"Mercedes Lackey - Jihad" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

saw that it was mounted. Not upon a camel, but upon a horse of a whiteness
surpassing anything Ali had ever seen. Not even the stud reft away from the
Turks was of so noble a colorтАФ

Now he saw what the noise was; behind the rider came every man of the
fortress, cheering and firing into the airтАФ

Ali goaded his mount into a loping canter, his heart in his throat. It could
not be, could it?

From the canter he urged the camel into a gallop. The size was right; the
shapeтАФbut whence the robes, the headcloth, even the headropes, of such
dazzling whiteness? They had been mired in mud for months, he had not thought
ever to see white robes until spring.

It was. His heart leapt with joy. It was! The figure was near enough to see
features now; and it was not to be mistaken for any other. Aurens!

He reined his camel in beside the white stallion, and the beast did not even
shy, it simply halted, though Aurens made no move to stop it. He raised his
hand, and the mob at his back fell respectfully silent.

Ali looked down at his friend; Aurens looked up, and there was a strange fire
in those blue eyes, a burning that made Ali rein his camel back a pace. There
was something there that Ali had never seen before, something that raised the
hair on the back of his neck and left him trembling between the wish to flee
and the wish to fall from his camel's back and grovel at the Englishman's
feet.

"Lawrence?" Ali said, using the English name, rather than the one they all
called him. As if by using that name, he could drive that strangeness from
Aurens' eyes. "Lawrence? How did you escape from the Turks?"

The blue eyes burned brighter, and the robes he wore seemed to glow. "Lawrence
is dead," he said. "The Turks slew him. There is only Aurens. Aurens, and the
will of Allah."

Ali's blood ran hot and cold by turns as he stared down into those strange,
unhuman blue eyes. "And what," he whispered, as he would whisper in a mosque,
"is the will of Allah?"

At last the eyes released him, leaving him shivering with reaction, and with
the feeling that he had gazed into something he could not, and would never,
understand.

"The will of Allah," said Aurens, gazing toward Deraa, toward Damascus, and
beyond, "Is this."

Silence, in which not even the camels stirred.
"There will be jihad."