Exile’s Return

• CHAPTER TWO •

Survival

KASPAR LAY DYING.

He knew his time was short as he sheltered under an overhang from the afternoon sun. He had been three days on the trail and his water had been used up at dawn. He was lightheaded and disoriented and had stumbled down the side of the ridge to a shaded area to wait out the heat.

He knew that if he didn’t find water by nightfall, he most likely would not awake tomorrow morning. His lips were cracked and his nose and cheeks peeled from sunburn. Lying on his back, he ignored the pain from his blistered shoulders as they rested against the rocks. He was too tired to allow the pain to bother him; besides, the pain let him know he still lived. He would wait until the sun was low in the west, then work his way down to the flat land below. The landscape was bleak and unforgiving: broken rocks and hardpan lay in every direction. He realized that the magician who had transported him here had given him little chance for survival; this was a desert by any measure, even if it lacked the flowing sands he associated with that name.

The few trees he had encountered were lifeless and dry, and even the underside of rocks were without a hint of moisture. One of his teachers had told him years ago that water could sometimes be found below the surface in the desert, but Kaspar was certain it wouldn’t be at this elevation. Whatever streams had graced this landscape ages before, any water was now long vanished; if any remained, it would be in those gullies that were his goal, down below the cracked surface towards which he staggered. For a brief moment he paused to catch his breath, which now laboured; no matter how deeply he inhaled, he couldn’t seem to get enough air. He knew it was another symptom of his plight.

Kaspar had never seen so bleak a place. The great sand ergs of the Jal-Pur of northern Kesh had seemed exotic, a place of shifting forms, a veritable sea of sand. He had been a boy with his father, and a lavish entourage of royal servants from the Imperial Keshian court at his beck and call, amid a mobile village of colourful tents and opulent pavilions. When his father hunted the legendary sand lizards of the Jal-Pur, servants were always nearby with refreshing drinks – water scented with herbs or fruit extracts, cleverly kept cool in boxes packed with snow from the mountains. Each night was a royal feast, with chilled ales and spiced wine.

Just thinking of those drinks caused Kaspar near-physical pain. He turned his fevered thoughts to his current surroundings.

Here there were colours, but nothing remotely attractive to the eye, just harsh ochre, dingy yellow, the red of rusted iron, and a tan muted with grey. Everything was covered by dust, and nowhere was there a hint of green or blue indicating water, though he had noticed a shimmer to the northwest, which might be a reflection of water on the hot air.

He had only hunted once in the hot lands of Kesh, but he remembered everything he had been told. The Keshians were descendants of the lion hunters who roamed the grasslands around the great lake called the Overn Deep, and their traditions had endured through the centuries. The old guide, Kulmaki, had counselled Kaspar, ‘Watch for birds at sundown, young lord, for they will fly to water.’ For the last two days he had scanned the horizon in vain; but not a bird had he seen.

As he lay exhausted and dehydrated he lapsed in and out of consciousness, his mind alive with a mix of fever dreams, memories and illusions.

He recalled a day as a boy when his father had taken him hunting, the first time he had been permitted to accompany the men. It had been a boar hunt, and Kaspar had barely the strength to handle the heavy-tipped boar spear. He had ridden close to his father as he took the first two boars, but then he had faced his own, he had hesitated, and the pig had dodged the broad head of Kaspar’s weapon. He had glanced over and seen the disapproval in his father’s eyes, and he had charged after the boar into the underbrush, without heeding the warning of the Master of the Hunt.

Before the men could catch up, Kaspar’s horse had chased the boar into a thicket where it had turned at bay. Kaspar had done everything possible that was wrong, yet when his father and the others had arrived, he stood ignoring the gash in his leg, standing triumphant over the still-thrashing animal. The Master of the Hunt put the animal down with a quick arrow, and Kaspar’s father had hurried to bind his son’s leg.

The pride Kaspar had seen in his father’s eyes, despite the admonishing words about foolish acts, had branded the boy for life. Never be afraid. He knew that no matter what, any choice must be made fearlessly, or else all would be lost.

Kaspar remembered the day when the mantle of rulership had fallen on his shoulders, and he had stood mutely by, holding his baby sister’s hands while the priests applied torches to the funeral pyre. As smoke and ash rose to the heavens, the young Duke of Olasko again pledged to be fearless in all things, and to protect his people as if he was facing that boar.

Somewhere it had all gone sour. Seeking a proper place in the sun for Olasko had somehow turned into naked ambition, and Kaspar had decided that he needed to be King of Roldem. He was eighth in line for succession, so a few accidents and untimely deaths would be all he required in order to unite all the disparate nations of the east under Roldem’s banner.

