by Glenda Larke
He grinned. “I have a healthy fear of my sandmaster.”
“Here, drink up.” Davim handed the skin back and lay down on his pallet, hands behind his head. The girl watched him fearfully, but he drifted off into a doze.
Ravard wanted to see whether the ziggers were already returning, but decided to wait a little longer in case Davim woke. He ignored the girl, now wrapped in the blanket in the corner, and stared at the sandmaster instead. Asleep, he looked almost benign.
Those unwelcome thoughts intruded again. What if the sandmaster had known who Mica was right from the beginning? What if Davim was the one who had killed Citrine just to teach Shale a lesson?
Ravard’s memories of that day were blurred by the terror of the event, muddied by the intervening years. If Davim was the man who had come and spoken to them outside the huts, who had seized Citrine, Ravard was unaware of it. The Reduners had all looked the same to him then—redmen, heads and lower faces wrapped in red cloth, red tunics, red breeches, every one of them armed, merciless and terrifying. He had no recollection of anyone in particular. He’d been so scared he’d pissed in his breeks, he remembered that much.
The rest was just one horror piled on the next. Citrine first, then his mother, then his father. Shale starting to scream like a desert cat caught in a trap, screaming and clawing like a wild thing, until one of the redmen had punched him in the stomach. The air had gone out of him, the redman had picked him up like a sack of bab fruit under one arm—and Ravard had never seen him again. He hadn’t turned up among the slaves, so he must have been killed, like so many others that day. Another grief he’d had to bear. Or so he’d thought.
He’d never spoken about it to Davim. Never asked him why he had chosen that settle. He’d just assumed it was one of many attacked by the Reduners in their desire to end the dominance of the Quartern.
But Garnet had said the sandmaster had gone there to find Shale…
Because Shale was a stormlord.
She’d said he was still alive. A wave of nausea swept over Ravard.
No. Garnet was a liar. He couldn’t bear to think what she had told him was true.
What if he, Ravard, was just a weapon to be used as Davim willed, when he willed, and discarded when it was convenient? Used, manipulated. A hostage for Shale’s good behavior, if ever that became necessary. Davim had two legitimate sons. The eldest was not old enough to braid his hair yet, but when he was—what then? Would he be named Master Son in Ravard’s place?
Shale, his enemy. The ziggers he’d just ordered released—one of them right now burrowing into his little brother. An agonizing death.
No.
No. He wouldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t.
Outside, someone screamed. A hideous, jagged sound, scarifying furrows of panic through his mind. He shot out of the tent, scimitar drawn, Davim right behind him flinging on his tunic as he came.
A chalaman raced past, his eyes wild with shock.
“What is it?” Davim shouted.
“Ziggers!” the man screamed, the whites of his eyes large in the dark of his face. “Tens of them!”
Davim grabbed Ravard by the arm and wrenched him back into his tent with him. Then he closed the tent flap. Ravard automatically began checking to see there were no gaps or holes anywhere. The girl watched them, wide-eyed.
Davim gave a half-laugh. “Now, there’s a good idea!” He reached out a hand and ripped the blanket from her to expose her nakedness. Opening the tent flap just wide enough to accommodate her, he made her crawl out on all fours, but kept a hold on her ankle. Then he yanked at her so she fell flat just outside the entrance. Still clutching her foot, he tightened the tent flap around her ankle and tied it tightly. “There,” he said, “that should save a few lives at least.”
Ravard, disgusted, tried to keep his expression neutral. “If these are the ziggers we released, they are all from Watergatherer. You and I are in no danger.” He didn’t need to ask if Davim wore the perfume; no one ever neglected to do so, even when they were at peace.
The foot wriggled, but Davim kept a tight grip. The girl continued her wailing, not understanding, but knowing something bad was about to happen. “Blasted female,” Davim complained. “She never would stop that hideous noise of hers.”
A moment later the crying melted into a sound of pure terror, and the sandmaster grinned at Ravard. Gulping sounds followed, as if she was experiencing pain so severe she could not even scream. The noises continued for five or six minutes before she was quiet.
