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"I serve the ... Lisan al-Gaib," Hawat said. "His welfare is my concern. I've pledged myself to this."
"You are pledged to his water?"
Hawat glanced at his aide, who was still staring at the Fremen, returned his attention to the squatting figure. "To his water, yes."
"You wish to return to Arrakeen, to the place of his water?"
"To ... yes, to the place of his water."
"Why did you not say at first it was a water matter?" The Fremen stood up, seated his nose plugs firmly.
Hawat motioned with his head for his aide to return to the others. With a tired shrug, the man obeyed. Hawat heard a low-voiced conversation arise among the men.
The Fremen said: "There is always a way to water."
Behind Hawat, a man cursed. Hawat's aide called: "Thufir! Arkie just died."
The Fremen put a fist to his ear. "The bond of water! It's a sign!" He stared at Hawat. "We have a place nearby for accepting the water. Shall I call my men?"
The aide returned to Hawat's side, said: "Thufir, a couple of the men left wives in Arrakeen. They're... well, you know how it is at a time like this."
The Fremen still held his fist to his ear. "Is it the bond of water, Thufir Hawat?" he demanded.
Hawat's mind was racing. He sensed now the direction of the Fremen's words, but feared the reaction of the tired men under the rock overhang when they understood it.
"The bond of water," Hawat said.
"Let our tribes be joined," the Fremen said, and he lowered his fist.
As though that were the signal, four men slid and dropped down from the rocks above them. They darted back under the overhang, rolled the dead man in a loose robe, lifted him and began running with him along the cliff wall to the right. Spurts of dust lifted around their running feet.
It was over before Hawat's tired men could gather their wits. The group with the body hanging like a sack in its enfolding robe was gone around a turn in the cliff.
One of Hawat's men shouted: "Where they going with Arkie? He was--"
"They're taking him to ... bury him," Hawat said.
"Fremen don't bury their dead!" the man barked. "Don't you try any tricks on us, Thufir. We know what they do. Arkie was one of--"
"Paradise were sure for a man who died in the service of Lisan al-Gaib," the Fremen said. "If it is the Lisan al-Gaib you serve, as you have said it, why raise mourning cries? The memory of one who died in this fashion will live as long as the memory of man endures."
But Hawat's men advanced, angry looks on their faces. One had captured a lasgun. He started to draw it.
"Stop right where you are!" Hawat barked. He fought down the sick fatigue that gripped his muscles. "These people respect our dead. Customs differ, but the meaning's the same."
"They're going to render Arkie down for his water," the man with the lasgun snarled.
"Is it that your men wish to attend the ceremony?" the Fremen asked.
He doesn't even see the problem, Hawat thought. The naivete of the Fremen was frightening.
"They're concerned for a respected comrade," Hawat said.
"We will treat your comrade with the same reverence we treat our own," the Fremen said. "This is the bond of water. We know the rites. A man's flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe."
Hawat spoke quickly as the man with the lasgun advanced another step. "Will you now help our wounded?"
"One does not question the bond," the Fremen said. "We will do for you what a tribe does for its own. First, we must get all of you suited and see to the necessities."
The man with the lasgun hesitated.
Hawat's aide said: "Are we buying help with Arkie's ... water?"
"Not buying," Hawat said. "We've joined these people."
"Customs differ," one of his men muttered.
Hawat began to relax.
"And they'll help us get to Arrakeen?"
"We will kill Harkonnens," the Fremen said. He grinned. "And Sardaukar." He stepped backward, cupped his hands beside his ears and tipped his head back, listening. Presently, he lowered his hands, said: "An aircraft comes. Conceal yourselves beneath the rock and remain motionless."
At a gesture from Hawat, his men obeyed.
The Fremen took Hawat's arm, pressed him back with the others. "We will fight in the time of fighting," the man said. He reached beneath his robes, brought out a small cage, lifted a creature from it.
Hawat recognized a tiny bat. The bat turned its head and Hawat saw its blue-within-blue eyes.
The Fremen stroked the bat, soothing it, crooning to it. He bent over the animal's head, allowed a drop of saliva to fall from his tongue into the bat's upturned mouth. The bat stretched its wings, but remained on the Fremen's opened hand. The man took a tiny tube, held it beside the bat's head and chattered into the tube; then, lifting the creature high, he threw it upward.
The bat swooped away beside the cliff and was lost to sight.
The Fremen folded the cage, thrust it beneath his robe. Again, he bent his head, listening. "They quarter the high country," he said. "One wonders who they seek up there."
