Ammar ibn Khairan grinned at the tone. Rodrigo offered a level glance at his second-in-command. “You know what this is about. We’ve had our real battles and we’ll have them again. We’re trying to achieve something here.”
Laín opened his mouth to reply, then shut it firmly. The expression in the Captain’s face was not conducive to argument.
Rodrigo turned to Martín. “Take a quick look. I need the numbers in there. We don’t want the Jaloñans to win, of course. If they are, we’ll have to move in, after all.”
Alvar, vainly trying to follow, was made edgy again by his ignorance. Laín might know what was going on, but no one else did. Was it always this way in war? Didn’t you usually know that your enemy was ahead of you and your task was to be braver and stronger? To kill before you were killed? He’d a feeling Laín felt the same way.
“He’s already been in there,” Laín said sourly. “I do know what I’m doing. It is balanced, about thirty of each left. The outlaws will break soon.”
“Then we have to go in.”
It was ibn Khairan who spoke, looking at Rodrigo. “The Jaloñans are good. You said they would be.” He glanced at Laín. “You get your battle, after all.”
Jehane, beside him, still looked worried. It was difficult to relate her expression to the intoxicated words Alvar had heard her crying from among the trees.
“Your orders, Captain?” Laín was staring at Rodrigo. His tone was formal.
For the first time Rodrigo Belmonte looked unhappy, as if he’d rather have heard different tidings from the defile. He shrugged his shoulders, though, and drew his sword.
“Not much choice, though this won’t be pretty. We’ve wasted our time if di Carrera fights free or the outlaws break.”
He lifted his voice then, so fifty men could hear him. “We’re going in. Our task is exact: we are joining the bandits. Not a man of the Jaloñans leaves that defile. No ransom. Once they see us and know we are here we have no choice about that. If even one of them makes it back to Eschalou and reports our presence this has all been for nothing and worse than that. If it helps at all, remember what they did at Cabriz in the War of Three Kings.”
Alvar did remember that. Everyone in Valledo did. He had been a bewildered child, watching his father weep when tidings came to the farm. King Bermudo had besieged the city of Cabriz, promised amnesty on surrender, then slaughtered every Valledan fighting man when they rode out under the banner of truce. The Asharites were not the only ones with a grasp of savagery.
Even so, this was still not war as he had imagined it. Alvar looked towards Jehane again. She had turned away. In horror, he thought at first, then saw that she was gesturing to someone near the back of their ranks. Velaz came forward, calm and brisk as ever, with her doctor’s implements. Alvar felt ashamed: she wasn’t reacting emotionally, as a woman, she was simply readying herself, physician of a company about to go into battle. He had no business doing less than the same. No one had ever said a soldier’s life was designed to give fulfillment to a child’s dreams.
Alvar drew his sword, saw others doing the same. A few shaped the sign of the sun disk as they did, whispering the words of the soldier’s invocation: Jad send us Light, and let there be Light waiting for us. The archers fitted arrows to strings. They waited. Rodrigo looked back at them, nodded his approval. Then he lifted and dropped his hand. They rode out of the sun into the defile where men were killing each other in the cold.
Nino di Carrera knew that he was winning. There came a moment in every battle when one could sense the rhythm changing and he had felt it now. The outlaws had needed to defeat them quickly, with the chaos of the spear pit and the shock of their archers’ ambush. Once those had been survived—if barely—this became a clash of roughly even forces and could have only one result. It was only a question of time before the Asharites broke and fled; he was mildly surprised they hadn’t done so by now. Even as he fought, shoulder to shoulder with his men in the ring around the gold, Nino was beginning to calculate his next course of action.
It would be pleasant to pursue this rabble when they ran, exceedingly pleasant to burn them alive for the deaths of so many men and so many purebred horses. There was the woman, too, if she could still be found on the slopes. A burning would go a long way towards addressing the grievances of this morning.
