“Listen to me,” Hati said. “I know what you’re doing. I know why you’re still up here. But the rest need you to be down there, or it’s just them, fighting each other. You can’t stand up here like a fool waiting for the sky to fall on us. Come on. Come down.”

He had made up his mind. He knew he had to admit it was over, and go. But was it what he had wanted to hear, was it that he knew he wanted too much to listen, and save his own life?

“They’re not all going to die up here, if they’ll just toss the excess weight off the packs and walk the beshti down—”

“And some don’t have the sense, and if we wait long enough, they’ll slip off the trail and fall on us and damn the whole rest of the caravan! We can’t help it!”

Osan wanted to move. He wanted to, and even knowing better, could not find a way to abandon his responsibility. He searched the rocks, the sand, the sky for an inspiration, and he saw the au’it still writing, by the last of all light in what might be the last day of all the world.

He saw the tall pillar of rock that marked the way down, and the au’it, and he rode close to her and took the ink-cake from her hand, and rode close to that rock. He spat on the ink-cake, dry-mouthed as he was, and drew a line on the rock as high as his chest, and spat again and wrote, as Osan fretted and jolted his writing: No pack higher than this. Lead the beshti. Walk—

The ink-cake, half-used, shattered and left fragments in his hand. The coming night would obscure his warning. But all through the night the villages would come to this edge, and the slowest, the less adept would still be coming to it at dawn, if the sun ever rose again, and if the wind delayed, and some of them would listen.

He rode over to a passing tribesman, and showed him the writing, such as it was.

“It marks the safe height of a pack. It says lead the beshti and walk down. Make this the rule! Tell the next tribe! Tell the villages! Leave anything but your tents and your food and water, whatever you have!”

“Yes, Marak-omi,” the tribesman said, and looked up at the rock and the message, and rode and told another of his tribe. Among the villages, many read.

He had done all he could then. And knew it. He rode toward the gap, the start of the descent, and Hati and the au’it followed him as he rode down onto the trail.