LITMIR.BIZ

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to Katrina, a vehicle appeared, driven at frightening speed right at them. In the driver’s seat was the man who had first pursued her, his face contorted with savagery as he shook his fist at her captor and mouthed some words in a dialect she could not understand before driving off again, reaching the waiting onlookers ahead of them.

      There were a hundred, no, a thousand questions she wanted to ask, Katrina acknowledged, but before she could do so he was reining in his mount in front of a powerfully built man of medium height, who was gesturing to him to dismount.

      Katrina shivered to see the powerful-looking rifle he was wearing slung over one shoulder, an ammunition belt around his waist, into which was thrust a wicked-looking traditionally curved dagger.

      At his side was the man who had pursued her, gesticulating angrily as he pointed towards her and burst into a rapid speech, of which she could only catch the odd word.

      A brief inclination of his head from the man at her side told Katrina that the man with the gun must be the leader of the men. But whilst he obviously commanded the obedience of everyone else, she was aware that her captor’s body language was subtly emphasising his own independence.

      ‘Why did you let the man get away?’ Katrina heard the leader demand angrily in Zuranese.

      There was a brief pause before her captor answered him coolly, ‘El Khalid, you’re asking me a question you should surely be asking another! A man on horseback, even when that animal is as fast as any mount in the Ruler’s fabled stable, cannot hope to outrun a four-wheel drive. Sulimen could have caught up with him had he not decided to pursue an easier prey.’

      ‘He has taken my prize and now he seeks to discredit me. The girl is mine, El Khalid,’ the driver of the Land Rover protested hotly.

      ‘You hear what Sulimen says, Tuareg! What do you answer him?’

      Katrina had to bite down hard on her lip to stop herself from turning to her captor and begging him not to let Sulimen take her. The leader had called him ‘Tuareg’, using only his tribal name, whereas he had used the more intimate Sulimen for the other man. Did that mean he would favour the other’s claim? Katrina felt sick at the thought.

      Why didn’t her captor say something…? She could feel him looking at her, but she could not bring herself to lift her head and look back at him. She was too afraid of what she might see in his eyes.

      ‘I answer him that I have the girl and he does not. She will earn me a fat purse when I take her back to Zuran City and ransom her back to her people.’

      ‘No one is to leave this camp until I say so,’ came the harsh response. ‘I have gathered you all here in this place for a special mission. Our success in it will make us all very rich men.

      ‘Since both of you lay claim to the girl, then you might fight one another for her.’ He gave a small jerk of his head, and before Katrina could protest she was being led forcibly away by two fierce-looking armed men.

      Anxiously she turned round just in time to see El Khalid removing the glitteringly sharp-edged hooked dagger from his belt and throwing it towards her captor.

      The breath left her lungs in a rush as he caught it and he and Sulimen began to circle one another. Sulimen already had a similar dagger in his hand and almost immediately he jabbed savagely at his opponent with it. The other men had begun to form a circle around them.

      Standing behind them between her jailers, Katrina could only catch maddeningly brief glimpses of the two men as they fought.

      Not that she liked watching men fight—far from it—but on this occasion she had a very strong reason for wanting to know which one was going to be the victor. Whilst the men had dragged her away, the two opponents, whilst retaining their headgear, had removed their cloaks and tunics and were fighting bare-chested as they circled one another barefoot.

      It was now dark and lanterns had been lit to illuminate the scene that to Katrina looked like something from another world.

      The light from one of the lanterns glittered on the daggers as they were raised in clenched hands, and the sickening sounds of human combat echoed the thuds of bare feet on sand.

      She heard a low grunt of pain and heard the watching men roar in approval; above their heads she could see the hand holding a dagger aloft, the light catching the tiny droplets of blood that fell from it. Her stomach heaved. Was the man with the golden eyes badly wounded? Ridiculously, given all she already knew about him and all that she didn’t, her anxiety and concern were not for her own plight and safety, but for his, and she knew that had she been able to do so she would have rushed to his side.

      She heard another groan and another roar of approval, but this time it was the name ‘Tuareg’ the watching men were calling out in praise.

      The fight seemed to go on for ever, and Katrina was becoming increasingly sickened by the thought of such violence and cruelty. She was simply not programmed to find anything about physical violence acceptable, Katrina acknowledged. Her initial anxious need to see what was happening had been overlaid by relief that she was spared witnessing such a loathsome spectacle.

      But at last it was apparently over, the watching men cheering loudly as she was pulled through their ranks to where the two antagonists stood in front of El Khalid.

      Only one of the three men commanded her attention, though, and her stomach churned with a mixture of nausea and guilty relief as she heard the crowd chanting ‘Tuareg’ and saw that in his hands he was holding aloft both of the daggers, whilst his opponent slumped despondently beside him.

      But then he turned round and Katrina sucked in a shocked breath as she saw the blood-beaded wounds on his flesh. One had slit the taut skin of his face along his cheekbone and dangerously close to his eye, another was carved just above his heart, and blood was dripping from a third on his upper arm.

      A feeling of sick dizziness began to threaten her, but she ignored it, dragging her gaze away from the sweat-gilded expanse of taut male chest in front of her. Sulimen, in contrast, did not appear to have any wounds at all, which puzzled Katrina a little since ‘Tuareg’ was obviously the victor.

      ‘Here is your prize,’ she heard El Khalid telling him. ‘Take her.’

      Was it her imagination or was the slight bow her captor made in El Khalid’s direction more cynical than respectful? If so, no one else seemed to have thought so.

      He still hadn’t so much as acknowledged her presence, turning to toss El Khalid’s dagger back to him, and then turning back to lean forward and scoop up his discarded tunic.

      Out of the corner of her eye Katrina saw Sulimen go to sheathe his own dagger, but then terrifyingly, instead of doing so, he lunged violently towards her captor’s unprotected back, the dagger clenched in his raised hand.

      Katrina heard her own sharp sound of shocked warning, but it seemed something else must have alerted ‘Tuareg’ to the danger because he had already whirled round, and in a movement so fast that Katrina’s eyes could not follow it he had kicked out at Sulimen’s raised hand, dislodging the knife.

      Immediately three men seized Sulimen and dragged him away. As though nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened, her captor picked up his tunic and pulled it on before indicating with a brusque inclination of his head that she was to join him.

      ‘Come,’ he said peremptorily. He took such long strides that she had difficulty in keeping up with him, but the moment she reached his side he stopped walking and turned to look down at her.

      ‘You will not walk at my side, but behind me,’ he told her coldly.

      Katrina could hardly believe her ears. And as for walking behind him! The traumas she had endured were forgotten, in the full fury of her outraged female pride.

      ‘I will do no such thing,’ she refused hotly. ‘I am not your…your chattel…And besides, in Zuran men walk alongside their partners.’

      ‘This is not Zuran, it is the desert, and you are mine to do with as I choose, when

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