"It's known that we retreated in this direction," Hawat said.
"One should never presume one is the sole object of a hunt," the Fremen said. "Watch the other side of the basin. You will see a thing."
Time passed.
Some of Hawat's men stirred, whispering.
"Remain silent as frightened animals," the Fremen hissed.
Hawat discerned movement near the opposite cliff--flitting blurs of tan on tan.
"My little friend carried his message," the Fremen said. "He is a good messenger--day or night. I'll be unhappy to lose that one."
The movement across the sink faded away. On the entire four to five kilometer expanse of sand nothing remained but the growing pressure of the day's heat--blurred columns of rising air.
"Be most silent now," the Fremen whispered.
A file of plodding figures emerged from a break in the opposite cliff, headed directly across the sink. To Hawat, they appeared to be Fremen, but a curiously inept band. He counted six men making heavy going of it over the dunes.
A "thwok-thwok" of ornithopter wings sounded high to the right behind Hawat's group. The craft came over the cliff wall above them--an Atreides 'thopter with Harkonnen battle colors splashed on it. The 'thopter swooped toward the men crossing the sink.
The group there stopped on a dune crest, waved.
The 'thopter circled once over them in a tight curve, came back for a dust-shrouded landing in front of the Fremen. Five men swarmed from the 'thopter and Hawat saw the dust-repellent shimmering of shields and, in their motions, the hard competence of Sardaukar.
"Aiihh! They use their stupid shields," the Fremen beside Hawat hissed. He glanced toward the open south wall of the sink.
"They are Sardaukar," Hawat whispered.
"Good."
The Sardaukar approached the waiting group of Fremen in an enclosing half-circle. Sun glinted on blades held ready. The Fremen stood in a compact group, apparently indifferent.
Abruptly, the sand around the two groups sprouted Fremen. They were at the ornithopter, then in it. Where the two groups had met at the dune crest, a dust cloud partly obscured violent motion.
Presently, dust
settled. Only Fremen remained standing.
"They left only three men in their 'thopter," the Fremen beside Hawat said. "That was fortunate. I don't believe we had to damage the craft in taking it."
Behind Hawat, one of his men whispered: "Those were Sardaukar!"
"Did you notice how well they fought?" the Fremen asked.
Hawat took a deep breath. He smelled the burned dust around him, felt the heat, the dryness. In a voice to match that dryness, he said: "Yes, they fought well, indeed."
The captured 'thopter took off with a lurching flap of wings, angled upward to the south in a steep, wing-tucked climb.
So these Fremen can handle 'thopters, too, Hawat thought.
On the distant dune, a Fremen waved a square of green cloth: once ... twice.
"More come!" the Fremen beside Hawat barked. "Be ready. I'd hoped to have us away without more inconvenience."
Inconvenience! Hawat thought.
He saw two more 'thopters swooping from high in the west onto an area of sand suddenly devoid of visible Fremen. Only eight splotches of blue--the bodies of the Sardaukar in Harkonnen uniforms--remained at the scene of violence.
Another 'thopter glided in over the cliff wall above Hawat. He drew in a sharp breath as he saw it--a big troop-carrier. It flew with the slow, spread-wing heaviness of a full load--like a giant bird coming to its nest.
In the distance, the purple finger of a lasgun beam flicked from one of the diving 'thopters. It laced across the sand, raising a sharp trail of dust.
"The cowards!" the Fremen beside Hawat rasped.
The troop carrier settled toward the patch of blue-clad bodies. Its wings crept out to full reach, began the cupping action of a quick stop.
Hawat's attention was caught by a flash of sun on metal to the south, a 'thopter plummeting there in a power dive, wings folded flat against its sides, its jets a golden flare against the dark silvered gray of the sky. It plunged like an arrow toward the troop carrier which was unshielded because of the lasgun activity around it. Straight into the carrier the diving 'thopter plunged.
A flaming roar shook the basin. Rocks tumbled from the cliff walls all around. A geyser of red-orange shot skyward from the sand where the carrier and its companion 'thopters had been--everything there caught in the flame.
It was the Fremen who took off in that captured 'thopter, Hawat thought. He deliberately sacrificed himself to get that carrier. Great Mother! What are these Fremen?
"A reasonable exchange," said the Fremen beside Hawat. "There must've been three hundred men in that carrier. Now, we must see to their water and make plans to get another aircraft." He started to step out of their rock-shadowed concealment.
