Hammerfall

They learned now or both of them were dead, in Marak’s reckoning. The boy could think of mercy, once he realized the slaves had likely had nothing to do with his father’s death, and were guilty of nothing but surviving. But the Lakht was merciless even to the skilled, like Obidhen, let alone to fools who drank their water up for fear of dying, and there were few second chances.

The dead they had laid out decently, covering them under with the sand they dug out from around their supplies. They spent no extra labor at it, however. It was a burial only for the boy’s comfort, and the boy knew as a matter of course that vermin of the sand, like the vermin of the air, were clever and persistent. The company simply said the names of the lost a last time, and were done with ceremony.

One seemed apt to be the next casualty, Proffa the tailor. Until the storm he had been strong enough, but when they had packed, and the time came, in the mid of the night, to get up on a beast and ride, Proffa was scarcely able to sit the saddle.

So they set him on like baggage, well padded with their mats, and cared for him on the march. It seemed to Marak that the tailor’s heart had failed him, perhaps as he understood the cost it was simply to go on living. The mad healed, but Proffa did not.

All these things the au’it wrote in her book the next day.

The caravan master, though rich by the desert’s standards, had never been written down in his life, and now an au’it from the holy city had written down his death.

“Have you written his name?” the boy asked earnestly. “It’s Obidhen Anfatin.”

The au’it wrote, and the boy gave her one of his treasures, one of his father’s bracelets.

Common folk had become uncommon, Marak thought, as they set up camp. Even the slaves had begun to grudge their own deaths, and now they had names: Mogar was the one Tofi had beaten, the least agile, but the strongest. The other slave was Bosginde.

They had begun to take note of one another. Friendships and enmities had formed. Certain ones rode together, like sisters, like brothers. Two women of the last tent, having suffered from rough men in their last camp, had armed themselves with knives and clung to Hati and Norit.

More, there had been a lengthy, angry conversation among the women the nature of which Marak did not inquire.

But once they camped, in consideration of possible violence, he suggested to Tofi they pitch only two tents for shade, and close to one another. The women who had suffered were out of the northwest lowlands and certainly had no idea how to manage in the desert. He suggested the women join Tofi and the two slaves, and keep Tofi comforted, while the two ex-soldiers went to Ontori’s tent.

The Lakht brought out the best or the worst in men, and men who had abused their tentmates for three days while they all were in danger of dying were fools. Likewise the women, who had lived through it all and still were on their feet, were not fools, and had gathered the means to defend themselves.

“If these women complain after this,” Marak said to Kassan, senior of the two ex-soldiers, the most likely instigators, in his opinion. “If they complain, you’ll never see the east.”

A suitable fear went across the man’s face. “It wasn’t me,” Kassan said. “It was Foragi.”

“Then change his mind,” Marak said, “or kill him. I’ve set the stonemason over you: Ontari. If either of you ever offends these women, I’ve given him authority to kill you both.”

“Omi,” Kassan said. Kassan was the one of the two soldiers with the wit to understand the proposition; and he hoped Kassan had the wit to be afraid. Kassan went away, doubtless to warn the other man they were in danger, and if his threat produced mutiny in the ex-soldiers, he was sure their looks would show it: they were not men for deep intrigue.

After noon, they broke camp, and the two soldiers avoided his gaze and ducked their heads.

It was, over all, the women who looked different. Hati had been talking to them, and one of them, Maol the farmwife, glowered and fingered something beneath her belt when she looked at those men.

As for Tofi, still mourning his father and his brothers, Maol and her friend among the three women took him as their special charge, a handsome, quick young lad, and in need of comfort. The third woman, whose name was Malin, seemed to have had a falling-out with the other two. She approached the soldiers, who tried to have nothing to do with her.

They broke camp at sunset and moved on, following the stars Tofi named.

Marak, the voices said, Marak, Marak, but they did not seem displeased. The voices still whispered—hourly now—and the visions still came, and he knew that Tofi’s guide stars were the same stars they had followed, the bright ones, to the east.

And if the morning and the evening pitched him east so reliably he never could have lost his way, so with all of them: they were not lost, nor dissuaded, and needed not have worried about knowing the way. The boy Tofi, who owned the beasts and the tents, was increasingly confident of their direction.

So was Hati, who with Norit shared his mat at night. Since the storm, he had no shame left in that regard, only hung a robe for a curtain, and so he heard two of the three women did, with Tofi, and together they got along.

But one of the three, on the outs with the women from the start, had set up to content various other men, and had them, two and three an evening, outside near the beasts, before they would get under way for the night, so he wondered whether the soldiers had been entirely at fault in the tent and who had started the business during the storm.

“Malin takes pay,” Hati said when he asked her opinion.

“What do they pay?” Marak asked, feeling like an i

“Food,” Hati said.

“They will not.” He was outraged. Taking part of a man’s ration weakened the man and strengthened a woman who by now had made her choice, and who, if prostitution was not her trade, might have revenge on her mind… or who, if it was, might become the object of revenge from the other women. “The hell! Tell them they may not use force. But they can’t use their rations, either. Let Malin choose what to do. Tell her let them win her favors.”

Marak, Marak, Marak, his i

But after Hati had a talk with them, the men who courted Malin, the prostitute, vied with small favors, helping her down from her beast, carrying her mat, unrolling it as if she ruled the camp. Malin flourished, better served than many a wife, and Norit and Maol and the other woman, Jurid, frowned daggers at her, but Hati shrugged and carried her own mat and hauled her own saddle with a wry and amused look.

They had cooked meals with the sun-mirrors in clear weather. But they had lost their cook, among the dead slaves, give or take Hati’s occasional merciful intervention, and now the cooking changed: it was Tofi’s two women, Maol and Jurid, who provided the skill. They were profligate with the spices; and Marak thought it a great improvement.

He found leisure for such thoughts. In Hati’s arms and in Norit’s he was happy, and that, too, was a new thought. He discovered he had seldom been happy, in his life. He had never been free in his life. But now… he had no idea whether he was, or not.

He found himself looking at Hati during their rides simply for the pleasure the sight gave him. Norit was a fine woman, and a comfortable one, and he liked her despite her other qualities: if he had met her alone, in such circumstances, he might have declared he loved her. But Hati stirred something in him that had never waked to anyone. He found all her movements a fascination. He found every expression memorable, and she had so many. If Hati should leave their journey, he thought he would follow Hati rather than the visions… it was that potent a lure.