Hammerfall

After that, Norit claimed her turn first.

He came to know for certain in the dark that there was every virtue in Norit, except sanity. She sang against his ear. She spoke of a star to guide them east, when there was nothing but dark outside.

Finally she slept a true, sweet sleep, and after she slept he was very glad to have Hati’s safe arms about him and Hati’s strong body against his. Into Norit’s madness a man could sink and lose himself, bit by bit. Hati was the storm wind itself, a force, a demand for movement and resourcefulness. But in Norit the demons lived and had full possession.

Both of them still drew from him the best of his nature, Norit, that patience and compassion he had had only for what he protected, and Hati, that sense of life and challenge for its own sake that he had lost somewhere on the Lakht, in his father’s wars. He felt sorry for Norit; but he felt wholly alive when he held Hati. She was a match for him, completely unlike any match the ambitious villages had tried to send him when he was Tain’s son. No, he had said, rejecting some, and no, his father had said, never suspecting that any of those very sane girls would think him a bad bargain, never suspecting he said no for fear of discovery.

But now he owned himself met, matched, mated with a creature that would never give back a step from his most outrageous actions, never fear his madness, never hesitate.

Hati, he said to himself, but there was no speech in the howling thunder above them.

On the next day, that day he had been so sure the storm would pass, a pole tore loose and they had to go out, the four or five among them who understood how to pitch a tent, and secure the ropes. The air had chilled. The sun had been cut off from the sand so long the air and the sand itself had turned bitter cold. With fingernails broken to the quick by the dry sand they dug for the eye of the deep-stake bolt and found it by the ragged scrap of rope left to it, still warm from the heat of days ago. They dug down to it and rigged a new line.

Then they retreated, shivering and coughing and wiping grit from their eyes and their noses and the edges of their mouths.

The storm continued to batter them, and his two days bid now to be a lie. He was ashamed of having promised those who trusted him a relief he could not deliver; but at least they had saved the tent.

Within hours, however, the wind was quieter. A look out the flap proved there was something like light beyond the walls, a transparent red promising the storm had indeed eased, but there was no view of anything farther than the tent stake nearest the door, and a man dared not expose the eyes or any more of the skin than he must.

Marak ducked his head back inside, and answered anxious questions with, “It’s a little quieter.”

One could hear it. The thunder of the canvas was muted: it had boomed and racketed so he thought he would lose what he had left of his reason, and now it was an occasional spate of wind.

But, chilled, he was doubly glad to find his mat and his comfort again, and find Hati’s arms and Norit’s to comfort him and to brush the dust from his hair and his clothing.

His throat was dry as the dust he had breathed. He was keeper of the food and water and could have had more; he could have given more to the men who had helped with the rope, but he honestly had no notion who they were and wished to open no doors to dispute. He simply advised himself and all of them to the same ration.

He slept, exhausted, the whole world seeming to spin about and fall to the east.

And after that short sleep, he waked to a near silence in the wind.

He stirred, drew on his robe against the chill, and pulled up his aifad against the dust that must still be moving. He unlaced the flap as others of their tentmates stirred, and he peered out at the other tents through the reddened, dust-choked air.

There had been four tents in his field of view when the storm began. Now there were only three. He tried to figure their positions, thinking one might still be veiled in dust. But there was a gap, right next to them.

Ropes had failed. The tent nearest them had gone.

He took a lap of the aifad about his head to shield his eyes from the grit and dust, went out and sca

Hati had come out behind him, so had the au’it, and so had the several who had helped him save their own tent.

“Stay here!” he said to Hati, not wishing to leave the water and food to chance or the desires of villagers, and most of all wanting someone sensible who could shout him back to his own tent if the wind rose up again, as it might, in the few moments he meant to be away from shelter.

Hati raised no objection, well understanding. “Stay here,” she said to the others. “The wind may come up. Stay close!”

The beasts had survived. Rare the storm that could wear them down. They were lumps of sand, tucked noses to the wind, in the lee of their own tent and the other, and roused as they saw movement, standing up to stretch cramped limbs.

Obidhen’s tent was still standing, past the place where the other had stood. He went to that tent, and shouted outside it until, within, someone unlaced the flap.

Two slaves were there. No one else. Not Obidhen, not his son Rom, not the freedmen or the four other slaves.

“Where is master Obidhen?” Marak asked.

“Give us water,” the slaves there begged, and he knew that tale instantly, without the caravan master to govern the water, these two fools had fallen to the whole tent’s water stores and consumed them. Their suffering was deserved, and far from fatal.

“Out and dig!” he said. “Or die!” He threatened a blow of his fist to the foremost, and the pair moved, ducking after gear.

Marak, Marak, the voices cried, and the whole world was threat and danger.

He left them immediately, went to the fourth tent in the blowing dust, careful not to lose his bearings, for intermittently the fifth and farther tent vanished in the sand red haze.

There, too, he got a man to unlace the flap, and expected Obidhen’s son Rom, but the two ex-soldiers roused out to do the job, and light poured past them onto stark, frightened faces… among the rest, he saw three women disheveled, half-clothed, terrified. He began to form a notion of utter disaster. He imagined someone from the tent in difficulty making it as far as the caravan master, who attempted to help, and then engaged his other sons.

“Ontari.” Marak ignored the disheveled soldiers and addressed the man he knew best, the stonecutter, who had good sense. “Take charge here.” What had gone on for three days between these women and the soldiers and perhaps several others, he suspected and deplored, but there were still their lives to lose if this was only an abate merit of the storm. “Turn out and dig, all of you. We have to recover the supplies. The fool slaves have eaten and drunk for three days!”

“Omi,” Ontari said, and rallied the rest. Ontari was a big man. Marak gave the three women a long look that told them he knew, while he asked himself what he could possibly do about their difficulty. He found no answer except to set Hati to find out the truth. In the meanwhile all their lives were at risk.

“The storm may have force left,” he said to the women. “Whatever happened here, we don’t know how much time we have and we’ve lost a good portion of our water, buried in that tent. Out and dig! Everyone!”

Marak! The voices assumed a tone of panic, and his heart beat like something trapped.

He went to the fifth tent, and there found the youngest of Obidhen’s sons, Tofi, alive, and a company larger by two than he had left it.

“Your father and your brothers are gone,” Marak said, rendered blunt in the hammering of the voices and the threat of the wind. “Get out and direct the slaves! We’ve lost them, and we’ve lost a tent!”