The Fire in His Hands Page 14

  “Haroun? Are you listening?”

  “Yes, Megelin.” The youth was as close as Radetic’s shadow. As always. He followed his teacher everywhere, watching with those wide, curious eyes, logging every detail of the siegework in an infallible memory.

  “Pay attention to this. Listen to your father. He’s talking about paying the price of an absolute and inflexible concept of duty. Don’t ever push a man into the corner he’s in. And don’t ever let yourself get shoved into one like it. Yousif, there has to be a way around destroying yourself because of Aboud’s stupidity.”

  “It’s our way, Megelin. It’s mine. I have to do something.”

  “Isn’t this something?” Radetic swept an arm round to include everything happening in Sebil el Selib. “Isn’t this enough? We’ve been bled white. We just don’t have our strength anymore. Yousif!”

  The Wahlig stepped back from his sudden intensity. “What?”

  “I get the feeling you’re thinking about going on through the pass. To meet Nassef and martyr yourself in some big last battle. Don’t do it. Don’t waste yourself.”

  “Megelin —”

  “At least set your schedule so you can do it after you’ve finished here. Would that violate the spirit of Aboud’s orders? Only a fool leaves behind an enemy who can close a trap on him later.”

  Yousif mused. “You’re right, of course. You always are. I’m not thinking this morning. I’m so tired of fighting and Aboud’s indifference that part of me just wants to hurry the end.”

  “Have you explored the pass? Is there a narrow passage where you could ambush Nassef? Where you could roll boulders down on him? This is our last great cry of defiance, Yousif. Why don’t we make it memorable without getting ourselves martyred?”

  “All right.”

  The Wahlig departed. He seemed less depressed.

  Radetic watched as the trebuchet crews cranked the arms of the engines back to throwing position. They were clumsy and slow. “Damn!” he muttered. “What I wouldn’t give for a company of Guildsmen.”

  Fuad materialized. “I don’t know what you said to Yousif, but thanks. He was ready to throw himself on his sword.”

  “Not much, really.”

  “He told you the news?”

  “That Aboud isn’t going to help? Yes. Damn the fool anyway. I thought sure Farid would talk him into sending us something.”

  “The Crown Prince won’t be talking anybody into anything anymore. Didn’t he tell you? Farid is dead.”

  Very carefully, like an old cat searching for just the right place to curl up, Radetic looked round and chose himself a stone on which to sit. “He’s dead? Farid?”

  Fuad nodded.

  “He had help making his exit? The Harish finally got him?”

  The cult was trying to exterminate the Quesani family. They failed more often than they succeeded, but scared hell out of the family by trying. Farid had become a favorite target. He had escaped their attentions three times.

  “Not this time. This time Nassef sent his own expert. He slipped Karim and a couple of hundred Invincibles into the wastes north of Al Rhemish. Last week they ambushed Farid while he was lion hunting. It was a big hunt.”

  “That’s sad. It really is. Sometimes I think there really is a God who’s on El Murid’s side.”

  “You don’t know how sad it is. They didn’t just kill Farid. I said it was a big hunt. They got most of his brothers, his retainers, a bunch of Aboud’s officers and ministers and the Wahlig of Es Sofala and a lot of his people.”

  “Good heavens. A disaster.”

  “A hell of a coup if you’re Nassef. He’s carved the heart out of the Quesani. You know who’s left? Who our beloved Crown Prince is now? Ahmed.”

  “Ahmed? I don’t know the name.”

  “With reason. He’s a nothing. I wish I didn’t know him. He’s a damned woman, if you ask me. I wouldn’t be surprised if he prefers boys.”

  “No wonder Yousif was so grim.”

  “Megelin?” Haroun piped. “Does that mean it’s over? Uncle Fuad? Did we lose the war when we weren’t looking?”

  Fuad laughed sourly. “A good turn of phrase, Haroun. A fine way to say it. Yes.”

  “No,” Radetic countered. “It’s never over till you surrender. In your own heart.”

  Fuad laughed again. “Bravely spoken, teacher. Fine talk. But it doesn’t change the facts.”

