The broad reddish paint stroke was now a wall, a churning line getting perceptibly closer by the minute. Splaying our toes in our huarache-style sandals gave us the best chance to cross the dunes in time, but they still feel short of what Tuspak feet accomplished.
Dune after identical dune passed us. Bastien navigated by instinct. I used the sun and the shapes of the distant mountains, barely visible on the horizon. The air had that unnerving stillness it always does before a sandstorm strikes. At the crest of a dune, I signaled Bastien that I needed to use the telescope.
Bastien came closer. It was very difficult to use the telescope while running, but it could be done and there was no alternative.
"Do you see them, my prince?" Bastien asked as I took the telescope down from my eye.
"No. None of cur crew isn't in sight. But I do see the top of Cairn Eleven."
"Perhaps they're already there," Bastien suggested hopefully.
"I see tracks," I said. A breeze came from behind. My stomach lurched into my throat.
"But it's not good. Their heading is off. They'll miss the cairn. We'll try to catch them, but we can't rest. Not even slow down." I looked behind, the wall was upon us.
Less than an hour separated that first breeze and when I grabbed Bastien by the shoulder. I pulled my googles out of my pack motioned for Bastien to do the same. I put a cloth around my face to protect my mouth and nose. Visibility was dropping fast. I grabbed his hand and put it on my shoulder. Separation would be death.
We crested the next dune and we both nearly ran into our own wagons.
I passed the tuspaks and went to the head of the wagon. Aukoa was stomping her feet and making a high pitched bellowing that I had rarely heard. A patted her on the side. "Quiet, girl. It's ok. We're here now."
The men clustered tightly, just as I had taught them, with their mouths and eyes covered with cloth. But we had never been so far from a cairn when a sandstorm came in. They were hunched. This one was going to be bad.
I found Olen in the lead. "My prince! We're headed for the cairn, as you ordered," Olen put his head close to mine and shouted. "But the Red Flood caught up with us."
I grabbed him by the shoulder. "Change heading by minus one twelfth."
Breathing through the cloth became harder. I coughed reflexively but I knew I would suffocate completely within minutes if I removed the cloth. Most of the men didn't have googles. They kept their eyes closed and kept up by touch alone. The sand went from stinging to scouring. Visibility went from cubits to handbreadths, but we pressed on. Then, a lurch and a terrible crack of splintering wood from behind me. A man screamed.
"The supply wagon!" Olen yelled, his voice barely audible. "The wheel is shattered!"
I turned to see the wagon tilted awkwardly. The tuspak was still trying to pull it. The cartman, no older than myself, stared in shock.
"Leave it," I ordered. "The men and the animals are all that matters now!"
Olen and Bastien cut the harnesses. They prodded the flanks of the two tuspaks and the poor beasts, already terrified, ran forward meet us.
"There!" Bastien shouted, barely audible over the gale.
I saw the peak of Cairn Eleven, a shade of darkness in the sand sticking up beyond the next dune. Twenty cubits high, as tall as five men standing on top of each other. I shouted at the top of my voice to Bastien and Olen. "Get the men and and animals into the lee of the cairn."
At each cairn, we had placed a wall three cubits high, large enough to provide substantial protection to any caravans caught in a sandstorm. We had buried water caches, even a few nearly inedible biscuits that would help people survive if they got caught. Not enough to support an invading army, just enough for a small group of people for a day or two until the storm passed.
Bastien and Olen had done as they were instructed. All the men and tuspaks were inside the semicircle. They began erecting tents. The storm's fury seemed to increase just as we got into the protective wall.
One of the heavy canvas tents got loose from its anchors. It flew through the sand, a barely visible shape, it hit Aukoa. Her harness, largely leather, snapped. She was panicked. Bellowing in terror. "AUKOA!" I screamed and began to run towards her, but she was running away. Out of the semicircular wall and into the growing gale. I ran to catch her. The wind hit like a club. Grating away every spec of exposed skin.
A beam, thick as a roof support caught me. It was Bastien's arm. "No, my prince!"
"AUKOA!" I screamed again, struggling against Bastien's irresistible grip.
"She's gone, Elyan. Get back inside!" Bastien's words were ice water splashed across my face. The Red Flood was a wall that would pulverize and sweep away anything that it encountered, one sand grain at a time. Neither our mighty cairns nor even the inselbergs would not last forever against it.
The day gradually turned to premature night as we huddled in our tents, canvas pulled tight. Periodically we pushed the sand off. I didn't know when night fell, but the temperature cooled.
As the wind grew stronger, I though of the people back home. The watchmen would have seen the storm coming. Horns would have been blown throughout the city, calling people into the shelters my parents had built out of the mines hewed into the mountains. Places where people's lives would not be at risk from building collapses. The City Guard would be going throughout the city making sure that the elderly and infirm got help.
I huddled with the other men in the tent as the storm roared. I fumbled with the strange stones in my pockets, cold and hard. Every time I would close my eyes, I saw the whites of her wide eyes as she was swallowed by the Red Flood.