Desert Rhapsody - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Outside, Adnan was saying goodbye to his horses and camels. Over the past few days, he had only been able to travel tied to a camel, with no way to look after his possessions. After the old raiders had been stuffed into cages, he bargained with his more amenable new masters and bought back a camel he had raised for two dinars. In exchange, he told the bandits how they should care for his livestock.

In the great desert, these gentle four-legged creatures were the most loyal companions of the people of Arabia. Nomads regarded their mounts as brothers. Falcons, fine horses, camels-these were the friends that accompanied the men of Arabia from childhood. Adnan dutifully told the men receiving the animals which horses had good tempers, which camels were gentle, what each of them liked to eat, and how to raise them so they would be easy to handle and grow close to their keepers.

This left the bandits with a rather good impression of him. When Jiang Yuan went to look for Adnan, they even said they would speak to Abal and let silver-tongued Adnan take two more camels and some useless silk and jewels back with him, so he could trade them for “Baghdad’s fine wine, Persia’s armor, and Damascus blades.”

Adnan had heard about Jiang Yuan’s situation and sighed a little. “I knew you were no ordinary bird.” The old man sat on a rock, his clothes ragged and stinking, marked with hard, splashed stains of dried blood. His hair was matted and full of windblown sand. A man as clever as Adnan could hardly have failed to notice that Jiang Yuan was extraordinary. Before the bandits surrounded them, it had been Adnan who told Jiang Yuan to take off her clothes and phone and switch them for a bundle. “I hoped to preserve you, my benefactor. But even buried in gravel, a pearl remains distinct from sand. Abal is a man who knows treasure when he sees it. He picked up the pearl and wants it to shine.”

Jiang Yuan was actually in no better state than him. She had not had time to bathe, had not even had time to change her shoes, and the soles of her feet had been cut open again during the fight, leaving them soaked with blood. There was still a little while before the heat set in, and the sky was already fully bright. She sat beside him, and all at once the pain began at the soles of her feet, so sharp it was almost unbearable.

“I’ll have Abal look after you a little more.”

“This batch of goods won’t be given to me. Those are the rules.” Adnan smiled. “Still, doing business with bandits is not a bad trade. Everything in their hands costs them nothing. I’ve already found out that the merchants the Blood Eagle dealt with before were not very honest.”

Jiang Yuan smiled too, but the motion tugged at the cracks in her lips, salty and painful.

In any case, she first received from Abal a decent tent, along with clean water and flatbread. She ate a little meat, wiped herself down as best she could with cold water inside the cloth tent, washed her face, and barely managed to bandage and medicate her feet. Then, urged on by her aching body, she collapsed onto the blanket and sank into a deep sleep. Around the afternoon, before sunset, Adnan came to bid her farewell.

Jiang Yuan was not fully awake yet. It was purely physical; her exhaustion had not eased, and she kept yawning. The one who brought Adnan over was Faisal. He already knew Jiang Yuan would be staying, and the look he gave her was both furious and restrained. Jiang Yuan saw Adnan to the entrance of the camp. Several surviving merchants were leaving with him. Men like Turkic warriors and Black slaves, who could not pay ransom yet still had value, would not be allowed to buy their freedom. They would be branded and taken away to be sold in all directions-to Rome, Eastern Europe, Egypt, even Central Asia and Great Tang. People wandered across the roads of the earth to places Jiang Yuan could not go. She gave Adnan the entire small pouch of gold coins Abal had given her.

“Take it back with you,” Jiang Yuan said quietly. “When you reach a place to settle, you should go collect your son’s body.”

Adnan had traded away his right to vengeance for Jiang Yuan’s life. Jiang Yuan would arrange his eldest son’s funeral for him. Though in truth, Adnan had once told her that dying in battle was the most glorious funeral for a warrior of Arabia.

Adnan accepted the pouch, raised his right hand to pat his left shoulder, and bowed to take his leave of her. He chanted, “O fate, watch over the one standing before me. A bird soars above the great desert; may he pass safely through the morning and sleep sweetly through the night.” His beard was grizzled, his body stooped. Dressed now in clean clothes, he did his utmost to straighten his back and climb onto the camel. Jiang Yuan stood where she was, watched by the wary eyes of the patrolmen on duty, and looked on as their group departed beneath the slanting sunset. Their footprints stretched longer and longer, step by step, before being buried by wind and sand.

