That had brought him up short, and in answer to his stammered question, his guide had only smiled whitely. “You shall see,” he said only. “When we reach Aurens.”
Reach Aurens they did, and he was brought into the tent as though into the Presence. He was announced, and the figure in the spotlessly white robes turned his eyes on the messenger.
His listeners stilled, as some of his own awe communicated itself to them. He had no doubt, at that moment, that Aurens was a Presence. The blue eyes were unhuman; something burned in them that Kirkbride had never seen in all of his life. The face was as still as marble, but stronger than tempered steel. There was no weakness in this man, anywhere.
Aurens would have terrified him at that moment, except that he remembered the garrison holding Deraa. The Turks there were cared for, honorably. Their wounded were getting better treatment than their own commanders gave them. Somewhere, behind the burning eyes, there was mercy as well.
It took him a moment to realize that the men clustered about Aurens, as disciples about a master, included King Hussein, side-by-side, and apparently reconciled, with his son Feisal. King Hussein, pried out of Mecca at last—
Clearly taking a subservient role to Aurens, a foreigner, a Christian.
Kirkbride had meant to stammer out his errand then—except that at that moment, there came the call to prayer. Wild and wailing, it rang out across the camp.
Someone had translated it for Kirkbride once, imperfectly, or so he said. God alone is great; I testify that there are no Gods but God, and Mohammed is his Prophet. Come to prayer; come to security. God alone is great; there is no God but God.
And Aurens, the Englishman, the Christian, unrolled his carpet, faced Mecca with the rest, and fell upon his face.
That kept Kirkbride open-mouthed and speechless until the moment of prayer was over, and all rose again, taking their former places.
“He did what?” The officers were as dumbfounded as he had been.
Once again, Kirkbride was back in that tent, under the burning, blue gaze of those eyes. “He said to tell Allenby that if he wanted to see the taking of Damascus, he should find an aeroplane, else it would happen before he got there.” Kirkbride swallowed, as the mess erupted in a dozen shouted conversations at once.
Some of those involved other encounters with Aurens over the past few weeks. How he had been in a dozen places at once, always riding a white Arabian stallion or a pure white racing camel of incredible endurance. How he had rallied the men of every tribe. How he had emptied Mecca of its fighting men.
How he had appeared, impeccably uniformed, with apparently genuine requisition orders for guns, ammunition, explosives, supplies. How he had vanished into the desert with laden camels—and only later, were the orders proved forgeries so perfect that even Allenby could not be completely sure he had not signed them.
How, incredibly, all those incidents had taken place in the same day, at supply depots spread miles apart.
It was possible—barely. Such a feat could have been performed by a man with access to a high-powered motorcar. No one could prove Aurens had such access—but Hussein did; he owned several. And Hussein was now with Aurens—
It would still have taken incredible nerve and endurance. Kirkbride did not think he had the stamina to carry it off.
No one was paying any attention to him; he slipped out of the officers’ mess with his own head spinning. There was only one thing of which he was certain now.
He wanted to be in at the kill. But to do that, he had to get himself attached to Allenby’s staff within the next hour.
Impossible? Perhaps. But then again, had Aurens not said, as he took his leave, “We will meet again in Damascus”?
Kirkbride sat attentively at the general’s side; they had not come by aeroplane after all, but by staff car, and so they had missed the battle.
All six hours of it.
Six hours! He could scarcely credit it. Even the Germans had fled in terror at the news of the army camped outside their strongholds; they had not even waited to destroy their own supplies. The general would not have believed it, had not French observers confirmed it. Allenby had mustered all of the General Staff of the Allied forces, and a convoy of staff cars had pushed engines to the breaking-point to convey them all to the city, but Kirkbride had the feeling that this was the mountain come to Mohammed, and not the other way around. He had been listening to the natives, and the word in their mouths, spoken cautiously, but fervently, was that Aurens was Mohammed, or something very like him. The victories that Allah had granted were due entirely to his holiness, and not to his strategy. Strangest of all, this was agreed upon by Suni and Shiite, by Kurd and Afghani, by purest Circassian and darkest Egyptian, by Bedouin wanderer and Lebanese shopkeeper. There had been no such accord upon a prophet since the very days of Mohammed himself.
