The ex-slaves had gotten up on their beasts. Tofi’s common sense for convenience, never knowing this would happen, had set them out of the convenient track for traffic going back and forth along the edge of the camp, and well toward their road. So when men took a notion to go far out of their way to encroach on their stacks of baggage, or to cast desperate, covetous eyes on their beasts, they could be sure it was no innocent encounter: they took their quirts and beat them off time and again. The would-be thieves were not brave, and went to plunder more helpless prey.

But quirts would not be enough when dark fell, as the camp ripped up the stakes and folded its canvas and began to quarrel about the life-and-death question of who rode, and who walked, and what they had to leave behind.

There would be a brief period of looting, Marak was well sure: when this huge camp utterly broke up, the wise would leave what fools would think they desperately needed; and there would be that sorting out of goods. Some, too, would elect to stay with the ruins, seeking shelter there, in the ruin of the Beykaskh, ignoring prophecies as they ignored the evidence of their eyes. Those few might even be right. The wealth there, and the burrows they might make in the shattered stones, might suffice to save them.

He would never wager his own life on it.

The sun sank in the clouds. He kept his eyes sweeping the south, where the caravan had to form, trying to discern whether the tribes had yet moved, sure that the first hint that one tribe was on the road would set off the others determined to secure their place in the march. He had said sundown: sundown was what he aimed for, and he feared delay for its own reasons: tonight the ones in utter lack would run riot in the ruins, predators and prey alike.

He waited, and he waited, and sure enough, as the sunset widened across the clouds. A handful of the more organized rough element made a determined sortie against their belongings. Marak saw it developing, and joined Tofi and his men, not just quirts now, but knives as well. None of the knives in fact drew blood: the skilled snap of a loaded quirt across a man’s arm or head was no small deterrent, and the ex-slaves enjoyed giving back what they had gotten. The ruffians drew back to regroup, nursing bruises.

“Marak.” Norit caught his attention, pointing.

A line of riders descended the hill among the collapsed tents, tall beasts gliding through the smoky chaos of the camp with the beshti’s classic arrogance. The foremost of those riders were armed men and the center of that column were riders all in red.

At that presence people all across the camp were distracted, and the straggling priests found a focus for their prayers to heaven.