The journey through the dunes became a rhythmic nightmare. The war party moved in a trance, stopping only twice a day: once when the sun reached its zenith, hiding under stretched tarps for four hours of suffocating heat to eat, sleep, and rest; and again for two more hours when the moon claimed the highest point of the night sky, a brief window to repair any damaged apparel.
Ámmon, Ámenor, and Kaséti were the only ones spared the burden of the planned watch. While the older warriors stood grim vigils, eyes peeling the horizon for threats, the scouts were ordered to sleep.
"Rest your eyes," Sofoú had grunted on the second night. "You don't need them yet. But when we hit the Flats, you won't blink for days."
By the end of the eleventh day, as the last light of the sun bruised the western sky purple, the endless rolling dunes finally gave way. Jagged teeth of black stone rose from the ground, some looming as large as the dunes themselves, marking the border of the Burning Flats. Beyond the rocks lay a nightmare of nature. The Flats had once been a vast, life-giving lake in the age of their ancestors. Now, it was a scar on the face of the world. The ground was a mosaic of cracked, baked rock, hard as iron and hotter than a forge. It was a place where cover did not exist for miles, leaving any traveler exposed like a bug on a dinner plate.
But nature was not the only danger. Though all the desert tribes were technically vassals by law to the Great Royal Empire, out here on the bleeding edge of the frontier, imperial law was nothing but a whisper. Reports of tribes turning on one another, ambushing caravans, were as common as the wind.
The Captain halted the column at the edge of the rocks. He didn't look tired; he looked like he was carved from the same stone as the landscape. "From now on, we don't stop to rest," the Captain announced, his voice carrying easily over the wind. "We have a day and a half of sprinting across the Flats. If we are fast enough, we will avoid the sun at its peak on the second day."
One day and a half? The thought hit Ámmon like a heavy backhand from Kaséti. One day and a half without stopping?
"How in the quickest of the quicksand are we supposed to cross this damn frying pan without hiding from the midday sun?" Ámenor blurted out, his mouth moving faster than his brain once again.
Sofoú turned slowly to look at the boy. He didn't yell. He didn't even frown. He simply gave Ámenor a look so withering it could have peeled the bark off a tree, a silent command that screamed: shut your mouth, boy.
The sprint began immediately, under the cover of darkness. It wasn't a run, no man could run for that long, but a punishment of a march, a pace that burned the lungs and turned muscles into pure acid.
The first night was a mercy, the cool air of the Flats offering a brief respite. But when the sun rose on the twelfth day, the reality of the Captain's order set in. There was no shade. No dunes to hide behind. Just miles of flat, cracked earth radiating heat upward, cooking them from below while the sun hammered them from above. At the beginning of the second day of the sprint, Ámmon retreated into his own mind. He stopped feeling his feet. He stopped feeling the thirst that clawed at his throat. He focused entirely on the back of the warrior in front of him, counting the stitches on the man's leather armor. One, two, three... step. One, two, three... step.
It's nearly noon, Ámmon thought, glancing up at the punishing sun. By the Captain's words, we should have arrived by now.
At high noon, the rhythm broke.
A thud, heavy and final, echoed through the silence. Ámmon turned his head sluggishly. A few paces behind him, an older warrior, a man of perhaps fifty cycles, with gray streaking his beard, had collapsed. He didn't cry out. He didn't reach for help. He simply hit the cracked earth and ceased to move.
It was Horemheb. He knew the man well; Horemheb had pitched his tent near Ámmon's during the last gathering season. You couldn't miss him, or rather, you couldn't miss his family. His wife was a woman of formidable lung capacity, her voice often thundering over the dunes as she scolded their daughters. Ámmon remembered a night just a few weeks ago. Horemheb had stormed out of his tent, the flap whipping behind him, escaping a particularly loud argument about spilled food. He had found Ámmon sitting by a small fire and slumped down beside him with a weary, defeated sigh. "Never marry a woman with a voice like a sandstorm, boy," Horemheb had grumbled, rubbing his temples, though there was a hidden warmth in his eyes that betrayed his annoyance. "I came out here just to remember what silence sounds like." Now, looking at his unmoving body on the baked clay, a strange, disjointed thought crossed Ámmon's mind.
Without the constant screaming of his wife and the crying of his loud daughters, this journey is probably a vacation for him. A worrying smile touched Ámmon's cracked lips. He moved toward the fallen man to help, stepping forward just as two other men did the same. But the Captain's voice cut through the shimmering heat like a whip.
