The man called Beloul set his axe aside, stared. His face blossomed. "My Lord!"
Haroun flung himself at the man. "I thought everybody was dead."
"Almost. I'd feared for you as well. But I had faith in the teacher. And I was right. Here you are."
Haroun's face clouded. "Megelin didn't make it. He died of wounds. Here. You remember Bragi Ragnarson? One of Hawkwind's men? He saved my life at the salt lake, and during the siege of el Aswad? Well, he did it again at Al Rhemish. He got cut off from his outfit." Haroun could not shut up. "Bragi, this is Beloul. He was one of the garrison at Sebil el Selib when El Murid attacked it way back when."
"I remember seeing him around el Aswad."
"He was the only survivor. He joined my father and was one of his best captains."
Bragi asked, "How do I get to High Crag from here? Soon as I rest up a little... " They were not listening.
"Everyone! Everyone!" Beloul shouted. "The King! Hail the King!"
"Oh, don't do that," Haroun pleaded. And, "We got lost in the mountains. I thought we'd never get through."
Beloul kept shouting. People gathered, but with little enthusiasm. Fear and despair stamped every weary face.
"Who else made it, Beloul?"
"Too early to tell. I haven't been here long myself. Where is the teacher?"
Haroun scowled. The man was not listening. "He didn't make it. They all died, except a couple kids. The Scourge of God himself was after us. Took us a month to shake him."
"Sorry to hear it. We could use the old man's counsel."
"I know. It's a weak trade, Megelin for a crown. He saved me for a kingship. So what am I king of? This isn't much. I'm the poorest monarch who ever lived."
"Not so. Tell him," Beloul appealed to the refugees.
Some nodded. Some shook their heads. Which depended on what each thought was expected.
"Your father's party established dozens of camps, Lord. You'll have a people and an army."
"An army? Aren't you tired of fighting, Beloul?"
"El Murid still lives." For Beloul that was answer enough. While El Murid lived Sebil el Selib and his family remained unavenged. He had been at war for twelve years. He would remain so as long as the Disciple survived. "I'll send word to the other camps. We'll see what we have before we start planning."
"Got messengers going west," Bragi said, "let me go along. All right?" No one answered. He spat irritably.
Haroun said, "Right now I'm content just to be here. I'm exhausted, Beloul. Put me to sleep somewhere."
He slept and loafed for three days. Then, so stiff he could barely walk, he left his hut and surveyed his new domain.
The camp surrounded a peak in the northern Kapenrungs. So many trees! He could not get used to the trees. When he stared through gaps created by axes, he saw an endless array of forest. It disturbed him as much as the desert disturbed Ragnarson.
He hadn't seen the mercenary for a while. What had become of him?
Beloul reported, "Forty-three people came in today, Lord. The mountains are crawling with refugees."
"Can we handle them?"
"The teacher's friend knew what he was doing. He put in the right tools and stores."
"Even so, we should move some out. This is a resting place, not the end of the journey." He glanced at the peak. Beloul was erecting blockhouses and a palisade. "Where's my friend?"
"He left with the westbound courier. Very determined lad. Wanted to get back to his own people."
For a moment Haroun felt vacant. The time of flight had created a bond. He would miss the big northerner. "I owe him my life three times, Beloul. And I'm powerless to do anything in return."
"I let him have a horse, Lord."
Haroun scowled. Not much of a reward. Then he indicated the fortifications. "Why all that?"
"We'll need bases when we start striking into Hammad al Nakir. Al Rhemish isn't that far."
"If you know the way through."
Beloul smiled. "True."
Haroun looked at the trees, at the river coursing along the foot of the mountain. It was hard to believe his homeland wasn't far away. "It's so peaceful here, Beloul."
"Only for a while, Lord."
"I know. The world will catch up.”
Chapter Three:
THE FAT BOY
Sweat rolled off the fat boy. He sat in the dust and mutely cursed the Master. This was the season for the north, not the boiling, rain-plagued delta of the Roe. Necremnos had been bad in springtime, Throyes worse a month ago. Argon, in summer, was Hell. The old man was crazy.
