On foot, Antissa would be a day away. At least. Leaving now, I knew, would strand me in the winds as soon as night fell, and while the Rath were gone for the moment, they’d surely resurface after dark. Having the fusil wasn’t much comfort without any ammunition, though I wasn’t stupid or desperate enough to go climbing down the crag for my sling-bag. Here I was safe. Or at least a little safer.
So I waited.
As if the pains throughout my body weren’t enough, hunger gnawed my insides. I tried pretending it away, knowing that as long as I stayed up here and held the high ground in safety, there wasn’t going to be any food. The thirst was harder to ignore, even when the heat ebbed and shadows lengthened. I was cold before the sun had set.
Night engulfed the Spectres. Creeping in, it wrapped those silent jet formations in more black; an inky, sticky kindred-black that only spared my white fortress. I took shelter from the cold in the fissure we’d climbed to reach the top. As it was right below the horn, the inside walls were bathed in light. Plamen had ripped my swathe-hood almost off, but by tying my head-cloth tight I could keep it in place and shield my eyes from the flashes. The icy wind whipped the crag and howled down into the crack. I curled my body into its tightest ball.
Then the gibbers came back. Crouched in my ball, and through the wind, I tried to gauge the distance of their groups as they ranged among the crags; now gathering there in bigger numbers, then scattering wide, then going quiet. They knew I was up here, but wouldn’t climb. Not with the whiteness blazing on around its spire above my head; a thousand crackling white torches in the void.
It seemed to scare them.
Sleep, when I got it, never seemed to last more than an hour. If it wasn’t the gibbers and howls rising below, it was the terror. That hand round my throat again, the boy who’d fallen from his horse, body then torn into pieces. I’d liked him, Kobi . . . I’d liked Eflan, and Ghulzar. I’d liked a lot of people.
I lost count of the times I started awake, afraid my white light had gone out. But always the light was there, looped and swirling round that horn. Behind it, the sky always night at its blackest.
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Deeper sleep must have found me: at last I woke to a little warmth and filtering grey. A thin red gleam had come to touch the top of the fissure and when I skated down its slope to stand on the ledge, dazed and exhausted, the sun was rising. Apart from the crackle of the blaze overhead, the sands between the Spectres were quiet, calm. Empty.
Scaling the crag down took a lot longer than climbing up, now without Ratheine claws gaining on me, and my body now too sore to move at speed. The sun turned red to orange, and from orange to yellow. The sand, white to gold.
It was like walking across a graveyard. The remains of the gelding lay in front of the crater’s arch, carcass picked clean to the bones. The saddle, shredded, a few feet away from it. I found my sling-bag some distance in front of the dip: it was threadbare and empty, though by a twinkle of silver I found my schot-capsule too. Nothing inside it of course. At the foot of the blazing crag, I found Eflan’s knife where it had fallen.
With my hand over my mouth, I willed myself close as I dared to Kobi’s body. They’d left a bit more flesh on him than they had on the horse, although from what I could see it was still mostly bones there. Limbs had been ripped, some clean off him, and though I couldn’t look for long, a leg perhaps had been taken. If they had left him with a face, that face was buried in the sand.
Fast as I could I walked away. Heading out between the jet giants to the south, I only stopped to look back when I reached the outer formations. From here I could just see the tip of white light on that Spectre; for the last time, I hoped. No matter what, we couldn’t come back to this place.
Dunes rolled into forever. With only the sun to tell where south was, I pinned my eyes to the farthest rise that I could see and tried to memorise the way it looked from here, imprinting shape and shadow angles on my brain as best I could. Headcloth tied tight, I was able to keep my torn hood firmly in place, and my face mostly shaded as the sun climbed.
My pace was good for a while, pushing past the needling pains, but as always the heat sapped off my strength before long. In the night, the wind had re-sculpted the dunes east to west, which meant there weren’t any easy strolls along the tops of their crests. Only hot, steep climbs and tumbling descents that demanded work from my muscles. I slowed to a trudge and at around what I guessed was the middle of the morning, I looked back from a higher dune to find with crushing disappointment that I could still see the tops of the Spectres. More sand ahead; rise, fall, rise, fall. The most I could hope for by dusk, I soon realised, was the southern edge of the erg. The fortress would still be far from there, but the flatter gypsum plains, maybe, wouldn’t take as long to cross. Even though I’d have to walk through the cold dark of the night.