Jiang Yuan limped back a little. The camp was in the middle of a revel. Captives and wine had all been dragged out. Young bandits splashed drink about and guzzled it down. Meat dripped oil as it roasted over the fire. Beside the flames lay dead sheep still bleeding, and prisoners bleeding just the same. They whipped slaves, driving them around for amusement. Female slaves sat nearby with their hair loose, giving delicate laughs and singing off-key songs, jewels hanging crookedly across veiled or bare bodies.

She watched from a distance for a few moments, then suddenly felt unbearably filthy. She made a detour and walked to the water. The surface of the water had been warmed slightly by the sun, but underneath it was still icy cold. Jiang Yuan fetched water back and forth several times before finally filling a large basin. Here, wasting firewood to heat bathwater was impossible. Even the chieftain Abal bathed in cold water. The desert was so hot that there was no need for the luxury of a warm spring.

She had just finished filling the basin when the curtain of the tent beside her was lifted and someone came out. Abal had granted Jiang Yuan a place beside his own tent, forcing her to listen for a long time in her sleep to the sounds of lovemaking. The most beautiful Persian slave girl was half-wrapped in a robe, her long brown-gold hair still wet and clinging to her back, her face flushed as she laughed and tussled playfully with another. No-not one. Two.

The slave girls, their business finished, staggered away with jewels still hanging from their bodies, carrying with them an indescribable smell. Abal, too, slowly leaned against the curtain in a half-draped robe. He was soaked all over, his buttons not properly fastened. From the short hair plastered close to his neck, pink wine ran down his collarbone and over his half-bare chest.

He looked at Jiang Yuan.

Compared to the way Jiang Yuan had seen him that morning, he truly did resemble a well-fed wolf now. Even if he was still only a young wolf. In one hand, he toyed with the curved blade that never seemed to leave his side. His other arm was crossed before his chest, the long, elegant fingers and jeweled rings complementing each other perfectly.
He pointed at Jiang Yuan’s feet. Jiang Yuan lowered her head and saw the basin of water she had painstakingly saved up.

“Why don’t you pour it yourself?”

A not-quite-smile appeared on Abal’s face-contempt, indifference, a barely perceptible arrogance, all mingled with a bloodiness that made one’s skin crawl. And it made her realize this was not something he was doing to target her deliberately, but a habit worn into him over years and years. He said, “Because you have some.” The bandit leader’s gaze followed the basin down to Jiang Yuan’s feet.

“You can go to Jamal for proper medicine. Also, he can find your boots for you.”

Jiang Yuan set the basin beside his feet and continued limping away. Behind her, Abal said, “Don’t sleep tonight, Jia Nan.”

Jiang Yuan did not know what Abal intended to do, but since he had told her not to sleep, she could not sleep. After nightfall, the camp’s revelry quieted. The slaves were driven into the tents, and the female slaves were shoved into the rooms. In twos and threes, the bandits gathered around the bonfires to drink and laugh. There was the hot, dry wind, the fine grains of sand on the blankets, and the wounded men’s increasingly agonized groans in the dark.

Staring into the darkness to stay awake under these conditions was truly rough. But at midnight, Jiang Yuan heard a sound. Before that, Abal had already lifted the tent flap and gone out. He was fully armed: long robe, light armor, a long scarf covering his face, a saber at his waist and a bow and arrows on his back. A headband woven with gems and camel hair was fastened tightly over his head. A hunting falcon beat its wings and rose before his eyes, and Abal’s blue eyes, revealed beneath the sweep of its feathers, were as cold and sharp as a night owl’s.

The sound of hooves rose. The attackers had arrived. Abal led his elites to lie in ambush outside the oasis fence, while the bandits acting as decoys beside the bonfires laughed and shouted even louder. They were utterly brazen, throwing themselves at one another in a wrestling match. In the scuffle, their thin robes were torn and splashed with wine, and they simply thrust their hips obscenely right there on the ground, howling with crazed laughter.