He opened one dark eye, cocked his brown, moon-shaped face, studied the Master.
Was there ever such a wreck? The shadow of the Foreign Quarter Gate helped, but even midnight could no longer conceal his age and debility, nor his weakening mind, nor his blindness.
The old man was napping.
The fat boy's hand darted to a tattered leather bag, whipped back clutching a rocklike bun.
The Master's cane cracked dust. "Little ingrate! Damned thief! Steal from an old man... "
Yes, he was past it. Once getting food had been difficult. Just a year ago the problem had required total concentration.
The old man tried to rise. His legs betrayed him. He tumbled backward, cane flailing.
"I heard that! You snickered. You'll rue the day... "
Passersby ignored them. And that was a dire portent.
Once the Master had drawn them against their wills. With his tricks and banter he had stripped the smartest of their money.
Sing-song, the old man called, "Brush aside a veil, see through the eyes of time, penetrate the mists, unlock the doors of fate... " He attempted a sleight-of-hand involving a black cloth and crystal ball, bungled it.
The fat boy shook his head. The fool. He could not admit that he was past it.
The fat boy hated that old man. He had traveled with the itinerant charlatan all his life. Not once had the old man mouthed a kind word. Always he had strained his imagination to torment the child. He had never permitted the boy a name. Yet the fat boy had not run away. Till recently the very idea had been alien.
Sometimes, when he managed the price, the old man would surround prodigious quantities of wine. Then he would mumble of having been court jester to a powerful man. The fat boy, somehow, had been involved in their falling out. Now he paid the price, whether it had been his fault or not.
The old man had instilled a strong guilt in his companion.
He meant it to be his security in his declining years.
The fat boy, brown as the earthen street, sweated, swatted flies, and wrestled temptation. He knew he could survive on his own. He had the skills.
Sometimes, when the Master dozed, he performed himself. He was a superb ventriloquist. He spoke through the old man's props, usually the ape's skull or the stuffed owl. Occasionally he used the mangy, emaciated donkey that carried their gear. When feeling bold he would put words into the Master's mouth.
He had gotten caught once. The old man had beaten him half to death.
That old man wore a list of names, varying according to whom he thought was chasing him. Feager and Sajac were his favorites. The boy was sure both were false.
He chased the secret of a true name doggedly. It might be a clue to his own identity.
Finding out whom he was, now, was the main reason he did nothing to improve his condition.
He was unrelated to Sajac, that he knew. The old man was tall, lean, and pale. He had faded grey eyes and blondish hair. He was a westerner.
Yet the boy's earliest memories were of the far east. Of Matayanga. Escalon. The fabled cities of Janin, Nemic, Shoustal-Watka, and Tatarian. They had even penetrated the wild Segasture Range, where the Theon Sing Monasteries, from their high crags, overlooked the shadowed reaches of the Dread Empire.
Even then he had wondered why he and Sajac were together, and what drove the man to keep moving and moving.
Sajac appeared t
o be sleeping again.
Hunger clawed at the boy's belly. He could not remember not being hungry.
His hands darted.
Nothing. The sack was empty.
The old man did not react. This time he was asleep.
Time to do something about their naked larder.
Coming by money honestly was hard enough in the best of times...
He waddled along, looking incomparably clumsy and slow. And, though he was not fast, he was quick. Quick and subtle. And daring.
He took the guard captain's purse with a touch so deft that the man did not cry out till he had entered a sweltering tavern and asked for wine.
By then the fat boy was three blocks away, buying pastries.
His liability was that he was too memorable.
The guard captain, though, committed a tactical error. He shouted his promises of punishment before having his criminal in hand.
The fat boy squealed and took off. He could be enslaved, if not maimed or beheaded.
He made his escape, and returned to Sajac before the old man wakened.
His heart pounded on long after he had regained his breath. This was his third close call this week. The odds were turning long. People would start watching for a fat brown boy with quick hands. It was time to move on.
