Erak_s ransom ra-7

by John Flanagan

  Gilan swung down from his saddle and knelt beside the marks in the hard ground. He made out faint impressions of hoofs here and there – all but invisible to an untrained eye. From time to time there were more obvious clues of the party's passage, in the form of piles of dung. Gilan poked at one with a stick, breaking it up to study the moisture content inside. Rangers used such clues to determine how fresh the tracks might be – moisture in horse dung or sap in the broken stem of a twig snapped by a passing animal. But they were unused to the blinding heat and dryness of the Arridi desert and the effect it had on moisture content.

  'Hard to say how old it is,' he said finally. Halt shrugged.

  'It'd dry out a lot faster here than further north. We know it can't be more than two days old. It's been left there since the storm passed through.'

  Gilan nodded. 'You're right. But if I were to see that back home, I'd say it was three to four days old. It's worth knowing for future reference, I suppose.'

  He straightened, brushing dust off his knees, and swung up into Blaze's saddle once more. He glanced towards Selethen and saw that the Wakir had stopped his horse as well and was fiddling with the ties that held his bedroll in place behind the saddle. The Arridi horse was turned at forty-five degrees to the direction of travel and Gilan had no doubt that the Arridi leader's eyes beneath the shadow of his kheffiyeh were trained unwaveringly on himself and Halt.

  'He's watching us,' he said quietly and Halt nodded, without looking in Selethen's direction.

  'He always does. I think we make him nervous.'

  'Do you think he knows we're keeping a chart of the route?'

  'I'd bet my life on it,' Halt said. 'Not much gets past him. And I'll bet he's racking his brains to find a way to stop us.'

  As they moved off, Selethen seemed to finish re-tying the thongs. He touched his stallion with his knee, turned back to the course his outriders had set and trotted forward.

  'What do you make of him?' Gilan asked. This time Halt did look at the tall Arridi warrior before he answered. He was considering his opinion, Gilan knew, weighing up what he knew about the Wakir with what he sensed about him. Finally, Halt replied.

  'I like the look of him,' he said. 'A lot of these local officials are always on the lookout for bribes. Corruption is almost a way of life in this country. But he's not like that.'

  'He's a soldier, not a politician,' Gilan said. He had a fighting man's usual distrust of politicians and officials, preferring to deal with men who knew what it meant to fight for their lives. Such men often had an inherent honesty to them, he thought.

  Halt nodded. 'And a good one. Look at this formation he's got us in. At first glance, it looks like we're straggling across the desert like Brown's cows. But we can't be approached from any direction without those outriders spotting something.'

  'His men seem to respect him,' Gilan said. 'He doesn't have to shout and bluster to get things done.'

  'Yes. I've hardly heard him raise his voice since we've been on the march. That's usually a sign that the men believe he knows what he's about.'

  They fell silent for a few minutes, both studying the white-cloaked, straight-backed figure riding on his own, twenty metres ahead of them.

  'Not too friendly, though,' Gilan said, grinning. He was trying to keep Halt talking, in an attempt to keep his old teacher from worrying too much about Will, gone somewhere into the unknown wastes of this desert. Halt sensed his intention and appreciated it. Talking with Gilan gave him some moments of respite from the constant nagging worry he felt about the boy who had come to mean so much to him. Without intending to, he let out a deep sigh. Gilan looked quickly at him.

  'He's all right, Halt,' he said.

  'I hope so. I just think… '

  Whatever it was that Halt thought was lost as something drew his attention. There was a cloud of dust moving towards them from the front – one of the outriders, he realised, as he managed to see more clearly through the heat shimmer and made out the dark figure at the head of the dust cloud, and could see the individual puffs of dust kicked up with each stride of his horse's legs.

  'What do we have here?' he said quietly. He touched Abelard with his knee and moved up to ride beside Selethen, Gilan following a metre or so behind him.

  'Messenger?' he asked.

