Hammerfall

Norit lowered her face into her hands and wiped her hair back, distracted and unhappy.

“In the bitter water,” Norit said. “A great fall. A shake is coming. It’s coming soon.”

“Not a danger to us,” he said, hoping it was the case.

“No,” Norit said. But in only a matter of moments the earth shook itself like a beshti clearing dust. The tents swayed and the beshti bawled their distress. It did so twice more.

The wind had fallen off markedly by then. And as Marak came out of their tent to inspect for damage, a few drops of cold water fell from the leaden clouds. Sheet lightning showed in the distance, to the east, and as Hati came out under the sky, a spit of rain came down and pocked the sand all about them.

Marak gave a desperate laugh.

“What’s fu

But before he could explain himself, more rain fell, and she took on a strange look and began to laugh and laugh, and laugh. “You’re right,” she said, and laughed again, until Tofi and the freedmen came out to see what was fu

“What’s fu

“We’ll drown or we’ll be eaten,” Hati said, and laughed. Norit simply looked puzzled and troubled.

“There’s a storm coming,” Norit said. “But a small one.” That was from Luz, Marak thought, and he had Tofi move to strike the tent, determined to get the canvas down before it gathered water weight. The Keran were taking those down, and meanwhile one of Memnanan’s messengers had come in, and he went to know what the news was.

“We’ve lost contact with the farthest contingents,” Memnanan said to him, after talking to that man. It was sifting rain, now, a mist as fine as dust. “We’ve heard nothing yet. I hoped this man had ridden back that far, but he didn’t. The weather changed, and he grew uneasy and came to report.”

“It’s possible they’re that far off,” Marak said.

“Or vermin ate them. But vermin aren’t our only worry,” Memnanan said. “There are bandits unaccounted for in all of this. They’ve doubtless picked over Oburan’s bones. If they’re starting now to pick at the column, there’s nothing we can do about it. They’ll scavenge the weak.”

“Like the rest of the vermin,” Marak said, all trace of humor gone from his heart. It was a reasonable suspicion, and one their plans could not deal with. “If that’s started, our line will grow shorter until they have too much to carry. Or they’ll tail us, picking off what they want, when they want it. We can’t divert our march to deal with them.” He knew this kind of war, this bandit harassment. He had practiced it himself, against the Ila’s caravans. He had equipped bands of raiders that way.

“It’s not in our hands,” Memnanan agreed. “But we’ll send no more men back there.”

“I’d say that’s wise,” Marak answered him, “if it was for me to say anything.”

“Oh, you’re the desert master, Marak Trin. I listen.”

Desert master because the abjori had fought from the desert, and Memnanan from the city, always from the city. And Memnanan remembered, too, what the marks were on his fingers.

“I’ve no better advice,” Marak said. “I haven’t, and Luz hasn’t, nothing that I know.”

The Ila remained secluded, and peevish. They parted, and Memnanan returned to his duty with a grim face. A short spate of rain soaked them, and then the clouds broke and shredded, and went flying along with amazing rapidity.

At sunset of that day a brilliant seam of color showed on the horizon and persisted after dark.

Clouds, some said. They had seen plenty of those.

Fire, others said. But the glow went out after dark, so they decided it had been cloud, and that foretold weather.

Sphere hit sphere in Marak’s vision. Hati was as downcast as Norit, and kept looking behind them as they rode. Stars fell, not many, but large ones, one of which left a stuttered trail for a long distance.

By dawn both those clouds and the wind had reached them, and it blew stiffly at their backs, raising the dust—if not for the dust, the wind at their backs would have been a benefit.

“How will it be?” Hati asked Norit, for she, more than they, had become a weather-prophet. “How long will it last?”

“It should last,” Norit said quietly as they rode. “But it won’t blow hard. Not enough to fear.”

Not enough for the labor of deep-stakes, that was, and still, as the dust rose, Marak thought of using them, because they dared not take risks with their lives and their sustenance, for the sake of all the rest. But Norit seemed right: by every scrap of weather-sense he possessed, he felt it would be a windy day, and the dust would get up, that curse of the pans, where a silken fine dust mixed with alkali and tasted bitter.

By noon of that day, the fine dust was thick in the air. The Keran, ahead of them, were shadows in the curtain of dust, but it was not enough to worry them: the day was still bright, not that all-darkening gloom of the great storms, and the beshti made light of it, blowing the dust from their nostrils in occasional noisy gusts. They camped without the deep-stakes, and since the Ila’s men attached the flaps on the windward side of that tent for her comfort, Marak ordered the same for their tent.

It gave them a few hours of relief from the wind. Dust seeped around the single wall, but far less of it. He and Hati even made love in the noon quiet, discreetly, hanging their robes on lines strung from the nearest center pole to the edge. Norit and the au’it were there to witness, but the wiry little au’it kindly went to sleep, and Norit lay with her back turned.

Marak slept afterward with his arm around Hati, next to Norit, who snored gently, troubling no one. The gusting of the wind, the thumping of the canvas, had assumed a quiet sameness.

Then someone came ru

He sat up, and moved the curtain. Tofi and his men, free and slave, were awake and upright on their mats, startled from sleep. It was a young woman… his sister Patya, her aifad trailing loose, her hair flowing wildly in the breeze from around the windbreak. Her expression told him something terrible was amiss.

He scrambled to his feet. He snatched his robe off the line, flung it on, beltless.

“Marak,” she said, then: “Mother,” and burst into terror and tears.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Father. Father came. She told me—”

That was enough. In leaden fear he ran out from under the tent, and Patya and then Hati ran with him. The au’it, too, snatched up her kit, but what she did, Marak did not stop to know.

He ran through the blowing dust, back through their camp, in among the Haga tents, among a gathering of men and women roughly waked from their own noon sleep. Patya had his sleeve, and guided him straight to the heart of the camp, in among the tents. “She told me to run,” Patya managed to say on the way. “She said run, and I ran.”

There was a crowd, shadows in the blowing dust, foretelling the worst. He pushed their way through, and saw, on the ground among them, a woman, their mother.

He fell to his knees and gathered Kaptai up into his arms. He felt the life weak in her as he lifted her, immediately felt the moisture of blood on his hands, under her back. “Marak,” she said, just that, her eyes half-open. Then she went limp in his hands.

Just that. Only that. He had held the dead before. He knew that absolute shift in weight. She was gone.