“I’m on my way to Barkut. But I’ll be glad to pay you—”
The other two men came for him at a run. They had very practical spears, which they carried in an accustomed manner. They made for him from two sides, one from the right and one from the left. A scimitar is not a weapon for use against spear. Moreover, Tony found it necessary to keep his foot on the wriggling, wheezing fat man to keep him still. These were desert Arabs—Bedouin—to whom the possession of goods is a sign of luck but by no means of inviolate personal ownership. If somebody has something they want and they can with reasonable safety take it, they do so, rejoicing.
Tony learned this fact later. At the moment he was only aware that they meant definitely to kill him for the ten-dirhim piece whose glint in the sunshine had roused their cupidity. They were remote from all law or other reasons for restraint. The spearmen plunged for him, eyes intent. Tony thought, in one masterpiece of irrelevant reflection, of the moment when he had begun this journey by flipping a coin. But still he would not have changed places with anybody in the world.
He took action. It was pure instinct. The scimitar in his hand had a good deal of the feel of a slightly heavy tennis racquet. It even balanced like a racquet. The left-hand spearman was nearest.
Tony swung the scimitar as for a neat back-hand return-volley stroke. The head of the spear sprang off. Quickly he turned and with the scimitar served a fast though imaginary ball straight over the net. He followed through. The second spearman got in the way. Tony still followed through. He saw his victim with unforgettable clarity—pure, bearded villainy with one eye and a sword-split nose. Then the scimitar landed. The result was colorful—mostly red—and unquestionably lethal. Tony wanted to be sick, and to avoid it he turned on his two remaining foes. The short fat man was on his feet now, still wheezing. The spearman looked dazed. They ran. Tony chased them with his reddened scimitar. They headed at first straight for the whirlwind, but then swerved around it, almost warily; just as it obligingly started to get out of their way. They vanished over sand hills.
Tony stopped, panting. He went back to the scene of the conflict. He carefully did not look at the man he’d hit with the scimitar. There were three camels, still kneeling. Tony wanted to get away from there. He tethered two of them to the third, and mounted that one. Nothing happened. He kicked it.
The camel, offensively chewing a reeking cud, got up hind-end first, and Tony nearly fell off. Then it resignedly began to move in some indefinite direction. The other two camels followed docilely. The whirlwind moved companionably along with them—never very near, but never quite out of sight. At times it was a mile away and of respectable size. Sometimes it was only a couple of hundred yards off, and not more than twenty or thirty feet high. But it followed persistently, rather like an interested stray dog following a man whose smell fascinates it.
Hours later—many hours later—a white-walled city appeared in the distance. Date groves surrounded it. There were minarets within the wall, and a lacy structure comparable for beauty of design to the Taj Mahal—only the Taj Mahal is a tomb. A camel caravan moved unhurriedly away from its gates, bound for some place of mystery on beyond.
The whirlwind fell behind, as if bashful. It stretched upward and upward—again as if to keep Tony in sight—until it was merely the most tenuous of mistinesses. That was when he was almost at the edge of the oasis. Then it vanished suddenly, as if it had collapsed.
Tony Gregg rode up to the nearest city gate and slid down his camel’s off foreleg, which stank. Soldiers in turbans and slippers and carrying flintlock muskets looked at him in lively suspicion. He essayed to speak. They essayed to speak. Then they all stared. Presently two of them took him gingerly by the arm and led him through the city streets.