So they fell in with the pace of the third contingent up from where they were. The village was Kais Kurta, a western village, and Andisak was its lord: one of his father’s veterans, a man of his father’s generation, but one who had broken with Tain before this. Marak was dismayed, meeting Andisak, to know where he had arrived.

“It’s possible I shouldn’t be here,” Marak said. “Tain has killed my mother in the Haga camp. I’ve hunted him for my mother’s life as far as the tracks lasted and found nothing that tells me we’ll come on him tonight. So I’m going back to my camp, but we can’t make it all the way tonight. And I wouldn’t have come here if I’d known this was Kais Kurta. What do you want? Will you take us into your camp until the next rest? Or shall we move on? I’ll take no offense if you decide that’s best.”

“Stay with us,” Andisak said, and he was western, so that was that: if Andisak himself invited them, there would be no treachery within the camp, on the offender’s life. Andisak’s reputation was at stake. “Give me the news,” Andisak said, “what the state of affairs is between you and my old ally.”

Marak began to, in the sinking of the wind for a space, and they rode at that pace the night long, resting sometimes, talking with Andisak in the intervals when the wind allowed easier speech, and they kept very close to the contingent in front, even commingling ranks with that village in the confusion of the wind and the blowing sand. Andisak was wise, and allowed no gap between his village and the next, but that spoke only of Kais Kurta. If any village let themselves lag behind, they could stray off the track in the storm and consequently lose all the rest of the caravan, never to find their way again.

It was a terrifying realization. For the first time Marak understood how fragile the chain of life was, far back in the line. The tribes would never break and lose their way… but the villages had no experience at this business of caravans. For most the only journey they had ever made in their lives was the matter of getting to Oburan on a well-traveled trade path. Now the weakest village lord, and his bad decisions, could kill all the rest of the people in the world, and vermin had begun to be a threat, much bolder than ordinary, much bolder than they had been since the war, when they had gathered thick about the battles and preyed on the wounded… the vermin could change their habits, and had begun to encroach, even within the line, where beshti feet cracked shells and where seething masses in the night and the blowing sand denoted some latrine left by a prior tribe.