by Glen Cook
"Woe!" he muttered after el Nadim cleared out. "Back along same old route. Is becoming boring routine, back and forth through mountains. Self, am more profound, being of broader adventurousness, wishing to see new lands. Same motivation brought self to west in first place."
He had lost his audience before he began. What was the point of a declamation when nobody was going to listen?
Kildragon's force followed el Nadim's rearguard without any great enthusiasm or alacrity. Four days of heavy fighting seemed an adequate contribution to the cause.
Four of them rode stumbling horses. Haroun and Beloul walked. They took turns falling and helping one another up.
They were the survivors, and not a one was not wounded and perilously exhausted. The Invincibles had hunted hard and well, and hunted still, but they had shaken the white robes for a while. The Invincibles needed a day or two to work themselves up for a charge into the enemy mountains.
"I heard a trumpet," el Senoussi muttered from his animal's back. "A long way off."
"The bugle of the angels, maybe," Beloul replied. "We're halfway between back there and nowhere. They never even heard of bugles out here."
El Senoussi was right. An hour later everyone could hear the occasional braying of trumpets and what sounded like a distant crash of battle. Sound carried well through the cold, still canyons.
"It's a big one," Haroun guessed. "Up here? How can that be?"
"Been seeing a lot of horse droppings since we got into this canyon," Beloul said. "Too many for our side."
The others had noticed too. No one had wanted to be first to mention the bad sign.
"We're getting close," el Senoussi observed a little later. "Someone ought to go take a look before we walk into it."
"He's right. Beloul, take Hassan's horse."
Beloul groaned but did as he was told. He returned soon. "The Guildsmen and our warriors have part of el Nadim's army trapped," he reported. "It looks nasty."
"Who's winning?"
"I didn't ask."
Haroun groaned as he climbed to his feet. He ached everywhere. "What I need is a week to do nothing but sleep, but I guess I'd better show my face. Heaven knows what they've been thinking since we disappeared."
His companions sighed and slowly clambered into their saddles.
It took but a moment to discern what Ragnarson had done. He had drawn a kill line across the easterners' path and was trying to wipe them out.
"It didn't work like I figured," Ragnarson admitted once nightfall provided a moment to visit.
"How so?" Haroun's followers were ecstatic about his return. He was using the meeting as an excuse to escape their attentions.
"That charge from the rear. I don't know if it was ill-conceived or just came too soon. It looked like it was going to work, then el Nadim made a comeback. He's got your men trapped in that side canyon now. And there isn't a damned thing I can do."
Haroun replied, "They can abandon their animals and climb out. If they don't, they're so stupid they deserve whatever happens. I'll go over myself come morning."
"Don't know if we can holdhere."
"Think positive. You've gained us another victory. Maybe our most important since Alperin. El Nadim himself is trapped here. Imagine the impact. He's El Murid's last great general. The hero of the east. The end of the legacy of the Scourge of God. Mowaffak Hali, too, is a tale that's reached its end. He made it to Al Rhemish, then the gangrene took him. The Disciple was furious."
Ragnarson grinned. "We wondered what happened to the sonofabitch. We ragged his gang pretty good, but couldn't find him afterwards. So tell us about your pilgrimage to the Holy City. I take it your scheme didn't work."
"We came this close." Haroun held up a thumb and forefinger spaced an inch. "Then the Disciple used his amulet. Damned near wiped us out." He told the story to a quiet, sometimes incredulous audience.
"Get some sleep," Ragnarson advised when he finished. "I'll get you up if we have to run for it."
"Thoughtful of you."
Haroun and his travelling companions slept through most of the next day's fighting.
The Royalists fought like a new army. Their King had returned. Fate was on their side.
El Nadim's men fought well. It did them no good. They could not break out. Ragnarson began talking about asking el Nadim to surrender.
A refreshed Haroun disabused him of that daydream. "Some of his least enthusiastic soldiers might sneak over and give up. Don't look for him to. He's a true believer. He'll fight till we kill him. Or till he wins."
