Lamb The Gospel According to Biff Christs Childho - By Christopher Moore Page 0,57

the horses for four more camels, and Joshua and I were allowed to ride. At night we ate with the rest of the men, sharing boiled grain or bread with sesame paste, the odd bit of cheese, mashed chickpeas and garlic, occasionally goat meat, and sometimes the dark hot drink we had discovered in Antioch (mixed with date sugar and topped with foaming goat's milk and cinnamon at my suggestion). Ahmad dined alone in his tent, while the rest of us would dine under the open awning that we constructed to shelter us from the hottest part of the day. In the desert, the day gets warmer as it gets later, so the hottest part of the day will be in the late afternoon, just before sundown brings the hot winds to leach the last moisture from your skin.

None of Ahmad's men spoke Aramaic or Hebrew, but they had enough functional Latin and Greek to tease Joshua and me about any number of subjects, their favorite, of course, being my job as chief camel deconstipator. The men hailed from a half-dozen different lands, many we had never heard of. Some were as black as Ethiopians, with high foreheads and long, graceful limbs, while others were squat and bowlegged, with powerful shoulders, high cheekbones, and long wispy mustaches like Ahmad's. Not one of them was fat or weak or slow. Before we were a week out of Antioch we figured out that it only took a couple of men to care for and guide a caravan of camels, so we were perplexed at why someone as shrewd as Ahmad would bring along so many superfluous employees.

"Bandits," Ahmad said, adjusting his bulk to find a more comfortable position atop his camel. "I'd need no more than a couple of dolts like you two if it was just the animals that needed tending. They're guards. Why did you think they were all carrying bows and lances?"

"Yeah," I said, giving Joshua a dirty look, "didn't you see the lances? They're guards. Uh, Ahmad, shouldn't Josh and I have lances - I mean, when we get to the bandit area?"

"We've been followed by bandits for five days now," Ahmad said.

"We don't need lances," Joshua said. "I will not make a man sin by committing an act of thievery. If a man would have something of mine, he need only ask and I will give it to him."

"Give me the rest of your money," I said.

"Forget it," said Joshua.

"But you just said - "

"Yeah, but not to you."

Most nights Joshua and I slept in the open, outside Ahmad's tent, or if the night was especially cold, among the camels, where we would endure their grunting and snorting to get out of the wind. The guards slept in two-man tents, except for two who stood guard all night. Many nights, long after the camp was quiet, Joshua and I would lie looking up at the stars and pondering the great questions of life.

"Josh, do you think the bandits will rob us and kill us, or just rob us?"

"Rob us, then kill us, I would think," said Josh. "Just in case they missed something that we had hidden, they could torture its whereabouts out of us."

"Good point," I said.

"Do you think Ahmad has sex with Kanuni?" Joshua asked.

"I know he does. He told me he does."

"What do you think it's like? With them I mean? Him so fat and her so, you know?"

"Frankly, Joshua, I'd rather not think about it. But thanks for putting that picture in my head."

"You mean you can imagine them together?"

"Stop it, Joshua. I can't tell you what sin is like. You're going to have to do it yourself. What's next? I'll have to murder someone so I can explain what it's like to kill?"

"No, I don't want to kill."

"Well, that might be one you have to do, Josh. I don't think the Romans are going to go away because you ask them to."

"I'll find a way. I just don't know it yet."

"Wouldn't it be funny if you weren't the Messiah? I mean if you abstained from knowing a woman your whole life, only to find out that you were just a minor prophet?"

"Yeah, that would be funny," said Josh. He wasn't smiling.

"Kind of funny?"

The journey seemed to go surprisingly fast once we knew we were being followed by bandits. It gave us something to talk about and our backs stayed limber, as we were always twisting in our saddles and checking the horizon.