of the desert lived, and Beth had found him.
Theodor didn't turn his eyes from the dancing girl, and remained silent for some time. When he spoke at last his voice held a particular disdain in it. “Go find yerself ah killah. I'm justa bliddy soldit, y'know, neht some kind of ahsassin fer t'Directorate.”
“Yah was trained t'speak Arabic fer infiltration duty in t'Great War, weren'tcha?” George Resmo asked sternly.
“Ahn' Turkish,” Theodor agreed with a moment of pride that brought his eyes away from the dancing girl. Servants brought wine for the Chiliarch and the Security Directorate chief, but Theodor waved them off. “More Kaffee.”
“Then y'can play aht bein ahn Arabist, yah?”
“S'not waht yah need t'get by in Yemen. T'Brits'll wahnder where you's from.” Theodor smirked, and affected a different, sterner accent, less the mangled droll of a Drakan voice: “What you really bloody well got in me is that ah can play at bein' ah Digger.”
“S'bliddy shame t'Aussies didnae join us when dey had t'chance,” Resmo muttered. “It'd hah made things s'lot easier.”
“Bunch'e prisoners an' Irish an' fanatics,” Conner countered. “Naht worth d'trouble, just fit to be serfs. Attitudes s'like that arh twenty years outta date, an' you'd dae well t'remember it.”
“We've got enough trouble with t'sand-niggers, y'think white men are goin' t'be easier to conquer 'an 'ese fanatics? Idjit.” A pause, and a self-satisfied smirk: “We're both stuck here, Connor, an' I can speak ma'mind like any citizen—Ahn I ain't no nigger-lover like Beth, either, y'can be shure a'that. Kill all'eh damned things, I sah. Ain't people, jus' good fucks, ahn 'en only sumtimes.”
“Well, ah ain't gonna disagree that it'd beh easier just to shoot all dem sand-niggers 'an try to enslave 'em,” Connor replied at last, letting the issue of the insult drop. Riyadh didn't need its top commanders fighting duels on top of everyone else.
George looked back to Theodor, who's eyes had remained on the dancing girl during the whole regression. Then he followed his eyes there, and watched for a moment. The music had grown more erotic, a faster tempo, as the woman gyrated senuously, her breasts rolled and bounced as her body slithered and contorted to the music, displaying her delicious attributes as a mount.
The music built itself to a climax as the slavegirl continued to dance, her veils and scarves now filling off, those full, strong thighs unveiled, her dark and senuous flesh progressively revealed until, at last, in a crescendo of drums she stripped herself entirely nude and fell down into the splits facing the three, showing off absolutely everything to those watching men, silent, still, obediently waiting for another command.
“Dah yah wan'ter?” George asked after a moment of silence. “I'll give 'er t'ya tonight, an' iffin yah like her, yah can keep 'er from when yah get back. And I'll provide you all the expense coverage yah need.” A pause, and he took a breath: “Demmit, but iffin anyone knows where she'd go, it's you, Theodor.”
“The Hadhramut, an' then Injia,” Theodor said, abruptly very cold in voice, as if he was remembering long-off things. “She's wanted to visit Injia since 'er school-days in England, an' ah think that want would jus' be stronger now. Innyway, s'easier t'be a Sapphist there. No decency laws, as they'd just offind one group'r'another, so everything is t'custom. Ayup, she'll go't'Injia, an' prolly on a trading dhow. T'British ain't bad at spycraft, no-sir dey is not. Directorate idjits'll prolly send all dere men on liners and tradin' boats an' so on.
“Wellp, ah won't do that. I'll go wit some Gold Rands an'll bribe some pirates. Iffin she goes by a dhow we'll run her down, mebbe win, mebbe not. Need permission from t'guard t'let 'em land safely on't'coast ah Persia. Ah can kill'er, iffin she goes 'at way. Iffin not? Well, dey might send her by ah cruiser, ahn then ain't nobody gettin' her.” A shrug. “S'hard to kill old comrades, y'know. But mebbe iffin' I d'this I'll have enough money 'ahn fame to marry some proper dottir of a ranchin' man ahn buy a plantation in t'Mark fer a son r'two to inheirit. Ain't nuthin' else in life fer me t'look ferward to, not now, not after t'Anatolian campaign.”
A very soft voice there, as he concluded, and then added with a smirk. “Ah ain't declinin' yer offer fer t'girl, either, y'know.”
“Then take 'er, Theodor. Ah'll make all t'arrangements right now, ahn y'can leave whenever you're ready,” Chiliarch Resmo promised fervently. Theodor's evaluation was the best yet, and better still, both he and Connor knew that if the bastard actually pulled it off, they'd finally get out of the ass-end of the Dominate.
For more than three weeks they had been riding through the desert. Their water was very low now, and the camels were nearing the greatest extremity of their endurance. Most of the journey was simply dune after dune, a sea of rolling waves made up of sand. Each one seemed to increase the length of the journey greatly, making the labored and cautious ascent upon camel-back in the night, and then descending again, over and over, until it seemed more natural that one was traveling uphill or downhill than on flat ground. Philby led them, navigating by the stars alone, never once relinquishing his cool confidence as he guided the great force through The Empty Quarter.
This night seemed the same as all the rest. They were alone in the desert, a mass of dirty, exhausted, thirsty men—and two women—amongst a mass of dirty and thirsty camels, riding through the dark. Nothing seemed different, save that here in the middle of the Empty Quarter the dunes were a little less severe. There was still no water or shubbery anywhere, but from time to time Beth thought she could almost make out the remnants of the ancient watercourses and lakes which Philby had described, and at one point Puran had found a fossil in a clear spot between two vast dunes.
