“Are you a complete fool, Mutafa ibn Bashir?”
Husari’s voice was sharp, clear, mocking, it filled the space before the gates. “It’s ibn Abazi, right beside you, that your wife’s sleeping with, not me!”
In the shocked stillness that followed this, someone actually laughed. A thin, nervous sound, but it was laughter.
“Who are you?” another voice cried. “Why do you stand before the gates of those who kill children?”
“Who am I?” Husari exclaimed, spreading his arms wide. “I am insulted and offended. Among other things, you owe me money, ibn Dinaz. How dare you pretend not to know me!”
Another pause, another subtle shifting of mood. Alvar could see those near the front relaying rapid explanations backwards. Most of the huge crowd was still around the corner, out of sight of this.
“It’s Husari!” someone exclaimed. “It’s Husari ibn Musa!”
Husari promptly swept off the leather hat and offered an elaborate bow. “And a bolt of good cloth goes to you tomorrow morning, ibn Zhani. Am I so changed that even my friends do not know me? Not to mention my debtors?”
He was, of course. He was very greatly changed. He was also, Alvar realized, buying them as much time as he could. Next to Alvar, Ammar ibn Khairan murmured out of the side of his mouth, “Sword down, look easy. If he holds them long enough the governor will have troops here. He can’t afford a fire tonight.”
Alvar obeyed, trying to find a balance between watchfulness and the appearance of calm. It was hard to feign ease with those bobbing, severed heads on pikes in front of him. Two of them were women.
“Husari!” someone cried. “Have you heard? The Jaddites are coming!”
“So they are,” ibn Musa agreed soberly. “Our walls have held against worse in their time. But in Ashar’s holy name, are we madmen, to riot in our own city when an enemy appears?”
“The Kindath are in league with them!” someone shouted thickly. It was the man who’d thrown the knife. There was a quick rumble of agreement.
Husari laughed then. “Ibn Bashir, count the blessings of your birth stars that a butcher needs no more brains than the meat he carves. The Kindath fear the Jaddites more than we do! They are slaves in the north! Here they live freely, and pay half our taxes for us, and buy your stringy meat, even with your fat thumb on the scale!” Alvar saw someone smile at that.
“None of them died on the Day of the Moat!” Another voice, harsh as the butcher’s. Alvar felt a movement beside him, then realized he was standing alone.
“And what,” said Ammar ibn Khairan, stepping forward into the sunlight, “would have been the point of that?” He made a production of sheathing his magnificent sword, giving them time to look at him.
He was known. Immediately. Alvar could see it happen. He saw shock, confusion, fear again, a measure of awe. Whispers ran backwards like water down a hill.
Ibn Khairan looked out over the crowd in the laneway, taking his time. “The last king of Cartada wished to eliminate the leading citizens of this city last year as a message to all of you. Which man here would name a Kindath as one such? A leading citizen? One of the Kindath? It is,” said Ammar ibn Khairan, “an amusing thought.”
“You were exiled!” one brave person shouted. “It was proclaimed last summer!”
“And revoked this spring,” Husari said calmly. “The man beside me—I see you know him—has been sent by King Almalik II to take charge of our defense against the rabble from the north.”
Someone cheered, then more people did. There was a perceptible brightening of countenances, another shift of mood. Alvar drew a breath.
“Why is he here then, why not with the governor?”
“With that stuffed pork chop?” ibn Khairan said indignantly.
Another ripple of laughter. The governor would not be well-liked; governors seldom were. Ammar shook his head. “Spare me, please! I’d far rather be with ibn Bashir’s wife, if you want to know the truth. But if I’m charged with your defense, I can hardly let the city be fired, can I?”
“Oh! Oh! My heart! I’m here, my lord! I’m right here!”
A woman’s hands could be seen waving vigorously, part of the way up the lane. Ibn Bashir, the butcher, turned to look, his face reddening. General laughter now.
