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There was sand everywhere, on my teeth, in my ass, in my nose, in my lungs and in my stomach. We had been walking for several days and the exposed parts of my body were burned by the merciless light of the suns. Covered with a crust that parts itched incredibly. Fatigue alternated with bouts of anger, which quickly turned into hysteria.
"I'm not going any further," I whined, sitting on top of a dune.
“Just don't start again. We need to get to the stash before it gets dark, otherwise I won't find it.”
“If you die, it will only be a joy to me.”
“Don't anger me, you snot," May-e-oka shouted and pulled the rope tied to my neck.
I pulled back, but the girl resisted and pulled again, so I rolled down the dune.
Having untangled me, the girl gave me a slap in the face and pulled after her. But I lay down behind the sand, and she had to drag me. The head slid along the stabbing grains of sand, wanting to break away from the body again. There was nothing to breathe.
"If necessary, I'll drag you all the way to the mountains," May-e-oka hissed.
“Di... e....” I groaned in response and again felt that I was losing consciousness.
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I woke up when it was already cool around and a warm breeze tickled my nose, which made me immediately sneeze.
“Hey," I called.
But there was no answer.
I got up, my hands were aching behind my back from burns and a strong knot. Struggling to my feet, I tried to go, but the rope around my neck tightened. Looks like I'd been tied to something.
Pulling the rope even tighter, I determined the direction and went there. Quickly enough, I bumped into something stone and began to rub my body against it to understand the shape. It turned out to be a wide stone pillar. The rope was tied to it at a level just above my head.
After going around the pillar, I twisted the rope so that it became possible to rub it against the pillar, and began to squat often. Fortunately, it began to cling to a ledge invisible to me.
So, a lot of time has passed. But no matter how I pulled the rope, there was no smell of freedom.
In the end, I just got tired and hung on the pillar, feeling my consciousness leave me again.
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“Asshole, get up.”
The voice and kicks of May-e-oka woke me up when the coolness of the night was already receding. The suns have clearly already come out from behind the horizon and started to bake my face.
"Drink," the girl barked and roughly opened my mouth, pouring some water into it.
I grabbed the flask with my teeth, but the girl pulled it out of my mouth and smacked me in the face with her palm.
“I may not give you any water at all.”
“Let me die...” I whispered with my lips.
“I hear you, snot. Except you can't die.”
I leaned my head against the pillar and shook, either laughing or sobbing.
“That's enough. Have you seen yourself? Your skin burns during the day and recovers by the evening. You tried to escape, but only strangled yourself on this pole. And still alive.”
“Why are the eyes not recovering?”
“I already told you. There's poison in them.”
"Give me back my eyes," I shouted.
But I just got another kick from the girl.
“I refuse to go.”
"Then something worse than death awaits you. I will stuff poison all over your body and leave it to roast forever in this sun until you are eaten by sand dragons.”
“What is that sound?” I asked.
The girl rustled and left. I heard her climb the dune behind which the wind brought someone's voices.
“Damn,” hissed May-e-oka, sliding back down from the dune, “a caravan. I should have guessed, to leave you here, near the crossing post.”
She jerked one way, then the other, and then ran up to me.
“Don't tell them anything. Don't tell them who you are and where you're from. Otherwise, they'll just take you as a slave and sell you somewhere in the market in Fedoya. Feds mean a good ransom and you're a tasty morsel for them, especially if they hear your accent. So, be quiet and do as I say, understand? Otherwise, you won't see your eyes.”
I leaned against the pillar and sighed heavily. The girl untied the rope from it and pulled me after her. Reluctantly, I got up and followed her through the growing heat.
The noise and the smell swooped down and hit me like a passing steam locomotive as soon as we came out from behind a dune. Something big was approaching us. I couldn't even imagine what kind of creatures were pulling these rumbling carts, and what kind of riders were riding them through the fiery desert. I imagined huge lizards with horns, the skin between which stretched so much that it became almost transparent. I've seen them in literature copied from textbooks on universal biology by Outs. Imagination pictured in my head machines built around these huge creatures. Metal cast in the shape of a monster, and turning into a train that stretches across the desert to the horizon.
“Shabash kash sharatmar?” a voice called from afar, interrupting my fantasies.
“Shaban nus sim!” May-e-oka shouted back.
“Sim-sim kala, shatur o pei ma," they answered her. And the girl pulled the rope, directing me to of the speakers.
