The Silver Sparrow

Collision

A gust of wind rushed through the valley. Nazir's zikh snapped sharply behind him, his eyes fixed on an empty spot far away, giving the rest of them a sense that he was seeing something they couldn't. For a moment, he seemed to be here and not here at the same time, and Hasheem wondered if everyone else felt the way he did watching their khumar. They were all watching him though, quietly, anxiously, judging from the way their horses were beginning to fidget. Horses were damningly quick in sensing if their riders were about to piss themselves.

"Who's early?" He had to ask, being the only one who didn't understand the situation.

"The Kamara." It was Khali who replied, already gathering the rein and readying his mount. "They aren't supposed to be here until we're done."

The Kamara kha'gan was their rival in the north. They shared a border made up of the Djamahari mountain range. Territory disputes happened from time to time between neighboring kha'gans when it came to taxing travelers and caravans in the White Desert, but they were considered mild conflicts and hadn't happened as often in the past. With the salar's raiding parties pushing in more aggressively from the east, the kha'gans had less room to move. It, in turn, created more frequent conflicts around the borders that weren't always clearly defined in the desert. There had been as many as two incidents in the short time Hasheem had been there between the Visarya and the Kamara, and eight men had been injured in the process. They were about to face another that day, from the looks of it.

"Why are they here at all?" Hasheem asked. They were never supposed to be in the same place. Entering another kha'gan's territory required permission from the chiefs unless one came with an intention to invade. This didn't look like it fell into the first category.

"The hunting ground is always shared between kha'gans," Nazir explained. There was unmistakable tension in his voice now, and those usually relaxed shoulders had become obviously stiff. "But there are agreements on its usage controlled by Citara. We have the priority this Raviyani."

Before he could ask more questions, a new batch of riders and gazelles poured into the valley, and Hasheem understood immediately why Khali had cursed just now. They were about to merge into one—the two hunting parties and gazelles—and Hasheem didn't need to be told how many things could go wrong if such a thing were allowed to happen. Shooting someone's cousin by mistake could be considered funny, doing so at a member of one's rival kha'gan was not.

Nazir, for all his seemingly limitless ability to control his emotions, looked like he wanted to kill someone with his bare hands at that moment. Hasheem wondered if he would actually see the khumar losing it over this. That would have been a thing to remember for life.

It might also mean battle. Hasheem swallowed at the thought. Nazir had the authority to initiate it here if his patience were to reach its limit. He only had to shoot an arrow into the new hunting party to kill one man and all hell would break loose. He looked like he wanted to do just that, and the men around him knew it. They all seemed to have stopped breathing as they waited, just as anxiously as Hasheem did, for their khumar to decide their fate.

Or the entire desert's given how one thing could always lead to another.

A suffocating, toxic moment pressed down upon them as they stared at the tall figure in white. The silver of his hair glinted like a newly sharpened blade just before it bites into flesh. Nazir's breathing was slow, barely visible from the movements of his chest. It rose and fell. Once. Twice. And on the third time came to a stop, and the world seemed to have stopped with it.

Gripping the rein until his knuckles turned white, Nazir drew another long breath, closed his eyes, and then, releasing it with a heavy sigh, he turned to issue a command. "Tell Bhotsa to sound the retreat. The hunt is over."