"I don't know if we can whip them," Bragi said. "We might end up getting hurt worse than they do if we try."
Haroun shrugged. "You're the one put his back to the desert."
El Nadim mounted his most ferocious attack yet. The Guild lines bowed and buckled and would have broken but for a timely rear attack by Kildragon.
Spent, the easterners withdrew into their encampment. Not a man was seen for days. "Looks like we play see who gets hungry first," Ragnarson said. "I damned sure ain't going after them. My momma's stupid babies all died young."
A Throyen officer came out under a white flag five days later. He asked for bin Yousif.
"News gets around, doesn't it?" Haaken muttered.
"Seems to," Bragi replied. He and his brother watched over bin Yousif's shoulder.
"We're ready to talk terms," the Throyen told Haroun.
"Why? You came out here looking for a fight. You get one and right away you want to call it off."
"There's no point fighting when there's nothing to gain. Were we to win, you'd just fade into the mountains. Were you to win, you'd have spent most of your men. It would be best for everyone if we disengaged."
Haroun translated for Bragi, who could not follow the Throyen dialect. Ragnarson said, "This guy is dangerous. He's got an off-center way of looking at things. Keep him talking."
Haroun asked questions. He translated the answers. "He's pretty much said it, Bragi. We quit fighting and go our separate ways."
"Where's the profit? He must have a good reason for this. Like maybe el Nadim is dead or hurt. Push him."
"Don't be too eager. They've still got the numbers." Nevertheless, Haroun pressed.
The Throyen responded, "I'll come see how you feel in a week."
Haroun translated. "I pushed too hard. I think they'd give up their weapons if we let them go."
"What's to keep them from hiking around the Kapenrungs and joining up with the rest of their mob?"
"What's to keep you from wiping them out once they give up their weapons?"
"We're Guildsmen. We don't operate that way."
"Maybe they have a sense of honor too. Look, all they're going to do is sit and wait us out. Right?"
"Looks like. And yes, we'd be better employed somewhere else."
"Ask for their parole. Weapons and parole. That's good enough for me." Haroun planned an active summer campaign. Having seen the chaos in Al Rhemish, he believed the tide of war had turned. He wanted to get into the thick and make so much noise his claims would catch the ears of all his allies.
"All right," Bragi said.
Haroun resumed dickering with the easterner.
El Nadim's force filed out of the trap next morning, leaving their arms in their encampment. Ragnarson and bin Yousif watched closely, ready for any treachery.
Ragnarson was depressed. "Another inconclusive contest, my friend. When are we going to make some real progress?"
Haroun insisted, "We've set another stone in El Murid's cairn. Be patient. This summer, or next summer at the latest, his house of sticks will fall. There's nothing to hold it together." He was bubbling. Could the Second Empire long endure now that its last hero had fallen?
Ragnarson believed it could. "It's not as easy as you pretend, Haroun. I keep telling you, it's not just a few men. But my big problem is I don't like what trying to stop them has done to us."
"Done to us? It hasn't done anything."
"What?"
"I don't know you well enough to tell about you. You're a closed person, and you've lived this all your life. But I can see what it's done to my brother. Haaken is a good mirror that shows me what it's done to me. I'm twenty, and I'm an old man. Anymore, my only concern is the next battle, and I don't much care about that. I'm just staying alive. There's more to this world. I can remember a time when I was supposed to get married next summer. I can't remember the girl's face, though. I've forgotten the dreams that went with her. I live from day to day. I can't see the end. I can't see it getting any better. You know, I really don't give a damn who sits on the Peacock Throne, or which god gets declared head honcho deity."
Haroun considered Ragnarson thoughtfully. He was afraid Bragi might be right. Megelin would have agreed. His father would not have. It was to their often antagonistic memories and shades that he answered.
They'd certainly lost their illusions, he thought. And maybe more, that they hadn't known they had. Bragi was right about one thing. They were just surviving, trying to get through a winnowing of survivors.