  Selethen shook his head. 'It's one of the screen. They must have seen something up ahead,' he told them. The rider was closer now and they could make out detail. He swerved his horse slightly as he made out the tall figure of the Wakir and rode directly towards him.

  'Vultures,' said Gilan suddenly. While the others had been intent on the rider approaching, his keen eyes had sought ahead of them. Halt looked up now but Gilan's eyes were younger than his. He thought that perhaps he could see black specks circling high in the sky ahead of them. Or it could just be his mind telling him he could see them now that Gilan had said they were there.

  Any doubt was removed when the rider came closer, reining in his horse in a sliding cloud of dust.

  'Excellence, we've seen vultures ahead,' he reported. Selethen waited. His men were well trained and he knew there would be more to the report.

  'I've sent Corporal Iqbal and two men ahead to reconnoitre,' the man continued. 'In the meantime, I've halted the forward screen.'

  Selethen nodded acknowledgement. 'Good. We'll continue until we come up with the screen. By then Iqbal might have something to report. Return to your post,' he added. The messenger wheeled his horse, touching mouth, brow and mouth in a hasty salute, then clattered away back the way he had come, raising, more of the fine dust. Selethen glanced at the two Rangers.

  'Better safe than sorry. Those vultures mean there's something dead up ahead. There's no knowing if whatever it was that killed them is still around.'

  Halt nodded agreement. It made sense. The desert was a dangerous place to travel, he realised. Selethen was too good a soldier to go blundering in unprepared to see what had attracted the vultures.

  'There's a lot of them,' Gilan pointed out. 'That could mean there's been a lot of killing.'

  'That's what I'm afraid of,' Selethen replied.

  ***

  His fears were well founded. They came up to the scene of the battle an hour later. Not that it had been much of a battle – it was more of a massacre. Horse, mules, camels and men were scattered about the desert, lifeless shapes surrounded by darkening patches of dried blood that had soaked into the sand.

  It was the trading party from Al Shabah, and they had been wiped out to a man.

  As the new arrivals cantered in among them, the heavy black vultures left their feasting and flapped lazily into the air. Halt motioned for Evanlyn and Horace to wait behind. He and Gilan dismounted and walked among the bodies with Selethen.

  The men and animals had been killed, and then hacked in a senseless frenzy. There was barely a body with just a single killing wound. The freight packs had been ripped open and their contents scattered on the ground. Anything of value had been taken. Then the predators had done their awful work.

  'When, do you think?' Halt asked. Selethen looked around, his normally impassive face dark with rage and frustration.

  'Earlier this morning, I'd say,' he replied and Gilan, kneeling beside one of the bodies, nodded confirmation to Halt.

  'The big predators, the cats and jackals, haven't got to them yet,' Selethen explained. 'They tend to prowl at night, so it must have been after dawn today. And the vultures are still gathering.'

  Halt had walked away as Selethen was talking, studying the scene more closely. Selethen glanced up at the slowly wheeling black birds above them, riding effortlessly on the currents of heated air that rose from the desert floor.

  'Any idea who might have done it?' Gilan asked and Selethen studied him for a moment, regaining control of his emotions.

  'The Tualaghi,' he said briefly, almost spitting the word out. 'All this… ' He indicated the hacked bodies. '… is typical of their handiwork.' He shook his head, puzzled.
'But why? Why would they attack a well-armed party? There were over twenty soldiers in the escort. Usually the Tualaghi prey on small parties. Why this?'

  'Maybe someone paid them,' said Halt as he returned from his survey of the desolate scene. The Wakir looked at him now, frowning.

  'Who? Who'd pay them?' he challenged.

  'Whoever betrayed Erak in the first place,' Halt told him. 'Take a look around. There's no sign of him. Whoever killed your men took him away with them.'

  Chapter 25

  Will's mistakes were beginning to compound. As they did, the danger grew progressively greater.

