The Invincible hit him. “What did you do?”
Haroun gritted his teeth and willed the pain away.
The blows fell steadily. The Invincible became workmanlike, telling him the pain would stop only when he undid whatever he had done.
The minutes felt like hours. The pain got worse and worse. Only stubbornness kept Haroun from yielding.
An Invincible rushed up. “They’re headed this way.”
“How close?”
“Right behind me.”
The captain dragged Haroun to his feet. “We’ll take him along. Is the Lord safe?”
“They’re leaving through the back way now, sir. The General and some of his men are with them.”
“Help me carry him.” Haroun hadn’t the strength to support himself. He sagged between the men, his feet trailing in the dirt. He could not see well, now. Everything was out of focus, distorted and fire-tinted.
He was going to die. They would make him break the spell, then they would kill him...
He was not afraid. Despite the pain, he felt only triumph.
“There he is!” Bragi yelled. “The white robes have him. Let’s go.” He charged, bloody sword overhead.
One of the Invincibles looked back. His eyes widened. He ran. The other turned, assessed the situation, released Haroun and drew a dagger. He grabbed the youth’s hair, pulled his head back for a throat slash.
Bragi threw his sword. It smacked the white robe’s shoulder, doing no harm, but did foil the murder attempt.
Bragi went for the Invincible’s legs. Haaken roared and wound up for a two-handed swordstroke. The white robe flung Haroun into their path. Bragi smashed into the youth. Haaken leapt over. The Invincible tripped him, flung the next Guildsman down atop him, sprinted into the night. Bragi’s squadmates charged after him.
Bragi untangled himself. “What a mess. Haaken?”
“Right here.”
“Look at this. They really worked him over.”
“He asked for it. Better see if I can make a litter.”
“Asked for it? You don’t have a sympathetic bone in your body.”
“Not for fools.”
“Not that big a fool. He broke the siege.” The fighting in the camp was slackening. The Disciple’s men were fleeing. Had the Wahlig been able to mount a controlled pursuit none would have escaped. In the chaos, Hali and el Nadim rallied enough men to shield El Murid’s withdrawal.
“That’s two I owe you,” Haroun croaked. Bragi and Haaken stood over him, flexing muscles tightened from carrying the litter.
“Yeah,” Bragi grumbled. “Getting to be a habit.”
“Here comes the old guy,” Haaken whispered.
Radetic came puffing up, features oddly adance in the firelight. He dropped to his knees beside Haroun.
“Don’t let the blood worry you,” Bragi said. “They just slapped him around.”
Haroun tried to grin. “I almost got him, Megelin. Stuck him with a spell, anyway. He’s going to hurt a lot.”
Radetic shook his head. Bragi said, “Let’s get rolling. Hoist him up, Haaken.”
Two riders came up, stared down. “Father,” Haroun croaked.
“Haroun.” The Wahlig eyed Radetic. “He start this, Megelin?”
“He did.”
The Wahlig sucked spittle between his teeth. “I see.” He considered Bragi and Haaken. “Aren’t these the lads who brought him out of the pass?”
“The same. Making a career, aren’t they?”
“So it would aeem. See to Haroun’s injuries, then get their stories. And I’ll want to talk to you once we’re finished down here.”
“As you will.”
“Fuad. Let’s go.” The Wahlig and his brother rode on into the confusion.
“Can we go now?” Bragi asked.
“By all means.” Megelin eyed Haroun, who could not conceal his trepidation. “It’ll be all right, lad. But you did get out of hand. Just as you did at Al Rhemish.”
Haroun forced a laugh. “Didn’t have a choice.”
“That’s debatable. Nevertheless, it turned out well. Assuming we save your teeth. I hope you have it out of your system now.”
“What?”
“The rebellion. The foolishness. You’re young. You have a lot of years left, if you don’t squander them. These lads won’t always be around.”
Haroun closed his eyes, shivered. He had been a fool, throwing himself in like he was one of El Murid’s Invincibles, with never a thought to how he would get away. There were a lot of tomorrows, and through thoughtlessness he’d nearly squandered his share. He owed the northerners more than he had realized.
