Michael looked down at the town in the sand. Red, flat roofs of clay interspersed by the elegant, wooden gables of buildings from northern climes, still stood in a basin of protective hills. From where he stood, the rotting boards were invisible, as was the sand that swirled along the unkempt streets.

  He tried to see the town as it had been ten years before. There had been trees standing inside walled islands of stone dotting the center of the main streets, and the sweetly scented jalaya flowered beneath them. There had been window boxes full of color clinging to the walls and the town had been white, the color of snow and light-hearted purity, not red, the color of old blood and war.

  Caroline had danced in the streets with him on the first day of the new year, and the unseen rains had made the river roar with power as it rushed between the white stone walls of the canal.

  That had been ten years ago, just before the Scorpions had first attacked, and the town had emptied shortly thereafter.

  Caroline’s family had disappeared in the melee, along with his son, but Caroline had refused to grieve them. They were safe, she insisted. His son was safe, she said, but he had to take their daughter.

  Michael had had no time to argue or grieve, but instead had clung to her promise. His son was safe. His daughter would be safe with him, but of his bride-to-be…

  Caroline had refused to go. She had said she had duties that must be attended. She had asked him to stay, but Michael had possessed other duties, other responsibilities that had forced him to leave her behind, so she said she would dance the streets on the first day of every new year in his memory.

  When he had protested that the day was no longer safe, she had promised to dance them at night.

  Michael had begged her to come with him, to wed him in the desert, but Caroline’s eyes had glistened with tears.

  “I have to stay,” she’d said, and insisted the reasons secret until they married and united as family. She had said she would not take him from his duties, hugged him fiercely tight, and then fled swiftly away.

  Michael studied the deserted city below. Caroline would dance again tonight, and again without his arms to hold her as she wound her way through the streets. She would raise her voice in bittersweet song, her body clad in the white of a bridal gown that had never seen a wedding day. And Michael would watch her from his place upon the hill.

  Once, during all her dancing and serenade, Caroline’s steps would bring her to the edge of the town. She would stretch her arms toward where he sat, folding back towards herself as she waved to him, beckoning him with her body and her hands. She would pause there, the song momentarily silent, as she waited for his response.

  When Michael did not answer, she would swirl away, dancing back along the empty streets, her voice returning in a song of mourning as she grieved her loneliness and the duty which prevented her leaving the town to join him. He would watch her as she floated between the buildings to the empty riverbed, listen as she wound her way from one ruin of a dock to another.

  He would hear her naming every dock and each boat that had ever tied up there. He would hear her naming other things, as well, but it did not worry him. It was just her way. She had conducted a similar ritual when they had been dating. It had been a family tradition, but she had never told him why. It was a secret that could only be shared once they were wed.

  Caroline knew the name of every boat that had plied their trade on the river: the old ones, the new and the sunk and mostly forgotten. Her father had taught her, and she had grown the habit of being at every launch or decommissioning. Now, without her father to supervise, she summoned them.

  She completed her tour of the docks as midnight approached, ignoring the midnight spirits ruffling her dress and pulling at her hair. When the litany was over, she would cry for her father and throw dust in the air, and then she would cry for Michael.

  That was the hardest time, when her voice lifted his name above the rising wind, and the dust she hurled into the air reached him still scented with her perfume. Michael always tried to snatch a handful of it, a piece of her, to see him safely through the rest of the year. He always wept when the fine particles sifted between his fingers and she was lost to him once more.

  “Papa?”

  Michael looked away from the town, unaware of the tears that had dampened his cheeks until a soft hand reached up and brushed them away.

  “Michelle.”

  She had been named for him, born early and out of wedlock but not in shame, proof of the fecundity of the woman he had pledged to marry and an advance blessing on the union they had planned. Her little brother had been a second blessing, one Michael hoped was not lost forever. Perhaps, when this was over, Caroline would reveal where her family had hidden.

  Aware of more tears following the first, Michael brushed the other cheek dry, then took his daughter under his arm as he turned back to the town. She spoke as they gazed down at the empty streets.

  “The tribe is moving. There have been Scorpions seen on the western fringe.”

  Michael’s disappointment was so great he could not answer, could only gesture helplessly at the clustered buildings while the tears wet his face once more. Michelle’s arm, about his waist, tightened in sympathy.

  “The headman says even dusk will be too long.”

  For a long moment of silence, Michael stared at the town. Now that he was looking for them, he could see the empty spaces where doors had once hung, and the brief scars left by bullets in the sandstone walls. This time he allowed himself to notice the broken stumps of the trees still standing in the center of the stones that had failed to protect them. The sight of their shattered trunks strewn in the streets almost broke his heart.

  He sighed.

  “I will need to fetch the jalaya. She will think I have abandoned her if I do not.”

  “I brought it. The headman did not let me forget.”

  Michael turned to stare at her.