Allenby had convinced himself somehow that Aurens was going to simply, meekly, hand over his conquests to his rightful leader.
Kirkbride had the feeling that Allenby was not going to get what he expected.
Damascus was another Deraa, writ large. Only the Turkish holdings had been looted; the rest remained unmolested. There were no fires, no riots. High-spirited young warriors gamed and sported outside the city walls; inside, a stern and austere martial order prevailed. Even the hospital holding the wounded and sick Turkish prisoners was in as good order as might be expected, for a place that had been foul when the city was in Turkish hands. There was government; there was order. It was not an English order; organization was along tribal lines, rather than rank, to each tribe, a duty, and if they failed it, another was appointed to take it, to their eternal shame. But it was an order, and at the heart of it was the new Arab Government.
Allenby had laughed to hear that, at the gates of the city. As they were ushered into that government’s heart, he was no longer laughing. There were fire brigades, a police force; the destitute were being fed by the holy men from out of the looted German stores, and the sick tended by the Turkish doctors out of those same stores. There were scavenger-gangs to clear away the dead, with rights to loot the bodies to make up for the noisome work. British gold became the new currency; there was a market already, with barter encouraged. Everywhere Kirkbride looked, there was strange, yet logical, order. And Allenby’s face grew more and more grave.
Aurens permitted him, and the envoys of the other foreign powers, into his office, commandeered from the former governor. The aides remained behind. “My people will see to us, and to them,” Aurens said, with quiet authority. A look about the room, at the men in a rainbow of robes, with hands on knife-hilts, dissuaded arguments.
The door closed.
Kirkbride did not join with the others, drinking coffee and making sly comments about their guardians. He had the feeling, garnered from glances shared between dark faces, and the occasional tightening of a hand on a hilt, that all of these “barbarians” knew English quite well. Instead, he kept to himself, and simply watched and waited.
The hour of prayer came, and the call went up. All the men but one guarding them fell to praying; Kirkbride drew nearer to that one, a Circassian as blond as Aurens himself.
“You do not pray?” he asked, expecting that the man would understand.
And so he did. He shrugged. “I am Christian, for now.” He cast his glance towards the closed door, and his eyes grew bright and thoughtful. “But—perhaps I shall convert.”
Kirkbride blinked in surprise; not the least of the surprises of this day. “What was it that the caller added to the end of the chant?” he asked, for he had noted an extra sentence, called in a tone deeper than the rest.
The man’s gaze returned to Kirkbride’s face. “He said, ‘God alone is good, God alone is great, and He is very good to us this day, Oh people of Damascus.’ ”
At that moment, the door opened, and a much subdued delegation filed out of the door. Allenby turned, as Aurens followed a little into the antechamber, and stopped. His white
robes seemed to glow in the growing dusk, and Kirkbride was astonished to see a hint of a smile on the thin, ascetic lips.
“You can’t keep this going, you know,” Allenby said, more weary than angry. “This isn’t natural. It’s going to fall apart.”
“Not while I live, I think,” Aurens said, in his crisp, precise English.
“Well, when you die, then,” Allenby retorted savagely. “And the moment you’re dead, we’ll be waiting—just like the vultures you called us in there.”
If anything, the smile only grew a trifle. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. There is wealth here, and wealth can purchase educations. In a few years, there will be men of the tribes who can play the politicians’ game with the best of them. Years more, and there will be men of the tribes who look farther than the next spring, into the next century. We need not change, you know—we need only adopt the tools and weapons, and turn them to our own use. I would not look to cut up the East too soon, if I were you.” Now he chuckled, something that surprised Kirkbride so much that his jaw dropped. “And in any event,” Aurens concluded carelessly, “I intend to live a very long time.”
