Chapter Eleven

Dryden knew he was dreaming. It was not a pleasant dream. He was riding up the long slope to Golconda again. Faces of people he had left behind looked up at him with hate and jealousy in their eyes. General Blackwater, Colonel Havor, Colonel Gorst, Captain Pugh, Private Harper, and more. All men who had fallen. He knew that it could not be real, for some had been captured before those last days of climbing to the Settru Pass. Ahead of him, he could see the cart driven by Julia Gorst, who was Colonel Gorst’s daughter, and a woman whom he had fallen for, for lack of a better term. She, along with many of the civilians, had been handed over to be prisoners of their enemy. He still thought about her often. He had promised her father that he would rescue her. It was a foolish thing to promise, but he would not deny it of a dying man. That cart with Julia, Helena, and Roxana moved ahead of him up the hill. The women did not look at him. No matter his speed, he could not catch it. He spurred Rosie. The horse he rode looked nothing like his bay mare Rosie, but rather like some horse he did not remember ever having seen. He knew it to be Rosie, though. He spurred the horse and she did not respond. He spurred her again, harder, whipped her with his crop, begged, screamed and cursed at the horse. She merely plodded along behind the cart, never catching it. When at last he felt he could take it no more he went to dismount his horse. If his horse would catch them, he would. He woke suddenly and soaked in sweat.

“Bad dream, Major?” Mar asked from across the campfire.

“Was it that obvious?” Dryden asked sheepishly.

“I’m sorry to say that the whole camp heard you cursing and thrashing.”

“You did not wake me?”

“You need sleep. Do not worry yourself, sir, many of us suffer the same affliction,” Mar explained.

“What nightmares plague you, wizard?”

Mar took a moment and exhaled, “I dream that I am falling into a deep black pit. It is so deep that I fall and fall and fall. Something awaits me in the depths. Sometimes I think it a demon, or a vampire, or something older and nameless. I always wake just before my tormentor is revealed.” He sighed and leaned back against his saddlebags which were propped up on the ground, “I find the aethium makes the dreams more vivid.”

Dryden rose and found that his body was still sore. His head swam if he stood up too quickly. He went to one knee, “Do you have more of that horrid tincture?” He asked. He had found that he could function if he only had a bit of the tincture that Mar had found in Ghinai. It was part aethium and part gris. Both substances were narcotics used by wizards for the casting of spells. Aethium came from the indigo flowers of Vurun. Gris came from the glands of great leviathans of the deep. Together, they eased his pain and made his mind sharper. Even days later he was feeling the effects of the blast. He could function so long as he had them. He had to function now more than ever. They still had to drive Aisa towards Haddock. Although Commander Havelock had given up trying to catch the witch himself, they could still push her along into the trap as General Haddock had intended at the start. The wizard handed him another small vial which he downed. It tasted cloying.

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“Are you improving?” The wizard asked after him.

“Slowly.”

“You need rest, sir. I must remind you that aethium and gris are highly addictive, and they aid the body not. It only masks the symptoms.”

“We’ve no time to lose.”

Dryden felt the effects of the drugs filling his body. He felt cool, first in his stomach and then the feeling went outwards to take his whole body. As it reached his head he felt a kind of bliss take him. His vision suddenly felt sharper. He shivered and a smile crept into his face. He rarely smiled anymore. He felt completely at ease.

“You must remember, sir, that you are not yourself under their influence. There are side effects. The gris makes you forget your pains, but also your joys and loves.”

“Your warnings, sir, are heeded. I wonder, though, at your own use. Are you not an addict?”

“I am. I was trained, however, in their use at the wizard’s conservatory in Blackbridge. The first year of my study was dedicated to acclimatizing my body and mind to their use. Furthermore, when a wizard uses them for magic, their potency is extinguished. Only the ill effects remain. It is a great deterrent to their abuse. That is not so for normal men and the allure of their use is great.”

“I have already told you that your warnings are heeded,” Dryden insisted more strongly.

“They cannot be overstated, sir,” Mar insisted.

“Why give them to me?”

“You have need of them. When your need is gone, I will cease my ministrations.”

“Noted.”

Dryden rose then, and soon the sun began to rise too. Stars above began to disappear, and light brightened the sky. The cavalry regiment rose too and prepared to ride during the day. They had changed to riding during the day after Ghinai. There was no reason to hurry quite so hard now. They would not catch the Vuruni light cavalry. They still rode a good pace through the desert, which became less sandy and more rocky and scrubby as they approached the Korum mountains again. They had gone in a wide arc, following the old road and the water it supplied to chase Aisa, who had ridden hard for the northern passes. Haddock’s army had cut straight north along the Korum to cut her off. There was no water on that route, traveling it was a difficult task, and his army was using camels to achieve it. It was one more reason he had sent the cavalry around as his hunting hounds. It was easier to keep them watered at the wells of the old caravanserais and the green lands of the River Jaxa. Now, however, they were leaving those watering holes and had turned to cross the thin stretch of waterless desert between the Jaxa and the Korum mountains.

They crossed dry riverbeds as they went. The people of the Kryval and Ghinai called them “riqa” or so Ugruz told them. He told them that during the rainy season, which came once every ten years in this land, the riqa flooded to the top. Dryden could scarcely believe it, the idea of water so deep here in the desert was to be scoffed at. Then one day they came to a deep scar in the land, an enormous canyon that Ugruz called Kul’dara. They arrived at midday, and standing at the edge the depths were still in shadow, even at noon. Even though it blocked their path, Ugruz told them they were going the right way and they rode north along the edge of the vast canyon until they found the end of it, where the river burst forth from somewhere underground, and they went east again. They chased the enemy across the flat stony desert, taking water where they could, and sleeping under open skies. Days passed as they followed the trail left by the Witch’s men, always with Aisa a step ahead of them.