  Radetic shrugged. “Haroun, let’s see if they’re ready with that spoon trebuchet.”

  The crew was cranking the machine for a test shot when they arrived. Radetic watched while they ignited a bundle of brush, tipped it into the spoon, then flipped the blazing missile over the New Castle wall.

  “Will it start a fire, Megelin?”

  “Probably not. But it’ll keep them nervous.”

  “Why do it, then?”

  “Battles can be won in men’s minds, Haroun. That’s what I meant when I told your uncle it’s not over till you surrender in your heart. The sword isn’t the only weapon that will wear an enemy down.”

  “Oh.” Haroun’s face took on that look he got when he wanted to remember something forever.

  Two days passed. And still Nassef did not come. Megelin could feel the contempt radiating from the coast. Nassef did not consider them dangerous.

  He would learn.

  Megelin sent for Yousif, who wore a bright expression when he appeared. The Wahlig seemed to have made peace with himself.

  “I’m going to bring her down now,” Radetic told him. He gave a signal. “Fuad, get the men ready. The way we rehearsed it.”

  Fuad muttered something uncomplimentary and stalked off. A gust of activity swept the valley. It became a gale. Yousif’s warriors gathered for the assault.

  The trebuchets ceased pounding the old castle. The wall had held, but barely.

  The engine crews dragged their machines around to face the New Castle.

  An hour passed. Yousif became impatient. “When’s something going to happen?” he demanded.

  Radetic indicated smoke trailing out of cracks at the base of the wall. “When you mine a wall you have to shore it up with timbers. When you’re ready to bring it down you fill the chamber underneath with brush and set it afire. It takes time for the timbers to burn through. Ah. Here we go.”

  A deep-throated grinding assailed the air. The cracks grew. Pieces of masonry popped out of the wall. Then, with a startling suddenness, a twenty-foot-wide section dropped straight down, virtually disappearing into the earth.

  “Perfect!” Radetic enthused. “Absolutely perfect. Fuad!” he shouted. “Go ahead! Attack now!” He turned to Yousif. “Don’t forget to watch the New Castle for a sally.”

  The gutting of the old fortress took under four hours. It was almost a disappointment. There weren’t enough defenders to slow the assault.

  Radetic turned his attention to El Murid’s New Castle immediately. The capture of the old was barely complete when word came that an enemy column was in the pass. Yousif roared off to spring the ambush Radetic had suggested.

  The tardiness and weakness of the relief column underscored Nassef’s contempt for el Aswad. He did not come himself. He sent el Nadim and two thousand green recruits from the coast. Yousif carved them up.

  Nassef himself came four days later. He brought twenty thousand men and did not spare their lives. It took him just eight days to reverse roles and surround el Aswad.

  The siege of the Eastern Fortress persisted for thirty months and four days. It was as cruel to the enemy as Yousif had hoped. El-Kader, in command of the besiegers, though nearly as competent as Nassef himself, simply could not overcome Yousif, his environment and the sickness that ravaged his camp.

  El-Kader’s own most potent weapon, starvation, remained untested because Nassef was unable to spare the besieging army sufficiently long.

  Nassef himself remained on the coast. After the successes at Es Suoanna and Souk el Arba he found the going more difficult. The narrow, ri
ch, densely populated littoral was nearly four hundred miles long. Those miles revealed a lot of towns and cities with no sympathy for El Murid’s cause.

  And there was Throyes.

  El Murid was compelled to fight a foreign war before he had won over his own people.

  When it came, the Throyen land grab was so brazen and extensive that El Murid found it politically unendurable. The nationalist sentiment it generated forced him to react.

  Nassef’s need for warriors on that front drew the besiegers away from el Aswad. He left just a thousand men in the province, commanded by Karim. They were to distract Yousif from Sebil el Selib.

  Once his environs were open Yousif began corresponding with neighbors and Royalists whose thinking paralleled his own. The Kasr Helal Gold Seam was reborn. Trustworthy friends and acquaintances of Megelin Radetic made quiet arrangements in the west.