On the other hand, he was likely to emerge from this evil place with no more than twenty men and a long way yet to travel through hostile country with the gold of Jaloña’s future. He simply could not afford to lose any more soldiers after this. They were going to have to travel at speed, Nino realized; no rest except what was utterly necessary, riding by night as well. They could travel with two horses, at least, for each man left, which would spare the beasts, if not the riders.
That would be the only course until they reached the tagra lands where he might assume there would be no forces large enough to trouble twenty mounted men. There will be time for revenge, he told himself, battling. There will be years and years for the taking of revenge. Nino might be young, but he knew exactly what this first installment of the parias meant. Almost contemptuously he blocked an outlaw’s slash and drove the man staggering back with a counterblow.
It was all beginning here, with him and this small company. The men of Jaloña would be coming back south once more, again and again. The long tide of centuries was turning, and it was going to sweep all the way through Al-Rassan to the southern straits.
First, though, there was this matter of bandits in a defile. They ought to have broken by now, Nino thought again. Grimly he hacked and chopped, with more space to move now, and even, at moments, room to advance a few paces. They were brave enough, these outlaws from the south, but Jaddite iron and Jaddite courage were going to prevail.
Someone fell with a grunt beside him; Nino pivoted and thrust his sword deep into the guts of the man who had just killed one of his soldiers. The bandit shrieked; his eyes bulged. Nino twisted his blade deliberately before hauling it free. The fellow’s hands clutched at his oozing, slippery intestines, trying to keep them from spilling out.
Nino was laughing at that, as it happened, when the fifty new riders swept into the defile.
They were Jaddites, he saw that much in the first astonished glance. Then he saw—and tried desperately to understand—that their mounts were small, nondescript horses of Al-Rassan. Then he realized, with a cold pressing of blackness against his heart, that they had come not to aid him but to kill.
It was in that frozen moment of revelation that Nino recognized the first of these riders by the image of an eagle on the crown of his old-fashioned helmet.
He knew that emblem. Every fighting man in Esperaña knew of that helmet and the man who wore it. There was a paralyzing weight of disbelief in Nino’s mind. He experienced an appalling sense of the unfairness of things. He raised his sword as the eagle-helmed horseman came straight towards him. Nino feinted, then swung savagely for the man’s ribs. His blow was parried, casually, and then, before he could right himself, Nino saw a long, bright, final blade come scything and he left the world of living men and fell down into the dark.
Idar, fighting beside his father, had been struggling to summon the courage to suggest retreat.
It had never happened before that his father had persisted this long with what was clearly a failed assault. They had established their name, their fortune, their castle at Arbastro, by knowing when to engage and when—as now, surely!—to withdraw and fight another time.
It was his brother’s wound, Idar knew, laboring with his sword in the trammeling press. Abir was dying on the hard ground behind them and their father was out of his head with grief. One of their men was beside Abir on his knees, cradling his head, two others stood by, to defend him should any of the accursed Jaddites break free of their tight circle.
Their father was a wild, terrifying figure beside Idar, frenzied in his attacks on the ring of their enemies, oblivious to circumstance and need, to the devastat
ing fact that more than half their number were dead. There were barely thirty men doing battle now with almost as many of the dung-eating Horsemen. Their weapons and armor were less good, their style of combat was not and never had been this kind of savage face-to-face confrontation.
The ambush had almost succeeded but it had not quite been enough. It was time to break free, to run south, to accept that a huge risk had nearly worked, but had not. They had a desperately long way to go to get home to Arbastro, on evil winter paths, through mud and rain, and with the wounded to slow them. It was past time to pull out while they could, while yet some of them lived.
As if to mark the truth of his thought, Idar was forced in that moment to duck swiftly down and to one side as a burly Jaddite with a studded mace stepped forward and hammered a sideswung blow at his face. The Jaddite was armored from head to calves, Idar wore a leather helm and a light chain breastpiece. What were they doing fighting face to face?
