Once more her keen eyes swept the vast plain which lay behind and across which, like a band of jet on damask cloth, showed the path made by the camels in their flight. She made no sound as she shaded her eyes and stared and stared into the far distance, but touched the amulet for good luck which hung at her own neck and, leaning far forward, touched the amulet which had been fastened in a tuft of hair on the camel’s left shoulder, thereby guaranteeing its safe arrival at the journey’s end.
“‘O thou who troublest thyself about the care of others, to whom hast thou left thine own cares?’” She muttered the proverb, then prayed to Allah as she smote the camel so that it finished the half circle and formed up with its companions, which utterly ignored its return.
“What is it, Namlah?”
Helen leant sideways as she spoke to the body-servant, in whose eyes she had seen the light of a great fear, then turned and looked back in the direction in which the woman pointed. She turned to her lover and pointed back along the path by which they had come, to where, hardly discernible and as a mere speck in the far distance, something moved.
“We’re followed, Ra!” she cried, leaning towards him and stretching out her hand.
“I know we are, sweetheart. I’ve known it for some time. Let’s hope it’s Yussuf.” He smiled at Namlah and shouted across to her. “We’ll put up a good fight, little sister, if they overtake us, and I swear they shall never take you two women alive.”
“Kismet! Excellency,” cried Namlah. “Perchance ’tis the blind one riding to join us, though verily there is but Lulah who could overtake these three beasts, the swiftest in Njed, and the black mare Yussuf does not ride. I pray thee let me have speech with Zarah if ’tis she, before death claims either the one or the other of us, likewise, if so be it is the will of Allah, allow me to approach the tyrant.”
She spat as she made her request, and guided her camel close to Helen’s and prayed to Allah, with frequent interludes of cursing, as they fled like the wind towards the spot whence they would turn due north and, if Allah the Merciful answered the prayers of the body-woman, would overtake a caravan journeying towards Oman or Hareek.
“’Tis the birds of prey, Excellency,” she said later, “calling as they ever call at dawn. Perchance from the heavens the eagles and the vultures spy food with which to break their fast.”
Helen looked up at the sky, across which drifted and wheeled vultures, eagles, hawks, and shook her head and smiled at the dusky little woman who lied to allay her fears.