The Heart of the Sands, Book 3 of The Gods Within (10 page)

Chapter 8: The March

The sharpness of the border between the sands of the
Munjarro and the Plains of Quam surprised Morgin. In the space of only a few
hundred paces they went from trudging through bottomless sand, to walking on a
layer of sand only a hand’s width deep, then to walking on the
hard prairie dirt. And there they walked into a wall of mist, a light fog that
clung to the ground and limited vision to a few hundred paces. Morgin
remembered the plains well: a flat and
barren land without shape or contour, broken only by clumps of sagebrush and
brown grasses. The last time he’d visited the plains, he’d
killed Salula.

Morgin noticed the
difference in the temperature immediately. As the sun rose and climbed above
the flat horizon, out on the sands, at this early hour, the temperature would
be rising quickly. But here, it still held onto a hint of the spring night
chill, which made the daylight hours
bearable. It didn’t burn off the mist, though he saw the clear,
blue sky above so the layer of fog couldn’t be too thick. To shift
their sleeping schedule back to nights, they continued marching.

A subtle difference
arose in the Benesh’ere when they crossed that border between the
oven of the sands and the horizonless prairie: a certain wariness descended
upon them all, and everyone now carried arms. Out on the sands, a warrior might
wander about the camp completely unarmed, or perhaps with no more than a
utilitarian knife on his or her belt. Now, however, everyone—warrior,
wife, debtor, old man, old woman, even small children—everyone
carried a sword or a spear of some kind, many with a fabled Benesh’ere
longbow and a quiver of arrows strapped to their back. And now, none wore the
broad-brimmed straw hats beneath their hoods. Clearly, the whitefaces were
preparing for some sort of battle or fight, and the straw hats would only
hinder a fighter’s ability to look quickly from side to side.

As they crossed onto
the prairie, the leading edge of the column slowed slightly, bunching it up so
they now walked about twelve abreast, whereas on the sand it had been no more
than single or double file. Quite a few of the warriors with horses mounted up
and rode out in squads of twelve, clearly outriders patrolling the column’s
flanks.

They stopped to set up
camp around midday, and Morgin
noticed another difference: the encampments were much larger. On the sands they’d clustered into small
groups of one or two twelves, but the encampment he worked in now was more like one hundred twelves, with perimeter
sentries posted.

The smiths followed
their usual routine: hobble the horses, unload the pack animals, pitch the
tents, stow their supplies, then time for an hour of sword practice and
sparring. After that they cleaned up and ate a good meal. And to accommodate
the change in their sleeping schedule, they’d wait until nightfall
before bedding down.

“Elhiyne.”

Morgin had been
checking their water skins, making sure they were properly stowed and there
were no leaks. He turned to find that Chagarin had approached him, silent as a
hunting cat. They were all like that, the Benesh’ere; they moved
with such stealth it seemed almost a magical talent of its own.

Chagarin held out a
sheathed sword and knife. Morgin accepted both, frowning. The sword he knew
well, but the knife was new to him. He slid it from its sheath: it was a large,
heavy blade, meant for fighting.

At Morgin’s
questioning look, Chagarin said, “From here on, you never go
unarmed. And you don’t leave the perimeter in a group with fewer
than twelve blooded warriors. Once we step off the sands, we begin the March.”

“The
March?”

“Aye, the
two-day March across the plains is
Kull hunting season.”

“You hunt
Kulls?”

“They
hunt us. We hunt them. From now on, be on the alert.”

Morgin strapped on the
sword and knife and went back to his chores. But he saw now that the whitefaces
constantly scanned the perimeter of their camp, looking over their shoulders,
jumping at the crack of a nearby twig, or the snort of a horse, or the bark of
a dog.

Morgin was banking the
cooking fires when Yim found him. “Lord Harriok wants to see you.”

The Benesh’ere
didn’t use titles like
Lord
, but Yim was quite young and impressionable, and
Harriok had made Morgin address him that way more as a jest, since Morgin was
not Benesh’ere. “Let me finish this,”
Morgin said. “It’ll just take a moment.”

It took more than a
moment, but Yim chattered on while Morgin worked, filling his ears with a
stream of gossip about which young girl had her sights set on which young
warrior. When he finished, Morgin stood, brushed ashes off his hands and said, “Lead
on.”

