It was simply that those hadn’t exactly proven themselves useful, either. The basic “theory” at hand was that I needed to stay out from underfoot, and so there I was, perched upon the giant thumb of a forgotten civilization, their last memory in the entire world, watching things happen in the present without actually being a part of them.
That was the kind of man I was.
It was extremely disheartening.
Once again, I reminded myself, I did not want to be a man like Rook. There were a thousand flaws in that way of living, not the least of which a dark venom that hurt even those he presumably cared about. That had never once appealed to me. Nor did I wish to be the sort of man who, like Rook, could easily take another human life—and would, tonight, when all went well. That was what disturbed me most of all: I wasn’t even nervous, or afraid that my brother would be hurt by all this. I knew he wouldn’t. All that harmed him physically rolled off his back like water off a duck; he was naturally suited to violence, and violence was naturally suited to him. Again, it was not the sort of ideal I personally strove toward.
But there was that terrible feeling again—the one that told me I was exactly like Geoffrey, except with even less of a practical bent. To what had I actually managed to apply myself? I had survived this far, but never once had I stuck my neck out. I was always there, in the background, observing and recording, but all that was starting to wear thin. My thoughts were selfish, messy and tangled. I hated considering them. That which had once been my strong suit—or so I thought—was now like chains around my ankles. I kicked my feet sullenly against the wind, feeling and acting like I was a child again, hiding from Georgie Pluck, who spent far too much time around a brothel for a child of thirteen, and who enjoyed giving me at least one bloody nose per performance hour during the ladies’ shows.
“You look like you ate something that didn’t agree with you,” Rook said, leaning up against the wrist at my side.
“Mm,” I replied. Not my cleverest comeback, but I was hot and I was glum, I was sticky, I smelled of camel, and even the smallest of my triumphs was truly nothing in the face of all that greater men than I had managed to accomplish in a shorter amount of time, and with less self-doubt.
“You don’t honestly fucking think I’d let you fight, do you?” Rook added. “I mean…you’re not exactly Molly’s finest.”
“I am aware of my shortcomings, thank you.”
“Whatever,” Rook said. He folded his arms over his chest and didn’t pull away. At least I could tell myself that he hadn’t completely acclimatized to the desert just yet. There was some chance left for me that he wouldn’t join with Kalim to rule the sand, leaving me to become his biographer or something else that required very little of my actual presence.
“Whatever,” I agreed.
“So stop sulking,” Rook snapped. “It just doesn’t make any sense. ’Sides, it’s up to me to fight on Have’s behalf. You don’t have to be a part of it.”
“But I would like to be,” I said, with more candor than I usually exhibited. “I want to be a part of it.”
Rook didn’t say anything at first, and I wondered briefly if I’d managed to surprise him. Little did he know I actually wished to be of some use to someone—to anyone, though to him at this point in time would have been preferable. Maybe, judging by my behavior and failure to perform even the most basic of duties, he hadn’t known, and this had come as a shock to him. But when I looked over at his face to try to read his reaction he was just staring out into the lowering sunlight, his mouth a tight line and the muscles in his jaw hard as twine.
“Never mind,” I said. “Just be careful, I suppose. Don’t get hurt.”
“Can’t promise that,” Rook said, because he never pulled any punches, nor did he ever lie—unless it was to suit him. “You know. Fighting’s dangerous.”
“I’m aware,” I told him.
“And you’re a jumped-up little ’Versity boy,” he added, looking at me sideways.
“Stop that,” I warned.
“Probably couldn’t punch your way out of a fight with a kitten,” Rook continued, looking thoughtful. “One little scratch and the fuzzball’d have you cornered.”
“That’s not fair,” I said, the blood starting to pound between my ears.
“In fact, I should probably tell Kalim I think we should leave you back with the pregnant women and children,” Rook concluded, a little too smug. “I mean, if something bad happened to the camp while we were all gone, they’d end up having to defend you from the enemy.”
“Enough!” I shouted and, in a moment of extreme insanity, I threw myself at him.