The Druze were becoming increasingly discontented with the distance of the journey. They were not nearly as used to the desert as the bedouin, even if their skills put most westerners in turn to shame. Frankly, they had become fearful of the whole enterprise, of their sworn enemies they were travelling with and of the magnitude of the desert. But every time they raised a murmur, Beth mustered herself and dissuaded them. Everything had held together, but the need for shelter, for a rest that had been denied them since the unceasing journey began so long ago in the Negev, was becoming overwhelming.
Puran felt it. Giving up part of her food ration to Beth she had grown weaker, far weaker over the past week, even as Beth seemed to gain a second wind from the extremity and strange beauty of this place, of this journey through the heart of the Empty Quarter. At last, the day before, Beth had simply refused any more of Puran's food and forced her to eat it; she was as much a judge of others in these conditions and herself, and Puran remained shamelessly envious of how well the elder woman held up to the strain of the deep desert.
Day was coming, and soon Philby would give the signal to bring the men to a halt. Another night spent camping in their tents, fearing perhaps a random sandstorm which would force them to spend hours and much energy digging out and great effort to protect the camels. Another night, wondering about the end of their journey. The sun was once more beginning to rise above the horizon, and with it the dangers of the day. Philby continued on, until the last of the stars had been obscured by the rising of the sun. He reined in for a moment and took a brief look toward the direction of the sky from which the sun rose, and checked his compass.
As that great flaming ball rose up into the air, a sliver of it casting down through the desert its red and orange brilliance, untarnished in the pristine air, Philby once again led them forward. Puran wondered why they hadn't stopped; she desperately needed the rest. But instead they continued onward, as the sun brightened the landscape and the day filled up the vastness of the dune sea. Puran, wearily shielding her eyes from its half-forgotten brilliance, looked to Beth—and saw her grinning.
Just a few minutes later, as it became bright enough that the riders of the Camels might see fully their path, much later into the day than they had traveled at any time before, Philby signalled the column to halt and swung around to face them, and spoke in Arabic in his clear, commanding voice: “We are three hours walk from al-Wabar! Dismount and water your camels, and then we shall make a dash for the city!”
There was a ragged cheer raised by the Druze. Puran felt an indescribable relief surging through her, and with it, disbelief. Three hours from freedom. The desert had been their escape; al-Wabar seemed to be their salvation. Simply a fortified town of less than two thousand people, it was still a free place, one that had never seen the Draka and, God Willing, never would.
“Just like him to race the last stretch. Brits.” Beth said almost fondly, as she dismounted and began to fill a canvas drinking bag for the camel with some of their last water, not stopping from taking a drink herself. “You'll want a swig of water, Dear,” she added almost as an afterthought—though it surely was not—to Puran. “Even an hour or so under the sun will take a toll on you in this state.”
“I understand,” Puran said with a voice that cracked through the words in a mixture of the dryness of her throat and the emotion that filled her, going through the task of watering the camel more slowly than Beth, thinking about all these things. “I.. I can't believe it,” she said at last.
“Then don't. Just ride—we've still got a ways to go, and we can celebrate once we're there.” Assuming we have the chance was unsaid. Beth in truth had little idea of what they were going to face, though of course the Druze provided a measure of security even in the worst case.
The order to mount up came soon enough, and Puran was ready just in time, her camel finishing off the water inside the canvas bag—which could be drawn up like a halter over the head—quickly enough, as the beasts are want to do. Then, back into the awkward camel saddle, and she took the time to carefully shift the scarf covering her head to best protect herself from the sun. After that, they were off one more time.
Quickly Philby drove his camel into a grotesque sort of trot that the animals were capable of, more of a crisp, lopping run, and somehow managed to keep himself ridgedly straight upright in the saddle the whole time. Now that they were traveling in daylight, the camels were still quite capable of this last dash, and they were quite safe in doing it; unless discovered, of course. But Philby understood that such gestures were important, and even the Ilkwan desired to return to the modest comforts of al-Wabar by this point.
Onward they rode, traveling through the dune sea at a refreshingly swift pace. al-Wabar was not seen, nowhere ahead; just endless dune after dune. This left some nervousness in Puran, a little doubt in her that denied that it could be really possible that she would in fact reach freedom. But she held it in, and rode on, enduring the rough, awkward pace of the camel, hope warring with doubt.
The desert was splendid from one's seat upon a racing camel. Bounding across the sand with ease, the marvelous beasts, however unpleasant their stride, shifted the monotony of the desert into something else. The dunes came and went, rolling under them, and each feature of the desert—made of shifting sand, and so impermanent—was revealed and concealed in turns of existance. Rushing through the desert brought a hot blast of wind against one's body, like being before a great blower next to a massive furnace. The sweat ran, but it seemed somehow less a trial than the still air, the breeze giving a sort of odd comfort despite the heat that came with it.
As with so much in the desert, it happened quite suddenly. One moment they were dashing through the terrain, as they had been for about an hour... And then at another moment they began to slow down. They began to slow down, and for Puran and Elizabeth and all the Druze alike, simply stared. Ahead of them, as they crossed the ridge of one great dune, al-Wabar was laid out before them. Three craters, each one smaller than the next, laid out almost like the pyramids. They reared out of a plain of rock in the midst of the sand, with sand piled up against their windward sides, making them like low mountains with their tops cut off.
