Alliances

He reached for the pan, stretching himself as far as he could since Adala stubbornly refused to move. He managed to wrap his fingers around the handle and dragged the pan close. With it in front of him like a screen, he began to inch forward on his knees. When he was directly beside Adala again, he banged his fist against her leg until he got her attention. He stood, and they held the broad pan before them. Sand sang off its bottom. Now and then a larger object torn from the camp caromed off the makeshift shield.

The center of the whirlwind passed directly over them. The bronze pan was torn from their hands. Adala released his arm, and Wapah fell to his knees. Adala’s feet lifted six inches above the ground.

He threw his arms around her ankles. The force of the wind lifted him until only the toes of his sandals still touched the sand. Face buried in his cousin’s robe, sand clogging the air, Wapah couldn’t breathe and couldn’t see. He felt Adala being pulled from his grip.

All at once, like a string breaking, the force holding them aloft suddenly was gone. They dropped onto a drift of sand. Wapah rolled away from Adala and began brushing sand from her sleeves and gown, all the while asking if she was all right, if she had been injured. She pushed herself up on her hands. He saw she was trembling, but one look at her face told him it wasn’t fear that moved her.

“I have taken his measure!” she declared, eyes blazing with triumph. “The false seer thought he could forestall my maita. No one can do that! Those on High are with me!”

He helped her stand. Sand cascaded from their robes. As Wapah brushed himself off, Adala stared at the dissipating whirlwind. It tracked northeast, rapidly losing cohesion. Soon it was only a rolling cloud of dust, tumbling over the dunes toward the Lion’s Teeth. She hoped it would hold together long enough to drop a load of sand upon the laddad.

Wapah’s attention was fixed in the opposite direction. Their camp was completely wrecked. Not a single tent still stood. The ground in all directions was littered with debris. Here and there frantic men and women tore at mounds of sand, digging out those buried beneath. Adala’s face wore a fierce grin, but Wapah saw precious little to be happy about. He was immensely relieved to see Adala’s niece. Zayna was pulling the lap loom from the flattened remains of her aunt’s tent. She began cleaning the mechanism with careful fingers.

Riders arrived from the camps of the other tribes. None but the Weya-Lu had been hit by the whirlwind. Even the Mikku camp, in direct line with the storm, had escaped damage. The storm had twisted wide around their tents, causing only minor problems.

It seemed a message directed at Adala and her tribe. Those few chiefs who had heard the voice tell Adala the laddad must continue passed that information on to their fellows. Many wondered aloud whether it might not be best to release the captives, so as to appease the wrath of the ancient oracle.

“In one more day,” Adala announced, “the laddad khan will have his people back. Their numbers will swell the ranks of the hungry and thirsty on Broken Tooth and Chisel, and their khan will know his doom is at band.”

The chiefs were relieved. She had heeded the oracle’s warning.

She seated herself in the shade of her tent, which Zayna had erected with Wapah’s help, and picked up the lap loom. Since she obviously intended to return to her weaving, Wapah and the nomad chiefs began to drift away.

“One thing more,” Adala called out, cleaning the last of the grit from the loom. “Let every male among the captive laddad be branded on the back of the left hand. Use the herd mark of the Weya-Lu.”

Wapah stared at her in shock. He took a step toward her, hands held out as if in supplication. “But why, Maita? What purpose can such terrible cruelty serve, except to anger the laddad khan?”

“It will tell him, and everyone who sees the mark, that his people were freed by our will, not by the hand of Sahim-Khan, not by the efforts of the laddad khan, and not by the meddlesome false seer who calls himself the Oracle. The mark will stand as a sign of their failure and our maita.”

The chiefs were not happy with the order. They were men of honor. Only slaves and herd animals were branded. To put such a mark on a captured enemy was a gross insult. But all had seen Adala stand before a whirlwind and emerge unscathed. Such courage demonstrated great power of the soul. Her survival underscored the awesome strength of the Fate that worked within her. They could not disobey her command.