“You do know,” Ammar said gravely, as the amusement subsided, “that the Muwardis are coming here even as we speak. They have orders to quell any disturbance. I’m afraid my control over them is not perfect yet. I have just arrived. I do not want anyone killed here this afternoon. It might spoil my pleasure in what I have planned for tonight.” He grinned slyly.
“Here, my lord! Why wait for tonight?” A different woman this time. And suddenly there were more than a dozen waving hands and imploring female voices through the crowd.
Ibn Khairan threw his head back and laughed aloud. “I am honored,” he said, “and exhausted by the very thought.” A ripple of amusement again, a further softening of mood. The westering sun left most of the lane in shadow now.
Ibn Khairan’s tone changed. “Good people, go to your homes before the veiled ones come. Put out your torches. We must not do the Jaddites’ work for them. Our walls are strong, the king of Cartada has sent me to you and others are coming even now. We have food and water in plenty and the Valledans are far from their homes in a land they do not know. We need only fear weakness in ourselves, or folly. This gathering has been folly. It is time to go home. See, the sun is setting, the prayer bells will be ringing soon. It is a good evening for prayer, my friends, an evening to be as pure as we can be, in the sight of Ashar and beneath his stars when they appear.”
The beautiful voice had become lyric, cadenced, soothing. He was a poet, Alvar remembered. Jehane had told him once that ibn Khairan still thought of himself as such, over and above anything else.
The crowd in the laneway seemed to have been lulled. Alvar saw one of the men holding a spear with a severed head look up at what he carried, and he saw repugnance and dismay cross the man’s features. These were frightened people, not evil ones. Leaderless and under assault, they had turned to the nearest, most accessible targets to purge their own terror. It seemed that the presence of a strong clear voice before them had blunted the edge of that.
It ought to have.
It might indeed have done so, but Ammar ibn Khairan had only been seen and heard by the leading edge of that mob and the Kindath Quarter of Fezana had been designed to keep the Kindath in at night, not to protect them in any real way.
It was not particularly hard to penetrate through means other than the gates of the entrance. A few makeshift ladders, broken windows in the outer houses and someone angry and determined enough could be right in among the treacherous, child-killing—
“Fire!”
The wild shout came from one of the guards on the platform behind them. Alvar wheeled, saw black smoke. Heard a child cry from inside the Quarter, and then the screaming began. Fire was the purest terror. Fire destroyed cities.
He slung his shield on his back, took three quick, running steps towards the gates, and leaped. One of the guards reached down a hand, gripped Alvar’s wrist, and pulled him up. Ammar was right beside him, and Husari too, more agile than he had ever been in his life.
Ibn Khairan turned back to the suddenly agitated crowd in the lane. “To your homes!” he shouted, hard authority in his voice now. “I will order the Muwardis to kill any man or woman who enters this Quarter. We cannot have the city burn!”
It was burning, though, and people would already be dying in the Kindath Quarter. Alvar didn’t wait to see what happened in front of the gates. He jumped down from the platform, out of the last sunlight of the day. He stumbled and fell on the cobblestones, rose up and drew his sword.
How do you put out fires when attackers, crazed with hatred and fear, are spilling into your streets and killing you? One of those questions, Alvar thought, sprinting towards the smoke and the screaming, for which there were no answers: onl
y the swirling images of nightmare.
The Kindath were streaming towards a part of the Quarter where the twin domes of the sanctuary could be seen. All the twisting, narrow streets seemed to lead that way. The fires had started in the houses nearest the streets beyond the gate. The Asharites had penetrated through outer windows and torched the homes through which they passed.
Even as he ran, cutting against the flow of running people, Alvar saw an Asharite with a sickle chop at the legs of a running boy. The wickedly honed blade sheared through the child’s legs as if they were stalks of grain. The boy went down in blood, screaming. Alvar veered over, not breaking stride and, shouting incoherently, brought his sword down with all his strength, killing the man who had done that thing.
Half a dozen Asharites stopped dead in their tracks just ahead of him. He must look like a wild man, Alvar realized; their faces registered gaping apprehension. It was one thing to pursue unarmed children; another to be confronted by a man wielding a sword, with that look in his eyes.
