“I can go no further,” I told the Kur.
He turned to face me, crouched over, He pointed now to his right, for the first time. He pointed directly eastward, toward the dunes. It was at this point, I understood, that he would enter the dunes for his overland trek.
I looked at the dunes to my left, shimmering with beat, rippled in the wind, the tops like bright, tawny smoke in the light.
It would be madness and death to enter them.
He pointed to his right, with the long arm, to the dunes.
“I can go no further,” I told him.
He approached me. I regarded him. He took me by the arms and threw me to his feet in the dirt. I heard him take the water bag, and heard it being ripped. My hands were jerked behind me and tied. My ankles were crossed and tied. With portions of the water bag and shreds from it, the Kur bound his feet, to protect them from the sand. He twisted a rope from other strips of the bag. I felt this, as I lay in the sand and grit, knotted about my throat. With his teeth he severed the leather that had bound my ankles. I almost strangled. I was jerked to my feet. The Kur turned toward the dunes, the rope of twisted leather in his right paw. Then he led me, tethered behind him, his human prisoner, climbing, slipping, up the first long, sloping crest, into the dunes.
“You are mad, mad!” I wanted to scream at him. But I could only whisper, and scarce could heir my own voice.
He continued on, and I, tethered, followed him.
The wind whipped across the sand.
I have marched to Klima, I told myself. I march again to Klima. I march again to Klima. But on the march to Klima I had had water, salt.
Sometime in the late afternoon I must have fallen unconscious in the sand. I dreamt of the baths of Ar and Turia. I awakened in the night. No longer was I bound. I was carried in the arms of the Kur, over the silvered dunes. He moved slowly. He was lame in his right foot. I lay against wounds in his upper chest.
They were open. But they did not bleed.
Again I fell asleep. The next time I awakened it was shortly before dawn. The Kur, near me, half covered with sand, stirred by the wind, slept. I rose to my feet, unsteadily. Then I fell. I could not stand.
I sat in the sand, my back against a dune. I watched the Kur. It had been an admirable, mighty beast. But now the deserts, and its wounds, were killing it.
It was now weak, and drawn. Its flesh seemed to hang upon its huge frame, a shrunken reminiscence of the former mightiness of the beast. I regretted, strangely, seeing its decline. I wondered at what drove it, why it strove so relentlessly in its mission, whatever that might be. It dared to pit itself against the desert. I noted its fur. No longer was it sleek, but now it seemed lifeless, brittle; it was dry; it was coated with sand. The leather of its snout, with the two nostrils, was cracked and, now, oddly gray. Its mouth and lips were dry, like paper. About the snout, the nostrils, the mouth and lips, were tiny fissures, broken open, filled with sand. Sand, too, rimmed the nostrils and eyes, and the mouth and lips. It lay in the sand, curled, its head facing away from the wind, like something discarded, needed no longer, cast aside. It, proud beast, had pitted itself against the desert. It had lost. What prize, I wondered, could be worth the risk the beast had been willing to take, the price it had been willing to pay, its own life. I wondered if it could rise again to its feet. I did not think either of us would survive the day.
The sun was rising.
The beast rolled to its feet, and shook the sand from its fur. It stood unsteadily.
“Go without me,” I said. “I cannot walk. You can no longer carry me.”
The beast lifted its long arm and pointed to the sun. It lifted two fingers.
It approached me. “I cannot go with you,” I said. “What is so important”‘ I asked.
The beast, with one of his digits, rubbed about its lips and tongue. It thrust the finger against my lips. I tasted sand, and salt.
“I cannot swallow,” I said.
The beast regarded me for a long time. Its corneas were no longer yellow, but pale and whitish. There seemed no moisture in the eyes. At the corners the tiny cracks about the eyes were coated with sand. My own eves stung. I no longer attempted to remove particles from them.
The beast turned away from me and bent his head over his cupped hands. When he again turned to face me I saw, in the black cup of his paws, a foul fluid. I thrust my face to his hands, and, my own hands trembling, holding his cupped hands, drank. Four times did the beast do this. It was water from the last large water hold we had visited, where the half-eaten tabuk had been found, held for days in the beast’s storage stomach. It was water, in a sense, from his own tissues he gave me, releasing it now, not into his own system, but yielding it to me, that I might not die. Again did the beast try to give me water, but then there was none left. He had given me the last of his water. Now again, from his mouth and lips, and body, he scraped salt. He took it, too, from the bloody crusts of his wounds. I took it, with the sand, licking at it, now able to swallow it. He had given me; it seemed an inexplicable gift, water and salt from his own body.
“I can trek again,” I told him. “It will not be necessary to carry me, should you be able to do this, or to bind me, leading me as a prisoner. You have given me the water and salt from your own body. I do not know what you seek, or what your mission may be, but I shall accompany you. We shall go together.”
But the beast motioned now that I should rest. Then he stood between me and the sun and, in the shade of his body, as he moved from time to time, I slept.
I dreamed of the ring he wore about the second finger of his left hand.
When the moons were high I awakened. Then I followed the Kur. He moved slowly, being lame. His desiccated tissues, I did not think, would much longer support life. The water he had been saving, perhaps for me, was gone.
I did not know what he sought. Yet I admired him that he should so indomitably seek it. I did not think it an ill or unworthy thing to die in the company of such a beast.
At his side I sensed the will and nobility of the Kur. They were indeed splendid foes for Priest-Kings and men. I wondered if either Priest-Kings or men could be worthy of them.
Thus, natural enemies, a human and a Kur, in a strange truce in the desert, side by side, trekked. I knew not toward what. I did not question, nor had I questioned, did I think my companion could have responded to me. I accompanied him.
Many times during the night he fell. He grew visibly weaker. I waited for him to regain his feet. Then we would again take up our march.
Near morning we rested. In an Ahn he tried to rise, but could not. He looked at the sun. In the sand, with one digit, he drew a single mark. He curled the great clawed right fist, and struck the sand once with it, hopelessly. Then he fell into the sand.
I thought that he would die then, but he did not. At times during the day, when I lay in the shadow of his body, I thought him dead but, putting my ear to his chest, I detected the beating of the large heart, slow, irregular, sporadic, fitful like the clenching of a weakening fist.
In the night I prepared to bury the Kur. I dug a trench in the sand. I waited for it to die.
I regretted that there would be no stone with which to mark the grave.
When the moons were full, he put back his bead and I saw the rows of fangs. To my horror he struggled again to his feet, and, shaking the sand from his body, took up again the march. In awe I followed it.
In the morning he did not stop to rest. He pointed again to the sun, and this time lifted a closed fist.