In the absence of contrary instructions, smelling the blood of reeling foes, el-Kader breached that line while momentum and morale remained his allies. Some of his war bands ranged as far as the Silverbind, well within the Itaskian domain. A large force camped within sight of the city walls, and departed only when the whole garrison came out to fight. Panic swept the north. The grand alliance was within a whisper of collapse.
From the south frontier of Ipopotam to the Porthune, the west had been returned to the Empire. Only two small enclaves of resistance remained. Hawkwind's stubborn Guildsmen still directed the defense of Hellin Daimiel. El-Kader ignored the city. It could do nothing to discomfit the Host.
Of High Crag he was not so tolerant. The home and heart of the Guild had to be destroyed. The warrior brotherhood backboned the resistance in the reoccupied provinces.
Ere ever he crossed the Scarlotti, el-Kader summoned Mowaffak Hali from Ipopotam and handed the Invincible the chore of reducing High Crag. Hali accepted the task with reservations. He doubted that it could be accomplished.
Mowaffak Hali was a thorough, methodical leader. He did not hurl the remnants of the Invincibles against High Crag's ancient walls. He gathered information and men of talent, and such additional warriors as he could obtain, for a slow, systematic reduction of the fortress. He built great engines. He employed miners. He did whatever needed doing to neutralize his opponents' advantages.
He might have succeeded had events elsewhere not compelled him to abandon the siege.
Far to the north, el-Kader had the misfortune to, at last, catch the elusive Greyfells.
The nearest town, Liston, gave the battle its name. The engagement was unusual. El-Kader amassed heavy cavalry for the first time in the Host's history. And Greyfells abjured the traditional western use of knights. Once el-Kader closed his trap and battle became unavoidable, the Duke ordered his horsemen to fight afoot.
Greyfells made his stand on the face and top of a rocky hill flanked by woods, with his pikemen and knights massed before his archers. The bowmen of Itaskia were renowned, and in this engagement justified their fame. While the pikemen, supported by disgruntled noblemen, valiantly absorbed charge after charge, the archers darkened the sky with arrows.
Had el-Kader not grown over-optimistic, had he not been overconfident, had he listened to his advisers and waited a few days till the whole of the Host had gathered, he would have obliterated the northern might. Liston would have been the battle memoralized as ending the resistance to El Murid's Second Empire.
But he did not wait, and he did not try getting behind his enemies. And still he came within a gnat's eyebrow of success. In the end, he simply ran out of ready bow-fodder before his foes collapsed completely.
Greyfells had the advantage of him in that his troops believed that they had nowhere to run. They believed they had to win or perish. And win they did-in the sense that they compelled el-Kader to withdraw.
The importance of Liston could be weighed only in its effects on the hearts and minds of men. The number of dead on the field was of no consequence. That Greyfells could do nothing but lick his wounds afterward meant little. That el-Kader had not committed his whole strength was overlooked everywhere.
The Host of Illumination had been turned.
Western armiescould withstand its onslaught. El Mu-ridcould be stopped.
The effect was magical. Enemies sprang from the earth. Some of el-Kader's allies changed sides again. Resistance stiffened everywhere.
El-Kader coped first by withdrawing across the Porthune, then by summoning every man he could from the south. The siege of High Crag, a project he cherished, he ordered abandoned. He drew strength away from Hellin Daimiel and the captains pursuing the growing guerrilla forces in the southern Lesser Kingdoms.
The summer campaign was in danger of collapse. He had to scatter his strength, flinging lesser armies here and there to stamp out sudden brushfires of resistance. He could not seize the breathing time to rejuvenate the Host and lead it in a grand, finishing surge northward, though he knew the Itaskians could no longer stop such a thrust.
Bin Yousif's Royalists were no help. They had adopted the tactics developed by the Scourge of God in the days when the Kingdom of Peace had been but a dream. There were thousands of Royalists now. They and their Guild allies were keeping the provinces in turmoil. Their raids were becoming ever more widespread, like the growth of a cancer.