“Are you all mad!” It was Husari, running up, screaming at his fellow citizens. “Fezana is on fire! Get water! Now! We will destroy our own city!”
“We will destroy the Kindath!” someone shouted back. “Then we will deal with flames. It is the holy work of Ashar we do!”
“It is the work of evil!” Husari screamed, his face distorted with pain and grief. And then Alvar saw him step forward and thrust his sword into the belly of the man he addressed. Instinctively, Alvar advanced, covering Husari with his shield. The Asharites in front of them retreated.
“Go!” screamed Husari, his voice raw. “Or if you stay, get water, now! We give our city to the Horsemen if this goes on!”
Alvar looked back over his shoulder. Kindath men and women were running past; some of the men had turned to make a stand where the tangle of streets reached a square. It was hard to make sense of the chaos in the half-light and the black, blowing smoke.
Even as he watched another house went up in a red sheet of flame. There was screaming everywhere. He had a sudden, appalling memory of Orvilla last summer. This was worse. This was a city, with houses almost all of wood, and if one part of it caught the whole of Fezana might burn. They had to get out.
He had lost sight of ibn Khairan, and had no idea where Jehane and her family home might be. Husari would know. He seized his friend’s shoulder. “Come on!” he shouted over the crashing and the screams. “Have to find Jehane!”
Husari turned, stumbling over the body of the man he’d killed. He seemed dazed, aghast; he carried his sword as if he didn’t even know what it was any more. There were flames at the head of this lane now. Already. Alvar, gripping Husari by the arm, turned back. His eyes were stinging from the smoke.
In a doorway across the street he saw a girl with a wooden staff facing a pair of men armed with knives. A small boy clutched at the girl’s legs from behind. He was crying desperately. The house was on fire above them. The men with knives were laughing.
It was the laughter that took Alvar past his own breaking point. Before he was aware of forming the thought, he had released Husari and was running.
Too many people in between. A thronged, roiling street. Only a dozen strides, but they were too far. The girl stood, smoke billowing around her, defending her burning home and her small brother against two men with blades.
No one else seemed to have seen them; there was too much panic all around. The nearer of the two men feinted with his blade, then drew it back to thrust as the girl overreacted badly.
“No!” Alvar screamed, from the middle of the street, battering a path across a tide of fleeing people. “No!”
Then he saw, in the shadows and flame, the man’s knife hand snap backwards uncontrollably. The Asharite cried out, dropped his blade.
And the whip that had caught him immediately coiled and lashed out again; catching the second man across the throat, opening a red gash. Alvar looked up and saw Rodrigo at a window above, leaning out with his whip. Alvar didn’t break stride. He came up to those two men and chopped them down like animals, a rage in his heart.
He stood there, fighting for control, and looked at the girl. She eyed him in terror. Was she twelve, thirteen?
“Where are your parents?” he gasped, trying to master his voice.
“They are dead,” she replied, her voice flattened out. “Upstairs. Men came in with torches and a spear.” Her eyes were too wide, opening on a world given over to horror. No tears.
She ought to be crying, Alvar thought. He looked up again. Rodrigo was shouting something, and gesturing to the next doorway: he couldn’t hear the words. The child behind the girl was no more than four years old. He was crying in harsh, convulsive bursts, scarcely able to draw breath.
“Come with me,” Alvar snapped, his voice sharp with urgency. He bent down abruptly and picked up the little boy and then pushed the girl out of the doorway with a hand on her back. A burly figure came rushing up to them, an axe raised. Still holding the small child, Alvar twisted away from a blow, pivoted, and thrust his reddened blade into the man’s chest.
There was a huge, roaring sound behind him. He looked up. The girl’s house was alight now, flames in all the upper windows. The whole of the Kindath Quarter was on fire. He carried the terrified child and guided the girl towards the doorway Rodrigo had indicated from above.
He gasped with relief when he got there. Jehane stood in the doorway with two people who had to be her parents. Rodrigo came hurtling down the stairs.