The black rock was imposing, and yet concealing; here was an entirely natural feature of the terrain, without a single indication of any sort of human habitation at all. And yet Philby claimed there was a city inside, and looking at the glory of those craters in the midst of the dune sea, Puran did not doubt him. Her awe silenced her, leaving her to follow automatically as the last quarter-mile to al-Wabar was covered, reflexive, unable to think or do more than stare onwards in disbelief at her salvation.
They made their way down from the dune, and out onto the rough, blasted plain of melted sand and thrown up rock which formed a solid surface in the midst of all the shifting sand. The camels picked their way across this surface—blazing hot under the sun already—the men following Philby's direction toward the leeward side of the largest crater. Black rock reared up before them, and then, right beside the face of the crater, Philby dismounted and advanced, tapping at a particular spot on the side of the crater with his riding crop in a fixed signal. It was only then that Puran realized that the crater wall there had actually been hewn away, and the outline of a door of iron just large enough for a person to lead a camel through became visible.
It was opened, swinging inwards with great speed, to reveal a group of armed Arab men in their robes, grimly staring at Philby. A rapid conversation began, just outside of earshot. One of the men, an old fellow with a grizzled look and a gray beard, stepped out a bit and looked directly toward Beth. She saw the look, and held it firmly. No words were exchanged. Then the man looked back to Philby; they spoke swiftly for a moment, and he retreated inside.
Philby simply waited, as Puran and the Druze got more and more nervous at what might be transpiring. They waited in silence, the Ilkwan dismounting—though they did not—and seeming content with that wait, though a few ominously fingered their rifles, perhaps idly, perhaps in malice. It had surely been fifteen minutes before something happened. The crowd of guards at the gates began to part, and a single man in white flowing robes and kaffiyeh. As he reached the gate, he straightened and pushed aside a stray roll of fabric.
He was a white man, and he had a face that Beth recognized instantly, from the rare pictures of him in the early days before he had vanished. “T. E. Lawrence,” she called out to him, meeting his gaze firmly. No other introduction was needed. The hero of the desert lived, and Beth had found him.
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The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Part Eight: The Pillars of Wisdom
"Elizabeth Rikkesgarde," Lawrence called back. "Demon that you are! I see you have made it to my beautiful al-Wabar after all. Come forward. Alone."
"T'girl's stayin' at mah side," Beth answered, the conversation for the moment in English, and she was to exhausted to recall the proper variation of her school days.
"Very well, if she's unarmed," Lawrence of Arabia agreed in a contrasting accent, clear and crisp and very English. But then he shifted to Arabic: "I will take my tea with you and we will talk. Your men may camp in the lee of the crater for the moment."
"Surely," Beth replied, and Puran, looking over, could see the relief present on her face, the admission of some weakness from the sheer and harsh requirements of her having crossed the desert in such a fashion. They started forward on their camels, up to the very verge of the crater, and then dismounted. The Druze took them from Beth and Puran, and Beth helped Puran up. She, herself, was armed with only one thing, a sword, and went fearlessly among the Arab men and up to the legendary figure regardless of it.
Now they had been invited in to take tea with the master of the fortress. Muslim hospitality made them in as secure a position as they ever might be in the 'Rub al-Khali. Their courage might only protect them better, and caution would be of no service here. They could scarcely continue on by their own right. Puran took courage from Beth's relentless advance, and followed her right up, face to face with Lawrence.
"We've fought each other for a long time," Lawrence began, leading the two of them in through the awed Arabs, who parted for their leader and the demoness who stood beside him, battered kappe tilting crazily and twenty years old, or more, with a droll look on harsh and battered features as she listened. Puran was comfortably in their shadow.
"Eight years, almost nine," Beth answered in a surprisingly agreeable way, as they walked through tunnels in the obsidian, narrow and hand-hewn, and deep into the bowls of the dank Earth. Here the air was palatably more filled with humidity than in the desert, and both Beth and Puran coughed for a good minute as they pressed on through it, their parched tissues accomadating only with difficulty to the comparative surplus of moisture which was still a pitifully small amount.
They reached a series of suites, guarded by a few Arabs who looked to Lawrence reverently, and which were appointed in an incredibly sumptuous fashion with plunder and salvaged, faded glory. For the first time since they had plunged into the Negev, they were in luxuries. For Puran it was no pleasant time; she was shocked at how ill-equipped her body was now to the thought of sitting on fine pillows and curling against wonderful carpets. They had left their sandals outside, and a youthful man served them tea. The glances between him and Lawrence she could not ignore, and marked them well.
"We're polar opposites in some ways, aren't we?" Lawrence observed, not actually speaking directly about the matter, or even acknowledging the existence of the boy, or Puran, for that matter.
"We are, I suppose. Except in motivation. Though I've heard that you wrote a book.."
"The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It won't be circulated until my death; no need to have you people figuring out how I think until it's useless to me and mine. I'm surprised your Security Directorate was able to find out that I had, however..."
"A leak in Bahrain, I think, from the context and the phrasing of the documents I was allowed to see," Beth answered. "Does that help you?"
"Quite possibly, as a matter of fact." He tugged on his beard, and drank of his tea.
Beth gently held Puran's arm. "Don't drink it to fast. Sip it. When it's gone, they'll give us water to sip. You don't want to poison yourself."
And with that she sipped her own.
"Are you defecting, then?"
"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't."
"I could think of many other reasons, actually, and none of them are good, my fair Snake."
"Then kill me."
"A very good idea," Lawrence reached for one of his pistols in a swift move and drew it out of the holster, the gun levelled just a few feet from Beth, straight at her calm and collected face.
