Exile’s Return. Raymond E. Feist

were two sleepers, a man and a woman. In the gloom he could see little, so he waited and let his eyes adjust. After a moment he saw a third body near the left side of the tent, a child from the size of it.

      Kaspar saw a pair of boots standing next to a small chest, where he imagined he’d find the chieftain’s personal treasure. Kaspar moved with the catlike stealth uncharacteristic of a man so large. He quietly picked up the boots and saw they were of a size he could wear, then moved back towards the tent flap. He paused. Conflicting urges tugged at him. He was almost certain to be overtaken and recaptured, perhaps killed this time, unless he could find an advantage. But what? While he pondered, valuable moments passed, time never to be regained that would count against him as he sought to distance himself from this place.

      Indecision was not part of Kaspar’s nature. He glanced about in the gloom and saw the chieftain’s weapons where he would expect them, close at hand in case of trouble. He inched past the sleeping couple and took out the nomadic leader’s dagger. It was a long, broad-bladed thing designed with a single purpose, to gut a man at close quarters. There was nothing dainty about it, and it put Kaspar in mind of the daggers worn by the nomads of the Jal-Pur desert of Kesh. He wondered idly if these people were somehow related. The language of the Jal-Pur was unrelated to Keshian, but Quegan had been a dialect of Keshian, and these people’s language bore a faint resemblance.

      Kaspar took the blade and crept closer to the tent flap. He peered in the gloom at the child. In the dim light he couldn’t see if it was a boy or girl, for the hair was shoulder length and the child’s face was turned away. With a quick, downwards thrust, Kaspar drove the dagger through the floor cover into the earth below. The slight sound caused the child to stir, but not wake.

      Kaspar left the tent. He glanced quickly around and saw what he needed, a filled waterskin. He then looked longingly at the line of horses, but ignored them. A mount would give him a better chance of survival, but trying to saddle one was likely to wake someone, and whatever chance his warning in the tent might earn him, stealing a horse from these people would certainly outweigh it.

      Kaspar moved out of the village and towards the trees and the hills beyond. What he had seen before his capture indicated that it was rocky terrain and perhaps these horsemen might be disinclined to follow if the way was too harsh. Perhaps they had a rendezvous to make, or perhaps Kaspar’s message might give them pause.

      For unless the chieftain was a fool he would understand what Kaspar had done. The dagger next to his child would say, ‘I could have killed you and your family while you slept, but I spared you. Now, leave me alone.’

      At least that’s what Kaspar hoped the man would understand.

      Dawn found Kaspar climbing over broken rocks, high into the hills. There was almost no cover above the small copse of trees he had seen the day before, and he struggled to find a place to hide.

      He could still see the camp below, though by now it was a distant dotting of tents on the floor of the wide valley. From his vantage he could see that this valley was a choke point of a broad plain, flanked on his side by broken hills with a plateau opposite. On the other side of the valley, a vast mountain range rose in the distance. Snow-capped peaks suggested that these mountains would be difficult to cross. The military man in him admired the defensibility of the location, should someone choose to place a fortress where the nomad’s camp was. But scanning the horizon, he realized there was nothing to protect here.

      The valley lacked apparent water. The trees he had passed through were a variety unknown to him. They were scrawny, had tough black bark, thorns, and obviously needed very little water to survive. Everywhere he looked he saw rocks and dust. The valley below and the cut through the rocks told him that once a river had flowed through here. Shifting land or a change in climate had caused it to dry up and now its only function was to mark a quick passage for horsemen between one place and another, both unknown to Kaspar.

      Distant sounds informed him his escape had been discovered, and he returned his efforts to climbing, feeling lightheaded and slightly weak. He had not eaten for at least two days, depending how he calculated the time. He had been dragged before Talwin Hawkins and his allies in chains at night and transported here instantly at dawn. He must truly be on the other side of the world.

      He needed rest and food. He had found some sort of dried meat and hard cracker in a pouch on the side of the waterskin, and planned on devouring these when time permitted, but for the moment he was content to put as much distance between himself and the nomads as possible.

      He reached a ridge, on top of which a narrow path ran. He pulled himself up off the rocks and turned to look at the distant camp. Tents were being folded and the tiny dots he took to be men and horses appeared to be moving at a sedate pace. There was no sign of pursuit below him. Kaspar took a moment to catch his breath and regarded the path.

      It was wider than a game trail. He knelt and examined it. Someone had taken the trouble to compact the earth beneath his feet. He followed it as it climbed, leading him away from the area above the camp, and soon he found a rock face on his right that showed marks made by tools. The sun was partially blocked by the rock face, so he sat and ate the cracker and some of the dried meat. He drank about a third of the water in the skin and rested.

      He seemed to have escaped and it appeared that his message to the tribe’s chieftain had been understood. No riders fanned out in search, no trackers climbed the hills below him. He was free of pursuit.

      The air was dry. He reckoned his orientation from the rising sun. The trail he was on had once been a military road, which appeared to have been abandoned for some reason or another. The surrounding countryside was harsh and ungenerous, so there seemed little reason to claim it. Perhaps it had once served as a highway for a nation no longer claiming this region.

      He knew the heat of the day would be punishing, so he sought out shelter. None was evident. He decided to spend a while along this old military road, for if nothing else it offered him a vantage point. He allowed himself one long sip of water, then replaced the stopper in the waterskin. He had no idea how long it would be before he found another supply.

      The snatches of conversation he had overheard the night before led him to believe water was a source of concern to his former captors. He assumed they would be heading for a new source, so he decided to walk the trail in parallel to their course.

      An hour went by and he noticed that the distance between himself and his captors was growing. They walked their horses, but they were traversing flat terrain and he was picking his way along broken stones. The roadbed was flat for a dozen yards or more at a time, then would be interrupted by breaks, overturned stones and gaps due to slides in the hillside below. Once he had to climb down half a dozen yards in order to circumnavigate a collapsed section.

      By midday he was exhausted. He removed his shirt and tied it around his head as a rudimentary covering. He didn’t know how he knew, but he vaguely remembered as a boy being told that the body could withstand sunburn as long as the head was shaded. He drank another swallow of water and then chewed the jerked meat. It was tough and with little fat, and very salty. He resisted the urge to drink more, determined to permit himself just one more mouthful when he had finished the food.

      It took a while to chew the meat, but at last he finished and he took that one long drink. He sat regarding his surroundings.

      Kaspar was a hunter. Perhaps not the hunter Talwin Hawkins had been, but he had enough wilderness lore to know he was in dire circumstances. Whatever rain visited this harsh countryside did so infrequently, for there were no signs of vegetation save the tough trees that scattered the landscape. The rocks he sat upon had no grass pushing its way up between cracks, and when he turned a stone over, there was no moss or lichen growing on the shaded side. This country was dry most of the time.

      He let his eyes follow the ridge upon which he walked and he saw that it ran towards the south. To the east he saw nothing but broken plains, and to the west the arid valley. He decided he would take this trail for a while longer, and look for anything that would keep him alive. The nomads were heading south, and if he didn’t know anything else, he knew that eventually they would be heading for water. And to survive, he needed water.

      For