"He's money, you fool! Passage money that I won't collect till I reach
Barrakesh, and not then unless he's alive and able to get it for me.
And if he doesn't, I'll see to him myself." Derech sprang up onto the
barge deck. "Now clear off. Or you'll have more killing to do than
you'll take pleasure in."
His men were lined up with him now along the rail, and the rest of the
crew were coming. Twelve tough armed men did not look like much fun.
The crowd began to drift away, and the original five went reluctantly
with them. Derech posted a watch and took Carey into the cabin.
"Get into these," he said, throwing down a bundle he had taken from one
of the men. Carey laid aside his axe. He was shaking now with relief
and his fingers stumbled over the knots. The outer wrapping was a thick
desert cloak. Inside was a leather kilt, well worn and adorned with
clanking bronze bosses, a wide bronze collar for the neck and a leather
harness for weapons that was black with use.
"They came off a dead man," Derech said. "There are sandals
underneath." He took a long desert knife from his girdle and tossed it
to Carey. "And this. And now, my friend, we are in trouble."
"I thought I did rather well," Carey said, buckling kilt and harness.
They felt good. Perhaps some day, if he lived, he would settle down to
being the good gray Dr. Carey, archeologist emeritus, but the day was
not yet. "Someone told them there was an Earthman here."
* * * * *
Derech nodded. "I have friends here, men who trust me, men I trust.
They warned me. That's why I routed my crew out of the brothels, and
unhappy they were about it, too."
Carey laughed. "I'm grateful to them." Arrin had come in and was
sitting on the edge of her bunk, watching Carey. He swung the cloak
around him and hooked the bronze catch at the throat. The rough warmth
of the cloth was welcome. "Wales will know now that I'm with you. This
was his way of finding out for sure."
"You might have been killed," Arrin said.
Carey shrugged. "It wouldn't be a calamity. They'd rather have me dead
than lose me, though of course none of them would dream of saying so.
Point is, he won't be fooled by the masquerade, and he won't wait for
Barrakesh. He'll be on board as soon as you're well clear of Valkis and
he'll have enough force with him to make it good."
"All true," said Derech. "So. Let him have the barge." He turned to
Arrin. "If you're still hell-bent to come with us, get ready. And
remember, you'll be riding for a long time."
To Carey he said, "Better keep clear of the town. I'll have mounts and
supplies by the time Phobos rises. Where shall we meet?"
"By the lighthouse," Carey said. Derech nodded and went out. Carey went
out too and waited on the deck while Arrin changed her clothes. A few
minutes later she joined him, wrapped in a long cloak. She had taken
the bells from her hair and around her ankles, and she moved quietly
now, light and lithe as a boy. She grinned at him. "Come, desert man.
What did you say your name was?"
"Marah."
"Don't forget your axe."
They left the barge. Only one torch burned now on the deck. Some of
the lights had died around the square. This was deserted, but there
was still sound and movement in plenty along the streets that led into
it. Carey guided Arrin to the left along the canal bank. He did not
see anyone watching them, or following them. The sounds and the lights
grew fainter. The buildings they passed now were empty, their doors
and windows open to the wind. Deimos was in the sky, and some of the
roofs showed moonlight through them, shafts of pale silver touching the
drifted dust that covered the floors. Carey stopped several times to
listen, but he heard nothing except the wind. He began to feel better.
He hurried Arrin with long strides, and now they moved away from the
canal and up a broken street that led toward the cliffs.
* * * * *
The street became a flight of steps cut in the rock. There were
roofless stone houses on either side, clinging to the cliffs row on
ragged row like the abandoned nests of sea-birds. Carey's imagination,
as always, peopled them, hung them with nets and gear, livened them
with lights and voices and appropriate smells. At the top of the steps
he paused to let Arrin get her breath, and he looked down across the
centuries at the torches of Valkis burning by the canal.
"What are you thinking?" Arrin asked.
"I'm thinking that nothing, not people nor oceans, should ever die."
"The Ramas lived forever."
"Too long, anyway. And that wasn't good, I know. But still it makes me
sad to think of men building these houses and working and raising their
families, looking forward to the future."
"You're an odd one," Arrin said. "When I first met you I couldn't
understand what it was that made Derech love you. You were so--quiet.
Tonight I could see. But now you've gone all broody and soft again. Why
do you care so much about dust and old bones?"
"Curiosity. I'll never know the end of the story, but I can at least
know the beginning."
