And the Rest Is History(11)

I lost all sense of time. My knees were on fire. I ached to stand up. Every muscle was screaming in protest. I could feel the sand scraping away at my back. I was convinced my T-shirt had been torn from my body. I hunched my shoulders even higher to protect my ears, which felt as if they were on fire, and just tried to hang on. After a while, I wasn’t even sure I was the right way up. I had no idea if Ronan was even still with me. Had he taken advantage of the storm to push off back to his own pod and abandon me here?

That was just plain ridiculous. There was no way anyone could stand up in this lot, let alone navigate their way back to a small pod. Besides, he wouldn’t leave me alone in all this. Would he?

Of course he would, said the voice in my head. How do you know he didn’t lure you to this here and now for precisely that purpose? It won’t take long for the sand to cover you completely. And your pod as well. No one will ever find you. No one will ever know what became of you. They never found Cambyses’s army and there were fifty thousand of them, so you’re not going to stand much of a chance, are you?

Unbelievably, I actually toyed with the idea of staggering to my feet and making a run for it. Of straightening my aching legs. Of getting away somehow. Of returning to the cool, damp silence of St Mary’s. I could feel sand piling up again. How long before I was buried completely? It was stupid to remain here. I should go and go now. Before I couldn’t go at all.

I shifted my weight slightly, feeling sand move around me, and an arm as rigid as an iron bar shot out, pushed me down, and held me there. I heard him shout something but the words were torn away in the wind.

I subsided, tried to close my mind to everything going on around me, and endure. It was all I could do. Occasionally, I would shake my head fractionally, dislodging sand and grit, trying to protect my face as best as could.

Unbelievably, the noise of the wind increased. A sudden buffet caught us both unawares. I heard Ronan shout something and suddenly, he wasn’t there. I didn’t stop to think – I just automatically grabbed at him. I felt some kind of cloth – his T-shirt, I think. I seized whatever it was and hung on, but now we’d both changed our position slightly and the tiny, but vitally important shelter we’d had from our rock was gone.

I felt Ronan shift in the wind. I reached out blindly with my other hand. I couldn’t see a thing. I found his arm. I hung on to him and he to me. Together, we were too heavy to blow away. Ladies – before heading to the gym you might want to consider hanging on to that baby weight. Very useful in preventing you being blown away in an unexpected desert sandstorm. Just saying.

More sand started to pile up around us. We crouched together, hanging on to each other for grim death – and a grim death it was likely to be if this didn’t let up

soon.

I lost all track of time. Every breath hurt. My arms felt as if they were being pulled from their sockets. Wind, sand, and sound tore at us. Our skin was on fire. Well, mine definitely was and it seemed safe to assume Ronan didn’t have some special dispensation. I was suffocating. I kept trying to lift my head out of the sand. It was coming down faster than I could clear it. It was in my mouth. I started to cough which didn’t help at all. Ronan wrapped both arms around me and pulled me close. The shelter of his body helped a little. Huge amounts of sand were whirling around us. It was as if the entire desert was trying to pick itself up and take itself off somewhere else. I buried my head in his chest. He was sheltering me so I wrapped my arms around his head to try to give him what protection I could and we just endured.



It ended as abruptly as it had begun. It wasn’t exactly that one moment there was shrieking wind and sand and the next moment the sun came out, but we were both aware that the storm was passing.

There was no sun – the air was still full of dirty brown grit and sand – but the wind had moved on. Chasing and catching a Pharaoh’s army who, almost certainly, were breathing their last at this very moment.

I found myself lying on my side, half buried. If it hadn’t been for the protection of the rock, we would have been completely covered. I twisted my head out of the sand and slowly unwrapped my arms from around Ronan’s head. He rolled off me with a groan and lay very still.

I coughed, spat sand, and coughed some more. ‘So – not dead then?’

He began to cough, as I had done. ‘No thanks to you. You’re a bloody madwoman. You do know that, don’t you?’

‘It’s been mentioned, once or twice.’

I lay back and concentrated just on not breathing in great lumps of desert.

I’d saved him. He’d saved me. God, this was embarrassing.

I sat up, shedding sand everywhere and looked around me. Clouds of fine dust still swirled around us, but I could see the sun trying to break through. It would be hot again soon.

I dug around and located a strap, pulled at it and my backpack came free. I shook off the sand, opened it up, and pulled out my flask of water. The way I felt, there wasn’t enough water in the entire world to quench my thirst, but he’d saved me, and you have to pay your debts.

He looked surprised.

‘Age before beauty,’ I said, just in case he thought I harboured kindly feelings towards him.

He grinned, cracking the sand that had settled on his face and in his hair. He meticulously took only two swigs and passed it back. I appreciated the thought, took my own two swigs, and passed it back again.