The Wandering Falcon Read Online Free

walked. The water hole was only a short distance away, and the animals were tired. If a camel got lost, one man—if not two—would have to drop out. In such circumstances, a camel was not merely valuable, it was life itself.
    Despite their raging thirst, the men did not hurry. The closer they came to their goal, the more patient they became. After every few yards, they would scan the horizon. The storm, which had just passed, would have blown away all traces of their track, yet even while they walked they tried to read the ground for any telltale signs of danger. It was at times like these, when one is tired, when one is close to rest, that death must be guarded against most.
    Hunted as rebels for months, they had learned their lessons dearly. If a Baluch needed little water and food when on the run, they had learned to do with even less. Betrayed once by the flashing mirrors embroidered on their caps, they had shorn their caps of all finery and trinkets. The traditional black, red, and white of their dresses was by now stained with sweat and dirt to neutral hues. They had also learned to live a life without their women.
    Yet the land—their land—had seen to it that beauty and color were not erased completely from their lives. It offered them a thousand shades of gray and brown, with which it tinted its hills, its sands, and its earth. There were subtle changes of color in the blackness of the nights and the brightness of the days, and the vigorous colors of the tiny desert flowers hidden in the dusty bushes, and of the gliding snakes and scurrying lizards as they buried themselves in the sand. To the men, beauty and color were rampant around them, even if the patches of decorative colored cloth had been unrelentingly shorn from their own clothes.
    They were still some distance away when they observed the two stone towers. These towers had not been there when they had last visited this water hole a few months ago. The sight made them uneasy.
    They approached cautiously, with two men acting as scouts well in advance of the rest of the party. On moving closer, they saw the dead camel with its long neck stretched limply on the ground. At the sight of this dust-colored mound of dead flesh, the party withdrew hurriedly and started riding a wide circle around the water hole, keeping it just in sight. They kept watching and listening carefully, and then decided to advance toward it after satisfying themselves that no life stirred for miles around and no alien sound disturbed the land.
    Except for their leader, Roza Khan, all the men were armed. They were carrying muzzle-loading guns with sickle-shaped stocks. Two of the party had, in addition, curved swords without scabbards, tied with twisted woolen cords around their waists.
    Roza Khan was an old man. His big frame and height were all that remained of the strength and prowess of his youth—that and his memories.
    Overgrown cataracts in his eyes had made him virtually blind. Even in the strongest light, he saw only vague and half-formed shadows. If events had not obliged him to honor his commitments to his tribe, he would have liked to seek treatment at the mission eye hospital, which was set up every winter in a town three hundred miles to the south to provide relief to the desert dwellers. He would have liked to see things, colors, faces, again before he died. If matters settled themselves, he would get his eyes operated on next winter. In the meantime, he would have to continue as well as he could.
    He was not a fighting man, and was certainly proving a hindrance to the free movement of the rest of the party. Men might have to die because of him. They might have to pay with their lives for his errors of judgment.
    Yet he well understood their need for him. They needed a symbol, and it mattered not to them what his age or condition was. He would stay with them even though he had no special wisdom to offer, either about the ways of the desert or the wiles of