  “How much time...?”

  Michelle was wearing her fatigues. They were blotched and mottled, the color of the sand across which they would travel. They were tinted red.

  “He says we have to reach the first river by nightfall.”

  There was no more time, but she handed him the jalaya bloom she had brought, and gently pushed him towards the ruins.

  “Be quick, Papa; I need your protection more than she does.”

  His daughter was right. After their first wave of attacks had emptied the town, the Scorpions had avoided the ruins as if afraid they were haunted. They had not even stopped to loot the undefended buildings. Michael stepped away from Michelle, his boots sliding on the scree. Halfway down, he hesitated, looking back.

  “I have brought your fatigues,” she called. “I will wait for you here. Don’t be long.”

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  Caroline’s inside the hotel, Michael thought as he picked his way down the slope.

  She had sung that she retired there because it reminded her of him, of the good times they had spent there when they were able to be together. He loved the hotel, too, knew exactly where it was, but there was no time to find her, and it would do no good if he did. He could feel the tears again, gathering at the edges of his eyes. He forbad them.

  Later, he promised. When the jalaya was delivered, and he was back with Michelle. Obediently, he felt the tears subside. Nine times previously he had left the jalaya at the edge of the town. Always, when he returned, the flowers had been gone.

  He did not know where Caroline took them, was not even sure that she found them. It was something he chose to believe over the possibility that the desert creatures had come before her and taken the blooms, leaving her with the impression she had been abandoned once again. On those years, the months had seemed longer as the time for her dancing drew near and it was only her white-robed figure that reassured him his gift had been received.

  With the scree of the slope behind him, he began to run. This time he did not look back to see if Michelle still waited on the hill. This would be the fourth time he had left the jalaya. He hoped Caroline’s forgiveness extended that far, that she did not subscribe to the old adage.

  Nine times spurned; a tenth time, hated.

  Michael pushed the thought from his mind. It was she who had refused to accompany him, to leave the town against her father’s orders. He felt his fingers tighten, then remembered the tube he held in his hand. If he crushed it, there wouldn’t be time to return for another; the fact Michelle waited with his fatigues was testimony to that. The first river by nightfall was an impossibility, but they would try.

  He wondered how long it would be before the Scorpions arrived.

  The town loomed before him, the red dust coating it losing some of its bloody look as he came closer. Beneath the relentless scouring of the wind and the fine layer of scarlet particles from the hills, the walls were still white. An irony, Michael thought, since the Scorpions had long ago robbed the town of its purity. It was fitting, then, that there were no flower-filled window-boxes; for the raiders had also torn the light-heartedness from the townsfolk and never given it back.

  Michael paused beside the first house. It was at the end of the street where Caroline beckoned him, and he hoped she did not think he had come to join her. He called her nonetheless.

  “Caroline!”

  His voice rang off the walls of empty buildings, becoming hollow and booming its way into the town’s heart as the echoes bore it. He did not doubt that she heard him calling.

  “I will leave the jalaya, if you do not wish to go with me.”

  He froze, listening, trying to quiet the thrumming tenseness that rattled like static in his brain.

  “Caroline?”

  His voice broke.

  “Please come.”

  He strengthened it and tried again.

  “Please come! My heart breaks without you. Caroline. Please…” Michael’s shout died to a whisper, ended on a choked-back sob. He waited for her response, the jalaya clutched in one calloused hand, hoping he would be able to give it to her himself, wanting to wrap his arms around her once again.

  When she did not answer and she did not come, Michael put the flowers on the windowsill. There was a bracket there. It had once held a lantern. Now it held the soft, whiteness of his wedding pledge. He had not forgotten, nor given it up. His fingers lingered on the outer surface of the tube. The jalaya quivered within.

  Suddenly, impulsively, he stooped and kissed the tube, then spun on his heel and ran for the hill. The kiss haunted him. He had never done that before, had never felt the need. He laughed at himself as the first scattering of scree slid beneath his feet, forcing him to slow down and concentrate on not tumbling back down the slope.

  There is no way she will know of the kiss, he thought and was comforted by the fact that only his daughter had seen his folly and she would not comment on it.

  She loved her mother, but hated her for her abandonment. The girl would not speak of her unless she had to.

  Michael didn’t see how the red dust settled over the small taint of moisture he’d left on the tube’s outer coating, and there was no way he could know of the mark that appeared in the centre of the bloom as the dust mark shadowed the jalaya’s heart in the sun’s last light. By that stage, he had pulled on his desert-toned fatigues and was running, with his daughter, toward the camp.

  The headman greeted him amidst the dust and confusion of the dismantling camp.

  “I need you on our back trail, Defender.”

  Michael nodded.

  “Who did you send on point?” he asked.

  “Hawk Mark.”

  “Good. I will take fifteen men from the Sun’s Mark. Where were the Scorpions last seen?”

