Quickburned

Safety

Now... 

It was a damn good thing the horse knew to keep going. Dirt weren't stupid, the stallion knew there were bad things somewhere back on his trail, and ahead was water and browse and safety. Caleb was happy to let him keep on. So long as it meant he didn't have to be doing the thinking right this moment.

The heat was making him dizzy. Or maybe it was the sick—something had gone wrong. After he'd quit the field, Myrmecia dead at his feet and her summoned demons dissolving into bloody sand, he'd started feeling... off.

He normally healed perfectly clean thanks to a constitution blessed by the Unconquered Sun, but not this time. Green streaks were crawling up his skin from the wound the demon-queen left in his belly, and the higher it got, the worse he felt. Right now, the horizon was doing its best to curl in on itself and take him with it, so Caleb kept his eyes on his hands at the cantle and tried not to fall.

"Good boy," Caleb murmured through a throat gone dust dry. Dirt's ears flicked back and focused on him. He got the distinct impression the stallion was worried about him. He huffed a laugh at the thought, grabbed the cantle to keep from falling out of the saddle as the movement jarred his balance.

"There you are, cowboy," said a familiar husky voice. Soft thudding footsteps of another beast of burden was coming up on his off-side but he didn't dare turn to look. Thank all the gods in heaven—Lysistrata had found him, just as she'd promised months ago.

"Tell me I'm not hallucinatin', darlin'," Caleb said.

"No, sunshine, I'm here."

"Thank gods, Lys. Was... ah. Was wonderin' when you'd be a-showin' up." He tried to straighten up a bit, give her a reassuring salute— and his misbehaving senses promptly threw him sideways again. Caleb caught himself, again, and practically felt the concerned face Lys was probably making beside him.

"Had a time of it, did you?" She swam into his vision, as red as the sand beneath him and the sunset off his right shoulder, and took the reins from his fingers. He sighed, letting what was left of his stubbornness drain into the earth, and hooked his hands where they'd catch him if he swayed again. He could relax, with her around.

"Y'might be sayin' that," he agreed. His hat was jammed down on his head but even beneath the low brim he could see her now, watching him even as she took the lead from Dirt and changed their course a bit. She was looking at him with soft eyes, like he were a favorite granpa on their deathbed or something. He dredged up a bit of a leer and shrugged a shoulder at her, where the silk sash she'd given him before was tied round his arm. "Takin' me somewhere nice, darlin'?"

"Somewhere safe, cowboy. Just stay on your horse, and I'll take care of everything." She seemed reassured at his ability to quip at her, some of the fire coming back to her as her camel picked up the pace.

"Y'always take care o' me good," Caleb said, and sagged into his saddle. He'd just rest, some. Now that she was here. Rest was all he needed, anyways.

He remembered very little of the path Lysistrata led him on, his mind a heat mirage of wavering lucidity. It was all heat and grit and red sand, the repetitive thumps of his horse's hooves, the slower beat of his own heart pounding in his ears.

For a thrashing panicked moment, as ropes wound around his wrists and chest to pull him secure against his own saddle, he felt Mezir coming to kill him again, to choke him on rope and dust and by a horse's galloping pull. He lost that battle before it even started, lapsing away into drowsing red darkness by Lysistrata's comforting murmur in his ears.

He came back again for a time, in shaded coolness and dampness caressing his face. Caleb grabbed for the water and alertness with both hands, and while he managed to grab hold of one, the water evaded his grasp when his arms refused to work for him, lying traitorously limp.