Haboob

A few hours beyond the steeple the cadre passed through the Spine, a sawtooth formation of bedrock that ran roughly north and south for two hundred kilometers and more. Each section was less than thirty meters thick, and up to four times as tall. Taylor could imagine them as dorsal plates of some biblical monster long deceased, but on close inspection their material was standard granite. Their guide took them through a section that had been quarried for stone, leaving an easy path through. All the while Mila watched him.

"Really, I feel fine!" Milo had tried to tell her once, in an attempt to ease her worries, but she disregarded him.

"Of course you're fine. You'd be all too happy to die in his service."

"Well, sure," he shrugged, an outlander gesture learned from their outlander master. "Wouldn't you?"

"I don't want anyone to die because that's not a good outcome! And I don't trust our so-called guide. He's shady, he has his own agenda, and it doesn't matter to him if Taylor dies."

"I can hear, you know," said Iraj. He scanned the south horizon, which neared them at alarming speed. A red-brown cloud billowed at ground level, while the sky above it was clear and colored by the dawn. "We must hurry. It's a short ride to the slough, and we can shelter there."

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"Or we could just take cover in the spine," suggested one of the bulwarks.

"Sometime rocks fall, and people die," Iraj shot back, "or did you not notice all the rocks on the ground?"

"Or we could make caves in the spine," said Khali.

"The slough is full of sand. It's much easier to dig there. Also, I can teach you the Calique way to sit through the haboob. But we will do as your master decides."

"The slough," said Taylor without hesitation. "I'd like to make a little more progress before we break."

In another hour of travel, pushing their mounts much harder than they had at night, they reached an expanse of trackless sand. The red earth they were so used to dropped down in long gouges and the gaps filled in with sand blown in from far-off places. Exactly why it liked to settle there wasn't clear, a trick of geography and wind, but for twenty kilometers a man could walk, and his feet would touch nothing but sand.

Iraj showed them how to dig a wide depression, lay down their mounts around the edges, and cover themselves with canvas sheets they lashed together. The storm, when it hit them, blocked all sunlight, leaving them in howling darkness. The canvas above their heads, drawn tight to keep from catching too much wind and blowing away, boomed and vibrated. With cotton in their ears and a pair of spirit lamps they made their shelter bearable. They spoke to each other in sign language. Leaned up against Magnificent Ben, with the animal's head and trunk in his lap, Taylor slept.