Stormlord rising

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Red Quarter and Scarpen Quarter Dunes and Warthago Range Ryka had never been so weary. Long days on the saddle under a hot sun had merged into one another, each spent dodging dune encampments and driving the two young pedes out of the way to avoid groups of riders. The quarter was alive with warriors on the move, riding between dunes and along dunes and across dunes to assemble at their agreed meeting point. She was always tense: straining her inadequate eyesight to glimpse riders, straining her unreliable water-sense to track approaching pedes and men so she could evade them, straining her own cumbersome body with too many hours on the saddle.

Finally-how many days was it? She couldn't remember-she crossed the southernmost dune undetected. Ahead was the Scarpen; ahead somewhere was safety. And Kaneth. But her backtracking and detours had delayed her far too much. And so she rode on toward the Warthago Range, knowing that for her, the sand was running too fast through the glass. She bypassed Qanatend at night, stealing water from a pede livery outside the walls as she rode by. She hoped somewhere within were Ravard and Davim and their men, but she knew it was more likely they were still ahead of her, already pushing their way deep into the Scarpen.

The track upward was hard on the young pedes. They had never encountered such a steady climb and they fussed and clicked their anxiety. Whichever one she was riding would swing its feelers behind to flick her in irritation, sometimes grazing her skin on their spines. She found herself bribing them with treats more and more often, just so they would keep going. The second day past Qanatend was even worse than the first because she wasn't feeling well. She'd lost her appetite. Her back ached. No matter how she wriggled or squirmed, she couldn't find a comfortable way of sitting on the saddle.

And then the reason struck her. Oh, no. Not now. Then, aloud and even more anguished, "Nooooo." Her baby was on its way. And she was still short of the mother cistern. Blackwing, sensing her inattention, ambled to a halt and turned to look at her. She raised her head, pulled a face at him and gave him a prod between the segments. When he'd started up again, she turned her senses upward. Water, a lot of it. The cistern was only a couple of hours further on. Her powers were not sufficient to tell her what she would find there, not from this distance and not against a background of so much water. As hard as she tried, she couldn't sense people or pedes until she was dangerously close to them.

You have no choice, Ryka. Push on-and hope there are no Reduners there. Hope they are all still back in Qanatend. And perhaps you had better consider turning religious as well because a prayer or two might be in order…

A little voice that had been bothering her thoughts ever since she'd left the Watergatherer whispered, Do you really think the Reduners in Qanatend would leave their water supply unguarded?

You're a rainlord. You can do this, Ryka, she told herself, you know you can.

She shouldn't listen to the little voices in her head; they never said cheery things, blast them. It never occurred to her that Kaneth had not stuck to their original plan. It did not cross her mind that, once he realized his group of escaping slaves was without a rainlord to tell them when they were in danger, he would decide it was safer to trek north to join forces with a woman fast becoming a legend: Vara Redmane. It was just after sunset, but there was still light in the sky as Jasper, Laisa and Lord Ouina of Breakaway silently led a group of Gibbermen down the slope, from where they'd left their pedes to the lanterns. Overhead, Jasper amassed waiting clouds to cloak the sky until the night had an eerie sombreness. The lack of star-shine reduced the normal exuberance of the Gibbermen to wide-eyed silence.

"A black sky," one of them had muttered earlier, eyes wide with fear. "Whoever heard of such a thing?"

"It's unnatural," his companion whispered. "It's like walkin' down an adit after your lamp blew out."

Even after Jasper had explained, they weren't any happier. Spooked by a darkness they had never known, they were like pebblemice caught out in the open, startled at every little sound, jumping at the sight of a scraggy bush looming up out of the shadows.

To Jasper's surprise, nothing went wrong even though the men were jittery. They dispersed to light the lanterns and camp fires. When they returned, he sent them back to the Scarpen camp, leaving the three rainlords behind.

"Now I know what it is like to be a decoy mouse, set in the windhover trap," Laisa said in Jasper's ear as they waited for the Reduners to react. "You had better be right about this, Gibber boy, because there is no way two of us can dry up thousands of ziggers."

"You won't have to," he said, trying to express a confidence that suddenly seemed absurd.

She asked, "Are you going to explain just what that little snuggery girl of yours had to do with all this?"

