A slender wooden contraption was parked at the edge of the city, alongside several others and a gaggle of robed figures milling about them. It had three thin wheels under its triangular frame, five furled sails, and three crew, all imps. The merchant introduced the party to them, speaking their own language, and then turned to translate the conversation to the orcs.

  “Yes, they say, have not enough crew. You see, I knew good people yes? Good business. You join. They take you to desert.” He said, pointing into the distance beyond the city. Beyond the stone teeth jutting out in front of his finger, Koruk could imagine the red sands beyond. He felt... strange, and he realized that this was probably as far as any orc had ever gone before in all of history. All the history he knew anyways.

  The leader of the imp group, the captain Koruk supposed, looked over them expressionlessly with deep black eyes. His hand rested on the hilt of a shortsword at his waist. His eyes seemed to linger a bit longer on Oben, and eventually he spoke to a shorter imp and turned away to go back to his ship.

  “The Kuumlah says you may come. But you will do as you are told. You work as you are told. You will drink when you are told. You do not leave the sandskimmer. We will leave tonight. Do you understand?”

  Koruk nodded, and the imp directed him and the other orcs to help load the sandskimmer while Moktark went to gather up their own belongings on the much abused travois. Likely the last journey of the trusty thing that had seen them to the edge of the world, Koruk thought. He felt almost mournful to leave it.

  The bulk of the cargo being loaded onto the ship seemed to be water. Jug after jug of it. Koruk was a strong orc but even his muscles started to hurt after an hour of lifting, and he wished Moktark would hurry back. The imps for their part sat back and did nothing but watch.

  “Ah the joys of being the new guy.” Semthak grunted, hefting a water jug. Koruk noticed with some annoyance that the old orc was sweating less than he was.

  After the sandskimmer was loaded, the orcs begrudgingly dressed in the robes they had purchased, which clung uncomfortably to their skin, and they set out. The imp explained that they had to reach the sands before they could set sail, and so they pushed.

  Hours passed, the wheels of the sandskimmer creaking as they rolled over a well worn but still rocky path through the hills.

  “Do you always have to do this?” Koruk asked.

  “No. We usually use camels.” The imp replied. Koruk swore under his breath, and Semthak let out a mirthless chuckle.

  Oben he noticed, did not have to push. He sat on board the cart with the other imps.

  “You could help you know.” Koruk said. Oben shrugged.

  “They say to do what they say. I will. You are do good.” He said. Semthak chuckled again, and Koruk just pushed.

  He didn’t know how many hours passed before the rocks started to become scarcer, and ground looser. The ground ceased to rise in sharp protrusions but in soft rolling hills instead. The sun began to peek up over the horizon. The captain called a halt, and the crew began taking the sails down as he had words with them. Koruk was exhausted, and slumped to the ground behind the craft, joined by the other two orcs.

  The imps unfurled two striped sails onto the sand, and pitched them up like tents. The orcs and Oben were given one tent to sleep in, and the imps another. During the day they slumbered and rested and ate, although few words passed between the two groups.

  The following evening they broke camp, and after some setup the sandskimmer finally began to roll under its own power. The sails whipped in the hot breeze, the wheels creaked, and soon the cliffs fell away behind them, to reveal nothing but open sky and endless undulating waves of red sand in every direction.

  Koruk’s stomach lurched as the craft slid rapidly down the dunes, and he was forced to cling onto the railing as it snaked its way back up the next sand drift. It took him some time to get his sea legs, such as they were. The imps had no issues, and stood on the deck as if this was something they did every day, which to Koruk’s knowledge they probably did.

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  Occasionally a shooting star would flicker into being overhead, and the imps would point at it and murmur nervously to one another. Koruk tried asking the more talkative imp what it meant to them, but he didn’t answer. The other two either didn’t speak a word of orcish or wanted to give that impression, and Koruk thought the odds of learning their language were very slim, so he focused his questions on the shorter of the three, although he seldom received clear answers.

  “How long will the trip take?” He asked the imp.

