By Anne Fraser and Barbara Zuchegna
With assistance from Sharon Pickrel and Jean Lamb
Copyright 1999

Chapter Twelve

This time, when she got in the shower, Liliana had decided to at least face facts. She loved him. She wanted to be with him. She'd walk across hot coals if that's what it would take. And if all she could have were his dreams, she'd take those, happily and joyously. Questions about when he returned to Anne she ignored. She was only in the mood to face some facts. Others, she was sure, could only improve by being ignored, rather like the effect marinade had on chicken.

Lily stepped out of the shower as she reached this point in her ruminations. Drying her golden skin, adding talc and cologne, drying her hair and adding a bit of discreet concealment to the shadows under her eyes and color to her lips, she knew she was doing it all with him in mind. She added a shimmering bronze colored, calf length, silk night shift and was ready. This time she would go to him in his dreams, find him as he was dreaming ... but she would be awake, at least to start with, and then be gone before he awoke. The bond between them was strong enough to do that. All she had to do was consent to allowing it to happen.

So, lying on the bed, she closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, relaxing completely. And sent herself, in her mind, flying through the night to the Middle Eastern desert. Into the tent where he was sleeping, and knew immediately he wasn't alone. It was stiflingly hot in the tent, the air totally still. Visible as well was the second, inner tent, occupied by some one else. That presence, and Will Scrope’s, put paid to any idea of remaining with Richard, even in his dreams.

Softly, so as not to wake him, she knelt next to him, moving a strand of hair away from his face, gliding her fingers gently across his cheek. He was sleeping deeply, at peace for the moment. She bent, kissed him gently on the temple and left. There would be other dreams. She could wait, at least for now. Wait, and while waiting try to find a way out of this impossible situation … because she was beginning to realize that his love for her was the same as hers for him.

He had slept, soundly, for most of the day. He knew it from the quality of the light on the pale silk overhead, from the shadows cast by the cut bushes the Baluchis had tossed on top of the tent to conceal it from patrolling planes or helicopters.

He was furious. The damned woman had done something to him ... it was the only explanation. Over long years, he had schooled himself to be able to stay awake when he chose to do so, and he had most definitely chosen to do so today. With Adrian sleeping only feet away, inside his small black mini-tent, and Will Scrope by the door, Richard would not sleep and risk dreaming again of the woman who was haunting his sleep with extremes of joy and despair he could not bear to have known to anyone else.

He scrambled up from the disordered sleeping pallet, still fully dressed. Will was gone; it was another indication of how much time had passed. Adrian would still be asleep. The sun had not yet set.

The woman, Alexis, had no doubt meant well, but Richard was in no mood to be charitable. He pushed aside the tent flap and stalked out, looking for her ... and found her. She was sitting with Will and Jake Fowler in the meager shade of the stacked brush the Baluchis had pulled down when they dismantled the other tent. All around them, the young Baluchi men were vigorously breaking camp ... only the tent Richard had just left was still standing, and all the pack horses had been brought up, ready for loading. He had been the last to wake. His fury grew.

Richard strode purposefully across to where the woman was sitting. Will, familiar with the look on his king's face, rose apprehensively to his feet. Jake didn't, but from the look on his face, it was obvious that he was expecting that Richard was about to be extremely courteous to someone.

"Good afternoon, Richard," Alexis said sweetly. "You're looking rested."

For all the burning anger in his eyes, Richard's voice was ice. "Due, in no small part, to your own unasked-for offices, lady. If I am incorrect in this, please advise me of my error."

She was not intimidated. "You will be of little use as a commander, my dear Richard, if you refuse to rest. You needed to sleep; I had the means to make it possible. And I think it worked out rather well, don't you?"

He inclined his head with a practiced grace totally at odds with his rumpled clothes and the storm breaking in his eyes. "Forgive me, no. Allow me to make one thing clear to you. I, and no other, will decide when I sleep and when I do not. Clearly, I have no way to prevent you from doing again what you have done to me today. If you choose to do so, bear this in mind: I am at this moment charging Sir William here to watch over me when I choose to stay awake. If, for any reason, I sleep when I have not decided of my own volition to do so, I will order Shahid Khan to strip Will down and apply a whip to his back until it is a bloody pulp. Do you accept this charge, Will?"

"I do, Your Royal Grace." There was no hesitation at all in Will's answer.

