Edge had indeed seen the dwarf cutting leather into strips and braiding it together, but he hadn’t given it much thought. Lenny always did things like this while traveling on horseback. Albert generally followed Rufus without much input, so Lenny was free to mend clothes or bags or make little things.
“You got that magic wood sphere?” Lenny asked.
Edge retrieved it from his bag and handed it over. The dwarf tied some leather loops around the orb and tied it around Albert’s neck.
“This way it’s out in the open and none of us’ll have to carry it all the time,” Lenny explained. “I’d have put it on Rufus, but it ain’t magic like his saddle. The first time he grew big it’d snap.”
“Good thinking,” Edge said, but there wasn’t much enthusiasm in his voice. His eyes were once more trained on the desert in front of them and the mountain beyond. “It’s time we get going.”
They crossed the stream and the moment they did so, the heat increased. There was a well-trod trail from the stream up to the edge of the sand. Someone had posted a sign there that read, “Only for the hopeless.” Piled next to the sign were dozens of empty boots.
“Dag-gum,” said Lenny with a grimace. “Who do you think left that sign?”
“It’s for the pilgrims,” said Edge.
Fist shook his head. “A sad sentiment for sure.”
Deathclaw approached the boots and briefly looked them over then crouched low at the trail’s end and looked out into the desert. “Jhonate entered here less than a day ago.” A gust of wind blew by carrying a cloud of sand with it. He turned back to face Edge. “It will be harder to track them once we enter. Wind covers tracks quickly in this place.”
“Then we’d best get started,” Edge said.
The entered in the agreed-upon formation. Deathclaw went first, determining the best trail, followed by Albert and Lenny, with Rufus bringing up the rear, Edge and Fist on his back.
In the beginning, the going wasn’t so hard. The path into the dunes was covered by sand in some places, but bare in others. It wasn’t until about a mile in that the dunes rose in height and footing became difficult. The sun beat down on them relentlessly, but each of them had their own ways to shield themselves.
For Edge, the heat wasn’t so bad. Ever since bonding with Artemus and receiving the frost-covered scar on his chest, he had discovered that he didn’t burn. He wasn’t foolish enough to test it too boldly, but the frost elemental’s mere presence seemed to shield him. Of course, each gust of wind brought hot sands that struck exposed skin like stinging bees.
The others had their own protections. Though Deathclaw had been born in this place and had spent decades of his life in the hot sands, he had acclimated to life outside the desert. It took some time for the magic in his body to adjust to the heat, but he bore it stoically. Fist had brought a cloak with runes sewn into it that kept him cool and Squirrel stayed in his temperature-controlled pouch.
Oddly enough, Lenny, despite his boasting, had the worst of it. His leather armor had been runed to regulate his temperature much in the same way that the horse’s saddle did, but a few hours into the desert, his armor’s magic failed. He began to sweat profusely, but he bore the discomfort with another dwarf tool. Cursing.
“Dag-blasted heat’s nothin’! I once snorted hot kiln dust on a dare!” he shouted.
“You alright, Lenny?” Fist asked.
“Like I said, it’s nothin’!” A gust of wind carried stinging sand into his open mouth and he hacked and spat. “I was-. Quenchin’ blades with-. With my own gad-flamed, garl-friggin’, dag-burned . . .”
He continued the string of curses in a continuous stream. He didn’t stop until a few minutes later when they passed their first dead pilgrim. The man was half buried in the sand and desiccated. Much of his flesh had been eaten away by insects, though there were none presently on his body. Perhaps the orb’s power had driven them away from their feasting.
Deathclaw declared that the body was two days dead and suggested that they move along quickly. The insects exuded a chemical that kept the body from stinking, allowing them to eat undisturbed, but now that they were gone the smell would bring bigger scavengers. Some of them were smart enough that the orb’s power might not work.
