Lady of the Sands

by Fuad Baloch

  Ruma moved her eyes to the latest bodies her men had reduced to corpses. Two of them had been ceremonially decked out like peacocks. Officers, more than likely. A shame she couldn’t keep them alive for questioning. At least they had scored well—the supply train of the Vanico army was intact, the four or so hundred spare horses unharmed and fresh.

  “Very well.” She nodded, tightening her grip over the sword. She was still no better at it than the greenest of recruits, of course, but at least she was faking it with more conviction now. “Follow me, but same rules apply. Do not attack until I command.”

  They moved their horses and camels east towards the open gates, towards the battle whose result was never in doubt. No more than a hundred yards and shouts rose from that direction. Men screaming, wailing.

  “Take up positions,” shouted Gareeb.

  Ruma raised her hand, ready to belay the order and order them to turn around when her eyes fell on the first figure running towards them.

  A young man, his white tunic splashed with red, both hands empty. Another three emerged a half beat later, more thunderous voices rising behind them.

  “They’re our men!” shouted Gareeb.

  Ruma sighed. So the believers had routed. What a surprise! Not trained enough, not numerous enough, not commanded by someone with half a mind. The result was never really in any doubt.

  Ruma didn’t give the command to turn around. Instead, she remained on her horse, one hand still clutching the sword, chewing her lower lip thoughtfully.

  More and more panicked warriors emerged, the twos and threes becoming groups of tens and then hundreds, all jostling and shouting, fleeing an unseen enemy. Ruma stood on her stirrups. If the Vanico soldiers weren’t pursuing them, it left only one alternative. They would assault the Traditionalists’ supply train—much like she had that of the Vanico—leaving any stragglers to be dealt with the men they had left behind.

  Shaking her head, she sank on her saddle. The battle was over. They had lost. A certain result.

  “Mzi…” shouted one of the stragglers, holding up a hand towards her. She narrowed her eyes. “Have you seen General Thallim?”

  Ruma shrugged. “He should be back with the supply carts.” Fleeing, if not killed yet. “Where’s General Urnal?”

  “Martyred,” the warrior replied, panting. He turned his head around as if half-expecting a spear to enter his body. “The infidels… They’re… They’re—”

  “What’s done is done,” she grunted. With another shrug, she motioned for Gareeb to approach her. Gareeb kicked his mare in the belly, shouted at the fleeing troops to make way for her. Ruma nodded. “Time to turn back. The battle is lost. The generals are both likely dead. I still need to chase the snake’s head… deal with Yasmeen. Nothing has changed for me on that front. Do you wish to still accompany me?”

  Gareeb didn’t reply immediately. Instead, the man looked around, the fight draining from his features. “We… We lost…”

  “Aye,” she confirmed. “They should have listened to me when they had the chance.”

  Gareeb raised his chin, shook his head. “This… result changes nothing.”

  “What?”

  “The light can never be removed by the darkness. Only shielded temporarily.”

  Ruma blinked, then chuckled. “Didn’t really expect words like these from you!”

  Gareeb’s eyes twinkled, the roguishness returning for a moment. “Father was a priest.” The twinkle disappeared just as quickly. “We can regroup. Attack them back.”

  Ruma shook her head, waited until the latest band of stragglers had run past her. “We’ve lost the momentum. Faith or no faith, a routing army needs to regroup before facing down a victorious army.”

  “Then… you command them!”

  Ruma felt her jaw slacken. “That’s—”

  “Yes,” said another voice from her right. Ruma whipped her head around. One of the dozen, a pudgy man with yellowing, rotten teeth. “You’ve already proved your methods work.”

  “My methods do not work for larger forces!”

  “Our ways do not work at all,” continued Gareeb. “Father wasn’t just a priest. He fought in the Blessed Turbaza’s armies against the early heretics. Often, he argued that the most unconventional approach to warfare often ended up being the successful one.”

  Ruma shook her head once more, opened her mouth.

  “Change the course of this world!”

  She narrowed her eyes. What in Alf’s name was the First trying to do? He did want her to influence the world but in what fracking way? Did he actually want her to slip away, let the Vanico Empire tear apart the Andussian peninsula? Did he want Yasmeen’s ideology to win out? Did he want to lead these routed forces as Gareeb was arguing for—or not?

  One thing he most definitely didn’t want was for the future to turn out the way it had. A world where Misguided had won—that was what he wanted. And that would only be possible if it was Yasmeen and her fanatics who ended up victorious over Bubraza.

  That realisation helped her understand what she needed to do. Change this world in the manner the First didn’t want. Fight the bastard, thwart his plans.

  When she turned back towards her dozen, they had already dispersed. Gareeb was shouting instructions, gesticulating wildly. Other voices shouted back. Not just the dozen, she realised. Other lieutenants and minor officers were turning around, gathering around them, nodding.

  The mass of routed soldiers, a formless, pathetic body on its own, began to take on form. Like chastened children, they began forming lines, gathering under the shade of the nearby Alfi temple, a hundred or so heading towards the Vanico supply train.

