The Forlorn(76)

Down in the riverbed, following their tracks, were twenty-two horsemen. They'd stopped so that the tracker could examine the trail. Dust hung about them, and the figures shimmered in the heat. Keilin snaked closer. He could hear the voices. "Not more than a few minutes ahead, master. The dung is still moist," said the man who was squatting and examining the trail. He wore the red-and-yellow-striped tarboosh of a goatherd from the Thunder Gorge area of the Tinarana River. All the other men wore the sweat-stained uniforms of the Palace Guard.

"Damn good thing too. If we don't catch them soon we're out of water. They'd better have those jewels you promised us, Kemp," said one of the other riders, suspiciously.

"Believe me," the nasal tones washed away the years, "the Morkth will pay a king's ransom for them. I just wish I'd grabbed them back in the palace when I saw them. But the worm's eye was on me. He wanted to play his bloody games first, the fool."

"How do we know they're worth that much?" challenged another man.

"Actas, you can turn your bloody nag around and go back if you like! All I can tell you is that Vedas was prepared to pay five hundred in gold for that boy who had just one. How much do you think he was going to get for it?" Keilin had heard enough. He crossed the dry riverbed behind them, and then as they mounted again, sent an arrow winging silent to sprout from the tracker's neck. Then he took to his heels, jinking up the steep gully-ripped slope, and into the heat-splintered talus at the base of the red cliff.

A brief scramble up a rock chimney and he stood at the top, looking down on the heat-shivered figures still struggling after him. "Kemp!" he shouted, knowing his voice would carry up the valley to Cap and the others. "Do you know who I am, shitface?" The figures below were still. "I am the boy, the boy with the bull. I'm the one of your victims who got away, and I've the jewels here. Yah! Couldn't catch me then, can't catch me now. Kemp dogsbreath, you syphilitic offspring of a diseased camel, even the sows vomit when you screw them!"

An arrow struck upwards out of the valley. Keilin contemptuously watched it fall short. And pushed a rock shower down on them in return. "Yah! Useless bunch of turd brains! You couldn't catch a one-legged blind-drunk grandmother."

The chase was joined. They were pushing their horses, despite the heat, up the steep-sided valley to the left. Keilin watched with grim satisfaction and led off, away from the dry Syrah Valley, off into the twisted canyons of the badlands beyond.

By the time that the midday sun had turned the air in those ragged canyons into dragon's breath, the sixteen survivors had realized that their horses were just as useful as jellyfish out here. They set off up the sandstone ridge on foot, determined to surround him this time. After a futile hour, and losing another man to a deadfall, one of them had had enough. "We're not going to catch the little beggar, you know," he said. "He's just leading us a dance up here. Let's get back to the horses and get after the rest of them. The little hellion has shot my waterskin, and Actas's and yours, Kemp."

Kemp shook his fist at the mocking canyons. "You're right, I suppose. Get the others, and he'll be stuck out here alone. I'm damned thirsty. But sooner or later I'll get that little shit."

It took them hours to find their way back to where they'd left the wounded men and the horses. But the box canyon was empty. A note, written in dried red-brown fluid was pinned through the pile of empty waterskins with one of the swords of the wounded. It read: THIRSTY, DOG TURDS?

"We have to catch him now. He obviously knows where water is here. And I'm going to enjoy every minute of wringing it out of him." The nasal voice was thick with anger. "Now give us a drink, one of you."

Nobody moved. "I'll kill you if don't give me a drink!" Kemp screamed at the nearest man.

He got his drink. But an hour later, when he desperately needed another, he found that that fellow, and another six who still had waterskins, had slipped off, trying to backtrack the horses.

* * *

The moon was high and shining clear and cold through the desert night when Keilin walked quietly up to Beywulf, who was on watch.

"For crying out loud, Keil. I nearly split your bloody brisket. How's the pursuit? We heard you taunting them."

Keilin dropped down onto his haunches. "The pursuit is about eight miles away as the crow flies. Phew, I'm tired. Ol' Marou would have laughed at me, so unfit and water-fat. I had a couple of close shaves out there."

"Eight miles . . . are they still after you?"

"Yes. Some of them," said Keilin, taking a long pull from the waterskin.

"Well, that gives us about an hour. The animals are nicely rested anyway. I suppose I'd better rouse everyone. You rest for bit. I've left you a bite to eat."