“Meaning?”
“Meaning they’re confident they can hold it. There’s no point in their taking something they can’t keep. Not at this point in their growth.”
“You give them too much credit.”
“You don’t give them enough. Despite everything you told me at Al Rhemish, you haven’t really convinced yourself that these people are anything more than bandits led by a madman. Do you recall what you said? About El Murid selling the snake oil everyone wants to buy? I’ve reflected on that, and I think it’s even truer than you know.”
“What would you have me do?”
“There are a lot of possibilities.” Radetic suggested several, all of which Yousif rejected as impractical or politically unfeasible. “Then be direct. Murder El Murid. People will scream, but they will forget quickly enough. And Nassef won’t be able to survive without him. Not at this point.”
“I plan to try. Assuming Fuad fails. You haven’t given me a thing.”
“I know I’m overlooking the financial and political difficulties. You asked for options. I laid out what I see. Hell, it’s even remotely possible we could ignore them till they all die of indifference.”
“Megelin, my recovery wasn’t spontaneous. I’ve been lying here for two days, aching more in mind than in body. I’ve thought of it all. And the only workable option is to fight and hope we get lucky. If we can’t get lucky, then we’ll try to keep them contained.”
“This is depressing. We’re talking ourselves into accepting a defeat before the event.”
“Drop it, then. Megelin?”
“Yes?”
“You can do one thing to brighten my life.”
“Wahlig?”
“Stay here when your contract is up. I may need the outsider’s viewpoint desperately before this is over.”
Radetic was surprised. This was the first time ever that Yousif had treated him with more than minimal respect. “I’ll consider it, Wahlig. I’d better go. I left Ali in charge of my class.”
Yousif chuckled. “Yes, you’d better.”
“I’m a political historian, Haroun,” Megelin explained. “That’s why I’m going to stay. Why I have to stay. I can’t leave during the political storm of the century, can I?”
The boy seemed slightly disappointed. Radetic understood, but did not have it in him to lay out the true, emotional bases for lengthening his stay. He did not understand all his motives himself.
“You see, I’m the only one here at the heart of it. History is written by prejudiced parties, Haroun. By winners, usually. This is a unique opportunity to capture the truth.”
Haroun looked at him sideways, wearing an amused little smile. After a moment, Megelin chuckled. “You devil. You see right through me, don’t you?”
He had his excuse, though. It would be good enough to prolong his stay as grim weeks piled into months and years.
Haroun whipped into Megelin’s room, almost falling as he swung through the door, almost overturning the little table where the scholar was pouring over his notes, inscribing one of his regular missives to a friend in Hellin Daimiel. “What is it, child?”
“Uncle Fuad is coming.”
Radetic asked his next question by raising an eyebrow. Haroun understood. “No.”
Radetic sighed, pushed his papers back. “I didn’t think so. There would have been messengers carrying his brags. Let’s go down to the gate.”
The troops were dragging in when Radetic arrived. Megelin located Fuad. The Wahlig’s brother was tired, deflated and had exhausted his stock of contrariness. He answered questions dully, frankly, apparently not caring how bad the answers might make him look. “Just get it down the way it happened, teacher,” he muttered at one point. “Just write it up the way it happened. We came up one company short. One stinking company. One fresh company, in reserve, and we would have had them.” Stalking toward his brother’s quarters, he added, “One company from any one of those whoreson sheiyeks who didn’t show at muster. There’s going to be some new chieftains in el Aswad.”
Three months later Yousif issued his own call to arms. It took Megelin by surprise. “Why?” he demanded. “And why didn’t you tell me?” He was severely piqued because the Wahlig had not consulted him.
“Because,” Yousif replied, donning a teasing grin. “Because I wanted to deal with your protests at one sitting, instead of endlessly.”
Hardly mollified, Radetic demanded, “Why this hosting? That’s the important question.”
