154 - There's a Dead Zone Here

The rock-fall was hidden behind a dozen turns in the road before Ilax and Kyrus nodded at each other and opened their bird’s bridles to let them run.  If they pushed, they’d be back at the wadi before nightfall.

At the first shade-stop, they let their panting fowl settle back on their hocks and retreated to the furthest dark shade under the overhanging rock.  “There’s something wrong back at those rock falls,” Ilax said.  “Did you see there was another?”

“Yes.  If I were going to lay an ambush that’s the spot.  But having the rock fall right then?”

“Perhaps someone made a mistake and is hoping we’d think it was natural?”

“And coincidental that we were there to see the rock fall.”  Kyrus snorted.  “Too endarkened coincidental, especially with every living thing apparently avoiding the area.  The ‘dead zone’ that I could see was almost out to where we let our birds run.”

Ilax nodded. “So, let us assume that someone is setting an ambush where we would and that rock-fall was an accident.  If there is no one there, we’ll look like a pair of anxious aunties.”

“A condition that our Rasheem would appreciate.” Kyrus’s grin showed over his veil.  “Raghnall is very conscientious.”

“... and his Amir is diligent to a fault.”

The two mounted, despite their bird’s groans of complaint, and goaded them to their feet. “He’s good,” Kyrus said in answer after his fowl’s feathers had been fluffed and settled, claws stamped out.  “But if he’s a mere Amir, I’m a purple dust flyer.”

**

The wadi was in the bottom of a valley, with true green spread through most of the valley floor.  The purple and yellow around the edges looked ragged and faded against the onslaught of grass.

Kyrus stopped his bird as they overtopped the last rise of road.  “Now what’s going on?”

They could see two figures near the bird-lines, saw a lot of arm-waving, stone-kicking, violent throwing gestures.  The camp, on the upwind side of the well, under the thickest trees, a mix of date palms and native lolipapera had a cluster of people, apparently unconcerned by the drama.

Kyrus looked over at Ilax, who shrugged.  “Either your boy and my girl. Or the boys.  Less likely to be Werfas and my daughter, they haven’t been sleeping together since she hauled Ky into her bed.”

Kyrus shook his head, slowly.  “Young people.  Especially from Milar.”

Ilax snorted.  “Nobody is going to get either pregnant or diseased, or kill each other.  They’ll work it out.”

Kyrus tsked back at his husband.  “Milari.  So... practical.”

**

The whole group sat around a clear spot smoothed in the earth.  Not sand, true earth.  Elemfias’s mandery had raised and sculpted the miniature to Ilax’ and Kyrus’s report.  “This is the only way through, without back-tracking for weeks?”  Kyrus asked his da.  He sat next to his da and step da.  Hara was on the other side of his da, looking attentive, apparently untroubled by all the previous day’s revelations. Werfas stood behind Merzhad, arms crossed, pretending to be a stone column that didn’t have to say anything.

“Months actually,” Kyrus said to his son.  “The first time a road was put through here, by Lainz engineers, they tried four alternate routes but found that the rock wasn’t stable and the way the weather patterns moved through here, the south route was choked with sand and rock inside a month.  Two more were washed away by the yearly water.  This is the only one that was stable enough to keep open.  There are rock falls through there constantly.  So two isn’t that unusual.”

“But...” Ilax drew a faint arc either side of the road, running into the cliffs and the broken ground.  “There’s a ‘dead zone’ here.  There’s no animal life at all.  Not even insects.”

Vishna ran a contiguous line from the ends of Ilax’s arcs, the line glowing faintly.  “If you make a circle based on that information then the centre point is roughly... coincidentally, right in the middle of the pass.”

Ky looked around at everyone, found the Amir watching him and da.  “That’s too much of a coincidence.  There’s someone or something there.  Probably waiting for us, since everybody on the lin over the whole empire has a notion that we’re close to the city.”

Raghnall nodded sharply.  “So we’ll go in prepared for every kind of trouble we can think of.”

Ilax laughed.  “Between the lot of us old war-birds, that’s quite a bit of suspicion.  I think we should go in looking as though we’re all careless idiots, haven’t a clue, and trap us a trapper.”

“Do we hope that who or whatever is waiting for us is that dumb?”

“If not, then we haven’t lost anything.  Let us plan for every kind of reaction, hmmm?”

“This sounds almost like a school thing, rather than any way of getting through to Lainz,” Hara said grumpily.

“It is, my darling daughter,” Ilax said.  “It is both.”