Keith Decandido - Under the Crimson Sun

“You know, seriously, you can just relieve yourself while you’re on duty.”

“That’s not what I do.” Rol had a work ethic, after all, and Gan knew that. “The last thing I want is to have to take on bandits with the family jewels hanging out.”

Gan rolled his eye, which looked ridiculous with the patch. “You don’t even know your family.”

“Hardly the point, and you know it.” Rol shook his head. “Anyway, it’s been quiet. A few lizards here and there, but nothing big enough to eat, much less be a danger.”

Nodding, Gan pulled out Fehrd’s staff. Or, rather, Fehrd’s father’s staff.

Rol asked Gan the same question he’d asked when Gan had removed it from Fehrd’s corpse. “You do know how to use that thing, right?”

“Fehrd gave me lessons,” Gan said.

With a sigh, Rol said, “Fehrd gave you one lesson, three months ago.”

“I’m a quick study.”

Rol opened his mouth to argue the point-in fact, there were several points worth arguing with Gan about-but he decided not to in favor of finally emptying his bladder. “I’ll be at the slaver carriage if you need me,” Rol said. Even if Tirana-or whatever her name was-wasn’t awake nor to be awakened, he liked the idea of waking up in her carriage.

Then, recalling something he’d meant to tell Gan, but had forgotten in the mental anguish of not being able to pee, he turned and said, “By the way, I saw some dead aguardi cacti around.”

“So your comment about anakores turned out not to be a joke?” Gan asked.

“Maybe not. Keep your eye open.”

“Will do,” Gan said as Rol walked toward a sand dune. When he got over to the other side of that, he could urinate in private.

As he adjusted his breeches so he could finally relieve himself, he thought about where in the caravan he might have his liaison with the slaver’s daughter. Privacy was, after all, hard to come by in a group of three dozen travelers (and that wasn’t even counting the slaves in the stone cart).

The next sound he heard was not one he expected. His urine hitting the sand, the howl of the wind, even the flickering of the nearest of the torches-all of them hovered in the background.

But suddenly, he found himself compelled .

In some ways it reminded him of the Way-Rol and the others had done some security work for more than one wizard in their time-but this didn’t quite match how he’d felt when mages worked their mind-craft on him.

He was overcome with an urge to stop what he was doing and walk toward-something to his left.

“Do you mind, I’m a little busy here,” he muttered, waving an arm past his ear, as if that would help. “Look, unless you’re a good-looking woman-or, frip, even a bad-looking one-I’m going to be very put out when I beat you into submission for interrupting my-”

Suddenly, Rol couldn’t move.

For all his life, Rol had prided himself on being in tune with his body. If you were going to make a living at physical violence, you needed to be in control of your movements and be fully aware of what you were capable of. You had to know your own strength down to the last iota. This was useful not only when he was beating up bandits or killing an anakore, but also in his dealings with women, who appreciated his strength and self-control.

So to find himself suddenly unable to control his limbs pissed him right off.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t even shout his outrage to the skies-or even to Gan, who wasn’t all that far away-because the control extended to his mouth.

His legs awkwardly started to amble across the sand to his left, farther from the dune where he’d been relieving himself. More than once he fell forward, only to clamber clumsily to his feet.

It was magic of some kind, that was painfully obvious. Rol had been on the receiving end of the Way before. But that usually had some impact on the thoughts of the person being affected. More than one mage had subsumed Rol’s will to his own, but on those occasions, Rol only had the vaguest recollection of the time he was controlled.

This, though, was wholly different. He was fully aware of what was happening. If this was the Way, it was a kind Rol had never encountered before.

And that, quite frankly, was pretty damned unlikely.

Whatever controlled him didn’t seem to know how the human body worked. About six years back, Rol had been injured in his left leg so badly that he couldn’t walk for months. Gan and Fehrd had managed to find a healing potion that cured him-a nobleman’s son couldn’t actually pay for services rendered, but he was able to get his hands on the potion-but after being bedridden for so long, he had to virtually relearn the simple act of walking.

Even then, though, he did better than whatever controlled him was capable of making him do.

After a few more minutes of ridiculous walking, Rol found himself standing before the corpse of a creature unlike any he’d seen in this or any other part of the desert. It was gray-at least the parts of its skin that were still intact-with four legs in varying degrees of decay and destruction. Bones jutted through cracked, desiccated flesh, rotted organs dotted about.

Rol barely registered any of that, because his eyes were forced to be focused upon a tiny pool of crimson and silver flecked liquid in the chest cavity. For several seconds, he just stared at it. Rol wondered what it was. It was the wrong consistency to be blood …

Then it started to roil and bubble, and Rol heard a voice that was at once everywhere and nowhere.

You will be mine. You are the first. You will not be the last. We will spread throughout this new world and fulfill our master’s purpose. Tharizdun’s will be done .

Rol had all of about two seconds to wonder who the frip Tharizdun was before the liquid shot upward like a waterspout to his face.

It covered his visage, blinding him, leaving him unable to breathe.

Then it began to ooze into every opening: his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears. All at once, his eyes stung, he gagged, he suffocated …

Hot knives of pain sliced through his mind as he tried desperately to scream, but he couldn’t even breathe, nor even attempt to draw breath.

He collapsed face first onto the sand, thinking that this was a really stupid way to die …

Gan was rather surprised when Rol walked right past him without acknowledging his presence.

He was even more surprised to realize that he hadn’t closed his breeches.

“Rol, what’re you doing?”

“Hm?” Rol stopped and stared at Gan as if he’d never seen him before. “What?”

Gan just pointed at his groin.

Looking down, Rol said, “Oi! Sorry about that.” Quickly, he adjusted his clothes.

“After your whole ‘family jewels’ nonsense, I can’t believe you’d just wander around like that.”

“Sorry,” Rol said, “I was distracted.”

Gan frowned. “You feeling all right?”

“Of course. I feel great, why?”

“Rol, I’ve known you for ten years, and this is the first time you’ve ever apologized for anything.”

Rol shrugged and again said, “Sorry.”

That was twice Rol used that word in the last minute and also in Gan’s lifetime. “Rol, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I just had to pee. Gonna go get some sleep.”

As Rol walked past him, Gan called out, “Aren’t you gonna try to sleep with Tirana?”

Rol ignored him and kept walking.

Gan assumed he was just refusing to rise to the bait. He rarely did, truth be told, which was one of Rol’s more annoying qualities. Especially since Gan always allowed himself to be baited by the other two.

Turning, he continued his walk around the caravan perimeter. He had seen the same dead cacti that Rol mentioned, and that meant that there might be anakores nearby. The nomadic creatures tended to burrow underground and eat roots, leaving the plants above to wither.