The party quickly moved on and continued into the late afternoon hours, passing the bodies of three more partially submerged pilgrims along the way. These ones were little more than skeletons, their flesh eaten away. The last one still had a creature feeding on it, clinging to the inside of the skeleton’s ribcage. It was a small black thing with leathery skin and no noticeable eyes. Deathclaw warned them to keep their distance. Such creatures were known to latch onto larger creatures with sucker-like mouths and were difficult to dislodge and even more difficult to kill.
Edge couldn’t help but wonder how many more bodies they had passed, unseen, covered by the sand. Though his sword pulled away the dread that built within him, he knew that Jhonate was passing through the same conditions that these pilgrims had. She was an experienced survivor and in many ways was stronger than he was, but she didn’t have an orb to drive away stinging bugs or poisonous snakes or leathery creatures with sucking mouths.
As the sun faded, the heat of the day was replaced by chilling night air. Deathclaw searched for a place for them to stop and rest for the night. Finally, he pointed them towards a craggy rock formation that jutted from the sand. The rock was pitted and worn by centuries of sand and wind. There were a series of caves in the side of the formation and he was able to find one that was just large enough for all of them to huddle inside. Luckily, it was unoccupied.
Fist set wards in the area outside the cave and they placed the orb in the center of the floor. Without wood to build a fire, they collapsed against the cave walls and ate cold rations, the small cave lit only by a small glow orb. While they ate, Deathclaw left for a brief scouting mission, and Fist sent his magic into the rock floor of the cave, searching for an underground water source he could tap into and replenish their stores.
“Gall-durn it!” Lenny growled.
He had pulled off his leather armor and was searching for the problem that had caused its cooling magic to falter. He fingered a gash in the leather. When Vern had struck him in the side with his axe, some of the runes had been damaged. The magic hadn’t failed right away, but white sand had gotten into the gash and disrupted the runes.
“Is it fixable?” Edge asked.
“If’n I can get all the sand out I might be able to put some sealer in. If I’m lucky the magic’ll work again, If not, well it still does ever’thin’ else it’s ’posed to,” he said and walked over to his bags to get his leather repair equipment out.
“Edge,” said Fist. The ogre had both hands placed against the floor. “I can’t find any water.”
“Then we will have to look elsewhere tomorrow,” Edge replied. “We brought enough water with us to last another day.”
You may not find any, Artemus said. Remember, this place was designed to stop people from reaching the mountain. That includes wizards with earth and water magic.
Edge sighed. What did you do for water when you came?
I was with the Prophet, Artemus reminded him. He could wring water from a rock if he needed to.
“Right,” he said. “Fist, can you generate water any other way?”
“The air’s so dry,” Fist said and scratched his head. “I will try some things.” What about you, Artemus? Can you help?
Like you said, the air here is dry, Artemus replied. Without a water source below or clouds in the air to expand upon, it will take an immense spell to generate enough water for just Albert and Rufus alone.
What about this? Squirrel asked and everyone turned their heads. He was standing in the center of the cave next to the wooden orb and he was balancing a quivering sphere of water almost as big as he was over one hand. Is this water enough to expand upon?
I felt that he was up to something with my magic, Fist sent. Squir
rel had long ago learned how to pull threads of magic from Fist’s side of the bond and manipulate them himself. Years of practice and experimentation, only some of which Fist knew about, had led him to creating some unique spells. “Squirrel, how did you do that?”
I killed a big viper, he said with a yawn. It was in a hole in the back of the cave. It was trying to get away but had nowhere to go.
Fist wasn’t surprised about the dead snake side of his story. “But what about the water?”
I extracted it from its body, Squirrel said. I was hoping for more, but this was all I could get.
“That’s . . . snake water?” Edge asked.
It’s just water, Squirrel replied patiently and directed his next thoughts to Fist. Can you do that one spell to expand this water?
Fist reached out his hand and Squirrel lobbed the sphere of water over to him. Fist’s magic caught the water and he sent energies into it, causing it to triple in volume. “That’s about as far as I can make it stretch.”