  “First from the Ibex Rim in the north, crossing the plains. Our scouts report the raiders stopped to camp at the foot of the Rim itself. They sent back a messenger on first sighting, then waited to see the direction the Scorpions travelled. Last report places them twenty miles north of the Northern Rim.”

  That put the raiders not far from the town. Michael’s eyes clouded and his voice, when he next spoke, was harsh.

  “When do you leave?”

  The headman gestured around them.

  “Defender, we are leaving now.”

  Michael let his gaze followed the gesture, and this time, he noted the order of things. Vehicles carrying families and hastily packed personal possessions were already lined up and moving south. All that was left were those carrying the emergency power plant, the barracks and the base communications. Michael knew that, somewhere ahead of the families, the vehicle carrying the mobile comms-unit was leading the way to safety.

  Again, impulse took him and he reached out to clasp the headman’s shoulders between his palms. Briefly he looked into the man’s eyes, then bowed his head and released him. It was the only way he could show his gratitude for what had been done.

  “I gave you what time I could,” the headman told him, his voice rolling low so only the two of them could hear. “It was all that I could do.”

  “You honor me,” Michael replied. “Now I will try to ensure your people stay alive long enough for me to lecture you on waiting so long.”

  The headman nodded, his smile hidden in the false beard he wore.

  “Go,” the man ordered him. “Do your duty, Defender, and teach your daughter her trade.”

  He tossed something in Michael’s direction as he turned away, and sudden excitement lit. Michelle’s face. Michael plucked the headman’s gift from the air, rejecting the temptation to curse the man in spite of his gratitude. His daughter was beside him when he opened his palm to see what lay there.

  “Oh, Papa,” she said.

  “Oh indeed,” he muttered examining the emblem in his palm.

  It gleamed at him, polished stone the color of fresh blood, covered in duralloy stronger than glass and more transparent. The stone was set in duralloyed gold, with the red ostrich plumes of a hereditary warrior encased at its center.

  Michael did not need to look at his daughter to know the delight on her face, nor did he need to examine the badge that clung to the front of his tunic to know the two pins were identical. He reached out to fix it in place just as the distant rattle of gunfire reached his ears.

  A second burst followed shortly after, and his movement lost its gentleness so that he hastily pushed the badge into place as he turned to look in the direction of the sound.

  He heard Michelle gasp, and realized what he had done. The badge was pinned in the old way, through the uniform and into the soldier beneath, blood and honor mixing to celebrate the occasion.

  His daughter regarded him with shock mingled with grateful pride. This was the first time he had truly acknowledged her right to take the place of the son who should have stood at his side.

  The red cloth of her uniform was stained a darker shade, against which the newly-pinned badge glistened with malevolent pride.

  “Sun’s Mark to me!” he roared.

  Michelle waited at his side.

  “Who’s out there?” he asked the first man that skidded to a halt beside him.

  “Lion’s Mark,” was the reply. “They’ve been out there a week.”

  “They should not be engaged in combat,” Michael snapped.

  “As you say, Defender,” the man replied.

  Michael glanced at him. It was Simeon, leader of Sun’s Mark.

  “Get out there and relieve them. Send Shumra to fetch the restorant, and Alamis with him. My daughter and I will plan the delays.”

  “Our lives are in your hands, Defender. If we must give them to defend our people, so be it.”

  They were words that exonerated him should he need to send them to die.

  “Gods guide your hands and your aim. You protect our heart.” Michael said the words in staccato, his attention already on the gunfire and the terrain.

  He was aware when Simeon left, but his mind was already on the task at hand. The two Marks might not be enough, but they were all that could be spared. Hawk’s Mark led the caravan. Ibex Mark guarded it. After a few minutes, he turned to Michelle.

  “Fetch the sandrunners. Make sure they are fully loaded.”

  She was gone, even as Michael activated the part of his mind that allowed him to float on the wind current over the sands. Observing the battle, he saw the Scorpions had outflanked the Lion’s and Sun’s Marks, that the raiders were coming in hard from the south-east. He drifted a little more, finding something odd about the battlefield, but not quite able to pinpoint what it was.

  He circled again, unaware that the science behind his power orbited the earth and was rapidly drifting out of range. The anomaly on the battlefield became apparent just as the power fizzed to a snowstorm blankness. An ambush!

  The Scorpions had hidden behind a bunker of sand, using the red-colored weight of heavy canvas to conceal them from the approaching Suns. There were scant seconds before the entire Mark was pincered between the two forces, and Lion’s Mark was too weak to be of any help.

  Michael lost no time wondering where the Scorpions had found the skill for such an elaborate trap, but reached for Simeon’s mind. It was like using a radio, save there was no sound and very little delay.

  “Simeon. Scorpions left on flank. Body of main force breaking back towards you,” he sent an image of what he had seen just before the power of the wind had failed him.