“Because I need to assert my primacy over the tribes. They need to be shown that I’m still strong, that I remain in command. We children of the desert are a lot like your forest wolves, Megelin. I’m the leader of the pack. If I stumble, if I reveal any weakness, if I hesitate, I’m lost. I have no desire to attack El Murid. The time isn’t right, as you no doubt would have told me endlessly had you been informed earlier. But the eyes of a hundred chieftains are on el Aswad, waiting to see my response to my wounding and Fuad’s defeat. Not to mention the turnout for Fuad’s hosting.”
Megelin now recalled the busy comings and goings of recent weeks, movements he hadn’t thought significant at the time. Messengers, of course. But, too, he had seen several of Yousif’s most devoted captains leading sizable patrols into the waste. Not one of those had as yet returned. “I presume your representatives will be in place when the call reaches certain sheiyeks of questionable devotion.”
Yousif chuckled. “Gently put, teacher. And true.”
“I suppose my wisest course is to keep my mouth shut, then. It’s an ancient truism: what is logical and practical isn’t always politic. And vice versa.”
“Truer in this land than anywhere else, Megelin. Truer here than anywhere. How have my son’s lessons been progressing?” He did not clarify which son. They understood one another plainly on that score.
Radetic searched for the right words. He decided he could do no better nor worse than to be straightforward. There were no witnesses. The Wahlig was tolerant in private. “I say it’s a pity he wasn’t born in a civilized land. He’s brilliant, Wahlig. Positively brilliant. The sorrow is, he has been shaped by this savage kingdom. Already. He could become a great man. Or a great villain. He has it in him. Let us direct that thrust to greatness.”
Yousif harumphed, stared into the distance, finally remarked, “Were it not for the situation, I would consider sending him to your Rebsamen. Perhaps that can be accomplished later. After this wicked little devil is put down.”
Radetic studied Yousif from the corner of his eye. There was a halo of destiny about the Wahlig at the moment, an aura, a smell, and Yousif sensed it himself. His stance said he knew the future he faced was not the one he had described.
Yousif’s expedition against the usurpers of Sebil el Selib, though stronger than Fuad’s, suffered the fate of his brother’s. Once again the loyalists came up that one fresh company short of strength enough to recover the Malachite Throne. In his determination to retain an image as strong and hard, Yousif pressed his attack far longer than was reasonable, well beyond the point when it became obvious that he would fail.
The bitter fighting brutalized both loyalist and rebel. Its outcome generated repercussions which only injured the loyalist stance. As the news swept the desert ever more opportunists gravitated to El Murid’s standard. Nassef sent out a call. Recruits drifted to him. He began teaching them his own devilish style of warfare.
Yousif adopted more reactionary tactics, screening the trails from Sebil el Selib, using his household warriors to pursue enemy bands moving in and out.
Spies sent disturbing reports about new fortifications.
“We can abandon any hope of ever rooting them out,” Radetic prophesied one day three years after the loss of the pass. Intelligence had just been received concerning the rapid growth of the fortress-palace guarding the Malachite Throne. The report also claimed that El Murid now had a full-time following of a thousand warriors, half of whom belonged to the fanatic Invinci
bles.
Nassef and his henchman Karim had begun slipping in and out to advise and occasionally direct the marauders plundering the desert in El Murid’s name.
“They’re like ghosts,” Fuad murmured one day. “Yousif, you should have let me kill Nassef when I had the chance. He’s everywhere and nowhere, and I can’t get him to fight.”
“Do I detect a case of the guerrilla warfare blues?” Radetic asked. “Of course Nassef won’t stand still. He’d get whipped if he did. Give him a target he can’t resist. Have a surprise waiting.”
“His spies would warn him two days before we decided to do it,” Yousif replied.
“I know. The real hope is that you can get him or El Murid with a knife in the kidneys.”
“We’ve tried,” Fuad growled.
“Keep trying. We’re losing a little ground every day. They’re wearing us down. As long as Aboud looks at it as a scuffle between Yousif and El Murid, and won’t see how it spills over into the rest of the kingdom, our best bet is to hang on and pray that they do something fatally stupid before we do.”
