Cleonar arrived at the rendezvous two days later than planned. For the first and last time, lateness had saved her life.

  he small mining hamlet of Sturva, a place so insignificant it did not appear on most maps. She imagined little more than a collection of small stone block-buildings around a single well. She assumed they would find it nestled against the base slopes of the three nameless peaks that hugged the far grander Mount Arat.

  Those very peaks stood just off her right shoulder, rearing up from the sand to dominate the skyline. Come evening, as the sun set across the western horizon, they would provide much needed shade. For now, she stood fully within the sun’s glare, bathing her in dry heat.

  She had been delayed at Ptheka, the first leg of her journey. Their boat across the A’at was ‘delayed’ by the rather intolerable port master until they could deal with a small local matter. It had been little more than a band of young ruffians causing trouble, and they quickly baulked when faced with a half-century of legionaries, but it was enough to risk ruining Aiur’s whole training operation. She had spent the intervening ten days once they had crossed the river, formulating explanations and excuses. The prospect of failing or embarrassing her lord rankled within her, as she felt it rightfully should.

  At first, she tried to make back the lost days; cutting corners from their route and crossing more dangerous dunes. Now, she had run through the imagined conversation upon her overdue arrival a hundred times, trying to decipher how best to steer discussion away from her lateness as quickly and painlessly as possible.

  As she ascended the final dune and took her first look upon Sturva, she knew in that single moment those sleepless nights had been pointless. The nights of agitation and worry facing her would be so much worse.

  Smoke, trails of it. Ink-black and curling wistfully up to the heavens, twisting around itself in a rising helix. It was billowing from the vague, oblong shapes where the hamlet should have been. Where her charge should have been.

  Her heart froze in an instant, and her eyes gaped wide. She was still staring, when Anakis, the sand-brown and surly centurion that had accompanied her, climbed the dune to stand by Cleonar’s side.

  She made no comment on Cleonar’s terrified state. She simply sniffed, followed by what sounded like an annoyed groan. “Best take a closer look,” she said in a flat and colourless monotone, before setting off down the dune at a steady march.

  Cleonar watched the centurion as she became a smaller and smaller shape against the dull canvas of sand. She continued standing there as the legionaries marched past her in neat file, clambering carefully down the dune while laden with equipment. They too became tiny shifting shapes, rolling along towards the hamlet. Only then, with a heavy sigh did she set off at a heavy jog to catch them, telling herself that after everything Aiur had survived in the past, she would find him alive and well. The alternative did not bear thinking about.

  ***

  Nothing living remained.

  The hamlet, though certainly larger than she had initially suspected, was in ruins.

  Most of the buildings had been consumed by the flames, reduced to tumbling piles of ash and heat-scorched stone, already being buried by the ever-encroaching sand. Were the smoke not still rising from the hamlet’s cooling corpse, they might have stridden through the outskirts without ever realising it was here.

  The stench made the presence of the dead unmissable. The cloying, stomach-churning scent of burnt meat and decaying organs hung over the hamlet in a putrid blanket. Flies buzzed in fat-bodied gangs over the remnants of the people who had lived here.

  Most of the bodies were nothing more than blackened masses of fused bone and liquified flesh, the remains of their clothes melted into their ruined forms. Some had patches of scale untouched by the flames, leaving the village speckled in tiny drops of comparatively scintillating colour. Every last one of them laid atop bloodstained sand.

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  Only two buildings remained upright, older and hardier structures made entirely from mountain stone, but even they had been gutted by the blaze and seared an ugly black.

  One had to be the mining office, or at least a building with some equivalent purpose, Cleonar decided as she strode into the centre of the hamlet. It was likely the single story, squat building that curled itself around the now-smashed well that had once helped sustain this place. The other she could not quite figure out. It was taller, at least three stories, and while broad, it appeared far more proportional upon its foundations. Once there may have been some signage hanging above its doorway, but the fire had erased it with ease.

  She peered in through the doorway-hole of the second building, hoping to find at least some sign of life. The front room formed the entire front facing side of the building, and contained nothing but piles of ash and more corpses. Not a minor noble’s manor then, perhaps some kind of tap house. Regardless, it was a smouldering ruin now.