He’d been nothing but awful to me throughout our travels. I’d been abused, mistreated, put down, insulted. He’d threatened to leave me behind, feed me to the camels, and it was all nothing in comparison to what I could expect from him in the future. We were supposed to be brothers; we were supposed to be good to one another.
This was not any definition of good that I could understand.
However, I honestly had no plan for how I’d beat him man-to-man, and he had me pinned in the sand after I got one pathetic little blow in, clipping his chin with my fist and hurting my hand, I suspected, more than I’d managed to hurt him.
“Feel better?” he asked me, while I tried to catch my breath.
“How could I possibly?” I demanded.
“Wanna have another swing at me?” he offered. “Makes you feel good though, doesn’t it—just punching someone.”
“Bastion damn it, Rook,” I said, but he was right. I was acting as I always blamed him for acting. It wasn’t very pretty. Also, there was sand in my mouth now, not just my nose, and I inhaled too quickly, choking on it.
Rook clapped me—a little too hard—on the back, finally letting up, and I used that moment of weakness to tackle him again. This time I did hit him, soundly and solidly, a full three times before he overpowered me. My hand was throbbing now, as if to ask why on earth I’d insisted on putting it through such abuses, but I supposed I could be grateful it wasn’t my head. This time, as I tried to regain my breath with my face pushed firmly into the sand beneath me, I heard Rook laughing.
“You dirty fucking bastard,” he said. “Guess I’ve got less to teach you than I thought.”
It was almost—almost—like being complimented.
“Peace,” I said, the word muffled, and he pulled back just slightly. Nonetheless, I knew that the same underhanded tactic wouldn’t work a second time; it was lucky I had no intentions of continuing the fight as it was.
“Nasty,” Rook said appreciatively, and I pretended the blush on my cheeks was the hot flush of battle rage inside of me.
It might seem plausible.
“At least tell me there’s something I can do,” I said.
“Yeah, actually there is,” Rook replied, taking me completely by surprise.
“Kalim doesn’t want to leave the, uh, rakhman with the women and kids, so he’s gotta take him with us. But he’d just be a liability, so you’re gonna look after Bless.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Think of it like this,” Rook offered. “He’s a low-down dirty prisoner and you’re the jail warden. It’s an important fucking job. If he says anything, we all give you full permission to rough him up a little. Just gotta follow through with your punches. Don’t be such a Cindy about ’em.”
It appeared that I was being given brawling advice by my brother. At last, a true moment of bonding, and it was over fisticuffs.
“Oh,” I said once more.
“Get real angry again, just like that,” Rook said. “Take it all out on Bless if you wanna; I sure as shit wouldn’t mind, and nobody here’d give a fuck, either. Probably cheer you up.” He paused to laugh, then sighed. “We’re riding out a little before sunset, so think about how much you hate me and that camel and sand and the sun and daytime and nighttime and sleeping outside and moving and everything that doesn’t involve sitting on your bony ass an
d reading about other people doing things, and Bless’ll shit himself with how scary you look, trust me. He won’t try a thing.”
“Is that official advice?” I asked wryly.
“Are you kidding?” Rook asked, pushing off the statue’s remnant and heading off through the sand. “Out here, I’m the fucking Esar.”
I supposed, for all intents and purposes, that he might as well have been. Since leaving Thremedon, I had never seen my brother so loquacious about anything. If I’d been making a study of it—as I suppose I was, in my own, unofficial way—I’d have said the desert was the cure for whatever melancholy he’d been experiencing. Of course he would take to such a beastly place, the landscape as wild and unforgiving as he himself was. I wanted to love it, however misguided my reasons, but there was altogether too much sun and sand for that ever to be a real possibility. Yet I still couldn’t begrudge the place, if only for what it’d done for my brother.