“How’s your monograph coming, Megelin?” Yousif asked.
The monograph’s incompleteness was Radetic’s stated excuse for staying on. He reddened. Gripping Haroun’s shoulder, he replied, “Damned slow. The war keeps getting in the way. I hardly have time to teach, let alone get any writing done.”
Time had made of Radetic much more than a tutor. In some ways he had become the power behind the Wahlig. Yousif sought his advice ever more often, and followed it with increasing frequency.
El Murid had recognized Radetic’s new importance in a recent sermon, naming him as one of the thirteen Barons of Hell on Earth, minions the Evil One had sent up to abuse the faithful. Megelin had been surprised to discover his noble standing. He thought Yousif more deserving.
Radetic was guiding Yousif’s policy into a Fabian mode, getting the Wahlig to husband his strength and buy time. He hoped the Crown would recover its senses, or that Nassef would do something to defeat himself.
He composed countless admonitory letters, over Yousif’s seal, to virtually everyone close to Aboud. He found a few sympathizers, but Crown Prince Farid was the only one in any position to influence Royal policy.
Young Haroun was growing, though more in mind than in stature. His father had begun to fear that he would become the family runt. Megelin soothed him with remarks about late bloomers. He had abandoned any pretense of educating anyone else. He no longer had time to coax and coddle Yousif’s stubborner sons and nephews.
His concentration on the one child won him no friends. Not when he took the boy away from his regular shaghûnry studies and chores to accompany him on botanical and geological field trips. Not when he answered questions about the other children’s talents honestly.
Other than Yousif and Haroun, Megelin had just one real friend in el Aswad, his bodyguard, Muamar.
Muamar enjoyed the field trips and studies more than did Haroun. For him they were play. The old warrior had reached that stage in life where mental challenges were more easily negotiated than physical. He responded to them with a heart never seen in the young.
In the fourth year the rebels made a small mistake. Fuad emerged triumphant, having trapped and slain nearly three hundred marauders. The victory guaranteed a respite from guerrilla activity. Yousif declared a holiday in his brother’s honor.
Women were summoned from their quarters to dance. Yousif, Fuad and most of the captains brought out their favorite wives. The voices of kanoons, ouds, derbeckis and zils filled the hall with music. Radetic found it strident, harsh and discordant.
Laughter abounded. Even Radetic hazarded a few jokes, but his efforts were too esoteric for his audience. They preferred long-winded, intimately detailed tales about rogues who cuckolded pompous husbands and about nitwits who believed anything their wives and daughters told them.
There was no wine to modulate the merriment, but the air was sour with a mildly narcotic smoke produced in special braziers.
Haroun sat beside Radetic, taking it all in with wide, neutral eyes. Radetic wondered if the boy was becoming one of life’s perpetual observers.
“Ho! Megelin! You old woman,” Fuad called. “Get up and show us one of your infidel jigs.”
Radetic was in a daring mood. He liberated a flute from a musician and danced a clumsy flamenco to his own abominable accompaniment. He laughed with the rest when he finished.
“Now you, Fuad. Put on the zils and show the ladies how it’s done.”
Fuad took the dare, without zils. He performed a wild sword dance which won a roar of applause.
The hall was packed with victorious warriors. With the women dancing, then the teacher and the Wahlig’s brother doing their stunts, no one had any attention left over. Nobody noticed the slow drift of three men toward the leaders...
Till they sprang, one each at Yousif, Fuad and Radetic.
Each lifted a silver dagger overhead. Fuad stopped his with his dancing sword. Yousif evaded his by throwing himself into the screaming mob.
Muamar flung himself into the path of the third assassin. The silver dagger slashed his cheek as the killer desperately tried to reach Radetic.
Muamar’s wound was bloody, but should have done no more than leave a thin scar. But the old warrior froze. His eyes grew huge. A gurgling whine crossed his lips. Then he fell, stone-dead.
The assassin drove toward Radetic again, struggling past grasping hands and flashing weapons. His dagger burned with a weird blue light.