Richard didn't give Alexis the opportunity to say anything. He said, "And if it should occur to you to cause Will to sleep as well, know that this will make no slightest difference in my disposition of his punishment. You have not been asked to interfere. If you choose to do so again, Will's discomfort will be on your own head, lady. I will not be interfered with. Accept this, or accept the consequences of your continued obstinacy."

He turned on his heel and stalked away.

There was a moment of absolute silence, and then Jake said, "Did he mean that, Will?"

Will looked down at him with perfect serenity. "Don't be a fool, Jake. He could not say that and then back away from doing it."

"And you're just gonna let him get away with it?"

"What he chooses to do in this matter," Will said kindly, smiling, "would seem to be up to the Lady Alexis."

And he, too, walked away.

Alexis counted to ten, in three different languages, before doing or saying anything. She was used to a lot of macho posturing – one didn't go far in the oil industry without being able to cope with it -- but this was a bit much. Even Ed Perry was looking rather thoughtful after the brisk little scene, while Jake was an unpleasant shade of crimson. What was CIA protocol for a team leader going berserk? She vaguely remembered the term 'tinpot dictator with delusions of godhood' from something she once watched on the telly a long time ago.

She would not approach Perry, though. Men hated that sort of thing -- considered it letting down the side or some such. However, she would do her best to appear entirely sweet and reasonable. And let him approach her. Meanwhile, she'd do her bit for cohesion by smoothing down Jake. Perry would appreciate such team spirit, and be a touch more receptive to any little suggestions she might make later on.

Alexis briskly walked over to Jake. "Please calm down," she said. "It won't help. His Grace is quite determined to run this expedition in the way that pleases him. We still have a mission to accomplish."

The younger man sputtered with rage. "How can you put up with that?"

"Because I do not care to see Mr. Scrope hurt, and I know you don't, either," Alexis said in her softest tone of voice. "Fortunately we have a strong second in command should His Grace ruin his health," she said, moving her chin minutely in Perry's direction. "T'Beth is still in danger, and it won't do her much good to have us quarreling among ourselves. It's my fault, really. Richard has made it clear that he's in charge of all decisions, and I did take it upon myself to send him to sleep."

"But he needed it!"

"That's not the point. I've seen this sort of thing before. He'll have to realize for himself that he requires rest, food, and the like before he will allow himself to have any. So far it hasn't hurt the expedition. I hadn't realize that he would react this way, obviously, or I wouldn't have done what I did -- but now he'll likely stay up for days on end just to prove I can't push him around. This is where the rest of us come in. We must follow Perry's lead should Richard become incapacitated, but I certainly hope it won't come to that. Pushing will just make it worse. Once he realizes that we simply are standing aside, he may well see reason. After all, he truly doesn't want Will hurt, either, and once he realizes that he's exhausted enough that he might fall asleep anyway, I sincerely doubt he'd go through with this. I do hope so, anyway."

Jake shook his head, baffled with her bullshit if not dazzled by her brilliance. At least his skin had turned back closer to his normal shade. Alexis let him think it over, and tried not to feel too smug once she noticed Perry's approving gaze.

Then Perry called them all together to hand out the burnooses.

As the group of rescuers gathered around the cooking fire to either eat a hasty meal or, in some cases, watch while others ate, Ed Perry approached them.

"Tonight," he said, ensuring he had their attention, "we cross the border. Any screwing around stops here. No more jokes, pranks, or anything that will cause dissent or divert attention. From this point onward, our lives are in danger. I will personally kick the butt of the first person who makes a crack, got it?"

They all nodded, even Adrian. Ed was the expert.

"We all need to look like we belong with the Baluchis, at least from a distance." Ed, from his amazing bottomless packs, produced appropriate garments for everybody. "Put these on," he ordered, handing out a burnoose per person, as well as headgear.

Despite his orders, there was a certain amount of muted mirth when the travelers finally got into their new garments.

"How do I look?" Alexis asked Jake, the first available critic, when she was finally clad Baluchi-style.

He studied her with pursed lips and quirked eyebrows. "Like Katherine Hepburn in 'The Lion in Winter,'" he finally decided.

Alexis struck a pose with one hand extended in front of her. "The calla lilies are in bloom again," she quavered.

"How about me?" Adrian asked, trying to stride forward without tripping. His practice in a chador stood him in good stead.

