"All right. All right. Get that gag off of him."
Mocker could hardly stand. He gripped the expanse of his belly, teetered, and dry-throatedly moaned, "Woe! That self should come to this after fighting way across thousand miles, hazarding life and limb at every step, constantly beset by hordes of desert madmen... "
"You did a good job in Ipopotam," Haroun told him. He used the desert tongue because Mocker had. "Ended up pulling a whole army away from the main action. More than I dreamed. What happened to your man-mountain friend?"
"Do not mention same again. Same met one Invincible too many. Lies buried far from home, not even knowing why. Poor, stupid Gouch. Was good friend. Sparen will rest easy, knowing same has avenged self."
"I'm sorry. He was likeable-in his primitive way."
Yasmid exploded. "Entertainer! You know this... This... You're working for him?"
Mocker grinned. "Truth told, Lady. Self, am tricksey rogue, more than with fingers. Sometimes do pretty good with girls, too, maybeso."
"What's she talking about?" Haroun asked.
Mocker bowed, still grinning. "Hail, mighty king. Self, am pleased to present same to genuine princess, same being firstborn daughter of archfoe El Murid, Yasmid, captivated by self, at great peril, and brought forth from very heart of Desert of Death. As small token of appreciation, self would suggestion mighty king bestow upon same huge cash reward. Line up gold pieces, one for every wound, one for every insult suffered... "
Haroun's eyes grew larger and larger. He really looked at Yasmid for the first time. "It's you. You've grown."
Their eyes locked for a long moment, as they had on that faraway night at Al Rhemish.
Yasmid launched a magnificent, almost artful tantrum. Her shrieks emptied the barracks. In moments she stood at the heart of a circle of two hundred men.
Haroun turned to Ragnarson. "The fat man has brought us the Disciple's daughter. I don't know how... Can you believe it? It's incredible."
Bragi did not share his awe. But he saw the possibilities. "The Fates have taken a dislike to the man. He was riding high a month ago. Now he's lost most of his family."
Yasmid kept it up. Her anger gave way to hysteria. A sea of evil gloating faces surrounded her. The legions of the Evil One had fallen upon her. What would Haroun do? Throw her to his men?
"Whew!" said Ragnarson. "She does go on, doesn't she?"
"Is in mortal terror," Mocker opined.
"Shut up, girl!" Ragnarson thundered.
She did not. Of course. He had spoken in Itaskian. She would not have had he used a tongue she did comprehend.
The Guildsman was not in the most tolerant of moods. He had been losing badly in the game he had been playing. But it was not anger alone that impelled him to do what he did. Her hysteria had to be cracked.
He grabbed Yasmid, dragged her down, rolled her across his lap, hiked her skirts, and began whacking her bare bottom with his hand. She squirmed and squealed for a moment, then refused to respond.
Ragnarson would never comprehend the indignity he had done her, nor those she had suffered already. In his culture women did not wear veils and girls usually got excited when a guy bared their bottoms.
The fat man had forced her into native dress, and had burned her veils. She had travelled in shame for days. Now another barbarian had exposed her womanhood to the whole camp. His followers laughed and jeered and made crude observations about the hand-shaped birthmark on her behind.
Tears rolled from her eyes, but she refused to pleasure them by begging or crying out.
Haroun was of the desert. He became livid. He slapped Ragnarson's hand aside, yanked the girl to her feet, shoved her behind him. He poised on the balls of his feet, ready for anything. Yasmid crouched behind him, shaking, overcome by shame.
The laughter died. Guild eyes hardened. Ragnarson rose slowly, fists doubling.
"Hai!" Mocker cried. He whirled between the men, his robe flying. As he spun, he yelled, "Self, am wondering when celebration begins. Have made hero of self. Should receive great jubilee in honor, singing, drinking, unfortunately no wenching, but good time for all." He tried to turn a cartwheel, crashed to the dusty earth.
His antics broke the tension.
"Maybe he's right," Ragnarson said, after puzzling out the fat man's fractured Daimiellian.