But the old man would not. He meant to put down roots this time.
Something had to be done.
Sajac wakened suddenly. "What have you been up to now?" he snapped. "Stealing my food again?" He seized his cane, probed the bun sack. "Eh?"
It was full.
The fat boy smiled. He always bought the hard rolls because the old man had bad teeth.
"Thieving, I'll warrant!" Sajac staggered up. "I'll teach you, you little pimple... "
The fat boy hadn't the strength to run. He whimpered. The old man plied his cane.
Something had to be done.
Once his persecutor tired, the fat boy whined, "Master, was man to see you hour passing."
The time had come.
"What man? I didn't see anyone."
"Came while Master meditated. Was great man of city. Offered obols thirty for guaranteed divination of chicken entrail, to choose between suitors of daughter. One poor, one rich. Man prefers rich, girl loves poor. To keep secret from daughter, same said come by midnight. Self, told same Master was in possession of sovereign specific to overcome love, same being available for obols twenty extra."
"Liar!" But the cane fell without force. "Twenty and thirty? At midnight?" That was a lot of wine, a lot of forgetfulness.
"Truth told, Master."
"Where?"
"On High Street. By Front Road, near Fadem. Will leave gate open."
"Fifty obols?" Sajac chuckled evilly. "Get me my potions. I'll mix him something fit to grow hair on a frog."
The fat boy, generally, could sleep under the worst conditions. But he could not doze while awaiting midnight.
The rains came, as always, an hour after nightfall. The old man huddled in his cloak, the fat boy in his rags. The time came to confess his lie or go on.
He went on.
He put the Master astride the mangy donkey, led the animal through silent streets, up hills and down, by back ways, making turns for confusion's sake. Neither robbers nor watchmen bothered them.
Their course took them past the seat of the Fadema's government, the Fadem. Still no one challenged them.
Finally they came to the place the fat boy had chosen.
Argon sits on a triangular island, connected to other delta islands by floating causeways. The apex of the triangle points upriver, and it is there that the girdling streams are narrowest. It is there that the ancient engineers built the walls their tallest, with their feet in the river itself.
A hundred feet below, and a quarter mile south, lay one of the pontoons. It linked Argon with suburbs on a neighboring island. Beyond, in the deeper darkness, lay fertile rice islands, the foundation of Argon's wealth.
The fat boy did not care. Economics meant nothing to him.
"Is necessary to walk from here," he said. "Great Lord say bring no beast to mess garden."
The old man grumbled, but let the boy help him down.
"Is this way." He took Sajac's arm.
"Damn you!" the old man snarled a minute later, rising from a rainwater pool nearly tour inches deep. "That's twice."Whack! "You did it on purpose."Whack! "Next time go around."
"Am humblest apologizer, Master. Promise. Will be more careful." A grin tore at the corners of his mouth.
"Woe! Is pool across path again."
"Go around."
"Is impossible of accomplishment. Is flowerbeds on sides. Great Lord would be angered." He paused. "Ah. Is only four feet wide. Self, will jump across. Will catch Master when same jumps after." He positioned the old man carefully, grunted prodigiously.
He cast his voice to say, "Hai! Was easy, Master. But jump hard to make sure."
The old man cursed and thrashed the air with his cane.
"Come, Master. Please? Great Lord will be angry if augurs come late. Jump. Self will catch."
The fat boy's heart hammered. His blood pounded in his ears. Surely the old man would hear their infantry-tramp thundering...
Sajac mouthed a final curse, crouched, hurled himself forward.
He did not begin screaming till he had fallen halfway to the river.
The tension broke. The fat boy flung his arms into the air and danced...
"Here! What's going on up there?"
A police watchman was hurrying up the cline to the ramparts. The fat boy ran to the donkey. But the animal would not move.
He would have to brazen it out.
The watchman walked into a storm of tears. "Woe!" the fat boy cried. "Am foolishest of fools."
"What happened, son?"
