Retrieving the water skin, Will slung it over his shoulder and prepared to mount.
Then he stopped and patted Arrow gently on the neck. 'I'll walk for a while,' he said. 'You've been doing all the work.'
He took out his Northseeker and checked his course, seeking a bearing point. There was a vertical pillar of rock and salt in the middle distance, the crystals reflecting painfully in the sun. But that made it easier to keep track of and he set off for it.
Arrow trudged after him, head down, his hooves now making a strangely muffled sound on the desert sand.
A further mistake. Burdened by the inescapable heat, Will took off his cloak and draped it over Arrow's saddle. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and, for a few moments, he felt a little cooler. But it was an illusion. The cloak, like the flowing garments of the Arridi, helped the body retain moisture. Without it, and exposed to the sun, he began to dehydrate even more rapidly than before.
In addition, his bare arms began to redden, then to burn, then to blister. But by the time he might have realised his mistake, Will was no longer capable of intelligent thought. His system was shutting down. His thinking was becoming erratic and unreliable. And still he hadn't seen that elusive formation of balancing rocks. They were an obsession with him now. They had to be here somewhere and he had to see them. Soon, he told himself. Soon. He could no longer appreciate the fact that he had hoped to see them after an hour or two travelling. He had now been riding and walking for over four hours with no sign of them.
Some time after noon he turned to face Arrow.
'Have you seen them?' he asked. – Arrow looked at him disinterestedly. Will frowned.
'Not talking, eh?' he said. 'Maybe you're a little hoarse.'
He cackled briefly at his own wit and for a moment, he had that uncomfortable sensation again – that he was standing to one side watching himself and the horse stumble across the desert. He became aware of the water skin slung across his shoulders.
'Need a drink,' he said to Arrow. Irrationally, he told himself that the water skin was weighing him down. If he drank some more, it would be lighter. And he would move more easily, he decided.
He drank deeply, then became aware of Arrow's accusing eyes on him. Guiltily, he re-stoppered the skin and set off again.
It was then that the realisation hit him. Selethen had given him a false map. There were no cliffs pockmarked with caves. There was no flat-topped hill. Of course, the Wakir wouldn't hand him such a valuable strategic document! Why hadn't he seen it before? The swine had given him a false chart and sent him out into the desert to die.
'He tricked us,' he told the horse. 'But I'll show him. We must be close to that soak by now. We'll find it and I'll go back and ram his map down his lying throat.'.
He frowned. If the map were false, there would be no water soak just a few kilometres away. He hesitated. Yet there must be a soak. There had to be! Then his thoughts cleared.
'Of course!' he told Arrow. 'He couldn't falsify the whole thing! Some of it must be true! Otherwise we'd have seen right through it straight away! That's real cunning for you.'
That problem solved, he decided that he could afford to give Arrow some more of the precious water. But the effort of untying and assembling the folding bucket seemed too much. Instead, he let the water trickle into his cupped hand, laughing softly as Arrow's big tongue licked at it. Some of it spilled, of course, soaking instantly into the baking sand. But it didn't matter. There would be plenty more at the soak.
'Plenty more at the soak,' he told the horse.
He replaced the stopper and stood swaying beside Arrow. The problem was, he thought, without another drink, he might not have the strength to reach the soak. Then he would die, all because he refused to drink the water he already had. That would be foolish. Halt wouldn't approve of that, he thought. Coming to a decision, he removed the stopper and drained the last of the water. Then he set off, staggering, beckoning Arrow to follow.
'Come on, boy,' he said, the words sounding like the harsh croaking of a crow.
He fell. The ground burnt his hands as he tried to break the fall and he didn't have the strength to rise. He lifted his head and then, wonder of wonders, he saw it!
The balancing rock, just as Selethen had drawn it! It was only a few hundred metres away and he wondered how he could have missed seeing it before this. And just beyond that would be the soak, and all the water he could drink.
He couldn't stand. But he could easily crawl that far. He began to crawl towards those beautiful balancing rocks.
'How do they do it? Why don't they fall over?' he marvelled. Then he added, with a chuckle, 'Good old Selethen! What a map!' He looked behind him. Arrow stood, feet wide apart, head hanging, not following.
'Come on, Arrow!' he called. 'Plenty of water this way! Come on! Just to the rocks! The wonderful, wonderful balancing rocks! How do they do it? Step right up and see!'
He didn't realise that his words were an indecipherable croak. The water he'd just drunk hadn't been enough to compensate for the amount he had lost in the past five hours.
He continued to crawl, dragging himself over the rough, stony ground – the stones cutting his hands and the heat burning them. He left bloody handprints behind him – handprints that quickly dried to a dull brown in the insufferable heat. Arrow watched him going with dispirited eyes. But the horse made no move to follow him. There was no reason to.
There were no balancing rocks and Will was crawling in a giant circle.
Chapter 26
Selethen looked up quickly at Halt's words, a frown creasing his forehead.
'Who would pay them to do such a thing?' he asked. 'And why would they do it?'
Halt met his gaze evenly. He knew the Arridi was angry and emotional over the death of so many of his men – and he sensed that his feelings were fuelled by a longstanding hatred of the Tualaghi tribesmen. The situation was a dangerous one and he would have to choose his words carefully. The more he knew about what had gone on here, he reasoned, the better he could convince Selethen of what he was about to say. He turned and spoke quietly to Gilan.
'Take a look around. See if you can figure out what happened.'
The young Ranger nodded and moved off. Only then did Halt address Selethen's question.
'I'd say that whoever betrayed Erak to you in the first place is behind this,' he replied.
'That'd be Toshak.' Svengal had approached unnoticed. He had been searching the scene for his Oberjarl's body and had come to the same conclusion as Halt. 'It'd be exactly the sort of thing he'd get up to.'
Selethen looked from Halt to Svengal, then back again. Now there was another emotion showing on his face – suspicion.
'Who is this Toshak?' he challenged. 'I've never heard the name. And why would he pay to have your Oberjarl abducted?'
'For the same reason he betrayed Erak to you in the first place. He wants him out of the way,' Halt said. He saw Selethen was about to ask another question but he continued, talking over the other man. 'It's politics,' he said. 'Skandian politics. There's a small group of Skandians who resent Erak and would like to see him deposed.'
He saw a first glimpse of understanding in the Arridi's face. Arrida was rife with political intrigue and Selethen accepted this as a plausible explanation. But he wasn't fully convinced.
'I repeat. I've never heard of this Toshak person. I take it he's a Skandian, like you?' He addressed the last question to Svengal, whose face darkened into a scowl.