by Dave Freer
Down in the riverbed, following their tracks, were twenty-two horsemen. They'd stopped so that the tracker could examine the trail. Dust hung about them, and the figures shimmered in the heat. Keilin snaked closer. He could hear the voices. "Not more than a few minutes ahead, master. The dung is still moist," said the man who was squatting and examining the trail. He wore the red-and-yellow-striped tarboosh of a goatherd from the Thunder Gorge area of the Tinarana River. All the other men wore the sweat-stained uniforms of the Palace Guard.
"Damn good thing too. If we don't catch them soon we're out of water. They'd better have those jewels you promised us, Kemp," said one of the other riders, suspiciously.
"Believe me," the nasal tones washed away the years, "the Morkth will pay a king's ransom for them. I just wish I'd grabbed them back in the palace when I saw them. But the worm's eye was on me. He wanted to play his bloody games first, the fool."
"How do we know they're worth that much?" challenged another man.
"Actas, you can turn your bloody nag around and go back if you like! All I can tell you is that Vedas was prepared to pay five hundred in gold for that boy who had just one. How much do you think he was going to get for it?" Keilin had heard enough. He crossed the dry riverbed behind them, and then as they mounted again, sent an arrow winging silent to sprout from the tracker's neck. Then he took to his heels, jinking up the steep gully-ripped slope, and into the heat-splintered talus at the base of the red cliff.
A brief scramble up a rock chimney and he stood at the top, looking down on the heat-shivered figures still struggling after him. "Kemp!" he shouted, knowing his voice would carry up the valley to Cap and the others. "Do you know who I am, shitface?" The figures below were still. "I am the boy, the boy with the bull. I'm the one of your victims who got away, and I've the jewels here. Yah! Couldn't catch me then, can't catch me now. Kemp dogsbreath, you syphilitic offspring of a diseased camel, even the sows vomit when you screw them!"
An arrow struck upwards out of the valley. Keilin contemptuously watched it fall short. And pushed a rock shower down on them in return. "Yah! Useless bunch of turd brains! You couldn't catch a one-legged blind-drunk grandmother."
The chase was joined. They were pushing their horses, despite the heat, up the steep-sided valley to the left. Keilin watched with grim satisfaction and led off, away from the dry Syrah Valley, off into the twisted canyons of the badlands beyond.
By the time that the midday sun had turned the air in those ragged canyons into dragon's breath, the sixteen survivors had realized that their horses were just as useful as jellyfish out here. They set off up the sandstone ridge on foot, determined to surround him this time. After a futile hour, and losing another man to a deadfall, one of them had had enough. "We're not going to catch the little beggar, you know," he said. "He's just leading us a dance up here. Let's get back to the horses and get after the rest of them. The little hellion has shot my waterskin, and Actas's and yours, Kemp."
Kemp shook his fist at the mocking canyons. "You're right, I suppose. Get the others, and he'll be stuck out here alone. I'm damned thirsty. But sooner or later I'll get that little shit."
It took them hours to find their way back to where they'd left the wounded men and the horses. But the box canyon was empty. A note, written in dried red-brown fluid was pinned through the pile of empty waterskins with one of the swords of the wounded. It read: THIRSTY, DOG TURDS?
"We have to catch him now. He obviously knows where water is here. And I'm going to enjoy every minute of wringing it out of him." The nasal voice was thick with anger. "Now give us a drink, one of you."
Nobody moved. "I'll kill you if don't give me a drink!" Kemp screamed at the nearest man.
He got his drink. But an hour later, when he desperately needed another, he found that that fellow, and another six who still had waterskins, had slipped off, trying to backtrack the horses.
* * *
The moon was high and shining clear and cold through the desert night when Keilin walked quietly up to Beywulf, who was on watch.
"For crying out loud, Keil. I nearly split your bloody brisket. How's the pursuit? We heard you taunting them."
Keilin dropped down onto his haunches. "The pursuit is about eight miles away as the crow flies. Phew, I'm tired. Ol' Marou would have laughed at me, so unfit and water-fat. I had a couple of close shaves out there."
"Eight miles . . . are they still after you?"
