Nalini’s back stiffened. She inhaled deeply, as much to loosen her muscles as to remind herself to be patient with Wumla. “It is too late to vacillate,” she said. “Mayhap, uncle Talekh may spare you. But aunt Ríma won’t.” Even if she claims you are illegitimate and therefore post no threat to her. “So long as you are alive, you are a threat to her, as will be your child. If you don’t go to war now, all that you love… all that Father built, will be ash, rubble and dust before the summer’s end.”
Wumla looked down at the ground. Then, he hunched forward putting his lips to her ears. “But I don’t know how to lead,” he said, lowly. “I don’t know what to do.”
Nalini clenched her jaw. Of course Wumla didn’t know how to lead. He was the sultan least suited to leading an army in all of Al-Jaraba’s history. He had done little other than lie in bed since he had ascended to the throne, and he had no knowledge of how to inspire or rally people to him.
But Nalini could not voice her thoughts. It would crush her brother, mentally, and would ensure that the campaign ended in disaster, to the detriment of them all. There was only one thing she could do, and more figurative weight burrowed into her shoulders at the thought. “I will come with you,” Nalini said. “I will help you defeat the witch and lift this curse from our family.”
Wumla straightened himself. “But if you ride to war,” he said. “Who will rule in my stead in Flourish?”
Nalini’s blood simmered. The heat raced to her head, pushing out another ugly spot on her forehead. She wanted to scream at Wumla, at the situation, at the Divine! Curse Abyar, she had solved one problem only to open up another. And no doubt neither He, nor Wumla, nor anyone else would have an answer as to who would rule the Kingdom in the Sultan’s absence if not her. And yet everyone would expect Nalini to-
“Go with him,” their mother said. “I will rule in Wumla’s stead and make certain that Payam is tended to.”
Nalini exhaled, releasing the heat that had built up inside her. Dowager Sultana Padma was a melancholic person by nature. But when it came to her family, she found a way to put aside her sadder tendencies, and she did whatever she had to for the family. “Thank you, Mother,” Nalini said. “Your help is much appreciated.” She then turned to Sultan Wumla, Lord Krarim, Lord Anané, Pallab and Emilio. “Now, let’s get our eight thousand men on the march. We have to reach the Azure Lake within the next few days otherwise we’ll run out of water.” And the witch will get there first.
8
-The Blue Sickness-
(Nalini)
The stink of excrement wafted in Nalini’s direction and she wrinkled her nose, as her camel trotted forward. She was at the front of the army and it still stank. Since they had left the capital, an outbreak of the Blue Sickness had spread throughout the ranks, slowing their march to a crawl. Five hundred men had already turned blue in the face as they had vomited and shat bloody water until their deaths, while a thousand more carried on marching with soiled garments. Nalini did not want to think about how foul the stench was in the middle or the back of the army.
How many more men will succumb to the sickness or be rendered in capable of fighting because of it?
Again, she did not want to think about it. Yet, the question went around her head like a coil, tightening its grip around her skull with every rotation.
Droplets of sweat formed on Nalini’s spotty head and she wiped them from her brow. The heat of the Sun-Drenched Desert was as intense as a furnace. The sun’s rays drove down on her, adding to her concerns about the number of men catching the disease, and where aunt Ríma, uncle Talekh and the armies of Date-Palm were. Nalini had heard nothing of them since leaving Flourish.
Nalini yawned. The heat, the Blue Sickness, her promise to her father, Wumla, and her aunt weighed her down, while her eyes drooped at the rhythm of the camel’s trot. Nalini wanted to give in, to close her eyes, sleep and let someone else deal with the problems facing Al-Jaraba.
“Nalini?” Emilio asked. “Are you all right?”
Curse Abyar! What’s the matter with me? Nalini could not fall asleep in the saddle while at the front of the army! She would be laughed at if she were caught. “Yes, Emilio,” she said, through gritted teeth. “And I would appreciate it if you didn’t-”
A cloud of dust and grit assaulted her throat. Nalini coughed, and her throat stung. When she stopped whooping, she grabbed her goatskin of water and uncorked it. She put it to her lips and sucked. But no water flowed into her mouth.
