A/N: To the French guest reviewer to whom I can't reply via private messaging: Merci beaucoup pour ton message ! Voici la suite, en espérant qu'elle te plaira. Les updates ont lieu environ tous les 3-4 jours, je ménage le suspense ;)

Chani stood on the crest of a dune about a hundred metres away from the camp, watching the stars gradually appear in Arrakis' night sky. The wind was blowing hard, and she'd pulled her linen hood over her head, protecting herself from the sand twirling around her. She could feel static in the air, see distant bolts of lightning illuminating the horizon. A storm is coming, she thought. A lifetime of experience in the deep desert had taught her to be very attentive to any changes in the weather – being surprised by a Coriolis storm meant death, especially in the open flatlands. In the northern reaches of Arrakis, the storms weren't quite as lethal as they were further south, but the winds could still blow fast enough to be extremely dangerous.

Presently, however, the wind was a welcome change from the stuffy atmosphere of the stilltent she had spent the last hours in. She'd sat at Paul's side all afternoon and all evening, and had only just allowed herself to step outside for a short while, after most of the Fremen had retired into their private quarters for the night. Three of them, she knew, had been sent by Stilgar to return to the site of the battle under the cover of darkness, equipped with portable deathstills to extract the water of the dead bodies lying there. Unable to travel back to Sietch Tabr for the time being, they would need all the provisions they could get.

Chani glanced back at the main tent and saw a shadowy figure move inside it, silhouetted against the thin canvas – probably Irlo checking on his patient. He, too, had kept a close eye on Paul during the day.

In the early afternoon, Irlo had successfully removed the bullet from Paul's chest and drained the blood that had accumulated in the lung, leaving a thin catheter in place between the ribs in case of further bleeding. He had also done his best to patch up the wounds on Paul's thigh, stitching up the damaged artery and the lacerated tissue around it. Luckily, he had told Chani, the bullet hadn't shattered the bone; any damage to surrounding muscles or nerves was yet impossible to assess.

Paul had lost consciousness at some point during the procedure – which Chani had been grateful for – and hadn't woken since. Chani tried to convince herself it was for the best, but the more time went by, the more she worried he might, in fact, not wake at all. She wondered how desperate the situation really was – whether she could allow herself to be cautiously optimistic. Irlo was too pragmatic to make any promises.

Soft steps in the sand made Chani turn around. Stilgar was climbing up the dune behind her, his brown robes billowing in the wind as he sandwalked, one side of his face lit by the moons' silver glow. He stopped next to her and inhaled deeply, his eyes lifted at the stars.

"A storm is approaching from the southwest", he said. "I reckon it'll be upon us by noon tomorrow."

"I feel it, too", Chani replied absently, still absorbed in her thoughts.

Stilgar stared at her in silence for a long moment, then draped his arm around her shoulders in one of these paternal gestures he sometimes had towards her.

"He's going to make it, Chani", he said. Chani nodded. She had heard those words many times in the past few hours, and each time, they sounded a little more like a comforting lie.

"I mean it." Stilgar must have discerned the scepticism on her face. "He will not die here. He is the Lisan Al-Gaib. His journey is far from over."

Ah. So that was it, Chani thought, sudden anger rising in her chest. Stilgar really believed what he said – but his reasoning wasn't based on facts or logic, merely on his unwavering faith in that hated prophecy he kept waving like a banner to unite the ever-growing legions of fanatical believers around him.

"You can't be serious", she snapped, her voice more aggressive than she had intended. She knew Stilgar meant well, but it somehow irritated her even more. "Are you going to tell me that this was written, too?" She pointed an accusing finger at the stilltent.

"Nobody ever said this road would be an easy one", Stilgar declared serenely. "But everything happens for a reason. Have faith, Chani."

"You're crazy." She shook her head angrily. Part of her almost envied Stilgar. She certainly wished she had that level of confidence in the future. But faith? No. She definitely didn't have any of that.

"I have to go back", she said, trying to keep her voice flat. This wasn't a conversation she was willing to continue. "He's fighting for his life in there, and your prayers won't help him."

