In the dead of night I heard the blacksmith toil. His workshop sprawled, nothing but the embers of a dying stove to light his face. He worked a canister of molten steel into molds. His body sweating, and the red of his hell fire forge setting neon glow across his body. He poured water in a small bucket and sat, waiting and watching the steam rise from the cooling molten core. He took a pipe. He took hash out of a little tin and stuffed it with his soot covered fingers and brought his pipe near the caged face of his furnace. An ember hit and he puffed.

“I’m taking some extra knives.” I said. “If they ask, tell them I went to check the west.”

The blacksmith said nothing. He stared and he puffed.

Stars too small and returning to obscurity, nothing but the hoof of my horse and the cricket of desert critters. Beetles. Scorpions. Worms. Shriveling away from the white legs of my horse. The dirt rose from the hooves, my horse stopped and prodded the floor. I looked both ways and lead. We rode for what felt like hours, and against the cool night air I saw the steam rise from my sweating steed. A phantom ghost, and me the phantom knight wandering through darkness. Somewhere in my travels I found a derooted bush. In another moment, a cactus stomped and torn. The fools hadn’t spotted either in the dark. I remained straightward and came to a stop near a dried river bend. Nothing but a leak now. I harnessed my horse to a firm oak rooted deeply into the white ground. I stepped up on a rock, there was a cliff side next to the dead river. Small steps I took - up. And peered ahead when I got to the very top of the wall. Gauze wrapped around my face, I narrowed my glare out beyond the edge of the cliff. Out and beyond there was a water source, broken reflections scattered in its narrow body. And next to this more liveable expanse, a dwindling fire flashed. A heavy wind blew and flickered the flare. I climbed and stood and raised my wolf pelt closer to my neck, watching two people idle around the fire. Moving ginger in the light. Betrayers. Traitors of the oath.

It is one thing to betray another. It is another to betray a promise to yourself.

Their horses stood stiff, latched to a raised rock by the river, wet and shiny and sleek with the golden reflection of the fire that mirrored its surface. I stepped up to the small ledge and watched my surroundings, the path was narrow and it sloped downward. I was by the side of some corrugation, holding close to the walls as I made my way down the path. A rock skittered and rolled down, next to my horse. I held my breath and watched out towards the fire. The men hadn’t caught on yet.

I walked. Hanging low. Dodging the branches of trees as the path finally merged out to flat terrain. I walked and walked and soon found myself next to the river, a little off from the men who stood by the gravel shores. Two were chatting and masticating on dried meat, choking it down with disgusted faces. Like sawdust, it must have been. One of them stopped chewing for a moment and went to the river bed to urinate. A thin arc. I tested my step down the the side of a boulder, almost feet away from the flat earth. I jumped. Rocks skittered out from beneath my fall.

The men did not turn. The river was too loud.

My body lay prone and crawled forward, dragging stone as I went belly down. Large boulders to my side, growing out and above the river like diving boards. Eventually I got close enough to make their faces out. But I watched. They ate. They shat. They drifted off to sleep. My eyes followed the lines of dangling rope. Their horses were uneasy, pawing at the floor.

A scorpion crawled up my back, confusing me for stone, maybe. It went up to my head, stayed for a while, and traveled out onto the surface of the boulder.

Still like stone. An entity as old as the eons of cosmic mess that had burned through heavens and hells. An entity as old as the hot nubile planets. Waiting. Cooling. Patient for thousands of years for this very moment.

One of the two stood, he rubbed his eyes and tossed sand into the fire. It hissed as the embers died. A gecko watched with a raised head as I shimmied forward, pushing myself with my elbows. I reached down underneath my coat and moved my hand slow across my leather pelt as I removed two small knives, Kelk-throwing blades, Kal had called them. Crescent shaped, dense at their very center. On one corner, a smaller hole where I fitted my finger in. I spun the thing and postured up. The two slept, or at least kept still in their little rugs. I threw one, at the rope holding the horses. The rope snapped and the knife plopped into water. My eyes went immediately to the two. Both of them coughed.

“Should’a kept riding.” One said.

“We’ll catch the sun tomorrow. I’m tired.” The other turned his back to the first. They sniffed, sneezed but made no reaction.

I spun a second Kelk, the air split and whispered as it ran in circles. One of the two horses reached out into the water and dipped its snout, taking big gulps. Its black eye buzzing with flies. It looked up. Blinked stupidly.

I threw the second crescent knife. It struck one of the beast in its hind leg. The animal raised its front legs. It stomped on the water and shook its head and screamed and ran kicking up dust. The second horse - afraid - looked around and followed closely behind. The giant cloud blew up towards the camp, the air sifted it through like a fog machine tinted black and yellow. I rushed in, low and deep in the cover of the dark sand storm.

“What the fuck.” One of them worked his boots. The other crawled and pawed for a sword, wiping sand from his face.

“They found us. They’d had to have found us.”

“Shut up and get your blade.” The man screamed, unsheathing his sword and looking up with one closed eye and one tight face and loud grunts of feigned courage. I ran low and close to him, swiping at his Achilles heel. He stabbed the sword to the ground and with his free hand gripped the wound behind his leg, screaming. Oh, screaming loud. Louder than the river rushing near us.

The other started for the rocks by the river, trying to climb them with naked feet. His toes slipped up against one side and his chin hit the edge of one of the stones flat. He turned and faced me, grabbing a little knife from his waist and gripping it with two hands towards me. He rubbed his face. Blood ran down his chin.

“Virgil?” He blinked.

“Fuck. It’s the wolf. Fuck!” The other one screamed, keeled over, holding his foot.

I walked forward. Quiet, gravel turning to slush-sand close to the river. My feet sank into the indents of horse hooves and my head hung low.

“Virgil.” The man’s blade shook in front of him. “Please, we can explain.”

I took out one of my straight knives and gripped its hilt hard underneath my coat.

“Virgil, please. Please!” He threw his blade to the side. “See? I’ve got nothing. Can we talk?”

I put my foot against the stone and raised my blade up to his neck. A trickle of blood fell down his pleated neck fat. Both hands raised, palms shown to me as they shook.

“The pelts?” I asked. “Where are the pelts?”

He pointed off to the side of the tent, near the fireplace where a large dark bump laid. I grabbed him by his hair and dragged him next to it, throwing him into the pit. He screamed and rubbed the coals off him. I grabbed onto the bump, lifting covers off of them. Pelts hid underneath, furry, dried and crackling as I looked through.

“What am I going to do about my leg?” The one with the sword said. He was almost crying.

“This isn’t all of them.” I threw a pelt onto the ground. “Where’s the rest?”

“My leg, Virgil. My leg.”

I walked over to him. The other still scrambled getting the ashes off his body.

I stepped on the cut leg and dug it into the ground.

“Where are the other half?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” He shouted. “I don’t know.”

“You better fucking guess then.” I stepped harder. “Where are they?”

“Down the river!” He pushed my foot off. “They’re down the river. All the way!”

“What?”

“We split in two.” He said. “Okay? That’s the truth.”

“You split into two?”

The two stopped rolling and looked at each other. And their faces melted into dread. And to frank, so did mine.