They moved on again, and now they were walking across the basin of a
harbor, with the great stone quays towering above them, gnawed and
rounded by the wind. Ahead on a crumbling promontory the shaft of a
broken tower pointed skyward. They came beneath it, where ships had
used to come, and presently Carey heard the jingling and padding of
animals coming toward them. Before the rise of Phobos they were mounted
and on their way.
"This is your territory," said Derech. "I will merely ride."
"Then you and Arrin can handle the pack animals." Carey took the lead.
They left the city behind, climbing to the top of the cliffs. The canal
showed like a ribbon of steel in the moonlight far below, and then was
gone. A range of mountains had come down here to the sea, forming a
long curving peninsula. Only their bare bones were left, and through
that skeletal mass of rock Carey took his little band by a trail he had
followed once and hoped that he remembered.
They travelled all that way by night, lying in the shelter of the rocks
by day, and three times a flier passed over them like a wheeling hawk,
searching. Carey thought more than once that he had lost the way,
though he never said so, and he was pleasantly surprised when they
found the sea-bottom again just where it should be on the other side of
the range, with the ford he remembered across the canal. They crossed
it by moonlight, stopping only to fill up their water-bags. At dawn
they were on a ridge above Barrakesh.
They looked down, and Derech said, "I think we can forget our
southbound caravan."
Trade was for times of peace, and now the men of Kesh and Shun were
gathering for war, even as Derech had said, without need of any Dr.
Carey to stir them to it.
They filled the streets. They filled the _serais_. They camped in
masses by the gates and along the banks of the canal and around the
swampy lake that was its terminus. The vast herds of animals broke down
the dikes, trampled the irrigation ditches and devoured the fields.
And across the desert more riders were coming, long files of them with
pennons waving and lances glinting in the morning light. Wild and far
away, Carey heard the skirling of the desert pipes.
"The minute we go down there," he said, "we are part of the army. Any
man that turns his back on Barrakesh now will get a spear through it
for cowardice."
* * * * *
His face became hard and cruel with a great rage. Presently this horde
would roll northward, sweeping up more men from the Low-Canal towns as
it passed, joining ultimately with other hordes pouring in through the
easterly gates of the Drylands. The people of the City-States would
fall like butchered sheep, and perhaps even the dome of Kahora would
come shattering down. But sooner or later the guns would be brought up,
and then the Drylanders would do the falling, all because of good men
like Woodthorpe who only wanted to help.
Carey said, "I am going to Sinharat. But you know how much chance a
small party has, away from the caravan track and the wells."
"I know," said Derech.
"You know how much chance we have of evading Wales, without the
protection of a caravan."
"You tell me how I can go quietly home, and I'll do it."
"You can wait for your barge and go back to Valkis."
"I couldn't do that," Derech said seriously. "My men would laugh at me.
I suggest we stop wasting time. Here in the desert, time is water."
"Speaking of water," Arrin said, "how about when we get there? And how
about getting back?"
Derech said, "Dr. Carey has heard that there is a splendid well at
Sinharat."
"He's heard," said Arrin, "but he doesn't know. Same as the records."
She gave Carey a look, only half scornful.
Carey smiled briefly. "The well I have on pretty good authority.
It's in the coral deep under the city, so it can be used without
actually breaking the tabu. The Shunni don't go near it unless they're
desperate, but I talked to a man who had."
He led them down off the ridge and away from Barrakesh. And Derech cast
an uneasy glance at the sky.
"I hope Wales did set a trap for us there. And I hope he'll sit a while
waiting for us to spring it."
There was a strict law against the use of fliers over tribal lands
without special permission, which would be unprocurable now. But they
both knew that Wales would not let that stop him.
"The time could come," Carey said grimly, "that we'd be glad to see
him."
He led them a long circle northward to avoid the war parties coming
in to Barrakesh. Then he struck out across the deadly waste of the
sea-bottom, straight for Sinharat.
* * * * *
He lost track of time very quickly. The days blurred together into
one endless hell wherein they three and the staggering animals toiled
across vast slopes of rock up-tilted to the sun, or crept under reefs
of rotten coral with sand around them as smooth and bright as a
burning-glass. At night there was moonlight and bitter cold, but the
cold did nothing to alleviate their thirst. There was only one good
thing about the journey, and that was the thing that worried Carey the
most. In all that cruel and empty sky, no flier ever appeared.
"The desert is a big place," Arrin said, looking at it with loathing.
"Perhaps he couldn't find us. Perhaps he's given up."
"Not him," said Carey.