They’d been moving steadily for over two hours, Storm bulling a more or less straight course at the limit of his endurance and the coyote an ambling quartering of the territory they passed through, and even moving slow, it had been running him to death.

Not now, though. Now it had slowed to a hardly discernable crawl.

“Don’t tell me, Storm whispered through cracked lips, not bothering to translate to wolf. “That’s the water, right?”

He was looking at a pair of smoke plumes and even here in this strange land he knew it for what it was. Battlefield. Still too far off to hear any sounds, or feel any rumblings, somehow, he knew that somewhere under that dirty blue smoke, somebody was getting killed.

He pulled a couple of chunks of the jerked meat from his pack and tossed them to the prairie wolf without turning from the horizon. No need to risk the animal’s life just for practice.

The coyote snapped the morsels up and was gone before it’d finished swallowing, heading almost straight south. Storm made a note of the direction absently, most of his concentration on the smokey horizon.

A sharp flash of light blinked the prairie blue-white for an instant and a fresh pillar of smoke slowly rose up from beyond the horizon, billowing deep maroon, tinged with black. Far off and faint, now that he was no longer moving, he heard a hollow poomp! Twelve seconds he’d ticked off idly as he’d waited for the report to catch the light.

Did they have cannon here? He hadn’t seen any, but that didn’t mean much. Back home cannon had preceded hand carried firearms by over a hundred years. Like that meant anything on the second world. The question was moot in any case — that flash hadn’t been any conventional explosive.

The plain remained open and rolling as far as the eye could see, with no especially distinguishing mark upon it to explain why this particular stretch might be worth a battle. Perhaps it was only where two armies happened to meet. Sure, he snorted. And perhaps he’d just happened to find the little birds where he had, when he had. That was just how coincidence worked.

Well, he’d not find any answers standing out here three hours hard march from whatever it was that was happening over there.

Another distant report and whatever had made it sent its pillar of smoke —this one a dirty orange— joining the others.

What do you think, Knothead? he asked the horse voicelessly. You thirsty enough to look for water on an active battlefield?

The smoke seemed to be concentrated in an area east by a little north-east, and close together. Whatever was going on looked to be very one-sided.

Which do we do? he wondered to himself as the far off battle raged. Swing around behind the winners? They’re in a far better position to keep an eye on their backsides. Behind the losers? Aside from their probably foul mood, what happened if they broke and the winners came charging through the back areas? There was always the middle, where the fighting was going on. Yeah, right. On the other hand, why didn’t he just stand here on this ridge and die of thirst?

Sighing, he bent to retrieve the million kilo saddle. He paused with his hand not quite touching the cracked leather. Glancing back at the horse through the hollow between his armpit and body, he regarded the saddle again. It wasn’t like his beloved Nana Clara had bequeathed him the thing. It had happened to be on Sandahl when he’d inherited him. It wasn’t even all that good a saddle. And it wasn’t as if he’d be needing it any time soon, was it? His back creaked as he stood, even without the weight of the old cavalry rig.

An hour later, they were a couple of stad closer, but not much wiser. From here, the battlefield pall was more obvious, but no more informative. There seemed to be a bank of cloud hanging over the area that further obscured things, which in itself seemed odd. The sun hammered down from a cloudless sky, baking or burning everything but that cloud bank? Of course, anything was possible when wizards were slinging spells.

Another hour and he was beginning to get an idea of the parties involved. Some of the effects manifested before they actually struck, and he could sort of see the trajectories. Every one of them was north-west to south-east. Not so much a battle, then, as an attack. An unopposed attack. Hard to believe anything could survive such a pummeling, but whoever was slinging shit wasn’t letting up even a little bit. Whoever those guys were to the south-east, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. Not only that, but he had a sinking feeling for no good reason that they might be the good guys.

Another hour, and Sandahl’s head came up, nostrils flaring. His pace quickened and he veered more northward. Storm followed close behind. They struck the dry river bed not long after. The horse slid down the bank on his rump, the man half rolling after him. The mud of the river bottom had dried and cracked beneath the sun’s glare, but not deeply, and both horse and man struggled to cross, breaking through to the ooze beneath at every step. But the river hadn’t been wide, and the last dregs of the missing flow lay in pools along the channel bottom only twenty or thirty meters in from the bank.

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The water tasted foul and metallic, but Storm sucked it up greedily, ignoring the horse’s muzzle inches from his head. Things —small, wriggly things— crawled around on the pool’s slimy bottom, but he ignored them as well. The first moisture hit his starved tissue like a hard slap in the face, and he fought the urge to guzzle, holding the fetid brew in his mouth and swishing it slowly around. Belatedly, he shoved the stud clear of the water with a stern mental command to go easy. Sandahl pawed at the half-baked mud at the pool’s edge, but didn’t force the issue. After a moment, the man nodded and the horse dipped his muzzle once more.

