“The Sahel? What’s that?”
“The outer edge of Hammad al Nakir. That means the Desert of Death.”
“Oh, that sounds great.”
“You’ll love it. Most godforsaken land you’ll ever see.” His eyes went vague.
“You been there?”
“I was at Wadi el Kuf with the General. We took this route then.”
Bragi exchanged glances with his brother.
“Ha!” Reskird cried, suddenly enthusiastic. He started babbling cheerfully about Hawkwind’s victory.
Bragi and Haaken had listened to other veterans of the battle. It hadn’t been the picnic Reskird thought. Haaken suggested Kildragon attempt a difficult autoerotic feat.
They finally overhauled the other infantry company a day from the assembly point, a fortified town called Kasr el Helal. The veterans grinned a lot during night camp. They had made the overtaking intentionally difficult.
Hawkwind and the remainder of the regiment were waiting at Kasr el Helal. Also on hand were several caravans hoping to slip into Hammad al Nakir in the regiment’s safety shadow, and two hundred Royalist warriors sent to guide the Guildsmen. Bragi and Haaken found the desert men incredibly odd.
Hawkwind allowed a day’s rest at Kasr el Helal. Then the savage march resumed. Bragi soon understood why extra boots had been issued. Rumor said they had eight hundred miles to march, to some place called the Eastern Fortress. The actual distance was closer to five hundred miles, but it was long enough.
The pace started slowly enough, passing through the wild, barren hills of the Sahel. The desert riders ranged far afield. The column traveled ready for combat. The primitive locals were fanatic adherents of the enemy, somebody called El Murid.
The natives never offered battle. The Guildsmen never saw them. They saw almost no natives anywhere during the first twenty-seven days of the desert crossing.
Hawkwind conducted repeated exercises during the march. The heavy support train acquired at Kasr el Helal was a severe drag on speed. Yet its professional camp followers, cooks and workers made military life easier to bear. Hawkwind, though, kept those people as segregated as he dared, fearing an infection of indiscipline. Their discipline was pure chaos compared to that of the Guildsmen.
The youths from the north examined the barrens day after day. “I’ll never get used to this,” Bragi said.
Haaken admitted, “It scares me. Makes me feel like I’m going to fall off the world, or something.”
Bragi tried to see a bright side. “Somebody wants to attack us, we’ll see them coming.”
He was only partly right. Twenty-seven days out of Kasr el Helal, Reskird suddenly yelled, “Pay up, Haaken.”
“What?”
“The van riders are coming in.” Kildragon pointed. The native outriders were rushing toward the column like leaves aflutter on a brisk March wind. “That means a fight.”
Bragi looked at Haaken meaningfully. “You suckered him out of a month’s pay, eh?” An hour earlier word had come back that they could expect to be within sight of their destination before nightfall. Haaken had begun crowing about how he had hornswoggled Reskird into betting they would see action before they arrived.
Haaken suggested they both attempt the sexually impossible. He grumbled, “Those Invincibles wouldn’t be this close to the castle anyway.”
“They’re between us and the Fortress,” Reskird said. “We have to break through. Pay me now, Haaken. Be hard to collect if you get taken dead.”
“Don’t you ever shut up? You got a mouth like a crow.”
“You do have a way with words, Reskird,” Bragi agreed.
Horsemen indistinguishable from the outriders crested a ridgeline ahead. They studied the column, then flew back the way they had come.
Hawkwind halted. The officers conferred, dispersed. Soon Bragi and his companions were double-timing into the selected formation, which was a broad, shallow line of heavy infantry with the native horsemen on the flanks. Bowmen scattered behind the infantry. The heavy horse, still donning armor and preparing mounts, massed behind the center. The camp followers circled wagons behind them to provide a fortress into which to retreat.
Birdsong dressed the squad. “Looking good, lads,” he said. “First action. Show the Lieutenant we can handle it.” Sanguinet insisted they couldn’t whip their weight in old women.
“Set your shields. Stand ready with spears. Third rank. Stand by with your javelins.”
Bragi watched the ridgeline and worried about his courage. This was no proper way for a man to fight...
