Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear

He didn’t intend to sleep, and wasn’t conscious of having done so, but when he next opened his eyes, the sun had shifted. He dug out the map. It showed a stream nearby and after searching for a bit, he found it. The water level was low, but it was fresh water and clean. He drank and refilled the canteen, then did the best job he could of washing his wound.

There were perhaps two hours of daylight left. The last thing Malcolm felt like doing was beginning the climb, but it had to be done. He set off. At first, the paths were nearly flat, but they grew steeper as he climbed, and the sparse vegetation of the mountain’s base turned into something more like a forest as he rose, with ample undergrowth to trap his feet and make progress difficult. When the sun went down, what had been merely difficult became impossible, and finally Malcolm allowed himself to stop. He was hungry, but since he didn’t know what around him was edible, he didn’t take any chances. He wedged himself between a tree and the rock wall against which it had grown, tipped the hat forward over his face, and slept.

The next day’s climb was easier, as the mountain leveled out for a stretch. To either side, he saw the curving paths along the rock walls slope upward alarmingly, but he stuck to Ettouati’s map and followed the shallower course of the pass. He found a tree that resembled a date palm and took a chance on its fruit. He filled his pouch and when, several hours later, he still felt no ill effects from the first piece, he allowed himself a few more. Only a few—even edible fruit could give you the runs if you ate too much of it. But at least he wasn’t ravenous any more, just hungry.

The path meandered, and he ached to cut across it, to attempt to find a shorter route, but he didn’t dare. The mountains were treacherous here, famous for sudden drop-offs into gorges five hundred feet deep. If Ettouati had been there, he’d probably have known some better paths, but he wasn’t, except in the form of his map. Malcolm had no choice but to treat the map as scripture.

He thought about Ettouati as he climbed, thought about the men who’d killed him. They’d looked more Egyptian than Libyan. Broader features, for one thing, and then there was the knife with its scalloped blade, the sort you’d find in Cairo sooner than in Tripoli. But he wasn’t sure they’d been Egyptian, either. The language the second one had been speaking certainly hadn’t sounded like Arabic.

He thought, too, of Burke and the assignment he’d accepted from him. Even if Malcolm made it to the Mechili temple, what was he supposed to do when he got there? Burke hadn’t said, and Margaret’s notes held no clues. There were dangerous men about, that much was clear—the ones who’d caught and mutilated Burke were presumably also the ones who’d sent the assassins to Ettouati’s home. They’d seen to it that the other men Burke had put on their trail hadn’t returned home, and they’d do what they could to add Malcolm to the list. So his first priority was staying out of their hands. But supposing he succeeded at that, how was he to find the bloody statue he was being paid to recover? He could hardly expect the thing to be sitting out in the open.

All Burke had said was that the statue was protected by a sect that moved it from place to place. The last word he’d had suggested it was at the Mechili site: Margaret had shown him the telegram. The man who’d sent it had been killed the next morning, strongly suggesting that he’d been on the right track. But that didn’t mean he’d actually found the thing. And if he had, wouldn’t they have moved it since?

No, Burke had insisted, they only moved it once every two lunar years. It’s a practice they’d observed since biblical times, and they wouldn’t deviate from it just because someone located the site. They might not even know Lambert had sent a telegram—they might think they’d silenced him before he could tell anyone what he knew. And even if not, they’d have confidence in their ability to silence anyone else who came looking. In addition to the four men he’d sent, Burke had turned up stories of a dozen other men over the past century who’d gone looking for the calf and never returned.

Hearing that, Malcolm had very nearly backed out. A dozen other men—why think he’d fare better? The only man who’d made it out alive was Burke himself, and look what had happened to him.

But he’d already bought the fucking hat. And he’d shaken hands on the deal. And what was the alternative, drinking himself to death slowly in a succession of West London pubs? Burke had been right: What did he have to lose?

Malcolm spent the second night between the roots of a giant acacia and woke with water on his face. It didn’t rain often in this part of the world, and you took advantage of it when it did. He stripped off his clothing, put his gun under his jacket to keep it dry, and stood with his head tilted back. It was a brief shower, not even enough to wash all the dust off him, but its touch invigorated him. The morning sun dried him rapidly and he climbed back into his clothes before he could burn. He ate the last of his dates and started downhill.

He could see the way off the mountain by noon and set foot on level ground before nightfall. The southern desert stretched out before him, flat and featureless. Near the coast there had been frequent patches of vegetation and signs of animal life; here there was nothing except for the occasional jird scuttling ratlike across the sand. And the sand itself—it wasn’t the rolling dunes you saw in Foreign Legion pictures, just a parched surface that had been bleached the color of bone and packed so hard it barely took footprints. He remembered a line from a poem they’d made him recite in grade school: Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. He’d had a mental image of the desert, he remembered, as a sort of giant beach. The reality, of course, drove such images out of your mind forever. You couldn’t imagine the size of it, the emptiness, till you were standing inside it.

He started walking, setting a roughly southwesterly course. Traveling by night would be less arduous than trying to cross to Mechili with the sun beating down. He had a full canteen and he’d packed his pouch with whatever bits of fruit he’d been able to find on the way down the final slope. He could do the seven miles before dawn if he pushed himself. He’d be tired when he got there, which was not the best condition in which to face whoever might be waiting for him at the temple, and worst of all, if the landscape didn’t change along the way, they’d be able to see him coming for the better part of a mile, but that was just all the more reason to approach at night. He pocketed the hat, shifted the strap of his bag so it cut into a different part of his back, and pushed forward.

At a certain point, the dusk gave way to total darkness. He had a tin of matches in his bag, but it wasn’t worth using them up for the few instants of light they’d provide. His eyes adjusted, though it hardly mattered: there was nothing to see by day, less still at night. There was a hot wind that blew past from time to time, stirring the sand around him. He listened to his footsteps landing rhythmically. There was nothing else to do.

Was this what it was like to be blind? He couldn’t imagine what Burke must have gone through, wandering the desert with the sun searing his unprotected eyes until at last they were burnt out like useless candle stumps. How he must have treasured the night! Until all he had was night.

It was strange, Malcolm thought, how the man burned to recover the least of what he’d lost—not his sight, not his hand, not the normal life he’d had, but that thing, that useless, useless thing he’d lost his sight pursuing. Oh, it was valuable, no doubt—priceless even—and Malcolm imagined that archaeologists and museum docents could jabber about it for a thousand years, but what good could it possibly do Burke? A three-thousand-year-old statue—was this worth a dozen men’s lives? Or even one man’s? There would be a certain satisfaction for Burke in recovering it, Malcolm supposed, in victoriously closing a chapter that had opened in bloody defeat. But in the clear light of day, what was that really worth?