“He’s killed Kaptai,” Marak said in a hard, disciplined voice. “And four Haga. The tribes are after him, and I am, to the death, Munas. This isn’t a war against the Ila. This is a war between us. If you hear from Kura, pull him back. Duran, too. I don’t want his blood. Only Tain’s.”

“They aren’t here,” Munas said stubbornly. “I haven’t seen them.”

“You’ve let most of your men go with him,” Marak said. “The wind’s up. What are you going to do when the sand moves? What when a tent needs help? Did my father ask you that?”

That scored. But Munas had his jaw set and his mind made up.

“You’re in danger,” Marak said, and rode out with the Rhonandin, knowing that what he feared had happened: Tain had called up his veterans and declared his war against the Ila, against the caravan, and against his son.

They kept riding down the side of the lines, in a wind that got no worse, and no better, either. Larger vermin scampered from under the beshti’s feet: the smaller, less aware, died there, and vanished in the blowing dust. When they came into the line again they saw some villagers had their baggage loaded and were ready to move, waiting for the village group in front of them.

“Have you seen men riding through?” Marak asked of them, and when they said no, lingered to wave them past. “If you’re ready and your neighbors in front are not, move past! The whole line can’t wait on the slowest! Camp as far forward as you can, and spread out from the line of march if you need to, to get to clean sand and keep clear of vermin.”

That might provoke arguments when it came to camping at night, and he knew it; but let the word spread: no waiting, once the line began to move. No villager would pass the tribes, but he saw how delay in these unskilled folk became a contagion, spreading from one to the next.

They moved on, circled out among the dunes and back again, in heavy, blasting wind that made them keep the aifad up close about their eyes: they found no tracks out there, only the numerous scuttling vermin, so they went back to the villages, and on back, on tracks steadily growing obscure in the blowing dust.

After two more villages they were moving beside a moving line, going counter to the flow, so movement had spread back along the caravan. To each of the villages Marak posed the same question: have you seen men pass you? He gained an admission from one that they had seen riders coming back, but the village took them for the Ila’s men.

Armed men, and more than one. That was no surprise.