She whirled around and sandwalked swiftly down the windswept dune, cursing the Bene Gesserit, their Missionaria Protectiva and their web of lies for the thousandth time.

Once back at the large rocky formation where the Fremen had made camp, she slipped inside the main tent and sealed the sphincter door behind her. Paul was lying on the ground where she'd left him. Even in the dim light, he looked frighteningly pale, his face and torso covered in a thin layer of sweat. His breathing wasn't quite as raspy as before, but still far too quick, his chest rising and falling at an erratic pace. The bandage wrapped around his thigh was soaked in blood.

Next to Paul, Irlo was busy tearing a square piece of white fabric into thin strips, preparing more bandages. He looked tired, Chani noticed. Once again, she silently thanked every deity in the Known Universe for the man's presence. Without him, she had no doubt Paul would be dead.

Irlo carefully peeled the sticky wet bandage off Paul's leg and grabbed a small glowtube to get a better view of the wound. Blood was still seeping through the stitches that closed the skin. Chani's eyes travelled from the wound to Irlo's face.

"Shouldn't we tie something around his leg again, stop the bleeding?" she asked. Irlo shook his head, wrapping a new bandage around the injury.

"You can only do that for a short period of time", he said. "Cut the blood flow to the leg for too long and he'll lose that leg."

After he was done, he switched off the glowtube and gestured to the far corner of the tent, where he had rolled out his sleeping bag, next to his neatly folded stillsuit and the rest of his gear. He was wearing a loose linen tunic and trousers, the kind of garment the Fremen usually wore in the safety of their sietches rather than in the open desert.

"I'm going to get some sleep", he said, "and you should do the same. You look like you need it."

"Is there anything more I can do?" As appealing as getting a few hours of rest sounded, Chani was reluctant to leave Paul without surveillance for even the shortest time.

"Not right now. But wake me if his condition changes, all right?"

"Okay", she said. "Thank you, Irlo", she added, hoping the small words managed to convey all her gratitude.

She watched Irlo disappear into the near-darkness at the other end of the stilltent, then pulled her own sleeping bag from her fremkit and laid it on the ground right next to Paul. It felt strange, sleeping beside him in such a confined space with another person present, but she was grateful Irlo had decided to stay in the tent with them – just in case.

She loosened the straps of her stillsuit and slipped out of it, then hung it above her head on one of the tent's poles and slid into her sleeping bag. Lying on her side, she snuggled up to Paul until her forehead touched his shoulder and took his hand in hers. She tried to ignore the sluggish pulse she felt at his wrist, the sound of the laboured breaths he drew – at least they were signs he was alive, she thought.

Chani relaxed the sore muscles in her body and closed her eyes. She had expected her anxiety to keep her awake for most of the night, but her physical exhaustion quickly got the better of her troubled thoughts, and within a few minutes, she was asleep.

• • •

The first thing Paul felt as he regained consciousness was the confusing sensation of drowning.

He had nearly drowned once, on Caladan, when he was no more than four years old. He had ventured too far into the ocean that day, on the rocks at the foot of the Atreides castle, away from his father's vigilant gaze. He remembered the terror, the frantic struggle to get back to the surface, every fibre of his being screaming for air. The Duke had pulled him out of the sea, scolding him for his imprudence while he spat out a copious amount of salt water.

If he were to trust his senses, there was no water around him now, but the feeling of suffocating was very much the same. He attempted to take in the deep gulp of oxygen his body desperately needed, but found that he couldn't. His breath turned into a cough, and a searing pain erupted in his chest. His mouth filled with the taste of blood. The portion of his brain capable of thinking rationally told him it wasn't a good sign.

Fighting back a wave of sheer panic, he took in a series of quick, shallow breaths. His lungs felt as if the surrounding air had suddenly turned into corrosive acid. The sharp, burning pain increased as his physical sensations gradually came back to him. He felt cold, his head throbbed, and his right leg hurt like hell, too – he tried to move it, but his body didn't seem willing to cooperate.

