It took several long moments for the realization that he did have a weapon to penetrate his pain-clouded mind. The rod. It was shorter than a sword, not much bigger around than one of his fingers.
But it was metal. With all the strength he could muster, he rose to a sitting position, ignoring the pain stitching across his midsection. He raised the rod high and brought it down fast, into the elven rope just beneath his foot. The angle didn’t give him as much force as he would have liked, and the cactus clung tighter in protest, but he did it again a second and third time. On the fourth blow, the cactus seemed to relax a little. Avra yanked his leg and was granted more leeway than he’d had just seconds before. He adjusted his swing and struck again, pounding the cactus into the dirt.
Finally, the thing split in two. Blood—his blood, Avra knew—gushed from both severed ends as the tendril gripping him went limp. Avra plucked it from his body and threw it as far as he could, scrambling away from the plant in case it sent out more.
Free of it at last, he collapsed into the sand. He had lost so much blood, when he tried to raise his head, the stars above started spinning. He lowered it to the ground again, and slept.
Avra didn’t know how long he slept. Surely not more than an hour. When he woke up, blood still seeped from his wounds. With considerable pain, he managed to stand up and retrieve his sword. Shen’ti hadn’t returned. Avra wanted to find him before heading back toward Nibenay.
He thought he knew where to look.
Shen’ti’s footprints in the sand confirmed his guess. His fellow soldier was on his way back to Akrankhot. For what purpose, Avra had no idea. He never wanted to see the place again, unless perhaps with a well-guarded caravan.
But Shen’ti had stuck by him, even when he might have left Avra to his fate and saved himself. He had thought there was something odd about Shen’ti’s behavior all that day. He’d put it down to watching their friends die, to being cut off from their caravan and on their own in a strange and frightening place. If it was something else? Well, no use pondering questions that couldn’t be answered. He would find out when he found out, or he would never know at all. Such was the way of things.
By the time Avra reached Akrankhot—relief flooding through him when he saw that it had not been submerged, during the night, beneath the desert that had held it close for so long—the sky was lightening at the approach of the sun. With it would come the punishing heat of the day. And he would be back at the city, far from the shade and refreshing water of the oasis, and that much farther from home.
Inside the city, Shen’ti’s tracks were harder to follow than they had been in the desert sands. It hardly mattered. Avra believed he knew where Shen’ti was going. He headed toward the building beneath which they had found the vast trove of steel. He had almost reached it when he saw Shen’ti coming out the door.
Something was wrong, though. More wrong than it had been. He had spent a lot of time with Shen’ti over the past couple of days, and he had never seen Shen’ti walking as he was, an ungainly half-stumble, half-lurch. And his head, held at a strange angle, bobbed loosely as he walked. “Shen’ti?” Avra said.
Shen’ti didn’t acknowledge him, just kept walking. When he got closer, Avra saw the reason his head was bobbing—it had been half-severed. Avra could see Shen’ti’s spine through the opening, and blood everywhere, but except for the spine and a narrow strip of flesh there wasn’t much holding it on. Shen’ti’s eyes stared blankly through Avra, and the soldier kept going, past him and toward the open desert.
Shen’ti was dead. Walking, but dead.
“Shen’ti? Shen’ti!” Avra cried. He wanted to stop the man, to shake him, to find out what had drawn him back here, and what animated him now.
But that was when the sand howlers came back.…
II
Steel
Aric listened to steel.
Everyone had some psionic ability, some affinity with the Way; some just developed it more than others. Aric believed that his ability was his connection to metals—he had always been able to hear what they had to say, and had been surprised to learn that others couldn’t.
As a result, he had chosen a difficult occupation for anyone on Athas, harder still for someone like him. Swordsmithing required the constant use of two of the rarest things around, metal and water. But his swords, when they were finished, were beautiful weapons, and fetched premium prices. The one he was finishing now was no different.
He was near the final stage. The metals had been combined—and this was when the song of the steel was loudest, the different combinations of materials calling out to him, telling him which amounts of what would work together to achieve the effect that he wanted—the blade hammered into shape, scraped and filed, heat-treated and quenched. Now he held it in his lap and worked it over with fine polishing stones, smoothing out any roughness, wiping away the faintest lines or cracks that he could only see by turning it this way and that in the bright Athasian sun.
This work required patience and concentration. He had to make sure he didn’t polish one spot more than another, which could throw off the balance he had worked so hard to achieve in the earlier stages. He had filed the edges and point to near-razor sharpness, testing them against knotty wood and carru hide and a scrap of fine silk he had managed to acquire, and it sliced through all three. He had tempered it in clay and water and heat until he could bend it almost back on itself and let it go, and it would resume its ideal shape, without curves or kinks.
So he didn’t want to ruin it now, with these final touches. This particular sword was a special order from a noble family, and they wanted it strong but lightweight, flexible but sturdy enough to stand up to the sorts of chips and nicks any sword took in battle, without breaking. Aric would deliver what they had asked. As he worked it in his hands, listening to the steel telling him which parts had been worked enough and which needed another touch here or there, he thought it was, perhaps, the best blade he had ever made.
“Falling in love with that thing?”
Aric looked up to see Ruhm, his goliath friend and assistant, watching him work. “What do you mean?”
“Looks like you want to kiss it,” Ruhm said. He was thick-necked and slope-shouldered, and he wore an almost perpetual frown. It was for the best. His smile, when he showed it, was an unnatural thing; a ghoulish, yellow-toothed grin that frightened small children and brave men alike. His voice was a low rumble, like the sound of rocks rolling along a river bottom. At almost twelve feet tall, he had to stoop to pass through the doors of Aric’s shop—most doors, for that matter—but his sheer brute strength often came in handy around the shop. Years of working with metals had deepened Aric’s chest, made his shoulders broad and his arms more muscular than those of all but the biggest full-blooded elves he had met. But there were still things he couldn’t lift, or could just barely manage, that didn’t even strain the goliath.
“It’s a good blade.” Aric rose, put his polishing stone on the workbench, and gripped the blade by its tang. He whipped it through the air a few times, enjoying the keen whistle it made. “And it’ll fetch a good price. Enough to keep us in ale and meat for a a long time.”
“I like meat.”
“As do I.” Aric took his seat again, nestling the blade against his apron and reaching for the stone. Almost time to switch to a finer one still. He liked Ruhm, he truly did, and he knew the goliath wasn’t stupid. But there were times the goliath’s mind seemed as weak as his muscles were strong, and though they had known each other for years and worked together most of that time, there were occasions on which he just didn’t know how to talk to his friend.