Under the Crimson Sun

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Oddly, he didn’t feel any pain, even though he saw the hilt of the knife sticking out of his chest. But he couldn’t move, though whether from the shock of being stabbed or surprise that Draz would use a knife in a staff fight, he honestly wasn’t sure.

  “Fehrd.” That was either Gan or Rol, Fehrd couldn’t tell.

  He just stood there like an idiot, the knife sticking out of his chest.

  Then he saw Rol beating the unholy crap out of Draz while Gan stood in front of him. “Fehrd.” Gan was saying—but his voice sounded like it was miles away. “Are you all right?”

  “I—”

  Fehrd swallowed, and it tasted like acid.

  “I seem to have a knife in my chest.”

  Then he finally fell over.

  The last thing he heard was Gan screaming at the top of his lungs.

  Somehow it just figured that the last thing he’d ever hear was Gan carrying on about something …

  Gan’s left eye itched.

  He stood and watched the funeral pyre they’d made up for Fehrd and the members of the Black Sands Raiders who didn’t get away. The flames licked into the night sky.

  You didn’t bury bodies in the wastes. Corpses attracted predators, and it was impossible to bury a body deep enough to be hidden from them—not with the way the sands shifted. So you waited until dark when it got very cold, and you burned the bodies. In death, they still served a purpose: to keep the caravan from freezing. It got cold at night, and by the time things settled down in the caravan and all the bodies were gathered in one place, and the possessions of the dead distributed among the survivors, as was traditional, it was near sunset.

  As the red sun sank below the horizon, the bodies of the raiders and of Fehrd were set afire.

  Gan always used to understand the hard practicality of it. That night, he had a harder time doing so.

  For all his bravado to Fehrd earlier that day, the fact was Gan knew that it was his own damn fault that they had been stuck traveling the wastes on foot. And in the privacy of his own mind, he was willing to admit to himself, at least, if not to Rol and Fehrd, that he’d been an idiot. For some reason, Gan had been arrogant enough to think that he would be the one to beat Hamno Sennit at the game that he always won at.

  If he hadn’t been such an idiot, they might have had the crodlus. If they’d had the crodlus, they would have been at Raam, and never even encountered the raiders. True, the people of the caravan would’ve been robbed, but people got robbed in the wastes all the time. It wasn’t Gan’s responsibility to help all of them.

  It was his responsibility to look out for Fehrd—indeed, it was their mutual responsibility to look out for each other.

  He and Rol, they’d failed Fehrd. And it was entirely on Gan.

  A man walked up to Gan from his right side, which was the only reason why Gan noticed his arrival, since that was the only side where he had any peripheral vision. He’d been introduced to the man earlier, but had no recollection of the man’s name. That was primarily because the introduction had taken place only a short time after Rol had pried Gan off of Draz’s corpse, Gan having stabbed him several dozen times. Gan’s memory of that particular time was fuzzy at best. The man was human, at least, and had thick black hair and an equally thick beard, both of which were curled into ringlets.

  “I, ah,” the man said haltingly, “wanted to, uhm—to thank you again. You and your friends saved our lives. I’m—I’m truly sorry that your friend died.”

  Having no interest in discussing Fehrd with a perfect stranger, Gan turned his one-eyed gaze on the man. “Look, uh—I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”

  “I’m called Yarro. I’m the caravan master. We’re traveling to Raam—all, that is, save for the slave traders. They’re staying on the Great Road, heading to Urik.”

  Nodding, Gan said, “We’re also bound for Raam. And we’re running late. If we could travel with you …”

  Yarro breathed a loud sigh. “We were hoping you’d say that. We were already robbed once, before the slaver joined us, and we fear that a third attack will destroy us.”

  “Don’t worry.” Gan put a hand on Yarro’s shoulder. “We were caught off guard—Rol and I will be ready this time, and the only people who’ll get hurt are the bastards who try to harm this caravan.”

  It was bravado, but it was what they always said when they started a job. Normally, Fehrd was the one providing that reassurance, of course, but Gan figured he needed to get used to it.

