by Glenda Larke
When Jasper sensed the first ziggers and knelt with Dibble to uncover it, he was reluctantly impressed by the simplicity and potential effectiveness of the trap. The cage top was so fragile a pede leg would wreck it easily to release the irate and hungry beetles. Thoughts grim, he covered the top with his palmubra to make sure none could escape, then stamped on the cage until the contents were crushed
Mica. Mica had done this.
Between them, he and Rubric cleared the slope of cages, about a hundred of them. A thousand ziggers. When nothing remained but dried-up husks, they returned.
No sign of agitation marred Kaneth’s face now. When Jasper told him that the southern force had still not managed to break through, he was coldly calm, his orders logical and clear and firm. He was once more the consummate warrior who’d taught Jasper the rudiments of sword play, who’d defended Breccia almost to the moment of death.
He spoke to the army, his words echoing over the dune, promising them victory, predicting a new future in which water would be certain and their culture safe from the vagaries of unpredictable drought.
When he finished, they cheered him, calling out his name: Uthardim! Uthardim! Uthardim!
Who would ever have thought?
Jasper watched, and wondered how many of them would still be alive at the end of the day.
They mounted then and, lined up at the top of the slope, waited for the signal to ride. Below, Ravard’s men had moved still further away. He pondered the reason and decided it was to tire out the pedes from God’s Pellets. They had ridden all night long, and now they had still further to go.
One more moment of hesitation, then Kaneth gave the order.
Ryka spent the night up on the Great Knob, the highest lookout on God’s Pellets. By morning there was even less to see than there had been the day before. Rubric and Jasper had covered Dune Koumwards with fog, a great bank of it hugging the land like wind-blown seed cotton. The armies lay invisible under that cloak.
Around God’s Pellets, the plains were quiet. She could see the wild pedes now, grazing much closer, pulling at the plants with their mouthparts, then pausing to masticate. She felt the water of a windhover in the air nearby, so still it could have been pinned to the sky, until it abruptly folded its wings and dropped like a spear from above on some hapless creature. Crouched amongst the creepers, it tore at the flesh of its victim. A feeling of foreboding raised the hair on her arms.
“Keep an extra sharp watch today,” she told the relief sentries. “You see anything that is unusual, anything at all, you send word. And don’t assume that anyone you see is one of ours.”
Descending to the valley floor, she mounted her pede and rode around the valley, visiting each of the canyon entry points, checking the alertness of the guards. All was as it should be. Yet somewhere this day, a battle would begin. Her pulse speeded up unpleasantly and seeded a sick feeling in her stomach that no amount of rational thinking could quell. Men would kill and be killed. And this time she was one of the women who waited, unable to influence the result.
I’m not patient enough for this. I hate it.
By midday she was back in the main camp. Robena had been looking after Kedri, a task she delighted in but which exhausted her. Kedri was rarely still, and turning your back on him usually guaranteed he’d be into mischief, especially since he’d learned to shift water. Fortunately most sources of water were kept tightly covered, but on one memorable occasion he had pulled hot water out of a pot over the fire. Luckily, the only damage he’d done was to extinguish the flames. But since then everyone watched him with the same wariness they gave to a spindevil wind. It was tiring.
He toddled across the tent to her, arms held aloft. “Up, up!” She swung him into her arms as Robena left. “Want Dada! Dada!”
“He’ll be back tomorrow,” she said. I hope. Because I don’t know how I’d live without him. Dreams, Kaneth? Trouble is, you’ve been part of my dream since I was just a girl.
Kaneth turned to look back at Fassim. “Give the signal.”
He waited until the board was whirring and the circles it made were steady, then prodded Burnish. He stood up, hooked his feet under the saddle handle and slipped the butt of his throwing spear into its notch to give him stability. Standing made him a target, but it also gave him the overall view that he needed to control the progress of the battle.
The pede lurched forward, then gathered speed. At his side Cleve, Vara and other tribal leaders headed the front edge of the wedge; behind them the lines of men gradually widened out to provide the bulk. Rubric was positioned about one quarter of the way along one side and Jasper on the other. They were tasked with controlling the two panels of water to protect the front and edges of the wedge from zigger attack.