"No," he said. "I'm not. There's nothing to tell. The Reduners will see the lamps and fires; they'll think it's our camp. They will loose their ziggers, we will stand here on the far side of the lamps. The ziggers will home in on our smell, but be distracted by the light. They'll fry themselves. Once they start coming, we move away."

"Sounds ridiculous to me," Ouina said with a scornful snort.

"To me, too," Laisa agreed.

Both women then proceeded to raise all the same questions that Terelle had, plus a few of their own, to ridicule the idea that the Reduners would release their ziggers.

Jasper listened patiently, and wondered what they would say if he said he knew it would happen because Terelle had painted it that way… It did sound ridiculous when you put it like that.

In the end Laisa did in fact ask, "And what the hells was that girl of yours painting dead ziggers for?"

"She's superstitious, that's all. She believes painting dead ziggers means all the ziggers will die."

"That's absurd!"

"Yes, isn't it?" he agreed, smiling blandly. Underneath his cheerful exterior, he wondered how long it would be before Laisa put two and two together and came up with an approximation of the truth. He had a horrible idea that if and when she did, it would mean trouble for Terelle. "What's happening?"

"The dark is eating the sky!"

Fear surrounded them on all sides. It was there in the whispers, in the eyes raised upward, in the harsh curses and the soft-spoken prayers, in the way men crowded together as if there was safety in proximity. Ravard was exasperated. These were the same men who displayed no fear when facing the reality of death in battle?

He and Davim and Medrim, the Warrior Son, moved among them, trying to dispel the fear and calm the mounting panic. "The stars are still there. Nothing is eating them, it's just a cloud blocking your view of the sky." "You afraid of a cloud now? What, you reckon it will come and eat you, too?"

Embarrassed, the men began to disperse as the word spread. Ravard, still carrying his burning pitch torch, returned to where their tents were erected, to find Davim had already arrived back and was now in conversation with Medrim and a Reduner whom Ravard didn't know. "This chalaman was on sentry duty up the gully to the south," Medrim was telling Davim. "There are lights and fires on the hillside above us, apparently a large camp. He reckons the Scarpen army must have come down just after dark and settled in for the night."

"Damned quiet about it they were, too, but they aren't trying to hide the lights, so they can't know we are so close," the chalaman added.

Ravard grinned, touched by an unexpected excitement. War. Battle: the promise of it was there in the shine of the sentry's eyes, in the anticipation of his tone.

"Show us," Davim ordered. "How many men do you estimate?"

"Several thousand, maybe? There must be a couple of hundred lamps at least, and a number of cooking fires. It's too sandblasted dark to see much, though, with the stars gone, and no way a scout can get close, not without making a racket."

Ravard knew Medrim's estimate was probably accurate. He was an experienced warrior. He was also Davim's uncle and he'd held the same position under the previous sandmaster. He would keep it, Ravard guessed, until one of Davim's sons was old enough to fill the role. I just wish he was a wiser man. We could do with some wisdom now. Experience is not everything…

Uneasily, he looked up. Half the night sky was still blotted out. Why? he wondered. So we don't have starlight to see when they attack? But then, how can they attack if they can't see, either? They'd be stumbling all over the place and we'd hear them coming. It didn't make sense, and Ravard didn't like things that didn't make sense.

Some time later, when they rounded a turn in the gully where the last row of sentries was posted, they had a view up the wash to Pebblebag Pass. On the hill slope there were scattered lights and flickering camp fires.

"You're right, Medrim. That's not a scouting party," Davim remarked, keeping his voice low even though they were too far away to be heard. "Too large by far. This is an attack force."

"Not Taquar's, surely?" Medrim asked.

"Hardly. This is the stormlord's trap for us."

Ravard struggled with that. "The message was from him, not Taquar?" The bastard! Davim knew all along. But he was worried the other tribes might give us trouble if they knew we were riding into a trap.

"Did you doubt it? Seems they are bringing the fight to us." He smiled. "I've been expecting something like this ever since I found out there have also been sky messages for that old bag of bones, Vara Redmane. As if the sandcrazy old bitch could read them! I hadn't expected they would set the trap so far down the gully, but I am glad they have. We will teach them the folly of their leadership."

