Part Forty-One

5 days out of Altaruk - evening camp

B'rohg came after us this afternoon, in a sandy area where the path dipped between two wrinkly brown hills. The tops were crowned in dense mats of thorny, ground-hugging naras plant, and two or three of them were lying in wait for us under the thicket. How the brutes made it through the barbs without tearing half their skin off I'll never figure out, but they were close enough to the trail to fling boulders at us without much chance of missing.

I'm riding along, mazy with the heat, combing tiredly at the bits of weedy fluff clinging to my hair, and the next thing I know, a boulder arcs out of the air and smashes into my chest. My wind whooshes out of me and I slide sideways off my kank. I hit the ground hard, and for a moment all I can do is scrabble in the dirt, whooping airlessly as the kanks stomp and bump above me.

A rock craters the sand next to my head, showering me with dirt and powdery sandstone. Another thuds down and scrapes a layer of skin from my calf. I can hear the b'rohgs bellowing thickly off to my right. Over them Kaylene's voice rings out, calling on fire and the lords of flame. She breaks off with a cry of alarm and I turn my head just in time to see Dar tumble from his kank, his scarf knocked aside to reveal a pale face veiled in blood.

Unok's yelling. There are more b'rohg coming up from the rear. I get my breath back and run in a stumbling crouch to the end of the train, fumbling a packet of colored sand from my belt. "Kaylene, guide my hand," shouts Unok, and Kaylene begins a wailing, eerie chant that sets the hairs on my neck on end.

As soon as he hears it, Unok breaks from the shelter of the kanks, charging the b'rohg behind us. I yell frantically for him to cover his eyes and toss the sand. The light that streams from my fingers is shockingly bright, the colors searing the yellow afternoon sky, and the b'rohg can only stagger and clutch helplessly at their eyes as Unok runs at them with his teeth bared in an arena-fighter's grin.

I glance back. Humbel's down behind his kank, sending arrow after arrow at the rock-throwing b'rohgs. Max crouches between two kanks, his hands woven into the saddle-straps to keep them from bolting. Petronia is huddled with Micha against the side of another kank; every time a boulder crashes down, she gives a stifled cry and flinches in the circle of Micha's arms. His bard's friend is out, but he's concentrating on shielding her from the falling rocks with his body. I'm amazed none of the kanks have been hit yet, and then I recall the stench of dead kank and figure the b'rohg are taking pains to avoid killing any of them.

I tear a clay fist from the thong around my neck and watch as Daphne leaps up from the shelter of her kank and lopes to help Unok, her muscular legs pumping, kicking a spray of sand up and out with every step. As I fling the fist, I note that the rocks have stopped falling. Humbel's arrows are finally taking their toll on the rock-throwers.

The fist tumbles through the air, crumbling to powder, and the results are unsettling--a human arm, formed entirely of dirt, snakes up out of the ground and grasps the leg of one of the b'rohgs. The b'rohg howls, jerks at its trapped foot, gropes impotently at the fist. Easy prey for Daphne's cahulaks. She barely glances at the fist as she goes after the b'rohg, and as she rips into the creature, Unok puts two more down and turns the fight in our favor.

In the end, Dar and I took the worst of it, and Dar was hurt more than I. After Kaylene tended to him, it was his turn to be strapped upside-down across a kank, for we had to risk a short journey away from the ambush site to avoid any b'rohgs bent on another go-round. We'll move on again when Dar's ready, likely tomorrow or the next day. With Kaylene and Micha both working on him, he ought to be all right soon enough.

My own lot was a handful of broken ribs, and I asked Micha to strap them for me. Kaylene's adept enough at binding wounds, but her powers would leave me with a crooked side and a scar like I'd been caught in a house-fire. I'd rather mend on my own and nudge it on with my meager scrap of the Way.

I'm beginning to feel like a jug that's been mended too many times. One more fight and I'll shiver into a thousand pieces.

6 days out of Altaruk - noon

Dar's recovered enough to sit up a bit and take a little food. I haven't said more'n two words to him since he braced me the other day, but I may before too long. This bunch of Wavir hirelings is used to magic, and I'd like to know if he made them that way. After Max reports that vulgar display of power, he said. Reports it to who, I wonder? To Wavir? Or to somebody under the Veil?

Dar's a preserver and a Wavir employee. He's tight enough with the rest of his band that I don't think they were thrown together for this job. They could be keeping quiet about his spellcraft for any number of reasons, but if Max can speak freely to his masters about magic without Dar getting all sweaty, I think it's likely that Wavir's given an unofficial nod to magery, at least the preserving kind.

Too hot to think about it. Too hot to write, but what else is there to do? Nothing out here but rolling hills and mangy, scattered patches of grass and long sandy stretches of loose, dry soil. Anything big enough to offer shade is too thorny to risk getting close to, and so we've been forced to build rickety lean-tos out of brambles and blankets, and lie stuporous in the heat while the sun rolls leisurely across the sky.

Been sprawled for the last hour in the meager square of shade I made from two sticks and my tabard. It's so hot I can't even sweat. My eyes are boiling out of my head and the noise of the kanks chewing and chewing and chewing is driving me mad. Apparently kank paradise is a giant patch of knife-edged grass*brittle knee-high stalks coated in tan dust, with darker brown streaks where the stems have snapped and leaked thick amber streams of sticky, pungent sap. In some places the mat of dead grass is so thick the kanks are ankle-deep in burrs and every step is a crackling, crunching nightmare of dry thorns and buzzing grasshoppers exploding out of the brush to whirr up into my eyes, or cling to my shirt and spit black goop at me when I try to sweep them off.

At first I thought there'd be water where the grass grew, but I know better now. The roots are as thick as hair and swarm through the soil as deep as I cared to dig, and likely much farther. A little way past the camp there's a place where the ground slipped in an earthquake and a great slab of ground fell away from the side of a hill. Six feet of grass-laced dirt lies open to the sun, and the roots run all the way through it. If I died out here, I think the roots would suck the blood out of my body so fast there'd be nothing but a dry bag of skin and bones in the space of an hour. What a place.

By this time tomorrow we'll be out of the plains and into the barrens that run along the edge of the mountains. Humbel knows an oasis at the southern tip of the range, two days from where we are now. We need the water sorely, for our progress has been slower than we thought and Dar's injuries cost us any distance we might have made today.

on to Part 42