Curse Abyar! They were supposed to have reached the Azure Lake already. There, she and the rest of her brother’s armies could re-supply on fresh, cool water.
“Here,” Emilio said, holding out his skin. “Have some of mine.”
Defiance prickled inside Nalini. She did not want to take her husband’s skin in case it made her look weak and unable to take the heat. But a dry tickle in her throat and another stinging whoop changed her mind. “Thank you,” she said, taking the skin.
Wumla moaned. “I think we should stop,” he said. “My stomach doesn’t feel good.”
Nalini ceased drinking. By the Divine, she internally prayed that the Sultan had not caught the Blue Sickness. “The last thing we can afford to do is to stop in the middle of nowhere, with no shade or water,” she said. “The heat will do us more harm than aunt Ríma’s army.”
“You don’t understand, I can’t-”
“It won’t be much longer,” she interrupted, not knowing how true it was. “We’ll reach the Azure Lake soon.”
Wumla winced and clutched his stomach. “How do you know?” he asked, as sweat dripped from his bald head. “This is so painful.”
Nalini looked into the distance. Her vision blurred as she observed the seemingly endless sunburnt, desert planes ahead of her… and a village. Nalini focused to make sure it was not a mirage, and her heart leapt when she determined it was real. “Look carefully, Your Majesty,” she said. “There are huts and fig-trees ahead. That’s the Azure Lake!”
“Should we not send riders ahead to make sure that Date-Palm hasn’t got there first?” Emilio asked.
Pallab snorted. “If Date-Palm were there, we’d know.”
“Emilio makes a good point, though,” Nalini said. “We should send out scouts.” She turned to Lord Krarim. “I want your men to run ahead to Fort Orchard. Have them inform your castellan that he must seal the town’s gates.”
Lord Krarim knitted his brows. “My army is here with us,” he said. “I would have kept my men at Fort Orchard, but His Majesty explicitly said that all armies had to gather at Flourish. Thus, all that remains in the town are three hundred men, and they are there to keep order in the place and to deal with thieves and bandits.
“In addition,” he continued. “Castellan Barukh is a responsible man. To give him the order to seal the gates and defend the town at all costs would be to cause Fort Orchard’s destruction and to condemn every man, woman and child to death. I am not sure he would go through with it.”
Nalini’s back twitched and she grunted. Lord Krarim’s castellan was of the roving Shakai people; heathens who had infamously refused to believe that Abyar was the Divine’s Messenger when He had surrounded their former kingdom’s capital of Peace Valley. Their refusal had been their destruction, and they had roved from kingdom to kingdom ever since.
Nevertheless, the Shakai people longed for a return to their former homeland. They looked to toward Peace Valley when they prayed, and paid and sided with any lord that gave them a flicker of hope of restoring their ancient kingdom. No doubt Castellan Barukh was the same. All it required was for aunt Ríma to make a false promise and he would have gladly opened the gates of Fort Orchard for her, regardless of the Sultan’s orders. The fool! Did he really think that a fanatic would give up one of Abyar’s holy sites?
“I could still give the order, though?” Lord Krarim said. “What say you, Princess Nalini? But three hundred men cannot defend a town against ten thousand.”
Lord Ana
né laughed, deeply and mockingly. “You think you are so clever, My Lord, that no-one can sniff your deceit. It stinks worse than the watery shit afflicting the men. You don’t want to order your castellan to seal the gates of Fort Orchard because you are play both sides. That way, you can save yourself, your family and your lands.”
Nalini grinded her teeth. What Lord Anané said sounded like a calculation Lord Krarim would have made. Fort Orchard was a strategically located town. It had a crucial source of water amidst the barrenness of the Sun-Drenched Desert, in between Date-Palm Port and the Azure Lake. Its banner was a scallop shell, used by pilgrims for drinking water when they stopped off by the thousands at Fort Orchard every year, as they went back and forth from Zenith; while merchants and armies used the town and its water for shelter and resupplies, as they traversed across Al-Jaraba and its neighboring kingdoms.