  The first mistake, and the one that led to all the others, he was still unaware of. That was the fact that for the greater part of the first day, misled by his inaccurate Northseeker, he had been travelling far to the east of his intended course. When the influence of the iron deposits in the Red Hills was finally behind him, and his Northseeker returned to a true heading, the damage was already done. With every kilometre, he had diverged farther from the course that he thought he was taking. Now he was travelling parallel to it, but kilometres from where he thought he was.

  His second mistake was to convince himself that he had seen the landmarks he was seeking. Admittedly, he had seen no flat-topped hill. But he told himself that he must have passed it without recognising it, rationalising to himself the fact that its shape had undoubtedly changed over the years from the distinctive profile that Selethen's chart indicated.

  The low bank that he had seen late the previous afternoon bore no real resemblance to a line of cliffs. But, needing to believe that he had seen the cliffs, he convinced himself that he really had. He had seen no caves, and the chart showed that the cliffs had been honeycombed with them. Instead, he reassured himself that the caves were invisible because they had been shrouded in late afternoon shadow.

  Now, to settle the question once and for all, he should see a balancing rock formation some time in the next few hours – a formation where a large rock balanced precariously on top of a smaller. At least, he told himself with a growing sense of foreboding, a feature like that would be unmistakable.

  Unless the big rock had fallen off the smaller one overnight, he added grimly.

  He needed to see that formation because his water supply was becoming alarmingly depleted. The first water-skin was empty. The second was less than half full. He had tried to ration himself severely but the heat simply drained energy from him so that he had to drink or fall senseless to the ground.

  He consoled himself with the thought that, once he saw the balancing rocks and fixed his position, the water problem would be solved. A few kilometres from those rocks, a soak was marked on the chart – a small depression in a dried-up river-bed where water seeped slowly to the surface. Once there, all he would have to do was dig down a metre or so and wait while water filled the hole. It might be muddy and unpleasant, he knew. But it would be drinkable. And with his waterskins refilled and his location established once and for all, he would be able to strike out for one of the wells.

  Sometime in the next few hours, he simply had to see the balancing rock formation or he was lost – figuratively as well as literally. As a result, he had to trust his map and his Northseeker and continue to believe that sooner or later, he would see those rocks. He simply had no alternative course of action.

  It was this growing fatalism that led to his final, and most serious, mistake. Obsessed with the need to find the balancing rocks, and validate his course of action so far, he continued to ride through the hottest hours of the day.

  Experienced desert travellers like Selethen didn't do this, he knew. But again, he rationalised. Selethen could navigate by the stars and didn't need daylight to sight landmarks and reference points. That meant he could afford the time spent resting in the middle of the day. But Will had an urgent need to find that water soak and surely a few hours of heat wouldn't do too much harm.

  So he rode on, the heat battering down on him like a physical force as the sun rose higher in the sky. The air itself was superheated so that it almost scorched his throat and lungs when he breathed it in. It seemed that the all-pervading heat had sucked the very oxygen out of the air so that he gasped and panted for breath.

  As well as the heat, the glare was a constant torture, forcing him to look into the shimmering distance with his eyes screwed almost shut.

  Beneath him, Arrow plodded on, head down, feet dragging. Will was alarmed by the horse's rapid deterioration, having no idea that his own condition was even worse.

  'Time for some water, boy,' he said. His voice was little more than a croak, forcing itself out through his dry throat and mouth.

  He swung down from the saddle, his body stiff and awkward. He staggered a few paces as he touched the ground, having to steady himself against the horse's flank. Arrow stood unmoving, head drooped almost to the ground. Then he shifted his weight to his left side, seeming to favour his right front hoof. Already, after only a few seconds standing, Will could feel the blazing heat of the ground burning up through the soles of his boots. For Arrow's unprotected hooves, it must be torture, he thought.

  'I'll take care of that in a minute,' he told the horse. 'First we'll drink.'

  He fumbled with the ties attaching the folding leather bucket behind the saddle and dropped the bucket onto the ground. He laughed briefly.