What Bragi didn't see was that it couldn't end till El Murid was overthrown. That beast would never stop fighting. He would do anything to make his mission bear fruit. Anything.
Ragnarson marched toward Hellin Daimiel. The lands through which he passed were preoccupied with spring planting. War was a terror of long ago or far away. There was little evidence of El Murid's occupation.
Each town had its missionary, and each county its imam, trying to convert the unbeliever. They had had their share of luck. Bragi saw scores of new places of worship built in the desert style.
The occupation had had its greatest impact on civil administration. The Disciple's followers had started from scratch in the desert and had brought new concepts with them, bypassing traditional forms. Though the feudal structures persisted, the old nobility was in decline.
Ragnarson found scant welcome along the way. The Disciple's propaganda effort had been successful. People were content with El Murid's Kingdom of Peace, or at least indifferent to it.
Ragnarson was near the bounds of the former domains of Hellin Daimiel when the rider he had sent ahead returned. The man had gotten through. Sir Tury Hawkwind agreed with Haroun's strategy.
Haroun and his Royalists were somewhere to the south, moving faster. They would deliver the first blow against Hellin Daimiel's besiegers. Curving in from the north, Ragnarson would deliver the follow-up. While the besiegers reeled, Hawkwind would sally with the city garrison.
El Murid's force at Hellin Daimiel was not big, nor was it comprised of the desert's best. Native auxiliaries, old men, warriors injured elsewhere... Its value was psychological. Haroun figured its defeat would have repercussions far beyond the numbers involved.
Ragnarson encountered fugitive desert warriors while still a day away from the city. Haroun's punch had been sufficient. He and Hawkwind had broken the siege.
"I'll be damned!" Ragnarson swore. "We run our butts off and we're still too damned late. What the hell kind of justice is that?"
Haaken peered at him. He wore what looked like a sneer. "Be grateful for a little good luck, nitwit."
"That any way to talk to your captain, boy?"
Haaken grinned. "Captain for how much longer? We get to the city, you're going to come down a peg or nine. We'll be back with the real Guild. And real Guild officers. No more of this Colonel Ragnarson stuff."
Ragnarson stopped walking. His troops trudged past.
He had not thought of that. He was not sure he could handle falling back to corporal. He had been on the loose too long, running things his own way. He watched his men march by. They were not real Guildsmen, despite the standard heading the column. Not one in fifty had ever seen High Crag. Only sixty-seven of his original company survived. They were the officers and sergeants, the skeleton but not the flesh of his little army.
"You planning to make a career of blocking the road?" Haaken asked.
"It just hit me how much has happened since we left High Crag."
"A ton," Haaken agreed. Something struck him. "We haven't been given our allowances for three years. Man, can we ever have a time."
"If they pay us." Suddenly, Bragi's world was all gloom.
He did not find himself deprived of his makeshift army. When he reached Hellin Daimiel, Hawkwind and bin Yousif were already headed south, intent on liberating Libiannin, Simballawein and Ipopotam. "Guess they're trying to draw strength away from the fighting in the north," he hazarded.
Haaken did not care about the big picture. His attention was taken with the city.
The siege had been long and bitter. Some all-powerful monster of a god had uprooted all the happy, orderly, well-fed citizens of yore and had replaced them with a horde of lean, hard-eyed beggars. The rich merchants, the proud scholars, the bankers and artisans of olden Hellin Daimiel had come into a ghastly promised land. It flowed not with milk and honey but with poverty, malnutrition, and despair.
"What happened?" Ragnarson inquired of a girl not yet too frightened to talk to strangers. He had to explain several times to make her understand that he wanted to know why the city was in desperate shape when the Itaskian naval and mercantile fleets had been supporting the city all along.
"Our money ran out," the girl explained. "They wanted our museum treasures too. They forgot whom we are," she declared haughtily. The Diamiellians long had arrogated to themselves the roles of conservators and moderators of western art and culture. "So they send just enough to keep us barely alive."
"Thank you. I taste politics, Haaken."
