The spring had been plugged with rocks, which explained its slowed trickle. Duiker removed his scarf and strained the water through the fabric into his helmet. He let the horse drink first, then repeated the filtering process before quenching his own thirst and refilling his canteen.
He fed the mare from the bag of grain strapped to the saddle, then rubbed the beast down before turning his attention to setting up his own makeshift camp. He wondered whether he would ever rejoin Coltaine and the army; whether, perhaps, he was trapped in some nightmarish pursuit of ghosts.
Duiker laid out the bedroll, then rigged over it a sunshade using his telaba. Without the trees the sun would scorch this oasis — it would be years in recovering, if it ever did. Before sleep took him, he thought long on the war to come. Cities meant less than did sources of water. Armies would have to occupy oases, which would become as important as islands in a vast sea. Coltaine would ever be at a disadvantage — his every destination known, his every approach prepared for …
The question the historian asked himself before falling asleep held a blunt finality: how long could Coltaine delay the inevitable?
He awoke at dusk, and twenty minutes later was on the trail, a solitary rider beneath a vast cloak of capemoths so thick as to blot out the stars.
Breakers rolled over a reef a quarter of a mile out, a phosphorescent ribbon beneath a cloud-filled sky. The sun's rise was an hour away. Felisin stood on a grassy shelf overlooking a vast beach of white sand, light-headed and weaving slightly as the minutes passed.
There was no boat in sight, no sign that anyone had ever set foot on this stretch of coast. Driftwood and heaps of dead seaweed marked the tide line. Sand crabs crawled everywhere she looked.
'Well,' Heboric said beside her, 'at least we can eat. Assuming those are edible, that is, and there's only one way to find out.'
She watched as he removed a sackcloth from the pack, then made his way down onto the sand. 'Watch those claws,' she said to him. 'Wouldn't want to lose a finger, would we?'
The ex-priest laughed, continuing on. She could see him only because of his clothes. His skin was now completely black, the traceries barely detectable even up close and in daylight. The visible changes were matched by other, more subtle ones.
'You can't hurt him any more,' Baudin said from where he crouched over the other backpack. 'No matter what you say.'
'Then I've no reason to stay quiet,' she replied.
They had water to last another day, maybe two. The clouds over the straits promised rain, but Felisin knew every promise was a lie — salvation was for others. She looked around again. This
Baudin had pitched the tents and was now collecting wood for a fire. Heboric returned with the sackcloth gripped between his stumps. The tips of claws showed through the bag's loose weave. 'These will either kill us or make us very thirsty — I'm not sure which will be worse.'
The last fresh water was eleven hours behind them, a damp patch in a shallow basin. They'd had to dig down an armspan to find it, and it had proved brackish, tasting of iron and difficult to keep down. 'Do you truly believe Duiker's still out there, sailing back and forth for — what, five days now?'
Heboric squatted, setting the sack down. 'He's not published anything in years — what else would he have to do with all his time?'
'Do you think frivolity is the proper way to meet Hood?'
'I didn't know there was a proper way, lass. Even if I was certain death was coming — which I'm not, at least in the immediate future — well, each of us has to answer it in our own way. After all, even the priests of Hood argue over the preferred manner in which to finally face their god.'
'If I'd known a lecture was coming, I'd have kept my mouth shut.'
'Coming to terms with life as an adolescent, are you?'
Her scowl made him laugh in delight.