There was a bright side to the summer. El Nadim and the armies of the east, receiving no instructions from Al Rhemish either, abandoned their futile siege of the Savernake Gap and turned their attention to the Empire's old provinces behind the Mountains of M'Hand. El Nadim integrated Throyes into the New Empire. He forced pledges of fealty from old eastern tributaries as remote as Argon and Necremnos. His legates collected caravans of tribute and battalions of mercenaries. His missionaries carried the Truth to the masses, and were well received.
El Nadim's successes amazed the Faithful. He was the least regarded of the generals Nassef had created. Now, suddenly, with only a few thousand men actually of Hammad al Nakir, with almost no fighting, he had recovered territories more vast than the whole west.
Some whispered that el Nadim had been successful because he was a true believer, because he followed El Murid's teachings in handling his foes. There were those who said that el-Kader's troubles were the Lord's punishment for associating with profiteers.
El-Kader ignored the whispers. El Nadim's successes pleased him. The tribute of the east could be used in the west. Two summers of fighting had left a lot of desolation.
He, too, was applying El Murid's precepts-to the extent that they won favor amongst the populations of the recovered provinces.
He drove his warriors and allies hard, extinguishing any resistance he could identify. He recovered several bridgeheads across the Porthune, but the enemy regained a couple below the river. Both sides retained isolated pockets within the other's territory. Their smaller allies remained evanescent in their loyalties, shifting allegiances with each breath of fortune.
Winter, the season of peace, set in. It became the season of negotiation, the time of secret treaties and not so secret betrayals. Always there was an agent of the Itaskian Duke around, ever with an offer of double-edged treason.
And still el-Kader had received no orders from Al Rhemish.
None that he considered genuine, anyway. None signed in the Disciple's own hand.
Order did come. From someone. He ignored them. They were not from his prophet.
Nassef's death had been the signal for the formation of new cabals, for the beginning of the institutionalization of the movement. The greatest, the most praised and heroic of the revolutionaries was gone. The sedentary administrators-potential perceived a vacuum and were trying to fill it.
It was a foreshadowing of the social inevitability of all revolutions, though Altaf el-Kader could not understand.
He saw a gang of stay-at-homes isolating the Disciple and presuming to speak in his name, perverting his pure vision.
He knew a cure.
He had a few words with Mowaffak Hali, a man he did not like but who possessed the specific for this disease. Hali agreed. Something had to be done.
Hali bore el-Kader no love either, but in this they had to be allies. He gathered a few tattooed white robes and rode for the capital.
He was shocked by what he found. The Disciple was a ghost of a man, drained, without spirit. His struggle with the evil within him was consuming him.
Mowaffak spent one afternoon with the master he loved, then went into the desert and wept. Then he instructed the Harish and returned to the west. He redoubled his prayers on behalf of the man who had been, in hopes he would be again.
The third summer of fighting began like the second, with el-Kader trying to avoid his old mistakes. He began by making big gains, but bogged down just thirty miles from the Silverbind and Itaskia the City. For four grim months he maneuvered, met the enemy, maneuver
ed, and skirmished in an area of barely a hundred square miles. Greyfells had spent the winter preparing, screening the approaches to Itaskia and the Great Bridge with countless obstacles and redoubts. El-Kader could not break through.
It was some of the bitterest, most sustained, deadly and unimaginative fighting ever. The Duke pursued no higher purpose than stalling el-Kader. Defeating him would have obliterated any chance of profiting from the threat to Itaskia.
El-Kader strove to bleed the north till it could no longer withstand him.
Both generals spent lives profligately, though the Duke was the worst. A worried king resided less than a dozen leagues away, and willingly raised fresh levies.
El-Kader's failing was an inability to adjust to the changed nature of his army. He was a desert captain, born to the warfare of the wastelands. But the Host was no longer a horde of nomadic horsemen, riding like the wind, striking where it would, then melting away. That element remained, but in this third summer more than half the troops were westerners whose lack of mobility el-Kader abhorred and whose tactics he could not entirely encompass.