“In the end she proved herself useful after all,” Davim said carelessly, and released his hold on her ankle. He pushed her foot outside the tent.
Ravard swallowed back his bile. She’s only a slave. He didn’t know her. It shouldn’t worry him, but it did.
In the distance, they could hear other cries of anguish. Withering hells, Ravard thought, it takes a lot to make a Reduner warrior shriek like that.
Davim asked, “Now tell me why, if they are our ziggers, they would return without having fed?”
“If not ours, then whose? Taquar’s? Scarcleft’s the only city that has any number of them.”
Davim didn’t answer.
The screaming outside subsided, but Ravard dreaded what he would find. Most of the Reduners did not have tents. If the ziggers were Watergatherer ones returning unsated, then only those from other dunes were vulnerable. If they were Taquar’s, then everyone was at risk.
“Why did you attack Wash Drybone Settle?” he asked suddenly. The question startled him. He hadn’t thought about asking it; he’d just blurted it out. He didn’t even know what he would do with the answer when it came.
Davim stared at him as if he was mad. “What?” he asked. “Where?”
“Wash Drybone. Where I was born.”
“What has that to do with anything? Are you sun-fried?”
“I need to know.”
Davim threw his hands up in the air. “I heard there was a boy there who had water-powers.”
“Did you find him?”
“Does it look as if I found him? Can you see him anywhere? I counted us lucky we found you. Although who would have thought then that you would become a water sensitive with enough water skill to be a tribemaster?” He pointed at the tent flap. “Now get the sand hells out there and see what’s happening. Let’s hope they were Watergatherer ziggers, eh?” The glare he gave was a challenge. He’d given an order and he expected obedience, knowing it could mean Ravard’s death if there were stray ziggers from another place—and not caring.
I mean that little to him. Garnet was right. Burning with anger, he went. No warrior defied a direct order, ever.
He took a lamp with him. As Davim retied the tent flap behind him, he stepped over the girl She was dead, of course. Blood oozed sluggishly from the ruin of an eye. It looked as if she had been attacked by only one beetle. It still sat on her chin, cleaning the flesh from its wing cases with its back legs. When it had finished, it opened the cases, displaying its gauzy delicate wings in a rainbow of shimmering color, and flew away.
Ravard looked around.
One of his own bladesmen came up, his face haggard, his gaze still glassy with shock. He was holding his zigger cage. There was only one zigger inside. It sat quietly, cleaning itself.
“What happened?” Ravard snapped.
“Those that came back were hungry. So they burrowed into some of the men from Dune Sloweater.”
“They were our ziggers? You’re sure?”
The man nodded. “They didn’t touch any of our sentries on the way in. None of our dune men here have been killed as far as I can see.”
“How many others died?”
“Not that many. Maybe twenty or so.”
“There were thousands of ziggers out there!”
“They—they haven’t returned.”
“Then what the bleeding hells happened to them?”
They looked at each other, unable to offer an explanation for the inexplica
ble.
“They couldn’t just disappear!” Ravard protested.
“Kher, they’ve had more than enough time to fly there, gorge themselves ten times over if possible, and fly back. It has been more than two runs of a sandglass. We waited and waited. And then a few trickled in. But they hadn’t fed. They were hungry!”
“The rest are dead?”
“Either that, or captured. Not one that came back had fed. Not one.”
Ravard thought about that, his face grim.
“They say rainlords can kill ziggers with a glance,” the bladesman remarked.
“Thousands of them? I doubt it. Where’s Medrim?”
“Talking to the other tribesmen. Their sandmasters are furious, Kher. They don’t like losing men to our ziggers. And our men aren’t happy, either. They don’t like losing trained ziggers.”
“I’ll go tell Sandmaster Davim what happened. He’ll have to talk to the other sandmasters.” He ducked back into the tent.
“I heard,” Davim said irritably. He was strapping on his scimitar. “I’ll speak to the sandmasters and tribemasters, although why I should have to is a mystery. Did they expect to fight a war without losing a man?”