"Lawrence of Arabia," Jake said promptly.

Adrian snorted. "Lawrence of Arabia was an idiot," he said.

"Your point?" Jake asked, too innocently.

All too aware of Ed Perry's scrutiny, Adrian swallowed his immediate response, which would have been unprintable, and studied Jake. "You, on the other hand," he said sweetly, "look like a football player at a toga party in a really weird frat house."

Richard joined them. He, of course, looked like he'd been born wearing a burnoose. "We only have to pass at a distance," he said. "If the enemy is close enough to notice that we are not truly Baluchi, then we start firing."

"Right," Ed said, "so mount up and let's get moving."

They obeyed.

Adrian was humming to himself, despite the fact there'd been no fresh munchies before bedtime this morning, and no company in bed. His mind was far from Pakistan, though, when Jake caught up to him as the trail widened.

'What's that you're humming?' Jake asked, not recognizing the tune.

'Elizabethan music,' Adrian replied. 'A dance tune ...' He shook his head ruefully. 'Just for a moment,' came the slightly wistful thought, 'I could imagine ... never mind.'

But Jake caught enough of the fading thought -- that Adrian had been pretending, for lack of a better word, that this was a different time, another world. That he was still human, and out riding under the night sky with a company of itinerant players, on their way to perform Marlowe or Shakespeare's latest work. Jake almost turned his head to see if there were phantoms riding with them, could nearly hear the creak of the lattys wheels, and the round tones of Elizabethan curses in the night.

Four hundred years from now, would he be fantasizing about playing touch football with the guys, or hanging out at the student pubs? He shook away the thought irritably. It wasn't like Adrian to moon about the past, but he shoved away that worry for the moment.

'Don't mind me, Jake,' Adrian said. 'Whatever was that unpleasant little scene about this evening?"'

'Didn't you hear?'

Adrian shook his head. 'It wasn't dark yet,' he pointed out. 'But when I came out of the tent, there was enough tension left in everyone to give me a headache. What happened?'

Jake explained it to him briefly, then told Adrian what was preying on his mind -- that he was afraid Alexis meant to undermine Richard's authority, using Ed Perry as her deputy. He repeated what he'd heard Alexis say.

'But you didn't tell Richard,' Adrian noted.

'It felt too much like snitching,' Jake admitted. 'I never did like tattletales. And I get the feeling that Richard knows perfectly well what she's up to, and that he's keeping an eye on her.'

'Then let Richard do just what he says he can do -- command us. And Jake, Richard never says anything he doesn't mean. Will accepts that, so should you.'

'But to whip him...!'

'If you challenge Richard's authority again yourself, you may very well find yourself on the receiving end of similar treatment,' Adrian warned. 'Richard is not a 20th century man, Jake. He must be seen to be in full command, and to have us respect his authority. Let him handle Alexis. I doubt that it will ever come to Richard having to carry out his threat. Even Alexis isn't callous enough to have an innocent man punished for her actions.'

'What about Ed?'

'Richard can handle him, too. When it comes right down to it, Ed is a paid employee. And I get to mind-wipe him when this trip is over.' Adrian's grimly amused tone indicated that he was really going to enjoy that. 'Now, then, since you know no Elizabethan tunes, how about we regale these poor Baluchi with another cowboy tune?'

Thus it was that Richard, Ed, Shahid, Zabour and the others were somewhat startled to hear "The Legend of Pecos Bill" come drifting from the lips of the two Canadians ...

Shahid Khan, on this fourth night on the trail, had undergone a sudden and complete transformation. Content before this to allow his young men to be managed by the dour Zabour, while he watched their antics with amused tolerance, he had now become what Ed Perry and Richard Plantagenet had always known he truly was: the ruthless and experienced old cutthroat who had prospered for all of his adult life by violating the borders and the laws of three countries.

Scarcely two hours into their journey, as their single-file march wound its way up a switch-backed horror of a narrow mountain trail with a yawning chasm from an acrophobe’s nightmare frighteningly close on their right, Shahid called a halt and issued quick, quiet instructions in a new and hard-as-nails tone of voice that had Zabour and the younger Baluchis scurrying up and down the line of horses. Richard dismounted and walked down the line as well, issuing his own terse instructions.

