Golden Blood Read Free Page B

Price and Jacob Garth accumulated by the devious negotiations required in such matters, the cargo listed on the manifests as agricultural machinery, and the score of men who called themselves the “Secret Legion.”
    The transactions completed and the cargo aboard, she slipped through the canal and down the Red Sea, and eastward along the Arabian coast, to the spot that Jacob Garth had designated as the rendezvous with his questionable Arab allies.

3. THE ROAD OF SKULLS
     
    THE SHEIKH Fouad el Akmet appeared painfully surprised to learn that he was expected to accompany an expedition into the forbidden heart of the Rub’ Al Khali. Jacob Garth, it developed, had engaged his services upon the promise of two hundred and fifty pounds a day, and rich plunder, without specifying where the plundering was to be done.
    “Salaam aleikum! [ peace be unto you!]” he cried, in the age-old formula of desert greeting, when Price Durand and Jacob Garth entered his black tent, on the night after the sinking of the Iñez.
    “Aleikum salaam,” Price returned, thinking at the same time that the old Bedouin’s pious greeting would have little meaning if he ever found it feasible to attack his farengi allies.
    Price and Garth seated themselves upon the worn rugs spread against camel-saddles on the sand. Fouad sat facing them, supported by a dozen of his renegade followers, squatting in a semicircle. One of the Arabs served thick, viscid, unsweetened coffee, poured from a brass pot into a single tiny cup, which passed from hand to hand.
    Price sipped the coffee, delaying the opening of negotiations; Garth’s bland, pale face was inscrutable. The glitter of curiosity burned stronger in Fouad’s dark, shifting eyes, and at last he could contain himself no longer.
    “We ride soon?” he asked.
    “Truly,” Price assented. “Soon.”
    “Raids,” the old sheikh suggested, “against the El Murra? They have many camels, of the fine Unamiya breed.” His eyes glittered. “Or perhaps we will make war even on the farengi?”
    Jacob Garth’s hand went to the leather scabbard at his belt. Slowly he drew the golden sword, held it up.
    “What think you of this?” he asked in Arabic as fluent as Price’s own.
    Fouad el Akmet started to his feet and came forward eagerly, the gleam of the yellow blade reflected in his eyes.
    “Gold?” he demanded. Then, at sight of the snake motif of the sword’s handle, of the great ruby held in the serpent’s fangs, he leapt back, with a muttered “Bismillah!”
    “Yes, it is gold,” Garth told him.
    “The thing is accursed!” he cried. “It is of the forbidden land!”
    “Then perhaps you know the road of skulls?” Garth asked, his sonorous voice slow and even. “You perhaps have heard of the treasures that lie at the end of that road, beyond the Jebel Harb?”
    “No, by Allah!” the old Bedouin cried, so vehemently that Price knew he lied.
    “Then I shall show you the road,” Garth told him, “for we ride to plunder the land at its end.”
    “Allah forbid !” The sheikh was nervously twisting a finger in his sparse, rusty beard; fear was plain in his eyes.
    “Every camel will be laden with gold!” Garth predicted.
    “It is forbidden the faithful go beyond the Jebel Harb,” the sheikh exclaimed with unwonted religious fervor, fondling the hijab suspended from his neck. “Beyond is a land of strange evil; Allah and his prophet are unknown there.”
    “Then shall we not wage a jehad, a holy war?” said Price, maliciously.
    An agitated whisper ran along the line of squatting men. Price caught mention of djinn and ’ifrits.
    “What is there to fear, beyond the mountains?” he asked.
    “I know not,” he replied, “but men whisper strange things of the Empty Abode.”
    “And what are those things?” Price insisted.
    “Of course I do not believe,” Fouad disclaimed his superstition, half-heartedly. “But men say that beyond the Jebel Harb is a great city, that was old when the