The mile over the plains seemed endless.
The front line of Ravard’s army loomed larger, men and pedes shimmering through the distortion of the water like sand-dancers. Warriors wavered, spears glimmered, antennae whipped and undulated.
I hope ziggers won’t think to go over the top of the water wall…
About half a mile from the army, they hit a wave of the little beasts. Most of them flew straight into the water and fell, wings sodden, to the ground where they were trampled underfoot. But not all. Kaneth heard the sounds of screams somewhere behind. Ahead, he noted in the calm part of his mind, the Watergatherers had not moved. They wanted the ziggers to do as much damage as possible before the two armies clashed. Once there was fighting at close quarters, ziggers were dangerous for everyone, especially when each tribe had perfumes that protected them from only their own beetles.
The second wave, about a quarter of a mile further on, was worse. By that time, Rubric and Jasper were no longer able to maintain the integrity of the water barrier and pieces were flying off in sprays of droplets.
All the more likely now that a trained zigger was aiming for his eye or ear or the soft tissues of his throat…
He saw one of Vara’s men fall, clutching his face, his scream a banner to his agony. He heard others behind, but did not turn to see. There was nothing he could do, so he shut them out, grateful he wasn’t one of them. He ordered Fassim to give the bullroarer signal for fast mode. Burnish raised itself, speed doubled.
The front row of the Watergatherers turned their pedes sideways to the charge, forming a solid barrier.
Now, he thought. Jasper, Rubric, for pity’s sake: now!
As if they heard him, the two wings of water sheltering their attack swung forward into a straight line and smashed into the barrier of pedes. Startled, pedes reared and panicked, thrashing about with their feelers. Men fell, swept from their saddles by water and the whipping antennae, creating pockets of chaos in the orderly Reduner formation.
Kaneth readied his throwing spear. Launched, it thudded into the side of one of the Watergatherer leaders trying to rally his men. With a deft twist of the reins Kaneth edged his pede into a gap. Then, scimitar in one hand and with the other clutching a thrusting spear he’d snatched from the rack on the side of his pede, he was among the enemy and whatever order there had been vanished into the chaos and horror of slaughter, the stink of death, the screams of battle. The only thing that mattered was to stay alive. It was impossible to direct the fight. There was no way to make order out of the disarray.
Seething, unpatterned turmoil. Clamour in his ears. Blood on his scimitar, his spear, his clothes, his face. His cheek pierced by something. Pull it out. Sharp slivers piercing his mind as men screamed their agony or their fear.
The stench of pierced guts, voided bowels, pumping blood, hot urine, pede shit. The scream of men and zigger and animal.
Then…
Something’s wrong.
Jasper was keeping close to him. Chert, his mount, was swinging its serrated antennae at Dibble’s command. Wisely, Jasper was confining himself to flinging water at the enemy, making them easier for others on his pede to kill.
Nothing wrong there. But still, something’s not
right. What is it?
His sense of small pieces niggled at him.
No time to concentrate on it. He thrust with his spear, once, twice, three times. Connected each time. Ducked under an enemy pede’s feeler. Slashed a rider from behind. Booted a man in the mouth when he tried to jump onto his mount. Rubric was ducking and weaving as he used his stormlord power. Blighted hells, he was quick. And deadly. Using a combination of stormlord powers and a fast blade. Nothing wrong there, either.
Something missing.
That was it. Something he should be feeling.
And then Jasper was yelling at him, “Ravard’s not here!”
Too few pieces. That was it. Too few pieces. Not just Ravard’s pieces.
A battlefield. Should be so many emotions…
He hadn’t seen Guyden either, or whatever the little louse’s real name was. People were missing. Not just Ravard. Not just Guyden. People who had been there, now gone. Hundreds. Some dead. Couldn’t all be dead, surely?