"We attack?" Ravard asked, trying to sound nonchalant. His heart beat faster in his eagerness. And yet another niggling thought refused to be cast out entirely: what if Garnet wasn't lying? What if Jasper Bloodstone and Shale Flint were one and the same person-and Shale was up there somewhere? Shale, always being beaten down by Pa, and yet so bleeding stubborn he never gave in.

"Ever the warrior; aren't you, Ravard! I know you'd rather wield a sword than a zigger, but there are better ways of winning a battle than poking your nose into a scorpion's hole and getting it stung." Ravard couldn't see the sandmaster's smile, but he heard it in his tone as the man clapped Medrim on the back. "Let loose some ziggers up there-they'll do a better job than we ever could."

"How many?" Medrim asked.

"Make a thorough job of it. Send five thousand. We wouldn't want any of the Scarpermen to miss out, would we?" His tone told Ravard he was wearing that feral grin of his, that glint in his eye only ever fuelled by blood lust. Davim loved ziggers in a way Ravard never had.

"Five thousand?" Ravard was taken aback. A zigger that had gorged on human flesh was sated and useless for three days. A third of their ziggers would be out of action. And only Dune Watergatherer had that many.

Medrim warned, "We'll lose quite a few. They'll fly into the flames or sizzle themselves on the lantern glass."

"Some, yes." Davim didn't sound worried. "But once those men start screaming and running, they'll be better targets than a lantern, believe me."

Ravard rubbed irritably at the back of his neck as they returned to the camp, leaving the sentry at his post. So many things seemed to be bothering him lately. He hadn't liked the idea of returning to the southern Scarpen in the first place. While he approved of the idea of being free of the power of stormlords and returning to a Time of Random Rain, Davim's quest for power and his hatred of all Scarpen folk smelled dangerously passionate to Ravard. Passion was fine in a warrior, but in a leader? A man wanted to feel he was being led by someone who used his head, not his temper, to make decisions.

When he arrived in Qanatend, Ravard had tried to counsel caution, but Davim had not been in the mood to listen, especially not when the usually bold Master Son preached prudence. Davim then asked him, with considerable asperity, if Ravard had lost his guts. Medrim, the sunblasted old bastard, had laughed.

"So what if it is a trap?" Davim had asked. "We will prevail. The rainlords of the Scarpen are doomed. Jasper Bloodstone will either die or be in our hands. Either way, we win."

Ravard's unease was with him still as he and Medrim ordered the zigger assault. It wasn't a simple matter; each dune used ziggers attuned to a different perfume. With their appetites satisfied, they were happy to return to their cages and ignore anyone else around, but until that moment it was essential only warriors doused with the correct perfume were anywhere in the release area.

They thought of giving everyone the Watergatherer scent, but a look at the stores convinced him there wasn't enough of it. Instead, Medrim pulled back everyone except the men of Dune Watergatherer, and sent them down the gully. Only Watergatherer ziggers were released, and he insisted that only cages with inbuilt zigtubes were to be used. This made the beetles crawl down a tube pointed in the right direction, one after another. They then tended to keep flying in a straight line. Haphazard release through an open cage door often meant more aimless flight as they hunted for a victim that smelled right. The last thing anyone wanted was fatalities among Reduners from other tribes.

Once he and Medrim had everything moving smoothly, and the first batch of the ziggers were on their way, Ravard didn't wait to hear the screams. He returned to the camp to report to Davim.

He ducked his head inside the flap of the sandmaster's tent. Davim was there, and so was a Qanatend slave woman, crying softly in the corner of the tent.

"You want me to get rid of her?" Ravard asked neutrally.

"No need. She doesn't speak a word of our tongue, and I shall have more need of her before the night is over. You can avail yourself of her reluctant services if you like. We will doubtless be fighting tomorrow, and this could be your last night on earth. What better way to spend it? The bitch bit me, though, so be careful."

There had been a time when he would have taken up the offer without a second thought, but now, since Garnet-

God, what had that woman done to him?

He thought of her wistfully. And wondered, not for the first time, why he hankered so after a woman who must be ten or fifteen cycles older than he was, and who was probably still in love with another man.

