Jack Whyte: Standard of Honor

Moray hefted the water bag. “We have until we reach the end of this. After that we’re in God’s hands.”

“We’re in God’s sands , Lachlan, and like to die here if He doesn’t provide for us.”

“Well, we’ll find that out tomorrow. For now, I walk and you take your ease.”

He fastened the water bag carefully in place, then strapped on the harness again and set off. They did not speak to each other after that, for they both knew how sound can travel in the desert at night and they had no wish to attract company. Moray quickly steadied himself into the plodding gait he had been using for hours, but he was aware from the outset that fatigue was rising in him. He gritted his teeth and willed himself to ignore the shooting pains in his calves and thighs, concentrating solely on the incessant rhythm of placing one foot ahead of the other.

Some time later, much later, he decided afterwards, an agonized groan from Sinclair brought him back to awareness, and he stopped short, surprised to see that the terrain around him had changed completely and that he had walked from one desert zone into another without realizing it.

“Alec? Are you awake?”

Sinclair did not answer him, and Moray stopped on the point of peeling off the harness that felt now as though it had embedded itself into his body. Instead, he straightened up, arching his back and suddenly aware of the pain and stiffness he had blanked out of his mind until then, and looked about him carefully. The moon was low in the sky, but it still threw sufficient light for him to see his surroundings clearly enough to be amazed at what lay before him. The ground beneath his feet now was hard, scoured down to bedrock by the wind, and he was standing on the edge of what he saw as an enormous tilted bowl that loomed above and ahead of him, a broad, almost circular area of flat land, more than half a mile in extent, that was littered with great boulders and surrounded on all sides, except for where he stood, by towering, featureless walls of sand. Mountainous dunes, their gigantic slopes painted silver and black by moonlight and shadows, swept up on both sides of him to shut out the horizon ahead, eclipsing the stars. As he stood there, hearing only the pounding of his own heartbeat, he became aware of the stillness of the night; nothing moved and no smallest sound disturbed the absolute calm.

“Alec, can you hear me?” There was still no response, but he spoke again, quickly, as though he had heard one. “We’re in a different kind of place here, but it looks promising, as far as finding shelter goes. There are boulders ahead, within reach, and we should be able to find a spot among them where the sun won’t roast us tomorrow. It’s late, and the moon’s almost gone, and I’m too tired to go much farther, so I’m going to take us there and find a spot to rest. And then I’m going to sleep, perhaps for the entire day tomorrow. But first I’m going to feed you some more of those drugs you don’t want. That is if I can force my feet to move again. Hold on, and I’ll try.”

He bent to the traces again and, after the first few faltering steps, found the plodding rhythm that had enabled him to keep forging ahead for hours. Within another quarter of an hour he was close enough to the largest pile of boulders to see that there was shelter aplenty among them, chinks and crevices that looked large enough to swallow both of them with ease. He lowered Sinclair’s bier to the ground and peeled himself agonizingly out of the network of straps and braces that had sunk into his tortured flesh. As he bent to check his friend’s breathing, Sinclair opened his eyes.

“Lachlan. It’s you. I was dreaming. Where are we?”

“Hazard a guess. You’re as likely to be right as I am.” Moray was massaging his right arm, moving his elbow in circles and grimacing with pain as his fingers dug into the muscles of his shoulder. “Damnation, but you make a heavy load, Sinclair. I feel as though I’ve been hauling a dead horse behind me since the day I was born.” He saw his friend’s quick frown and waved away the apology before it could be uttered. “You would do the same for me. But I’m looking forward to having you back on your feet and walking again. Then you’ll be able to pull me.” He grunted and switched his ministrations to his other shoulder. “I believe I’ve found us a place to rest out of the sun tomorrow, but I’m going to leave you here while I make sure of it. In the meantime, you should pray and give thanks to God that I was clever enough to get rid of all our armor before we set out on this little sojourn. I’ll be back.”

He returned quickly, a strange expression on his face, so that Sinclair, after hawking to clear his throat, asked, “What’s wrong? Did you not find a place?”

Moray shook his head. “Did you pray? You must have. I hoped to find a gap between the stones that would shelter us. I found a cave instead—a cave that has been very recently in use as a living place. I found a cache of bread—stale but edible—along with water, dates, dried meat and a bag of dried dung, camel and horse both, for fuel. If I had not been here in this accursed Holy Land for so long, I would think it a miracle. As it is, it’s a stroke of fortune of the kind a cynic like me can barely contemplate.”

Sinclair was frowning. “Who would live out here?”

“Some nomad. There are more than a few of them out here. And who but a nomad would think to hoard dry dung?”

“But—think you he might be still around here?”

Moray stooped and hoisted the bier by the short cross-brace at its head, throwing the mass of straps across Sinclair’s legs at the same time. “I doubt it,” he said, grunting with the effort of lifting Sinclair’s weight again. “Whoever he was, he’s probably at La Safouri now, or at Tiberias, celebrating our defeat. Since you appear to be praying effectively, pray then that I am correct. One way or the other, we will know soon. Now lie back, it’s not far.”

SINCLAIR AWOKE IN THE DAWN LIGHT, his arm on fire, the pain of it a living thing that he could feel somewhere at the back of his throat, or so it seemed to him. He knew immediately what had happened to him, and that his arm was broken, but he had no awareness at first of where he was or how he had come there. Then he heard a soft sound and turned his head to see Moray’s shape silhouetted against the morning brightness at the cave’s mouth, and everything came back to him. He tried to call Moray’s name, but on the first attempt, although his lips moved and he articulated the sounds, nothing emerged. He swallowed, trying to moisten his dry mouth, and tried again, his voice emerging as little more than a croak.

“Lachlan.”

Moray did not stir, although Sinclair knew he must have heard him, and his eyes narrowed as he took note of the tension and rigidity of the other man’s posture. Moray stood stiffly in the entranceway, one hand braced against the side of the deep cleft in the rock that was their shelter, his entire body inclined slightly forward as he peered at whatever it was in the distance that had caught his attention.

“Lachlan, what is it? What can you see?”

Moray straightened slightly, the tension fading from his stance as he did so, and spun to move purposefully back towards Sinclair. “Vultures,” he said, as though the word explained everything. “I saw them circling when I went outside to piss and I’ve been watching them ever since, until the last of them disappeared.”

Sinclair felt as though he were missing something painfully obvious. “I don’t understand. There are always vultures in the sky out here in the desert. Always one, at least …”

“Aye, until something dies, and then they gather in flocks as by magic. No one knows how they know, but they always do.”