After the Atreides defeat, Thufir Hawat hides before dawn beneath a desert overhang with only twenty survivors from a force of three hundred. A Fremen envoy approaches and warns that Harkonnen patrols are everywhere. Hawat reviews the catastrophic scale of the attack, realizes he underestimated Baron Harkonnen's spending and planning, and wrongly concludes that Lady Jessica must have been the traitor.

The Fremen reports that Gurney Halleck and some of his men are safe with smugglers, but Hawat's immediate problem is survival. The Fremen repeatedly frames the issue as a matter of water: Hawat's wounded men, their lack of stillsuits, and the need to decide what can be preserved for the tribe. Hawat struggles to understand Fremen custom, while also asking after Duke Leto, Paul, and Duncan Idaho; the Fremen says Leto is believed dead and Paul's fate is in Liet's hands.

The conversation reveals how formidable the Fremen are. The envoy says Fremen captured a Harkonnen artillery piece for Liet, killed many enemy troops, and took three Sardaukar prisoner, treating the Imperial soldiers as worthy but beatable opponents. Hawat is shaken by the implication that the Fremen may be far stronger fighters than the Atreides ever understood.

When one of Hawat's men, Arkie, dies, the Fremen declare a bond of water and carry the body away to reclaim its water according to their rites. Hawat's men nearly rebel, horrified by the custom, but Hawat restrains them and accepts the bond as an alliance. The Fremen promise to treat the Atreides survivors as their own and to help them fight Harkonnens and Sardaukar.

The envoy then uses a trained bat to send a message and sets a trap across the basin. Fremen decoys lure a Sardaukar patrol in a captured Atreides ornithopter, and hidden Fremen overwhelm them. When more enemy aircraft arrive, a Fremen pilot deliberately crashes the captured ornithopter into a troop carrier, destroying hundreds of enemy soldiers in what the envoy calls a reasonable exchange.

Before Hawat's group can withdraw, Sardaukar descend over the cliff using suspensors. They kill the Fremen envoy with a thrown knife, and Hawat draws his own blade but is struck unconscious by a stunner projectile.