The Desert Kid's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

The Desert Kid walked east alone until the dunes flattened into hard gravel. He saw the riders before they saw him. Four men on horses sat beside a low wooden tower built into the rocks. They held spears across their saddles and watched the open ground. He dropped flat behind a ridge and waited for his breath to slow. He thought through his options the way he counted coins. He could not outrun horses. He could not hide on flat ground. He could only look like something they did not want. He crawled back to a dry wash he had passed and found what the wind had left there: a torn patterned robe half buried in sand, a broken spear shaft, a stained scarf. He shook the robe out and pulled it over his clothes. The colors were loud and sun-faded. He wrapped the scarf high around his face. He needed them looking the wrong way. He cut his thumb with his knife and pressed the blood into a rag from his pack. He walked north along the gravel for a hundred steps, dragging his heels to leave deep prints, then dropped the bloody rag in a clear spot between two stones. He doubled back on the hard rock where his feet left nothing. Then he picked up the broken spear and walked toward the riders in plain sight, slow, like a man who had nowhere to be. One rider trotted out to meet him. The Desert Kid lifted a hand and pointed north, then mimed something running, something bleeding. He kept his voice low and rough and said only a few words about a hurt goat. The rider studied him, studied the loud robe, studied the spear. Then he turned in the saddle and called to the others. They kicked their horses north toward the rag. The lead rider waved the Desert Kid off without another look. He walked east with steady steps until the tower was small behind him, and only then did he let his hands shake. He shed the robe a mile on and buried it under a stone. His thumb still bled into the cloth he wrapped around it. He was through. He was also seen, remembered, counted. Somewhere a man who had met Aldric Stonewander once on a better day would have laughed at the costume. The Desert Kid did not laugh. He drank a careful swallow of water, set his compass east, and walked. The oasis was closer now than the last place anyone knew his name.