A primal cry erupted from Puran's lips at the scene, and she flung herself without a thought to her life, let alone the tea, into the path of the gun, a desperate look on face. "For the sake of God, stay your hand!" She cried out now in Arabic, her body as a human shield for Beth; but Beth, for her part, pushed Puran bodily aside, and continued her comment as though it had never been halted by Lawrence's agreement:
"Just don't kill Puran. Let her go no matter what. She was my private secretary, and she knows everything that I know. You can slaughter me and my men and take her out of the desert to Muscat and she will give you all the information that you could get out of me, while being perfectly safe with the location of al-Wabar."
"Love," Lawrence observed in a harsh but almost choked voice, as the gun was lowered and then smoothly returned to its holster. "Are you free, girl?" He didn't even look at Puran.
"She freed me the first night we were in the desert, with all of the men besides," Puran replied, shuddering. "I love her, yes. I don't like admitting it but if it's to save her life I will. I didn't think I did before, but... She's led me out of the desert like this. Abandoned all for me. And we can go to Weimar Germany and live openly together in a nice house and try and forget the past..."
"Forgetting the past is impossible."
"We'll try," Puran whispered, but she began to sob at the prospect of that, especially as Lawrence added:
"And I fear the cabarets of Berlin are not so welcoming these days under Goering's influence. I suggest Stockholm. Chilly climate, but of all of Europe they will bother you the least, and care about the affairs of the Snakes the least. The Nordic peoples, the low countries, Finland, the Baltics. Perhaps, maddeningly, the Hungarians. Save for Japan and her satellites, the only nations with whom Drakia carries on commerce of note these days."
"And Ireland."
"The Irish hate the Draka. They just hate the British equally," Lawrence remained very calm throughout, watching as Beth, though she matched his gaze and posture, nonetheless spared her arms for a tender embrace of Puran, and fresh tea was poured.
"I should kill you both for wasting two almost full glasses, where water is precious," he continued languidly. "But then again, I brought the act on myself. And I proved a remarkable thing. There exists a freed serf who genuinely loves her Drakian mistress. It's worth the price in water to see such a thing."
For the first time, though more a studying a curiousity, the rather misogynistic Lawrence paid some attention to Puran. "Tell me, what made you do it in the end? Fall in love with her, that is? Rather than just play along..."
"I never did just play along," Puran answered, composing herself, though still leaned up against Beth, sipping her tea very delicately. "I simply denied it, loathed myself, hated my enjoyment and what I felt. I suppose in some way we have been lovers for a long time. But the memories of the past don't fade easily, this is true; and yet she's always treated me so well..."
"Tell me, woman. Plain-out."
"She told me the story of her grandfather and the end of the Sokoto Caliphate," Puran managed, frowning rather faintly at the presumptiousness of the man before her. "And it showed me that there was humanity that flowed in her blood. I couldn't see her as a snake anymore; and I loved her. And I wish I understand how such a people has lost all virtue, all morality, all ethics, all restraint...."
"They are hampered by no morality," Lawrence agreed. "I don't think that your precious Elizabeth Rikkesgarde is, either."
"How.. But she's brought me here...!"
"And what morality is required for that action? None, girl, none at all. Just love. She is not acting morally because she has developed any kind of conscience or sense of ethics. She's acting morally because it furthers an emotional impulse she feels.
"Go on, Elizabeth. Tell her the truth. Tell her how, in fact, you're enjoying every minute of the fighting and the press through the desert. I know you much to well. Your love for her is just an excuse. Something that you let push you over the edge so that you could take on the ultimate challenge: Defying your own society in the whole, thumbing your nose at it, and winning.
"You are trying to out-Nietzsche a society founded on his works; an act which would, of couse, garner you the thorough approval of that poor syphilitic bastard, for what it is worth. You wanted to achieve one of the three grand feats of human endeavour, and only the second to be accomplished. To reach the Poles, to Summit Everest, and to cross the 'Rub al-Khali. If I let you live and leave this city, I will hear about you--and probably your loyal girl here--either succeeding or perishing as part of a team making an attempt on one of the other two. Summitting Everest? A fair challenge. Crossing the whole Antarctic continent as Shackleton had planned to do? Perhaps that is within your capability; it is a desert, just a very cold one, and, if I dare say, my good Elizabeth, you are as good in the desert as my Thomas and Philby are. Thesiger doesn't compare yet."
"Worthy company, for you to acknowledge your old foe is matched with the best of your men. The four Englishmen who have given us the greatest trouble all of these days." She refused to speak on the other matters.
"It would seem for how your fellow Snakes have reacted that you have given them as much trouble as I have, though, my dear Elizabeth. What do you have to say for yourself there? Are you going to answer my questions?"
"You're right," Beth said grimly. "You're right, Lawrence, as you've had to have been in every single decision and observation you've made to escape this long, to hide al-Wabar from us."
The devastated look on Puran's face seemed to affect even Beth's stern, stoic, British facade. It prompted her to turn aside, and murmur, softly: "I do love you, ever so much."
"But you're a monster who loves me."
"And I've abandoned everything except you..."
"And fame." Puran very nearly spat. "This is your quest for immortal glory."
"Well then, now that we've established all the particulars of your arrival," Lawrence continued, jovially, as though he were amused by the whole quarrel, "shall we come again to the question of whether or not you will leave al-Wabar alive or dead?"
Water was brought in now that they'd finished the tea, but Puran did not initially partake of it. Lawrence showed a first expression of emotion at that. "Don't worry, my young girl--Persian, no doubt, for your accent in Arabic betrays you--I will not kill guests with poison. I will see you out and then gun you down, if I do not mean for you all to leave here alive. We have our customs here in the deep desert, and the sanctity of our cause does not forgive us from so base a breach of them as poison."