She looks me in the eye, he thought, as if she is my equal. A strange reason to like a woman, when he came to think of it. Maybe she is my equal. He didn't pursue that thought. It made him uncomfortable.

"All done?" Davim asked.

"The ziggers are on their way. Do you want to follow with an attack by the chalamen?"

"No. Not until we see in the morning what happened. Come in, come in. Have some amber with me. Best brew I could find in Qanatend." He held out a drink skin.

Ravard withdrew his head from the tent and glanced around. Down in the dry stream bed, rows of warriors were trying to get some sleep wrapped in their bedrolls against the cold; small fires of pede droppings glowed between the prone bodies, helping to take the cold cutting edge from the air. On the higher flat ground, the tents-belonging mostly to the sandmasters of other dunes and all the tribemasters-had their flaps laced shut. Ravard knew without being told that many of them contained other slave women, or men, brought upwash to use, just as Davim had used the girl now shivering in the corner.

Where men were still up, they were quiet, chatting around a fire perhaps, or eating a late meal. Everything was as it should be. It would be at least half a sandglass run before the first ziggers returned. There was nothing to do but wait, so he entered the tent, accepting the skin as he sat. He tossed a blanket to the girl before lifting the skin to his lips.

Davim gave a mocking smile. "You are too soft, tribemaster," he said.

Ravard shrugged. "Not where it counts."

"Don't disappoint me tomorrow."

"Do you expect me to?" He handed the skin back to Davim. He wasn't interested in drinking and had taken little more than a sip. If he died in the fighting to come, he didn't want it to be because he was slurped. He didn't like drunkenness; it reminded him too much of his father, Galen the sot. Dune god save me, I hate the bastard even now.

"No, I don't think you will. I made a man of you. You were nothing when you came to the dunes. Nothing but a sniveling Gibber grubber scared of his own shadow." Davim took a long drink. "I beat that out of you. In fact, I beat the fear out of you. You're not afraid of anything now, are you?"

He grinned. "I have a healthy fear of my sandmaster."

"Here, drink up." Davim handed the skin back and lay down on his pallet, hands behind his head. The girl watched him fearfully, but he drifted off into a doze.

Ravard wanted to see whether the ziggers were already returning, but decided to wait a little longer in case Davim woke. He ignored the girl, now wrapped in the blanket in the corner, and stared at the sandmaster instead. Asleep, he looked almost benign.

Those unwelcome thoughts intruded again. What if the sandmaster had known who Mica was right from the beginning? What if Davim was the one who had killed Citrine just to teach Shale a lesson?

Ravard's memories of that day were blurred by the terror of the event, muddied by the intervening years. If Davim was the man who had come and spoken to them outside the huts, who had seized Citrine, Ravard was unaware of it. The Reduners had all looked the same to him then-redmen, heads and lower faces wrapped in red cloth, red tunics, red breeches, every one of them armed, merciless and terrifying. He had no recollection of anyone in particular. He'd been so scared he'd pissed in his breeks, he remembered that much.

The rest was just one horror piled on the next. Citrine first, then his mother, then his father. Shale starting to scream like a desert cat caught in a trap, screaming and clawing like a wild thing, until one of the redmen had punched him in the stomach. The air had gone out of him, the redman had picked him up like a sack of bab fruit under one arm-and Ravard had never seen him again. He hadn't turned up among the slaves, so he must have been killed, like so many others that day. Another grief he'd had to bear. Or so he'd thought.

He'd never spoken about it to Davim. Never asked him why he had chosen that settle. He'd just assumed it was one of many attacked by the Reduners in their desire to end the dominance of the Quartern.

But Garnet had said the sandmaster had gone there to find Shale…

Because Shale was a stormlord.

She'd said he was still alive. A wave of nausea swept over Ravard.

No. Garnet was a liar. He couldn't bear to think what she had told him was true.

What if he, Ravard, was just a weapon to be used as Davim willed, when he willed, and discarded when it was convenient? Used, manipulated. A hostage for Shale's good behavior, if ever that became necessary. Davim had two legitimate sons. The eldest was not old enough to braid his hair yet, but when he was-what then? Would he be named Master Son in Ravard's place?

Shale, his enemy. The ziggers he'd just ordered released-one of them right now burrowing into his little brother. An agonizing death.

No.