  She cursed under her breath as she turned away from the building. She was angry, angry at herself for being late, angry at whatever had committed this senseless act of butchery.

  She marched over to Anakis, who was directing the legionaries by the shattered well. They had forty professional fighters at their command, who would turn this entire hamlet upside down if they had to. She had to know what happened.

  The centurion made her wait while she finished a hushed conversation with one of her legionaries. Whether so she wouldn’t hear, or to avoid disturbing the dead, she couldn’t tell. The legionary was a slab-faced, green-scaled block of a man. He nodded respectfully to Cleonar as he stepped away.

  “All the ore; Iron, we suspect, is gone,” Anakis grunted, gesturing towards the remnants of the mining office. Her voice was still hushed and low, by her standards at least. “We think a resource run. Probably not mountain bandits, my men think Ikthaki. I am inclined to agree.”

  “This far east?” Cleonar said, at a normal volume, superstition over the spirits of the dead be damned. She took a long moment to gaze around at the ruins, eyes flicking between the buildings and corpses, taking a mental tally. “And burning the whole place down?”

  “Of course this far east! An Ikthaki tribe will go wherever the sand takes them. It’s only south, where the sand thins out, that they won’t go,” Anakis grunted, far more like her usual self again. “Arson’s not beyond those blasted quadrupeds, either.”

  “I disagree. Ikthaki are repeat raiders. Burning things down is their first threat, but they rarely follow up on it. Places are left intact so they can raid them again come the following season., Cleonar said.

  “Maybe someone finally called that bluff,” the centurion growled, with more belligerence than she had right to. “Who knows how confident having Aiur here would have made these low-caste trash.”

  Cleonar cursed under her breath, she hadn’t quite considered that possibility. Surely, he would not have been so foolish? But then, it was still not clear what he faced. “He only had twenty scouts with him, I doubt he would be that arrogant.”

  “He’s Consul of House Zerkash. Of course he might be.”

  “It still doesn’t bear the hallmarks of their handiwork. We’re not jumping to conclusions.”

  “Who else could have done this? Mountain bandits are the only other option around here. What use could they have for iron? I imagine they’re drowning in the stuff!”

  “I would watch my tone if I were you,” Cleonar growled, looming over the centurion.

  “And I would watch your words around me and those at my command,” Anakis snarled back, showing no signs of backing down. “It sounds awfully to me like you’re making excuses for those raiders, pillagers and murderers. Or do you just prefer company with four legs?”

  This time Cleonar replied with her fist, striking Anakis full in the face and sending her sprawling into the sand. The centurion recovered quickly, scrambling back briefly, before grimacing and bringing her hand to the new bruise forming around her nostrils. “Point taken ma’am…my apologies,” she muttered with a scowl.

  Cleonar trudged over to her, thrusting her arm out to grab Anakis by the wrist and drag her back to her feet. “Ikthaki don’t take slaves.”

  “What?” Anakis snapped. She was hunched up in a pugilist’s stance now; shoulders raised, fists clenched and poised at her sides.

  “The number of corpses and buildings doesn’t add up. If they fled, Ikthaki would run them down easily and either add them to the pyre or leave them in the open to rot. There are not enough corpses. Four legs are faster than two and they would never carry one of us on their backs.”

  Anakis visibly relaxed, her shoulders lowering. “That’s…not a wholly unrealistic point…” she mused “I’ll have the legionaries take proper count. At least we’ll know how many we’re looking for, if we can even find them out here.”

  They both slowly turned to gaze out at the seemingly endless rolling sea of sand stretched out before them, reaching out to the north, south and east of the isolated hamlet. There was no easily visible source of water or food for miles, and neither had any clue of what lurked in the dunes beyond.

  “That may prove a problem.”

  “Well, we may not be scouts, but our best lead is going to be looking for tracks. If we can’t find any, we’ll come back with a whole damn legion and scour every grain of sand in the desert for them,” Anakis declared, head held high.