Puran drank only very reluctantly. Yet the water was cold and beautiful, pure and perfect, to one who had been in the desert for so long. It was like paradise itself, and for a moment she was entranced by it, and forgot her anger with Beth's confession, and her mistrust of the enigmatic man before her, Lawrence of Arabia, the unconquerable leader of an unconquerable revolt.
"So what will you do, Elizabeth Rikkesgarde? What, oh snake, will be your ambition in the world beyond the Dominate. To find Shangra-lai, perhaps? Or Xanadu?"
"Nothing so mystical. Philby, however, brought to my attention a fascinating fact of the desert, that it was once filled with life, it appears. I do confess this raises a question in me--in some antedeluvian age when the Earth was warmer, do you suppose that Antarctica was similiarly lush with life? Perhaps I would lead an expedition to discover some evidence of that."
"Philby's opinions are his own, and not shared so readily with us all," Lawrence pulled at his beard for a moment. "Ah, I suppose that it's a suitably scientific endeavour. Very masculine, but that's to be expected of a Drakian woman, and yet still properly British. A scientific expedition in the footsteps of Shackleton. You'd probably be welcome at home in Britain, in some ways, if it weren't for your Sapphist inclinations with the girl being so open and obvious. You might certainly raise an expedition there. Perhaps so, at least. Draka are as fascinating as they are frightening, and the defectors twice as much in equal measure."
"Perhaps I'll do nothing, if Puran doesn't like the celebrity. Perhaps a modest house in Stockholm will be my sole aspiration."
"I don't believe that for an instant. You're a snake, and you'll be forced to prove yourself again and again, until you die. At best, her love will keep you from becoming a threat to whatever society that you two end up settling in."
"Does that mean you're going to let us go?" Beth countered, cuddling Puran against her and assuaging the girl's fears as best she could.
But it was to Puran that Lawrence's attention turned once more. "Tell me. Do you really want her to live? Would you still love her after what she's confessed? Will you pour all your emotional energy into keeping her from going mad in a society utterly alien to what she knows? Will you suffer everything that your relationship brings on each other and do it for the sake of a woman who bought you and doubtless raped you when you were a little girl? When her endeavours bring an unwanted spotlight upon you, will you bear it stoically?"
"Yes. Yes to it all, Your Excellency or whatever, Yes, I will do it," Puran answered, unsteadily, but with gathering fury till the chopped sentence had finished with a last proud exclaimative agreement. She was not sure she meant it; she surely could not say that she meant it, that she'd thought about it even before these revelations. And so in some way she felt that she had joined this strange and brutal game, made a commitment, like Beth had, that wasn't quite truthful but was still heartfelt, for she knew, instinctually, that it was their only path to survival, or at least that of Beth's, and for all she might not mean what she had said, she at least still could not find it within herself to desire the woman dead.
"Then you're mad."
Puran shuddered when she heard those words, but Lawrence blessedly continued:
"Mad, and yet Allah gives favour to the mad. I suppose it is only right, then, to let you have this request. Survival it is, for you both and your men besides; if your simpleton little lunatic's heart holds so much affection for her, who am I to deny you two your place together?"
Puran audibly sighed in relief, and slipped closer 'gainst Beth. But Lawrence of Arabia continue to speak, his own voice, in a calculated gesture, betraying some weariness.
"We have run out of options. This last big attack was a failure; we lost half of the attacking force, very near to it. We cannot sustain losses like that. The number of dedicated martyrs is not enough; great, but not enough. Fifty such attacks would wipe us out, and the Dominate would still remain. They have tightened their grip, and each day the situation in Riyadh grows better, the rails more secure, and my own position more tenuous. After the failure of Philby's raid--which you saved from total destruction, to be quite honest--we cannot attempt another like it. Ever. Until, that is, we have an ally..."
"The Power, growing in the north. Krasnov fresh in his strength, in the Soviet Union." Beth looked up, clear-eyed: "How do the border-skirmishes go?"
"Very badly for the Dominate."
"I'm not surprised. They're overstretched, the army is. But they'll be back, stronger and better prepared than before. It went the same way with our intervention in the Balkan War, and then in World War One."
"You are not facing any old Ottoman Empire, my dear; the Soviets will be back better and stronger, too, and they are, as always, relentless."
"Well, I do not think that the Dominate will last forever."
"Then even among defectors you are unique, and perhaps, just perhaps, there is hope for you after all."
Beth sighed heavily. "It is a heavy thing to admit. But if even the very savannah can turn to a sand ocean, this desert sea, all certitudes in life are gone."
"I like that part of what Philby has found," Lawrence answered after a moment. "Well, we are in a delicate situation. That raid was, as I said, our last; we shall be withdrawing from them, and from the Nejd. al-Wabar shall be our furthest outpost, and all raids, save those by one or two men as the smallest harassment, will have to cease, for the moment. But, God Willing, there will come a time when we have the strength behind us to strike such blows as your entire, ever so tenuous Empire over the Sands will crumble and fall like a dune in the sea, itself. And the bedouin will remain, and God will remain, and most of all, the desert will remain. So that is why I will let you live; because I desire another propaganda coup, a last gesture: And helping you safely out of the desert and to Europe, in peace, will be just that, when the Draka have invested so much in finding and killing you.
"So, now, the last act: Tell me everything, every single drop--and you know that I shall know if you are lying--of what you know about the practices of the Security Directorate in general, and of all operations in Arabia besides. Every little detail, from the economic and the political to the military, of your nation." As he spoke, the boy returned, holding a book and pen, to act as a scribe of Beth's litany of treachery to her people, a final sundering made while she held Puran in her arms. "And when you are done, I shall allow your Druze to rest in here, to drink our water, to eat our food, as I shall allow you two to do the same, until you are ready for the next leg of the journey."