No. He wouldn't believe it. He wouldn't.

Outside, someone screamed. A hideous, jagged sound, scarifying furrows of panic through his mind. He shot out of the tent, scimitar drawn, Davim right behind him flinging on his tunic as he came.

A chalaman raced past, his eyes wild with shock.

"What is it?" Davim shouted.

"Ziggers!" the man screamed, the whites of his eyes large in the dark of his face. "Tens of them!"

Davim grabbed Ravard by the arm and wrenched him back into his tent with him. Then he closed the tent flap. Ravard automatically began checking to see there were no gaps or holes anywhere. The girl watched them, wide-eyed.

Davim gave a half-laugh. "Now, there's a good idea!" He reached out a hand and ripped the blanket from her to expose her nakedness. Opening the tent flap just wide enough to accommodate her, he made her crawl out on all fours, but kept a hold on her ankle. Then he yanked at her so she fell flat just outside the entrance. Still clutching her foot, he tightened the tent flap around her ankle and tied it tightly. "There," he said, "that should save a few lives at least."

Ravard, disgusted, tried to keep his expression neutral. "If these are the ziggers we released, they are all from Watergatherer. You and I are in no danger." He didn't need to ask if Davim wore the perfume; no one ever neglected to do so, even when they were at peace.

The foot wriggled, but Davim kept a tight grip. The girl continued her wailing, not understanding, but knowing something bad was about to happen. "Blasted female," Davim complained. "She never would stop that hideous noise of hers."

A moment later the crying melted into a sound of pure terror, and the sandmaster grinned at Ravard. Gulping sounds followed, as if she was experiencing pain so severe she could not even scream. The noises continued for five or six minutes before she was quiet.

"In the end she proved herself useful after all," Davim said carelessly, and released his hold on her ankle. He pushed her foot outside the tent.

Ravard swallowed back his bile. She's only a slave. He didn't know her. It shouldn't worry him, but it did.

In the distance, they could hear other cries of anguish. Withering hells, Ravard thought, it takes a lot to make a Reduner warrior shriek like that.

Davim asked, "Now tell me why, if they are our ziggers, they would return without having fed?"

"If not ours, then whose? Taquar's? Scarcleft's the only city that has any number of them."

Davim didn't answer.

The screaming outside subsided, but Ravard dreaded what he would find. Most of the Reduners did not have tents. If the ziggers were Watergatherer ones returning unsated, then only those from other dunes were vulnerable. If they were Taquar's, then everyone was at risk.

"Why did you attack Wash Drybone Settle?" he asked suddenly. The question startled him. He hadn't thought about asking it; he'd just blurted it out. He didn't even know what he would do with the answer when it came.

Davim stared at him as if he was mad. "What?" he asked. "Where?"

"Wash Drybone. Where I was born."

"What has that to do with anything? Are you sun-fried?"

"I need to know."

Davim threw his hands up in the air. "I heard there was a boy there who had water-powers."

"Did you find him?"

"Does it look as if I found him? Can you see him anywhere? I counted us lucky we found you. Although who would have thought then that you would become a water sensitive with enough water skill to be a tribemaster?" He pointed at the tent flap. "Now get the sand hells out there and see what's happening. Let's hope they were Watergatherer ziggers, eh?" The glare he gave was a challenge. He'd given an order and he expected obedience, knowing it could mean Ravard's death if there were stray ziggers from another place-and not caring.

I mean that little to him. Garnet was right. Burning with anger, he went. No warrior defied a direct order, ever.

He took a lamp with him. As Davim retied the tent flap behind him, he stepped over the girl She was dead, of course. Blood oozed sluggishly from the ruin of an eye. It looked as if she had been attacked by only one beetle. It still sat on her chin, cleaning the flesh from its wing cases with its back legs. When it had finished, it opened the cases, displaying its gauzy delicate wings in a rainbow of shimmering color, and flew away.

Ravard looked around.

One of his own bladesmen came up, his face haggard, his gaze still glassy with shock. He was holding his zigger cage. There was only one zigger inside. It sat quietly, cleaning itself.

"What happened?" Ravard snapped.

"Those that came back were hungry. So they burrowed into some of the men from Dune Sloweater."

"They were our ziggers? You're sure?"