"Yes. Some of them," said Keilin, taking a long pull from the waterskin.
"Well, that gives us about an hour. The animals are nicely rested anyway. I suppose I'd better rouse everyone. You rest for bit. I've left you a bite to eat."
"Don't wake anyone. They're eight miles off, as the crow flies. None of them are crows. Maybe thirty miles on foot, if they had the least idea where they were or where we were. And they don't have horses or water any more," said Keilin with grim finality. "Get some sleep old friend. The ones that were still trying to follow me were going in the wrong direction."
He stood up again. "I'm for bed. Sorry, but I won't bother with food tonight, Bey."
"How many of them . . ."
"Twenty-two."
"But Keil . . . some of them must still be following you? You haven't killed that many of them, surely?"
Keilin turned to face Beywulf, and in the moonlight his face was much older . . . almost a grim death's-head. "I didn't kill any of them. I darted a few with narca. It makes you lose your wits for a few days. I dropped a few rocks on some of them. Broke a few heads and limbs. Then I drove off their horses, and left them out there without water. Their own stupidity and the desert will kill them. You'll see the vultures tomorrow."
He turned and unrolled his bedding, and crawled into it. He saw that S'kith, lying in the rock shadows, was still awake too. He saw teeth reflect the moonlight. The shaven-headed man must be giving him one of his rare attempts at a smile. Somehow it comforted him.
"Cay."
He sighed and sat up. "Yes, Princess." She hadn't really spoken to him much since she had been liberated from the Patrician's torture chambers. He had a feeling she still blamed him for suggesting they come via Port Tinarana.
She looked at him, studying him. Even in the moonlight he could see the tiny wrinkles around her eyes as she peered at his face. Then she slapped him. "Don't you ever do that to me again. I . . . I've been so frightened."
He felt his throbbing cheek. "Don't worry, Princess, I really wouldn't have left you here."
"You idiot!" He ducked the second slap, and she stormed away, back to her own bedding.
The cool morning brought him more abuse. "Bey tells me you took on twenty-two men out there. And they're not coming back," Cap said, his voice hard.
For an answer Keilin pointed out into the desert landscape. In the clear, pale morning air a twist of black dots circled slowly. "More back that way," said Keilin quietly, pointing to a second flight of vultures.
This slap rocked him on his heels. "Don't ever get smart with me, boy. You think you're so bloody clever. Just remember, even here in this oven you call your own, Beywulf can track you by smell alone . . . And I can—and I will—kill you, if I have to," Cap said grimly. "Now, mount up and let's get out of here, before your big mouth proves to be wrong, again."
The day after, when the sun was starting to sink towards the west, they rounded a bare sheetrock bluff to confront a totally incongruous sight.
Cap put it into words for nearly all of them. "Just what the Hell is that?"
Keilin volunteered no reply.
It was a building, perched on a desert scree slope, sun-baked and torn by the desert storms but still very recognizably a town building. Some of the windows were still intact, as was the faded sign above the door.
* * *
A. DYMETRAS. APOTHECARY.
MEDICATIONS, ASSAYING, CHARMS,
CONTRACEPTIVE POTIONS, ETC.
* * *
"Must be a hell of a demand for contraceptive
potions around these parts," Bey snorted, looking at the barren hillsides. With an elbow that nearly sent Keilin flying and a wink as broad as his face, he said to Shael, "You'd better pop in and get a few, dear. Never know when you might next need one, hey broad beam."
She sniffed. "My morals aren't like yours, ape." It was a sign that she was beginning to recover from her ordeal in the Patrician's cellar room.
Bey chuckled. "Talking of some people coming out of other people's cabins . . ."
Coming closer there were other pieces of the story littered about. Two clean-picked human skeletons, their bare bones showing the gnawing of tiny teeth, as well as the attack of something that could split femurs.
"Hyena," was the only comment that Keilin vouchsafed.
Then Cap noticed the Morkth flying disk. He almost leapt from the saddle and jogged across to it. Kicking aside the scattered pieces of a carapace, he examined the machine with knowledgable care. Keilin saw he wore his shark smile of triumph. "Did you kill it, boy?"