The fat boy blubbered. He was very good at that. "Grandfather of self, only relative in whole world, just jumped from wall. Am idiot. Believed same only wanted to look on river by night for last time." He made a show of trying to control himself.
"Only relative left. Was wasting sickness. Much pain. No more money for opium. Self, am stupidest of stupids. Should have known... "
"There, there, son. It'll be all right. Maybe it was for the best, eh? If the pain was that bad?"
That watchman had patrolled the same beat for years. He had seen all kinds go off the wall. Jilted lovers. Dishonored husbands. Guilty consciences. Just plain folks.
Most of them did it by daylight, wanting an audience for their final world-diddling gesture. But a man with cancer would not be mad at the whole world, just its gods. And those little perverts could see just fine at night. His suspicions were not aroused.
"Come on down to the barracks. We can put you up there tonight. Then we'll see what we can do for you in the morning."
The fat boy did not know when to quit. He protested, wailed, made a show of trying to throw himself after his departed relative.
The policeman, deciding he needed detention for his own safety, dragged him to the police barracks.
A less enthusiastic despair would have allowed the boy to have gone his own way. The lawman would not have demurred. His world was filled with parentless, street-running children.
The same watchman woke the boy from his first-ever sleep in a real bed. "Good morning, lad. Time to see the Captain."
The fat boy had a premonition. How many guard captains could there be? Not many. He could not risk meeting this one. "Self, am famished. Dying by starvation."
"I think we can arrange something." The policeman gave him an odd, calculating look.
The boy decided he had better show more grief. He turned it on, as if suddenly realizing that he had not just awakened from a bad dream.
The watchman seemed satisfied.
He gorged himself at the mess hall. And filled his pockets while no one was watching. Then, when he could stall no more, he followed the watchman to the Captain's quarters.
He got h
imself out a side door while the patrolman made his report. He had recognized the officer's voice. His premonition had been valid.
They almost caught him in the stables. The donkey did not want to leave such rich fodder. But the fat boy got her moving in time to evade the Captain's notice.
He decided to abandon Argon altogether. The Captain was bound to do his sums and order a general search. Sajac had taught him long ago that the best way to avoid police was to be out of town when they started looking.
Could he bluff his way past the causeway guards? They might not let a kid leave by himself.
He managed it. He was a crafty and confusing liar.
The child-fugitive from Argon joined the ranks of the visibly unemployed who nevertheless survived. He did so by employing the dubious skills he had learned from Sajac, and others of the old man's ilk whom they had encountered in their journeys.
For several years he wandered the route he had shared with Sajac, from Throyes to Necremnos, to Argon, and round again, with stops in most of the villages between. One summer he traveled to Matayanga and Escalon. Another, he journeyed down the western shore of the Sea of Kotstim, beneath the brooding scarps of Jebal al Alf Dhulquarneni, but that route showed no promise. The people were too savage and excitable.
They used human skin, back in those dread mountains, to make the parchment on which they scribbled their grimoires.
He picked up several more languages, none of which he learned well. He stayed nowhere long enough to become proficient. Or he simply did not care.
He developed evil habits. Money fled through his fingers like grains of sand. There were girls, and wine...
But gambling was his downfall. He could not resist a game of chance. He left a series of bad debts. The list of places he had to avoid grew too long to remember.
And he persevered in his stealing, thereby committing the double sin, making enemies on both sides of the law.
It caught up with him in Necremnos.
Mornings and evenings he did the usual phony sorcerer spiel.
"Hai! Great Lady! Before eyes of woman renown for beauty and wisdom sits student of famed Grand Master Istwan of Matayanga, self, working way west at Master's command, to seek knowledge of great minds beyond Mountains of M'Hand. Am young, true, but trained in all manner of secrets beauteous. Am also Divinator Primus. Can show how to win love, or tell if man loves already. Have in hand certain rare and secret beauty potions hitherto concocted for wives of Monitor of Escalon only, ladies known across nethermost east for teenlike beauty unto fiftieth year."