123 - We're In Trouble

It was stuffy and dim inside the hide, despite the airholes Werfas had made, and the lumefly lights from Elemfias gave them just enough vision to keep things from being pitch black but not much else.  

Kyrus spoke up again. “We’ve got Maya and Kiru with our young Rasheem officer... and their riding birds... they have one pack bird with, that had the water packs." He pointed.  "About five paces that way.  Apparently Raghnall is fairly competent and kept that lead-line,” he said.  “Kiru is injured. I can sense the Amir and... no.  Deovar, I’m sorry.  I think we just lost Pirzifon... I don’t register him at all. It was his bird that fell, through a sink hole.  I’m sorry.” The wind, full of sand and glass and humic and fulvic acids, moaned outside.

Dead.  Just like that, just like in a war.  Ky gulped and watched his da and his stepda hug each other.  Pirzifon... the wirey old man had been such a good friend, and a good teacher.  In the dim light, with the storm outside, Ky couldn’t help just thinking of him, when he’d helped save him, holding the line tight so that nobody would fall.  “I’m sorry,” Ilax said.  “We... we’ll have to mourn later.  He was a warrior and fell.  Right now... we go on.” With his husband’s hand on his shoulder, he took a deep breath.  “Please go on, inamor.”

“As far as I can tell... we’ve lost at least eight birds... more likely a full dozen.  We here have our riding birds and our personal water packs.”

“Da?” Kyrus spoke up.  “Why didn’t we hunker down and do this in an organized way?  What were we trying to reach when the storm hit us?”

“We might be an armlength away from a shelter I knew about – not just a surface hide where you cram yourselves under a ledge and crouch behind dragon-blood trunks hoping to outlast the storm.  It’s a cavern with enough water for all of us... a true refuge, a camp where we could wait this out..  We might be as far as a few hundred strides.  I’m sorry.  We nearly made it.  I took a risk. ”

“Underground?  With water?”  Ilax sounded intrigued.  “I thought this road was just the quickest way to the next wadi, on the way to Lainz.”

Kyrus looked away, Ky could see the reflection of his eyes shift as he did, then he looked back.  “It was a secret during the war.  As far as I know it wasn’t kept deliberately secret afterwards.  I don’t know how it is now.  It was how we got our birds so far so fast.  We didn’t need to carry our own weight of water.” He coughed.  “It was a bivouack last time I saw it, though I don’t see His Radiance giving up on it after the war, so it’s not likely abandoned. The Rasheem... the Amir drew me that way... so it must be open knowledge by now.”

Elemfias had stilled, now she spoke in a voice like hammered iron as she controlled her emotions.  “How long could this go on?”

As best as Ky could see his da looked grim and he reached out his hands and took Werfas and Hara’s in his own.  He knew.  He was already thirsty.  “It could blow for days.  Even a week or more.”

“Like the blizzards in mid winter,” Hara said. “How many water packs do we have, father?”

Ilax didn’t answer for a long, long moment.  “We have one each.”

“I have two,” Merzhad spoke up.  “That means we have eight, for seven people.  If we can put the birds to sleep we might be all right.”

“If we all go short... if we can put the birds to sleep... we don’t need five litres a day if we sleep as much as possible. We could get on with manage between a litre and a half... or maybe two litres.” Kyrus said.  “We have forty litres of water.” In the silence afterwards, the grating roar of the sand on the roof took on an almost triumphant air as if, cheated of killing them directly, it sniggered its eventual success.  Fine dust drove in through the shafts Werfas had formed.

“It still gives us, at most, three days... six days if we alternate days drinking our cleansed urine.” Ky’s mouth twisted.  He and ma hadn’t often been desperate enough to resort to the pee-sellers in the Basin but he knew that no matter how clean it was, it still had the faint residual taste.

“Kiru has the programs to do that.  Pirzifon knew how.  Neither Merzhad or I have those,” Elemfias said.  “We’re in trouble.”