With all my gut, I felt my companion tense up. But her step became soft, and her movements smooth and relaxed.
“Where to go?” a gruff voice asked from my left. Next to him, I could hear snarling breath and a heavy sour smell that ate through my nose with scabies.
“Sim a-haran paruga ma..." began May-e-oka, but a voice interrupted her.
“You speaker my language worser than I poke at your navel,” he laughed, “answer in federa, my understand.”
"This one is sick with the blue, I am taking him for cleansing," the girl said, and I heard her interlocutor twitch and the creature behind him backed away or sideways.
“It can't be left to rot. He's already blind. The wind will...”
“Apur maida, apur!” a voice shouted.
“Apur noi!” May-e-oka shouted to him.
“Apur nar salaban marai!” a voice shouted angrily at her.
Nothing happened for a while.
“You will be put in a cage with other blue ones,” the girl told me with annoyance, “it looks like they have already caught a lot on this trip. I'll get you out.”
“What kind of blue?" I asked afraid.
“You call the blue – whale plague.”
“Whale plague!” I shouted.
“Don't scream," the girl hissed at me and pulled my neck so that I fell.
"No, no, I'm not going to them," I groaned, resisting.
"Nothing will happen to you Ogunter Lag. You'll lose consciousness a couple of times, but your body will recover. And I'll steal you out of there.”
“No, no!” — I protested.
“Samai ban barai kin!” Someone shouted, and the rope from May-e-oka’s hands flew in the direction of the voice.
He whipped his animal, then growled and jerked me so that I thought that soon my head would definitely come off my body. But it was not possible to indulge in these thoughts for a long time, and I was dragged along the sand, hitting the bumps painfully. So, I lost consciousness again.
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I came to myself surrounded by groans and the smell of decomposition. I immediately vomited bile.
“New guy..." someone croaked from the right.
“Look, already blind. Just like you, Baraman," a woman's voice echoed in front of me.
In the distance to the right, someone stirred and crawled up to me.
“Baraman is no blind. Baraman sees better than all of you.”
The man everyone called Baraman sniffed me, and then pulled away and breathed heavily.
“It's him!”
“Who?” the woman asked blankly.
“The Savior! This is the savior!” Baraman babbled and jumped on the spot, causing the space in which we were shaking. And only then did I realize that we were in somewhat resembling a huge cage. Something big shook the cage in response and growled.
“Don't anger bigfoot, remember what happened last time. Let the Savior save you without your dancing," the man on the right boomed.
“Don't listen to them, Savior! We will be released this very night, after your death” Baraman giggled in my ear.
I shuddered and pulled away from the madman.
“Thanks to the moons who brought you back to life. I will serve. I will serve you faithfully. Both in this and in the other world. Know. Baraman will not leave you. And vero ...”
“You have at most a week to live, and if we get to the purifier, then even less,” a voice boomed from the right, interrupting the joyful whisper of my unexpected admirer.
“Baraman won't die. Baraman will be cleansed by the Savior!”
"The holy flame will purify you. And in it you will dance in full," the woman snapped and kicked the madman so that he fell on me.
"You'll see, creature," he hissed, getting up and shaking something invisible to me from my knees, "you'll ask to be taken away, but Banaman remembers the insults. Banaman won't forget.”
They argued for a long time, but soon I felt so bad that I stopped following their bickering. My head was spinning, I felt sick and I wanted to be absent from this world full of noise, smells and fear, stinging with the rays of the sun. I coughed.
“Look, a cough. Strange. He is already blind…" I heard.
Then it only got worse. My legs and arms were numb. My face was covered with sweat, and the cough became unbearable. Whale plague penetrated through the lungs, and then affected the whole body. Incomparable, it led to a week-long fever, after which, if a person survived, there was a lull, but the body began to exude a barely noticeable smell that infected everything around. A week later, everything was repeated and so on indefinitely, until the body could not stand it. But even after dying, the man exuded whale plague for many more months. And being burned or buried, he infected the earth with the plague, and everything that grew in it. Therefore, the only salvation from it was the holy fire. Portable thermonuclear reactors of Outs. Sealed so much that not a single particle could penetrate from it to the outside. Only by decomposing a person to microparticles, it was possible to get rid of the whale plague.
There were few such reactors. But the Trade Federation made sure that there was at least one for a thousand kilometers. Each post was guarded. And there, there was hope that I would meet my own. Unless that crazy girl keeps her promise and steals me away. At this thought, I lost consciousness again.
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