Impressive, Artemus said. Using the excess energy in the water’s basic structure to cause it to increase in volume.
“Wizard Locksher taught me that trick. But the excess energy is used up now,” Fist said. “I can’t make any more out of it.”
“Is there anything wrong with the water after you do that?” Edge asked.
“It’s perfectly drinkable, just useless for working magic with,” Fist replied. He lifted his water bag, which was mostly empty, and caused the water to funnel down into it. “All the life in it’s gone. It also tastes . . . flat. Perhaps bland is a better word for it. Or insipid?”
“Is there any reason you can’t do that with the rest of our water?” Edge said. “Make it stretch?”
“I suppose so,” Fist said. “But I was serious when I called it bland.”
I can always just find more things to kill along the way, Squirrel suggested.
Deathclaw’s thoughts rushed into the bond. He was a good distance away in the dunes and there was worry in his mind. We have trouble. This area we are in is surrounded by scent markings. We are in the midst of several territories.
What kinds of territories? Edge asked.
Raptoids, Deathclaw hissed. Large packs.
“Ooh,” said Rufus, perking up with excitement. “Scary.”
“Huh?” said Lenny, looking up from his patch job. “What’s scary?”
“We’ve got raptoid packs out there,” Edge told him. What are our options?
We can backtrack a few miles and try to find another way through, but I can’t predict how far out of our way we will have to travel-.
Or? Edge pressed. He did not like the thought of delaying.
Or we can chance travel through the territories, Deathclaw said and his thoughts were uneasy as he considered it. Packs this big will have large areas to roam. If we are fortunate, we could get through without them noticing.
How likely is that scenario? Fist asked.
Our group has a large scent footprint, Deathclaw said. Between you and Rufus and the horse . . . If we had a sense of where the packs were, I might be able to keep us downwind from any of them, but we would have to be fortunate.
Edge felt a surge of anxiety, but forced himself to consider all angles of the situation. Alright, Deathclaw. Jhonate is somewhere out in this desert, maybe travelling through these same territories. Knowing that, what would you suggest we do?
Knowing that she is in this desert has no bearing on the decision, Deathclaw said. We do not know where she is. Therefore, we have no way of rescuing her or guiding her out of danger. Considering the size of this desert the possibility that we could run into her at this point is very remote.
He makes a good point, Artemus agreed.
Edge wanted to shout out that they were both wrong, but he realized that he had once more lost his objectivity. He grasped Peace’s magic again and it was obvious that Deathclaw’s logic was right. Very well. What do you recommend?
If our goal is to catch up to Jhonate, we have no choice but to assume that she is going to make it to the mountain unscathed. Our best course of action is to arrive there before she does, Deathclaw said to Edge’s surprise. We cannot afford to delay. Therefore, I suggest we travel through the territories, doing our best to avoid detection. If we are fortunate, we will get through without a fight. If not? We will have to win.
Well thought out, Artemus said.
I concur, said Fist.
Me to, Squirrel said.
Lenny was watching Edge’s facial expression, his eyes squinting. “It feels like you’ve made a decision. What’re we doin?”
Chapter Twenty Five
The Big and Little People Tribe – Packs
The next morning, Deathclaw left the cave early and climbed to the top of the rock formation to see if he could get a better idea of the lay of the land. From his vantage point atop the craggy spire, he could see a large swath of the desert in the rising light. He knew that this land contained parts of four different raptoid territories.
He couldn’t tell which part of the land belonged to which territory from here, but he did see to his dismay that one pack was nearby, running along the dunes. He doubted he would be seen from this distance, but he focused on his scales and caused them to shift color and blend in with the rock. There were a dozen raptoids in this pack, a group dangerous enough that he wasn’t sure his tribe could handle them.
These raptoids were about the height and weight of large humans. Their heads were like that of a reptile, with two hawk-like eyes on either side, and a large mouth filled with razor sharp teeth. Their legs were longer and more muscular than their arms and each limb ended in a set of nasty claws. They had a long thick tail that ended in a cruel barb and ran hunched forward with the tail reaching straight behind them for balance.
