Bailar Catlett dropped the wounded man in the sand in the shade behind a dune. He held a hand over the man’s mouth to muffle a scream. “Quiet, fool,” he said. He scrambled a few meters to his right, then rushed back quickly. Using his hands, he dug a small trench, then rolled the man inside, flopping next to him in the sand. “Be still,” he hissed. “The’r coming this way.” He lowered his head as much as he could, hoping that the shade and his camouflaged uniform would hide the two of them well enough from the Estonian patrol. He calmed his breathing as he had been taught. One cannot think with a drum playing in their ear, he remembered one of his instructors telling him. Slow your breathing, calm your heart, engage your mind. He closed his eyes, concentrating on taking slow, methodical breaths. In moments, he could feel the beat slow, fading away as his flight response calmed.

“What now?” The man beneath him whispered. “What do we do?”

“Shhh,” Bailar said, his voice nearly nonexistent. “We wait for them to pass, and then…” He looked around them. Their unit had been ambushed by the Ersonians, just a few kilometers from where they had intended to camp. He visualized the map of their route in his head, thankful that he had taken the time to study it as had been suggested. “And then. I don’t know.”

The Cermaliynes were to their left, the sun lowering behind their vertical mountain faces. Late afternoon. They had been marching east, to the emplacement at the mouth of the pass through the mountains. They were to take up the position, and relieve Crag Company, that had been in garrison for the past month. It was a routine maneuver, one the troops called the Kreidelen Ballet. The Ersonians had their own plans.

The sound of machinery rose from the plains, and Bailar lowered his head. “Steady,” he said, his face only inches from the wounded man.

“I didn’t want to die here today,” the bleeding soldier said. There was no panic in his voice, just a grim resignation to his fate. “I had plans.”

“Well,” Bailar risked a peek over the berm he had made. “I think I agree with ye’ on this one, friend.”

With a roar, a pair of sand skimms appeared around the end of the dune, two men on each, one driver, and one on the rear, facing backwards. Their weapons poised at shoulders and scanning the horizon.

“Steady,” Bailar whispered, laying his head down. “They haven’t seen us. Just stay steady.”

Together, they lay in the sand until the tortured motors of the skimms faded into the distance.

“Okay,” Bailar said, looking around. “We head north, to the foothills. We’ll try to lose ‘em there in a canyon.”

“The Ersonians are to the north,” the wounded soldier said.

“Yeah? Well the blasted dust sea is to the south. I’ll take my odds against a man over that.” He stood, lifting his companion to his shoulder. “Y’er a big man,” Bailar said, grunting with the effort.

“Thank the gods that you are bigger,” he said. “I’m Jayk.”

“I’m thirsty.” Bailar turned to the north and staggered off.

* * *

He kept to the low points and found passages through squat hills that meandered through the sand and dirt. He had to hide several times, once dropping so abruptly that he dropped Jayk onto his head. By then, the man was unconscious, though Bailar didn’t know if it was from the fall or loss of blood, which now soaked through the shoulders of his uniform.

For a while he contemplated leaving the man for whatever insects or scavengers would find him come the nightfall. He even walked away, leaving Jayk propped up in the shade of a rock, but soon returned. His conscience, he knew, was a bastard. Bailar wasn’t afraid to kill a man. He had already killed many men in the service of his city, but this was different. He could no more abandon Jayk than he could lie down and die beside him. It wasn’t in his makeup.

Soon enough, the sky did turn crimson and the air began to cool. Night was coming, and by the bite in the wind, it was going to be a cold one. He set his mind to find shelter while he could still see and was soon rewarded. He set Jayk on the ground, then got to work piling up some stones to make a wind break.

“Is this a cave?” Jayk’s voice was weak and dry as the desert sand.

“Ye could call it that,” Bailar said, hefting another stone into place on the low wall he had built. “If y’er feeling generous.”

“Very generous,” Jayk said. “Do you have any water?”

Bailar sighed. “I do not,” he said. “My pack is . . .” He shrugged. His gear was where he had left it, among the bodies of his dead unit. “Gone,” he said. “It’s just gone.” He wouldn’t last another day out here in the heat without water. His lips were dry and cracked, and his muscles were cramped and sore. It was only a matter of time.

He helped Jayk adjust himself near the wall and checked his wound in the last lights of the day. The field bandage was black with blood, and still wet. “It’s still bleeding,” he said.

“Yes. It is,” Jayk said. He chuckled to himself. “I suppose I should thank you for not leaving me to die in the sand.”

“This is a far more comfortable place. For everything,” Bailar said. He curled up next to the wounded man, trying to share as much of his body heat as possible. The truth was that the man was done for. If he was alive in the morning, Bailar would have to leave him, to find water. Food. A way out of here, all the while avoiding Ersonian patrols. They would certainly both be dead by the next sunset. He lay still, watching the stars turn bright as the sky darkened, remembering his constellations, and other nights he had spent, happier nights, out stargazing. Next to him, Jayk’s breathing grew ragged, and he began to shiver. Bailar removed his coat and covered him with it, though it did nothing to stop the chill. Several times, in the distance, he could hear Ersonian skimms roaring through the night, though he never saw their lights. They were probably safe until sunrise, at least.

“Earlier, ye’ said that ye’ had a plan,” Bailar said. “What was ye’r plan?”

Jayk laughed, then coughed. “I bought a bar,” he said. “In Bruntside. This old man just wanted to be rid of it, so I cashed out my enlistment and gave almost all of it to him. I wanted to mix drinks and serve food and pay women to dance for the customers. There are a few rooms upstairs, I was going to fix them up and use them for…well, whatever. Whatever the customers needed.”

“You cashed out y’er enlistment?”

“Ha!” Jayk said. “I did. Eight years I’ve been in the armor. Eight long years. And that was at least six years too many. Did you know that this was my last post? One more month and I was going to be out.”

“Arn has a sense of humor,” Bailar said.

“Arn can rub my rod,” Jayk said.

* * *

The night was long, and the wind became bitter. But the sun rose, and the heat returned. Bailar woke to find that Jayk had died in the night. He searched the man’s pockets, finding a paltry few dose coins, a prayer token, and some toilet rags. Jayk’s enlistment badge hung on a lanyard around his neck, giving his full name and date of birth. Regg Jayk. It wasn’t a Hatran name, though Bailar couldn’t place the origin.

He spent the first hour of the day digging a small grave, then lay Jayk’s body in it. He had already turned gray, but his eyes were closed, and looked almost peaceful. Bailar sighed.

“I got no words for ye’,” he said. “But ye’ didn’t seem a bad sort. Might be we could have been friends, had ye’ lived.” He knelt and laid Jayk’s badge on his chest, and placed a dose coin in each of his hands. “I hope Arn rubbed y’er rod before ye’ went,” he said.

Then he shoveled sand into the grave.

I bought a bar . . . Bailar stopped, then looked around him. It was at least three days back to Hatra. Maybe he would get lucky and miss the Ersonian patrols along the way. But, no. He’d have to find one of them, at least. Kill one or two of them, get some food and water. If he was lucky, a working skimm.

“Everyone that I know in the service is dead,” he said, eying Jayk’s badge.

When the grave was filled, it was Bailar Catlett who lay there in the sand. He wore Regg Jayk’s badge now. The same Regg Jayk that owned a bar in Bruntside.

He began walking, searching for an Ersonian patrol. In three days, he would be in Hatra. Gods willing. He would serve drinks, and make food. And pay women to dance for the customers. And the sign over the door would read Jayk’s.

* * *

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