Few of these horsemen had faced the arrowstorms so often seen in the north. They received a rude shock.
Every man of Ragnarson's carried a bow. The pikemen and swordsmen of his front ranks loosed several shafts apiece before hefting their weapons and bracing to receive the charge. The regular archers never slackened fire. These infantrymen had borne the charge of el Nadim's cavalry and had survived. They had confidence in themselves and their officers. They faced the human tidal wave without losing their courage.
The Host left thousands dead on that hillside and countless more heaped before the trenches. The pikemen fended them off while the archers plinked. Yet the impetus of the attack was so massive, Ragnarson's front began to sag. It seemed the surviving horsemen might yet carry the day.
He committed his small reserve, ran back and forth behind the line cursing his bowmen for not shattering the attack.
For half an hour it hung in the balance. Then, here, there, a few of the enemy began to slip away. The larger mass, almost entirely unhorsed after Ragnarson had ordered his bowmen to redirect their fire against the animals, began to give ground. Ragnarson ordered his wings forward to give the impression he meant to encircle.
Panic hit the enemy. They blew away like smoke on the wind.
"That was close," Bragi muttered. His men were exhausted but he had no mercy. "Sort out the wounded and get them up to the ruins," he ordered. "Archers, get down the hill and recover arrows. Move it! Come on, move it! Officers, I want to form for the advance. We've got to challenge them before they get their balance."
He had drums pound out the message of his coming. He had his men beat their shields with their swords. He hoped nerves in the Host would be so frayed his enemies would scatter.
El Murid had other ideas. He detached men from the assault on Libiannin and sent them to reorganize the survivors of the first wave for a second attack.
Ragnarson did to that second wave what he had done to the first, more thoroughly. The horsemen were less enthusiastic about facing the arrowstorm. They took longer reaching his pikemen and as a consequence suffered more from the blizzard of shafts. The enemy coming up afoot never closed with Ragnarson's line.
More drums. More shield banging. And again El Murid did not bluff. He pulled all his men away from the city.
This time he spearheaded the attack himself, pounding the hill with bolts of lightning called from the cloudless sky.
Ragnarson was proud of his soldiers. They did not let the sorcery panic them. They took cover and tried to hold their ground. When compelled to fall back they did so with discipline, fading toward the ruin.
They wrought incredible carnage while their arrows lasted. But this time the supply ran dry.
Bragi heard a distant whinny and sudden pounding of hooves. The Disciple's men had captured his mounts. "Looks like I miscalculated this time, don't it?" he told one of his officers.
"You're damned calm about it, Colonel."
Surprised, he realized he was calm. Even with the lightning stalking about. "Get back into the ruins. They'll have to come after us on foot. They're no good on the ground."
He ran hither and thither, establishing his companies amidst the tumbled stone. The majority of the foe were hanging back letting their prophet hammer the hill. El Murid was not much of a sharpshooter. Satisfied with his new dispositions, Bragi climbed to the ruin's highest point and stared toward the city. "All right, Haroun. This is your big chance."
Haroun surveyed his men. Their mounts pranced as if eager to be off to the fray. The warriors wore grins. They could not believe their good fortune. An absolute certainty of destruction had turned into a chance for escape.
"How soon, Lord?" Shadek asked.
Haroun peered at the hill. Ragnarson was in bad trouble. "A few minutes yet. Let a few hundred more dismount." He considered the street below. Beloul had finished passing along the line, vigorously pointing out that there was to be no run for freedom while El Murid's back was turned. They were to jump the Disciple from behind.
The more Beloul talked the fewer were the grins.
"Now, Shadek. Take the left wing. Beloul will go to the right."
"I'm thinking we ought to head east, then north, as hard as we can ride."
"What about our friends?"
El Senoussi shrugged.
"Who was it said something about people sticking? Sometimes I wonder how much I dare lean on you myself, Shadek."
"Lord!"
"The left wing, Shadek. Go after them as hard as you can, as long as you can. Let's not let El Murid duck the Dark Lady again."
"Suppose he won't letyou duck?"
"Shadek."
"As you command, Lord."
Haroun led them out, spread them out and trotted them toward Ragnarson's hill. His coming was not wholly unanticipated. Many of the Disciple's horsemen came to meet him.