As he lay there thinking this, Kaspar’s father appeared suddenly, and for a moment Kaspar wondered if he had died and his father had come to guide him to the Hall of Death, where Lims-Kragma would weigh the value of his life and select his place on the wheel for its next turning.

‘Didn’t I tell you to be cautious?’

Kaspar tried to speak, but his voice was barely a croaking whisper. ‘What?’

‘Of all the weaknesses that beset a man, vanity is the most deadly. For through vanity can a wise man turn to folly.’

Kaspar sat up and his father was gone.

In his fevered state, he had no idea what the vision of his father meant, though something told him it was important. He didn’t have time to ponder this. He knew he couldn’t wait until sundown, his life was now being counted out in minutes. He stumbled down the rocks to the flatlands, heat shimmer rising off the grey and ochre rocks, stumbling over the broken shards of stone once made smooth by ancient waters.

Water.

He was seeing things that weren’t real. He knew that his father was dead, yet now the spirit of the man seemed to be marching before him.

‘You placed too much faith in those who told you what you wished was true, and ignored those who tried to tell you what was true.’

In his mind, Kaspar shouted, ‘But I was a force to be feared!’ The words came out an inarticulate grunt.

‘Fear is not the only tool of diplomacy and governance, my son. Loyalty is born from trust.’

‘Trust!’ shouted Kaspar, his voice a ragged gasp as the word seemed to scrape along the inside of a parchment-dry throat. ‘Trust no one!’ He stopped, nearly falling over, as he pointed an accusing finger at his father. ‘You taught me that!’

‘I was wrong,’ said the apparition sadly and it vanished.

Kaspar looked around and saw he was heading in the general direction of where he had seen the reflected shimmer. He staggered along, lifting one foot and putting it down before the other. Slowly he halved the distance, then halved it again.

His mind continued to wander as he relived events from his childhood, then the downfall of his reign. A young woman whose name he could not recall appeared before him, walking slowly for a minute, then vanished. Who was she? Then he remembered. The daughter of a merchant, a girl he had found fair but whom his father had forbidden him to see. ‘You will wed for reasons of state,’ he had been told. ‘Take her to your bed if you must, but leave aside foolish thoughts of love.’

The girl had wed someone else.

He wished he could remember her name.

He stumbled along, several times falling to his knees, only to rise once more on will alone. Minutes, hours, days passed, he had no way of knowing which. His mind was turning in on itself as he felt his life begin to wane.

He blinked, aware that the day was fading and he was now in a small gully, heading downwards.

Then he heard it.

A bird call. Slightly more than the peep of a sparrow, but a bird call.

Kaspar forced himself out of his lethargy and blinked. He tried to clear his swimming vision, and then he heard the call again. Cocking his head, he listened, and then a third call came.

He staggered towards the sound, mindless of the treacherous footing. He fell, but caught himself on the walls of the deepening gully.

Tough grass appeared beneath his feet and his mind seized on this one fact: if there was grass, there must be water below. He looked around and could see no sign of it, but he could see a stand of trees ahead. He pushed himself forward until he had no strength left, and fell to his knees and then onto his face.

He lay panting, face down on the grass; and he could feel the moisture of the blades against his face. Weakly, he dug at the grass and his fingers clawed up the loose earth. Below it he felt dampness. With his last shred of will he pulled himself to his knees and drew his sword. The odd thought came to him that should his old swordmaster see him use a blade this way he would be up for a beating, but he ignored the whimsical thought and plunged the blade into the soil. He dug. He used the blade as a gardener would a spade and he dug.

He ripped and pulled with the last of his strength and forced a hole into the ground with near-hysterical purpose, tearing the dirt aside as rapidly as a badger digging a burrow. Then he smelled it. The damp smell was followed by a hint of gleaming moisture on the blade.

He plunged his hand into the hole and felt mud. He tossed aside the sword and dug with bare hands, and then plunged his fingers into water. It was muddy and tasted of clay, but he could lie on his stomach and pull up a meagre handful at a time. He filled his cupped hand, raised it to parched lips and drank. At some point he rubbed some water on his neck and face, but over and over he raised his cupped hand to drink. He had no idea how many times he did this but eventually he collapsed, his head striking the ground as his eyes rolled up into his head and consciousness fled.

The bird scratched at the seeds, as if sensing danger nearby. Silently, Kaspar watched from on his stomach behind a depression a few feet away, masked by a line of thorny brush, as the bird – some sort of sage fowl he didn’t recognize – pecked at the seed, then picked it up in its beak and gobbled it down.

Kaspar had recovered from his ordeal enough to pull himself into the shade that morning, leaving it only to drink what he could dredge up from his impromptu well. The water came harder each time, and he knew this little reservoir would soon be exhausted. He had decided near mid-afternoon to venture deeper into the gully, to see where it led, and to find another place to dig for water.