"No. My partner. He got killed too," Keilin answered shortly, not caring if it angered the tall man.
Instead, the answer seemed to please Cap. "Hmm. Didn't think you were up to that level of combat. Still, unusual and lucky for you it had only one of them on board. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it." He took a black clip-on unit off the control panel. "I must keep this in mind," he said, as he turned to the others who had dismounted and were exploring the shop. "Come on, you lot. Time is awasting here. Pack it in with your looting and let's move along." Still for the first time in days he seemed pleased with life, and even was polite about the baked goanna they had that evening. Which, once she was told what the steaming, succulent flesh was, was what Shael tried to be.
Usually they'd ridden into the dusk. It was more pleasant to travel then. But this evening they had stopped early, before sundown. Keilin had used the nearby water cave and the relative abundance of thorny scrub for the camels as an excuse. Actually they were near a spot called Broken-Chimney Rock. He was wrapped in memories, and they were within a mile of the place where he had burned Marou. He wanted to go and pay his respects in private. Also he was mighty sick of that camel. He was already thinking about how to part with it.
He retired from the fire early, took his bedroll and moved well back into the shadows.
* * *
He was so damn transparent in some ways. He'd said more since they'd come into the desert than he normally did in a month. Mostly talking about the plants and animals he knew and had hunted, or about geology. Geology! And even Cap had acknowledged he knew what he was talking about. There'd been a sort of joy about him. Shael didn't even think he'd realized he was talking mostly to her. Even his destruction of the pursuit had not seemed to shatter his mood.
But since they'd come to the ruin of that shop he'd gone quiet, shifted into the reticence which was his norm, when he wasn't being a teenager showing off to the girls. Funny. She'd almost forgotten his performances back when he'd met her. The realization that he had been trying to impress her as a member of the opposite sex, back then, struck her abruptly. She'd been pretty dense, hadn't she? All she needed to have done at that stage was pretend to be awed, to have had him eating out of her hand. Still . . . how was Cay to have known he was a lot more impressive when he wasn't trying to show off his tricks? A sharp insight pecked at her quick mind: Did the same apply to her? No. Couldn't be.
She watched him like a hawk that evening, refusing even to let the fact that he and Beywulf had tried to feed her overgrown lizard distract her. When he made his excuses for going to bed, she followed within a minute, ignoring Bey's comment, and Leyla's searching look.
When he left the camp she was just behind him.
* * *
He'd been distracted when he left camp. But not that distracted. She made more noise than the Tinarana Brass Band, for heaven's sake.
"Go back, Princess."
She stepped out from behind the rock where she'd been ineffectually skulking. "Cay. . . . I'm not sure of the way back. Can't I . . . come with you? Are you leaving us?"
"I made my promise, Princess. I'll see you to your father, if I can. I won't run off before that," he said dismissively.
"We could still just go on alone . . ." she said softly.
He shook his head. "I'm ashamed of you, Princess. They'd all die out here, without me to find them water. Now, I'll take you back to where you can see the fire."
She twined her fingers in his. "Can't I just come with you? You . . . seemed to be climbing into yourself for the last couple of hours. What's wrong?"
He sighed. "I'm just going to pay my respects. I'm going back to the place where I burned the body of the man who was like a father to me. My first real friend. He made me what I am."
He stood silent for a while, seemingly unaware that he still held her hand. "Back in Port T. people put flowers on the graves. Ol' Marou wouldn't want flowers. I'm taking him a piece of goanna and a bottle of beer. To remember."
She said nothing, just squeezed his hand. "Come," he said roughly. "Come and see the last resting place of the lord of the desert."
In the stark moonlight he led her up between the shadowed buttes and then into a narrow ravine, dark and cruel-edged in the sharp moonlight, and then out onto the naked sheetrock at the top. In the moonlight the tangled weave of sharp-edged valleys lay like some gargantuan mauled tapestry below them. "In the early morning, after a storm, you can see both the mountains and the sea from up here. The old man loved it," said Keilin, as Shael tried to catch her breath. He walked forward to a few charred remains of the cedar logs. He stood for a moment, with only the sound of her panting stirring the still, cold air. Then he set down the piece of goanna, and poured the beer onto the bare stones.