Riders crested the hill. They swept toward the Guildsmen, hoofbeats rising into a continuous thunder. Bragi crouched behind his shield and awaited the order to set his spear. Some of his squadmates seemed to be wavering, certain they did not dare hold against the rush.
The riders sheered off toward the flanks. Arrows from short saddle bows pattered against shields, crossing paths with a flight from longer Guild bows. Horses screamed. Men cursed and wailed. Bragi could see no casualties on his side.
An arrow chunked into his shield. A quarter inch of sharp steel peeped through. A second shaft caromed off the peak of his helmet, elicited a startled curse behind him. He scrunched down another inch.
The earth shuddered continuously. Dust poured over him. The taunting riders were racing past just thirty yards away.
He could not restrain his curiosity. He popped up for a peek over the rim of his shield.
An arrow plunked him squarely, smashing the iron of his helmet against his forehead. He tumbled onto his butt, losing his shield. Another arrow streaked through the gap in the shield wall, creased the inside of his right thigh. “Damn,” he muttered, before it started hurting. “An inch higher and...”
Reskird and Haaken shifted their shields, narrowing the gap till a man from the second rank could assume Bragi’s place. Hands grabbed Ragnarson, dragged him backward. In a moment he was cursing at the feet of the bowmen. One shouted, “Get back to the wagons, lad.”
He didn’t make it halfway before the encounter ended. The enemy tried to turn the flanks. The friendly natives pushed them back. Trumpets sounded. Hawkwind led the heavy horse through aisles in the infantry, formed for a charge. The enemy flew away, vanishing over the hill as swiftly as he had come. He remembered Wadi el Kuf, and had no taste for another bout with the men in iron.
Though Bragi had perceived their undisciplined rush as an endless tide, there had been no more than five hundred of the riders. Outnumbered by a disciplined foe, they had done nothing but probe. Even so, several dozen fallen comrades were left scattered across the regiment’s front. Bragi was one of only four casualties on the Guild side.
The camp followers rushed out to cut throats and loot. The Guildsmen remained standing at arms while their native auxiliaries went scouting again.
Bragi settled down with his back against a wagon wheel, cursing himself for the stupidity that had gotten him hurt. All he had had to do was keep his head down, just as he had been taught.
“Some people will do anything to get out of walking.”
He looked up, lips taut. His wound hurt bad now.
Sanguinet dropped to one knee. “Might have known you’d be the first one hurt. Let me look at it.” He grinned. “Close, eh? Don’t look that bad, though.” He squeezed Bragi’s shoulder. “There’s a reason behind every lesson we try to teach. Hope you learned something today. You paid a cheap enough price.” He smiled. “I’ll send the surgeon around. You’ll need stitches. Ride the chow dray the rest of the way in.”
“Do I have to do KP? Sir?”
“Got to pull your weight somewhere.”
“I’ll walk, then. Just stay with my squad.”
“You’ll do what you’re told, son. Laziness isn’t a good enough excuse for losing a leg.”
“Sir —”
“You have your orders, Ragnarson. Don’t compound foolishness with more foolishness.” Today Sanguinet spoke as a Guildsman to a broth
er, not as a drillmaster belittling a recruit.
Birdsong let Haaken and Reskird drop back to visit the afternoon the regiment started the long climb up the slope leading to the Eastern Fortress. They lifted him down off the chow wagon so he could look at the castle. “Gods. It’s big,” he said.
“They call it the Eastern Fortress,” Reskird told him. “Been here for like eight hundred years, or something, and them all the time adding on.”
Bragi looked around. How did the people of Hammad al Nakir survive in such desolation? The castle turned out its garrison in welcome. Ranks of silent men, dark of eye and skin, often beakish of nose, observed them without expression. Bragi sensed their disdain. The were all old, weathered veterans. He tried hard not to limp.
If he could impress them no other way, his size ought to stir some awe. He was six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than the biggest.
Nowhere did he see a woman, and children were scarce. “This is the reception the old-timers talk about when Guildsmen come to the rescue?” he muttered. “Where are the flowers? Where are the cheers? Where are the eager damsels? Haaken, I’m not going to like it here. I’ve seen brighter people at funerals.”