They crossed an open
space to the next large group, which Morgin now understood was a
well-structured defensive perimeter. Yim explained that Chagarin’s
instructions to not “. . . leave the perimeter in a
group with fewer than twelve blooded warriors,” didn’t
apply when crossing the short distance from perimeter to perimeter.

Morgin found Harriok
sitting up in the shade of his tent, looking much better with color in his
cheeks and a smile on his face, Branaugh sitting beside him. Morgin greeted him
by lowering his eyes. “Lord Harriok.”

“Please,
Elhiyne,” Harriok pleaded, “don’t call
me that. That was just a joke.”

“What
should I call you?”

“Harriok.
And I’ll call you AethonLaw, not
the
Elhiyne
.”

“Actually,
I’d prefer Morgin.”

Throughout the
exchange, while Harriok bantered happily, Branaugh sat stone-faced listening to
the two of them. She seemed impatient, as if she had something on her mind and
the banter irritated her no end for keeping her from getting to it.

Morgin asked them
both, “What is it you’re not saying?”

Harriok lowered his
eyes while Branaugh continued to stare stonily. Harriok broke the silence. “I
saved your life out on the sands and so you owed me a debt of honor. Then you
saved mine, so the debt is repaid.”

That seemed clear, but
Morgin was just as clearly missing something. “So you’ll
remove the debt collar now?”

“I can’t,”
Harriok said, his eyes still lowered. “My father will then be free
to challenge you to mortal combat. And he’ll kill you. I’ve
stalled, made excuses, and we’ve been careful to tell them only
that you gave me water, not that you carried me across the sands. But when we
reach the Lake of Sorrows, I’m afraid I’ll not be
able to stall further.”

The implications of
that were rather clear. Morgin had a few more days to live, and then Jerst
would kill him.

Branaugh still stared
at him stonily, and he realized then that Harriok’s confession was
not the subject she waited so impatiently to discuss. She leaned forward and
pleaded, “Did you kill the demon cat?”

Harriok winced at her
outburst, looked at her and said, “Not that superstitious
foolishness again.”

“It’s
not foolishness,” she said through gritted teeth, her eyes never
leaving Morgin. “Well, did you?”

Morgin told her the
truth. “I don’t know.”

“What do
you mean by that? Either you killed her, or you didn’t.”

Morgin described the
night Shebasha had attacked them, told them in detail what he remembered. “The
last thing I recall was standing there with a sword, you unconscious, and
waiting for her next attack. When she hit me I thrust out with the sword, but I
have no idea if I struck true, and the next thing I recall was waking up in the
heat of the day, no sign of the cat.” He didn’t want
to discuss his dreams of Shebasha. He’d come to accept that his
dreams and his reality were closely intertwined, but would these Benesh’ere
accept that? If he claimed to have killed her based solely on a dream, would
they think it an idle boast? He had come to like these two, and he didn’t
want them to think of him that way.

Branaugh shook her
head, closed her eyes and let her chin drop. “That won’t
do.”

Morgin asked, “What’s
the problem?”

Harriok sighed
unhappily and spoke. “There is no question Shebasha struck me with
the sixth claw, and left her venom in the wound. I should not be alive. My soul
should be hers until she dies.”

Branaugh opened her
eyes and leaned forward, searching Morgin’s face hungrily. “Yim
says you were not touched by the sixth claw, that she marked you with the five
but not the sixth. She also said you have an old scar about where the sixth
would have been?”

Morgin nodded and
said, “I’ll have to trust Yim on that. I can’t
see them myself.”

“May I
look at it?”

Morgin nodded again.

Branaugh stood and
walked around him as he opened his robe and exposed his left shoulder. She
gently pulled the robe further down his back. “There is a scar
here, next to the other five, and spaced about where the sixth would be. But
they’ve all healed nicely.”

She walked around
Morgin and returned to her place beside Harriok. Morgin refastened his robe.

Branaugh looked at him
intently as she asked, “Was that sixth scar an old one?”

Morgin owed them the
truth. He shook his head resignedly, and Branaugh let out a faint whimper. “When
I awoke that morning the sixth scar was swollen, and numb, and open. But it
healed the first day, long before the others.”

Branaugh buried her
face in her hands and said, “That’s just not
possible. He can’t have killed her. He’s not Benesh’ere,
and he hasn’t completed the first four deeds.”