He noted that their formation was a focused one. Their leader knew where it was headed, which meant that they had caught a scent. He felt an old and mostly forgotten feeling swell in him, and he remembered what it had been like to be the leader of the pack, the deathclaw. To run along the dunes with a prey’s scent in his nostrils and to chirp out a command for his powerful pack members to follow in perfect concert . . .
The deathclaw was a concept in the mind of every raptoid. He was the one who directed the pack. He was also the one to strike the killing blow. They didn’t have a word for this concept, just a tone of voice. There was a hierarchy to be established within the pack, but once it had been established, only the true deathclaw could chirp at the others with that tone. For as long as he could remember, this had been his identity.
Deathclaw had once been the leader of the largest pack in this desert. It had been over two dozen strong until he had taken on stronger prey than mere raptoids could handle. In his hubris he had taken on a pair of red dragons, enormous monsters. His pack had been destroyed, cut down to five. He had been in the midst of rebuilding it when Ewzad Vrill had changed his body into what he was today.
As he watched the raptoid pack run into the distance, he felt a call within him. It was a subtle thing, but real. The desert remembered him. It had rejected him once before when he had been something changed and new. The magic that tied this place to the holy site of Alsarobeth sensed the strength within him. There was room in the desert for a new deathclaw.
He rejected the call. He was Deathclaw. He had carried the concept away from this desert with him and had made it his own. He was part of something greater than a raptoid pack with their instinctual hierarchies. It had taken him many years to understand this, but he was now part of the Big and Little People Tribe, where every member had their own unique importance that was greater than any position in a pack.
We must go to the northeast, he sent to Edge and included mental images of the surrounding geography. If we can manage to stay at the borders between territories, they may not discover us.
Alright, come back down and we will set out, Edge said. He shared Deathclaw’s information with the others and they beg
an to get ready to leave.
Lenny, who was frustrated as he put his leather armor back on, saw everyone moving and asked, “What’re we doin’?”
“We’re leaving,” Edge replied. “Deathclaw thinks he has a route picked out for us to take.” He noted the way that the dwarf tugged at his armor and asked, “Did your repairs work?”
“Seems to be fer now, but it ain’t the best patch job. Don’t think I got every grit of sand out. Dag-blamed thing’s liable to stop workin’ on me when we get out there.”
Edge nodded in concern. “Let me know if it fails.”
“You’ll hear me hollerin’,” he grumbled.
Edge turned to head towards the cave entrance, but paused and turned back to the dwarf. “Actually, I’d rather you didn’t holler. I’ll need you to follow my directions, but don’t speak. If we are going to get past these raptoids without being noticed, we must keep silent every step of the way.”
“How in the gall-durn hell am I ’posed to know what you want me to do if’n we can’t talk ’bout it?” Lenny complained.
“This isn’t your first stealth mission, Lenny,” Fist said.
“’Course it ain’t, you eight-foot nostril farmer!” the dwarf snapped. “I know how to be quiet when I wanna be.”
Edge glanced at Fist. Don’t take it personally. He’s having a bad morning. The ogre shrugged and began tying his bedroll to Rufus’ saddle. Edge returned his attention to the dwarf. “You and Albert ride behind Rufus this time. Just keep your eyes on me as we move. I’ll signal to you.”
Lenny scowled, his eyes darting between Edge and Fist. “All y’all can do this mental thing, but I’m the only one who don’t friggin’ know what’s goin’ on. It didn’t bother me much before, but now that I can just kinda hear it at the edges of my mind, it’s startin’ to piss me off!” He shook his head at the helpless expression on Edge’s face. “Turds. Don’t know how Jhonate put up with this fer sixteen dag-gum years.”
Edge blinked. “Wait a minute.” He laughed at his own stupidity. Jhonate had also felt left out of the group at first, but she had found a simple solution.
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