Hammerfall

Tofi himself brought a waterskin for him, and the two freedmen brought Norit’s. They had secured none for themselves: it was the way the day had progressed. “I have your gear packed aboard,” Tofi said, “all of it.”

“I’m in your debt,” Marak said. He had regarded Tofi as a quickwitted young man; he was not surprised, or disappointed, either. “If debts will ever be paid in this life.”

“Save us from the Ila, is all,” Tofi said under his breath. “Don’t let her cut my head off, and I’ll be grateful.”

Tofi went to his business. Hati rode up beside him, and slowly the Ila’s column wedged a straight course through the confusion toward them.

“Form up,” Marak called out when he judged it time.

Tofi moved, shouting to his men, who already knew their places in the line of march.

The Ila approached, at Memnanan’s side, and Marak waved a signal, sweeping to the south and never even stopping for courtesies. Marak fell in smoothly with the head of that column, he and Hati and Norit.

The Ila was behind them, in the heart of their protection, not leading. An au’it, their own au’it, fell in with them and rode with them, her book on her knee, writing as she rode.

“Ride with me,” Marak said to Memnanan. “Is your household with you?”

“Within the column. They’ll come to your tent when we camp,” Memnanan said. “I’ve told them. You have my lasting gratitude. And your relatives?”

“With the Haga,” he said. “I hope they’re there.” For the first time he thought of that second question. “My father?”

“Released,” Memnanan said, and Marak suffered curiously mixed feelings about that.

“It was that or kill him,” Memnanan said. “I’ll not have him near the Ila.”

“I well understand,” Marak said. A certain part of his heart wished he had seen Tain. A certain part of him longed to linger back and wait for Kais Tain to pass: See, Father, he could say. I’ve done something useful with my life. I’ve saved all of you.

And another part wanted to say, I’ve survived. I’m still alive. So has my mother, so has my sister, damn you for a devil.

He did neither. They filed out along the road, past that trampled ground near the ridge, past the wreckage of the carts, where not a book remained, only a vermin-covered body. The junior priests might not have lingered to bury their chief priest, or, do them credit, perhaps they had, and misjudged the tenacity of the vermin. In either case, even if they had carried him back to the city for burial, the vermin would get the body, with more or less work.

On that thought, Marak rode aside from the column and looked back at the city.

A pall of smoky haze hovered above the hill that had been Oburan, and over the Beykaskh that had been the heart of it. It was the last of sunset. The glass dome and the glass-rimmed walls caught no light now. Their fire and their life was extinguished. The vast camp had gone down, collapsed, beshti rounded up, pressed back to the work of carrying riders and baggage.

And some had none. People had come in from the villages using them; and only if they were strong enough and forceful enough, they rode out with them. He knew with all his experience of desperate men that the desperate and the hard would have beasts to ride and the forgiving and the gentle would have no one to defend their rights.

Oburan’s people in the city’s fall had passed through a sieve, through which only one kind survived, and it was not for the better, and it was not for the kindest, except as they had protectors more ruthless as the worst… and the Ila had moved to the fore of the line, being that ruthless. So had he. But the Lakht as it had become was a far finer sieve, a trial from which fools and those led by fools did not emerge at all, and a leader who had too much pity for the few would kill everyone who trusted him. Witness the caravan they had passed, bones, naked bones in the sand, and a leader who should have known his business had miscalled the storm and the proximity of safety. Norit had warned them… and they had used that advantage.

He saw the tribes drawn up along the road, different in proportion of beasts and goods than those caravans of the villages, for the tribes had less, used less, were much the same as each other in weight carried, in every aspect. There were subtle differences in colors and patterns, but all tribal patterns, even the brightest, blended generally with the beasts, with the rocks, with each other, as if the same haze of desert dust lay over them all. The Ila and the au’it were a splash of scarlet in his company, the priests that had attached themselves a glare of white, and then the rest of the tribes poured in, following their line, more dusty hues half-obscured in dust as the sun sank to leaden death.

As for the villagers, beyond his view, people of every color and every pattern, inexpert with the beshti and a hazard to themselves and others in the high desert, he could only wish they hurried onto the road and kept the pace behind them as best they could. He would not turn back in this deep dusk to see how they fared, what they chose, what they did. So far as they would survive, behind the tribes’ example and advice in front of them, they were on their own.

Hati paced him, riding by him. Norit scarcely bothered. They both knew where she was, back among the rest, and nowhere, drifting in her mind in a dark place, cold, peaceful, remote from them.

Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices said, as if he could be several days’ marches farther on, and they would never be satisfied.

They rode past familiar formations, and on and on. There was no fall of stars tonight. The cloud obscured it.

Throughout the night the villages camped around the ruin would still be setting themselves on the road. Perhaps into morning, the halt would ripple down the column to those just setting out. They had thought they would make better time than they had on the way back, with lightly laden beasts, but with the incidents on the road, it turned out they had not. Now by no means would they set any greater pace on this trip, with the beasts as laden as they were, burdened most of all with shelter and with water. The slow pace was unintended mercy for those afoot. It was danger to the rest of them, and still the hindmost might not survive… but they would have a trail to follow, the more they straggled. They would have it until the wind blew and erased the slate and buried the bitter wells too deeply to dig out.

Marak slept, rocked by Osan’s motion, safe in Hati’s company. At times she slept, and he stayed awake, both of them exhausted.

Past the mid of the night, Memnanan came forward.

“The Ila asks when we will take a major rest,“ Memnanan said. ”I think I know your answer. But these people are unaccustomed to riding.“

“At noon,” he said. “Granted no delays. Tell her I regret the discomfort, but this is to save her life. Twenty and thirty tomorrows will have no more pleasant answer.”

Memnanan rode back to tell her so.

How the Ila had received it he was not sure, but Norit came forward then, and rode with them a while, and slept in the saddle: Norit had finally learned to do that in their travels… had learned her balance, and how to brace herself, and rested as secure as a woman of the tribes.

The falling object hit the sphere, again and again and again. The lake of fire flowed down over the rocks like a spring let loose.

Norit waked, and said nothing to either of them.

When the sun came up, a gathering light along the line of the Qarain, Marak rode up the line a little. Hati paced him as he rode past their column, not pressing the beshti for any speed, but gaining, slowly, slowly, comfortably, as riders moved within the column. They entered the Haga column.

Patya saw them. She rode over just out of range, looking for a signal, but she was no great rider, and she could hardly guide her mount with any subtlety. Hati waved to her. Marak would not bend to acknowledge a close relationship, not now, not since the caravan was under way, but she could come to him, and it was his hope that Patya and his mother would move toward him if he came up in the line. He had no need to ask whether their mother was safe: she drifted close, a far better rider, and stayed just within sight of him, presence enough to assure him she was safe and well, but she, too, had her dignity before her new neighbors, her relatives. She would hold off as long as there was Patya to run the errands between them.