Trok galloped down the track until he reached the spot where he had seen the three chariots turn aside and head into the dunes. Their tracks were so deeply etched into the sand that they might have been made by a single pair of wheels. At that moment Zander rode up from the opposite direction at the head of the second column.
'Well done! You have turned the quarry. We have them now,' Trok shouted at him.
'It has been a good chase,' Zander roared back. 'What formation do you want me to keep?'
Take the rearguard once again. In column of fours. Follow me.' As he turned off to follow the fugitives, his two divisions of chariots fell in behind him. He looked ahead. Taita and his tiny party had already disappeared into a funnel of high sandhills, whose tops were purple and blue. The depths between them were sombre and shaded under the lowering sky. He had not gone two hundred cubits when the outside chariots of the column were bogged down in the soft sand. He knew then why Taita had maintained such a tight formation. Only in the centre line was the earth hard enough to support a chariot.
'In single line ahead!' He altered his formation. 'Stay in my tracks.' The two combined divisions stretched out over half a league as they followed Trok into the uncharted wilderness, and the troopers looked up with mounting trepidation at the towering sand walls and the ugly sky above. Trok could not press his horses at the same killing pace and they came down to a walk, but he could judge by the tracks Taita had left that he, too, was moving more slowly.
They kept on for almost another league until abruptly the land ahead changed character. From the soft sand waves rose a dark island of rock. It was like some small craft lost in the ocean of the dunes. Its sides were honeycombed and eaten away by the abrasive sand-laden winds of millennia, but the peak was as sharp as the fang of some fabulous monster.
On the peak, tiny with distance, stood an unmistakable figure, sparse and tall with a wild bush of silver hair that glinted like a helmet in the strange and awful light.
''Tis the Warlock,' Trok gloated to Ishtar. They have taken refuge in the rocks. I hope they try to fight us there.' Then to his trumpeter, 'Sound the battle call.'
--
When Nefer and Mintaka saw the rockpile looming ahead they were both astonished. 'Did Taita know it was here?' Mintaka asked.
'How could he have known?' Nefer replied.
'You told me once that he knows everything.' And Nefer was silenced. He looked back to cover his uncertainty, and saw the dust of the pursuit close behind, rising to mingle with the yellow glare of the sunless sky.
'It matters not at all. How can it avail us?' he asked. 'We might be able to defend those rocks for a very little while, but there are hundreds of Trok's men. This is almost the end.' He touched the waterskin that hung from the rail beside him. It was almost empty, not even enough left to keep the horses alive for another day.
'We must trust Taita.' Mintaka said, and he laughed bitterly.
'It seems the gods have deserted us. Who else is there to trust but Taita?'
They went forward, with the horses down to a hampered walk. Behind them they heard the faint sounds of the pursuit: the cries of the captains urging their troopers to keep the line, the jingle of loose equipment and the groan and whine of dry wheel hubs.
At last they came up under the hill of black and ochre-coloured rock. It was a hundred feet high and the accumulated heat radiated from it like a bonfire. Not a single plant had found a foothold on it, but the wind had carved fissures and cracks in its cliffs.
'Drive the chariots close in against the cliff,' Taita ordered, and they obeyed. 'Now free the horses and bring them this way.' Taita set the example by leading his own team around the angle of the rockface. Here there was a deep fissure with sheer sides cutting into the rock pile.
'This way.' He led them as far as they could go along the sandy floor of the deep, vertical crack. 'Now make the horses lie down.'
All cavalry horses were trained to perform this trick. At the urging of their handlers they lowered themselves to their knees and then, grunting and blowing, they went flat on their sides on the floor of the fissure.
'Like this!' Taita told them. He had brought a bedding roll from the chariot. With strips torn from it he blindfolded the horses to keep them quiet and submissive. Then he drove a javelin deep into the loose earth and used it as an anchor to tie down the horses' swathed heads and prevent them from rising again. The others followed his example.
'Now bring what remains of the water. 'Tis a pity there is not enough to give the horses a last drink, but we will need every drop for ourselves.'
Almost as if he knew of its existence, Taita led them to a shallow overhang in the cliff. The head room under the overhang was so low that anyone trying to enter would have to go down on hands and knees.
'Use the loose scree from the cliff to wall this in.'
'A zareba wall?' Nefer looked puzzled. 'We cannot defend this place. Once we are in the cave we could not even stand, let alone swing a sword.'
'There is no time to argue.' Taita glared at him. 'Do as I tell you.'
Nefer's nerves were raw with fear for Mintaka, and he was wearied by the hardships they had lived through these last days. He glared back at Taita. The others watched with interest: the young bull challenging the older one. The seconds drew out until abruptly Nefer realized his own foolishness. Only one person could save them now and he capitulated. He stooped and picked up a large rock from the scree pile and staggered with it to the shallow cave. He placed it in position and ran back for another. The others joined in the work. Even Mintaka carried her share of the rough lumps of schist. The skin of her hands was raw and torn before they had closed in a narrow space behind the wall.
'What do we do now?' Nefer asked stiffly, still smarting from his encounter with the Magus.
'Drink,' said Taita,
Nefer poured from the skin into a leather bucket and handed it to Mintaka. She took a few sips then offered it to