He considered throwing the known quantity of his countrymen like chaff into the wind, to let the breezes carry them where they would, behind Greyfells and along the banks of the Silverbind. But he did not. He did not trust his allies, and the defeat at Liston still haunted him.
So he endured four months of attrition, and, if gravemarkers were the totalizers of success, he was winning. But the Great Bridge seemed to arch into a bottomless pool of replacement battalions.
It was a pity that he had lost touch with Nassef's spy networks. The news of political conditions north of the Silverbind would have heartened him. Itaskia's peasantry were on the verge of revolt. The nobility were demanding Greyfells' recall. Bankers were threatening to call in their loans to the Crown. Merchants were howling about the interruption of overland trade. City dwellers were angry about rising food costs caused by exports to Hellin Daimiel and reduced production due to conscription of peasants into the replacement levies. Fathers and mothers were bitter about the losses of their sons.
Itaskia was as taut as a bowstring stretched till it was about to snap. El-Kader needed to give just the right nudge.
His choice of campaign style was an error. By letting the Duke set the standard of battle he had permitted himself to be diverted from his strength to a form of warfare he did not understand.
Then, as autumn approached, he made every soldier's most dreaded mistake.
He stepped into the shadow of the outstretched left hand of Fate.
He was doing what needed doing, directing an attack against a stubborn earth and log redoubt, when a random arrow struck his mount in the eye. The animal threw him, trampled him, and dragged him. Altaf el-Kader was a stubborn man. He held on for four days before finally yielding to the Dark Lady's charms.
His passing broke the will of an already dispirited army. Bits and pieces broke away. The most fanatic Faithful were dismayed.
The wrath of the Lord was upon them, and their hearts were filled with despair.
The Host was an eager, conquering horde no more. It had become a huge mob of war-weary men.
Mowaffak Hali assumed command, after riding all the way from Al Rhemish. He bore the mandate of the Disciple himself. But he arrived only after a chaotic, month-long interregnum.
He found the Host in disarray, dissolving, retreating, its captains squabbling amongst themselves instead of fighting the enemy.
He summoned a council. A Harish kill-dagger thrust into a balk of oak formed an intimidating centerpiece for the meeting. Hali spoke. He brooked no questions.
He told them he would be a hard taskmaster. He told them they were going to turn the campaign around. He told them he would have no patience with defeatism or failure. He told them that the Lord was with them even in their hour of despair, for he had descended upon the Most Holy Mrazkim Shrines and the Disciple and had renewed his pledge to the Faithful. He told them to keep their mouths shut, to listen, and to do what they were told when they were told. He caressed the kill-dagger with each of his directives, and each time that silver blade glowed a gentle blue.
He got his message across.
Methodically, Hali studied the situation and took hold of its problems. Systematically, he carved off chunks of northern strength and obliterated them. He was not a man of inspiration like Altaf el-Kader. He was no genius like Nassef el Habib. He was, simply, a determined workman. He knew his tools. He knew their limits and his own. He strained both. Animated by his will, the Host stopped, ceased falling apart and brought the enemy to a halt on the Porthune.
Winter came once more.
El Murid attained his victory over the demon within him. It was a long, grueling battle. Esmat served as his eyes and ears in the world. The physician screened his master from anything even mildly disturbing.
Even after El Murid recovered, Esmat confined outside news to the huge irrigation project El Murid had ordered begun before going into seclusion.
The drive had gone out of the Hand of the Lord on Earth. He knew the physician was intriguing, but did not protest. Hewanted to escape his role as Disciple, and Esmat had deprived him of his chemical escape...
He told himself he could quash Esmat's ambitions whenever he wanted.
He knew the movement would suffer during his absence. The Al Rhemish factions would play at a hundred intrigues, trying to push into the power vacuum, perhaps even attempting to suborn the generals in the field...
He could not bring himself to care. With Yasmid gone, and no news of her fate... He did not have much to live for anymore.