The lines crashed. Horses reared and screamed. Men shouted war- and death-cries. Lances cracked, swords clanged, shields whumped to the impact of savage blows. Dust rose till it choked the combatants, coating their colorful clothing a uniform ochre. And the Disciple's horsemen gave way.
Haroun howled and wailed, urging his men to finish it for once and all. His blood was up. He never thought to appeal to his people with arguments more convincing than love for their King. What matter to him that one man's death would mean they could return to loved ones unseen for years?He had no loved ones waiting in Hammad al Nakir. What matter that the passing of El Murid would permit their escape from sad roles as unwanted strangers in lands with grotesque customs?He was a stranger everywhere.
For Haroun-and Beloul-home was the hunt for the hated foe. Family were the men who shared the stalk.
A hand of fear passed over the battlefield. Its shadow fell heaviest upon the Chosen.
Haroun crowed and whipped his men forward.
The enemy broke and flew away like autumn leaves scattering in a sudden cold wind.
Beloul and Shadek drove their wings forward. Haroun, wounded, kept pointing with his blade and cursing his men because they would not hurry.
Spears of lightning fell upon the battleground, failing to discriminate among targets. Horsemen pelted away from every point of impact.
Haroun tried to locate the Disciple. He descried a large band of Invincibles, but could not determine if El Murid were amongst them. He tried to force his way closer.
More and more of the Disciple's horsemen fled. Some flew eastward, toward Hammad al Nakir. Some galloped across the narrow plain and got inside Libiannin's undefended wall.
The fighting rolled this way and that, up and down Ragnarson's hill. All order vanished. Immense confusion set in. The dust made it difficult to distinguish friend from foe. Neither side could guess who might be winning. But the longer it went on, the more the once stout members of the Host chose the better part of valor.
Late in the afternoon the big band of Invincibles lost their nerve. They scattered. The morale of the Host collapsed. It dissolved in minutes.
"Enough," Haroun told Beloul, who wanted to give chase. "We got out alive. That's enough." He dismounted with exaggerated care. His legs quaked with weariness and reaction. He lowered himself to the earth and began cataloging his injuries.
Twenty minutes later Ragnarson limped down the hill. He was covered with gore. Some was his own. He rolled a corpse aside, seated himself on the trampled earth, loosed a weary sigh. "I'm going to be too stiff to move for a week. If they come back... "
"They won't," Haroun promised. "They're going home. They've had enough. This was the last battle." Despair shadowed the corners of his soul. "The last battle. And the desert is still theirs." The groans and cries of wounded men nearly drowned his soft, sad voice. "I should have seen it before."
"What?"
"It will take more than killing El Murid to recover Hammad al Nakir."
He stared down the hill. The fallen lay in mounds and windrows, as though a big, wild tornado had slapped down in the midst o
f a parade. People from Libiannin were hurrying toward the field to join the looting. "Beloul, run those people off. You needn't be polite about it." A handful of Royalists, apparently with energy to spare, were working the dead already.
Haroun turned to Ragnarson. "My friend... My friend. What are you doing here? Sir Tury had more room to refuse than you did."
Ragnarson wrapped his arms around his knees, rested his right cheek atop them. "What orders? This ismy army." He tried to smile. It was too much work. "I'm my own man now."
The setting sun painted the seaward sky a fitting shade of blood. A cool breeze came off the water. Bold gulls drifted inland, curiosities aroused by the gathering ravens.
"They wouldn't be too harsh with you," Haroun guessed. "You won. Winners are easily forgiven."
"I don't want to go back. I wasn't born to be a soldier. Not the Guild type, anyway."
"What, then, my friend?"
"I don't know. Not right now. There'll be something. What about you?"
Haroun glanced at Shadek, at Beloul returning across the field of death. "There's an usurper on the Peacock Throne." A vast weariness entered his voice. He was tired unto death, and still the ghosts whispered in his ears. His father, Yousif, to his right, his uncle, Fuad, to his left. Contested by Megelin Radetic. "Still an usurper."
"There's one in my homeland too. The way I figure it, time and his own stupidity will take care of him."
"I'm not made for waiting."
Ragnarson shrugged. "It's your life. What ever happened to the fat guy? He was weird, but I liked him."
"Mocker? I thought he was with you."
"I haven't seen him since we split up. I figured he went with you."
"Curious."
"Maybe he headed east. He talked about it enough."
"He talked about everything. Probably somebody finally stuck a knife in him."