Twisting under the lethal mace, Idar chopped sharply at the back of the Jaddite’s ankle. He felt his sword bite through the boot and into flesh. The man screamed and fell to one knee. They would say it was a coward’s way to fight, Idar knew. They had their armor and their iron. The men of Arbastro had decades of experience in the tactics of cunning and entrapment. When it came to killing or dying there were no rules; his father had drilled that into them from the beginning.
Idar killed the fallen giant with a slicing blow to the neck, where the helmet did not quite meet his body armor. He thought about grabbing the mace, but decided it would be too heavy for him, especially if they had to run.
And they did have to run, or they were going to die in this defile. He watched his father, still wild with rage, pounding his blade over and again against a Jaddite shield. The Jaddite withdrew, one pace and then another, but the shield arm held, steady and resilient. Just beyond his father Idar saw the Jaddite captain, the yellow-haired one, dispatch another of their men. They were going to die here.
It was in that moment that the second wave of Jaddites came galloping up behind them, the hooves of their horses like sudden thunder in the defile.
Idar wheeled about, aghast. Too late now, he thought, and in his mind he saw a swift, vivid image of a white-faced, black-haired maiden coming for him, her long fingernails reaching for his red heart. And then, a pulsebeat later, Idar realized that he understood nothing at all of what was happening here today.
The leader of this new wave of Horsemen came sweeping through the outlaw line. He rode straight up to where the yellow-haired man wielded his heavy sword. Leaning in the saddle, he blocked a thrust and then, curbing his horse tightly, swept his own long blade down with incisive mastery and killed the other Jaddite where he stood.
Idar became aware that his mouth was gaping open. He closed it. He looked desperately towards the red-smeared figure of blood and grief and fury that was his father and he saw the sharp-eyed clarity that he remembered—that he needed—suddenly return.
“We have been used,” his father said to him then, quiet amid the roiling chaos of new horses and dying men in front of them. He had lowered his sword. “I am in my dotage. Too old to be allowed to lead men. I ought to have died before today.”
And, amazingly, he sheathed his blade and stepped back, seemingly indifferent, as the new Jaddites killed the first ones without mercy or respite, even though swords were being thrown down in the circle around the gold and men were crying aloud for ransom.
No one’s surrender was accepted. Idar, who had killed many men in his time, watched in silence from where he and his father had withdrawn beside his dying brother.
The men from Jaloña, who had come south for a fortune in parias gold, who had ridden foolishly into a trap and then survived it by main courage and discipline, died that morning, every one of them, in that dark place.
Afterwards it was quiet, save for the moaning of injured outlaws. Idar realized that some of the new Jaddite archers were shooting the wounded horses, which is why those sounds had stopped. The animals’ screaming had been going on so long he had almost blocked it out. He watched as the undamaged horses were rounded up. They were magnificent stallions; no mounts in Al-Rassan could match those from the ranches of Esperaña.
Idar and his father and the others laid aside their weapons, as ordered: there was no point resisting. They numbered barely more than twenty, all exhausted and many wounded, with nowhere to run, facing fifty mounted warriors. On the ground beside them, his head now pillowed on a saddle cloth, Abir breathed raggedly, dealing with pain. The wound in his thigh was too deep, Idar saw; it was still bleeding despite the knot tied above it. Idar had seen that kind of wound before. His brother was going to die. There was a kind of blankness in Idar’s mind because of that, an inability to think properly. He remembered, quite suddenly, the vision he had had when the new Horsemen had appeared: death as a woman, her nails raking for his life.
It wasn’t his life, after all. He knelt and touched his younger brother’s cheek. He found that he could not speak. Abir looked up at him. He lifted a hand so their fingers touched. There was fear in his eyes but he said nothing at all. Idar swallowed hard. It would not do to cry. They were still on a battlefield. He squeezed Abir’s hand and stood up. He walked a few steps back to stand beside their father. The old man’s blood-smeared head was high, his shoulders straight as he looked up at the new men on their horses.
Tarif ibn Hassan of Arbastro, captured at last after almost forty years.
