“I’m in your debt,” Marak said fervently, “for water and peace. I honor you as my grandfather, omi. But they’ll have to follow me. The wind’s taking the trail, and I can’t stop that long.”

Beasts were unsaddled for their noontime rest. Men ran while he rode out to recover the trail. He recovered it, and in a very short time Antag and his four brothers appeared out of the dust behind him, armed with hunting spears and swords and one long rifle wrapped against the dust. Under the circumstances it was a weapon worth ten men, and one which Tain would kill to get into his hands.

“Omi,” the foremost said. “My name is Antag. These are my brothers.”

“In your debt, all.” He never delayed, scarcely took his eyes off that quarter of the horizon where he guessed the trail to lie. “My father intends to raise a war within the caravan. He’ll ride across the camps somewhere. There are those that might join him.”

“The Ila is no friend of ours,” Antag said. “But the Haga are.”

“I’m outside the Ila’s orders. This is a blood matter. And life and death for us. If Tain starts a war between the villages and the Haga, and these villagers get to acting like fools, they’ll shed blood, and we’ll feed the vermin, all of us. He doesn’t care. He’s angry, and now he’s attacked the tribe that were his friends.”

“You’re sure of his track, omi.”

It was tacit acceptance, respect for him. And an essential question. “He has no second beast, unless he got it from the Haga, and I didn’t detect it.” It was a tribesman’s trick, to confuse the trail, steal a second besha and let his own go, to confuse pursuit as the freed beast wandered confused between the known company that abandoned him and the larger lure of the caravan.

“The Haga are friends,” Antag said, and the four Rhonandin stayed with him, following the tracks in among the dunes, over the edges.

The blowing dust made it harder and harder to keep the track, but it remained a single track. They passed one and the other of the tribes, and sometimes the trail came close, and then veered off. Tain had found the beshti too restive, set within the circle of tents as the tribes tended to keep such valuable possessions.

“We’d best tell the tribes as we go,” Marak said. “Their livestock is at risk, if not their lives, tonight. Are these near us within your kinship?”

“These are cousin-tribes.” Antag sent the two younger brothers off to the side, into the camps, where a kindred tribe would meet fewer questions and gain quicker compliance. Meanwhile Antag and the one brother stayed with him, in and out among the dunes, trusting the other two brothers to find them again by their pace and their direction.