Sahir's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Morning came gray and sharp. Rashid rolled the blanket without a word and cinched the saddle tighter than usual. He mounted, took the reins short, and pointed Sahir's head at the road. Sahir felt the difference at once. The reins did not give. The knees pressed. When Sahir drifted a step off the line, Rashid pulled him back before the drift became a turn. Rashid had learned from the night on the sand. Sahir had won that trade and lost this one. They rode past the desert market at a distance. Sahir could see the striped awning of the fruit stand across the flats, the baskets hanging from their hooks, the small round shapes of apples stacked in the front row. His nostrils opened. He slowed a half step. The reins snapped tight before his hoof finished the motion. "No," Rashid said. "Not today." Sahir tried the old trick. He turned his head against the pull and leaned his weight toward the stalls. On loose sand the trick worked. On the packed road it did not. Rashid stayed in the saddle and used the reins and his heels, and Sahir went where Rashid pointed him, which was past the market and out along the flat spread of sand toward the dunes beyond. Sahir saw the vendor at the edge of his stall, the gray-haired man in the apron, watching them go. Chen Bao lifted a hand. Rashid did not lift one back. Sahir tried once more, half a mile on. He planted his hooves and refused to walk. Rashid did not shout. He dismounted, took the bridle at the cheek, and stood in front of Sahir's face. "Walk," he said. "Or stand here until dark. Your choice." The sun was already climbing. There was no shade. There was no water in the saddlebag Sahir could reach. Sahir stood a long minute. Then he walked. By midday they were far from the stalls. Rashid took them up a low wind-carved ridge and stopped at the top, where the sand rolled off in long ripples on every side. He let Sahir drink from the skin and eat a handful of dry grain from his palm. The grain was not an apple. Sahir ate it anyway. Rashid rubbed his neck once, brief and firm, and swung back into the saddle. Sahir understood the shape of it now. The man had changed. The reins would not slack again for a while. The market was closed to him, not by distance but by the hand on the leather. The apple he wanted still sat in its basket under the striped awning, and he had walked past it without a bite. He would not walk past it forever. He flicked an ear against a fly and filed the thought away. Tonight he would watch how Rashid tied the reins, and where the man set the spear, and when the man slept.