There was no wind in Wadi-Gihon. The endless hamada of Planet Crete was at the mercy of the red sun. Being a wadi, the dried bed of what was once a river, it was comparable to a cauldron in an oven. But it was as if the river, for its life, had been compassionate with who would one day come to inhabit these lands, and it had gouged caves in the sides of the canyon. The remnants of Emir Ali Yusuf's loyal soldiers and servants, no more than 1,500 of them, had hidden from the sun in those caves, waiting for the supplies and reinforcements that King Enrique Herrera of Montañaria had promised. It all came with the noon, suddenly, all at once, from the sky, with much noise and commotion, a fitting display of power by a rising kingdom. But for some reason it brought worry on the emir's face, not relief.
The emir sent one of his most loyal servants, one Daud Peretz, to meet the parachuting reinforcements above the wadi, and bring their leader to him.