Megelin scowled.
“Well?” the Wahlig demanded.
Radetic looked at Hawkwind. The General’s leathery countenance remained blank. His vote was “present,” nothing more. Megelin considered Fuad. The Wahlig’s brother was abubble with rage. He had an ally there, but he and Fuad made a pathetic marriage of purpose.
Megelin recalled an instructor who had intimidated him terribly in his youth. It had taken him a decade to conquer his unreasoning fright. And only then had he been able to analyze what the man had done. He adopted the fellow’s method now.
“For more years than I care to recall I have slaved thanklessly in this armpit of the world.” Excessive ferocity and bombast were the keys, accompanied by exaggerated gestures and body movement. These wakened the father-fear in one’s listeners. “Time and again have you asked my advice. Time and again have you ignored it. Time and again have I prepared to return home, only to have my will thwarted. I have fought for you. I have suffered for you. I have wasted a career for you. I have endured ceaseless, senseless humiliation at the hands of your family and men. All for the sake of salvaging a rockpile in the middle of nowhere, a rockpile that protects a godforsaken wasteland, inhabited only by barbarians, from the predations of bandits whose mercies the land most assuredly deserves.”
His blood was rising, responding to years of frustration. “How many hundreds, nay, how many thousands of men have lost their lives over this abomination upon a hill? I have grown old here. Old before my time. Your sons have grown up here, made ancient by endless hatred and treachery and war. And now you want to abandon the place to the Disciple. For shame!”
Radetic planted himself in front of the Wahlig, fists on hips. He almost grinned. Even Fuad was shaken by his fury. “What have we lived for? What have we died for? If we go now, have we not wasted all those years and sacrifices?”
“We fought for an ideal, Megelin.” Yousif’s voice was soft and tired. “And we lost. The Disciple did not overthrow us physically. We ran him off again. But the ideal lies dead beneath his heel. The tribes are deserting us. They know where the strength lies, where the future lies. With the man we couldn’t kill. With the man who, in a few weeks, will command hordes eager to swarm over our broken walls to plunder our homes, defile our women and murder our children. There is nothing we can do here — unless we want to die valiantly in a lost cause, like the knights in your western romances.”
Megelin could not sustain his anger in the face of the truth. He and Fuad were being stubborn out of sentiment and pride. Death could be the lone reward for harkening to either. The Wahligate was lost in all but name.
Yousif continued, “Things aren’t yet hopeless up north. Aboud opened his eyes enough to see the need for the General. Maybe reports from his own men, who have seen the enemy, will widen the crack in the wall around his reason. He still commands the strength and faith of the kingdom — if he’d just use them.”
Torment and despair muddied the Wahlig’s words, pain he would never confess. The decision to flee had cost him. It may have broken him as a man.
“You’ll have your will, Lord. I haven’t the strength to deny it. But I fear you’ll find more heartbreak in Al Rhemish. There’s nothing else to say. I must pack. It would be a sin if my labors of years were destroyed by ignorant fools in white.”
For an i
nstant torment controlled the Wahlig. His face reflected the horrors of hell. But he steadied himself, like the great lord he was. “Go, then, teacher. I’m sorry I’ve been a disappointment.”
“Not that, Wahlig. Not ever.” Radetic surveyed the others. Hawkwind remained inscrutable. Fuad was a study in inner conflict, an almost trite portrait of a man compelling himself to remain silent.
“Megelin,” Yousif called as Radetic neared the door. “Travel with Haroun. I have very little else left.”
Radetic nodded, stamped out.
“There you go,” Kildragon said. “March all the way from High Crag, forced march, killing ourselves, so we can save this dump, and what do we do? Walk away. Why do they always let the morons do the military planning?”
“Listen to the old strategist,” Haaken mocked. “He don’t have sense enough to hold his spot in the line, but he knows better than the General and Haroun’s old man, who’ve only been leading armies since before he was a twinkle in his father’s eye.”
“Keep it down,” Bragi said. “We’re supposed to be sneaking out of here.”
