of time and distance by the time he heard Sinclair grunt deeply and move suddenly, disturbing the plodding rhythm of his walk and almost throwing him off balance. He was glad to stop and shrug out of the harness, twisting around as he tried to lower his end gently without jarring the injured man.
“Where in God’s name are we?”
Moray noted that Sinclair’s voice, while still weak, was noticeably stronger. He stood up on his toes and stretched hugely, swinging his arms for a time to loosen his shoulder joints before he made any attempt to answer.
“And why can’t I move? What am I tied to?”
Moray ruffled his friend’s hair. “Well, God bless you, too, Alec. I’m well, thank you, merely having hauled the solid weight of your large and miserable arse halfway across this desert. But it is a relief to listen to your complaining and know therefore that you are well, too.” His voice altered from one word to the next, dropping its tone of raillery and becoming serious. “You can’t move because you’re trussed up like a pig’s carcass, and you’re trussed up because it was the only way I could stop you from flailing your arm about. It’s badly broken and you were growing sick because of the pain, tossing about and raving. I used crossbow bolts for splints. And you are lashed to the only means I have of moving you in the hope of reaching safety. Saracens are swarming all about us. As for where we are, I have no idea. We’re in the desert somewhere, heading southwest towards Nazareth because I can’t think of anywhere else to go. I overheard two Saracen patrols exchanging information—Saladin has taken La Safouri, so there’s no refuge there. I borrowed this thing that you are lying on from a corpse that was left behind. I’ve been dragging you across Outremer ever since.”
He fell silent and watched his friend absorb everything he had said, noticing as he did so that Sinclair’s face appeared to be less haggard than it had been earlier that day, although that might have been the effect of the moonlight, for the moon was now riding high overhead.
Sinclair frowned. “You are dragging me? How?”
“With ropes. A leather harness.”
“You mean, like a horse?”
Moray grinned as he untied the bindings of the water skin. “Aye, the same thought had occurred to me. Like a horse. A workhorse. See what you’ve made of me?”
“You said there are Saracens everywhere. Why is that?”
“I don’t know. They’re probably looking for fugitives like us, people who escaped from Hattin. You look better than you did earlier, thanks be to God. Here, have some of this.”
He knelt and held the water skin to Sinclair’s mouth, and when he had finished drinking, the injured man looked around at the moonlit waste surrounding them.
“You have no idea where we are?”
“South and west of Hattin and Tiberias, perhaps four leagues, or five. I must have come five miles at least, pulling you, and we walked all night last night. Do you remember that?”
Sinclair looked almost hurt. “Of course I do.” He hesitated. “But I don’t recall much else.”
“I dosed you with some medication I had in my scrip and you’ve been asleep for hours. How much pain are you in?”
Sinclair made a movement that might have been a shrug. “Some, not much. There’s pain, but it’s…distant, somehow.”
“Aye, that will be the drug. I’ll give you more of it later.”
“Be damned if you will. I need no drugs.”
Moray shrugged. “Not now, it’s plain. But later, if you start raving again, I’ll be the one to make that decision.” He peered up at the sky again, as though expecting to see clouds. “In the meantime, we have to keep moving. The moon’s high, so we’ll have light for an hour or two more, but after that, if I can’t see the ground underfoot, it might be nasty for both of us.”
“Then keep your eyes open for another place to hide during the day that’s coming. The loss of an hour or two of darkness won’t make much of a difference to our journey if we don’t know where we are or where we’re going. But what about water? Have we enough?”
Moray hefted the water bag. “We have until we reach the end of this. After that we’re in God’s hands.”
“We’re in God’s sands, Lachlan, and like to die here if He doesn’t provide for us.”
“Well, we’ll find that out tomorrow. For now, I walk and you take your ease.”
He fastened the water bag carefully in place, then strapped on the harness again and set off. They did not speak to each other after that, for they both knew how sound can travel in the desert at night and they had no wish to attract company. Moray quickly steadied himself into the plodding gait he had been using for hours, but he was aware from the outset that fatigue was rising in him. He gritted his teeth and willed himself to ignore the shooting pains in his calves and thighs, concentrating solely on the incessant rhythm of placing one foot ahead of the other.
Some time later, much later, he decided afterwards, an agonized groan from Sinclair brought him back to awareness, and he stopped short, surprised to see that the terrain around him had changed completely and that he had walked from one desert zone into another without realizing it.
“Alec? Are you awake?”
Sinclair did not answer him, and Moray stopped on the point of peeling off the harness that felt now as though it had embedded itself into his body. Instead, he straightened up, arching his back and suddenly aware of the pain and stiffness he had blanked out of his mind until then, and looked about him carefully. The moon was low in the sky, but it still threw sufficient light for him to see his surroundings clearly enough to be amazed at what lay before him. The ground beneath his feet now was hard, scoured down to bedrock by the wind, and he was standing on the edge of what he saw as an enormous tilted bowl that loomed above and ahead of him, a broad, almost circular area of flat land, more than half a mile in extent, that was littered with great boulders and surrounded on all sides, except for where he stood, by towering, featureless walls of sand. Mountainous dunes, their gigantic slopes painted silver and black by moonlight and shadows, swept up on both sides of him to shut out the horizon ahead, eclipsing the stars. As he stood there, hearing only the pounding of his own heartbeat, he became aware of the stillness of the night; nothing moved and no smallest sound disturbed the absolute calm.
“Alec, can you hear me?” There was still no response, but he spoke again, quickly, as though he had heard one. “We’re in a different kind of place here, but it looks promising, as far as finding shelter goes. There are boulders ahead, within reach, and we should be able to find a spot among them where the sun won’t roast us tomorrow. It’s late, and the moon’s almost gone, and I’m too tired to go much farther, so I’m going to take us there and find a spot to rest. And then I’m going to sleep, perhaps for the entire day tomorrow. But first I’m going to feed you some more of those drugs you don’t want. That is if I can force my feet to move again. Hold on, and I’ll try.”
He bent to the traces again and, after the first few faltering steps, found the plodding rhythm that had enabled him to keep forging ahead for hours. Within another quarter of an hour he was close enough to the largest pile of boulders to see that there was shelter aplenty among them, chinks and crevices that looked large enough to swallow both of them with ease. He lowered Sinclair’s bier to the ground and peeled himself agonizingly out of the network of straps and braces that had sunk into his tortured flesh. As he bent to check his friend’s breathing, Sinclair opened his eyes.
“Lachlan. It’s you. I was dreaming. Where are we?”
“Hazard a guess. You’re as likely to be right as I am.” Moray was massaging his right arm, moving his elbow in circles and grimacing with pain as his fingers dug into the muscles of his shoulder. “Damnation, but you make a heavy load, Sinclair. I feel as though I’ve been hauling a dead horse behind me since the day I was born.” He saw his friend’s quick frown and waved