Page 87 of Heart of the Desert

I exhaled through my nose in as close to a laugh as I could muster.

“High Lords!” came a call for the second time this morning.

Warrick stood at the front of one of the ships, leaning on the point adorned with the wolf’s head; the prow, he had called it.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he shouted.

Erix and I looked at each other before raising our hands. The flow of magic between us sprung to life quickly, the fraught power of the desert jumping to respond at even the slightest touch. She too was ready for battle and blood—although whose, I could not be sure.

The sudden wind snapped against the unfurled canvas of the sails, and the boats lurched forward. Warrick stumbled and had to grab on to the high wooden sides to keep from falling at the sudden acceleration.

The entire fleet glided over the sand, sailing inland on an ocean of dunes. It might have been wonderous if the men on the boats hadn’t looked back over their shoulders at the ocean as it faded out of view. Some of them would never see it again.

Daiti and Alza stepped forward confidently, keeping us behind the fleet where we could create the wind needed to propel it. Behind us, all the lords rode abreast, leading their clans to war.

We rode until the sun was all but disappeared below the horizon, and the deep shadows of dusk painted everything in washed out shades of gray. Normally, a clan with women and children would not drive themselves so hard, but these were not ordinary times.

Even those who were not warriors were familiar with the ways of war, and they steeled themselves for a difficult journey. There was no time to spare.

After such a long day, there was no time to hunt or energy to cook. We all sat outside our tents eating the small amounts of dried oryx meat and dates we had left. Aderyn looked down at her meagre meal distastefully, but she did not eat.

I frowned. No matter how ill I felt, I always managed to choke down food—an ability trained into myself by a decade of scarcity. Even when just the thought of dates made me gag, I had sustained myself on them. But I had never been pregnant.

“Does your stomach not agree with oryx? I wish I had something else to offer you,” I asked, looking around. Now that we had Zephyr back, perhaps he could find us a jackrabbit.

Aderyn shook her head. “My stomach has been fine for weeks now. And that’s what worries me.”

I furrowed my brows in confusion, and Aderyn sighed, putting down her meal and seemingly giving up on eating all together.

“It took us months to reach the ocean. So long that my sickness passed. If it takes us that long to get back…” Aderyn chewed her lip. “Neven might never even know he had a child.”

My ribs ached with the force of the sadness that coursed through me. Sand slipped through the hourglass of time too quickly, and with it, our chances for victory. The threat of Calix and Viltov pressed in, spurred by the knowledge of another threat on the horizon. If we could not fight through his people to make it back to the top of the palace at Kelvadan, the entire desert would be lost regardless.

Erix spoke next to me. “The true test of the desert is reaching the ocean. The journey home is never as far. When Lord Alasdar and I returned from the ocean last, it only took us a week to reunite with Clan Katal.”

“And what if that is still not fast enough?” Aderyn asked.

I set my jaw. “It will be. And if it is not, then we will feed the desert the blood of every last one of Calix’s men.”

On the morning of the eighth day, one of the scouts we had been sending ahead galloped back to our caravan in a puff of dust. Sweat drenched the sides of his horse, and his hood had been pushed back from the speed of his flight.

“The clans,” he gasped. “I could see the clans’ encampment in the distance.”

Hope rose like a flower in my chest—we had made it in time—only to be trampled beneath a horse’s hooves as he continued.

“But between us and them lies a massive army—I see no clan banners. It must be the invaders, and they control an oasis.”

I grimaced, my mouth already dry. Calix might be new to the desert, but he had learned the ways of clan war too quickly. Cutting your opponent off from water was a fast way to victory. If you controlled the nearest water supply, your opponents could not outlast you long.

“How large is the army from Viltov?” I asked.

The man paled under his sheen of sweat. “More massive than any force I have ever seen,” he admitted. “I can normally guess how many riders a clan boasts from the size of their encampment. But this army… I’ve never seen anything like it. They wear gleaming armor and carry long spears.”

The other lords had gathered around as the scout gave me and Erix his report.

“We could circle around at a distance and rejoin with the other clans. Together, we might have the numbers we need to plan an attack and claim the oasis,” Izumi observed, already calculating.

The scout shook his head. “Even combined, the clans would not boast half as many blades as Viltov’s army.”