"They are wrapping the horses' hooves in rags to avoid creating any sound that will carry for any distance," he explained. "The border is at the crest of the ridge we are now climbing, and from this point on, there will be no speaking that is not absolutely necessary. If you must speak, do so in as low a voice as possible. The hours between now and dawn are the most dangerous we will encounter on our journey." His own voice was only loud enough to be heard by Jake, whose horse's bridle he had seized, and Adrian, who had turned in his own saddle to hear. "All of the passes through the mountains along the border are as well known to the Iranian patrols as they are to our Baluchi friends, but they cannot all be watched at all times. It is entirely a matter of chance whether or not we will encounter such a patrol tonight." He paused, for effect, Adrian thought ... an old actor's ploy, and then said, "If we are unlucky, it is absolutely imperative that you follow immediately and without question any orders you receive from Shahid, from Zabour, or from me. Do you understand?"

Even for Jake, the urge to kid around had died long since, when he saw the grim faces of the Baluchis. The quiet tension in Richard's voice only reinforced his awareness that this trip, which had been irritating and uncomfortable up to now, had become deadly.

But he was astonished when Richard added, "Adrian, you should be at the front, now," and even more surprised when Adrian, without hesitation, agreed.

'Talbot,' Jake thought at him fiercely, 'what the hell do you think you're doing? You're letting that damned burnoose go to your head.'

Adrian's eyes gleamed in the faint starlight. 'Jake, if there are Iranian troops up ahead, they will be lying in ambush. I'll know they're there before anyone else can.'

Oh. Adrian was right, of course. He would be able to sense the presence of anyone hiding along the trail ahead of them long before any shooting started. Jake hadn't really thought about it before, but it was dawning on him now that Adrian could do a lot of things that they were probably going to find useful before this trip was over. He realized, too, that Richard had probably long ago learned about every one of them and planned just exactly how he would use them.

Richard had gone on down the line to speak with Will and Alexis. Jake watched Adrian get down from his horse. Apparently, whatever Adrian was going to do at the front, he would be doing on foot. Unwilling to acknowledge his very real worry, Jake thought at Adrian, 'Watch your ass up there, okay? Even you could get squashed like a bug if you fell off the damned mountain.'

The expected smartass response from Adrian didn't come, and Jake was startled at the genuine humility in Adrian's reply. 'Thank you, Jake.'

The little bastard had actually been moved by the concern Jake couldn't hide from him. Well, dammit, you could care about someone without ... well, you could worry about a friend, couldn't you? As Adrian started up the line toward the front, Jake sent a quick, 'Break a leg, Talbot,' and he could dimly see Adrian's hand lift in acknowledgement before he disappeared into the darkness.

Ed Perry was astounded to see Richard bringing his obnoxious little actor friend with him to the front of the caravan. Keeping his voice low, he hissed, "What in the hell is he doing up here?"

Richard was in the process of undergoing his own transformation. Up until now, he had deferred in most things to both Perry and Shahid Khan because they knew the territory and the situation better than he did. But now there was the possibility of a fight, and he would allow not the smallest doubt about just who was in command here.

The trail was slightly wider at the front of the train, with room enough for the dismounted Perry, Shahid and Zabour to gather closer at Richard's abrupt gesture. In a voice none of them had heard before, a voice low and unexcited but with an unquestionable authority in it, he said, "The Effendi Adrian is unusually skilled at scouting unseen, and he will go ahead of us, on foot, to determine whether or not the way is clear." He fixed his eyes on Perry, waiting for any objection, but Perry swallowed whatever he might have been about to say. He was remembering the actor's unexpected skill with a handgun. Apparently, it was not the only unexpected skill Adrian Talbot possessed.

Richard turned to Zabour. "I have made the Effendi Will responsible for the Khatun Alexis. But you will assign one of your young men to him, one to her, and one to the Effendi Jake, to assist them if we run into trouble. If there is shooting, these young men are to see to getting them out of the line of fire as quickly as possible. See to it now."

Zabour didn't question. He bowed and hurried back into the darkness. Richard turned his attention to Shahid Khan. "My lord khan, if we discover the enemy in our path, you will bring up those among your young men most skilled at moving silently afoot through the rock slopes above the trail. The Effendi Adrian and I will lead them to remove as many of the enemy as possible before we move the animals forward. If you hear small arms fire at any time, you will proceed through the pass at the greatest possible speed immediately. Is that understood?"