At the mention of the
deeds Morgin flinched, a reaction he couldn’t have hidden, and
Branaugh’s eyes narrowed. “I know of the deeds,”
Morgin said. “Why do you speak of them?”

Harriok answered him. “Shebasha
is thought to be the spirit of the sands, trapped within her own haunting. Killing
her would free her of that. And there are many here who believe those old
legends of the last SteelMaster returning to us. I do not.”

Free the spirit of the
sands!

“Is it possible?”
Branaugh asked, almost pleading with him to deny it.

Morgin sighed and felt
a great flood of weariness. “The Thane were giant, winged
griffins, half eagle and half lion.”

Harriok gasped, and
Branaugh began to cry quietly.

Morgin continued. “They
no longer exist. Aiergain of Aud is the hand of the thief.”

With each revelation,
Harriok’s eyes widened further.

“The
daughter of the wind was AnneRhianne, an ancient Benesh’ere
princess who waited centuries for me to free her. WolfDane, the hellhound king,
is the Dane King. And now you tell me Shebasha was the spirit of the sands.”

Harriok stood. “We
have to tell them, tell everyone.”

Branaugh stood beside
him and pulled on his arm. “No. They’ll never believe
it. They’ll think we’re trying to save him from Jerst’s
blade. That’ll only inflame them and they’ll demand
his death now.”

“But—”

“No,”
she said. “Say nothing.”

She looked at Morgin. “Can
you prove any of this?”

“No,
nothing.”

She nodded. “Then
we say nothing and you continue to wear the debt-ring. At least until we figure
something else out.”

~~~

Morgin shot awake and sat up, his heart pounding, fear
coursing through his soul. Still tangled in his blanket he pulled the heavy
fighting knife. He’d slept out in the open under his blanket; he
saw, by the faint bluish tint of the sky, that dawn was not far off. The thin
mist still blanketed the prairie and Morgin could only see about fifty to a
hundred paces into it. Some danger had awakened him, but what?

Nothing imminent, nothing nearby coming at him, so he
tossed the blanket aside, stood and drew his sword. It came alive and tugged at
his hand, though not forcefully. It pulled him toward the southern edge of the
perimeter, so he walked that direction and that seemed to satisfy it. He
approached one of the perimeter sentries, approached him well to one side. An
armed man that chose to approach an armed whiteface in the misty-dark from
behind, such a fool would probably not live long.

Morgin stopped at the perimeter half way between two
sentries: one a swordsman, the other a pikeman. They were spaced so they could
see each other easily in the mist. Morgin recognized the pikeman; he’d
been one of the most abusive during his first days among the Benesh’ere,
spitting on him and kicking him whenever the opportunity arose.

Both whitefaces looked his way and the swordsman said, “Elhiyne,
you rise early, and carry both blades naked?”

Morgin glanced down momentarily, looked at the sword in
his right hand, the knife in his left. “Yes,” Morgin
said, staring out into the early dawn of the prairie. “Something
is wrong.” The sword tugged at his hand, confirming that. “And
I can only think of one thing that can be this wrong.”

The swordsman on his left drew his blade. The pikeman on
his right leveled his pike and dropped into a crouch. Then he whistled a
single, sharp note, which Morgin heard repeated down the perimeter line and
through the camp. Nothing happened for several heartbeats, then he heard a
horse neigh, followed by the thunder of several horses charging across the hard
prairie dirt, all hidden somewhere in the mist. And then a charging horse
thundered out of the mist straight at him.

Morgin wrapped himself in a shadow, stepped to one side
and ducked. The horse drove past him and a Kull saber sliced through the air
where his neck would have been. Since the Kull’s blade hadn’t
connected with a target the halfman knew was there, Morgin knew he’d
not leave an enemy at his back. Morgin spun and charged after him, knowing what
to expect. The camp erupted in chaos, shouts and cries and the ringing of
blades clashing everywhere.

The Kull reined in his horse, pulled it to a stop and spun
about. As Morgin crossed the distance between them in a sprint, he hoped all
the halfman would see in the faint morning light was a dim shadow fluttering
across the ground. The Kull hesitated, and that was the instant Morgin needed. He
veered slightly to the right to avoid the horse’s head, crossed
the last few paces and leapt, drove the blade of the knife up under the Kull’s
chin as he hit him.