But I feared that the stories told of what would soon transpire in Dumah, regardless of the outcome, would have no need for exaggeration.
That trouble came late in the afternoon. I was again high above the Marid, where I often retreated with my son to be in the open air but out of sight. Below the fortress, Dumah slept in silence. I saw the dust then, coming from the east, a silent line of boiling sand stretching across the eastern flat as far as I could see.
A storm, I thought.
Then I saw a speck leading that line. And I knew that I wasn’t seeing a storm at all. I was seeing a single camel followed by an army of camels. Far too many to be the Kalb, who would have come from all directions.
East. This was the Thamud. Saman bin Shariqat, ruler of the Thamud, was coming to Dumah.
War!
My breath caught in my throat and I stared at the scope of that army, unable to move.
A call from the slope east of the city jerked me back to myself. Father’s lookouts had seen. The call was taken up by hundreds as the warning spread throughout Dumah.
First a dozen, then a hundred and more of Rami’s men, mounted on horseback, raced down the slope, toward the trees at the edge of the oasis. They would engage the Thamud there, under the cover of the date palms.
Surrounded now by the sounds of great urgency, I held my son tight and flew down the stairs, thinking only of sealing myself in the chamber of audience as directed by my father.
I hurried down the hall clinging to little Rami, who managed a little laugh. But something in him shifted when I crashed into the chamber of audience, barred the door, and ran to the window. There he began to cry.
I was too stunned by the scene unfolding below to calm him. Like a stampeding herd, a thousand Thamud camels thundered over the crest toward the date palms of the oasis. Then more, flying the yellow-and-red banners of their tribe, flowing like the muddy waters of the great Nile in Egypt.
They were armed with sword and bow and ax and lance, bucking atop lavishly draped camels. The Thamud were a sea of flesh and color intent upon death.
Such a force would have quickly slaughtered Rami’s small army had he remained in the open desert. Only by drawing the Thamud into the palm groves and the city itself could his Kalb leverage any advantage of cover.
By riding horses, the Kalb held speed over the Thamud, who’d needed camels to cross the softer sands as quickly as they had. On the harder ground of the city, Rami’s horses could outmaneuver the larger beasts.
My father held only these small advantages. How could they possibly offset the superior numbers now swarming into Dumah?
Two days had passed since Nasha’s death. The Thamud stronghold in Sakakah lay a hard day’s ride east, requiring a full day to reach it and another to return. Now I understood Rami’s insistence that Nasha’s passing remain secret. The Thamud had surely already received Aretas’s blessing to vie for power if his bond with Rami was ever broken.
And now word of that break had reached the Thamud.
Maliku.
It only stood to reason. If the Thamud crushed Rami and the Kalb here in Dumah, the Thamud would give Maliku power as the new leader of the Kalb. Though he would not be a sheikh, his sword would enforce his power among his own people in alliance with the Thamud.
I stepped away from the window, heart in my throat, pacing, bouncing my son in my arms.
“You’re safe, Rami. Hush, hush… your mother’s here. You’re safe.”
He calmed.
The chamber of audience was large enough to hold a hundred men seated on the floor facing the seat of honor. The ornate camel saddle was placed upon a rise and covered by the finest furs and colorful woven pillows, which provided as much comfort as beauty. Drapes of violet silk hung from the walls, and the room was usually lit by a dozen oil lamps set upon stands.
But they were all dark now, like the rest of the fortress, lit only by the waning sunlight.
I could hear far more than I could see, for camels protest as much in battle as they do rousing from slumber. Their roars reverberated through the city without pause. Shrill battle cries from a thousand Thamud throats accompanied that thunderous camel herd. The punctuating sounds of men and beasts in the throes of death pierced my heart.
The eastern slope was strewn with fallen mounts, camels all of them, taken by Kalb arrows, for the Kalb are known for the bow above all weapons. The sand was weeping blood already.
A Kalb horse raced up a street near the center of the oasis, rider bent low over his mount’s neck. No camel could match such speed. And none did, because the fighting was sequestered in the groves along the eastern edge of Dumah, where Rami tested the limits of his every advantage.
I shifted my gaze back to the desert and watched as a camel carrying two riders—one facing forward with reins and one facing backward with full use of his hands—galloped across the slope’s open sand. The Thamud warrior at the rear slung arrows into the palms one after the other without pause. Where the arrows landed, I could not see from the palace, but I knew the Kalb were as wise as they were fierce and would not place themselves in the open for arrows to find easily.