"Uhm?"
"The Itaskians have destroyed Hellin Daimiel more surely than the Host could have by sacking it. Wearing a mask of charity. That's bloody cruel and cunning."
"What do you mean?"
"Remember Haroun telling about that Itaskian War Minister? He got what he wanted. He's let the siege ruin Hellin Daimiel. And all the time he was probably reminding their ambassadors of the great things Itaskia was doing for them. Maybe that's why Greyfells piddled around."
"Politicians," Haaken said. He expressed an extreme disgust with that word.
"Exactly." Bragi was just as indignant. "Let's see if we can't find someplace to get crazy. I've got three years in the woods to get out of my system."
The vacation lasted only two days. One of Ragnarson's men brought the bad news. "El Murid has left the desert, Colonel. They don't know where he's headed. The Daimiellians are in an uproar. They figure he'll come straight here."
"Damn! Well, let's see if we can't give him a warm welcome.”
Chapter Twenty-One:
HIGHWATER
Hard-eyed, El Murid glared at the pylons bearing the names of those who had died for the Faith. There were too many. Far too many. The obelisks formed a stone forest atop the south lip of the bowl containing Al Rhemish. The presence of his family stelae only worsened his mood.
It had taken a great act of will to lay Sidi beside his mother. He had been tempted to throw his traitorous get to the jackals.
"Esmat."
"Lord?" The physician was not pleased that his master had resumed his pilgrimages to his family's graves.
"The Lord charged me with bringing the Truth to the nations. I've been delegating that task. That is why so many have died. The Lord is reminding me of my vocation."
"I don't follow you, Lord."
"I began alone, Esmat. I was a child dying in the wastes when I was called. I brought the Truth out of the badlands. Hearts opened to it. I used them. I wasted them. I'm alone again. Alone and lost in the Great Erg of the soul. If I remain here again this summer, the entire Host of Illumination will be taken from me. More and bolder bands of assassins will remind me that the time alloted for my work is both borrowed and limited. This summer, Esmat, the Disciple becomes a warrior for the Lord, riding with the Host."
"Lord, you swore never
to go to war again."
"Not so, Esmat. I vowed not to determine strategy for the Host. I swore I would leave the management of war to my generals. Assemble us an escort when we go back down."
"As you command, Lord."
"If the Lord calls me before thee, Esmat, lay me down beside Meryem. And if ever Yasmid should be found, let her lie at my other hand."
"So it shall be, Lord. Was there ever any doubt?"
"Thank you, Esmat. Come. Let us gird ourselves, for we face the hour of our trial."
"And the Lord our God, Who is the Lord of Hosts, shall trample thine enemies, O Chosen, and they shall drink the sour wine of their unbelief, and they shall be vanquished."
"Esmat! You amaze me. I thought you indifferent to the Teachings. I didn't know you could see beyond your own small ambitions."
The physician shook. How subtle the Disciple was, chiding him in this gentle way! His transgressions were known! They had been forgiven, but not forgotten. "I'm not well enough known, Lord, and by myself least of all. I'm so foolish I try to be something I'm not."
"That's the curse of humanity, Esmat. The wise man leashes it before it leads him into the shadow where pretensions are of no avail."
"I am a child in the light of thy wisdom, Lord."
El Murid gave him a hard look. Was that quote a gentle mockery?
His venture west did not begin immediately. News of el Nadim's demise delayed it. "The Lord has written the final paragraph of his message, Esmat," he said. "I stand alone on the battlefield, naked to the Evil One. I must wrestle his minions now, as I wrestled the Dark One himself in the Shrines."
"Hardly alone, Lord. The Host of Illumination is more vast than ever before."
"Who will wield it, Esmat?"
"Convene a council of leading men, Lord. Let them name candidates."
"Yes. Good. Gather the right people, Esmat."
He selected Syed Abd-er-Rahman, the man least popular with functionaries who obviously wanted a general they could manipulate. El Murid could not recall ever having met the man or even having heard of him. But he was popular with the military.