  “What brings you to Raam?” Yarro asked.

  “My sister.” That, for the first time since he was cheated in that damned frolik game, prompted Gan to smile. Thinking of Feena always did that. He adored his little sister, and right then, seeing her ice blue eyes and curly blond hair was the most important thing in his life. “She’s working for some traveling merchants. They’re in Raam for the bazaar.”

  Yarro frowned. “I think that bazaar ends for the season tomorrow—or perhaps the next day. And we’re still three days out of Raam.”

  “I know. They’ll wait for us.” Despite his words, Gan wasn’t at all convinced that that was the case. Feena would ask, of course, and Komir would probably also speak up for Gan, but Serthlara and Shira hated him, and Karalith didn’t think all that highly of him either. He wouldn’t put it past them to go on without them.

  And since Gan had no idea where the Serthlara Emporium was headed next, he and Rol would be in trouble.

  Well, not in trouble, precisely—but Gan hadn’t seen his sister in far too long, and he wasn’t too keen on the notion of not knowing where she was. Sure, they could leave a message with someone in Raam, but there was no guarantee Gan and Rol would see it.

  Also, Fehrd was the one with all the friends and contacts in Raam …

  Again, Gan stared at the flames that grasped upward, the flickering light making it impossible to see the stars, leaving the sky bereft.

  With a sigh, Gan turned away. He was getting maudlin, and it needed to stop.

  Following him back to the main gathering of the caravan—everyone was clustered around the slave trader’s stone cart, as it was the largest vehicle—Yarro started, “We don’t have much to pay you …”

  “It’s okay.” Gan waved him off. “Just feed us something that isn’t jerky, and we’ll consider ourselves well compensated.”

  Yarro did better than that. His own carriage had space for Gan and Rol’s pack, and all of the other carriages were willing to let one or both of them ride. Since they were charged with protecting the caravan, they rotated where they sat, each making sure that they had good sight lines for the land beyond where the caravan was.

  Even with the caravan forced to move at the pace of its slowest member—in their case, the slave trader—they were making far better time than Gan, Rol, and Fehrd had been on foot.

  It was small consolation, but Gan would take what he could get. With Fehrd dead, it was even more important that he reach Feena before Serthlara left Raam.

  Early the following morning, just as the caravan was getting underway for the day, a messenger came riding through on an erdlu bound for Raam. Yarro provided him with information to post at the Raam caravan station, including his own name as caravan master and the roster of travelers who would be arriving there in a few days’ time. Gan hoped that Feena would see his and Rol’s names (the messenger refused to put Fehrd’s name, an insistence on brutal honesty that Gan had rarely encountered on the wastes) and make sure the emporium didn’t leave town until they arrived.

  “I’m worried,” Yarro said at one point the next afternoon, “that the raiders will return to avenge their comrades.” They were both riding in Yarro’s carriage, which was taking point—the slaver, where Rol currently was, bringing up the rear. It was being pulled by a large crodlu with a particularly bright carapace that reminded Gan of Forna, one of the crodlus that Hamno cheated him out of in the frolik game.

  In response to Yarro, Gan shook his head. “There are a lot of danger
s out here, but I guarantee that won’t be one of them. Only four of them survived, and their leader, Zeburon—”

  Yarro’s eyes widened as he interrupted. “The Iron Rider?”

  No, Zeburon the tailor. Gan was barely able to restrain himself from saying that out loud. “He doesn’t take to failure very well. Honestly, they probably won’t even report back to Zeburon for fear of dying. It’ll be weeks before the other raiders even know that this bunch is mostly dead. By then, you’ll be long gone. Besides, they’re more than like to just stay away from this region for a while, if they lost this many people hereabouts. Zeburon’s more about profit than revenge.”

  “So we’re safe?” Yarro sounded very hopeful.

  Though it was tempting to agree just to assuage the man, Gan couldn’t bring himself to do so. “From the Black Sands, yeah, but there’s plenty more out here that’ll get you, believe me.”