The Lords of Fort Orchard had always trod a tightrope to keep the historically moderate sultans of Flourish and the traditionally more hardline lords of Date-Palm Port happy. Lord Krarim, no doubt, trod the same tightrope. Mayhap, he was playing a double game, plotting to save his hide as he marched with His Majesty.
Yet, to believe Lord Anané’s word now and doubt Lord Krarim’s was close to accusing him of treason. Sultan Daquan had always told Nalini never to question a vassal’s loyalty to his face until there was proof of disloyalty. Thus far, Lord Krarim had given her no reason to suspect him of treachery, and if he went through with her order he would have nailed his colours to the cause of House Reba. “Mayhap,” Nalini said. “Your three hundred men guarding the town can bloody Date-Palm’s nose and take out five hundred to a thousand of their men. Who knows?” We need all the help we can get.
Lord Krarim chewed on the inside of his cheeks. It was the most outward show of emotion she had ever seen him display, as he weighed up what to say and do. “Very well,” he said. “I will relay your message to my castellan.”
Lord Anané snorted. “What? No demands for the Crown to pay for the damage that Date-Palm will cause? That doesn’t sound like you, My Lord-”
“In the name of the Divine,” Pallab swore. “Has your bitterness rotted you to the core? First, you criticise Lord Krarim for trying to do what’s best for his people, and then criticise him for going through with Princess Nalini’s order. What next will you criticise him for: wearing a turban, or not losing his sons in battle?”
“If he had ridden out from behind his walls when Lord Cadman sounded the call, my sons would still be alive. They died fighting while he remained behind Fort Orchard’s walls! Then, he surrendered the town when Razilan brought forward the trebuchets. The weasel!”
“The battle was lost,” Pallab countered. “Lord Krarim did what any sensible lord would have done. It is not his fault that your gamble to ride out from behind and try to catch us unawares failed. Don’t blame Lord Krarim for that, nor for saving his men, his people, his town and his family. You would have done the same in his position.”
Lord Anané glared at Pallab. The air tensed and Lord Anané’s banner whipped in the hot desert wind. House Jadwiga’s symbol was of four rapiers linked together to form a rectangle. They represented the four sons that the first Lord of Last Thirst had lost fighting for Sultan Samu II, a century ago. But, equally, the symbol had come to represent the four sons that Lord Anané had lost fighting for Sultan Jashan the Fanatic during Daquan’s Revolt.
Following the rebellion, Sultan Daquan had shown mercy upon Lord Anané by letting him live and keep his titles, in exchange for fealty and a seat on the royal council. Lord Anané had agreed. But as he had knelt, he had said that he would rather be in the ground and that one of his sons were kneeling instead.
Nalini had no doubt that the same was true now as it had been seven years ago; especially, as he had yet to have another son with his second wife, leaving him only with three daughters to inherit his lands. “We are all riding to fight the fanatics of Date-Palm together,” Nalini said, carefully, and to remind them of their common goal. “We don’t need to aid our enemies by fighting among ourselves.”
“Halt!” Sultan Wumla called, seemingly oblivious to everything else going on. “We are here.”
Nalini noted that they were close to the huts on the perimeter of the Azure Lake and pulled on the reins. As her camel stopped, Wumla got down from his, gingerly. He swayed for a couple of steps, and Nalini’s stomach went queasy. Please don’t tell me he has the Blue Sickness.
Then, Wumla bent over. He had soiled his blue salwar hose through to his red kaftan, and blood rushed to Nalini’s head. “Wumla, get into a hut! Get into a hut now!” she shouted. “Whatever you do, don’t-”
Wumla vomited and collapsed.
9
-A Strategic Location-
(Nalini)
Wumla coughed weakly on a bed, as Emilio exited the hut to refill the Sultan’s goatskin with fresh, cool water. “How has this happened to me?” Wumla asked, faintly. “Why do bad things always happen to me?”
Patience, Nalini. Patience. She breathed in the putrid stink of excrement and vomit, as the words echoed in her head. She had been sitting beside her brother’s bed since he had slumped to the ground the previous day, and when he had not been shitting himself or vomiting, he moaned. Sultan Wumla might have been dying, but now was not the time for self-pity. “Father got Skin Scales, Razilan died of a chill, and near a thousand of the men are suffering from the Blue Sickness,” Nalini said. “Sadly, it is not just you to whom bad things happen.”
