“He may double back on us,” Marak said when they reined to a pause, and as the caravan had begun to move. “I can’t ask more than you’ve done. He may double back tonight, he or some of the men with him. He’s gotten away.”

“He deserves his reputation,” Antag conceded, leaning on the knee of the leg tucked against his besha’s neck, while the wind battered them. “Now our tribe is against him, and he may strike at us.”

“Go back. Spread the word among your allies. Spread it among all the tribes, and into the villages. He’ll try to kill the caravan guides—the only ones that know where we’re going. He’ll try to stir up the old abjori, as many as he can find, to take the leadership for himself. Then he’ll lead everyone away from the only safety there is. He doesn’t know what’s coming down on us, and what he does know, he doesn’t believe.” In his vision the ring of fire went out again and again, and he shivered in what had become a chill wind. “Nothing we’ve seen yet equals what’s coming.”

“You’ll go back with us, omi.”

“I want to go on. I need to find Kais Tain. It’s my village, as well as his.”

“It’s foolish to go on. You’ll be traveling in the dark.”

“I’m a villager. I know these people. I can talk to their lords.”

Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices said, but he ignored them.

Antag asked his brothers what they thought, and they shrugged. Antag said: “We’ll stay with you a while. You’re taking too much risk, for one of our guides.”

“I know I am. But my wives are up front. They know.”

“We’ll still stay with you,” Antag said. “We’ll be sure you get back. Easy to go back in the column. Hard to catch up with it while it’s moving.”

It was the truth Antag told him. The beshti had their limits, too, and almost, he surrendered to the voices, almost, he was willing to go back.

But not with his father loose, not with harm apt to come on the whole caravan, and him with a chance to prevent it.

They rode in on village after village, he and Antag and Antag’s brothers, asking their question, naming their names and spreading their news. They rode beside the village leaders in each village only long enough to do that, and then reined back moved farther back in the line, quickly lost in dust and dusk.

Two more of these village lords Marak knew: Kefan of Kais Kefan, and Taga of Kais Men.

“Killed Kaptai?” Taga asked, in a tone of great indignation. “That was a good woman.”

Taga had always loved Kaptai, had always been a friend of the house, and Kaptai had always welcomed the old man.