"Beloul," Haroun said, "take the Lady Yasmid to my quarters."
Beloul's eyebrows rose. But he said only, "As you command, Lord."
Shifting languages, Haroun told Ragnarson, "You should be more careful of the sensibilities of other peoples. You subjected her to unforgivable humiliation. I'll probably have to guard against her taking her own life."
"What?" Bragi asked incredulously.
"That's ridiculous," his brother said.
"Perhaps. To you. You are the children of another land. You do things differently there. My people sometimes find your ways ridiculous."
"You mean she's the real thing?" Bragi asked. "She's not just some tramp your friend picked up on the road?"
"It's her."
"Then we've got some thinking to do. She's trouble."
"Such as?"
"You figure we've had El Murid's men in our hair before? You ain't seen nothing. If we keep her alive-and what good is she dead?-people are going to come looking for her. All of them with hook noses and wearing white. And your friend left a trail good enough for one mob to follow. There'll be more. Which means we've got to disappear. Fast."
"You're probably right. Let me think about it." Haroun strode after Beloul. He met his captain outside his hut. "How is she?"
"Mortified, Lord."
"Uhm. Beloul, find some cloth. Anything, so long as it's something she can use to make a veil and decent clothing."
"Lord?"
"You heard me." Haroun stepped into the shack that served him as home and headquarters.
Yasmid had seated herself on the dirt floor. Her head was down. She was crying silently, her whole body shaking. She did not look up.
"I apologize for my friends. They hail from faraway lands. They have different customs. They weren't trying to humiliate you."
Yasmid did not respond.
"I've told Beloul to find something you can make decent clothing from."
She did not look up, but in a small voice asked, "What are you going to do with me?"
"I? Nothing. Except keep you out of sight. So your father will worry."
"Aren't you going to kill me? Throw me to your men, or those barbarians, then cut my throat?"
"Why would I do that?"
"I'm your enemy. My uncle and my father killed your whole family."
"Your uncle was my enemy. Your father is my enemy. But you're not. I don't make war on women. You didn't... "
"You killed my mother."
Haroun shrugged. "There was a battle on. I wasn't keeping track."
Yasmid pulled her knees up under her chin, hugged them in her arms. "He tricked me, didn't he?"
"Who?"
"The fat man." She knew, of course, but wanted to be told again. That would, somehow, make her feel less like an accomplice in the deceit. "He got me to come... I thought I could make peace between you and my father."
"That would be difficult. Yes. He tricked you. That's his profession. And he's better than I suspected." Haroun sat on the earth facing her, wondering what made her seem unique.
It was nothing physical. She was an average looking girl, not at all striking. An active, outdoor life had weathered her more than the men of Hammad al Nakir liked. And she was much too assertive.
Yasmid stared into infinity. After a time, she murmured, "It's an interesting dilemma."
"What's that?"
"Whether I should slay myself and thus free the movement of concern and uncertainty, or preserve myself against its need."
The nature of his culture denied Haroun much knowledge of women. He knew them only through tradition and hand-me-down gossip from equally ignorant companions. The last
thing he expected of a female was an ability to reason, to sacrifice, to be concerned about tomorrrow. He remained silent, awed.
"I guess I should wait for a sign. Suicide is extreme. And if I'm alive there's always a chance of escape or rescue."
"As my fat friend might say, all things are possible." But some are unlikely, he thought. "Ask Beloul for whatever you need for sewing." He left the hut looking for Ragnarson.
"No, no, no," Bragi was telling an Altean who had just sped an arrow into a butt. "You're not remembering what I said about your elbow."
"I hit it, didn't I? Sir."
"Yeah. That time. But you're more likely to hit it every time... "
"Excuse me," Haroun interrupted. "It's occurred to me that our best course might be to move into the Kapenrungs."
"What?"
"We should move to the mountains. They're more suited to the kind of war we'll have to fight now. More room to move around and stay ahead of the hunters. And close enough to Hammad al Nakir to give us the option of striking south. It's only a few days ride from the mountains to Al Rhemish."