If Shahid was disturbed to be receiving instructions rather than giving them, Adrian could see no sign of it except for a small tightening of his mouth, almost invisible in the exuberant facial hair. He bowed slightly and said only, "At your order, Effendi Richard."

Richard drew Adrian away from the others, into the sheltering darkness beyond the head of the caravan. "Take care, Adrian." They had discussed this earlier, and Richard was confident of Adrian's ability, but he had come to value this strange man highly and there was a note of worry in his voice. "We will be moving slowly up behind you. If you sense nothing ahead, rejoin us a mile or two beyond the crest of the ridge, at whatever point the pass widens and offers no places of concealment for ambushers."

Adrian nodded. It was gratifying to know that Richard was worried about him, but really, there was almost no chance that anything they were liable to encounter here could hurt him. It was even more gratifying to realize that Richard was trusting him with the lives of the entire group.

Almost against his will, Adrian found himself trying very hard to play the role Richard had given him with as much panache as he could, and if he was thinking now that, as bad as riding a horse was, it was infinitely preferable to hiking afoot over a rough mountain trail in this godforsaken corner of creation, he wasn't going to give Richard any sign of it. He drew himself up in his best stalwart hero pose and said, "Oui, mon capitaine," and was pleased to see, through the darkness, the quick flash of Richard's grin. Richard squeezed his arm briefly, then turned away and went back toward the others.

Adrian sighed, looking ahead at the trail winding upward through the rocks. To his eyes, the darkness was not nearly so opaque, and he could clearly see their way. They would be moving off the cliff-edge just ahead, and up a narrow crevice that worked its way toward a notch in the mountain crest, the actual pass that would take them to the far slopes of the range ... and across the border into Iran. If there were border patrolmen watching this pass, they would be in that crevice, most probably where it crossed the top of the ridge. The notch was deep; it would offer plenty of places to lie in wait.

Adrian was a very urbanized creature. Hiking, even in the superb trail boots Richard had provided, was not his idea of a desirable activity for a civilized being. 'You had to tell him,' Adrian thought, 'that you could zip around unseen by normal humans. You had to tell him you could sense their presence even when you couldn't see them. You are going to have to learn to keep your mouth shut.' But even though he could never in a million years have imagined that he would end up scouting out a trail through hostile mountains like some kind of damned Wild West Indian scout, Adrian was discovering that he wasn't really reluctant to do this. He couldn't wait to see the look on Ed Perry's face if there really was someone waiting for them, and Adrian was the one who came back to tell them about it. Smiling in anticipation, he set off up the trail.

The caravan moved in eerie silence now. Only the soft plod of the horses' muffled hooves betrayed their presence. Every piece of gear that might have clinked or clanged or jingled against another had been carefully wrapped or stowed to prevent any sound from alerting any possible listening ears. One idiot horse, who insisted on making periodic blubbering noises through his nostrils, had found his nose tightly wrapped as well, and was unhappily forced to breathe through his mouth. Among the riders, no one made a sound of any kind.

Their progress was slow. The trail swung away from the cliffs now, turning up into a deep crevice that rose toward the ridge line, and then cut through a V-shaped notch, the pass that would take them over the mountains and over the border into Iran. If they were going to run into trouble, it was most likely going to be in that pass.

Ed Perry, riding at the front of the line, where the trail was wide enough now to allow him to ride side by side with Richard and Shahid Khan, strained his eyes to see forward into the darkness ahead and above them. Somewhere up there, the weird actor friend of the mysterious Richard Plantagenet was scouting on foot, looking for signs of an Iranian border patrol and a possible ambush. Perry had been reassessing the impossibly beautiful little actor ... first when he outshot every one of his companions with practiced ease, and then when Richard trusted him with the responsibility of warning them if there was trouble ahead. It hadn't taken Perry long to realize that Richard himself was more than competent; what Richard didn't know, he quickly learned, and he paid close attention to those who had knowledge or information he needed. His quiet faith in his peculiar friend spoke volumes to Ed Perry. Clearly, Adrian Talbot really was something more than just another pretty face.

If there was an Iranian border patrol troop up ahead, and Adrian warned them before they walked blindly into it, Perry was perfectly willing to let him fuck Baluchi ass from now till doomsday. As a matter of fact, he'd round it up for him and, if necessary, hold it still.