  “Attention,” rang out a loud, shrill command behind her. A tall adjutant she had seen beside Thallim. He nodded at her, touched his chest with the tips of his fingers, then turned his eyes back at the warriors. “Form up! Form up!”

  Almost in a state of daze, Ruma watched the beaten army transform into a new one. They didn’t chant anymore. Nor did they boast of what they’d do upon seeing the enemy. Like iron blackened and misshapen after its first visit to the anvil, their faces were bloodied, but she could sense the strength within.

  Battle-hardened warriors looking at her. A woman plagued by her own doubts, torn between her own desire to tear away from this world and this utterly foreign desire to do right. All while being watched by a Pithrean!

  “Umm…” She trailed away, unsure of what was going on. She’d never really been the centre of attention before. Always working in the shadows, first with her father and then on her own. Then as the trusted sidekick of the prophet himself, often overshadowed by the treasonous Zrivisi snake of a woman. Always tucked away in the engine rooms, away from the action unless forced to partake.

  “Mzi!” someone shouted.

  “The red-haired lady!”

  “The laal!”

  Ruma shook her head. Her heart was beating fast. Things had taken a step she had not anticipated. And not one she’d have wanted. Much better to live on the sidelines, hoping she could still find a way back to her time without corrupting what was going on here.

  “The men are ready, Mzi,” reported Gareeb.

  “This is not what I wanted.”

  “We may not have a lot of time,” he said. “Not much of a supply train we left behind for the infidels.”

  True enough. Ruma exhaled, bit her tongue. A part of her wanted to step forwards, address the men, tell them what a gigantic mistake this all was. Then again, that would be a foolish decision as well, especially when what she needed to do was keep a low profile.

  “Tell them to continue west. We’ve still got the Blessed to hunt.”

  “What of the Vanico soldiers?”

  “What of them?”

  Gareeb scratched his chin. “I spoke with the scouts. Those that survived. Looks like the infidels are marching towards the holy cities. We can’t leave the cities unguarded.”

  Though she knew the cities would surv
ive alright into the future, a melancholy rose in her chest at the fate she knew waited for the holy cities centuries later in her time. “Leave it to Alf to look after His own cities.”

  She snapped her fingers, then kicked her horse, heading west.

  Behind her, Gareeb shouted. The other adjutants and lieutenants picked up the call, and soon, the reformed army began following her.

  Twenty-Seven

  The Dream

  They trekked through the desert for three days and two nights without incident. Luckily, the Vanico Empire believed in equipping its soldiers well. Not only had the army they’d faced been well-trained, but its supply train had been especially rich as well. Enough to outfit her army with weapons and mounts and also feed them for another four weeks if the need arose.

  Ruma kept a low profile throughout the hard march, making a point to not engage in direct conversation with the common soldiers. A decision she’d taken out of prudence to ensure she would slip into oblivion once they met up with one of Bubraza’s generals, but from what Gareeb mentioned, it’d had the unintended consequence of more tongues wagging about her origins and methods.

  She could control only what she could, though. And what men talked about was something out of her hands, so she didn’t let it frazzle her much.

  As she’d hoped for, the Vanico army didn’t chase them. They might have lost their provisions, but in turn they had acquired what the Traditionalists had left behind. And their mission still lay to the east, towards the holy cities of Irtiza and Salodia.

  So each day, Ruma had hoped they were putting more distance between themselves and the Vanico armies. The only thing that still surprised her was knowledge from the scouts that the Blessed were still heading north-east, instead of fighting the infidels.

  Gareeb rode over to her. “Mzi, should we camp for the night?”

  Ruma nodded absentmindedly at the efficient young man who was bound to make officer one day.

  Gareeb said something else as well, though she didn’t hear the words. She scanned the skies. Just as empty as it’d been all this time. The sun setting at the horizon, not a sliver of cloud or ships streaming through the open skies.

  She pulled on her reins, watched men start setting up camp for the night with a cold detachment. The Vanico army carried tents to house ten men at a time—the harsh deserts obviously not to their liking—and now her men had seemingly acquired the taste overnight.

  All except her.

  The unimpeded night sky with the constellations she’d seen all her life was something she couldn’t bear giving up. Strictly speaking, the arrangement of stars she saw now wasn’t exactly as it was eight hundred years in the future, but then again, eight centuries was a period of time so little in galactic terms that the relative change in movement of the stars was barely perceptible to the layman.

  Still mounted, she munched on the beef jerky cooked some time ago by the Vanico cooks, still watching the men settle down for the evening. Three days had passed but they still didn’t make space for kabbad.

  The pudgy man from the dozen approached her. She nodded, gave her assent for her bedroll to be set up away from the main host. She’d watch the stars again tonight.

  Ruma dismounted, relieved herself behind a sand dune and away from prying eyes. The yellow liquid trickled down the sands, the fine particles greedily lapping up her waste. Shivering for some reason she couldn’t quite understand, she pulled up her breeches.

  When she returned, her thoughts dark, moroseness deep within her chest, she found Gareeb standing beside her bed roll. “The men have begun talking about you, Mzi.”

  “Men like to talk.”

