The sight of the twisted tree acted like water on a thirsty traveler. Sofoú barked an order, and the three boys broke away from the sluggish main column. They didn't run; they loped, a low, energy-saving stride that ate up the remaining distance to the border. The heat of the Flats still hammered their backs, but their eyes were fixed forward.
As the baked mud gave way to struggling patches of yellowed grass, Sofoú accelerated, moving with surprising grace for a man of his bulk. He snapped his fingers, the sound sharp as cracking bone in the dry air.
"We are crossing the threshold," Sofoú growled, jogging backward to face them. "The Flats kill you slowly with heat. The savanna kills you fast with teeth." He pointed a thick finger at Ámenor, who was breathing in shallow gasps. "Ámenor! You are Ears. The wind is your enemy now. If a beetle farts, I want you to know its last meal."
He shifted his gaze to the large youth pounding the ground beside Ámmon. "Kaséti! You are Eyes. Don't look at the grass; look through it. Look for patterns that don't belong. You see it first, or we all bleed."
Finally, his hard eyes locked onto Ámmon. "Icon. You are the Ghost. You stay low. You move only when the wind gusts to cover your sound. You are the space between the grass blades." Sofoú stopped, drawing his curved dagger. "Now, spread out. Keep visual contact. Arrow formation, Ámmon, you are the tip and I will lag behind. We move until twilight, then we dig in. Move!"
The boys fanned out, but as Ámmon took his first step past the tree line, he stopped abruptly, turning to face the unknown. He felt a sudden, hollowing sensation in his chest, not a presence, but a strange absence. For the first time in his life, he felt displaced, an intruder in his own reality, as if the world itself was rejecting him. The Elders always said that sand ran in the veins of their people, that the heat which killed outsiders was the very fire that fueled their hearts. Ámmon had always thought it was just a metaphor. Is it not? he thought, the question slipping past his defenses without him realizing it.
Stepping off the quartz-infused sands was like being unplugged from a lifeline. The subtle, vibrating hum of the desert, a song he hadn't realized he was hearing since birth, went silent. He was out of his domain. The sensation was jarring. The air tasted different here, less like sulfur and sand, more like dust and rot. It was the silence that truly unnerved Ámmon.
The Captain had been right. The Savanna wasn't just quiet; it was empty. There were no buzzing insects, no distant calls of birds, no rustling of small game scurrying away from their approach. It felt like walking into a held breath. Ámenor took the left flank, his head twitching back and forth like a cornered desert jerboa, his knuckles white around the hilt of his knife. Kaséti took the right, moving with a surprising, heavy stealth, his spear ready. Ámmon took the center, dropping into a crouch. He felt exposed. They advanced slowly for an hour as the sun began its final descent, casting long, bloody shadows across the sea of pale grass. The tension was a physical weight. Every sway of a thorny acacia bush looked like a crouching warrior;.
Suddenly, a sharp whistle cut through the air, a mimic of a desert hawk. It was Sofoú, ordering a halt. They regrouped near a cluster of dead bushes. Sofoú looked grim, wiping sweat from his bald head.
"How much water do you boys have?" Sofoú asked, his voice low.
"A day's worth," Kaséti answered promptly, patting his hip.
Ámmon nodded. "Me too. I barely touched it."
Ámenor didn't say anything, lowering his gaze to his dusty sandals.
"What?" Sofoú asked, his eyes narrowing.
"My skin is empty," Ámenor mumbled. "I finished it earlier today."
"Empty?" Sofoú hissed, looking like he wanted to strike the boy. "Did you drink it or did you bathe in it, you fool? We haven't even started the real work." Sofoú unhooked his own waterskin and shoved it into Ámenor's chest. "Drink. Take half. If you die of thirst, I have to carry your gear, and I'm too old for that."
While Ámenor drank guiltily, Sofoú turned to Ámmon. "Icon, you're with me. We're going to scout the perimeter. You two," he pointed at Kaséti and Ámenor, "stay here, keep low, and set up a cold camp. No fire." Ámmon stifled a groan. His legs were screaming for rest after three days of marching, but the look in Sofoú's eyes brooked no argument. "And leave the rat here," Sofoú muttered, glancing at Ámmon's pack."
How does he know about Khepri? Ámmon wondered. He had been so careful, feeding the jerboa only at night, shielding him with his body during the marches. Sofoú saw the look on his face and rolled his eyes. "You think I didn't see your pack twitching for the last hundred miles? Or that I didn't notice you sneaking dried roots into it?" He pointed a calloused finger at Kaséti. "Watch the thing. If it runs, don't chase it."