But when this trip was over with, Perry had every intention of satisfying his own curiosity about Adrian, about Richard, and about all the rest of what had to be the strangest group of people he'd every seen in one place. He was an educated man, and one thing he was reasonably certain of was that the surname "Plantagenet" had died out some five hundred years ago. So he wanted very badly to know just who Richard was, where he got the money he spread around so liberally, and who and what his friends really were. He could believe that Adrian was an actor; he didn't for a moment believe that he had some kind of illness. But he knew all about the small black tent-within-a-tent they'd brought for him, and the idea that suggested, along with the entire group's extremes to protect him from the sun, was too weird take seriously ... and too weird to ignore.

Then there was the woman ... she went with Richard when he went to bed every morning, but in nothing else did she act as if she had any kind of sexual or romantic relationship with him. If anything, she seemed as curious about him as Perry was. And how in the hell had she made Richard sleep when he didn’t want to? For that matter, what was her relationship with Dex, back in Karachi? Perry knew exactly who and what Dex was, had found himself working both with and against Dex in the past, and any woman who could get Dex to jerk the Pakistani bureaucracy around the way he had was a woman well worth investigating. And every so often, Perry would get this funny feeling that he'd seen her somewhere before...

The big guy, Will, and the anthropologist, Jake, seemed the most normal of the bunch. But Perry had tried, with some subtlety, to get information out of each of them ... and had run into stone walls. Jake was hypersensitive to anything that touched on Adrian or Richard, and Will ... Will wouldn't offer an opinion on the weather.

When this trip was over, Perry promised himself again, he was going to find out everything there was to know about the whole bunch of them.

They were still about a mile short of the pass itself when a shapeless mass materialized out of the darkness and turned out to be the cloaked Adrian Talbot. Richard's hand went up immediately, bringing the entire group to a halt as each rider in line signaled to those behind him. Richard dismounted quickly, as did Shahid, Ed Perry, and Zabour, who came hurrying forward from his place toward the rear.

As soon as they had gathered around him, Adrian said, his voice very low, and his damned ego not unaware of being the center of their riveted attention, "Richard, we were unlucky."

Naajy was one of the two young Baluchis Shahid had decided would accompany the Effendis Richard and Adrian. But this was a Naajy Adrian would hardly have recognized. With a flashlight shielded under a heavy burnoose, Adrian had drawn a quick sketch in the dirt with his finger, showing the layout of the pass ahead and the approximate locations of the seventeen men he had counted waiting, bored out of their minds, in the rocks above the pass. Some of them were actually dozing; others stared off into the star-filled night sky, their eyes vacant. None of them were expecting company tonight. Naajy, as he listened to Adrian's description, grinned with the feral joy of a fox who had just heard that the henhouse had been left open. And the gleam in his eyes did not at all resemble the soulful romantic yearning he had turned on Adrian just yesterday.

The other young Baluchi who would go with them, Fadi, was actually chuckling under his breath with glee. Richard had no expression on his face at all except polite interest. Once, he asked a question. Other than that, he listened in silence until Adrian had finished.

The flashlight was turned off and tucked away somewhere and Naajy and Fadi straightened, waiting. Richard held something out to Adrian, who took it and pulled the double-edged dagger halfway out of its belt scabbard. Starlight played along the polished steel of its blade. "Adrian," Richard said quietly, "can you do this?"

There was no hesitation at all in Adrian's answer. "Yes." He realized he would not like for Richard to know just exactly how often he had done it over the many years of his ... unlife. He snapped the scabbard onto his belt and stood, as did Richard.

Richard turned to Shahid Khan. "Bring the train along slowly, but halt within a quarter mile of the entrance to the pass. We will signal with the flashlight when the way is clear. If we are detected before then, and there is shooting, come immediately at all speed and do not stop until you have cleared the pass entirely."

Shahid bowed, very gravely. "As you say, ,Effendi."

Richard's eyes turned to Zabour. Even in the moonless night, Zabour could see the growing ferocity gleaming there. "You are responsible for the Khatun Alexis and for the Effendis Jake and Will. You will answer to me if they come to harm."

Zabour, who was learning fast, bowed but chose not to answer.

Ed Perry, who was wondering about now if the money he was being paid for all this was anywhere near enough, watched Richard with cautious eyes and said nothing at all. What was about to happen was something he hadn't planned for or even imagined. And his determination was deepening by the minute to find out who in the hell Richard Plantagenet really was.

