The heat returned at mid-morning with the ferocity of an ungreased iron saw.
By noon, the red dunes had flattened into a waving plain of bleached caliche gravel and razor-sharp white chalk-stone shards. The wind had dropped fully, leaving the air suffocatingly still. Every breath was a rasp of bitter-salt dust that tasted of chalk, sulfur, and ancient sea-salt.
Ren hauled the lead handcart through a dry wash, his lambskin apron crusted with white salt rings from evaporated sweat. His freshwater allergy throbbed like a backup pulse. Every time a drop of sweat ran down his neck and trickled over the raw blisters on his collarbone, his skin screamed in sympathetic agony. He kept a flat pebble of stone salt wedged beneath his tongue, sucking on the bitter salt water to keep his swollen throat from closing.
Behind him, the eighteen refugees dragged their feet through the gravel like walking corpses. Master Varos, the elderly cobbler, stumbled every dozen paces, his leather apron flapping against his hollow ribs. The textile weavers had ceased talking hours ago, their eyes fixed on the dust between their boots.
“Look!” Master Varos suddenly cried out, his voice cracking with wild, desperate fervor.
He was pointing trembling, blistered fingers toward a low dark rock knoll half a league to the north.