  'Just as well it wasn't full,' he told Arrow. The horse didn't respond. Setting the bucket down carefully, making sure he had placed it on a flat surface, Will took the remaining waterskin and unstoppered it carefully. He was painfully aware of how light it was now. As he poured carefully, Arrow's head turned towards the sound. The horse made a low grumbling noise in his throat.

  'Hold your horses,' he said. Then he laughed again at the idea of telling his horse to hold his horses.

  'Not that you're my horse, really,' he continued. 'But you're a good horse for all that.'

  A part of his mind was a little concerned by the fact that he was laughing and joking with his horse. He had the strange sensation that he was standing to one side, watching himself and Arrow, and he frowned at this irrational behaviour. He shook the ridiculous notion away and held the bucket for Arrow to drink.

  As ever, he felt his own mouth and throat working as he watched the horse drink. But, whereas the previous day his mouth had been thick and gummy feeling, today it was dry and swollen, all excess moisture gone from it.

  Arrow finished, his big tongue futilely searching the seams of the bucket where a few last drops might be hidden. Will had become accustomed to the horse's almost philosophical acceptance of the amount of water he was given. This time, however, Arrow raised his head and nosed insistently around the waterskin slung over Will's shoulders. It was another indication of how their condition was worsening. The horse's training was overcome by its need for water.

  Will pushed the questing muzzle away. 'Sorry, boy,' he said, almost incoherently. 'Later.'

  He took two small sips himself, holding each one in his mouth, making it last, before letting it trickle slowly down his throat. Then, reluctantly, he re-stoppered the water skin and laid it in the scant shade of a thornbush.

  He raised Arrow's left front hoof to examine it. The horse grumbled and shifted awkwardly. There was no visible injury but when he laid his palm on the soft centre of the hoof, he could feel the heat there. The desert ground was burning Arrow's unprotected feet. Will appreciated it even more now that he was standing. The heat was all around them. It beat down from the sun, hit the desert floor and struck upwards again. At least when he was riding Arrow he had a little relief from it.

  He untied his blanket from behind the saddle and cut it into squares and strips. Then he wrapped the little horse's hoofs with pieces of the blanket, padding the underside with several folded layers, and tying the whole thing in place with thin strips. He'd be cold when night fell, he knew. But he'd be in a worse spot if his horse became lame.

  Arrow seemed to be standing more comforta
bly, no longer leaning to his right side. Will took his bridle and led him a few paces, walking backwards to watch his gait. The horse didn't seem to be favouring either side now, he saw with some relief.

  Retrieving the water skin, Will slung it over his shoulder and prepared to mount.

  Then he stopped and patted Arrow gently on the neck. 'I'll walk for a while,' he said. 'You've been doing all the work.'

  He took out his Northseeker and checked his course, seeking a bearing point. There was a vertical pillar of rock and salt in the middle distance, the crystals reflecting painfully in the sun. But that made it easier to keep track of and he set off for it.

  Arrow trudged after him, head down, his hooves now making a strangely muffled sound on the desert sand.

  ***

  A further mistake. Burdened by the inescapable heat, Will took off his cloak and draped it over Arrow's saddle. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and, for a few moments, he felt a little cooler. But it was an illusion. The cloak, like the flowing garments of the Arridi, helped the body retain moisture. Without it, and exposed to the sun, he began to dehydrate even more rapidly than before.

  In addition, his bare arms began to redden, then to burn, then to blister. But by the time he might have realised his mistake, Will was no longer capable of intelligent thought. His system was shutting down. His thinking was becoming erratic and unreliable. And still he hadn't seen that elusive formation of balancing rocks. They were an obsession with him now. They had to be here somewhere and he had to see them. Soon, he told himself. Soon. He could no longer appreciate the fact that he had hoped to see them after an hour or two travelling. He had now been riding and walking for over four hours with no sign of them.