  “Yeah.” Yarro suddenly had a faraway look.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Gan said, “how did you wind up being a caravan master?”

  “I’m not,” Yarro said. “Not in the guild, anyway. No, those bastards were charging ridiculous prices to lead us through the desert, but it’s a path I’ve traveled before in my youth. Besides, my brother used a caravan master to get to Urik once, and the man took them to Tyr instead, and then charged double to bring them to Urik. They’re charlatans, all of them.”

  In fact, most of them were good at what they did, or they didn’t stay in the guild. Too many people depended on caravan masters to survive for the guild to tolerate incompetence or criminal activity.

  Of course, Yarro’s brother’s caravan master might have forged his guild membership too. Either way, traveling without a proper caravan master was imbecilic. However, since Yarro was Gan’s and Rol’s client, he thought it would be impolitic to say so.

  Instead, he asked, “Why are you headed to Raam?”

  That faraway look got farther. “Let’s just say that my family’s health depended on us no longer remaining in Balic.”

  Gan knew that look, and knew that he’d get no more specifics out of Yarro.

  Not that he really cared all that much, he just wanted to talk about subjects other than the job at hand. That was the sort of thing that made the clients nervous, and it was easier to protect people who weren’t nervous.

  Generally talking about personal things distracted them enough not to worry about, say, the huge sand creatures that could easily jump up and eat them all alive. However, it was equally obvious that Yarro had no interest in discussing why he was traveling through the wastes.

  Luckily, he’d provided another topic. “I’m sorry, which ones are your family?”

  Yarro’s face brightened, and he proceeded to point out his wife, his son, both daughters, and his “no-good” son-in-law, whom he only took along because his daughter insisted, and the son-in-law’s brother, who was “a much nicer boy—I don’t know why Fatma didn’t marry him instead.”

  At the very least, Yarro wasn’t talking about how worried he was anymore. Gan just had to make sure he didn’t attempt that conversational gambit again before the journey ended, since the details Yarro provided were falling right out of his head. Gan had never had a good memory for such personal details …

  Eventually, it was time for the evening meal. The food wasn’t great—most of it was overcooked mush—but it was a feast after subsiding on jerky for the better part of a month.

  Rol, of course, didn’t bother. He loved jerky. Gan had been openly concerned—before the frolik game made it irrelevant—that Rol would have only provided jerky for the trip even if they’d had excess funds to spend on vittles.

  Afterward, Gan sought out Rol, who was gnawing on a piece of jerky and chatting up one of the girls in the caravan. Gan had no recollection of which group the girl belonged to—besides Yarro’s family, and the slave trader, there were three or four other sets of people traveling together—but she was young, short, slender, and had darker hair, all typical for one of Rol’s potential conquests.

  As Gan approached, Rol straightened and said, “Apologies, m’dear, but duty calls.”

  “That’s quite all right,” the girl said breathlessly as she gazed up at Rol. “I feel so much safer with you here to protect me.”

  She wandered off, and Gan just stared at her. “She does know that I’m part of the protection too, right?”

  Rol frowned at Gan. “Stop whining, will you? Did you even talk to any of the women here?”

  “No, because I prefer to take the job seriously.”

  Shrugging while popping the last of his jerky into his mouth, Rol said, “Long as you take it more seriously than you do frolik.”

  “Very funny.” Gan sighed. “Look, I think we should do night-guard duty. With the pyres last night, we didn’t really need to, but I don’t think the torches these people are using’ll be much use—”

  “I was gonna suggest the same thing, actually,” Rol said, which Gan figured was a lie, but he let it go. “You want first shift?”

  Gan was about to agree, then he looked over at the girl Rol had been flirting with. “No, you take it.”

  Putting his large hands on his hips, Rol asked, “Why did you look at Tirana before making that decision?”

  Impressed that Rol had actually gone to the trouble of learning her name, Gan asked, “Why do you think?”

  “You think that if you’re on first shift, that I’ll spend the time you’re on duty with her, and never actually get any sleep, so that I’ll be too tired to properly be on watch for the rest of the overnight. Whereas if I take first shift, I won’t be free to flirt with her until the middle of the night, when she’ll probably be asleep.”

