Simna was not the only one startled by the herdsman’s unexpected and inexplicable disappearance. Hunkapa Aub walked all around the area where Ehomba had vanished, and Ahlitah paced the spot sniffing like a huge black dog.
The flames were closing in, narrowing the circle of unburned grass and breathable air. Simna started to cough, choking on the ashes from the carbonizing vegetation and the air that had begun to sear his lungs. Surely Ehomba hadn’t abandoned them for some mystical refuge only he could access? The swordsman had to admit that such a development was not beyond the bounds of possibility. How often had Ehomba spoken of the need first and foremost to fulfill his perceived responsibility to the deceased scion of distant Laconda? How many times had he made it clear, to Simna as freely as to total strangers, that the resolution of that journey took precedence over everything else?
A sweating Simna ibn Sind scanned his surroundings. Encircled by leaping flames, with the earth itself seemingly beginning to incinerate around him, he saw nowhere to run, no place to hide. This was not a good place to die, out in open country witnessed only by insects and rodents, his body about to become food for indolent meat-eaters that under normal circumstances he could run circles around. From the time he had been old enough to understand the significance of life and the finality of death he had planned to depart this plane of existence in a blaze of glory that would be immortalized in ballad and song. Now it seemed he was to expire simply in a blaze, as something else’s dinner. Where were the cheers, the shouts to admire him as mind and body shriveled and dissolved? The circumstances were ignominious to a fault.