Near sundown he had found the tree. He had no name for it, but it bore a tough-skinned fruit. He had cut several down and discovered that once the skin was cut with a blade, the meat was edible. It was also pulpy and tough, and the flavour was nothing to delight a hedonist, but he was desperate. He ate a few bites, despite being consumed by hunger, and waited.

It seemed they weren’t poisonous. He ate several before cramps gripped him. They might not be poisonous, but they were tough on the stomach. Or perhaps three days without food had caused his stomach to act more tenderly.

Kaspar had always possessed a healthy appetite and had never known hunger more pressing than skipping a midday meal because of a hunt or sailing off the coast. Others in his father’s household had complained bitterly when he pressed on, and he laughed silently to imagine how they would react in his current circumstances. The laugh died as he realized they would all likely be dead by now.

The bird came nearer.

Kaspar had placed seeds in a line leading to a snare he had fashioned from the materials at hand. Painfully he had woven tough fibres pulled from the bulb of a strange-looking cactus; it was a trick shown him by his Keshian guide. He had ripped off the end of the bud and yanked hard, producing a sharp tip attached to a long fibre. ‘Nature’s needle and thread,’ the guide had said. He had struggled, but in the end he had produced a line twice the length of his arm. His hands and arms were covered in cuts and puncture wounds, testament to his determination to fashion a snare from the thorn-covered branches of the local plants.

It took every ounce of will for Kaspar to remain silent and motionless as the bird approached his snare. He had already started a small fire, which was now banked and waiting to be fanned back into flame, and his mouth positively watered in anticipation of roast fowl.

The bird ignored him as it worried at the seed, attempting to break though the tough outer husk and get to the softer inner kernel. As Kaspar watched the bird finished the tiny morsel and moved to the next seed. For an instant, Kaspar hesitated as a pang of doubt seized him. He felt an almost overwhelming fear that somehow the bird would escape and he would slowly starve to death in this isolated place.

Genuine doubt almost paralysed him to the point of losing the bird. The fowl tossed the seed in the air and it landed just far enough from where Kaspar had placed his snare that he felt sure it would escape. However, when he yanked his line the trap fell exactly where he had judged it would land.

The bird fluttered and squawked as it tried to escape the thorny cage. Kaspar endured punctures from the iron-like points as he lifted the small cage to reach under and seize the bird.

He quickly wrung its neck and even before he had returned to the fire he was plucking its feathers. Using the tip of his sword to gut the bird proved a messy prospect. He wished now he had kept the dagger instead of using it to warn off the nomad chieftain.

Finally the bird was dressed and spitted and he was turning it over a fire. Kaspar could hardly contain himself waiting for the bird to cook. As the minutes dragged on, the cramps in his stomach were from anticipation more than anything else.

Throughout his life Kaspar had developed a strong self-discipline, but not eating undercooked bird was the toughest test he could remember. But he knew the dangers of eating undercooked fowl. One bout of food poisoning as a young man left an indelible memory.

Finally he judged the bird finished, and with disregard for burned lips and tongue he set to with a frenzy. All too quickly he was finished, having eaten every shred of meat and the tiny bit of fat the scrawny thing had possessed. It was the best meal he could recall, but it merely whetted his appetite. He stood up and looked around, as if he might spy another bird waiting to be snatched up and eaten.

Then he saw the boy.

He looked to be no more than seven or eight years of age. He wore homespun and sandals, both caked with dust. He had as handsome a face as Kaspar had ever seen on a child and a serious expression. He was dark blond and he studied Kaspar with wide, pale blue eyes.

Kaspar remained motionless for what seemed minutes, and then the boy turned and fled.

Kaspar took off after him a half-moment later, but he was weak from hunger and deprivation. His only goad was fear that the boy would alert his father or the men of his village and while Kaspar feared no man living, he knew he was too weak to give much account of himself if faced by more than one man.

Kaspar laboured to keep the boy in sight, but soon the child had vanished down a gully and between some rocks. Kaspar followed as well as he could, but after only a few minutes of climbing where he had seen the boy disappear, he stopped as dizziness gripped him. His stomach grumbled and he belched as he sat down. He patted his middle and in a moment of giddiness laughed at how he must look. It had only been, what? Six or seven days since he had been captured in his citadel in Olasko, but he could feel his ribs already. Near starvation had taken its toll.

He forced himself to be calm and then stood up and looked around for signs. He was perhaps as gifted a tracker as any man born to nobility in the eastern kingdoms. Kaspar had few vanities, but his skill at tracking and hunting were not among them; he was as good as he thought he was. He saw scuff marks on the rocks and when he climbed up them he saw the pathway.