Allenby swore under his breath, and turned on his heel. The rest, all but Kirkbride, followed.
He could not, for Aurens had turned that luminous blue gaze upon him again.
“Oxford, I think,” the rich voice said.
He nodded, unable to speak.
The gaze released him, and turned to look out one of the windows; after a moment, Kirkbride recognized the direction. East.
Baghdad.
“I shall have need of Oxford men, to train my people in the English way of deception,” the voice said, carelessly. “And the French way of double-dealing, and the German way of ruthlessness. To train them so that they understand, but do not become these things.”
Kirkbride found his voice. “You aren’t trying to claim that ‘your people’ aren’t double-dealing, deceitful, and ruthless, I hope?” he said, letting sarcasm color his words. “I think that would be a little much, even from you.”
The eyes turned back to recapture his, and somewhere, behind the blue fire, there was a hint of humor.
“Oh, no,” Aurens said, with gentle warmth. “But those are Arab deceptions, double-dealings, and ruthlessness. Clever, but predictable to another Arab; these things are understood all around. They have not yet learned the ways of men who call themselves civilized. I should like to see them well-armored, before Allah calls me again.”
Kirkbride raised an eyebrow at that. “You haven’t done anything any clever man couldn’t replicate,” he replied, half in accusation. “Without the help of Allah.”
“Have I ever said differently?” Aurens traded him look for ironic look.
“I heard what happened before the battle.” Aurens, they said, had ridden his snow-white stallion before them all. “In whose name do you ride?” he had called. “Like a trumpet,” Kirkbride’s informant had told him, as awed as if he had spoken of the Archangel Gabriel.
And the answer, every man joined in one roar of response. “In the name of Allah, and of Aurens.”
Aurens only looked amused. “Ride with me to Baghdad.” This had less the sound of a request than a command. “Ride with me to Yemen. Help me shape the world.” Again, the touch of humor, softening it all. “Or at least, so much of it as we can. Inshallah. I have Stirling, I have some others, I should like you.”
Kirkbride weighed the possibilities, the gains, the losses. Then weighed them against the intangible; the fire in the eyes, the look of eagles.
Then, once again, he looked Aurens full in the eyes; was caught in the blue fire of them, and felt that fire catch hold in his soul, outweighing any other thoughts or considerations.
Slowly, knowing that he wagered all on a single cast of the dice, he drew himself up to attention. Then he saluted; slowly, gravely, to the approval of every one of the robed men in that room.
“To Baghdad, and Yemen, Aurens,” he said. “Inshallah.”
This story first appeared in Fantasy Book magazine; it was later combined with the following story, “Dragon’s Teeth,” and stories by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Jennifer Roberson for a volume originally called Bardic Voices, later published by DAW as Spell Singers.
Martis is very close to being a soul-sister to Tarma and Kethry.
Balance
Mercedes Lackey
“You’re my bodyguard?”
The swordsman standing in the door to Martis’ cluttered quarters blinked in startled surprise. He’d been warned that the sorceress was not easy to work with, but he hadn’t expected her to be quite so rude. He tried not to stare at the tall, disheveled mage who stood, hands on hips, amid the wreckage she’d made of her own quarters. The woman’s square features, made harsher by nervous tension, reflected her impatience as the mercenary groped for the proper response to make.
Martis was a little embarrassed by her own ill manners, but really, this—child—must surely be aware that his appearance was hardly likely to invoke any confidence in his fighting ability!
For one thing, he was slim and undersized; he didn’t even boast the inches Martis had. For another, the way he dressed was absurd; almost as if he were a dancer got up as a swordsman for some theatrical production. He was too clean, too fastidious; that costume wasn’t even the least worn-looking—and silk, for Kevreth’s sake! Blue-green silk at that! He carried two swords, and whoever had heard of anyone able to use two swords at once outside of a legend? His light brown hair was worn longer than any other fighter Martis had ever seen—too long, Martis thought with disapproval, and likely to get in the way despite the headband he wore to keep it out of his eyes. He even moved more like a dancer than a fighter.
