Ali thought calmly of the journey before him. A novice attempting such a trip would invite his own death, and even an experienced desert traveler would find such an undertaking very precarious. However, Ali, who'd spent most of his life on the caravan routes, thought of it as just one more journey.
The merciless sun spared nothing. Waves of heat rolled along with monotonous regularity, as though the heat blanket were a mighty ocean beset by a steady wind. Ali turned his back to the sun's direct rays and watched Ben Akbar. He was hot and thirsty, and becoming hotter and thirstier, but so had he been before and would be again.
The sun was almost exactly where Ali had decided it should be when Ben Akbar raised his head and fixed his attention on the western horizon. It was the direction from which they had come, that from which pursuit should come. Ali turned to face the same way as Ben Akbar.
A few minutes later, they rode over a hillock and Ali saw them. They were a little group of the Pasha's crack troops, superbly mounted on magnificent dalul and maintaining tight formation behind a tracker. Ali reached up to fondle Ben Akbar's neck but kept his eyes on the riders. They were seven, including the tracker, and Ali knew at once why there were no more than seven and no fewer.
He was no ordinary outlaw, but a direct affront to all that Moslems held most dear. He must be brought to justice, and no effort would be spared to do so. Thus the tracker was the best to be found. The six soldiers were picked men. Finally, the seven dalul were the very elite of the almost thirty thousand camels with the Hadj. There were no more than seven pursuers because there was not another dalul to keep pace with these seven.
Ali did not have to ask himself if the seven dalul were fresh or weary; their riders would know how to conserve their mounts. Ben Akbar had had less than four hours' rest.
Standing quietly beside Ben Akbar, Ali told himself that he had wanted and planned to have the pursuit take form in just this way, and he would not change now if he could. He himself might have ridden much farther in the hours that had elapsed since leaving Al Misri's camp, but he'd have done it at the expense of Ben Akbar. The test had to come, and it was better to meet it in this fashion.
The soldiers sighted him and urged their mounts from an easy trot to a swift lope. Ali waited until they were within two hundred and fifty yards, well beyond effective range of smoothbore muskets, before he turned to Ben Akbar and said quietly, "Kneel."
Ben Akbar knelt and Ali mounted. At ease in the saddle, he turned to watch the soldiers sweep nearer. A momentary doubt assailed him as a close-up inspection of their dalul revealed the full magnificence of such animals. Ali put the doubt behind him and told Ben Akbar to run.
At home in a camel saddle as he seldom fitted in elsewhere, Ali did not waste another backward glance as Ben Akbar flew on. He knew what lay behind him, and that he could expect no mercy whether his back or his face was toward the pursuers. Wherever it struck, the blade of a sword would be equally sharp and bite as deeply.