Hammerfall

Struck at her because Taincould not be the source of the madness and Taincould not be at fault for losing a war.

So Tain stole up on a peaceful, allied camp and called a woman out, not to reconcile and beg her pardon as he ought by rights to do, as Kaptai had every right to hope he might intend—but to murder her and then run like the felon he had become, challenging every tribe to kill him.

There was no forgiveness. There was no one left to ask it for Tain.

Antag’s two brothers overtook them, calling out as they took shape out of the haze, to be sure of identities. The warning was given. The tribes knew, and sent out messengers and hunters of their own.

They asked at every camp they passed: “Has a man ridden through?” and at five camps the answer was the same, but at the sixth there was confusion and an instant’s hesitation.

“I’m Marak Trin Tain,” Marak said. “ Where is my father?”

The people of that village, a village from the rim of the west, stayed unmoving, so many statues staring up at him with frightened eyes. Tain was known to take bloody vengeance on betrayers. Did he not know that?

But one old woman pointed to the side of the camp.

“You said nothing,” Marak said to her. And to the rest: “It’s your mistake if you pity him. The tribes are against him. The Ila is guiding you to water, out from under the star-fall. His own son guides this caravan. Do you want to die?”

For an answer, they only stared, so many wind-rocked images, and he and the four Rhonandin turned off where the old woman had pointed.

There were faint tracks. Tain had crossed back to the same side he had ridden before, and now they followed tracks rapidly growing dim in the blowing dust, then merging with others along the side of the camp, where the feet of men and beasts had made a complex record.

No track went out from it: Trin’s course lay within that trampled ground, on to the next camp, but allthe camp was ringed and crossed by that kind of track.

“Keep with it as best you can,” Marak said, and rode into the village camp alone to ask whether any man had gone through.

“No,” they said, and this was the village of Kais Mar. “Someone rode by,” a child said, and pointed.

Marak turned Osan’s head and rode back to join Antag and his brothers along the outer edge.

“There’s still the gaps between camps he might use,” Antag said. Particularly in this stretch, the camps did not abut up against one another: the villages pitched their tents often in confusion, not in orderly fashion, and one would end up closer and another farther, and such trampled gaps existed. At every such gap there was the chance of losing the track.

And now there came a stir within the camps, as somewhere far forward the Keran must have started moving, and gotten on their way, and now that movement had spread backward through the line.

They came to a western encampment, the village of Dal Ternand, and there Marak called out a name: “Mora!” It was the lord of Dal Ternand he wanted, and when the old man came out from the shade of the tent, the last left as the young men packed up: “Mora, you know me. I’m looking for my father.”

“With no good intent,” Mora judged. “You’re the Ila’s man now.”

“I’m the guide for this caravan, the masterof this caravan, and it’s my job to get it to safety, with all that’s in it. Tain killed my mother just now, and ran like a coward. I want him, Mora!”

“Killed Kaptai?”

“Killed her with a knife in the back, with no stomach to face me and not a damned care whether this caravan lives or dies… whether all the people in the world live or die. Whereis he?”

“He went the length of the camp. That’s what I know.”

“Pass the word. Tain’s shed Haga blood, and from behind. They’re after him. And I am.”

“The Rhonan are after him,” Antag said, “for the Haga’s sake. And so are the Dashingar. Spread that word. This is a dead man.”

Marak sent Osan on, along the route Mora of Dal Ternand had pointed out, and so into the next and the next village camp.

In the next after that, he knew the lord lied, and there was a suspicious dearth of able men packing up the tents: it was Kais Vanduran, where his father had veterans, and where he had his own, men who ought to be here.

“Where’s Duran?” he asked old Munas, the lord of the village. “ Where’s Kura?” That was a man who had ridden with him, no older than he.

There was no answer, only a troubled look from Munas.

“He’s killed Kaptai,” Marak said in a hard, disciplined voice. “And four Haga. The tribes are after him, and I am, to the death, Munas. This isn’t a war against the Ila. This is a war between us. If you hear from Kura, pull him back. Duran, too. I don’t want his blood. Only Tain’s.”

“They aren’t here,” Munas said stubbornly. “I haven’t seen them.”

“You’ve let most of your men go with him,” Marak said. “The wind’s up. What are you going to do when the sand moves? What when a tent needs help? Did my father ask you that?”

That scored. But Munas had his jaw set and his mind made up.

“You’re in danger,” Marak said, and rode out with the Rhonandin, knowing that what he feared had happened: Tain had called up his veterans and declared his war against the Ila, against the caravan, and against his son.

They kept riding down the side of the lines, in a wind that got no worse, and no better, either. Larger vermin scampered from under the beshti’s feet: the smaller, less aware, died there, and vanished in the blowing dust. When they came into the line again they saw some villagers had their baggage loaded and were ready to move, waiting for the village group in front of them.

“Have you seen men riding through?” Marak asked of them, and when they said no, lingered to wave them past. “If you’re ready and your neighbors in front are not, move past! The whole line can’t wait on the slowest! Camp as far forward as you can, and spread out from the line of march if you need to, to get to clean sand and keep clear of vermin.”

That might provoke arguments when it came to camping at night, and he knew it; but let the word spread: no waiting, once the line began to move. No villager would pass the tribes, but he saw how delay in these unskilled folk became a contagion, spreading from one to the next.

They moved on, circled out among the dunes and back again, in heavy, blasting wind that made them keep the aifad up close about their eyes: they found no tracks out there, only the numerous scuttling vermin, so they went back to the villages, and on back, on tracks steadily growing obscure in the blowing dust.

After two more villages they were moving beside a moving line, going counter to the flow, so movement had spread back along the caravan. To each of the villages Marak posed the same question: have you seen men pass you? He gained an admission from one that they had seen riders coming back, but the village took them for the Ila’s men.

Armed men, and more than one. That was no surprise.

They passed the villages more rapidly now, the caravan’s motion carrying them past as they rode toward the rear: Kais Goros, Kais Tagin, and Undar went by: the westernmost villages were not the hindmost in the line.

They passed Kais Karas and Kais Madisar, and the wind was, if anything, fiercer, coming in gusts that reddened the air with sand. They had come into a place where a deep wash rolled down to a dry alkali bed and where there was little room on the column’s right hand. By then, shadows had begun to gather, the sun dying in murk.

But on that rock Marak saw the bright scratches in the slope where a rider had gone down, and another where he had climbed up again and onto the far side, and so toward the low stony ridges.

“No knowing whether it’s Tain himself,” Antag said, and Marak said to himself that it was true. He would wager if he looked to the other side of the camp he would see other tracks, and that Tain had sent a man out to divert pursuit and himself taken another route.