The giant red ball of the sun was close to the horizon when he decided it was time to stop. He had to gather firewood and he needed light for that. He hobbled Arrow and walked to an outcrop of low, dry bushes, drawing his saxe knife with his right hand. His bow was in his left and he used it to reach out and shake the bush violently, as he had seen Selethen's men doing. Sand cobras lurked in the shade under such bushes, he knew, and he intended to scare any out before putting his hand into a potential death trap.
But there were none and he gathered a sufficient supply of firewood. The bush's branches were full of oil and they would burn with a bright, dry heat for a considerable time before being consumed.
He built the fire but didn't light it. Then, with that immediate task taken care off, he unsaddled Arrow and piled his gear to one side. He glanced at the sky and looked at the tent beside his saddle and bedroll.
'No need for it,' he said finally.
He spread out his bedroll and blanket and sat on them, wincing as one of the desert's multitude of stones dug into his rump. His tastebuds ached for a cup of coffee but he didn't have the water to spare. He contented himself with another swig from the water skin and a handful of dates. Seeing Arrow's reproachful look, he rose, groaning as his knees took the strain, and moved to feed and water the horse.
The sun finally disappeared and the day's heat began to leach out of the desert. By midnight, it would be close to freezing, he knew. He checked Arrow's hobbles, then returned to his bedroll. He was exhausted. The heat of the day had been a palpable force and it seemed to have beaten against his body, leaving him feeling battered and worn out. The darkness grew and the stars began to blaze out above him.
As more and more of them blinked on, he lay back, an arm behind his head, to study them. Normally he found the stars a welcoming, friendly sight. But not tonight. Tonight his thoughts were with Tug, lost somewhere in this pitiless desert. And with Halt and the others, far away to the south-west. He thought sadly about the cheerful conversation by the camp fire, and cups of thick, sweet coffee. He licked his lips.
Even the stars were no comfort to him. They were strangers. Cold and pitiless and uninterested in him and his plight. The familiar constellations of the northern latitudes were missing here. When he inched around, he could see one or two of them, low on the northern horizon.
But these foreign desert stars gave him no comfort at all.
Arrow stirred and, in the distance, Will heard a low, grunting cough. He knew that was the sound that a lion made. He would have expected a majestic, earth-shattering roar. But this asthmatic coughing grunt was the reality. He looked at the horse. Arrow stood straight, ears pricked, eyes showing a lot of white.
'Better light a fire,' Will said reluctantly. He stood painfully, moved to the fire and went to work with flint and steel. Within a few minutes he had a small, bright fire burning. He led Arrow a little closer to it. The horse moved awkwardly in its hobbles but Will couldn't risk removing them and losing him.
'Settle down,' he told him. Within a few minutes, Arrow had. His head drooped again, his ears relaxed.
Will stretched out and pulled the blanket up around his chin. Accustomed to sleeping when the opportunity arose, he dropped off almost at once.
The moon had risen when Arrow's startled whinny jerked him awake. For a second or two there was an awful sense of disorientation while he wondered where he was. Then he remembered and came to his feet, his bow in one hand and an arrow in the other, eyes searching the thick darkness around them.
He heard the coughing grunt again and it seemed that it could be a little closer. He stirred the fire, added a few more branches and sat down, his back against his saddle, the bow across his knees.
He hitched the blanket up around his shoulders and settled himself, resigned to the fact that he would have to keep guard sitting up and dozing fitfully, while every muscle and bone in his body ached for him to stretch out and relax.
'No rest for the wicked,' he said. He sensed it was going to be a long, cold, uncomfortable night.
Chapter 24
As Will had noted to himself, Selethen had kept his party moving in the pre-dawn hours each day.
They would wake hours before dawn when the Arridi escort would prepare cook-fires, making coffee and toasting the flat bread over the coals. Selethen noticed that a change had come over the party of Araluans since the young Ranger had left them two days previously. No longer did they joke and laugh around the camp fire while they drank their morning coffee. They were subdued, concerned for their missing companion.
It was easiest to notice with the three younger members: Horace, the Princess and the young Ranger, Gilan. Halt, of course, had always maintained an unemotional facade. He was grim-faced and taciturn most of the time. But Selethen fancied that in the past days, the grimness was accentuated a little. It was obvious that the Ranger Will provided the heart and life of the group and the others felt his absence sorely.
Not that the two older Rangers were any less diligent in observing their surroundings and taking covert notes as they passed landmarks. He was sure they were memorising and noting prominent features so they could reproduce a map of the route from Al Shabah to Mararoc. Will might have given his oath never to reproduce the chart Selethen had given him, but the others were bound by no such promise. He was concerned about that but decided there was little he could do to stop them.
For the first few hours, in the pre-dawn dimness, they rode in their usual close-knit formation. Then, as the sun performed its spectacular arrival, the screen of cavalry around the central party moved out to take up their daylight travelling positions.
On the second day, a few hours after sun-up, they came upon the tracks of the party preceding them – the party who were taking Erak as a hostage to Mararoc. Prior to that point, of course, any sign left by the riders ahead of them had been obliterated by the massive storm that had swept over the desert. Now, they realised, they were within two days of them.
'They'll be moving more slowly than we are,' Halt said. He knew that Selethen had sent Erak with one of the regular caravans that travelled between Al Shabah and Mararoc, carrying trade goods from the coast to the inland city. Such caravans already had an armed escort and it made sense to kill two birds with one stone. But of course, the heavily laden pack mules and freight camels would slow the party down.
Gilan swung down from his saddle and knelt beside the marks in the hard ground. He made out faint impressions of hoofs here and there – all but invisible to an untrained eye. From time to time there were more obvious clues of the party's passage, in the form of piles of dung. Gilan poked at one with a stick, breaking it up to study the moisture content inside. Rangers used such clues to determine how fresh the tracks might be – moisture in horse dung or sap in the broken stem of a twig snapped by a passing animal. But they were unused to the blinding heat and dryness of the Arridi desert and the effect it had on moisture content.
'Hard to say how old it is,' he said finally. Halt shrugged.
'It'd dry out a lot faster here than further north. We know it can't be more than two days old. It's been left there since the storm passed through.'
Gilan nodded. 'You're right. But if I were to see that back home, I'd say it was three to four days old. It's worth knowing for future reference, I suppose.'
He straightened, brushing dust off his knees, and swung up into Blaze's saddle once more. He glanced towards Selethen and saw that the Wakir had stopped his horse as well and was fiddling with the ties that held his bedroll in place behind the saddle. The Arridi horse was turned at forty-five degrees to the direction of travel and Gilan had no doubt that the Arridi leader's eyes beneath the shadow of his kheffiyeh were trained unwaveringly on himself and Halt.