The outlaw who had become more a king—and who had always been more a lion—than any of the myriad pretenders to royalty since Silvenes fell.
The numbness in Idar extended to this as well. Their world was ending in this defile. A new legend to go with the old ones about the haunted Emin ha’Nazar. His father betrayed no expression at all. For more than three decades a series of khalifs and then half a dozen of the petty monarchs of Al-Rassan had vowed to cut off his fingers and toes one by one before they allowed him to die.
The leaders of the new company sat astride their horses, gazing down upon him. They looked undisturbed, as if nothing of note or consequence had taken place. Their own weapons had been sheathed. One of them was an Asharite. The other was Jaddite, as were all of the soldiers. The Jaddite wore an old-fashioned helm with a bronze eagle on the crown. Idar didn’t know either man.
His father said, not waiting for them, “You are mercenaries from Ragosa. It was Mazur the Kindath who planned all of this.” He did not put it as a question.
The two men looked at each other. Idar thought he saw a trace of amusement in their expressions. He felt too hollow to be angered by that. His brother was dying. His body ached, and his head hurt in the silence after the screaming. It was in his heart, though, that the real pain lay.
The Asharite spoke. A courtier’s voice. “A measure of self-respect requires that we accept some of the credit, but you are correct in the main: we are from Ragosa.”
“You arranged for us to know about the parias. You drew us north.” Tarif’s voice was flat. Idar blinked.
“That is also correct.”
“And the woman on the slopes?” Idar said suddenly. “She was yours?” His father looked at him.
“She travels with us,” the smooth-featured man said. He wore a pearl in one ear. “Our doctor. She’s a Kindath, too. They are very subtle, aren’t they?”
Idar scowled. “That wasn’t her doing.”
The other man, the Jaddite, spoke. “No, that part was ours. I thought it might be useful to have di Carrera distracted. I’d heard some rumors from Eschalou.”
Idar finally understood. “You drove them into us! They thought you were part of our company, or they would never have ridden into the trap. They had sent spies, I saw them. They knew we were here!”
The Jaddite brought a gloved hand up and touched his moustache. “Correct again. You laid your ambush well, but di Carrera is—was—a capable soldier. They would have doubled back and around the valley. We gave the
m a reason not to. A chance to make a mistake.”
“We were supposed to kill them for you, weren’t we?” Idar’s father’s voice was bitter. “I do apologize for our failure.”
The Asharite smiled and shook his head. “Hardly a failure. They were well trained and better armed. You came close, didn’t you? You must have known this was a gamble from the moment you set out.”
There was a silence.
“Who are you?” Idar’s father asked then, staring narrowly up at the two of them. “Who are you both?” The wind had picked up. It was very cold in the defile.
“Forgive me,” the smooth one said. He swung down from his horse. “It is an honor to finally meet you. The fame of Tarif ibn Hassan has spanned the peninsula all my life. You have been a byword for courage and daring. My name is Ammar ibn Khairan, late of Cartada, currently serving the king of Ragosa.”
He bowed.
Idar felt his mouth falling open again and he shut it hard. He stared openly. This was . . . this was the man who had slain the last khalif! And who had just killed Almalik of Cartada!
“I see,” said his father quietly. “Some things are now explained.” His expression was thoughtful. “You know we had people die in villages near Arbastro because of you.”
“When Almalik was searching for me? I did hear about that. I beg forgiveness, though you will appreciate that I had no control over the king of Cartada at that point.”
“And so you killed him. Of course. May I know who your fellow is, who leads these men?”
The other man had taken off his helm. It was tucked under one arm. His thick brown hair was disordered. He had not dismounted.
“Rodrigo Belmonte of Valledo,” he said.
Idar actually felt as if the hard ground had suddenly become unstable beneath his feet, as in an earth tremor. This man, this Rodrigo, had been named by the wadjis for years to be cursed in the temples. The Scourge of Al-Rassan, he had been called. And if these were his men . . .