  Nodding, Gan said, “That’s pretty much it, yeah.”

  Rol grinned widely. “You’re not as dumb as you look. But then, you couldn’t be.”

  “That’s certainly true.” Gan chuckled. “I’m going to see which carriage is willing to put up with my snoring.”

  “Good luck with that,” Rol said with a chuckle of his own. “I’ll keep the place safe from anakores.”

  Gan wandered off, trying to see where Tirana was staying. For some reason, he thought it might be amusing to sleep in the same carriage as her for his first shift …

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Karalith looked up from helping a rather stubborn dwarf and saw Vas Belrik return to the bazaar with only two of his bodyguards.

  She had been expecting that he’d bring the entire entourage when he returned that morning—especially that wizened old tutor of his. In terms of logistics, it was certainly better that he brought a smaller group, since there were half-a-dozen customers at the emporium already. His crodlu only made a minor impact on the foot traffic, as opposed to the near-stampede his team of mounts caused yesterday.

  Tricht’tha, of course, had arrived half an hour early, as was her wont. The thri-kreen was never late for a financial transaction. The rest of the time, she had a rather elastic relationship with punctuality, but she took the placement of coins into her pincers very seriously.

  Shira and Torthal were both dealing with an elf couple who were trying to decide on knickknacks for their kitchen, while Karalith’s twin brother Komir was struggling to help a mul pick some spices. She wondered where the hell Zabaj was—Komir’s Davek was never very good, and this mul spoke with an odd accent.

  Unfortunately, Zabaj was still off with Feena delivering that shipment. They should have returned half an hour ago—the delivery was to arrive right at sunup—but they hadn’t gotten back yet.

  For her part, Karalith was trying to convince an insane dwarf woman that the silks really were from Tyr and really were worth a silver a foot.

  When Belrik came back, the dwarf finally decided to wander off to another vendor, having refused to accept that any silk could possibly cost that much, there was no silk in all of Athas that was worth more than ten coppers a foot. She almost crashed into one of Belrik�
��s bodyguards as she stomped off in a huff.

  Belrik stared after the dwarf as he dismounted. “They should really watch where they’re going.”

  Favoring Belrik with her seductive smile, Karalith said, “I’ll knock a copper a foot off the linens if you go back and have your crodlu step on that dwarf.”

  Braying a laugh, Belrik said, “Were it my crodlu, I would gladly do so, but sadly, this mount is merchandise. I can’t risk the dwarf’s filth lowering the crodlu’s value.”

  Karalith chuckled.

  “Enough!” Tricht’tha stepped forward. “Do you have the thousand gold?”

  His eyes remaining on Karalith, Belrik held out a hand to one of his bodyguards, who removed a pouch from his belt.

  Taking the pouch, Belrik jingled its contents for apparent theatrical effect and then handed it to Tricht’tha.

  The thri-kreen voiced the same thought Karalith had when she heard the low number of clicks resulting from Belrik’s action: “That does not sound like one thousand coins.”

  “It isn’t.” Belrik smiled, showing off his annoyingly perfect teeth. “It’s one hundred coins—but they’re hundred-gold coins.”

  Tricht’tha muttered, “I’ll believe it when I see it” in Chachik, then tugged the ends of the drawstring pouch to peer inside it. Then she let loose with a Chachik curse. “Impressive,” she finally said in Common, indicating that they truly were coins worth one hundred gold each.

  Then, Tricht’tha handed the map over to Belrik, who again held out a hand to a bodyguard—the other one, that time. The guard provided a tube-shaped container, into which Belrik very gingerly placed the map.

  Handing the tube back to the guard, Belrik said, “Be careful—that map’s irreplaceable, unlike you.”

  “Yes, sir,” the bodyguard muttered.

  Then Belrik leaned forward on the textile table, his elbows distressing the silk. “So, Karalith, now that my business with the thri-kreen is concluded, may I interest you in breaking your fast with me?”