  “Not long. Maybe too long. You will come to love the sand, or you will come to hate it. Who can say?”

  For the most part though, the journey was made in relative silence and after the initial novelty of the dune sea had worn off, even boredom. Once the craft was underway there was precious little to do. The captain and the other impid crew directed the craft with skill, occasionally measuring their course by the stars and a curious bronze instrument. One sand dune began to look the same as the next to Koruk’s eyes, and he found himself zoning out. The night passed quickly, and then the day, and then more nights and more days.

  Food was plentiful but water was carefully rationed, leaving Koruk’s throat feeling perpetually parched. His skin itched under the robe, and he saw that despite the robe it had begun to turn a muddy brown. During the days while they rested, Oben looked very haggard, and Koruk gave him a little of his own water ration, as well as reapplying his red makeup. Thankfully it had held up well, and the imps didn’t seem to have noticed.

  On the fifth day Koruk woke up in his tent, this one apparently made from the flying jib that led out the front of the slender barge, and stepped outside to relieve himself. It took him a moment to realize that the ship was nowhere in sight, as was its crew. He frantically glanced around at the horizon, shielding his eyes from the red tinged sunlight, but couldn’t spot a thing.

  They were alone.

  The word “stranded” appeared in Koruk’s mind, and he felt panic coming on. He quickly roused the others. After a brief argument and climbing up the nearest dune to search for the missing sandskimmer, they began to take stock of what they had.

  “We have a single jug of water, a sack of dried fruit, and this tent and poles. That’s it. Everything else is gone. Even the shield. It was all on the bloody boat!” Moktark said, sighing. “At least we still have our weapons.”

  “Lot of good they’ll do us. Damn it! I knew we shouldn’t have trusted those horned devils!” Semthak said. “I knew nothing good would come of this!”

  “Come on. We can’t just sit here. Calm down! What do we do?” Koruk said. He felt anything but calm. His words seemed to have an effect on Semthak though.

  “Well, I know we were traveling west southwest, but I don’t know where to. They never said how far it was to their well or encampment or wherever they were headed. The wind blew their tracks away. I didn’t find a trace of them. And...”

  Semthak sighed heavily, looking about himself.

  “And we’re too far into the desert to turn back. Five days by sandskimmer is probably twenty by march, and we don’t have enough water to make it back even if we did navigate correctly.”

  “In other words, we’re completely boned.” Moktark said.

  “It would seem so. But… hm.” Semthak began, thinking to himself.

  “How do you find water back home?” he asked.

  “You look for plants. Plants grow strong where there’s water. Trees.” Moktark replied. Semthak shook his head.

  “No, there’s a better way to do it. You douse for it. You see, even when a river is no longer flowing on land, it is still flowing under the ground.” He said, pointing at the sand beneath his feet. “If the imps do have an oasis somewhere, that water has to come from somewhere. It must come from below. In ancient times it is thought that the land used to be different, and that rivers once flowed through here. This desert was once a much wetter place.”

  “How do you know there are rivers under the ground? Why wouldn’t the water just spring up wherever it pleased?” Koruk asked.

  “And how do you find it?” Moktark finished.

  “I am a soot shaman remember? A soothsayer! Here hang on a moment.” Semthak said, and began taking the tent down. “Help me with this!”

  Semthak selected one of the tent poles that had a fork in it, and cut shorter. Holding it out in front of him, he closed his eyes, and began to murmur. A murmur that turned into a sort of chant, sung from the orc’s deep belly. He walked in a wide circle around the camp, when he got back to his starting point, his eyes jolted open.

  “Ah!” He said. “There’s no water here!”

  The rest of the party groaned collectively, but Semthak quieted them down and suggested that they continue further southwest in the direction that the red men probably travelled. They might not know exactly where they were going, but thus far they’d plotted a straight line since they left Brittle Teeth, and there was no reason to think the imps wouldn’t continue that way. On the way, they would continue dousing, and if they found a trace of water, they would follow it to its source.

  It was a plan of desperation, but nobody had any better ideas. They set off into the desert that night, following the stars and the magical stick.