Honor and Blood

"Why?"

"Because nothing in the air can see us," he told her calmly. "If those flying things went around the storm, they could be very close to us. This way they can't get an exact idea of where we are if they did."

"Good point," Sarraya agreed. "How long has it been since you slept?"

"That doesn't matter," he said dismissively. "What matters is what I can find to eat around here. I'm getting hungry."

"Now that you've fleshed out again, I think you can make it on what fruit I can conjure til we get to a place more hunter friendly," she told him.

"I'm certainly not going to find anything in this," he grunted. "I can't even smell the ground. All I smell is this scarf and dust."

After stopping right where he stood and sitting down, he and Sarraya shared a meal of fruit and berries that the little Faerie conjured. All of it had a faint taste of dust, which was understandable considering the fog-like pall of dust that hung in the air, but after a night of movement it was exactly what he needed.

The wind began to pick up when they were done, when Tarrin stood up. It blew and billowed the dust as it reached them, tugging at Tarrin's cloak, and the Were-cat realized after looking up that the wind was pulling the dust out of the area, blowing it towards the back of the sandstorm. He cursed under his breath at the loss of their concealment, then reached under the cloak for his water skin. It was only half full, but that was no problem. Sarraya could conjure water as easily as she conjured fruit. She had been the one to fill the skin he had. She'd conjured the skin too.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"The wind is pulling the dust out of the air," he told her, pointing up. The dust was getting thi

"I think that's not much of an issue, Tarrin," Sarraya told him. "I don't think the wind can completely get all the dust. Besides, if it worries you that much, I'll go up and look."

"That would make me feel better."

Sarraya rose up from her seat on the ground and darted straight up, quickly leaving his sight. Even the sound of her wings faded after a moment, leaving him to wait in relative silence for several moments. Then he heard her winds again, growing louder by the second, and she appeared in front of him, moving towards him quickly. "Nothing," she replied. "I can't see around the sandstorm, but there's nothing in any other direction."

"I guess that's a good thing. How long would it take them to get around that storm?"

"It would depend on how close they were when they started," she replied. "But even if they started early, if I can't see them now, then they can't be anywhere near close to us. We shouldn't be bothered all day by anything in the air."

"That's a relief," he sighed contentedly.

The wind did not get rid of all the dust, as Sarraya had predicted. It hung like a dirty fog for most of the day, concealing the Were-cat from anyone who may happen to be overhead. It was considerably challenging to run in the pall, Tarrin discovered, for his visibility was very poor, and many times he had to react with lightning speed to avoid ru

This baffled Tarrin, but only momentarily. After all, there were trading posts on the border of the desert, and those posts had to have some way to move their goods back and forth to the rest of the kingdom. Tarrin didn't see a road when he left the nameless city behind him, but that wasn't very much of a surprise, because he could barely see his own feet at that time. The road was little more than a clean patch of sand and dirt ru

He followed the road for the rest of the day, moving more confidently in the dust-filled air now that he didn't have to worry about tripping over a log or ru

The dust had almost completely settled by sunset. There were no objects in the sky, as Sarraya had predicted, but the clearing air did reveal something on the ground. It was a wagon, a wagon with no animals to pull it, turned over on its top on the side of the road. It rested on the gentle slope ru

"Looks like someone didn't get to shelter," Sarraya said conversationally, zipping over the wagon. The sand and dust had piled up around it like a snowdrift on the side that would have been leeward of the storm.

"No tack or harness," Tarrin said. "Either it was left behind, or the animals broke free."

"You think there's anything in it?" Sarraya asked.

"I don't know, but it'll serve as shelter for a night's sleeping," he said, reaching up and unclasping the cloak. "It shouldn't be that hard to turn over."

Settling himself beside the wagon, Tarrin sank his claws into the side of it, then began to pull. As he suspected, the wagon wasn't very heavy-it had to be light, else it would sink into the road and be hard to move. He turned it on its side, then slid partially under it and heaved it over and above him.

The activity told him that he was stronger now. He held the wagon completely off the ground, a feat that five men could not easily accomplish. He turned towards the middle of the road and readied to set the wagon back down on its wheels-

– -and a sudden shrill scream nearly startled him out of his fur.

Tarrin heaved the wagon aside, landing with a crash on its side beside him as he whirled around in the direction of the scream, claws out and eyes lit from within with their unholy greenish radiance. Whatever had made that sound was right there, close enough to attack, and he hadn't sensed it. Tarrin did not react well to surprise. He growled loudly in his throat and laid his ears back, primal threat displays to whatever it was attacking him, telling it that it wouldn't take him without a fight.

His surprise grew when he found himself looking down at a child of no more than eight years, screaming at the top of her lungs, pressing and shoving at a still form beneath her.

A child! All that nonsense over a human cub! Tarrin rose up from his slouching battle stance, looking down at the little girl with a