  “They wonder whether you’re guided by the divine just like the Uniter.”

  Ruma chuckled, the very idea tickling her. “I don’t think Alf thinks much of those who don’t follow him blindly.” She snapped her fingers. “Have the scouts returned yet?”

  “No,” he replied, looking up at the darkening sky, his long hair fluttering in the cool desert breeze. “They won’t be back till the second hour after midnight.”

  “Present them to me first thing in the morning. I need to know whether we’re still heading the right way.”

  Gareeb nodded.

  “Now, leave me,” she said, waving her arm dismissively.

  The young soldier’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded, marched away. Ruma sighed, then lowered herself on the bedroll. She was at least a hundred yards from the main host, couldn’t see any soldiers between her and the other camps, but she knew her dozen were spread around this very second, hiding from her sight, guarding her.

  Could she really blame them, though? They’d lost two generals already and didn’t want to lose a third—no matter her lack of qualifications.

  Lying down on the hard bedroll, she stared up at the stars beginning to twinkle. Each minute, the black blanket of space grew darker. Her heart ached at the sight. That was her home, aboard a ship travelling between the stars, not reduced to staring at them from an impossible distance.

  Why in seven hells had she accepted to lead these men instead of finding some other way? Surely, she could have still helped the Uniter, continued on her hunt for Yasmeen, without a whole division of men following her every move.

  She yawned, stretched her arms.

  Lately, sleep had been hard to come by.

  Tonight was an exception. She closed her eyes, let her thoughts roam free, and found herself slipping away almost immediately.

  Instead of the oblivion that ought to have followed, though, she sensed a darkness surrounding her.

  A thick, almost organic type she could feel. Though she perceived it, her observations came through senses she couldn’t feel in turn. She floated about, a mere consciousness, aware of itself and the cosmos as one.

  Pain seeped in, spiralling inwards, a universe beginning to contract, writhe, the pain increasing.

  Without warning, a jolt of pain ran through her consciousness. It was so sharp she screamed.

  No sound came out.

  The inky blackness grew impossibly darker.

  Terror rose within her, fighting with the sensation of pain for her attention.

  Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  Ruma looked around. Heavenly bodies surrounded her. Stars. Galaxies. Swirling satellites.

  Hexagonal Shards flickering in the distance.

  Not Shards, though, she knew somehow without really knowing for sure. Fossilised remains of her people. Those who had migrated from her realm, sacrificed themselves by depositing parts of their consciousness into different corners of the universe and—

  Ruma felt the terror return.

  Her terror now, hers, intruding upon an experience that wasn’t hers but for a moment she had appropriated.

  This wasn’t her dream.

  Not her memories.

  She was the Pithrean, seeing the cosmos from a Pithrean’s perspective. A representation that strained her mental faculties as they struggled to paint the world into symbols and terms and artefacts that made sense to her.

  They failed to mask the fact this wasn’t meant for her.

  More pain flooded in. Hopes and ambitions of an immortal race colliding and finding themselves at odds with the laws of thermodynamics. So long as there was energy to be harvested, they could live on forever. But like a cosmic tragedy, the energy had finally run out. Nothing lasted forever. Something they’d always known. The end had been calculated, accounted for, expected, yet when it had come, it had still drawn shock and horror from a race unused to the trivial concerns of existing.

  The bravest ones had ventured out, promising to further their species.

  No matter the cost. Putting their own lives on the line.

  She saw the minions, artefacts of technology built upon subatomic particles, imbued with intelligence, utilising precepts of quantum mechanics she could divine yet not understand fully through the consciousness that watched it all, follow their masters. Mere pawns weren’t worth h
er attention anyway.

  The minions followed their masters, dispersing throughout the cosmos.

  Pain.

  She cried out.

  Then she retracted to being merely the consciousness.

  The bravest ones sought more. The perfected one. A Pithrean the likes of which had never been seen. One truly independent of the need of energy. The very fount of it.

  Debates rose. Doubts, too. There weren’t many gaps one couldn’t answer using the mechanics of the universe. Indeed, they were gods unto themselves, able to warp space and time and an umpteen number of dimensions around themselves.

  Conflict waged across the cosmos.

  Plant-shaped conscious beings attacked the brave ones. They were easily quashed. The minions helped, too.

  Gelatinous beings plumbing viscous oceans of nitrogen and other gases conspired against them and were wiped out.

  Despite it all, they continued to lose the energy that the bravest of them had in little supply.

  The brave ones. Ones like her.

  Like the one whose memories she occupied.

  The others sacrificed themselves.

  She did, too.

  They all followed the social contract. The rules unwritten, unenforceable.

  All through the eons, their eyes kept turning to the one unexplained variable in their equations, a gap beyond even them, one they couldn’t subject to their plans.

  So they waited instead, perfecting their methods.

  And waited.

  Time moved on. Something of little import for them, marked only by the gradual dimming of their lustre.

  More conscious beings rose, took to space. They found the brave ones, exchanged their energy for petty gains.

  Joy filled the consciousness.

  Again, time passed.

  The pain had been growing in the meantime, never going away.

  The holds weakened.