“I will not.” He looked back to her. “I am loyal to my captain.”
The vision of Alex tumbling backward off his horse flashed in her mind. Sage didn’t even realize she had her knife out and was reaching for the man’s throat until Darit caught her from behind and pulled her arms back, lifting her off her feet. She screeched and fought him as the other two men yanked the Kimisar away from her. The weapon was stripped from her fingers, but Sage twisted out of Darit’s hold and lunged for the prisoner again. Before she got two steps, Darit swept his leg out and knocked her off her feet. Within seconds he had her pinned to the ground.
“Stop!” Darit shouted in her ear. “You must stop!”
“Get off of her!” Nicholas tackled Darit from the side, but the Casmuni didn’t let her go, and they rolled and tumbled together in a tangle of arms and legs. By the time they were pulled apart, Sage had a bloody lip, and Nicholas’s tunic was ripped completely open. She sat sullenly, glaring at the Kimisar man, who was lying on his side several yards away, looking shaken.
The prince clutched his bound wrist. “Are you all right?” he asked Sage.
“Yes, fine.” She licked sand out of the gash on her lip and spat. “You?”
“If my wrist wasn’t broken before I think it is now.”
Sage looked up as Darit stood over her, offering her a waterskin. She accepted it and rinsed out her mouth while he knelt beside Nicholas to examine his arm.
“It is not well to let words affect you so much, Saizsch Fahler,” Darit lectured her over his shoulder. “I promise you his threats will come to nothing.”
Sage sipped water. “He made no threat,” she said.
Darit glanced at her. “Then you deserve your injury. Only children respond to taunts.” His expression lightened a little as he turned back to Nicholas. “But you may tell Nikkolaz he did well in coming to your aid.”
After rebinding the prince’s wrist with a splint of stiff palm leaves, Darit offered Sage her knife. Alex’s knife. She put it back on her belt, resisting the urge to trace her fingers over the initials. “You do not fear I will harm the man?” she asked.
Darit shrugged. “I think if you want to kill him, you will not be stopped by lack of a weapon.”
64
SERGEANT MILLER AND Private Wolfe were his volunteers. Both men had been in the desert with Alex the first time, for which he was glad—they already knew how to walk in the sand and conserve water. They’d left camp without head scarves or tents, so they improvised by wrapping their heads in undershirts donated by some of the men who’d returned with Casseck. As for tents, they did without, but luckily they found a small spring with a handful of short trees on the second day, and they were able to refill their canteens and take shelter during the hottest part of the day. The trees were a kind Alex had never seen—their leaves opened like paper fans to be larger than an archery target. Alex stripped several dead leaves down to their thick, arm-length stems to use for fuel. The Demorans walked through the night, but when they did stop to rest, it was damn cold and the fire was welcome.
Their luck ran out on the third day.
He and the two other soldiers had spread out to where they could see each other well enough to communicate if they saw something nestled in the dunes between them. As a consequence, Alex couldn’t be sure when exactly Sergeant Miller disappeared, but it was a full hour after noticing Miller was gone that he and Private Wolfe established that he’d vanished without a trace. Wolfe claimed to have heard what sounded like a scream. At the time, he’d thought it was one of the desert hawks they occasionally saw.
Sage would’ve known the difference.
After their fruitless search, Alex and Wolfe spread apart again, though not as far as before. Not that it mattered. It was nearly sunset when Wolfe shouted for attention. Alex ran at him, calling for him to wait, but Wolfe wasn’t moving as Alex had initially thought—he was sinking into the sand. While still fifty yards away, Alex’s boots sank over his knees within two steps. Alex crawled his way back in the direction he’d come as Wolfe’s cries became weaker and weaker. By the time Alex was on solid-enough ground to stand and turn back around, Private Wolfe was gone, swallowed by the sand.
For a long time Alex sat there, terrified to move, hoping against hope that Wolfe would emerge, clawing his way out, or that Miller would appear over a nearby dune, having only been lost. He wasn’t much for praying, but he prayed then, asking the Spirit to pass on to them how sorry he was for leading them to their deaths. Losses in battle were easy to bear in comparison. Those lives were currency spent to achieve an objective; these were like being robbed.
The right thing to have done would have been to have waited—waited for supplies, waited for permission, waited for more information. He deserved to lose his command, but given the chance, he’d have done everything the same, though he would have done it alone.
Eventually, Alex continued southwest—the only direction he knew to go in, worrying every step would be his last. Sergeant Miller had been carrying their one water sling, and Alex was down to one empty and one partially full canteen. When night came, he hunkered down between dunes for a few hours and lit a fire. With nothing left to burn, he resorted to tearing the leather-bound cover and a few blank pages from Sage’s ledger. He should’ve rested, but instead Alex read and reread the letter she’d kept. She must have turned to it dozens of times in the last weeks for reassurance that he loved her. He would never give her a reason to doubt him again.
The heat of the fourth day brought hallucinations. Sometimes he thought Miller and Wolfe were walking next to him. Other times it was Sage. In both cases he wanted to cry and beg their forgiveness, but his eyes were too dry to make tears. Twice he thought he saw a spring like the first one, but neither was real. Alex stumbled from hill to hill, each time telling himself he would go just one more. His head throbbed with every step, and he began staying along the ridges of the dunes to prevent the cramps that seized his feet when he walked downhill.
At some point he started hoping the sand would swallow him, too.
The sun sat low and red in the sky when the black tops of trees appeared, silhouetted against the horizon. In a corner of his mind, he knew it wasn’t real, but the part that kept him walking believed it. If he pulled the makeshift scarf off his face, he could smell the greenery. He didn’t need his jacket, either. Alex left them both in the sand behind him. His legs were cramping. If he removed his boots, he’d be able to walk better. The sand was pleasantly warm under his feet.
The sword belt was slowing him down, too, and he struggled to undo the buckle with fingers that didn’t want to bend. His trembling legs suddenly gave out, and he fell, first to his knees and then forward onto his face. Alex tried to push himself up, but his arms shook so violently he barely rose enough to turn his head out of the sand to breathe. He felt he was sliding down the side of a dune though nothing around him changed.
Sliding into sleep, that’s what it was. He hadn’t slept in so long.
Alex closed his eyes and let the darkness take him.
65