It went on and on. Then quit.

“The others broke the ropes and ran,” Fashti said, out of breath. “Meziq has his leg broken, I think.”

“They didn’t take the tent. They didn’t take the food or water.” Marak found himself short-winded. Long since he’d fought for his life, or taken a beshta’s knee in the ribs. It was a curious, even exhilarating feeling. “We have two beshti. We’ll catch the others. Are you all right, Hati?”

“Very well,” Hati said. “Which shall we let up?”

“Mine.” He didn’t have to explain anything to Hati. Everything was a mystery to the boys. They’d doubtless heard what to do, but never had to depend for their lives on the old wisdom. A man afoot was a dead man, and getting only one beshta down and secured meant they could catch the rest…if things went well.

Now it was a matter of getting their two beshti up and saddled, which meant letting go very carefully and only one at a time.

“Let go,” he instructed Argid. “Loose the hind feet when Fashti brings my tack. Move easily. Don’t hurry.”

There was a quick to-do, sorting tack, and Fashti brought the saddle. Marak eased his pressure across the beshta’s eyes, and it wanted up all at once as the boy loosed the hind feet. Long legs started to flail, looking for purchase.

It rolled upward. He gathered himself up with a death grip on the halter and kept the beshta’s head exactly where it had to be to assist the beshta up without its breaking its own bones or a bystander’s. It had to get its front feet tucked and its hind feet under it, first.

Up it came then, reliant on his pull, dependent on him all the way, and continually under control. While he held it steady, Fashti bravely eased the saddle pad on, as another boy waited with the saddle.

“Watch that girth.” It was swinging free, and the beshta’s patience with objects hitting him in the groin was slim at the moment. The beshta was ready to explode, and another shaking in the earth could send him sky-high. Fashti made a fast reach under, risking his head, and got the girth strap threaded through the steel ring. Then Fashti hauled up hard, once, twice, three times. The beshta, however, took it with a deep sigh, wove from side to side, beginning his general lament at the winds and the dust and the thunder of the canvas tent, and most of all at his own deep misfortune, being caught and saddled when all but one of his mates had run, lured off by a young rival male.

“Lai, lai,” Marak said, as a parent would to an infant, while hanging on to the rein with all his strength. “Argid, get hold of his head on the other side.”

The saddle was on, straight and secure. Fashti handed Marak his long quirt. He let go the cheek strap, slipped the quirt’s loop onto his wrist, and tapped the beshta’s foreleg, keeping the long rein in hand. The beshta offered a partial, distracted obedience, answering to its training and extending its left leg in a bow. It was more interested in getting up, pulling and turning, but the slight bob it gave was enough. Marak seized the mounting loop, hurled himself up like the tribesmen of old and landed firmly in the saddle, rein in hand.

“Let him go,” he said immediately, and reined the beshta in a circle, pulling its head around against its own deep-chested body. The beshta only managed a little lurch forward and around, a motion that, in the veiling dust, took them in the general direction of the canyon rim.

“Fool,” he named it, and used heel and rein to hold it back. “Help Hati,” he said to the boys, and the whole process began again, getting their second beshta up onto her feet and saddled.

Hati got up to the saddle as a little jolt hit: a tall rider and a long-legged beshta necessarily swayed in the aftershock. The two beshti staggered, squalled and fought the reins, heads aloft.

“How is Meziq?” Marak asked the boys from his high perch. His dust-hazed view of the camp moved from windblown canvas to the relay installation as the beshta under him restlessly turned half-about and squalled. He saw Meziq lying beside the tent, the other boys hovering over him.

“The femur is broken, but not through the skin.” The boy who stood up, bare-faced, to report it had a sand-scrape on his cheek, and a renewed gust of wind battered at him, rocking him on his feet. “We shall take care of him, omi.”

The stack of baggage and saddles was safe. Their supplies and water were safe in the tent. They had two beshti. In the old days, even if the worst happened, a man only needed to stay in camp with the only water in a wide, arid land. The runaway beshti would tend in again in a matter of days to get a drink and a browse, leaving it to a man’s cleverness and strength to catch one and afterward track down the others.

But the land had changed. Water and new green growth abounded down in the river chasm on one side and down among the pans on the other, the latter sheltered from this miserable northwest wind. Marak had no question what thoughts would come into their furry skulls once the panic of the quake wore off.

And one thing more he could predict. The young male, Fashti’s, would assert himself over the females of the group the moment he was out of range of Marak’s senior bull. Tolerated until the mass escape, he would find new and rebel thoughts entering his thick young head. He needed no water their former masters had to supply, and being with the females, he would keep the females with him, moving farther and farther from the threat of combat.

So as master of this small band, Marak had his own choice. They could pile food, water, and small canvas on their two beshti, having set up the one relay and disposed of its heavy components. They could abandon the other relay yet unset and the bulk of the supplies as a cache for a later mission to the Southern Wall, such supplies as might survive the intervening storms. They could try again next year.

But that quake had been strong, a forewarning, it might be, that they had no next year, and going back now was not Marak’s first choice. Meziq could live and heal while on trek in either direction, back to the Refuge or on to their final site, where he could sit and heal. And which direction they went now, in his intentions, depended solely on their catching or not catching the fugitive beshti.

“They will go down to the pans, likeliest,” Hati called to him over the thunder of canvas. “They will go down at the first opportunity, away from this wind.”

“No question,” Marak said, and looked down at the boys caring for Meziq. “Set it, splint it. Wrap it with matting. Keep him still until I get back.”

“Yes, omi.”

If he now only cut his hand, if he set the bone straight and bled the makers in his blood into Meziq, he might greatly hasten Meziq’s recovery.

Or kill him with fever. That sometimes resulted. In either case he would change Meziq’s life. That always resulted, and it was worth Meziq thinking long and soberly about the consequences.

“Keep the tent,” Marak said further, “and finish the work here. If one or two beshti should come back, and you can get them, do, but take no chances and do not try to follow us down. Stay here in comfort as best you can and save your resources.” He and Hati could talk directly to the watchers in the heavens. The boys could not, but they had the relay installation at hand, and could communicate with the Refuge by means of their hand units with no trouble at all, once the relay was up and working. They needed only get the power cell charged. “Finish the setup, call Ian and get his instructions. Find out what may have happened to the Southern Wall and use your wits. Expect more quakes, and trust Ian to advise me. Be moderate with food and water, and check the deep-stakes of the tent at every shaking. We shall need rope, supplies, and canvas. And a pistol.”

“Omi,” they said earnestly, and ran to do his bidding.