Mark Morris - The Great Wall

The mountains looked like something from a dream. The many layers of sandstone and multi-colored minerals had been compressed together over millions of years, creating rock formations both bizarrely garish and breathtaking in their beauty. Beneath the desert sun they glowed in vivid stripes of red and yellow, green and blue. It was an artist’s palette of color, a phantasmagoric feast for the eyes.

Despite its beauty, though, this was a harsh landscape. People died here every day. The unprepared and the foolhardy expired from hunger and thirst; others fell prey to wild animals or brigands. Vultures wheeled in the sky, knowing that carrion was never far from their hooked beaks. The desert dust beneath the sparse clumps of greenery was rich with the powdered bones of the dead.

For now the air was still, the desert undisturbed. A lizard basked motionless in the heat of the slowly setting sun. Then, sensing vibrations beneath its feet, it darted for cover. Next moment a blot of darkness appeared on the horizon, wreathed in a churning cloud of dust.

Anyone standing where the lizard had been would have heard, faint at first, wild cries and approaching hoof beats. They would have seen the blot of darkness emerge from the heat haze and resolve itself into a tightly packed group of eight horses, five of which had men mounted on their backs. The men were hunched over, urging their chargers on. They were heading for the range of Painted Mountains, hoping that, under cover of the coming night, they would find safety in its deep ravines and steep valleys.

One of the men, William Garin, narrowed his eyes against the stinging onslaught of desert dust. He was lean, scarred and sinewed, his beard and hair wild and matted like those of the rest of his companions, his clothes a filthy patchwork of well-worn leather, threadbare animal hide and light armour. Born in England thirty-seven years earlier, he was currently a long way from home. But then William was a nomad; he regarded the entire world as his home. In the last three decades he had fought his way across continents. His past was steeped in the blood of countless battles. His vast experience of warfare had not only hardened his resolve, but had sharpened his senses and turned him into a master tactician. Glancing at his companions, he realized he was going to have to call on every one of his countless skills to get them out of their current predicament.

Of the twenty-strong party that had embarked on this possibly foolhardy quest, only five were left. The rest had been cut down by the thirty or so brigands who were now on their tail. Out in front was Najid, the Saracen mercenary, his dust-smeared robes flying behind him. If it came down to a case of every man for himself, then Najid was the one most likely to escape the flailing blades of their pursuers. He was a master horseman, and when in the saddle he and his steed seemed like one creature, a perfect fusion of man and beast.

Least likely to escape was Rizzetti, or possibly Bouchard the Frank. Rizzetti, the Italian, was an adept soldier, and fearless in battle, but he was badly wounded. He had taken an arrow through the leg, and was now pale and sweating, hunched grimly over his horse, his teeth clenched against the pain. William glanced at the untended wound, and saw that blood was still pouring down the Italian’s boot and leaving a trail on the sand behind him.

At least, though, Rizzetti had the grim, determined mind-set of a soldier. Bouchard, on the other hand, the master of their ragtag crew and the only non-soldier left alive, was nothing but a soft-bellied blusterer, a smooth-talking entrepreneur, who had enticed them here with wild tales of a magical black powder that would bring them fame and untold riches. Confident, even arrogant, when spouting his empty promises, Bouchard was now terrified and much reduced. No longer a leader, but a gibbering wreck, he couldn’t prevent himself from glancing continually behind him.

William caught the eye of Pero Tovar, the fifth member of their group, and the only one among them he would tentatively call a friend. Pero was a fiery Spaniard, a beast in many ways. Yet although he could be wild and unrestrained in temperament, and brutally efficient in battle, he nevertheless possessed a resilience, an intelligence and a humor that appealed to William—and indeed, that led him, if not to fully trust the man, then at least to know he could rely on him when they were faced with a common enemy.

Pero’s expression right now was easy to read, not least because William himself was thinking exactly the same thing. Bouchard was a liability. He was slowing them all down with his persistent backward glances. Twitching the reins of his horse, William brought his steed flank to steaming flank with Bouchard’s own.

“Stop looking back!” he yelled at the Frank. “If you can see them, we’re dead men!”

Bouchard’s only response was a flicker of his wide, panicked eyes.

Leaning over in the saddle, William whipped Bouchard’s horse, urging it to go faster.

“Ride!” he yelled at the Frank. “Ride or die!”

As Bouchard’s horse, stung into action, eased ahead of him, William broke his own rule by glancing quickly back. He couldn’t see the brigands behind them. Yet. Which meant there was still a chance of escape.

“Najid!” he bellowed into the dust.

Ahead of him, the Turk looked back.

William pointed at the ridge of multi-colored mountains ahead, which were looming ever closer, and then at the three riderless horses that were pounding along beside them, full saddlebags jouncing.

“Cut loose the horses on my signal!”

His words penetrated Bouchard’s brain-freezing barrier of mortal terror, and now the Frank looked panicked for a different reason.

“The bags?” he gulped. “Non! Pas les sacs!”

But William didn’t give a shit about the Frenchman’s precious bags, not when their lives were at stake.

“Now!” he yelled.

Bouchard let loose a high-pitched wail of denial and distress, but Najid didn’t hesitate for a moment. Drawing his scimitar, he sliced through the lead tethering the three unmanned horses to the rest of the group, and then whipped the animals to encourage them to run faster.

“Yahhh! Yahh!” he shouted almost gleefully. “Run for your lives, ladies!”

The three untethered horses pulled ahead, making for the nearest ridge. Bouchard’s eyes bugged with distress and rage as he watched them go.

As they dipped towards the valley Najid twitched his reins and led his party in the opposite direction to the three untethered horses. With luck, by the time the brigands crested the hill, the five survivors would be out of sight among the jagged peaks, and their pursuers would follow the distant trail of decoy dust kicked up by the trio of unmanned and still blindly fleeing horses.

The fire flickered feebly in the darkness. Advertising their presence was a risk, but a calculated one. Out here, in this dazzling but inhospitable landscape, the temperature dropped like a stone at night. If they were going to survive they needed at least a little heat to prevent themselves freezing to death.

Although all of them were shattered, and their horses all but hobbled after the headlong chase through the desert, Rizzetti was the member of their party who was most at risk. He was now stretched out beside the fire, bundled with coarse blankets to keep him warm. William, Pero and Najid had extracted the arrow from his leg, and cleaned and bound his wound as best they could, but the Italian’s grizzled, bearded face was now slick with sweat, his body shuddering with fever. William knew he couldn’t ride in his present state—but nor could the rest of them afford to linger here beyond the break of dawn. So either Rizzetti’s fever had to break overnight, enabling him to recover quickly, or they would be forced to leave him behind to die.