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Mardek took his thousand north into place that rolled like the back of a sleeping bull. He walked with his hands behind him as if he were on holiday. That smile of his sat in the corner of his mouth like a piece of difficult fruit he had decided to enjoy. He led them up onto a knife ridge where the wind could see them and did it on purpose.
He wanted birds to lift. He wanted eyes in watch posts miles away to note movement in a place that was not the place he intended to go. He stayed up there long enough for rumors to settle like pollen across the line, then turned his men hard southeast into a string of dunes thin as blades.
He taught the first fifty to read the sand the way sailors read the set of a sail and put them out in a scattered fan. When the wind shifted those fifty changed their lines without looking at him.