"Cheers, Marou, you ol' bastard."
After a long silence he turned to Shael. "He lived out here for seventy years at least. He couldn't read or write. He never had a bath in his life. Every year or so he'd go across the mountains, drink himself blind, stink out the whorehouse . . . and leave before morning. He could kill you in thirty ways . . . he could slip up to you without you even knowing he was there. He could keep alive on country so bare an ant would starve. He taught me nearly everything I know. He showed me things no king ever saw. He was rich. Richer than any other man I ever saw. Yet all he had was a knife, a spear and a few old bits and pieces. God, I miss him. I miss him."
The wind came breathing out of the night, and the stars and moon burned coldly on the little plateau. She looked at him, finding her own lower lip quivering. "He'd be proud of you, Cay."
"I've no doubt he'd kick my butt. Come on. He left me a legacy. I'm going to need a bit of it." They set off down and across the open mesa top. Shael was just beginning to wonder how much further she could go when they came to yet another ravine. This led them into an area of twisted and jumbled rock formations. Keilin found his way to a narrow spire of water-worn rock, broken halfway and leaning precariously against the next spike. There were a number of black cave maws which dribbled bats when disturbed. Keilin peered at the mouth of each in turn, and then had her scramble up the rotting tiers of sedimentary cheese-rock and into one of these dark places.
He lit a crude torch made of a pitch-pine knot with paraffin bush bound roughly around it. Then he went to the back of the cave and reached for the high shelf he knew should be there. It was. But it was also difficult to reach. "If I pick you up on my shoulders, will you look and see what's back there?" he asked.
She almost fell off her perch. Glowing out of the darkness in the flickering ruddy torchlight were hundreds and hundreds of deep-blue eyes. Some handsized. Some as big as her head. "What are they? Cay . . . there's just blue eyes . . . sort of soft glowy ones."
"Turquoise, you nit. Pass some down. Nothing too big to carry."
She handed down piece after piece. Then when Keilin thought it was enough she came down and helped him to put them into the sack he'd brought along.
; "Is there much left?" he asked cheerfully.
"It just goes back and back, as far as I could see. I only passed down the pieces I could handle with one hand. This is really only the tiniest bit."
"Good," said Keilin. "Nice to know there is something left for a rainy day."
"I'd say," she said with conviction, "that there is enough for a rainy year. I don't know much about the value of this stuff, but I should think it must be worth a good few fortunes. I thought you said your `old man' only had a knife and a spear and few bits and pieces."
"Yeah, well. He said he didn't want to leave the desert. He said he had enough, and I guess he was right. Come on. We've got a long hike back, and I'd like to move off early tomorrow morning."
* * *
"Wondered whether you'd be coming back last night," Bey said calmly to Keilin as they prepared breakfast.
"You should have S'kith's level of faith in your friends, Bey. Mind you I don't know if you are a friend of mine. You won't come scorpion hunting with me, even though I've told you there's nothing quite like them for flavor."
Bey shook his head. "I'd love to, Keil. But you know how it is. You can do it, but me . . . people 'ud say the monkey genes were coming to the surface at last. Next thing they'd be feeding me bananas and presenting their heads for grooming. But if you want to go, and I don't mean scorpion hunting, youth, I owe you. I'll fail to find you after great effort."
Keilin smiled. "Give me a tin, Bey, I'll bring you a few choice fat stingy tails to try, without you having to demean yourself by squatting on the hillside, turning over rocks. Funny . . . that's the same shade of green the princess went. Look, Bey, I promised her I'd get her back to her dear papa. Then I'll run like hell. I gather he's not a very nice man. I'll rejoin you lot as soon as that is done." His face went deadly serious. "Nobody ever asked me why I've stayed. Maybe Cap believes his threats, but there's been lots of water, and lots of desert beyond it. I could have slipped off many times. The world is big and I'm small. But the truth is I'm hunting. Hunting Morkth. They killed Marou and I'm going to destroy them. The core sections will make sure they come to me and die. And I know now that getting our starship going again will hurt the Morkth worst of all."