“The one time I tried to do the right thing, to make Yasmeena and my family proud of me, and look how that turned out.” There was no humour to his words. Just realisation, and he coughed, weakly, again. “We should have stayed in the capital and let aunt Ríma come to us.”
If we had done that, the denizens of Flourish would have turned on us as they did to Sultan Jashan, believing that we were looking out for ourselves rather than them. “It’s too late for that now. It’s best not to think about it.”
“When aunt Ríma comes, we should just surrender.”
Nalini’s muscles tautened and twitched. She had no idea where their aunt was as the scouts had not returned. But surrender was not an option. “So, you would have us undo all that Father built? You would put your unborn child, the potential heir to the throne, at risk? You would leave our family’s future to the whim of a fanatic? And all without a fight?”
“We are cursed, Nalini. There is no denying it. If we had not burned Father’s body, none of this would’ve happened.”
“Mayhap, we were cursed the day Father revolted against Sultan Jashan! Mayhap!” But I can’t do anything about that. What I can do is uphold the promise I made to Father: to do everything in my limited power to keep Al-Jaraba together. I still intend to uphold it, and so should you.”
Wumla looked at her veiny, watery eyes glinted with despair. “Do you truly believe he was my father?” he asked.
The question insults our mother! How dare you! “I believe it, yes! Of course I do. I believe Daquan the Daring was-” she shook her head. “-No, is your father the same way I believe that the Divine would never curse us for honouring our father’s will, or for following Abyar’s commandment.”
Wumla sighed. “Then you have more belief than I do,” he said, his voice barely audible. “You have more faith in Abyar than…”
His face relaxed and his head sank into the bundle of rags that made up the makeshift pillow. Then, his eyes dulled, and he stared at nothing.
Nalini’s throat tightened. Her body shook and water rushed up to her eyes. Wumla was gone. The second of her two brothers was gone.
Nalini wept. How could she have been so foolish as to argue with him in his final moments. They had seldom argued throughout Wumla’s life and, for all his faults, she had loved him as a sister should. She should’ve told him that before he had gone, not argue with him over lies that others had spread.
“Princess Nalini,” Lord Krarim said, entering the hut. “T
he scouts have returned. They say that… oh. I am so sorry.”
Nalini dammed up the water in her eyes, and wiped her face and nose, smearing snot on her sleeve, in order to save face. Crying for a loved would be seen as weakness, as womanly instability, when leadership was required against fanatics on their way to smash everything in their path, including everything she knew.
Nalini pushed down her emotions, as she did the water, regained her composure, and turned around. Pallab and Emilio standing next to Lord Krarim, inside the hut. Emilio held the goatskin, dripping with water for His Majesty, even if he was too late. “Nothing… has changed,” she said, forcing the words out of her throat. “Wumla’s child is still inside Sultana Yasmeena’s womb and we have a kingdom to defend. Now, what do the scouts report?”
Pallab and Emilio crinkled their brows and looked at Lord Krarim, who remained stoic in face at least. “The armies of Date-Palm will be here tomorrow-”
“Tomorrow!” Nalini spluttered.
Lord Krarim nodded. “Possibly as early as the morning.”
“How are they so close already!? Didn’t you tell your castellan to seal the gates?”
Lord Anané then walked in. “From what I heard,” he said. “Lord Krarim’s castellan was seduced by Lady Ríma’s beauty, opened Fort Orchard’s gates welcomingly.”
Nalini shot him Lord Krarim a glare. “Is this true, My Lord?”
Lord Krarim lowered his brows and glanced at Lord Anané with disapproval. “The armies of Date-Palm had already left Fort Orchard, and were on the march here, when the scouts noticed them in the distance,” he said. “Not that such details matter to all in here.”
“You’re right,” Pallab put in. “No-one cares for details, unless they are about how we are going to stop ten thousand men slaughtering us. Any ideas?”
Emilio stepped forward. “Why don’t we leave for the capital and, before we do, throw shit and rotting carcasses into the lake? Then, the lake will be a death trap for Date-Palm and its armies.”
The Sultan's Daughter Page 6
