In the steady, jogging pace there was time for Duncan’s thoughts to roam.
Must I permit the Sisterhood to use me? What do I owe them?
And he thought of Teg, that last gallant stand to permit two of them to escape.
I did the same for Paul and Jessica.
It was a bond with Teg and it touched Duncan with grief. Teg was loyal to the Sisterhood. Did he buy my loyalty with that last brave act?
Damn the Atreides!
The night’s exertions increased Duncan’s familiarity with his new flesh. How young this body was! A small lurch of recollection and he could see that last pre-ghola memory; he could feel the Sardaukar blade strike his head — a blinding explosion of pain and light. Knowledge of his certain death and then . . . nothing until that moment with Teg in the Harkonnen no-globe.
The gift of another life. Was it more than a gift or something less? The Atreides were demanding another payment from him.
For a time just before dawn, Ambitorm led him at a sloshing run along a narrow stream whose icy chill penetrated the waterproof insulated boots of Duncan’s Tleilaxu garments. The watercourse reflected bush-shadowed silver from the light of the planet’s pre-dawn moon setting ahead of them.
Daylight saw them come out into the larger, tree-shielded animal track and up the steep hill. This passage emerged onto a narrow rocky ledge below a ridgetop of sawtoothed boulders. Ambitorm led him behind a screen of dead brown bushes, their tops dirty with wind-blown snow. He released the cord from Duncan’s belt. Directly in front of them was a shallow declivity in the rocks, not quite a cave, but Duncan saw that it would offer some protection unless they got a hard wind over the bushes behind them. There was no snow on the floor of the place.
Ambitorm went to the back of the declivity and carefully removed a layer of icy dirt and several flat rocks, which concealed a small pit. He lifted a round black object from the pit and busied himself over it.
Duncan squatted under the overhang and studied his guide. Ambitorm had a dished-in face with skin like dark brown leather. Yes, those could be the features of a Face Dancer. Deep creases cut into the skin at the edges of the man’s brown eyes. Creases radiated from the sides of the thin mouth and lined the wide brow. They spread out beside the flat nose and deepened the cleft of a narrow chin. Creases of time all over his face.
Appetizing odors began to arise from the black object in front of Ambitorm.
“We will eat here and wait a bit before we continue,” Ambitorm said.
He spoke Old Galach but with that guttural accent which Duncan had never heard before, an odd stress on adjacent vowels. Was Ambitorm from the Scattering or a Gammu native? There obviously had been many linguistic drifts since the Dune days of Muad’dib. For that matter, Duncan recognized that all of the people in the Gammu Keep, including Teg and Lucilla, spoke a Galach that had shifted from the one he had learned as a pre-ghola child.
“Ambitorm,” Duncan said. “Is that a Gammu name?”
“You will call me Tormsa,” the guide said.
“Is that a nickname?”
“It is what you will call me.”
“Why did those people back there call you Ambitorm.”
“That was the name I gave them.”
“But why would you . . .”
“You lived under the Harkonnens and you did not learn how to change your identity?”
Duncan fell silent. Was that it? Another disguise. Ambi . . . Tormsa had not changed his appearance. Tormsa. Was it a Tleilaxu name?
The guide extended a steaming cup toward Duncan. “A drink to restore you, Wose. Drink it fast. It will keep you warm.”
Duncan closed both hands around the cup. Wose. Wose and Tormsa. Tleilaxu Master and his Face Dancer companion.
Duncan lifted the cup toward Tormsa in the ancient gesture of Atreides battle comrades, then put it to his lips. Hot! But it warmed him as it went down. The drink had a faintly sweet flavor over some vegetable tang. He blew on it and drank it down as he saw Tormsa was doing.