“With all this racket? You could probably hear these wagons four miles away, they’re making so much noise.”
The Wahlig’s horsemen had ridden out at nightfall, several hours earlier, in hopes of scouring the area of enemy spies. Now the main column was under way. The Guildsmen would guard its rear. The Wahlig hoped his getaway would not be noticed till he could not be overhauled.
“Ragnarson.”
Bragi faced Lieutenant Sanguinet. “Sir?”
“Too much noise from your crowd. Tell Kildragon to keep it down or I’ll leave him for the jackals.”
“Yes sir. I’ll gag him if I have to, sir.”
That should have been it. But Sanguinet remained rooted, staring. Bragi began to wilt. Once the man finally did leave, Bragi told Haaken, “He knows. He has to pretend he don’t on account of if he doesn’t he’ll have to do something about it. Even if we did save the Wahlig’s kid. We’re going to be walking on eggs. He’ll be looking to get us on something else. Reskird, you better pretend you never learned to run your mouth.”
“What did I do? I just said what everybody is thinking.”
“Everybody else has sense enough to keep it to themselves. Let’s move out.” Bragi left el Aswad and never looked back. A glance over his shoulder would have been a glance into his past, and he did not want to rue his decision to enlist. A fool’s decision, that, but he was here now, and he was of that stubborn sort which insists on enduring the consequences of its acts.
Looking ahead, he saw nothing promising. He expected to shed his life’s blood somewhere on the sand of this savage, alien, incomprehensible land.
Haroun did look back. He had no choice. The litter he rode, despite insisting he could ride a horse, faced the castle.
He wept. He had known no other home, and was certain he’d never see it again. He wept for his father and Fuad, for whom el Aswad meant even more. He wept for all the valiant ancestors who had held the Eastern Fortress, never yielding in their trust. And he wept for the future, intimations of which had begun to reach him already.
Megelin joined him, and walked beside him, sharing a silence no words could give more meaning.
Before dawn arrived the column vanished into the Great Erg, unmarked by a single unfriendly eye.
Chapter Thirteen
Angel
Stunned by unexpected shifts of fortune, El Murid retreated into his fastness in Sebil el Selib. He did but one thing before further retreating into the fastnesses of his mind: he summoned Nassef from the Throyen front. He did so in a message sufficiently strong that it would be subject to no misinterpretation. Nassef must appear or face the wrath of the Harish.
Nassef made record time, urged on more by the Disciple’s tone than by what he actually said. He feared El Murid might fall apart. He was not reassured when he arrived. His brother-in-law acted as if he did not exist.
For six days the Disciple sat on the Malachite Throne and ignored everyone. He drank little and ate less while venturing deep into labyrinths of self. Both Nassef and Meryem became deeply disturbed.
Nassef. Cynical Nassef. Unbelieving Nassef. He was half the problem. He was an infidel in the service of the Lord. El Murid prayed that his God forgive him for compromising. He should have shed the man a decade ago. But there was Meryem to reckon with, and there was Nassef’s unmatched skill as a general. And, finally, there was the grim chance that some of the Invincibles now felt more loyal to their commander than to their prophet. It had been a mistake to hand them over to Nassef.
But the heretics within would have to wait till he had cast down the foes of the Lord without.
But Nassef... He took bribes from Royalists willing to buy their lives. He sold pardons. He appropriated properties for himself and his henchmen. He was building a personal following. If only indirectly, he was suborning the Movement. Someday he might try to grab it all. Nassef was the Evil One’s Disciple within the Lord’s camp.
But no spiritual malaise had driven El Murid into the wasteland of his soul. No. Nor was it so much the debacle before the Eastern Fortress. That hadn’t proven as bad a defeat as it had seemed at the time. The enemy had loafed at the pursuit, fearing another ambush. The cause of his inturning was the decampment of the Wahlig of el Aswad.
It had come too suddenly, and was too out of character. The man was a sticker, a fighter, not a runner. Flight made no sense after his having resisted so bitterly for so long.
Yousif’s withdrawal left the Disciple without focus. His plans, for so long, had been thwarted by one man’s stubbornness, that he had given up looking beyond Yousif’s defeat. He did not know what to do.