And then what?
They’d been walking behind me for a while now, the thoughts; stepping in my footprints like tired sappers from the Deep. If only Kobi had made it away in that moment. If only he’d got out of the range of that crossbow faster. If only I hadn’t been so stupid, thinking I could pit my will against the will of a High Commander. Or would he have killed him anyway?
No. I’d forced Plamen’s hand, without thinking what would happen, and Kobi was dead because of me.
Just like Con was. Erik. Sarah.
Trudging on, I started to wonder what would happen when I got back; when I reported what I knew, what I’d found under the Spectres and what it meant. Could I even expect Rusper to believe me when I told him how the mission had ended? And why. I’d been so sure of his trust when we’d left, but now . . .
It was one thing to report that Plamen, appointed aide to the Viceroy, had been plotting to take his place right from the start. It was another to explain how the man had died. The very fact that the head of the Mooncircle Army had been killed in the desert was a betrayal of our mission, and that mission a mark on Rusper’s name. Only the discovery of the Rath’s river could cleanse him of that mark. If, that was, the First Circle saw it reason enough to overrule the Satrap. Mobilise forces. Send them out into the Northern Erg. The thing I’d set out to enable and now the thing I had to stop. And if I did—if I stopped it—then Rusper Symphin was doomed.
It was all for nothing.
I’d dared to stand in Plamen’s way, tried to stop him from taking the Viceroy’s power, only so that someone else could take it instead. Hadn’t I?
No, I hadn’t! I’d not done anything, or even killed anyone. The Disc had eaten him alive.
Before long, few thoughts were making too much sense anymore. My lips had started to crack, I couldn’t swallow and if a lump of sand had been sitting on my tongue I’d not have known. For about an hour now, I realised, I’d been watching my feet. Maybe longer. I’d lost track of the dunes. The sun was in the middle of the sky, but I couldn’t stop here to rest. If I did that, I might too easily forget which way I should be walking and then start walking back. And so I pushed myself on.
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After another mile maybe—who knew—the shadows started to circle. I didn’t need to look up, every step already dragging me closer to ruin. Rusper Symphin renounced. Naemians turned from the gates. The Satrap overruled. The army marched to its death.
I was the key. Key to it all.
Don’t go back.
What was the point, if all I did by going back was set disaster in motion?
Come to that, what was the point of any of it, if one Vedan could slay another Vedan just for power?
The Vedish Way . . .
I stopped. Eyes closed, I sagged into the downslope of the dune, the torrid sand banking under my sandals to stop me sliding all the way. Those shadows crossed over my eyelids but I was too weak to move now.
Antissa hadn’t ever needed my help. Rusper didn’t either. Plamen was right, all I’d been doing was trying to prove myself to him. Change monstrous things. But I couldn’t.
I drifted; the heat so immense that I could almost melt right into it and feel nothing at all. No thirst, hunger or pain.
No going back.
A wheel of gold burned bright on blue, stinging my eyes, turning and turning. Five Rath were skirting round its loops, their bodies shadows . . .
Now I was standing on the northwest fortress wall.
Rusper was there; a wry look in his eye. ‘Politics is a dangerous dance, Flint, and one learns to meet a threat on its own turf, you understand. Plamen still serves me, I assure you.’
He’d been so wrong.
‘Why does the Satrap need a Deep?’ I asked.
‘Because he’s frightened.’
I looked down then, from the battlements; down at the banner streaked all over with my vomit. Then I gazed out to the edge of the Northern Erg. There was a spot there, beneath the crest of a dune and a circle of birds. Not Rath. A boy-shaped spot, and it was moving, dipping out of sight . . .
As a big wad of sand filled up my mouth, I choked and spluttered and woke up. Barely conscious, I’d tumbled all the way down the dune’s slope. As I retched I tried to make a bit of moisture in my mouth, enough at least to spit the sand out, but I couldn’t.
Two big brown vultures beat their wings and flapped away to join their kettle that still circled in the air. They hadn’t flown away from me, though. Something else had spooked them; something shuffling closer even now. A sound I knew: hooves over sand.
Someone was coming – riding towards me.