Ámmon gently set the pack down near Kaséti. Khepri poked his head out, sniffing the new, dangerous air of the Savanna. The little creature was trembling, his whiskers twitching as if he could scent a predator stalking.
"Stay," Ámmon whispered to the creature, locking eyes with him. Khepri shot a look that carried a silent weight, a warning that something felt wrong and chirped, a low, distressed sound, refusing to retreat into the bag. "Stay," Ámmon repeated, his voice firmer this time, knowing how much Khepri despised being left with strangers. As the stubborn creature finally dove back into the backpack, Ámmon rose, suppressing a groan of exhaustion, and turned to follow Sofoú.
As they moved away from the others, slipping through the low grass, Ámmon couldn't hold his tongue. "We've been running for hours and haven't seen a single sign of life," Ámmon whispered. "If the Savanna is empty, why all this worry? Why are we sneaking around like this?"
Sofoú didn't stop moving, his eyes scanning the horizon. "Empty doesn't mean uninhabited, boy. And it wasn't always this way you know?."
"Generations ago, the Savanna was alive," Sofoú continued, his voice taking on a storytelling cadence that felt out of place in the gloom. "Its people were friends to ours. The Flats? They were a Great Lake that fed us both. We had fish, they had game. The desert was barren, yes, but we had water."
"And then the war happened?" Ámmon asked, already knowing the answer.
"The War," Sofoú spat the word like a curse. "The Savanna tribes and the Desert tribes stood together against the Grasslanders. We were strong, we had numbers, but they... they were endless. We lost. The Grasslanders didn't just conquer the land; they broke it." Sofoú gritted his teeth, as if recalling horrors unimaginable to Ámmon. "The land started to die. As if it was grieving. The lake dried up into the Flats. The green turned to gray. It's been dying for decades, shrinking every year, as if life itself is being drained from the soil."
Ámmon absorbed the information, looking at the twisted, dead vegetation around them. How can the land die because of a war? he thought. It makes no sense.
"Okay," Ámmon said, stopping to look at the older man. "I understand the history. But with all due respect, I must ask again: if it's desolate now, why are we being so cautious here?"
Sofoú stopped and turned to him. "Because the Grasslanders didn't just leave. They built outposts. Watchtowers along the ridge. They patrol this dead land to make sure we stay in our sandbox. That is why our last raids ended so miserably. We wal—"
The sound was wet and sickening, like a boot stepping into deep mud. Sofoú stopped speaking. His expression didn't change; his mouth was still half-open to form the word. Then, Ámmon saw it.
Where his right eye had been, the gray and red fletching of a black arrow now sprouted from the socket. The impact had been so violent it had punched through the back of his skull. For a second, the Scout Captain stood there, a look of mild confusion on his face, the blood instantly masking his features. Sofoú collapsed like a tent with its main pole snapped, hitting the ground with a heavy, lifeless thud.
Ámmon didn't think. The instinct he had inherited from the sand took over. He dropped flat just as a second arrow hissed through the space where his head had been a heartbeat before.
A deep voice shouted in a foreign tongue from the tall grass ahead.
Ámmon scrambled backward on his hands and knees, panic overriding his exhaustion. He turned and sprinted back toward his friends, staying low, his chest heaving. A figure emerged from the brush to his right, a silhouette in green lacquered armor. Ámmon didn't stop; he thrust his spear blindly, feeling the tip catch on something soft, and kept running as a scream erupted. Another arrow whizzed past his ear, cutting a lock of his golden-brown hair.
"Kaséti! Ámenor! They are here!" Ámmon screamed as he burst into the small clearing where they had left the others.
He skidded to a halt. There was no camp. There was only slaughter.
Kaséti was on his knees, his massive body held upright only by the spear driven through his chest, pinning him to the ground. He looked like a fallen statue, his eyes open, staring at nothing. Ámenor was gone. There was no sign of a struggle, only his spilled waterskin soaking the dry earth.
Before Ámmon could scream, before he could raise his spear, the world exploded in pain. Something heavy slammed into the back of his head. The ground rushed up to meet him, tasting of dust and rot. As his vision swam and darkness clawed at the edges of his mind, he saw boots, heavy, green leather boots, encircling him.
A voice grunted from far away. An argument erupted above him, guttural and angry. Then, a boot slammed viciously into his groin.
Pain, white and blinding, tore through him, curling him into a ball. I am going to die, Ámmon thought, the realization cold and absolute. Through the haze of tears and dust, he looked up. He saw a man kneeling over him, holding a strange device carved from polished red wood. The man thrust the device onto Ámmon's face.
Then, the silence claimed him completely.