Yousif was gone, but he remained foremost in El Murid’s mind. Why had he gone? What did he know? Finally, the Disciple summoned Nassef and put the question.
“I don’t know,” Nassef replied. “I’ve interviewed el Nadim and Hali repeatedly. I’ve talked to most of the men. I’ve lost a week’s sleep over it. And I can’t tell you a thing. Aboud certainly didn’t summon him. Nothing is happening at Al Rhemish.” Nothing that transpired in the capital escaped Nassef. He had an agent in the Royal tent itself.
“Then he knows only what we do,” El Murid mused. “What fact is he interpreting differently?”
“That foreign devil Radetic is behind it.”
“Perhaps. The outland idolaters must hate me. They must sense the hand of God upon me. They must feel, in His wrath, the knowledge that I shall be the instrument of their chastisement. They are the slaves of the Evil One, struggling to prolong his sway over their wicked kingdoms.”
Was that a suppressed smirk on Nassef’s lips?
“Papa?”
The girl was skipping. His first impulse was to swat her for insolemnity before the fanes. But it had been an age since he had given her any attention.
Nassef remarked, “The child is a savage sometimes.”
“And when was laughter an abomination unto the Lord? Leave us.” He let her slide into his lap. “What is it, darling?” She was nearly twelve now.
Had it been that long? Life was whistling by, and he seemed little nearer fulfilling his destiny. That unholy Yousif. Nassef had had so many successes, but they had meant nothing as long as the Wahlig had kept the Movement bottled up in Sebil el Selib.
“Oh, nothing. I just wanted to see if you were done thinking yet.” She snuggled, moving in his lap.
He was shamed by the impulse the Evil One sent fluttering across his mind. Dark-winged vampire. Not with his own daughter.
She was on the precipice: womanhood was but a moment away. Soon her breasts would begin to swell, her hips to broaden. She would be marriageable. Already his followers were scandalized because he allowed her the run of Sebil el Selib, unveiled, and often permitted her to accompany Nassef on his safer journies.
He suspected Nassef wanted her himself.
And still she had no name.
“You know I don’t believe that, sweetheart. Something besides your grouchy old papa brought you here.” He was acutely aware of the disapproval of the priests tending the shrines.
“Well...”
“I can’t say yes or no till you tell me.”
In a staccato burst, “Fatima promised me she’d teach me to dance if you said it was okay. Please? Oh, please, Papa, can I? Please?”
“Slow down. Slow down.”
Fatima was Meryem’s body servant, and a successful piece of propaganda. A reformed prostitute, she was living proof that all who came seeking were found worthy in the eyes of El Murid’s Lord. Even women.
It was El Murid’s most radical departure from orthodox dogma, and he was having trouble selling it still.
Women had been doubly disadvantaged since the Fall. A woman had brought the nation to its present desperate plight. Now the most rigidly fundamentalist of men allowed their wives in their presence only for purposes of procreation. Even relative liberals like Yousif of el Aswad kept their women cloistered and on the extreme fringes of their lives. The daughters of the poor were sometimes strangled at birth, or sold to slavers who trained them for resale as prostitutes.
A prostitute, socially, was as far beneath a wife as a wife was beneath a husband.
Yet even in Hammad al Nakir Nature had her way with the young. “This is serious.” Little girls seldom became interested in dances unless also interested in interesting boys in girls. Then they were little girls no more. And the boys were no longer boys.
It was time to speak to Meryem about veils.
“Time, he rides a swift steed, little one.” He sighed. “So soon come and gone. Everything past in the wink of an eye.”
She began twisting her face into a pout, sure she was about to be refused.
“Let me think. Give me a few days, will you?”
“All right,” she said brightly. His asking for a delay was, inevitably, the prelude to his giving in. She kissed him, scooted off his lap, became all skinny, windmilling arms and legs as she ran away.
Disapproving priestly stares followed her passage.
“Hadj!” El Murid called to his chief bodyguard. “We’re going to make a journey. Prepare.”