A spear flashed between his arm and his body. Too withering close. The man who had thrown it had pulled his packpede alongside. Eight riders. Pedeshit. For a wild moment the men on his pede and the men on the other animal were locked in a bloody scrimmage—jabbing, ducking, slashing. Whipped by the serrations on flailing feelers. A piece of fear and excitement abruptly gone—that was a man lost from Burnish’s last segment. Dead.
Someone hit Kaneth’s leg with his blade, but the blow was muted because it also connected with the saddle handle. He ignored the pain. The enemy pede began to pull away. Before they separated he wedged his spear under the mounting slot leaving his hand free to grab one of their warriors by the leg.
“Fassim, give me a hand!”
Together they hauled the man out of his saddle and pulled him across the growing space between the mounts onto Burnish.
“Don’t kill him,” Kaneth said as Fassim pulled a knife while the man behind him held the Watergatherer warrior face down across the saddle. The other pede and its riders disappeared into the melee. Kaneth sheathed his sword and extracted his own dagger. He bent over the captured man and laid the tip of his blade against his eyelid. “You have three heartbeats to tell me where Ravard is or the point of this digs out your eye.”
When the man didn’t reply, Kaneth began to cut his eyelid off.
“He’s fucking your bitch of a rainlord wife!” the man screamed at him.
He died then, with a blade into his brain. Fassim tossed him off the pede.
“Kaneth!” Vara rode up, yelling. “They’re fleeing!”
He stood tall and looked around. She was right. He hadn’t heard a retreat sounded, but far fewer of the foe were left on the battlefield. The odds were now definitely in his favour.
His unspoken question was answered by a voice calling out to him. “Some of their men charged straight through us!” He looked around to see who had spoken. Jasper.
Sunlord blast them to a waterless hell. A number of Ravard’s armsmen were heading to God’s Pellets.
He yelled back. “How many?”
“A thousand maybe!”
“Where are our southerners?”
“Still half a sandrun out! But on the move now.”
“Then we’re splitting up.” He pulled his pede closer to Vara’s, head to rear, and shouted at her to make himself heard over the noise of the fighting around them. “Vara, you and Cleve deal with the ones left here. You’ll have the southern reinforcements in half a sandrun.” He turned to Fassim. “Signal retreat for my section only. Jasper, get Rubric—you two are coming with me.”
The bullroarer sounded. “All of you, off my mount. Find a loose pede and follow me.”
He turned Burnish and jabbed it hard in the neck as his men scrambled to leave the beast. Outraged, the animal took off, straight towards Dune Koumwards.
As Kaneth burst through the perimeter of the fighting, he could see part of Ravard’s army as a cloud of dust, nearing the base of Koumwards. A thousand men between him and God’s Pellets.
The fighting had been the fiercest around Jasper and Kaneth. For Jasper, there’d been no time to think, no moment to focus on the battle as a whole. All he’d been able to do was fight the best way he knew how—with water, as a team with the men on his pede. One moment he’d been battling to survive, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his fear so constant it was part of him; the next, the ferocity around him had melted away.
What the—?
He concentrated on the water he could feel. And the water that wasn’t where it should be. That was when he yelled at Kaneth to tell him part of Ravard’s army had gone. Kaneth gave the orders and he obeyed, glad it wasn’t him who had to make the decisions. He looked around for Rubric and told the riders behind him on his own pede to dismount.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Dibble said. He was driving and kept a hold on the reins. Jasper didn’t argue.
Rubric was in the midst of the fighting, using his water-power to blind and maim rather than kill. Tossing a ball of water in his direction so that it hit him on the shoulder, Jasper attracted his attention and signalled they were leaving.
“Ride for home like you have fifty spindevils on your tail,” he ordered Dibble. “This whole thing must have been just a diversion to get us out of God’s Pellets so they can seize the Source and hostages. Hurry, man!”
Rubric rode up in time to hear his words. “We’ll never catch them,” he said. “Our beasts are dead tired. Theirs were much—”
But Dibble had already prodded the pede into action and Jasper had to guess the rest of the words as Chert sprang forward.