The pool only lasted ten more minutes, but there was another only a few paces further on. The sun was heeling over in the sky far along on it’s journey toward evening before Storm was able to sit back, confident in his ability to spit. Spitting had taken on a whole new meaning in the last hours, for the water, life giving though it may be, was absolutely rank. Gazing along the river bottom , wondering where the rest of the river had gone and what sort of new organisms were now calling his stomach home, he thought that it might be years before he successfully rid his mouth of the taste.

Sounds that he’d been hearing for most of the afternoon began to register on his consciousness. The attack on whatever continued, it seemed. Even here in the mud canyon, he could see the noxious looking cloud that had been gathering above the unfortunate defenders throughout the day. And beneath it, the billowing off-white clouds. The thought struck him then, that those clouds were doing a considerable amount of billowing, considering the relative lack of wind hereabouts. And now the missing river.... Steam would look something like clouds from a distance if you could get enough of it hot enough. But what sort of power would it take to boil off an entire river? And, he glanced around at the slowly drying mud, fear tugging at his guts, how long could you keep it up?

“Time to go,” he announced without preamble, staggering to his feet.

They’d moved most of a stad down the riverbed chasing pools, and the banks around them were far too steep to climb. Sandahl snorted and tossed his head, reluctant to quit the comfort of the water smell.

“Move!” storm rasped. “I mean it!”

Aching muscles cried out at the abuse, but the sun had been their ally for once, and the ground was drier, firmer. They only broke through every fourth or fifth step. The sun had nearly touched the western horizon before a passably shallow bank showed itself. Sandahl scrambled drunkenly up the crumbling slope, Storm hanging onto his singed tail for assistance.

The grass of the riverbank felt wonderfully warm, its sweet aroma caressing the senses. Storm lay on his back, staring up at the evening sky, chest heaving, lungs pumping. He was thirsty again. Sandahl reached down for a mouthful of long grass and turned an accusing eye his way.

“What?” he demanded.

The horse blew through his nose and rocked his head, munching grass.

“I had my reasons, okay? Am I supposed to clear all my actions with you first?”

A derisive switch of the tail, and Sandahl turned away, ostensibly looking for a more succulent patch of grass.

“Fine,” Storm mumbled to himself irritably. “Now he thinks it’s a friggin’ democracy.”

Thunder rumbled suddenly off to the east, or what seemed thunder. A harsh wind sprang into being, pushing hard at the weary travelers, beginning hot and dry, but finishing up damp and chill. With a rush, the river was back, a wall of foaming, frothing fury slobbering ten feet above the banks! Spray soaked them in an instant, and the sluicing overflow all but knocked Sandahl off his feet. Storm found himself floundering, half swimming in a frantic effort to keep from being swept up and into the maelstrom pounding down the watercourse.

Within minutes, the river had become just a river again, the current tearing through the channel safely beneath the banks. Storm lay spluttering and shaking, grasping some sort of spiky bush as though it were his mother’s leg on his first day of kindergarten. Sandahl shook himself like a dog, water spraying rainbow arcs all around, and looked accusingly at Storm as though it were all the man’s fault.

The cloud was gone, of course. Nor did magical artillery color the sky. Gradually, as the roaring of the river released its hold on his hearing, another sound took its place. Yelling. Far off, it seemed as though thousands of throats were giving voice simultaneously. The defenses had fallen and the true attack had begun.

He sat and listened to the far off sounds of battle, gnawing quietly on a chunk of jerked meat. He didn’t need water anymore. To top it off, he had a landmark, or at least a possible landmark, in the river. The stars would be out soon, and he’d be able, finally, to use the star charts on his maps to determine where the hell he was. Perhaps he’d even be able to figure out how to get around the ravaged part of the plain and back to his companions.

He finished the jerked meat and rested elbows on knees. The yelling had given way to the clash of battle and then what he took to be recall horns and finally silence. Twice now the cycle had repeated itself. Whoever had been under that steam cloud had weathered two charges so far. He hoped they’d make it, though some gut instinct told him that they wouldn’t.

They were on the poor end, magically, or they’d have given back some of what they’d been getting all day, and now even their defensive screen was finished. He had a feeling that if withdrawal had been an option, they’d have been long gone.

Another faint surge of noise told him that the attackers were trying a third charge. The clash of battle lasted a lot longer this time and he figured this was it. Then the horns sounded.

He really should be getting the hell out of here, Storm told himself. Close enough to hear was far away and gone too close to this sort of thing, even if he’d been healthy and fit, which he was not. No, he was not, he told himself, getting slowly to his feet. Bones creaked and joints popped as he stretched. His spine sounded like rice cereal when you first put the milk on it as he rotated his head to get the stiffness out of his neck.

He limped over to the horse, who stood hipshot and half asleep. Sandahl’s ears came up and he whickered, but didn’t raise his head. “No, we aren’t going anywhere just yet,” Storm told him, lifting his weapons belt down and strapping it around his waist.

Another yell, some more clashing, then more yelling. It was over. He waved a sad salute to the lost defenders, wishing for some inexplicable reason that he’d known them.