“Where’s Ammar?” Jehane asked quickly. He couldn’t ever remember seeing her look so frightened.
“Don’t know. Think he’s holding the gate with the guards.”
“Husari’s right over there,” Rodrigo said. Alvar looked back. Ibn Musa was wielding his blade again, fighting a slow retreat in the street, letting the running Kindath stream past him towards the square.
“We have to get out. It’s all going up,” Alvar gasped. He was still carrying the little boy. He handed the child over to the nearest person, who happened to be Jehane’s mother. “Is there a way out?”
“There is,” Jehane said. “We have a long way to go to get there, though, and—oh, thank the god and the moons!”
Ammar ibn Khairan, bleeding from a gash in one arm, came running up. “The Muwardis are here,” he snapped. “This will end soon, but we have to be gone before they round everyone up!”
Alvar, a day ago, half a day, would have been unable to conceive of how tidings of the arrival of the veiled ones could ever have brought him relief.
“Jehane, which way?” It was Rodrigo. “Past the sanctuary?”
“No. The other way! There’s a place in the wall, but it’s on the far side of the Quarter.” She pointed past where Asharites were still streaming in pursuit of her kindred. Even as he looked, Alvar saw a running woman clubbed down from behind. The man who had felled her stopped running and began beating her where she lay. Alvar took a step towards them, but felt Rodrigo’s hand grip his arm.
“We cannot save them all. We must do what we can. What we came to do.” The Captain’s eyes were bleak.
“Let’s go,” said Ammar ibn Khairan.
“These two come with us,” Alvar said flatly, gesturing to the children.
“Of course they do,” said Eliane bet Danel. “Can you get us through?”
“Yes we can,” said Alvar, speaking before ibn Khairan, before the Captain. “No one is going to stop us.” He looked at the two leaders. “I go first, with your permission.”
They glanced at each other. He saw something in both faces: a kind of acknowledgment. “You lead,” said ibn Khairan. “Jehane guides. Let’s go.”
Alvar stepped from the doorway in the direction Jehane had indicated. They had to go straight into the stream of the attackers—those who would destroy people, small children, with sickles and axes and cudgels. With utter savagery. The Asharites were terrified themselves, he tried to remind himself. There were invaders approachi
ng their walls.
It didn’t matter.
Nuances were not for this evening. At the descent of twilight in the burning Kindath Quarter of Fezana in Al-Rassan, Alvar de Pellino went forward with a shield and a sword and an undivided heart, and he could not be stopped.
Banishing ambiguities, everything but the need to be swift and deadly and sure, he led their small party into the path of the advancing mob and he carved a way with his blade for the others to follow.
He became aware that Husari was with them now, that the merchant had sheathed his blade and was guiding the blind physician who was Jehane’s father. When they reached the head of the street, Alvar felt the presence of Rodrigo at his side in the stinging smoke and the heat. He knew, without looking back, that ibn Khairan would be guarding their rear.
They dealt with a sudden swirl of assailants in the open space. Alvar blocked a blow, chopped his sword at someone’s knees. Turned and cut back the other way, even as the first man was falling. He had never moved so quickly in his life.
There was a vast, cracking sound; an entire building collapsed across the way in a shower of sparks and a rush of flame. They felt the heat as a wave.
“That way!” Jehane cried.
Alvar saw where she pointed. Led them, slashing with his blade. Went through thick smoke and the heat of the fires, past the running figures of Kindath and their pursuers, forging a path against the flow.
Jehane signaled again and then again, and one more time, and finally they came to a place at the other end of the Quarter, a dead-end laneway leading only to the outer walls.
Alvar looked back. No one was following through the smoke. There was blood in his eyes. He didn’t think it was his own. He swiped at it with his forearm.
Rodrigo was beside him, breathing quickly but calm as ever. The Captain gave him a searching glance. “Bravely done,” he said quietly. “I could have done no better. This is truth, not flattery.”
“Nor I,” said ibn Khairan, coming up to them. “I knew you were a soldier. I never knew how much of one. Forgive me that.”