The man nodded. "They didn't touch any of our sentries on the way in. None of our dune men here have been killed as far as I can see."

"How many others died?"

"Not that many. Maybe twenty or so."

"There were thousands of ziggers out there!"

"They-they haven't returned."

"Then what the bleeding hells happened to them?"

They looked at each other, unable to offer an explanation for the inexplicable.

"They couldn't just disappear!" Ravard protested.

"Kher, they've had more than enough time to fly there, gorge themselves ten times over if possible, and fly back. It has been more than two runs of a sandglass. We waited and waited. And then a few trickled in. But they hadn't fed. They were hungry!"

"The rest are dead?"

"Either that, or captured. Not one that came back had fed. Not one."

Ravard thought about that, his face grim.

"They say rainlords can kill ziggers with a glance," the bladesman remarked.

"Thousands of them? I doubt it. Where's Medrim?"

"Talking to the other tribesmen. Their sandmasters are furious, Kher. They don't like losing men to our ziggers. And our men aren't happy, either. They don't like losing trained ziggers."

"I'll go tell Sandmaster Davim what happened. He'll have to talk to the other sandmasters." He ducked back into the tent.

"I heard," Davim said irritably. He was strapping on his scimitar. "I'll speak to the sandmasters and tribemasters, although why I should have to is a mystery. Did they expect to fight a war without losing a man?"

"What do you think happened? I mean, where are all the missing ziggers?"

"Don't be pissing waterless! Dead, of course. It was a trap. Maybe the camp was full of rainlords waiting for them to fly in. Maybe it wasn't a camp at all. Maybe it was just the lights. You know what they're like around lights-moths to candle flame if they don't have anything else to distract them, like people to eat."

"Taquar-?"

"Taquar's no fool and he knows ziggers." Davim paused, and when he spoke again, his rage was more under control. "But Taquar needed us. It can't have been him. We have been tricked, Ravard. Go organize the burials while I calm down the dunesmen." It was much later when Ravard finally lay down to sleep in his own tent, tired, irritable and besieged by worries he could not shape into any sensible plan of action. He woke at the hour of deepest night to a sound he had never heard before. For a moment he lay absolutely still, listening to the impossibility of hundreds of fingertips pattering on the tent top. And a feeling of being surrounded by water.

God, he hadn't had that feeling since he and Shale had played in the water that came in that unexpected rush down the drywash when they were boys…

He sat up, listening, his overwhelmed senses muddled. The pattering changed to a battering, and water dripped onto his face. Water.

He stood up and touched the ceiling of the tent. A trickle of water ran down his arm. The tent sagged as a pool formed on the roof.

Water dropping on us. The thought was ridiculous. The stormlord must have broken that cloud over their heads. But why? The waste! He straightened his clothing, grabbed up his scabbard belt and scimitar and ran outside.

The darkness was profound. He wasn't used to that, and immediately ran smack into a panicked chalaman who had come to wake him. Water was falling on them, wetting their hair, their clothes, running into their eyes and ears. It was cold.

The chalaman blurted out, "Kher Davim wants to see you, Kher Ravard!"

Ravard pushed him away and ran on. Davim was standing outside his tent. "Why would the stormlord want to do this?" Ravard asked. He had to shout to make himself heard above the noise of the rain.

"I don't know," Davim yelled back. "One thing for certain, Taquar is not controlling him. I should have known that bleeding boy was going to cause us trouble. Smart-mouthed little wretch he was, even back when Taquar kept him caged. Tried to mock me-me!-by holding a ball of water over my head!"

As he was speaking, a tribemaster's tent next to them collapsed in on itself as tent pegs loosened in the deluge, and the jute canvas absorbed too heavy a burden of water. It had been a long time since Reduner tents were made to shield occupants from more than the sun, the night-dew and wind. Pedeshit, Ravard thought. If we ever do return to a Time of Random Rain, we are going to have to rethink how to make a tent.

The rain pelted down and Ravard was both appalled and impressed-water, wasted as if it was no more precious than dust on the wind. Water just flowing away, unused, sucked into thirsty, useless soil. "What should we do?" he asked. He was stunned, at a loss, wanting leadership. He wasn't the only one; the other sandmasters and tribemasters were gathering around. Several men were trying to funnel as much water as they could into their dayjars; others were ineffectively trying to shore up their tents.