Experimentally, I made a fist. It looked all wrong for some reason—or at least rather knobbly and ineffectual as compared to when Rook did it. Then I imagined slamming my fist into Geoffrey Bless’s face, and though it was a terribly violent image, I found myself not particularly averse to it. I was quite sure that I had never been as angry with anyone as I’d been with Geoffrey—not even that little Pluck rat—the night the nomads had come upon us and my brother had challenged their leader to a duel. I was not often given cause to worry after Rook’s safety, but the uncertainty of the circumstances coupled with the unfamiliar territory had created just enough room for the shadow of doubt in my mind. If I hadn’t been so concerned with not disrupting the fragile peace we’d made with these desert men, that night I would have struck Geoffrey. How dare he lead us into such trouble—and it didn’t seem to matter much now that inadvertently he’d also led us into Sarah Fleet’s lap. He was clearly not our ally. We were only lucky that Kalim had gotten to him before he was able to get to us.
As the sun began to set, I gathered up the few notes I’d made. There weren’t many, since I’d been so distracted by Rook’s impromptu lesson, but they would have to suffice for the time being. It was rare that a man was given the opportunity to observe a nomad camp in the state it was now; apparently all it had taken to change my attitude was being thrown down to the sand a few times. Or perhaps it was just the possibility of having my revenge on Geoffrey, although either option said rather unsavory things about me. Best not to dwell too closely on such thoughts, I decided at last. After all, Rook hardly ever did, and though he was decidedly not the kind of person I wanted to be taking life lessons from, his way of doing things seemed to work enviably well out here.
After I’d packed my notes, I made my way back into the camp proper, taking care not to get in anyone’s way as they went about their business, some towing camels while others sharpened their weapons. I could only hope that my own camel would somehow get lost in the shuffle, so that I might be able to trade it in for a slightly more equable model, but that didn’t seem too likely. Kalim’s men were too organized ever to let such an error take place.
I was doomed by the very efficiency I had previously been admiring in my notes. Truly, irony at its best.
Kalim’s men had been holding Geoffrey captive in a tent somewhat nearer to the center of camp—so that they might more easily keep an eye on him, I suspected. None of Kalim’s men spoke Volstovic, aside from the one with the frightening face, Abbas, who seemed to take great pleasure in creeping up behind me and proclaiming “Hello!” as loudly as possible whenever he had a spare moment. Afterward, he’d clap me on the back and wander off until the next round, which I was never quite able to anticipate.
Nevertheless, it seemed Kalim had fully explained the situation to them, for when they saw me, Geoffrey’s captors all began to move at once. Two of them rose, pulling Geoffrey to his feet while another pushed past me, making his way toward the camel enclosure.
“Thomas?” Geoffrey inquired, his voice thin and parched like he hadn’t been using it—which seemed terribly unlikely, considering the source. “That is you. Hurrah! Have you any idea what’s happening? Are we leaving tonight?”
“Kalim has a score to settle with a rival tribe leader,” I explained, hustling to follow as Geoffrey’s guards dragged him out of the tent and secured him on the newly arrived camel. I was deeply grateful that mounting the prisoner on the camel had not been a part of my duties, but then I realized that most of these men had seen my own efforts where camels were concerned, and doubtless had decided to compensate for them.
I neglected to inform Geoffrey that, in reality, we were heading out after a better prize than anything tribal warfare might have to offer. I didn’t trust him—especially after hearing how lightly he held the lives of the natives in his esteem.
“Oh,” said Geoffrey, his eyes following a man with a long, cruel-tipped spear as he passed us by. “I had a feeling it was something like that. You can tell by the way they wear their cowls, did you know that?”
“Indeed,” I told him sternly. “And they refuse to leave you here with the women and children, so you’ve earned the lucky position of accompanying us.”
It was hardly us, if I was being entirely truthful, but Geoffrey didn’t have to know that.
Once the sun began to set in the desert, it went down very quickly. Already the sky overhead was growing dark, and I realized that many of the men were already mounted in preparation for the ride. There were women too, gathered into groups for solidarity, or bidding their men a last farewell. As someone who’d very nearly been left behind, I felt nothing but sympathy for their position. It was difficult being the one left behind while someone you cared about rode off to commit great deeds of heroism.