"Leave him! Take his water and his spear."
Ámmon watched as they stripped the fallen man of his gear in seconds, a nervous weight settling deep in his mind. He's alive, Ámmon thought, panic rising in his chest. He has a family, and he's alive. But as Ámmon looked at the unmoving body, fear choked the words in his throat. He said nothing; he simply stood there, rooted to the cracked earth. "March!" The Captain ordered. The soldiers began to move, shuffling past the body, but Ámmon remained frozen in disbelief.
"We should have arrived hours ago," he heard Sofoú mutter to the Captain. Ámmon hadn't even realized the Scout Captain was standing so close.
"Yes," the Captain replied, the worry evident in his gravelly voice.
"So it is true?" Sofoú asked, his usual confidence shaken. "The Flats are expanding eastward? Eating into the Savanna?"
The Captain didn't answer. He simply turned his gaze to the east and began to march again. "March!" The Captain ordered again, this time not even looking back. "Before the Flats claim another of us."
Ámmon couldn't believe it. His mind was torn between the horror of the present and the bleakness of the future. And if it were me? Would they just leave me? he thought, paralysis gripping his legs. Are we really just going to leave him here? Like this?. Suddenly, a strong grip tightened on his arm. "Come on," Kaséti urged, his voice low but firm as he pulled him forward. "We cannot stop."
Time dragged. The sprint had devolved into an old man's shuffle, passing as slowly as an old crone without a walking stick. The horizon shimmered and danced, mocking them with mirages of water and shade. It was during this endless torture that Sofoú dropped back from the front, falling into step beside the struggling Kaséti. The desert was weighing heavily on him; he was breathing raggedly, his eyes unfocused.
A body that size is hard to sustain out here for so long, Ámmon thought, watching his friend struggle, the image of Horemheb's motionless body still tormenting his mind. Fear began to grip him. Is Kaséti alright? he wondered.
Sofoú matched Kaséti's pace. "Easy, lad," Sofoú said, his voice surprisingly soft, lacking its usual boom. "You're grinding your teeth so hard I can hear it over the wind."
"I'm fine, Captain," Kaséti wheezed, trying to straighten his back.
"It's not the pack that's heavy," Sofoú observed, offering Kaséti a small sip from his own waterskin, a gesture of immense value among their people. "I heard about your mother and sister. The famine takes the gentle ones first."
Kaséti blinked and nodded, unable to speak.
"You have his brow, you know," Sofoú continued, smiling sadly. "Your father's."
Kaséti looked up, surprised.
"I fought beside him," Sofoú chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. "The man was a stubborn bastard. The best kind. He didn't just die in the war, boy. He saved us. He held the line alone against five Grasslanders so the rest of our unit could retreat. I am only breathing today because your father stood his ground."
Sofoú clapped a heavy hand on Kaséti's shoulder. "He was a hero. And looking at you now, walking through hell without complaint... I see that the strongest stone comes from the same mountain."
Ámmon, walking a few paces behind, watched as Kaséti's posture straightened, not from water or rest, but from pure pride.
He may smell like fermented cheese and lizard rot, but he truly knows how to lead, Ámmon thought, a newfound respect for Sofoú settling in his chest.
But then, a thought struck him. I suppose if we are losing The battle, Sofoú can just lift his arms and the Grasslanders will drop dead from the fumes. Ámmon laughed aloud, unable to contain himself. Sofoú looked back at him, squinting as if he thought the boy had gone mad from the heat.
The sun was already halfway to sunset when, just as Ámmon felt his own legs beginning to buckle, a hand grabbed his shoulder again. "Living Icon," Kaséti croaked. His voice was rough, like two stones grinding together. Ámmon looked up. Kaséti was pointing a trembling finger toward the jagged line where the sky met the earth.
At first, Ámmon saw only the heat haze. But then, his vision cleared. There, rising from the desolation like a dream, was a color he hadn't seen in years. Not the brown of rock, not the yellow of sand, not the white of bone.
Green.
It was brownish-green, dusty and struggling, but green nonetheless. It was a tree. Twisted, lonely, and defying logic, standing as the gatekeeper to the world beyond.
"Trees," Kaséti whispered, a mix of exhaustion and relief in his eyes. "I see trees!"