  To an extent, the defenders of the Eastern Fortress had surrendered in their hearts.

  Yousif stood in a windswept parapet watching the smoke of a brush fire burning twenty miles south of el Aswad. It was a huge blaze. Fuad was using it to herd one of Karim’s battalions into a deathtrap. Haroun, practicing his shaghûnry at last, was with his uncle.

  The boy had been a tremendous asset since the end of the siege. He always accompanied his uncle now. His shaghûnry instructors said he had enormous potential. They had taken him to their limits without pushing him to his own.

  The Wahlig spied a rider coming from the northwest. Another whining message from Aboud? He did not bother going down to find out.

  His royal cousin was becoming a royal aggravation. His bluster, wishful thinking and vain edicts would not alter the situation one iota.

  Radetic joined him a few minutes later. He looked grim. He was becoming ever more dour and remote as el Aswad’s position became ever less tenable.

  “Another command to victory?” Yousif asked.

  “More like a petition this time. But he has started to realize what’s happening. After all this time. I mean, Nassef has got to be more than a bandit if he can fight a war with Throyes. Doesn’t he?”

  “Eh?” Yousif turned. “You mean he said something positive? That he’s going to take us seriously? Now that it’s too late?”

  “A little. A little too little too late. He’s hired Hawkwind again. He’s sending him out here.”

  “Hawkwind? Why a mercenary?”

  “He didn’t explain. Maybe because no one else would come. The messenger says the negotiations have been on since Prince Farid’s death. For three years! Hawkwind was reluctant — But Aboud finally made a sufficiently convincing presentation to the Guild generals, and paid over a handsome retainer. And he put huge bounties on El Murid, Nassef, Karim and that lot. Hawkwind is on his way already.”

  Yousif paced. “How many men?”

  “I don’t know. I was told a substantial force.”

  “Enough to change anything?”

  “I doubt it. We both know there will be no more victories like Wadi el Kuf.”

  “But why won’t he send Royal troops?”

  “I think all is not well in the Royal camp. Some wahligs apparently refuse to send men into the witch’s cauldron. They want to sit tight and let El Murid come to them. It seems if he wanted to send anyone, it had to be mercenaries. He did the best he could in the circumstances he faces.”

  “But not enough.” Yousif smote the weathered, lichened stone of the parapet.

  “No. Not enough.” Radetic studied the smoke from the brush fire. “Is Haroun out there?”

  “Yes. Fuad says he’s doing well. Is there more news? You looked grim when you arrived.”

  Radetic kept his own counsel for a few minutes. Then, “Prince Hefni was killed.”

  “A pity. The Harish again?”

  “Yes.”

  Hefni had been the last of Aboud’s sons, excepting Crown Prince Ahmed. He had been much like his brother Farid. There were rumors that Aboud wished Hefni were Crown Prince instead of Ahmed, and that Ahmed was being pressured to abdicate in his favor.

  “The Quesani are going to become extinct.”

  “Wahlig...”

  Yousif turned slowly. “Don’t tell me any more bad news, Megelin. I don’t think I could stand what I think you’re going to say.”

  “I don’t want to. But I have to. Now or later.”

  Yousif peered at the fire. In time, he murmured, “Out with it, then. I don’t want to break down in front of everybody.”

  “Your sons, Rafih and Yousif. They were killed in the attack on Hefni. They acquitted themselves well.”

  The two had been in Al Rhemish for several years, serving in the royal court. It was a common practice for nobles to send junior sons to court.

  “So. Now I have only Ali and Haroun.” He stared. For a moment it seemed the cloud of smoke was a response to his baleful glare. “Look away from me, teacher.”

  Radetic turned his back. The man had a right to solitude while he shed his tears.

  After a time, Yousif remarked, “Aboud won’t be able to handle this. He’ll do something stupid.” He sounded like a man begging for help. He was not talking about Aboud.

  Radetic shrugged. “The behavior of others has always been beyond my control. Unfortunately.”

  “I’d better go tell their mother. It’s not a task I savor.”

