The sun finally disappeared and the day's heat began to leach out of the desert. By midnight, it would be close to freezing, he knew. He checked Arrow's hobbles, then returned to his bedroll. He was exhausted. The heat of the day had been a palpable force and it seemed to have beaten against his body, leaving him feeling battered and worn out. The darkness grew and the stars began to blaze out above him.
As more and more of them blinked on, he lay back, an arm behind his head, to study them. Normally he found the stars a welcoming, friendly sight. But not tonight. Tonight his thoughts were with Tug, lost somewhere in this pitiless desert. And with Halt and the others, far away to the south-west. He thought sadly about the cheerful conversation by the camp fire, and cups of thick, sweet coffee. He licked his lips.
Even the stars were no comfort to him. They were strangers. Cold and pitiless and uninterested in him and his plight. The familiar constellations of the northern latitudes were missing here. When he inched around, he could see one or two of them, low on the northern horizon.
But these foreign desert stars gave him no comfort at all.
Arrow stirred and, in the distance, Will heard a low, grunting cough. He knew that was the sound that a lion made. He would have expected a majestic, earth-shattering roar. But this asthmatic coughing grunt was the reality. He looked at the horse. Arrow stood straight, ears pricked, eyes showing a lot of white.
'Better light a fire,' Will said reluctantly. He stood painfully, moved to the fire and went to work with flint and steel. Within a few minutes he had a small, bright fire burning. He led Arrow a little closer to it. The horse moved awkwardly in its hobbles but Will couldn't risk removing them and losing him.
'Settle down,' he told him. Within a few minutes, Arrow had. His head drooped again, his ears relaxed.
Will stretched out and pulled the blanket up around his chin. Accustomed to sleeping when the opportunity arose, he dropped off almost at once.
The moon had risen when Arrow's startled whinny jerked him awake. For a second or two there was an awful sense of disorientation while he wondered where he was. Then he remembered and came to his feet, his bow in one hand and an arrow in the other, eyes searching the thick darkness around them.
He heard the coughing grunt again and it seemed that it could be a little closer. He stirred the fire, added a few more branches and sat down, his back against his saddle, the bow across his knees.
He hitched the blanket up around his shoulders and settled himself, resigned to the fact that he would have to keep guard sitting up and dozing fitfully, while every muscle and bone in his body ached for him to stretch out and relax.
'No rest for the wicked,' he said. He sensed it was going to be a long, cold, uncomfortable night.
* * *
Chapter 24
* * *
As Will had noted to himself, Selethen had kept his party moving in the pre-dawn hours each day.
They would wake hours before dawn when the Arridi escort would prepare cook-fires, making coffee and toasting the flat bread over the coals. Selethen noticed that a change had come over the party of Araluans since the young Ranger had left them two days previously. No longer did they joke and laugh around the camp fire while they drank their morning coffee. They were subdued, concerned for their missing companion.
It was easiest to notice with the three younger members: Horace, the Princess and the young Ranger, Gilan. Halt, of course, had always maintained an unemotional facade. He was grim-faced and taciturn most of the time. But Selethen fancied that in the past days, the grimness was accentuated a little. It was obvious that the Ranger Will provided the heart and life of the group and the others felt his absence sorely.
Not that the two older Rangers were any less diligent in observing their surroundings and taking covert notes as they passed landmarks. He was sure they were memorising and noting prominent features so they could reproduce a map of the route from Al Shabah to Mararoc. Will might have given his oath never to reproduce the chart Selethen had given him, but the others were bound by no such promise. He was concerned about that but decided there was little he could do to stop them.
For the first few hours, in the pre-dawn dimness, they rode in their usual close-knit formation. Then, as the sun performed its spectacular arrival, the screen of cavalry around the central party moved out to take up their daylight travelling positions.
On the second day, a few hours after sun-up, they came upon the tracks of the party preceding them — the party who were taking Erak as a hostage to Mararoc. Prior to that point, of course, any sign left by the riders ahead of them had been obliterated by the massive storm that had swept over the desert. Now, they realised, they were within two days of them.
'They'll be moving more slowly than we are,' Halt said. He knew that Selethen had sent Erak with one of the regular caravans that travelled between Al Shabah and Mararoc, carrying trade goods from the coast to the inland city. Such caravans already had an armed escort and it made sense to kill two birds with one stone. But of course, the heavily laden pack mules and freight camels would slow the party down.
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 sho
ut 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 wat
er 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.
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