“What do you think happened? I mean, where are all the missing ziggers?”
“Don’t be pissing waterless! Dead, of course. It was a trap. Maybe the camp was full of rainlords waiting for them to fly in. Maybe it wasn’t a camp at all. Maybe it was just the lights. You know what they’re like around lights—moths to candle flame if they don’t have anything else to distract them, like people to eat.”
“Taquar—?”
“Taquar’s no fool and he knows ziggers.” Davim paused, and when he spoke again, his rage was more under control. “But Taquar needed us. It can’t have been him. We have been tricked, Ravard. Go organize the burials while I calm down the dunesmen.”
It was much later when Ravard finally lay down to sleep in his own tent, tired, irritable and besieged by worries he could not shape into any sensible plan of action. He woke at the hour of deepest night to a sound he had never heard before. For a moment he lay absolutely still, listening to the impossibility of hundreds of fingertips pattering on the tent top. And a feeling of being surrounded by water.
God, he hadn’t had that feeling since he and Shale had played in the water that came in that unexpected rush down the drywash when they were boys…
He sat up, listening, his overwhelmed senses muddled. The pattering changed to a battering, and water dripped onto his face. Water.
He stood up and touched the ceiling of the tent. A trickle of water ran down his arm. The tent sagged as a pool formed on the roof.
Water dropping on us. The thought was ridiculous. The stormlord must have broken that cloud over their heads. But why? The waste! He straightened his clothing, grabbed up his scabbard belt and scimitar and ran outside.
The darkness was profound. He wasn’t used to that, and immediately ran smack into a panicked chalaman who had come to wake him. Water was falling on them, wetting their hair, their clothes, running into their eyes and ears. It was cold.
The chalaman blurted out, “Kher Davim wants to see you, Kher Ravard!”
Ravard pushed him away and ran on. Davim was standing outside his tent. “Why would the stormlord want to do this?” Ravard asked. He had to shout to make himself heard above the noise of the rain.
“I don’t know,” Davim yelled back. “One thing for certain, Taquar is not controlling him. I should have known that bleeding boy was going to cause us trouble. Smart-mouthed little wretch he was, even back when Taquar kept him caged. Tried to mock me—me!—by holding a ball of water over my head!”
As he was speaking, a tribemaster’s tent next to them collapsed in on itself as tent pegs loosened in the deluge, and the jute canvas absorbed too heavy a burden of water. It had been a long time since Reduner tents were made to shield occupants from more than the sun, the night-dew and wind. Pedeshit, Ravard thought. If we ever do return to a Time of Random Rain, we are going to have to rethink how to make a tent.
The rain pelted down and Ravard was both appalled and impressed—water, wasted as if it was no more precious than dust on the wind. Water just flowing away, unused, sucked into thirsty, useless soil. “What should we do?” he asked. He was stunned, at a loss, wanting leadership. He wasn’t the only one; the other sandmasters and tribemasters were gathering around. Several men were trying to funnel as much water as they could into their dayjars; others were ineffectively trying to shore up their tents.
Davim singled out Medrim. “Make sure the sentries stay alert. Double their number. I shall talk to the men.”
Ravard returned to his tent to snatch a short sleep. He dropped off quickly, but soon woke again to another sound, and to a hauntingly familiar feeling of unease. A murmur in the distance, getting closer; that mutter becoming a roar—
A rush down a Gibber wash.
For the first time in a long while he felt the starkness of terror. Not fear for himself, but for others. He dived out of the tent and began to run, not to safety, but down the slope toward the warriors still in the wash. Slipping and sliding, he fell down on one knee, rose with his trouser leg heavy with water and his arm covered in mud up to the elbow. He ran on.
Dune god save me, save the men, why didn’t I remember the rush, why didn’t I think, Wash Drybone after rain…
Most of the men were now huddled among the rocks trying to keep out of the rain, or attending to the pedes still pulling at their lines and bucking in nervous spasms as they felt rain on their backs. As he ran, he bellowed at the top of his voice: “Out! Out of the wash! Out! Run!”