He forced himself to open his eyes. An abstract scape of blurry shapes materialised before him, bathed in a dim, reddish light. As his vision focused, he discerned the familiar mesh texture of a stilltent, drops of reclaimed moisture travelling through a maze of thin plastic tubes on its surface. He tried to recall how he had ended up in this place. He remembered the huge Spice Harvester, the fight against Harkonnen forces, the sound of a machine gun filling the air. After that, it was only indistinct fragments – but something, he suspected, had gone very wrong.

Something moved beside him, bumping into his right arm. He turned his head slightly and glimpsed a dark mass of curly hair. Now that he paid attention to it, he could hear someone breathe right next to him, in a slow, regular pace indicating the person was asleep. Chani.

He tried to call her name, but the only thing that escaped his lips was a fit of coughing, sending a ripple of agony through his nerves. He gasped for air, feeling his head spin, the coppery liquid on his tongue.

"Usul." The voice was distant, muffled as if through a thick layer of cotton, but unmistakable nonetheless. "Usul, can you hear me?"

A hand cupped his cheek, another squeezed his shoulder. Chani's features appeared in front of him, her face close to his, her all-blue eyes filled with worry. Since his own voice didn't seem ready to comply, he merely nodded, trying to focus his gaze on her. The simple fact of keeping his eyes open cost him a tremendous effort. He heard her speak again, her tone too low for him to hear, then another, masculine voice – one he didn't immediately recognise. He did, however, identify the second person that showed up next to Chani as the Fremen named Irlo, another of Sietch Tabr's Fedaykin. He vaguely remembered Irlo having been there sometime earlier, his deep, warm voice echoing in his memory.

"You're in the desert."

"You were shot by Harkonnen soldiers."

So that was what happened, he thought, racking his foggy brain to recall the details. He felt two fingers pressing against the side of his neck, then the back of a hand touching his forehead.

"How are you feeling?" Chani's voice again, tight with tension. Paul pondered the question for a moment. Truth be told, he felt terrible. He tried to scan his body from head to toe, concentrating on each individual part with Bene Gesserit awareness like his mother had taught him, but the pain in his chest and leg made it difficult to focus on anything else. Each breath set his lungs on fire. His heart was racing, pulsing at his temples. He tried to lift his head to look down at himself, but he was too weak to move a muscle. He wet his dry lips with the tip of his tongue, felt a sharp pang of fear as he became aware of the taste of blood again.

He had many questions, but found himself unable to ask them. He didn't have to – Irlo gave him a quick rundown of the past twelve hours, his words ringing repeated alarm bells in Paul's mind. Bullet to the chest and to the thigh. Injured lung. Arterial bleeding. None of it sounded good. He closed his eyes, chaotic images of the battle rushing back to his mind – the Crawler, the 'thopter, hordes of sword-wielding Harkonnens, and the bodies of his fellow Fedaykin, lying dead on the sand. A small voice inside his head told him he was among the lucky ones. Quite a few of Stilgar's fighters hadn't survived that battle.

"Paul", Irlo said, and he opened his eyes again. "You need to drink." A hand gently lifted his head, then his lips met the cold, rounded rim of a tin cup. He took a tentative sip of what appeared to be fresh water. Judging by the familiar cinnamon-y aftertaste, it had been infused with Spice. The cool liquid felt good for a second in his mouth before it triggered another cough. He waited until he was able to breathe again and forced himself to take another sip. It hurt, but he knew his body needed the water.

He drank as much as he could, but quickly reached his limit – one more mouthful and he was afraid his stomach wouldn't keep it down. He clenched his teeth to hold back another cough, felt Chani brush a strand of hair from his eyes.

"I'm here", she murmured into his ear. "I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere."

There was distress in her tone – with good reason, he supposed. He wanted to say something, if only to assure her he would be fine; perhaps he needed some convincing himself. He wanted to touch her hand, hold her in his arms. But even keeping his eyes open was proving to be more than his body could handle. He felt himself slip back into unconsciousness, wondered briefly if he should struggle against it, using Chani's touch as a tether to the non-too-pleasant reality.

The world faded away around him before he could put up a fight.

To be continued in...
Chapter 5: The Storm