"I wish to go to Muscat."
"Thesiger has made that journey often; he will lead the force that goes with you, and kill you and all of your's at the slightest sign of any behaviour which shows you.. Unfriendly."
"He will see no such sign."
"I like how you answer that. Let's begin, for we both know this will take quite some time."
Elizabeth ran her hands tenderly through Puran's hair, and the girl smiled up at her with half-lidded eyes of nervousness and hope alike, and she started to speak. Each word of treachery to her old people seemed to ease the situation for Puran and Lawrence in their own respective ways, and gradually, Puran again was able to fall asleep, exhausted by the deep desert, in the arms of the softly speaking woman who had both once owned her, and had now led her to the centre of the most desolate place upon the Earth, where was held the court of its most enigmatic man.
"Elizabeth Rikkesgarde," Lawrence called back. "Demon that you are! I see you have made it to my beautiful al-Wabar after all. Come forward. Alone."
"T'girl's stayin' at mah side," Beth answered, the conversation for the moment in English, and she was to exhausted to recall the proper variation of her school days.
"Very well, if she's unarmed," Lawrence of Arabia agreed in a contrasting accent, clear and crisp and very English. But then he shifted to Arabic: "I will take my tea with you and we will talk. Your men may camp in the lee of the crater for the moment."
"Surely," Beth replied, and Puran, looking over, could see the relief present on her face, the admission of some weakness from the sheer and harsh requirements of her having crossed the desert in such a fashion. They started forward on their camels, up to the very verge of the crater, and then dismounted. The Druze took them from Beth and Puran, and Beth helped Puran up. She, herself, was armed with only one thing, a sword, and went fearlessly among the Arab men and up to the legendary figure regardless of it.
Now they had been invited in to take tea with the master of the fortress. Muslim hospitality made them in as secure a position as they ever might be in the 'Rub al-Khali. Their courage might only protect them better, and caution would be of no service here. They could scarcely continue on by their own right. Puran took courage from Beth's relentless advance, and followed her right up, face to face with Lawrence.
"We've fought each other for a long time," Lawrence began, leading the two of them in through the awed Arabs, who parted for their leader and the demoness who stood beside him, battered kappe tilting crazily and twenty years old, or more, with a droll look on harsh and battered features as she listened. Puran was comfortably in their shadow.
"Eight years, almost nine," Beth answered in a surprisingly agreeable way, as they walked through tunnels in the obsidian, narrow and hand-hewn, and deep into the bowls of the dank Earth. Here the air was palatably more filled with humidity than in the desert, and both Beth and Puran coughed for a good minute as they pressed on through it, their parched tissues accomadating only with difficulty to the comparative surplus of moisture which was still a pitifully small amount.
They reached a series of suites, guarded by a few Arabs who looked to Lawrence reverently, and which were appointed in an incredibly sumptuous fashion with plunder and salvaged, faded glory. For the first time since they had plunged into the Negev, they were in luxuries. For Puran it was no pleasant time; she was shocked at how ill-equipped her body was now to the thought of sitting on fine pillows and curling against wonderful carpets. They had left their sandals outside, and a youthful man served them tea. The glances between him and Lawrence she could not ignore, and marked them well.
"We're polar opposites in some ways, aren't we?" Lawrence observed, not actually speaking directly about the matter, or even acknowledging the existence of the boy, or Puran, for that matter.
"We are, I suppose. Except in motivation. Though I've heard that you wrote a book.."
"The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It won't be circulated until my death; no need to have you people figuring out how I think until it's useless to me and mine. I'm surprised your Security Directorate was able to find out that I had, however..."
"A leak in Bahrain, I think, from the context and the phrasing of the documents I was allowed to see," Beth answered. "Does that help you?"
"Quite possibly, as a matter of fact." He tugged on his beard, and drank of his tea.
Beth gently held Puran's arm. "Don't drink it to fast. Sip it. When it's gone, they'll give us water to sip. You don't want to poison yourself."
And with that she sipped her own.
"Are you defecting, then?"
"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't."
"I could think of many other reasons, actually, and none of them are good, my fair Snake."
"Then kill me."
"A very good idea," Lawrence reached for one of his pistols in a swift move and drew it out of the holster, the gun levelled just a few feet from Beth, straight at her calm and collected face.
A primal cry erupted from Puran's lips at the scene, and she flung herself without a thought to her life, let alone the tea, into the path of the gun, a desperate look on face. "For the sake of God, stay your hand!" She cried out now in Arabic, her body as a human shield for Beth; but Beth, for her part, pushed Puran bodily aside, and continued her comment as though it had never been halted by Lawrence's agreement:
"Just don't kill Puran. Let her go no matter what. She was my private secretary, and she knows everything that I know. You can slaughter me and my men and take her out of the desert to Muscat and she will give you all the information that you could get out of me, while being perfectly safe with the location of al-Wabar."
"Love," Lawrence observed in a harsh but almost choked voice, as the gun was lowered and then smoothly returned to its holster. "Are you free, girl?" He didn't even look at Puran.
"She freed me the first night we were in the desert, with all of the men besides," Puran replied, shuddering. "I love her, yes. I don't like admitting it but if it's to save her life I will. I didn't think I did before, but... She's led me out of the desert like this. Abandoned all for me. And we can go to Weimar Germany and live openly together in a nice house and try and forget the past..."
"Forgetting the past is impossible."