Haaken had his shoulders hunched defensively. He grunted his agreement.
The column passed through the castle gate, into a stronghold as spartan as its defenders. Everything inside looked dry and dusty, and was colored shades of brown. Dull shades of brown. The companies fell in one behind another in a large drill yard, under the hard eyes of a group watching from an inner rampart. “Those guys must be the ones who hired us,” Bragi guessed. He studied them. They did not look any different from their followers. To him, very strange.
Reskird murmured, “Two things I’d give up what Haaken owes me to see. A tree. And a smile on just one of their ugly faces.”
The group on the wall came down and joined Hawkwind. Time passed. Bragi wished they would get on with it. After all that desert all he wanted was a gallon of beer and a soft place to lie down.
Things started moving. Men led the horses away. The front company filed through an inner gate. Bragi surveyed the fortress again, scowled. Not damned likely to be any comfortable barracks here.
One by one, the companies ahead marched away. Then it was the recruits’ turn. A lean native youth approached Sanguinet and spoke briefly. The Lieutenant turned and started bellowing. The company filed out.
The quarters were worse than Bragi had imagined. Two hundred men had to crowd into space meant for maybe seventy. Only a serpent would be able to slide in or out after taps. He tried not to think of the horror consequent to an alarm sounding after dark.
Even officers and noncoms got shoved into that overcrowded cage. There was no room at all for gear. That they left outside.
The growling and cursing died a little. Reskird muttered that he didn’t have room enough to get breath to bitch. Their youthful guide said, “I offer my father’s apologies for these quarters. You came earlier than expected, and at a time when many of our warriors are away, fighting the Disciple. You will be moving to better quarters as soon as they can be furnished. Some may move tomorrow. Your commander is already meeting with my father concerning duty rosters. Men who are assigned stations far from here will be moved nearer immediately.” He spoke Itaskian with a nasal accent, but much more purely than Bragi or his brother.
His gaze crossed Bragi’s. Both youths stared for a moment, startled, as if seeing something unexpected. Once their eyes moved on, Bragi shook his head as though trying to clear it.
“What’s the matter?” Haaken demanded.
“I don’t know. It’s like I saw... I don’t know.” And he didn’t. And yet, the impact had been such that he was now sure this slim, dark, strange young man would play an important part in his life.
Haaken was intrigued. There was more life in his eyes than there had been for months. “You’ve got that look, Bragi. What is it?”
“What look?”
“The same look Mother got when she was Seeing.”
Bragi snorted, making light of their mother’s alleged ability to see the future. “If she’d been able to See, Haaken, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Why not? She could’ve known. She wouldn’t have said anything if there wasn’t anything she could do. Would she?”
“That was all bullshit. She just put on an act to scare people into doing things her way. She faked it, Haaken.”
“Who’s bullshitting who? You know better than that.”
“Want to hold it down back there, you Ragnarsons?” Sanguinet bellowed. “Or at least speak Itaskian so the rest of us can get in on it?”
Bragi reddened. He glanced at the Lieutenant, averted his gaze from the man’s taut face. His eye fell on the young guide again. Again he had that frisson, and the youth seemed to have suffered a similar response. He was just regaining his equilibrium. Curious. Maybe his mother was in his blood after all.
The youth said, “I am Haroun bin Yousif. My father is Wahlig of el Aswad. What you would call a duke. During your stay here, unless I am needed elsewhere, I will remain attached to your company as interpreter and go-between. Is there a word for that in Itaskian?” he said in an aside to Sanguinet.
The Lieutenant shrugged. Itaskian was not his native tongue either.
“Liaison,” Sergeant Trubacik volunteered.
“Yes. I recall now. Liaison. If you have problems requiring communication with my people, see me. Especially in matters of dispute. We are of contrasting cultures. Probably my people seem as strange to you as you do to them. But we must stand side by side against the Disciple...”
“Rah rah rah,” Reskkd muttered, a little too loudly. “Three cheers for our side. Why doesn’t he tell us what’s so special about this El Murid character?”