He skidded to a stop just in time: just before the plunging wall of water slammed down the gully—and obliterated everyone there as if they had never been. In the darkness, he couldn’t see much; above the thunderous roar of the flood he couldn’t hear much, either. The water lapped around his ankles where he stood on the slope. Someone brought a lamp and he grabbed it, raising it high. They stared into the darkness. There was no one. No men, no pedes, no packs.
Gods, but it was dark! A black void overhead, disgorging water as if the stars were pissing on them. Perhaps there were survivors out there he could not see, perhaps there were pedes that would ride the waters down—yet, somewhere inside his reasoning mind, he knew they had just lost five hundred men and who knew how many mounts. He lowered the lamp. This was not war. A real man fought with a scimitar or a spear or a knife. But with water? What could you do against water? Against rainlords and stormlords? This was cold-hearted murder.
Shale. Blast him to a waterless death.
At his shoulder someone asked in bewilderment, “Where is everyone, Kher? Faldim was camped here, with all his brothers. And Karidar—you remember Karidar? He was the fellow with the ridiculous nose…” His voice trailed off. There was no one to find.
Gods, Ravard thought, will this nightmare never end?
He stood where he was, mind-sick. Water rolled from his chin to sputter on the heat of the lantern glass. Some irrational part of him blamed Uthardim for all their recent ills, and he couldn’t rid himself of the idea. The bad luck had started, or so it seemed, the moment that strange man with the scars entered his life. He turned the dune god against us, and our luck has gone.
He was relieved to see Medrim arrive, giving orders to some of the men around him, bidding them find a couple of pedes and ride downwash to search for anyone who needed help.
Ravard plodded back up the slope to where Davim waited. “I can’t see anyone,” he said, “and very few appear to have climbed out of the wash in time. There may be some on the other side of the water, though.”
“But you think most of them will have died,” Davim finished for him.
He nodded. “What should we do?”
“Break camp. We will move back to the cistern.”
“In the dark?” Medrim asked, astonished, speaking for all the gathered sandmasters and tribemasters awai
ting orders.
Withering hells, Ravard thought, there’s water in the wash. The ground was slick with mud, and it rained still, blinding men and beasts.
“In the dark!” Davim confirmed in a temper. “We are vulnerable here. What better time for them to mount an attack? At least at the cistern we will have our backs protected by a cliff wall, and we have the supplies. I will pick the battle ground, not some half-grown, brown-skinned lowlife!”
Ravard tried to think rationally. Jasper Bloodstone. Shale Flint. But what sort of army could he have? Breccia was defeated, and Taquar’s men would not follow him, surely.
“I’ll skin him alive one day, along with every rainlord and reeve I can lay my hands on,” Davim said, his voice choked with rage. “Reduners will never kneel to the blackmail of stormlords, not ever again.” He looked up the wash, into the terrifying blackness of a rainy night. “We will go back to random rain,” he whispered. “I swear it.” And he shook his fist at the darkness blotting out the stars, at the clouds that were manifestations of a stormlord’s power.
Ravard shivered at the vicious hate he heard. Then he turned to find his own tribesmen, to find out who lived, and who had died.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Scarpen Quarter
Warthago Range
“Lord?” Iani’s voice spoke into the darkness.
Jasper jumped. Would he ever get used to a man of Iani’s age and experience calling him “lord”? He sighed. Maybe it was just as well they all did. It reminded him he wasn’t Shale the Gibber grubber anymore and, spindevil take it, he still needed to be reminded. Often.
“Are the men in position?” he asked, wondering if anyone would hear the waver in his voice. The panic. Probably not. He was good at hiding his feelings. An expert at displaying a cool calm to the world. His father and Lord Taquar had done that much for him.
He smiled at the thought and felt better.
“Feroze says we’re all ready,” Iani said. Near him, there was laughter as Gibbermen on pedeback teased one another as if the thought of death was far from their minds.