“Kill them!” Foot soldiers charged into the camp with blades raised, followed by the cavalry’s pounding hooves. But ropes were pulled taut. The cavalry’s high-speed charge sent riders flying through the night, their necks snapping amid shrill screams. Every step was clear: the whistling of arrows, the neighing of warhorses, the muffled grunts of men hitting the ground. Abal shouted, “Now!” Blades rose everywhere with his command. Once more, chaos and screams erupted, mingled with the sound of steel chopping into bone.

Jiang Yuan’s toes clenched inside her own boots. She stood close against the tent flap, gripping the knife she had been assigned. But when the first person was knocked into her tent, she realized she could not bring herself to cut him down. Unfortunately, he was a stranger-which meant he was one of the enemies who had come to launch a night raid. He was a full two sizes larger than Jiang Yuan, a brave and fierce man. When he saw Jiang Yuan clearly, joy and viciousness showed through his thick beard.

Jiang Yuan threw the knife at him to buy herself a moment, then turned and ran. She rushed out of the tent, first circling halfway around, then picked up a stone from the sand. After running two more steps, she bent and grabbed another. Someone slashed at her from behind. She judged the direction from the sound of the wind, dodged the blade, struck back with an elbow, then copied what she had done before and leaned in to twist his joint.

But unlike last night, the difference in their strength was too great. She could not twist him. Jiang Yuan’s hand was caught, and another blade came chopping down. She had been prepared. She blocked with a stone and deflected it, then drove her knee upward, slamming viciously into his crotch amid the stench of his body odor.

Bandits’ light armor generally did not protect the crotch. Rather than saying it did not protect the crotch, it would be more accurate to say there were far too few places it did protect. Beneath her kneecap came a squelch that made her teeth ache. Jiang Yuan had reason to suspect she had crushed his balls. The man let out a scream. She followed up by jabbing her fingers into both his eyes. After completing the three-step anti-pervert combo, she broke free and pulled away. Her captured wrist bone throbbed with agony; Jiang Yuan felt as if it were about to snap. When the wind blew over her, cold sweat suddenly broke out all over her body.

She panted twice. Then, from somewhere in the air, a falcon shot in. The man rolling on the ground had an eyeball pecked out in one bite, then an arrow pinned him through to the earth. Clearly, he wouldn’t survive. Abal strode over from the firelight, drenched in blood, his bow held backward as he looked at Jiang Yuan’s hand. His face scarf, however, was still perfectly in place. What sort of murderous quirk was that? His voice came muffled through the screams, and Jiang Yuan could barely make it out.

“You don’t know how to kill?”

“Obviously not,” Jiang Yuan answered calmly. She might have jabbed the wrong spot in that moment between life and death; the bones of her fingers hurt a little. Also… there was a nauseating sensation on her knee, as if chewing gum were stuck to it. She very much wanted to jump up and scream. Abal gave a snort. “Woman from the Tang Empire, I used to think everything written in the books was nonsense. It seems you don’t know how to ride a horse either?”

“Sorry, I don’t know that either.”

Abal raised his hand and whistled through his lips beneath the scarf. He shouted something she could not understand, and a neigh answered him. A black horse galloped out of the night like the wind. A small horse from Arabia-the most renowned mount in the world.

Abal swung into the saddle, looked back, and ordered, “Move out!” “Raaah!” His men, killing to the point of excitement, raised their blades and shouted. Horse after horse broke into a gallop, racing past through the firelight. Abal leaned down from the saddle and reached out to Jiang Yuan. “Get on. I’ll take you.” The hunting falcon circled above his head, made one loop, then landed on his shoulder.

Abal: Take my belongings and my woman, and run.

Speaking of which, I happened to look it up. At the height of the empire of Arabia, during Harun al-Rashid’s era-when he was still a prince-the Queen of Byzantium paid tribute to the Abbasid Caliphate, and it was only seventy to eighty thousand dinars a year. Harun al-Rashid is the Caliph from One Thousand and One Nights who liked to go out incognito and stir up trouble everywhere.

Adnan makes one escort run-what even-and the cargo alone is worth eight thousand dinars. That’s a bit much. Because when I read One Thousand and One Nights, it was always casually like: bestowed one thousand gold coins upon XXX. The dinar was the gold coin in circulation in the empire of Arabia at the time, including the gold coins of the Sasanian dynasty of Persia and the gold coins later minted by the Caliph himself.

Mm. I’m too lazy to change this little detail, so let’s just call it inflation.