“We have Kaneth,” he yelled back over his shoulder. “Follow me!”
Kaneth rode with a focus that allowed no distraction. He saw nothing to either side. He could only hope that the men ahead did not have any more ziggers to release, because if they did, he was probably dead. But that must not happen. He had to stop them. I have to get back.
Weeping hells, why had they been so sand-brained stupid? Ravard didn’t give a damn about winning a battle. The wilted bastard knew everything that Guyden knew, and his conclusion had been simple and logical. Whoever occupied God’s Pellets and controlled the Source was the sandmaster of all the dunes. Dunemaster. He wouldn’t need a stormlord or a cloudmaster. He wouldn’t even need random rain. He’d have the water, and he’d control Kaneth and those from God’s Pellets because he’d have their womenfolk and their children. For the future, he’d have Kedri, a stormlord—if he wanted one.
It was as simple as that.
And the bastard was ruthless enough to leave part of his forces behind to be decimated by me, while he seized God Pellets… The concept was so foreign to his own idea of honour, he could scarcely believe Ravard had done it. Brutal, cold-blooded—and brilliant. Damn you to waterless hell, Ravard.
Still, Ravard hadn’t won yet. He’d have to enter God’s Pellets, and Kaneth couldn’t see how he’d manage that. Not with Ryka there.
I have to get there before Ravard’s army does. I have to have faith in Ryka. I have to assume that she can handle him. She’s a rainlord. She’s Ryka Feldspar.
But then, if Ravard got anywhere near her he had a lever to use against her. Kedri.
Withering spit, he had to be there. He leaned low over the pede’s neck and spoke to Burnish, murmuring praise and encouragement.
And Burnish did try. It streamlined its feelers back along its body, ducked its head lower and raced across the plains towards the dune. But how would it have the energy to climb the steep slopes and valleys of Koumwards? The sunblighted dune was so staggeringly high. He couldn’t ask Burnish to hurry up those slopes again.
Ravard’s men were already on the dune. As he approached, he could see that the tail end of them had stopped at the top of the first slope to look back. To release more ziggers? He wouldn’t be surprised. Hatred rose within him. He hadn’t come this far just to be eaten alive by one of those despicable creatures.
His anger r
eached out ahead of him, to whatever he could grasp. Not ziggers. Not men. No, he seized those tiny pieces that dwelt beneath the dune sand. The soul of the dune. The essence of the dune god. The lifeblood of a living, moving dune. Or just tiny pieces of water. It didn’t matter. He touched them with his fury, whispered his needs to them—and blew them apart with his rage.
Some way behind Kaneth, Jasper’s jaw dropped. One moment he was feeling sick at the thought that Kaneth had no protection from ziggers, the next he almost fell off Chert in shock. What he saw, what he heard, what he felt—all his senses were assailed. The sands screamed and howled and wailed. The earth shuddered. Threaded through it all was the extraordinary movement of water, water in people, in pedes, in ziggers, in plants, inside the dune… All of it being ripped away from its foundations and flung in different directions.
Kaneth’s power slammed into the first slope of the dune like the bore wave of a rush slapping into the bend of a settle drywash. The power furrowed into the dune, deep, deep inside—and exploded. On the surface, pedes, men and ziggers were tossed aside like leaves in a spindevil wind. The earth erupted. Sand was flung up and out to the left and right, two huge waves channelled to each side. The land roared. Even as far away as they were, they could hear it. The impact resonated under the feet of their mount. Chert balked, antennae trembling.
Dibble slowed the pede down. The devastation in front of them continued. Still the sand fountained and parted, pushed aside as if the breath of an invisible, monstrous giant was blowing a path through the dune from one side to the other.
“I’ll be shrivelled,” Dibble whispered. “Wait till I tell Elmar about this! Is—is it Lord Kaneth doing that?”
“I rather think he is.”
The floor of the plain was being laid bare in a broad ribbon, wide enough for three pedes to ride abreast, slicing through the sand as straight as the path of an Alabaster spear.