A commotion came down with a grating of rock, and a besha, sitting higher up, had simply had the trail give way under it, and slid down the gravel face of a switchback, slowly, ponderously fetching up against Hati’s besha in the near dark. Hati’s besha held its place, sitting and stable, and the fallen besha slid no farther. Its master came sliding after it, not by his own choice, it seemed. For a moment it seemed more of the trail might come down; but the slide stopped. The tribesmen above had to repair the damage to keep coming. It was their task, in their reach, not his. They did as they could.

Marak ordered Osan up, and in the pragmatic way of beshti, the besha pinned against the slide behind him made methodical efforts toward the open ground, dislodging more rock, while Hati’s stubbornly sat fast, as beshti tended to do when they thoroughly had had enough of a situation. Marak seized the bridle and the mounting strap of the fallen besha, tugged in time with its efforts to free its legs, and it suddenly shoved forward, gained its feet, crowding him and crowding Hati.

The beast’s embarrassed master reached a place where he could stand, and worked his way past the besha, which stood, barrier between the tribesman and a further slide.

“Omi,” the tribesman said, as shaken as a man of his kind was apt to appear, and Marak asked himself whether it was his repair which had given way up above.

But Hati was all right. She had her besha up, and the au’it did, by now. Marak could only keep going, with the tribesman between him and Hati now, the trail impossible for two abreast.

There had been shouting back and forth, the tribesman’s kinsmen ascertaining he was alive, and now repairing the trail above them. On their own level, they moved carefully, beshti planting their feet gingerly on ground they no longer trusted, but going on, following those ahead as the gap widened. The instinct to go with the group overrode everything but immediate self-preservation, and Marak, with the bottom of the climb in view, let Osan set his own pace.

Three more sharp turns, three more sloping, rock-cluttered stretches of trail, and they began to go among projecting rocks, in places where they had to clear fallen stones from their way. They had lost sight of the men before, who had ridden down, who had been on lower courses when the shaking came: they were in the dark, now, and the rocks had cut off the view of anyone ahead.

But they came down past rocks Marak remembered from their last descent, and in the murk of the night, in a breathless hush of air, saw the tail of the tribe ahead of them, and tents promising shelter.