Alliances

Chapter 18

Adala sat on a small carpet, shielded from the broiling sun by a square of blanched cotton. She gripped a stick in one hand and tapped it against her leg in a quick, regular rhythm. Normally she used the stick to urge Little Thorn to move. At that moment she wished she could use it on her entire nation.

Just after dawn, a patrol of Mikku horsemen had thundered in, babbling inexplicable news. The laddad were gone! A broad swath of trampled sand led away from Chisel and Broken Tooth. Horsemen went to investigate the two plateaus. The first party ascended Chisel unopposed. They found only abandoned rubbish. The party that tried to climb Broken Tooth was greeted by a shower of arrows and rocks. The nomads withdrew and went to learn the Maita’s judgment on the strange situation.

Chiefs and warmasters arrived, dismounted, and doffed their sun hats in deference to Adala. Chisel was empty, they told her. Tracks led away from Broken Tooth and joined up with those from Chisel. The laddad seemed to have departed both plateaus, so who remained on Broken Tooth?

With a sharp word, Adala silenced them all. “It’s clear as a midnight sky,” she said and stabbed the stick into the sand, as though spearing laddad flesh. “They slipped away, leaving a few of their number to deceive us.”

The Tondoon chief lifted his hands. “But how, Maita? Our night patrols saw and heard nothing! How could so many escape without being detected?”

“Foul magic again, or treachery.”

Despite all the changes in the world, the nomads had never lost their belief in and respect for magic. But it was her mention of treachery that upset the chiefs most. They all spoke at once, loudly disclaiming that any child of the desert could betray his people.

“Be quiet,” Adala said, and they were. “We ride after the fleeing laddad, and this time there will be no quarter. I have been too gentle, too forgiving”—the chiefs traded looks—“but no more. The time of gentleness is past. Let every warrior carry two swords today.”

Solemnly, the chiefs and their warmasters vowed to obey. Carrying two swords was an order with an especially grim meaning. In battle a nomad carried his best sword, leaving his spare in his tent. If his sword broke or was lost, honor decreed he ride back to his tent, fetch his second blade, and return to the fight. Carrying both swords meant the warriors would fight until death claimed them.

“The Weya-Lu do not go with us,” Adala announced. “They will remain here and storm Broken Tooth.”

The warmasters nodded sagely. It would be unwise to ride off in pursuit of one enemy and leave another unmolested behind. Adala had reserved for her own tribe the difficult task of assaulting the steep pinnacle and crushing the defenders that remained.

The men galloped away. Only the Weya-Lu warmaster, Yalmuk, stayed with Adala. He was new, having succeeded hot-tempered Bindas, who had perished fighting on Lesser Fang. Bindas had been young; Yalmuk was barely twenty. Like nearly everyone in the tribe, he was Adala’s distant kinsman.

She gestured for him to sit. Yalmuk squatted with the boneless grace of youth. Adala pulled her stick from the ground and traced an aimless pattern in the sand. “Is there any sign of Wapah?” she asked.

“No, Maita.” He jerked his head, tossing long hair from his eyes. “It’s as if he was carried off by the wind.”

She pondered that. Something untoward might have befallen Wapah. They were surrounded by dangers, and no one’s life was safe. On the other hand, loquacious Wapah was a master of the desert. He knew its fickle moods, knew the many dangers that lurked in its trackless expanses. Since his possession by the Oracle of the Tree, he had been different, not as talkative and-obvious only to Adala-his staunch support of her and her maita had waned. Had the meddling spirit seduced him away from their people’s true path? She did not like to think so.

Yalmuk was not so delicate. “Only a man who wants to disappear vanishes so completely,” he said. Despite her chilly reception of his words, he did not hold back. “Wapah knew the desert like no one else, Maita. He could have led the laddad around our patrols.”

She glared into gray eyes that were so like Wapah’s. “You j have no proof of that!” she snapped.

He covered his face with his hands, an act of obeisance. “That is true. I beg forgiveness, Maita, and withdraw the slur on your honorable cousin.”

Your cousin, too, Adala fumed silently. Despite the words, Yalmuk’s tone made it obvious he still thought Wapah had betrayed them. Yalmuk was a savage fighter, but Adala disliked him and his family. So many Weya-Lu of higher precedence had fallen that he had been left as the ranking warrior in the tribe. It was with double satisfaction she gave her next order.

“Take the Weya-Lu and storm Broken Tooth. I want that rock cleansed of its foreign taint today.”

“I will spare no one!”

“Spare any you take,” she retorted. “I want to learn where their people have gone.”