"We'll try," Puran whispered, but she began to sob at the prospect of that, especially as Lawrence added:
"And I fear the cabarets of Berlin are not so welcoming these days under Goering's influence. I suggest Stockholm. Chilly climate, but of all of Europe they will bother you the least, and care about the affairs of the Snakes the least. The Nordic peoples, the low countries, Finland, the Baltics. Perhaps, maddeningly, the Hungarians. Save for Japan and her satellites, the only nations with whom Drakia carries on commerce of note these days."
"And Ireland."
"The Irish hate the Draka. They just hate the British equally," Lawrence remained very calm throughout, watching as Beth, though she matched his gaze and posture, nonetheless spared her arms for a tender embrace of Puran, and fresh tea was poured.
"I should kill you both for wasting two almost full glasses, where water is precious," he continued languidly. "But then again, I brought the act on myself. And I proved a remarkable thing. There exists a freed serf who genuinely loves her Drakian mistress. It's worth the price in water to see such a thing."
For the first time, though more a studying a curiousity, the rather misogynistic Lawrence paid some attention to Puran. "Tell me, what made you do it in the end? Fall in love with her, that is? Rather than just play along..."
"I never did just play along," Puran answered, composing herself, though still leaned up against Beth, sipping her tea very delicately. "I simply denied it, loathed myself, hated my enjoyment and what I felt. I suppose in some way we have been lovers for a long time. But the memories of the past don't fade easily, this is true; and yet she's always treated me so well..."
"Tell me, woman. Plain-out."
"She told me the story of her grandfather and the end of the Sokoto Caliphate," Puran managed, frowning rather faintly at the presumptiousness of the man before her. "And it showed me that there was humanity that flowed in her blood. I couldn't see her as a snake anymore; and I loved her. And I wish I understand how such a people has lost all virtue, all morality, all ethics, all restraint...."
"They are hampered by no morality," Lawrence agreed. "I don't think that your precious Elizabeth Rikkesgarde is, either."
"How.. But she's brought me here...!"
"And what morality is required for that action? None, girl, none at all. Just love. She is not acting morally because she has developed any kind of conscience or sense of ethics. She's acting morally because it furthers an emotional impulse she feels.
"Go on, Elizabeth. Tell her the truth. Tell her how, in fact, you're enjoying every minute of the fighting and the press through the desert. I know you much to well. Your love for her is just an excuse. Something that you let push you over the edge so that you could take on the ultimate challenge: Defying your own society in the whole, thumbing your nose at it, and winning.
"You are trying to out-Nietzsche a society founded on his works; an act which would, of couse, garner you the thorough approval of that poor syphilitic bastard, for what it is worth. You wanted to achieve one of the three grand feats of human endeavour, and only the second to be accomplished. To reach the Poles, to Summit Everest, and to cross the 'Rub al-Khali. If I let you live and leave this city, I will hear about you--and probably your loyal girl here--either succeeding or perishing as part of a team making an attempt on one of the other two. Summitting Everest? A fair challenge. Crossing the whole Antarctic continent as Shackleton had planned to do? Perhaps that is within your capability; it is a desert, just a very cold one, and, if I dare say, my good Elizabeth, you are as good in the desert as my Thomas and Philby are. Thesiger doesn't compare yet."
"Worthy company, for you to acknowledge your old foe is matched with the best of your men. The four Englishmen who have given us the greatest trouble all of these days." She refused to speak on the other matters.
"It would seem for how your fellow Snakes have reacted that you have given them as much trouble as I have, though, my dear Elizabeth. What do you have to say for yourself there? Are you going to answer my questions?"
"You're right," Beth said grimly. "You're right, Lawrence, as you've had to have been in every single decision and observation you've made to escape this long, to hide al-Wabar from us."
The devastated look on Puran's face seemed to affect even Beth's stern, stoic, British facade. It prompted her to turn aside, and murmur, softly: "I do love you, ever so much."
"But you're a monster who loves me."
"And I've abandoned everything except you..."
"And fame." Puran very nearly spat. "This is your quest for immortal glory."
"Well then, now that we've established all the particulars of your arrival," Lawrence continued, jovially, as though he were amused by the whole quarrel, "shall we come again to the question of whether or not you will leave al-Wabar alive or dead?"
Water was brought in now that they'd finished the tea, but Puran did not initially partake of it. Lawrence showed a first expression of emotion at that. "Don't worry, my young girl--Persian, no doubt, for your accent in Arabic betrays you--I will not kill guests with poison. I will see you out and then gun you down, if I do not mean for you all to leave here alive. We have our customs here in the deep desert, and the sanctity of our cause does not forgive us from so base a breach of them as poison."
Puran drank only very reluctantly. Yet the water was cold and beautiful, pure and perfect, to one who had been in the desert for so long. It was like paradise itself, and for a moment she was entranced by it, and forgot her anger with Beth's confession, and her mistrust of the enigmatic man before her, Lawrence of Arabia, the unconquerable leader of an unconquerable revolt.
"So what will you do, Elizabeth Rikkesgarde? What, oh snake, will be your ambition in the world beyond the Dominate. To find Shangra-lai, perhaps? Or Xanadu?"
"Nothing so mystical. Philby, however, brought to my attention a fascinating fact of the desert, that it was once filled with life, it appears. I do confess this raises a question in me--in some antedeluvian age when the Earth was warmer, do you suppose that Antarctica was similiarly lush with life? Perhaps I would lead an expedition to discover some evidence of that."
