“Ibn Saran, in the past months, has heard an unusual thing,” said Samos. “I leaned of this from a captain, one known to him, with whom he spoke recently upon the salt wharf.” Samos was first in the Council of Captains of Port Kar, which body was sovereign in the city. There was little of interest, which did not, sooner or later, come to his attention.

“The noble Samos has been most kind” said Ibn Saran. His hospitality has been most generous.”

I extended my hand to Ibn Saran and he, bowing twice, brushed twice the palm of his hand against mine.

“I am pleased to make the acquaintance of he who is friend to Samos of Port Kar,” said Ibn Saran. “May your water bags be never empty. May you have always water.”

“May your water bags be never empty,” I said. “May you have always water.”

“If it pleases you, noble Ibn Saran,” said Samos, “would you speak before my friend what heard you in Kasra.”

“It is a story told by a boy, a tender of kaiila. His caravan was small. It was struck by storm, and a kaiila, maddened by wind and sand, broke its hobble, plunging away into the darkness. Foolishly the boy followed it. It bore water.

In the morning the storm had passed. The boy dug a shelter trench. In the camp was organized the wheel.”

A shelter trench is a narrow trench some four or five feet deep and about eighteen inches wide. The sand, struck by the sun, can reach temperatures on its surface of more than 175 degrees Fahrenheit. Set on rocks, boards of metal some two feet in length, and six inches wide, exposed to the sun, are sometimes used by the nomad women in frying foods. Only a foot or two below the surface, these temperatures are reduced by more than fifty degrees. The trench provides, most importantly, shade from the sun. The air temperature is seldom more than 140 degrees in the shade, even in the dune country. The trench, of course, is always dug with its long axis perpendicular to the path of the sun, that it provide the maximum shade for the longest period of time One does not, alone, without water, move on the sands during the day.

Interestingly, because of the lack of surface water, the nights, the sun gone, are cool, even chilly at times. One would, thus, if not in caravan, move at night. The conservation of body water is the crucial parameter in survival. One moves little. One sweats as little as possible.

The “wheel” is a search pattern. Herdsmen, guards, kaiila tenders, leave the camp along a “spoke” of a wheel, spacing themselves at intervals. The number of men in the caravan determines the length of the “spoke.” No one in the caravan departs from it by more than the length of the wheel’s spoke, pertinent to the individual caravan. The boy, for example, presumably, if he had his wits about him, would not follow the kaiila long enough on foot to place himself outside the “rim” of the “wheel.” As the “wheel” of men turns about its axis, the camp, at intervals the men draw arrows in the dirt or sand, or, if rocks are available, make arrows, pointing to the camp. When the search is discontinued, after success or failure, these markers are destroyed, lest they be taken by travelers for water arrows, markers indicating the direction of water holes, underground cisterns or eases. The caravan kaiila, incidentally, both those which are pack animals and those used as mounts for guards and warriors, are muchly belled. This helps to keep the animals together, makes it easier to move in darkness, and in a country where, often, one cannot see more than a hundred yards to the next dune or plateau, is an important factor in survival. If it were not for the caravan bells, the slow moving, otherwise generally silent caravans might, unknowingly, pass within yards of men in desperate need of succor. The kaiila of raiders, incidentally, are never belled.

“By noon,” said Ibn Saran, “the boy was found. Hearing the bells of a guard’s mount, he emerged from the shelter trench, and, attracting the man’s attention, was rescued. He was, of course, muchly beaten, for having left the caravan. The kaiila, of its own accord, returned later, for fodder.”

“What,” I asked, “was the story of the boy?”

“What, in pursuing the kaiila, he found,” said Ibn Saran. “On a rock there was scratched this message: Beware the steel tower.”

Samos looked at me. I made little sense of this.

“Near the rock, dead” said Ibn Saran, “blistered, blackened by the sun, dried, weighing no more than a child or woman, was a man. He had torn off his clothing and drunk sand.”

It would not have been a pleasant death. Doubtless he had died, mad, thinking he had found water.

“It, judging from discarded accouterments,” said Ibn Saran, “was a raider.”

“Was there no kaiila?” I asked.

“No,” said Ibn Saran.

“From how far had the man come?” I asked. How long had he been on the desert?”

“I do not know,” said Ibn Saran. “How well did he know the desert? How much water had he?”

The man might have come thousands of pasangs before the kaiila had died, or fled.

“How long had he been dead?” I asked.

Ibn Saran smiled thinly. “A month,” he said. “A year?”

In the desert decomposition proceeds with great slowness. Bodies, well preserved, had been found which had been slain more than a century before.

Skeletons, unless picked by birds or animals, are seldom found in the desert.

“Beware the steel tower,” I repeated.

“That was scratched on the rock,” said Ibn Saran.

“Was there any indication from which direction the man had come?” I asked.

“No,” said Ibn Saran.

“Beware the steel tower,” said Samos. I shrugged.

Samos rose to his feet and, touching twice the palm of the right hand of Ibn Saran, took his leave. I noted that Ibn Saran ate only with the right hand. This was the eating hand, and the scimitar hand. He would feed himself only with the hand which, wielding steel, could take blood.

The dancer whirled near us then enveloped me in her veil. Within the secrecy of the veil, binding us together, she moved her body slowly before me, lips parted, moaning. I took her in my arms. Her head was back, her eyes closed. I pressed my lips to hers, and with my teeth cut her lip. She, and I, together, tasted the blood and rouge of her subjugation. She drew back slightly, blood at the side of her mouth. Fist by fist, my hand on the back of her small, delicious neck, preventing her from escaping, I slowly removed her veil from her, then threw it aside. Then with my right hand, the Tuchuk quiva in it, while still holding her with my left, as she continued to move to the music, I, behind her back, cut the halter she wore from her. I then thrust her from me, before the tables, that she might better please the guests of Samos, first slaver of Port Kar. She looked at me reproachfully, but, seeing my eyes, turned frightened to the men, hands over her head, to please them. Never in all this, of course, had she lost the music in her body. The men cried out, pleased with her beauty.

“The message girl is ready,” said the man who wore the green of the physicians.

He turned to the man beside him; he dropped the shaving knife into the bowl, wiped his hands on a towel.

The girl, bound, knelt between the guards. There were tears in her eyes. Her head had been shaved, completely. She had no notion what had been written there.

Illiterate girls are chosen for such messages. Originally her head had been shaved, and the message tattooed into the scalp. Then, over months, her hair had been permitted to regrow. None but the girl would know she carried such a message, and she would not know what it might be. Even those for a fee delivering her to the house of Samos would have considered her only another wench, mere slave property.

I read the message. It said only “Beware Abdul.” We did not know from whence the message came, or who had sent it.