In the distance, I could even see Kalim making his final preparations alongside his strategists, but I didn’t see Rook with them.
“Are you riding with me, Thomas?” Geoffrey asked, apparently feeling in much better spirits now that he’d been tied to his camel. “Truly, I appreciate the show of support. I must admit, I’d half expected you to go riding with that beast of a character Rook, but I see now that all my worries were unfounded.”
“And here I’d have thought you had more important things to worry about than little old me. I’m real flattered,” Rook said, appearing out of nowhere in that disconcerting way he had. Somehow, I managed to keep from jumping clean out of my boots. “Here,” he added, slapping a knife handle first into my palm, which I’d held out on instinct. “If, and that’s if, mind, you get into some kind of trouble, use this. Might have to use it on him if he pulls anything; you never fucking know with weasels.” Rook nodded toward Geoffrey, who gulped rather showily, and I quickly tucked the knife away.
“I see we’ve graduated from fisticuffs rather speedily,” I said foolishly, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“Can’t intimidate a prisoner with something like that,” Rook explained, with a look toward Geoffrey in case he’d forgotten we were still speaking of him.
“Really now,” said Geoffrey, in a huff. “I hardly think that’s necessary. Thomas and I have known each other for years! Why, we’re practically brothers. Of the mind, I mean, but still! It’s a very close bond. It’s one ruffians couldn’t possibly—”
“That’s enough,” I said coldly. Geoffrey fell silent at once, which at least meant that he hadn’t taken leave of all of his senses. Once Rook was gone—to play with the big boys, as it were, leaving us at our children’s table—he might not find me quite so intimidating, but for the time being he did fall silent.
“Better mount up soon,” Rook said, clapping me on the shoulder for the second time that day. “We’re leaving pretty quick, and I know how long it takes you.”
“Very funny,” I muttered, and he strode off to his place at the front of the lines, up ahead with Kalim himself.
I mounted my own camel with a certain grim determination that served me well—I didn’t fall off the animal, in any case, which would have made Kalim do
ubt even the small responsibilities he’d granted me, nor did I shame myself in front of Geoffrey—no longer a friend and certainly no longer a colleague. A shout went up from the ranks ahead, and I saw the few remaining women and children scurrying to either side of the crowd of mounted warriors. I gave Geoffrey a sharp look, just to let him know I was keeping my eye on him, then we were off.
Never before had I been privy to such a sight—men and camels moving together like the waves of a desert ocean, purposeful and momentous. They moved silently, strange as shadows, in a single rush. It lacked the overwhelming majesty of a dragon midflight, but it offered the same immediate danger as dragonflight did—the mechanisms different, the basic principles the same. To suddenly become part of such a group was something I’d never once dared to imagine for myself. For the first time, I had no desire at all to take notes or record what was happening in any way. If I were to take my eyes off anything for even a second, I would miss a vital moment of the action, and that was an unbearable thought.
“You aren’t really going to use that knife on me,” Geoffrey said, over the thudding of camel’s hooves.
“So long as you don’t do anything to warrant it,” I told him, knowing perfectly well what sort of comfort he could derive from that. I was becoming more and more like Rook with each passing day. It wasn’t what I wanted, but neither did it seem to signal the end of the world, as it might once have done.
Geoffrey fell silent again, and as we rode on I found it rather preferable to fumbling for awkward methods of conversation about topics on which we assuredly did not see eye to eye.
I had no knowledge of how long it would take us to search out our enemy. I’d been privy to the strategy talks, and Bakr had named the place in the desert he thought it most likely for the enemy to be sequestered at this season, but my knowledge of the desert was not extensive enough that I could recognize it—and the scales of measuring distance on their maps were unfathomable to me. In essence, I was riding blind into the wind, and even though I knew I would not be joining the others “in the thick of it,” as it were, I was still a man of their number. Humbling, sobering, and exciting all at once. Somehow, I did like it.
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