Richard made a small motion with his hand as he turned, and Adrian, Fadi and Naajy followed him silently. Within a moment, they had all vanished from sight and Shahid Khan raised his hand high to set the caravan in motion once more.

"What the hell is going on up there?" Jake whispered, under his breath, to Will Scrope, who had come up beside him. They had been halted for more than ten minutes, and no one had come to tell them why.

Will turned unexcited eyes on him but said nothing. Right. His royal kingship had said no talking. Jake turned to look at the grim-faced young Baluchi who had taken station on his other side, but he didn't think he was going to get any answers there, either. There was another of them beyond Will, and this one had come with Will when he moved up. Clearly, they had been assigned a greenhorn each, but they weren't saying anything. Jake turned in his saddle and saw another of them sitting his horse quietly beside Alexis. Something, Jake knew, was about to happen. He wished to hell he knew what it was.

When it came, it was almost disappointing. The rider immediately ahead of them raised his hand and began to move slowly forward. The young Baluchi beside Jake passed the signal on to those behind and kneed his horse into motion as well, and Jake's horse, agreeably, moved right along with it. Will and his companion dropped back behind, and the entire line was moving, very slowly, climbing steadily toward the pass, visible only as a V-shaped dip of lesser blackness in the ridge above, against the background of the star-strewn night sky.

That was one thing you had to give the desert, Jake thought, looking up. The clarity of the air allowed every tiniest star to shimmer gorgeously, and the path of the Milky Way across the sky was breathtaking. Toronto's skies were never like this. A city dweller, Jake was used to night skies that reflected the constant light of the city below, and against which only the brightest stars could be seen. Here, the sky was unrelievedly black, and the sheer number of visible stars boggled the mind. You could really imagine, with just a little effort, that you were looking at black velvet, with diamonds ... millions of tiny diamonds, scattered...

"Oh, shit." Jake looked down, and found himself virtually blinded by the brilliance of the stars. Was that gunfire?

Someone yelled something up ahead, then someone else.

"YAA-HAAA!" The young Baluchi beside Jake damned near deafened him as he reached over to smack Jake's horse across the hindquarters with his rifle. Jake had barely time enough to lock his knees before the horse bolted forward, and just that suddenly, the whole damned caravan was careening wildly toward the pass, heedless now of noise, the Baluchis bellowing at the top of their lungs as they rode.

That was gunfire. And there was a whole lot more of it ... and they were riding right into it. Instinctively, Jake started to pull back on the reins, and the Baluchi beside him yelled something Jake couldn't understand and jerked the reins out of his hands. Jake grabbed for the horse's flying mane and bent forward over it while his friendly neighborhood Baluchi pulled the horse along at insane speed over the rocky, uneven ground.

They were in the pass now, where the ground leveled out under foot. The horses, urged on with whips and battering rifles, were running flat out, foam flying back from their straining mouths. On the slopes above the pass, little gouts of flame marked where guns were firing, and all around Jake the Baluchis themselves were firing back, but not slowing down at all to do it. Shocked, Jake felt something buzz, incredibly hot, by his ear, and he saw the sparks showering up from the rocks where bullets struck ... lots of bullets. Behind him, a horse screamed suddenly, a hideous, horrifying noise, but no one stopped or slowed down.

Will Scrope was beside him again, and he, too, leaned over to smack Jake's horse a good one, encouraging its already mad flight. There was a gleaming wetness on Will's shoulder and arm, but his face was split in a huge grin of camaraderie, and he was yelling every bit as loud as the Baluchis. Incredibly, what he was yelling was, "For God and St.George!"

Jake thought they'd all gone crazy. He hung on, praying, not even sure who he was praying to or what he was praying for, and just waited for the insanity to end.

The ground was dropping away under them now, and the horses were slowing. There were no more sparks flying from the rocks underfoot. Will reached over to grab the bridle of Jake's horse and drew it to a shuddering halt, along with his own. Behind them, in the pass they had cleared, guns continued to fire.

The Baluchis had turned and were going back, swarming eagerly, Shahid among them. More yelling, more guns firing, and they were out of sight. Jake found himself sitting atop a trembling animal with only Will, Alexis, Ed Perry, the taciturn Zabour and a bunch of packhorses for company. Will's shirt, all over his shoulder and arm and down the front was black and definitely wet, but he seemed not to notice. Zabour said, "Come. We keep moving." And nobody argued.