"Philby's opinions are his own, and not shared so readily with us all," Lawrence pulled at his beard for a moment. "Ah, I suppose that it's a suitably scientific endeavour. Very masculine, but that's to be expected of a Drakian woman, and yet still properly British. A scientific expedition in the footsteps of Shackleton. You'd probably be welcome at home in Britain, in some ways, if it weren't for your Sapphist inclinations with the girl being so open and obvious. You might certainly raise an expedition there. Perhaps so, at least. Draka are as fascinating as they are frightening, and the defectors twice as much in equal measure."
"Perhaps I'll do nothing, if Puran doesn't like the celebrity. Perhaps a modest house in Stockholm will be my sole aspiration."
"I don't believe that for an instant. You're a snake, and you'll be forced to prove yourself again and again, until you die. At best, her love will keep you from becoming a threat to whatever society that you two end up settling in."
"Does that mean you're going to let us go?" Beth countered, cuddling Puran against her and assuaging the girl's fears as best she could.
But it was to Puran that Lawrence's attention turned once more. "Tell me. Do you really want her to live? Would you still love her after what she's confessed? Will you pour all your emotional energy into keeping her from going mad in a society utterly alien to what she knows? Will you suffer everything that your relationship brings on each other and do it for the sake of a woman who bought you and doubtless raped you when you were a little girl? When her endeavours bring an unwanted spotlight upon you, will you bear it stoically?"
"Yes. Yes to it all, Your Excellency or whatever, Yes, I will do it," Puran answered, unsteadily, but with gathering fury till the chopped sentence had finished with a last proud exclaimative agreement. She was not sure she meant it; she surely could not say that she meant it, that she'd thought about it even before these revelations. And so in some way she felt that she had joined this strange and brutal game, made a commitment, like Beth had, that wasn't quite truthful but was still heartfelt, for she knew, instinctually, that it was their only path to survival, or at least that of Beth's, and for all she might not mean what she had said, she at least still could not find it within herself to desire the woman dead.
"Then you're mad."
Puran shuddered when she heard those words, but Lawrence blessedly continued:
"Mad, and yet Allah gives favour to the mad. I suppose it is only right, then, to let you have this request. Survival it is, for you both and your men besides; if your simpleton little lunatic's heart holds so much affection for her, who am I to deny you two your place together?"
Puran audibly sighed in relief, and slipped closer 'gainst Beth. But Lawrence of Arabia continue to speak, his own voice, in a calculated gesture, betraying some weariness.
"We have run out of options. This last big attack was a failure; we lost half of the attacking force, very near to it. We cannot sustain losses like that. The number of dedicated martyrs is not enough; great, but not enough. Fifty such attacks would wipe us out, and the Dominate would still remain. They have tightened their grip, and each day the situation in Riyadh grows better, the rails more secure, and my own position more tenuous. After the failure of Philby's raid--which you saved from total destruction, to be quite honest--we cannot attempt another like it. Ever. Until, that is, we have an ally..."
"The Power, growing in the north. Krasnov fresh in his strength, in the Soviet Union." Beth looked up, clear-eyed: "How do the border-skirmishes go?"
"Very badly for the Dominate."
"I'm not surprised. They're overstretched, the army is. But they'll be back, stronger and better prepared than before. It went the same way with our intervention in the Balkan War, and then in World War One."
"You are not facing any old Ottoman Empire, my dear; the Soviets will be back better and stronger, too, and they are, as always, relentless."
"Well, I do not think that the Dominate will last forever."
"Then even among defectors you are unique, and perhaps, just perhaps, there is hope for you after all."
Beth sighed heavily. "It is a heavy thing to admit. But if even the very savannah can turn to a sand ocean, this desert sea, all certitudes in life are gone."
"I like that part of what Philby has found," Lawrence answered after a moment. "Well, we are in a delicate situation. That raid was, as I said, our last; we shall be withdrawing from them, and from the Nejd. al-Wabar shall be our furthest outpost, and all raids, save those by one or two men as the smallest harassment, will have to cease, for the moment. But, God Willing, there will come a time when we have the strength behind us to strike such blows as your entire, ever so tenuous Empire over the Sands will crumble and fall like a dune in the sea, itself. And the bedouin will remain, and God will remain, and most of all, the desert will remain. So that is why I will let you live; because I desire another propaganda coup, a last gesture: And helping you safely out of the desert and to Europe, in peace, will be just that, when the Draka have invested so much in finding and killing you.
"So, now, the last act: Tell me everything, every single drop--and you know that I shall know if you are lying--of what you know about the practices of the Security Directorate in general, and of all operations in Arabia besides. Every little detail, from the economic and the political to the military, of your nation." As he spoke, the boy returned, holding a book and pen, to act as a scribe of Beth's litany of treachery to her people, a final sundering made while she held Puran in her arms. "And when you are done, I shall allow your Druze to rest in here, to drink our water, to eat our food, as I shall allow you two to do the same, until you are ready for the next leg of the journey."
"I wish to go to Muscat."
"Thesiger has made that journey often; he will lead the force that goes with you, and kill you and all of your's at the slightest sign of any behaviour which shows you.. Unfriendly."
"He will see no such sign."
"I like how you answer that. Let's begin, for we both know this will take quite some time."
Elizabeth ran her hands tenderly through Puran's hair, and the girl smiled up at her with half-lidded eyes of nervousness and hope alike, and she started to speak. Each word of treachery to her old people seemed to ease the situation for Puran and Lawrence in their own respective ways, and gradually, Puran again was able to fall asleep, exhausted by the deep desert, in the arms of the softly speaking woman who had both once owned her, and had now led her to the centre of the most desolate place upon the Earth, where was held the court of its most enigmatic man.
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In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.