This was supposed to guard her back? It looked more like she’d be guarding him. It was difficult to imagine anything that looked less like a warrior.
“The Guard-serjant did send this one for that purpose, Mage-lady, but since this one does not please, he shall return that another may be assigned.”
Before Martis could say anything to stop him, he had whirled about and vanished from the doorway without a sound. Martis sighed in exasperation and turned back to her packing. At this moment in time she was not about to start worrying about the tender feelings of a hire-sword!
She hadn’t gotten much farther along when she was interrupted again—this time by a bestial roar from the bottom of the stair.
“MARTIS!” the walls shook with each step as Trebenth, Guard-serjant to the Mage Guild, climbed the staircase to Martis’ rooms. Most floors and stairs in the Guild-hold shook when Trebenth was about. He was anything but fat—but compared to the lean mages he worked for, he was just so—massive. Outside of the Guards’ quarters, most of the Guild-hold wasn’t designed to cope with his bulk. Martis could hear him rumbling under his breath as he ascended; the far-off mutterings of a volcano soon to erupt. She flinched and steeled herself for the inevitable outburst.
He practically filled the doorframe; as he glared at Martis, she half-expected steam to shoot from his nostrils. It didn’t help that he looked like a volcano, dressed in Mage-hireling red, from his tunic to his boots; it matched the red of his hair and beard, and the angry flush suffusing his features. “Martis, what in the name of the Seven is your problem?”
“My problem, as you call it, is the fact that I need a bodyguard, not a temple dancer!” Martis matched him, glare for glare, her flat gray eyes mirroring his impatience. “What are you trying to push on me, Ben? Zaila’s toenails, if it weren’t for the fact that Guild law prevents a mage from carrying weapons, I’d take sword myself rather than trust my safety to that toy!”
“Dammit, Martis, you’ve complained about every guard I’ve ever assigned to you! This one was too sullen, that one was too talkative, t’other one snored at night—” he snorted contemptuously. “Mother of the Gods, Martis, snored?”
“You ought to know by now that a mage needs undisturbed sleep more than food—besides, anyone s
talking us would have been able to locate our campsite by ear alone!” she replied, pushing a lock of blond hair—just beginning to show signs of gray—out of her eyes. The gesture showed both her annoyance and her impatience; and pulling her robe a bit straighter could not conceal the fact that her hands trembled a little.
He lost a portion of his exasperation; after all, he and Martis were old friends, and she did have a point. “Look, when have I ever sent you a guard that couldn’t do the job? I think this time I’ve really found the perfect match for you—he’s quiet, half the time you don’t even know he’s there, in fact—and Mart, the lad’s good.”
“Him? Ben, have you lost what little mind you ever had? Who told you he was good?”
“Nobody,” he replied, affronted. “I don’t take anyone’s word on the guards I hire. I tested him myself. The boy moves so fast he doesn’t need armor, and as for those two toy swords of his, well—he’s good. He came within a hair of taking me down.”
Martis raised an eyebrow in surprise. To her certain knowledge, it had been years since anyone could boast of taking Trebenth down—or even coming close.
“Why’s he dress himself up like a friggin’ faggot, then?”
“I don’t know, Mart. Ask him yourself. I don’t care if my guards wear battleplate or paint themselves green, so long as they can do the job. Mart, what’s bothering you? You’re not usually so damn picky. You generally save your complaining till the job’s over.”
Martis collapsed tiredly into a chair, shoving aside a box of tagged herbs and a pile of wrinkled clothing. Trebenth saw with sudden concern the lines of worry crossing her forehead and her puffy, bruised-looking eyelids.
“It’s the job. Guild business—internal problems.”
“Somebody need disciplining?”
“Worse. Gone renegade—and he’s raising power with blood-magic. He was very good before he started this; I’ve no doubt he’s gotten better. If we can’t do something about him now, we’ll have another Sable Mage-King on our hands.”
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