In a voice dripping with honey, easygoing Corporal Birdsong said, “That will be four hours of extra duty, Kildragon. Want to try for more?”
Reskird gulped, sealed his lips.
Haroun continued, “I, and my tutor, Megelin Radetic, whom I shall introduce later, are the only men here who speak Itaskian. If you find yourself desperate to communicate, and you can speak Daimiellian, try that. Many of our men have worked the caravans and speak a little Daimiellian. But talk slowly, and be patient.”
Haaken lifted a hand. “Back here. Where can we get something to drink?”
“There is a cistern.” Haroun turned to Sanguinet, who expanded upon the critical question in a soft voice. He looked puzzled. Then he said, “The drinking of spirited beverages is forbidden. Our religion does not allow it.”
Grumble mumble growl. “Holy shit,” somebody shouted. “What the hell kind of hole is this? No women. No booze. Hot and dirty... Hell. For this we should risk our lives?”
The youth looked baffled. He turned to Sanguinet for help. Bragi prodded Haaken, who was within reach of the loudest complainer. Haaken took hold of the man’s shoulder muscle and squeezed. His protests died.
Sergeant Trubacik called out, “Any problems, you see me or Haroun here. At ease. Settle in. Lieutenant suggests you roam around and get to know the place. Duty assignments will come out tomorrow. That’s it.”
“You’d better believe I’m going to roam around,” Reskird muttered. “This is so tight it would give me the shakes, only there isn’t room to shiver.”
“Yeah. Me too,” Bragi said. “Come on, Haaken. Let’s catch that Haroun. I want to talk to him.” But it took them ten minutes to get out of the barracks room. By then the youth had disappeared. So the brothers went up on the wall and looked out on the barren land and wondered why anyone would fight to defend it.
Haaken, unwittingly prophetic, observed, “What I’d fight for is to get out.”
“There he is, down there,” Bragi said, spotting Haroun. “Let’s go.”
But they missed him again. And thus they began their first commission as soldiers of the Guild.
Chapter Ten
Salt Lake Encounter
El Murid had been up late discussing the coastal war. His aching limbs left him in no mood to be wakened prematurely. “What is it?” he snapped at the insistent slave. “It had better be important, or... Well, out with it!”
The man gulped. The Disciple’s temper had grown ever fiercer since Wadi el Kuf. “Lord...” He burst right into it, talking almost too fast to follow. “Lord, Mowaffak Hali insists on seeing you. He’s just returned from patrol. He won’t be put off.”
El Murid grumbled and scowled. “Hali? Hali?” He could not associate a face with the name.
“Mowaffak Hali, Lord. The elder Hali. The Invincible.” The slave eyed him oddly, as if bemused because he could not recall a man as important as this visitor.
“All right. Show him in. And if it’s another petty squabble over precedence between the regulars and the Invincibles, I’ll crucify you both.” He beckoned a second slave. “Clothing.”
He was dressing when the Invincible strode in, advancing like a trail-dirty thunderhead, brow furrowed. El Murid remembered him now. One of his favorites among the Invincibles. One of his best men. One of the most determinedly faithful. And, in all likelihood, one of the high brethren of the Harish, too.
“Mowaffak, my brother. A pleasure to see you again.”
Hali halted a few, paces away. “My apologies, Lord. I wouldn’t disturb you for anything less than a disaster.”
El Murid’s lips stretched in a rictus of a smile, cracking because they were dry. “Disaster? What now?”
“The rumors are true. Aboud has engaged Hawkwind again.”
El Murid’s stomach knotted. He fought to keep his fear off his face. They had whipped him like a cur at Wadi el Kuf. They had branded terror upon his soul. He could not be reminded without cringing. “Hawkwind?” he croaked.
“I saw them with my own eyes, Lord. I was leading the Fourth through the gap between el Aswad and the Great Erg. My scouts reported the presence of a large body of foreigners. I took the battalion forward, and engaged briefly. They drove us off like swatting away flies.”
El Murid swallowed. Memories of Wadi el Kuf swarmed, helter skelter, chaotic. He simply could not think straight.