“Sorcery!” a woman screamed.
The uproar redoubled.
Haroun kicked the assassin in the groin. It was as savage a blow as a ten-year-old could deliver. The knife wielder ignored him.
Neither he nor his companions seemed to notice the blows raining upon them. Six of Yousif’s men perished before the assassins could be stopped.
Shaking, Radetic gasped, “I’ve never seen anything like it! What kind of men are they?”
“Back! Damn it, clear away!” Yousif bellowed. “Gamel! Mustaf! Beloul!” he roared at three of his captains. “Clear the hall. Get the women to their quarters. Don’t touch them!” he snarled at a man who had rolled one of the assassins onto his back.
The three silver daggers lay on the dark stone floor, glowing blue.
Fuad crouched over the man who had come after him. He was pale. His hands shook. “Nassef said he would send an assassin.”
“He waited long enough,” Yousif growled.
“This isn’t El Murid’s style,” Radetic murmured. “There’s sorcery in this. It hasn’t been six months since he preached that sermon against wizardry.”
“Nassef. It has to be Nassef’s doing,” Fuad insisted.
Something about one assassin caught Radetic’s eye. He dropped to one knee, lengthened a tear in the man clothing, gazed at his chest. “Come here. Look at this.”
A tiny tattoo lay over the man’s heart. It was not clear, but seemed to be two letters of the desert alphabet intertwined.
The tattoo faded away as they studied it.
“What the hell?” Fuad growled. He jumped to another assassin, hacked his clothing. “Nothing on this one.” He went to the third. “Hey. This one’s still alive.” Again he cut cloth. “And he’s got the same mark.”
“Gamel. Send for the physician,” Yousif ordered. “Maybe we can keep him alive long enough to get some answers.”
While they were looking at the tattoo, Haroun collected one of the daggers. A blue nimbus formed round his hand. He held the flat of the blade to the light of a lamp.
“What are you doing?” Yousif demanded. “Put that down.”
“It’s harmless, Father. The light is just a spell unraveling.”
“What?”
“There was a spell on the blade. This one includes Uncle Fuad’s name. I’m trying to read the rest, if you’ll let me. It’s hard. It’s fading away, and it’s in the language of Ilkazar.”
“If t
here’s sorcery...”
“The blue is the sorcery giving up energy as it decays, Father. Because the knives cut the wrong men. They’re just daggers now.”
Haroun’s assertions did not reassure Yousif. “Put the damned thing down.”
“He just died,” Fuad said of the third assassin. “Oh. There it goes.”
The man’s tattoo faded in thirty seconds.
“What are we into here?” Yousif asked the air. The air did not reply.
Haroun’s shaghûnry instructors confirmed the boy’s comments about the daggers. Spells had been placed on the blades to make even a slight cut fatal. But they could make nothing of the vanishing tattoos. Nor could they, with their most potent conjuring, determine whence the assassins had come.
The physician determined that the men had taken drugs. And everyone could see that they had bound their limbs and genitals tightly, severely restricting circulation. They had been both fearless and immune to pain when they had attacked.
“Whoever sent them has himself a potent weapon,” Radetic observed. “Yousif, you’d better tell the gate watch to stay alert.”
Once the excitement died and there was no other concern to stay him, Megelin knelt over Muamar and wept. “You were a true friend, old warrior,” he murmured. “Thank you.”
Fuad, of all people, placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “He was a good man, Megelin. We’ll all miss him.”
The teacher glanced up. He was surprised to see a tear on Fuad’s cheek. “He was my weapons master when I was Haroun’s age. As he was Haroun’s.” For Fuad that seemed to be ample explanation.
The man called Beloul, who, subjective centuries ago, had escaped the disaster at Sebil el Selib, examined the dead men. He was now one of Yousif’s most savage captains. In his time, too, he had gone back into Sebil el Selib as one of the Wahlig’s spies.
“These are El Murid’s men,” he said. “This one is Shehab el-Medi, a captain of the Invincibles. He was almost as crazy as the Disciple.”