As I looked up, I knew him even before the ruby flashed in the sun. White messenger. Soldier. Vorth’s protector. The one who’d summoned my people to safety. His white robes billowed behind him, the stallion charging down into the saddle of the dunes. He drew his sword with a flourish but I didn’t have the strength to run. Not even strength enough to fear. I was all finished anyway; already down on my knees, so I bowed my neck and let my eyes sag closed. The hooves drummed closer and I readied for the blow.
Would they be waiting? How’d I never wondered about that before . . . ?
Then, a snort. It came from silence. And then again, followed by the stomp of just one hoof. I opened my eyes, lifted my face and dared to squint into the glare.
No white fury was coming. No one was riding me down. No robes, no ruby, no drawn sword. No High Commander.
Just his horse.
Some five yards away, the stallion stood there in profile. Such a stunning animal, it seemed strange that I didn’t even know its name. His name.
After two false starts I got up and stumbled across the short distance, hardly believing him there. But he stood his ground and, every time I started doubting, stomped again and tossed his head. Soon enough I saw the reason for his mood. Four red claw-marks ran from his withers to his belly, the deepest gash still bleeding. I let my hands hover above the sandy cuts and up towards his shoulders, heat blazing off his coat.
Barely outrunning the Rath, he’d survived.
Survive.
With another snort he wheeled his huge head towards me, looked at me, and I felt it.
I was alive because of Rusper. Fool or not, the Viceroy had aligned my people’s fate with his own and risked his life to keep us safe. True, I’d failed. True, when I got back to Antissa, disaster would unfold and I’d be helpless to stop it. After all, what was I but a Naemian exile in the realm of the Satrap?
But I was still alive, against all odds. And while the Disc had played a part in that survival, so had Rusper.
Dying wasn’t what I owed him.
Scabbardless, Plamen’s sword was still bound to the saddlebag. I reached past it to look inside the flaps: there wasn’t much. No waterskin. Only a tightly-rolled blanket and black cloak, a scroll-tube, compass, folding razor and a pouch with two schrods of very crumbled khapent inside. I bore down on them, craving their salt more than anything and not caring about the sand that got in my teeth. With so little saliva in my mouth it took a while and hurt to swallow. Then I opened the compass to find my bearing.
Very gently, I patted a path along the stallion’s high shoulder, trying to murmur something like calmness, though only croaks would come out. Even with the stirrups, mounting a beast of such a height wasn’t easy. Far too small, I would have struggled even with the full strength of my legs. But the stallion was surprisingly patient and, after several tries and falls back into the sand, I got a clumsy leg over. My foot brushed the open claw-wounds and the horse started with a cry. Again I stroked him, trying to talk; he breathed and puffed and calmed again.
I didn’t have any riding skill, not after such a short time in the saddle as part of the column. But this horse answered to my hand and seemed to know his part well. I had direction. And yet, hard as I tried to sit up straight in the saddle as I rode, doing all the things Eflan had told me, it was less than an hour before exhaustion took hold of me again. I floated away from awareness, keeling forward on the pommel.
The hooves moved me on regardless and the sand passed underneath. Gold climbing, gold falling again. I’d always come back to consciousness when we descended the slopes, at least by enough to cast a half-opened eye at the compass. Then again, the gold climbing . . . falling . . . climbing. South.
Gold thinned to grey, I don’t know when. Dunes blew away. There were swirling browns, dead trees like skeletons and a big mound somewhere in the haze. The mane was musty and warm in my face, and the rhythm of hooves over hard ground soothed the jittering in my dreams. I dreamed of feldspar and shingle and of rearing yellow rock. Climbing again.
Time left me behind; I was far from guessing how much had passed when at last I nuzzled my face out of the mane to part my eyes. The yellow rock was vast and tall and straight with an open mouth, and there were movements at the mouth. Those skeleton flags had come to life and there were creatures with them, great big hairy yellow ones. I tried to marshal my strength, kicked at the stirrups, fumbled for purchase on reins long ago slackened in my hands. Without knowing any landing, I was on the ground.
The hooves walked on.
Something groaned. Someone shouted, first far then right above me. I remembered camels existed as the big foot of one flapped dust next to my face. I heard the crunching of boots, time melting away from me again. My body was dragged. My neck lolled back against hot leather. Sun pried my eyelids but even without the sand sticking them closed I’d not have let it in. No more.
A man was talking: ‘Take his arm.’
Whole arm this time . . . ?
‘Take his arm, I said. Get him up, up! It’s Tools!’