“There’ll be panic,” he said, thinking of the last messenger they had dispatched, and took a small, personal chance. “You might inquire of Tarsa, if someone gets as far as that village. Tell them ride through the column, not down the sides.”

“We do what we can,” Memnanan said, and they parted, and went each of them to see to their own necessities.

His were simple, to see everyone in his own tent mounted up and ready. Tofi had packed the tents. The beshti and the waiting riders stood like ghosts in the blowing sand.

He had no desire to imagine their collective situation if all the vermin in the world began to turn toward the only caravan in the world as their only source of food. He declined to mention the notion to Hati and Norit and the rest as he joined them: if Luz had not bothered to tell them in relentless detail, he kept the secret. Tofi looked at him questioningly, and he said: “The captain’s sending instructions back.”

By the time they began to move, behind the Haga and the Keran, the dust was blowing steadily at their backs, and the Keran, foremost, had surely gotten the message from Memnanan’s first messengers. The Keran moved out, and they did, and they set a faster-than-usual pace as the wind helped them along. The strong west wind was an assisting hand behind the weak in these first hours; but the dryland gusts carried moisture away from them, too, and made them drink more often. The wind stressed the weak, some of whom would die today. Marak could not but think of it.

Three times that morning the earth shook, but the line never faltered, not, at least, that the foremost could see when they looked back. At noon they made the ordinary measured rest, and pressed on.

The Ila through the day spoke rarely and was cross with everyone. The aui’it went in healthy fear, and theirs was likely glad to be serving them, writing down their daily progress and little else, ignorant, perhaps, of what Memnanan had told the Ila. In the late afternoon Marak rode up a time to see his mother and his sister, and they had heard the news: the Keran had told everyone in their camp.

“Are we in danger?” Patya asked, being half a villager, and doubtless she had asked their mother the same question.

“Not us,” he said plainly. “The last ranks are dead men.”

The knowledge of the situation cast a pall on their meeting. Kais Tain might be among the last. He had never yet seen his own village in the lines. But they never mentioned Tain, and they never mentioned their village. He dropped back to ride with Hati and with Norit, and Luz was quiet, apprised of the hazard around them: so by then, might they be, but he told them.

“Vermin are moving in. The end of the caravan is in danger.”