Davim singled out Medrim. "Make sure the sentries stay alert. Double their number. I shall talk to the men." Ravard returned to his tent to snatch a short sleep. He dropped off quickly, but soon woke again to another sound, and to a hauntingly familiar feeling of unease. A murmur in the distance, getting closer; that mutter becoming a roar-

A rush down a Gibber wash.

For the first time in a long while he felt the starkness of terror. Not fear for himself, but for others. He dived out of the tent and began to run, not to safety, but down the slope toward the warriors still in the wash. Slipping and sliding, he fell down on one knee, rose with his trouser leg heavy with water and his arm covered in mud up to the elbow. He ran on.

Dune god save me, save the men, why didn't I remember the rush, why didn't I think, Wash Drybone after rain…

Most of the men were now huddled among the rocks trying to keep out of the rain, or attending to the pedes still pulling at their lines and bucking in nervous spasms as they felt rain on their backs. As he ran, he bellowed at the top of his voice: "Out! Out of the wash! Out! Run!"

He skidded to a stop just in time: just before the plunging wall of water slammed down the gully-and obliterated everyone there as if they had never been. In the darkness, he couldn't see much; above the thunderous roar of the flood he couldn't hear much, either. The water lapped around his ankles where he stood on the slope. Someone brought a lamp and he grabbed it, raising it high. They stared into the darkness. There was no one. No men, no pedes, no packs.

Gods, but it was dark! A black void overhead, disgorging water as if the stars were pissing on them. Perhaps there were survivors out there he could not see, perhaps there were pedes that would ride the waters down-yet, somewhere inside his reasoning mind, he knew they had just lost five hundred men and who knew how many mounts. He lowered the lamp. This was not war. A real man fought with a scimitar or a spear or a knife. But with water? What could you do against water? Against rainlords and stormlords? This was cold-hearted murder.

Shale. Blast him to a waterless death.

At his shoulder someone asked in bewilderment, "Where is everyone, Kher? Faldim was camped here, with all his brothers. And Karidar-you remember Karidar? He was the fellow with the ridiculous nose…" His voice trailed off. There was no one to find.

Gods, Ravard thought, will this nightmare never end?

He stood where he was, mind-sick. Water rolled from his chin to sputter on the heat of the lantern glass. Some irrational part of him blamed Uthardim for all their recent ills, and he couldn't rid himself of the idea. The bad luck had started, or so it seemed, the moment that strange man with the scars entered his life. He turned the dune god against us, and our luck has gone.

He was relieved to see Medrim arrive, giving orders to some of the men around him, bidding them find a couple of pedes and ride downwash to search for anyone who needed help.

Ravard plodded back up the slope to where Davim waited. "I can't see anyone," he said, "and very few appear to have climbed out of the wash in time. There may be some on the other side of the water, though."

"But you think most of them will have died," Davim finished for him.

He nodded. "What should we do?"

"Break camp. We will move back to the cistern."

"In the dark?" Medrim asked, astonished, speaking for all the gathered sandmasters and tribemasters awaiting orders.

Withering hells, Ravard thought, there's water in the wash. The ground was slick with mud, and it rained still, blinding men and beasts.

"In the dark!" Davim confirmed in a temper. "We are vulnerable here. What better time for them to mount an attack? At least at the cistern we will have our backs protected by a cliff wall, and we have the supplies. I will pick the battle ground, not some half-grown, brown-skinned lowlife!"

Ravard tried to think rationally. Jasper Bloodstone. Shale Flint. But what sort of army could he have? Breccia was defeated, and Taquar's men would not follow him, surely.

"I'll skin him alive one day, along with every rainlord and reeve I can lay my hands on," Davim said, his voice choked with rage. "Reduners will never kneel to the blackmail of stormlords, not ever again." He looked up the wash, into the terrifying blackness of a rainy night. "We will go back to random rain," he whispered. "I swear it." And he shook his fist at the darkness blotting out the stars, at the clouds that were manifestations of a stormlord's power.

Ravard shivered at the vicious hate he heard. Then he turned to find his own tribesmen, to find out who lived, and who had died.