"We were assigned to Altea."
"Specifically? Without any flexibility for the commander on the scene?"
"I don't know. They just said we were going to Altea. Maybe they told Sanguinet more. But he's not here to let me know."
"Sent you here and forgot you. Haven't you noticed? They haven't been in any hurry to replace your captain. They haven't even sent any orders. You're on your own."
"How do you figure to get from here to there without getting wiped out? They've got men everywhere."
"Consider our prisoner. They'll know who has her, and where we were last. Anyway, moving was your idea."
"Yeah."
Ragnarson did not debate long. He knew there would be no more miracles like Alperin. The first bands left that evening.
Haroun talked him into sending their men in parties of four, by as many routes as possible, travelling at night, so they would attract minimal attention. Haroun assigned one of his people to each group of Guildsmen, to guide them to Beloul's old refugee camp. Bragi sent his brother with the first night's travellers, and Kildragon with the second's. Bin Yousif, Mocker, and Yasmid vanished sometime during that night. Haroun left no word of his intentions or destination.
Ragnarson left the Bergwold on the last night, riding with Beloul and two young Royalists. None of the three spoke a dialect he understood, and Beloul had wanted to be the last of his.
He looked back once. The Bergwold leaned toward him like a dark tidal wave frozen in mid rush. He felt a twinge of regret. The forest had become home.
There had been few moments of happiness since fleeing Draukenbring. But he and Haaken were still together, and healthy, and he had never asked the gods for more than that.
Beloul was a crafty traveller. He led them across the nights and miles without once bringing them face to face with another human being. He seemed to sense the approach of other travellers. Always, they were under cover when another night rider passed. Most of those were people of their own persuasion.
It was a skill his own men should learn. How could El Murid find them if even their friends never saw them moving?
These desert men were naturally cunning. Sneakery and deceit were their patrimony.
He wished he could communicate with Beloul better. The captain was one cunning old man.
Bragi had been trying to learn the desert tongue for ages. He had not made much headway. Its rules were different from any he knew, and there were countless dialects.
Thus it was that, when Beloul broke his own rule and stopped a dispatch rider, Ragnarson was bewildered by his companions' behavior. They went into a frenzy of angry excitement. It took half an hour for them to make him understand. El-Kader had destroyed the northern army.
That explained Beloul's sudden haste. This end of the world would fill with warriors hunting the daughter of their prophet. It was time to find a hole and pull it in after. He was glad Haroun had talked him into fleeing the Bergwold.
Four days later he threw his arms around Haaken and said, "Damn, it's good to see you. Good to see anybody who doesn't talk like a coop full of hens clucking."
"You hear? About the battle?"
"Yeah. But you have to fill me in. I missed most of the details."
"El Senoussi and I have been plotting. We figure we ought to recruit survivors. So we can build our own army."
"Tell me in the morning. Right now all I want to do is sleep. Face down. How do you figure to get guys to join when we can't pay? When we can't even guarantee them anything to eat?"
Haaken had no answer for that one.
Eventually, Ragnarson and Beloul did send their boldest followers, in ones and twos, to recruit not only survivors of the battle but anyone who wanted to enlist in the hidden army. That army grew as autumn progressed into winter. The recruits learned Guild ways on the march, while dodging and ambushing el-Kader's hunters.
Those hunters never realized whom they were skirmishing. The search for Yasmid was centered farther north, closer to the Bergwold.
They were turning Altea over.
Mocker turned up after a month, but Haroun remained invisible even to his best friends. He was gone so long that Beloul began worrying about having to find a new king.
It was then that Beloul realized that El Murid's offspring were now closest to the throne, through their mother.
Grinning evilly, he prepared special message packets meant to fall into enemy hands. They contained faked plans for an effort to alleviate Sidi's burden of life lest he be put forward as a Pretender by his father.
