Hammerfall

Past midday, with the pond behind them, the heat only increased. The caravan master ordered a halt until the heat of the day had passed, and Marak, among the rest, was glad to bid his beast kneel and to step down from the saddle.

In the jolt of the beast’s kneeling down, his own knees and elbows ached with remembered fire. He sat down on the burning sand against his beast’s broad side while the caravan master and the servants pitched the tents.

The au’it settled near him, book and kit in her lap.

There would be nothing remarkable in this camp to record. He was determined on that point.

He said to her, instead, “Write the names of the mad.” It seemed a harmless question. “Write the names of their cities. Write what they look for.” It might keep her from hovering near him.

The au’it bowed her head and went on her mission, visiting the rest, who disposed themselves in a tight, sweaty huddle under the first canvas stretched… forty madmen, all in a space for ten.

Marak cared little for what she did or reported. The holy city had gone below the horizon, but it would appear many times during the next night and day, and for that sight he no longer roused himself. He only cared that he hear no loud sounds and that nothing require him to stir, and where he would find the strength in his legs to mount the beast again this afternoon he could not imagine. Now the pain had set in. Now the weakness swept over him. The caravan master’s sons would heave him up as they did the wife of Tarsa and the potter.

He would burn with shame, he, Marak Trin, once Trin Tain, his father’s heir.

Terror of the Lakht, the men had called him. Not lately.

He rested foolishly in the sun, not even seeking shelter in the first canvas spread: at this pitch of disgust with himself he could not abide the looks and the questions of his fellow travelers, the recipients of his charity, the models of his fortune. It was the latter truth that galled him most, that in point of fact, as far as the Ila cared and as far as the soldiers cared, he had become no different than the rest of them. He brooded on his situation, his aifad pulled about his face, shading him from what was now, though he had invited every one of them, an unwelcome company.

But when all five tents were all up, all open-sided to let the air flow through, the mad had somewhat spread out and settled down on their mats. Then he stirred himself.

“Omi,” Obidhen accosted him. My lord. “I’ll have the number one tent, with my freedmen and the slaves. My second son Landhi will have the next, Rom, my eldest, the third and Tofi, my youngest, can manage the fourth. I can place two freedmen with the first and manage the fifth myself, unless, omi, you will take charge there. You know the Lakht. You clearly know the necessities. If you will take the au’it in your care and be master there, it might be best.”

He understood the delicate position the master was in. The Ila’s soldiers had camped in that fifth tent, men over whom the master had little authority.

“I will deal with it,” he said to the master, “and I doknow the Lakht.”

The master bowed, clearly relieved. He was relieved. He had a tent where his word was law. As for the soldiers, they would leave after their noon rest, and good riddance, Marak thought. He took his waterskin, took his mat, almost last of the pile, and went to that shade, sure that the au’it, still pursuing her questions, would come back to him in due time.

Meanwhile he spread his mat near the edge of the shade, where the breeze moved beneath the shelter, and went and got his rations. As master of the fifth tent, he was the arbiter of disputes, the dispenser of stores on days when they chose not to share a common meal. There were no disputes, no questions, and peacefully he unwrapped what he had to eat, the common fare on days when the travel was too hard and the press of that work too fast and furious to spread out the sun-ovens and cook. The cake was the sort of dry ration common to the Lakht, where water was too precious to let into food. Water stayed in the canteen, and one mixed the two in the mouth, to sustain life and make it possible to swallow. That was the usual fare of the desert tribes on the move, and the mad had learned it on the march. They might know nothing about riding beasts; but they knew by now how to eat and drink in the desert. These were the survivors, toughest, most adaptable of the lot. He had nothing to tell them regarding the preciousness of water and the apportionment of supplies… given they were in their sane minds.

The Ila’s men, meanwhile, unwrapped their supper and ate fruit from the market, dripped juice wantonly on the sand, and pitched the pits away still having flesh on them. Marak glowered, resting, nursing the recurrence of pain the Ila had given him.

The au’it came back. “Two have left,” she said.

“Have they taken beasts?” Marak asked.

“No,” the au’it said. “When we stopped to rest, they simply walked away.”

“They’re dead,” he said.

Those who also had walked the Lakht to the holy city had not prevented them or reported them, and there was a certain logic in that. If they would walk away today, they would walk away tomorrow, having eaten and drunk a day’s rations in the meanwhile. The desert killed the wasteful and the extravagant quickly, surely, and covered them over. He had given them their chance and spent a day’s food on them. Effectively they were dead, and he could not fault their choice.

It might be the better choice, who could know? He had asked for their lives in a moment in which he fought for his own life. Now he had no notion what he had done to these madmen, whether it was good or not. He had no idea whether he had rescued these people or damned them to a lingering death.

But he knew why he shuddered at the reasonless, wasteful actions of the men and women that surrounded him. The soldiers swilled water. One of the mad at the moment had wandered out and turned in circles, looking up at the sky and staring at the sun. Because he had asked for this man’s life, was he responsible? Could he advise the man against his visions? Could he do better in leading this band of fools?

Could he say he would not, himself, sooner or later, be that crazed?

The au’it, in the soft, rarely used voice of her profession, reported the two names of the lost among the others from her book, and listed the rest as he had wished, with their origins. None of the names of the mad meant much to him, except that the wife from Tarsa had a name: Norit; and the potter had a name, Kosul. He took account of those and of others, despite the roaring that had begun in his ears, and meant to remember them.

It proved, too, that there were tribesmen among the mad. He had thought so. That was good news, in this land… only granted they were not the ones who had walked away.

He lay down to sleep after eating. It seemed to him this afternoon that the air was either hotter than the rule, or he might be fevered. He had been in pain, and his wounds always went fevered: it was his weakness from childhood.

When the fever came, however, he always healed.

And he waked after a sleep of a few hours in less pain, which put him in a better frame of mind. To his relief, too, there was less of the intermittent buzzing and roaring behind the voices in his ears, so he began to hope that, too, might abate. He heard one of his voices calling him, distinctly so: Marak, Marak, Marak, that idle repetition clear for the first time since the Ila’s fire had run through his bones.

He had never thought he would be relieved to hear that voice, but he was. A voice was better than the roaring sound, and far better than dulled ears and diminished senses.

But less welcome, this afternoon, his eyes flashed with i