"My headquarters. It's about seven days' march--an island city, old as
the moons. The Rama cult was strong there, legend has it, and it's a
sort of holy place to the tribesmen. That's why I picked it."
He took a deep breath and smiled, looking out over the dead sea bottom
toward the Border, and his eyes held the same pitiless light as the sun
that baked the desert.
"Very soon, now," he said, more to himself than the others. "Only a
handful of days before we drown the Border states in their own blood.
And after that...."
He laughed, very softly, and said no more. Stark could believe that
what Berild said of him was true. There was a flame of ambition in
Kynon that would let nothing stand in its way.
He measured the size and the strength of the tall barbarian, the eagle
look of his face and the iron that lay beneath his joviality. Then
Stark, too, stared off toward the Border and wondered if he would ever
see Tarak or hear Simon Ashton's voice again.
For three days they marched without incident. At noon they made a dry
camp and slept away the blazing hours, and then went on again under
a darkening sky, a long line of tall men and rangy beasts, with the
scarlet litter blooming like a strange flower in the midst of it.
Jingling bridles and dust, and padded hoofs trampling the bones of the
sea, toward the island city of Sinharat.
Stark did not speak again to Berild, nor did she send for him. Fianna
would pass him in the camp, and smile sidelong, and go on. For her
sake, he did not stop her.
Neither Luhar nor Freka came near him. They avoided him pointedly,
except when Kynon called them all together to discuss some point of
strategy. But the two seemed to have become friends, and drank together
from the same bottle of wine.
Stark slept always beside his mount, his back guarded and his gun
loose. The hard lessons learned in his childhood had stayed with him,
and if there was a footfall near him in the dust he woke often before
the beast did.
* * * * *
Toward morning of the fourth night the wind, that never seemed to
falter from its steady blowing, began to drop. At dawn it was dead
still, and the rising sun had a tinge of blood. The dust rose under the
feet of the beasts and fell again where it had risen.
Stark began to sniff the air. More and more often he looked toward the
north, where there was a long slope as flat as his palm that stretched
away farther than he could see.
A restless unease grew within him. Presently he spurred ahead to join
Kynon.
"There is a storm coming," he said, and turned his head northward again.
Kynon looked at him curiously.
"You even have the right direction," he said. "One might think you were
a native." He, too, gazed with brooding anger at the long sweep of
emptiness.
"I wish we were closer to the city. But one place is as bad as another
when the khamsin blows, and the only thing to do is keep moving. You're
a dead dog if you stop--dead and buried."
He swore, with a curious admixture of blunt Anglo-Saxon in his Martian
profanity, as though the storm were a personal enemy.
"Pass the word along to force it--dump whatever they have to to lighten
the loads. And get Berild out of that damned litter. Stick by her, will
you, Stark? I've got to stay here, at the head of the line. And don't
get separated. Above all, _don't get separated_!"
Stark nodded and dropped back. He got Berild mounted, and they left the
litter there, a bright patch of crimson on the sand, its curtains limp
in the utter stillness.
Nobody talked much. The beasts were urged on to the top of their speed.
They were nervous and fidgety, inclined to break out of line and run
for it. The sun rose higher.
One hour.
The windless air shimmered. The silence lay upon the caravan with a
crushing hand. Stark went up and down the line, lending a hand to the
sweating drovers with the pack animals that now carried only water
skins and a bare supply of food. Fianna rode close beside Berild.
Two hours.
For the first time that day there was a sound in the desert.
It came from far off, a moaning wail like the cry of a giantess in
travail. It rushed closer, rising as it did so to a dry and bitter
shriek that filled the whole sky, shook it, and tore it open, letting
in all the winds of hell.
It struck swiftly. One moment the air was clear and motionless. The
next, it was blind with dust and screaming as it fled, tearing with
demoniac fury at everything in its path.
Stark spurred toward the women, who were only a few feet away but
already hidden by the veil of mingled dust and sand.
Someone blundered into him in the murk. Long hair whipped across his
face and he reached out, crying "Fianna! Fianna!" A woman's hand caught
his, and a voice answered, but he could not hear the words.
Then, suddenly, his beast was crowded by other scaly bodies. The
woman's grip had broken. Hard masculine hands clawed at him. He could
make out, dimly, the features of two men, close to his.
Luhar, and Freka.
His beast gave a great lurch, and sprang forward. Stark was dragged
from the saddle, to fall backward into the raging sand.