She saw the incomprehension in his eyes and explained further. 'Aseikh is our word for leader. He is the headman of the Khoresh Bedullin people. He's also my husband,' she added. 'And he knows that our tent needs mending and that I have a carpet that needs beating. This is why he is surely involved in weighty affairs right now.'
The hint of a smile touched her mouth. Will had the feeling that an Aseikh might be the leader of his people but, like husbands the world over, he answered to the ultimate authority of his wife.
'I would like to thank him,' he said and she nodded agreement.
'I'm sure he would enjoy that too.'
Chapter 28
'These Tualaghi are good at this,' Gilan said as he and Halt swung back into their respective saddles. Selethen was seated on his own mount, waiting to hear what the Rangers had found.
It was the fifth time that afternoon that they had lost the trail left by the Tualaghi war party ahead of them, and had to cast around on foot for some faint sign showing the direction they had taken.
Halt grunted in reply as they headed out again. On the first day, the Tualaghi had pushed on without making any attempt to hide their progress. But after that, they had begun to cover their tracks, leaving a small party to follow behind and obliterate the signs left by the main group as they gradually changed direction. Of course, they couldn't manage to remove every trace of their passing, but only trackers with the skill of Halt and Gilan would see the faint signs remaining.
'This is how it's been any time we've tried to follow them,' Selethen said. 'We'd see their trail clearly for a while, then they would simply disappear.'
'Makes sense,' Halt told them. 'You need daylight to cover tracks like this, just as we need daylight to follow them. The first day, they'd be keen to put as many kilometres behind them as possible. My guess is they ride out before dawn and keep pushing till the middle of the day. Then they rest and continue on in the late afternoon and evening. Then, when they've established a lead over their pursuers, they start all this zigzagging and track covering.' He looked at Selethen. 'That's when your trackers lose the trail and you have to give up,' he said. Selethen nodded glumly.
'At least this is slowing them down,' Gilan put in.
Halt nodded. 'They have to travel in daylight, the same as we do. And they're not taking a direct route. My guess is we've closed the gap by half a day.'
The two Rangers had been able to cut a few corners in their pursuit. It had quickly become apparent that the Tualaghi, perhaps overconfident in their past ability to confuse Arridi pursuers, had fallen into a pattern of false trails and zigzags. After several hours, the pattern had become predictable and Gilan and Halt had been able to ignore several of the false trails and keep on a more direct route, picking up the real trail some kilometres further on. It had also quickly become apparent that when they laid a false trail, they would take less effort to cover it. They were good, as Gilan had noted. But they lacked the important element of subtlety.
Of course, it helped that Halt and Gilan could work as a team. When they reached a diversion, Gilan would follow it for a short time, as insurance, while Halt led the Arridi party along the path the enemy had been taking previously. The fact that the pursuing party was travelling in the early morning or late afternoon was another piece of luck. The oblique, low angle light made it easier to sight the disturbances and faint hoof prints left in the thin sand covering the desert.
So far, whenever they had adopted this tactic, they had rediscovered the real trail within a few kilometres, at which point Gilan would rejoin them. Fortunately, the terrain was flat and they were able to maintain line of sight communication for considerable distances.
As Halt had said, this had put them half a day closer to the Tualaghi. But he wanted to get closer still. He looked up at the sun, shading his eyes with his hand. It was getting close to the middle of the day, when they'd have to rest from the heat.
'I'm thinking,' he said to Selethen, 'that this afternoon, the three of us might push on ahead. We'll move more quickly that way and we can leave clear signs for the rest of the party to follow. I want to get close enough by tomorrow night for Gilan to take a look at these Tualaghi.'
Selethen nodded agreement. The suggestion made sense. With a party of fifty men, they were limited by the slowest horse in the group. And the continual stop-start nature of their progress, when Halt and Gilan had to search for tracks on the hard ground, added to the time they were taking. Each time they stopped, it took that much longer to reassemble a large party and get it under way again. There was always a girth to be tightened, a stone in a horse's hoof, a piece of equipment needing adjustment, another drink to be taken from a water skin. It might only be a few minutes here and there but it all added up over a day.
'We'll keep going for a few more kilometres,' he said, is 'then we'll rest. This afternoon, the three of us will go on ahead.'
It was a significant indication of the change in their relationship, Halt thought. After his initial suspicions at the scene of the massacre, the Wakir had placed his trust in the two Rangers to guide his party. Now he was willing to isolate himself from his own men and ride ahead with Halt and Gilan.
For his part, the Wakir felt a growing satisfaction at the prospect of dealing a telling blow to the Tualaghi tribesmen. The nomads knew that he had no Bedullin trackers working with him and they were overconfident, as the bearded Ranger had explained. If he and his warriors were able to stage a surprise attack sometime in the next few days, the old enemy might not be so ready to raid in future with their apparent ability to disappear into the desert wasteland undermined. They would never know how he managed to track them across the desert and he would make sure the knowledge never reached them.
He was in some awe of the ability of the two northerners to read signs on the ground. They had shown him several times what they were looking for, and what they sighted: a faint indentation in a softer piece of sand; a slight scrape of a hoof on a piece of stony ground; a thread from a saddle blanket or robe caught on one of the ever-present scrubby bushes. Tiny signs that he would never notice. Yet their keen eyes read them as if the facts were written on the ground in large letters. He also reflected wryly on his willingness to ride off alone with them. He had been tempted to take one or two of his troops as well. But he rejected the notion. It was important, he felt, to show these men that he trusted them.
Gilan was swinging down from the saddle again and running a few paces ahead, staring down at the ground. His bay horse followed obediently behind him, saving him the time needed to run back and remount. The young Ranger reminded Selethen of a searching hound with his energy and eagerness to follow the trail of the Tualaghi.
'This way,' he was calling, pointing slightly to the left, and the Arridi party swung their horses to follow the direction he had indicated.
After resting through the middle of the day, Selethen and the two Rangers moved ahead of the main party, having arranged to leave signs behind for the others to follow. At every change in direction, they would scrape a large arrow in the ground. Or, if the ground were too hard, they would form an arrow with stones and rocks.
After the first two hours, it was obvious that they were moving more quickly than Selethen's troopers. The small cloud of dust raised by the body of horsemen was barely visible on the horizon. Halt frowned thoughtfully as he studied it.