One man kept the Faith. One man kept the schemes and intrigues from becoming a gangrenous wound in the movement's corpus. One man battled and controlled the forces of devolution. Mowaffak Hali, Master of Assassins.
Hali did not like Esmat, but he did trust the physician. More than he should have. When Esmat said the Disciple was still fighting his addiction, Hali took his word. He would preserve the movement while it awaited the return of its prophet.
He did much of his waiting in Al Rhemish, in a big white tent from which grim-faced, fiery-eyed men ventured with silver daggers next to their hearts. The daggers had a habit of finding the hearts of the more dangerous conspirators.
Even the least of men shrank from the Invincible when they encountered him in the street. Esmat was terrified of him.
El Murid spent all his time sequestered in a vast suite hidden deep in the Shrines. He had had Esmat assemble a dozen tables in what once had been the priest' dining hall. He had shoved them together and covered them with maps and crude models reflecting northern Hammad al Nakir. Upon that vast board he planned his dream reconstruction.
He could wander round for hours, making marks, shuffling models, building his vision of the desert's tomorrow. Citrus groves. Lakes. Renewed forests. All to be created with the water that western prisoners were canaling down from the Kapenrung snows.
It was the day that el-Kader fell. His amulet began vibrating. It became hot. He cried out in surprise and pain. The jewel's glow intensified. Then it flashed so brightly that for a time he was blind.
A voice thundered through the Shrines: "Micah al Rhami, son of Sidi, that was named El Murid by mine angel, where art thou?"
The Disciple collapsed, burying his face in his arms. For a moment he could do nothing but shake in fear. Then, "Here, O Lord of Hosts." His voice was a tiny mouse squeak.
"Why hast thou forsaken me, Chosen of the Lord? Why hast thou abandoned me in the forenoon of mine triumph? Why dost thou lie in indolence, surrounding thyself with the wealth of nations?"
The fear ground him down. He grovelled and whimpered like a puppy at the feet of a cruel master. The voice boomed on, chastising him for his sloth, self-pity, and self-indulgence. He could not force a word of rebuttal past the whiteness of his lips.
"Rise up, Micah al Rhami. Rise up and become El Murid once more. Shed thy robe of ungodliness and
minister to the Chosen once more. The Kingdom of Peace doth lie in great peril. Thy servant el-Kader hath been slain."
Five minutes passed before El Murid dared peep out of the shelter of his arms.
The light was gone. The voice had departed. His amulet had returned to normal. His wrist was an angry red. It ached.
He rose, looked around. He was badly shaken. The first time he called out his voice cracked. It was the mouse voice again.
Then the mouse roared. "Esmat!"
A terrified Esmat appeared instantly. His furtive gaze darted from shadow to shadow.
"Esmat, tell me the situation in the provinces."
"Lord... "
"Did you see a light, Esmat? Did you hear a voice?"
"I heard a thundering, Lord. I saw lightning."
"You heard the voice of the Lord of Thunders telling me I was failing Him. You heard Him setting my feet on the Path once more. Tell me what I need to know, Esmat."
The physician started talking.
"Thank you," El Murid said when he finished. "It's worse than I thought. No wonder the Lord is vexed. Where is Mowaffak Hali these days?"
"He's in the city at the moment, Lord."
"Bring him. I need him to take command of the Host."
Esmat was puzzled, but asked no questions. He went for Hali, and as he walked told his friends what had happened in the Shrines. Few were pleased.
The news of el-Kader's passing reached Al Rhemish eleven days after Hali's departure. The Disciple's foreknowledge further dismayed those who had been profiting from his seclusion.
Three weeks later El Murid changed his mind. "Esmat, find me a messenger. I want to move el Nadim west. He's finished in the east, and I need Hali here."
"As you command, Lord." Esmat left looking pale. It looked like the profitable days were done.
El Murid did not rush Hali's recall. The threat of the man's return was enough to purge Al Rhemish of parasites. Nor did he hasten el Nadim's transfer. El Nadim and his strength would not be needed till spring.