Beloul's purpose was to inform Sidi of his standing. The Disciple's son was but a boy, yet from what the fat man said he had qualities that would set sparks flying if he saw a chance for power.
The winter was a cold one and hard on the war-torn lands where marauding troops from both sides stripped the peasantry of its food stores. Anger stalked the snowy land like some hungry, legendary monster.
Everywhere, high and low, men schemed against the coming of spring, when they might seize their own particular breed of fortune and bend it to their will.
Chapter Sixteen:
THE MIDDLE WARS
Assigning blame is not the task of the historian. Neither should he deny guilt where it exists. In later days even the chauvinist historian would admit that the north, personified by Duke Greyfells, provoked the second El Murid War.
Itaskian apologists pointed at the Guild and Haroun bin Yousif's Royalists and argued that the first summer of fighting did not possess a separate identity because those belligerents never made peace. But the Guild and Royalists were fighting different wars. Theirs merely shared some of the same battlefields as that of the allies. The Kingdom of Peace had established treaties with those enemies who could accept an accommodation short of annihilation. Even Itaskia's highest leadership, despite verbal belligerence, had accepted El Murid's redrawing of the western map. Once winter settled in, the first El Murid War was over.
The real question was when and why the next would begin.
Only the Disciple himself knew his intentions for his second summer of conquest. His warriors came from their homes and tribes, more numerous than ever. Remote, maundering, El Murid blessed them on Mashad, and sent them to join el-Kader in his watch on the Scarlotti. There they were joined by thousands of converts and adventurers from the recovered provinces.
El-Kader waited, daily expecting an attack order from Al Rhemish. The instruction did not come. El Murid had lost interest in the reconquest. His dream of greening the desert and his effort to conquer his addiction had become obsessions.
Among the faithful it was whispered that the Evil One himself had come to Al Rhemish and the Lord in Flesh was wrestling him within the confines of the Most Holy Mrazkim Shrines.
El-Kader distributed the Host along the Scarlotti in accordance with an order of battle mentioned by the Scourge of God months before his death. E
l-Kader's posture remained strictly defensive.
He sat. He waited.
Lord Greyfells and Itaskia's allies bullied several small states whose lords had concluded treaties with the Disciple. They abbrogated treaties at will, at swordpoint crossing kingdoms which had agreed not to permit passage of belligerents. They promoted palace revolutions and imprisoned uncooperative nobles. Greyfells' arrogant treatment alienated the masters of the smaller states.
Emissaries came to el-Kader begging him to withhold his wrath. Some volunteered intelligence in hopes of staying the fury of the Host. A few even petitioned its intercession, begging protection from the arrogance and rapacity of the Duke.
Greyfells did little to conceal his desire to carve out an empire of his own.
El-Kader bided his time, awaiting the will of the Disciple, allowing Greyfells to make himself ever more obnoxious.
His petitions to Al Rhemish went unanswered. El Murid could not stop wrestling the Evil One long enough to concern himself with his opponent's manifestations on the frontier.
El-Kader finally took the initiative. He summoned his captains. He presented them with the order of battle and told them that unless they heard otherwise they were to cross the Scarlotti in fifteen days. They were to speak of the plan to no one till the last minute. Certain kingdoms were to be treated as allies, not foemen.
He waited. He even went so far as to pray for word from Al Rhemish.
Responsibility had changed Altaf el-Kader. His office left him too busy with command to waste time profiteering.
The day came and still there was no command from Al Rhemish. He prayed once more that El Murid would forgive him for taking this on himself. Then he left his tent and crossed the river.
The Host of Illumination rolled north like a great tsunami, unexpected, unstoppable, everywhere swamping its foes. Greyfells, caught unprepared, found his rebuilt army adrift in enemy waters. War bands swarmed around it, nibbling at its extremities. He spent all his energies keeping it intact and avoiding battle with the Host. He showed his positive qualities in retreat.
Suffering inconsequential losses, el-Kader seized all the territories south of the River Porthune. Though the Scourge of God had expected that to take a season, el-Kader finished by Midsummer's Day.