  Megelin moved nervously, came to a decision. “Would you look at this first?” He offered Yousif a chart on which he had penned names, titles and connecting lines in a tiny, tight hand. It constituted a who’s who of Hammad al Nakir.

  “A chart of succession?” Over a period of ten years Yousif had sneakily picked up enough reading ability to puzzle his way through simple texts. He was good at names.

  “Yes.”

  “So?” Every nobleman kept one. The chart was critical in determining precedence and protocol.

  “Permit me.” Radetic laid the chart out on a merlon. He produced a stick of drawing charcoal. “Let’s scratch out the names of people who aren’t with us anymore.”

  His hand moved like the swift-stabbing hand of Death.

  Dolefully, Yousif remarked, “That many? I hadn’t realized. It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “Anything apparent?”

  “The better classes are being slaughtered.”

  “Yes. But that’s not what I wanted you to see.”

  Yousif leaned closer to the chart, then backed away. His eyes were weakening.

  “I see,” he said. His voice was sadder than ever. “All of a sudden I’m third in the succession. If anything happens to Ahmed...”

  “Some of our most devoted allies might expedite his meeting with the angels.”

  The Crown Prince had all of his father’s faults, and none of the virtues that had made Aboud a respected king earlier in his reign. He was thoroughly disliked. Some of his enemies even accused him of being a secret adherent of El Murid.

  His life would become worthless the moment Aboud’s health started to fail. The behind-the-scenes manipulators at Al Rhemish would hold an “abdication by dagger.”

  “And,” Radetic added, “going by the way you people figure these things, Ali is fourth in line, Haroun fifth, Fuad sixth, and his sons in line after him.”

  “Megelin, I know how you think. You’ve got a double-level puzzle here. You’re getting at something more. Out with it. I’m not in the mood for intellectual gymnastics.”

  “All right. If by some ill fortune your family is destroyed — say during a successful siege — the succession would shift to the western cousins of the Quesani. Specifically, to a certain Mustaf el Habib, who must be pretty old by now.”

  “So?”

  “This particular gentleman is the father of a rebel named Nassef.”

  Yousif seized the chart. He stared and stared. “By damn! You’re right. How come nobody ever saw it before?”

  “Because it’s not exactly obvious. Mustaf el Habib is a damned obscure royal relative. And Nassef is as cunni
ng as El Murid’s Evil One. His moves remain strictly explicable within the context of his service to the Disciple. Why should anyone expect a threat from this direction? Would you like to bet that El Murid hasn’t the vaguest notion that the Scourge of God could become King?”

  “No. Hell no. Megelin, somebody has got to kill that man. He’s more dangerous than El Murid.”

  “Possibly. He does think on his feet. El Murid was ready to set the Harish on him before Wadi el Kuf. Six months later he took over the Invincibles.”

  “Well, I’ve got a surprise for both of them. It’ll so amaze them that they’ll waste six months trying to figure it out. It might even panic Nassef into abandoning his eastern wars.” Yousif laughed a little madly. “How soon will Hawkwind arrive?”

  “I couldn’t guess. They should be coming by now, but it’s a long haul from High Crag.”

  “I hope it’s soon. I do hope it’s soon.”

  Chapter Nine

  Ripening Soldiers

  High Crag was an ancient, draughty stone pile surmounting a wind-and sea-battered headland.

  “The Gates of Hell,” Bragi gasped as his training company double-timed uphill, toward the fortress. For three months he and his brother had been in the hands of merciless veterans. Seldom had they had a moment to call their own.

  They had found themselves a new friend. He was the only other Trolledyngjan in their Itaskian-speaking company. He called himself Reskird Kildragon. “It was just a small dragon,” he was wont to say. “And thereby hangs a tale.” But, though Reskird almost never shut up, he never told that tale. He hailed from Jandrfyre, a town on the Trolledyngjan coast opposite the Tongues of Fire. He was as loquacious as Haaken was reticent.

  “No,” Kildragon replied to Bragi’s remark. “Hell would look good from here.”

  “Knock off the chatter up there,” Sergeant Sanguinet thundered. “You barbarians got breath to waste, I’ll send you round the course again.”