Ragnarson shrugged again.
Below, the groans and cries continued. More of their men were finding the ambition to search the dead.
Chapter Twenty-Three:
GOING HOME
El Murid flung both hands skyward, beseeching another bolt from the firmament. He was half-mad with frustration. The bandit Royalists were not overawed by his power.
The blow felt like a hammer stroke against his ribs. He felt bone crack. A whine ripped through his lips. The earth hurtled up. He tried to reach, to soften his fall. One arm would not respond. He hit the ground hard. His bodyguards wailed in dismay.
As consciousness faded he heard hooves racing away. He cracked one eyelid and watched his Invincibles flee.
The darkness came.
And the darkness went away.
A foot pushed against his ribs, rolled him over. A scream boiled in his throat. He swallowed it, did not breathe while the warrior went through his clothing. The man cursed him. He carried no wealth upon his person.
The warrior's eves brightened when he discovered the amulet. He removed it quickly and furtively, instantly concealing it within his clothing.
The jewel had ebbed low. The looter never noted its weak gleam.
El Murid confined his curses to his heart. The choice was the amulet or life. That was no choice.
A second warrior called, "You find anything?"
"Two lousy pieces of silver and a handful of copper. These guys are poorer than we are. This one's got decent boots, though. Look like they might fit."
The Disciple ground his teeth while the man yanked his boots from his feet.
The second warrior joined the first. "I found one of those silver kill-daggers. That ought to be worth something."
"Yeah? Let me see."
"Like hell."
"All right. All right. Hey, this one has a pretty fine sword here."
"Better than that nicked up hunk of Itaskian tin you're carrying."
El Murid wanted to laugh. The weapon had been given him in Dunno Scuttari only days ago. He'd never had it out of its scabbard. There was something ironic in that.
Even more ironic, he concluded after the warriors moved on, was the fact that his enemies were making no effort to learn if he were among the fallen. He did not understand their political apathy. They had him at their mercy.
How ironic it would be, too, if he were slain simply because he were found alive, with his killer never realizing the importance of the deathblow he dealt.
Darkness took the field into its arms. For a time, the more ambitious Royalists plundered by torchlight but eventually even the greediest opted for sleep.
The battlefield grew still and silent. El Murid waited. The pain kept him awake. When he was certain he would not give himself away, he began dragging himself from the field.
He had gone no more than a dozen yards when he came upon his physician. "Oh, Esmat. What have you done? I thought you were one of the immortals and here you've abandoned me. My old friend. My last friend. Lying here for the ravens. It's cruel. All I can do is raise a stele for you."
Someone or something stirred a short way down the slope. El Murid froze. He did not move for a long time.
Somehow, the plunderers had overlooked Esmat's bag. He took it with him when he resumed dragging himself from the field. When he felt safer he crawled to a tree and used it to pull himself to his feet. He began stumbling eastward by the light of a crescent moon, his feet bleeding. Twice he paused to draw strength from the medicines in Esmat's bag.
Near dawn he encountered a riderless horse. He caught and calmed the beast and dragged himself into the saddle. He walked his new mount eastward.
Two weeks of agony brought him to the Sahel, where he fell into the arms of devoted followers. They nursed him and eventually carried him back to Al Rhemish where he secluded himself in the Most Holy Mrazkim Shrines.
His high ambitions had died their final death.
The Royalist warrior who plundered the Disciple's amulet sold it to a goldsmith in Libiannin after the Chosen there withdrew. The goldsmith in turn sold it to a woman of quality returning south to reclaim family estates near Simballawein. She had had the amulet for two months when it came to sudden life, cursing in a foreign tongue. Terrified, certain the thing was some dread sorcerer's toy that had been fobbed off on her by a dishonest artisan, she had her servants hurl it into a deep well. The well she ordered filled with earth and planted over.
So El Murid's amulet vanished from the earth, to the bafflement of historians, the Faithful and, most of all, of him who had presented it to the Disciple.
The magic had gone out of El Murid's Movement. Literally.
Chapter Twenty-Four:
REVELATION
The fat man was never more circumspect. He traversed an inhospitable land infested by piratical deserters from both the Itaskian army and Host of Illumination. These renegades preyed on everyone. The locals therefore greeted any stranger with violence, fearing he might be scouting for one of the bands.
Disorder held sway from the Scarlotti north to the Silverbind. He had survived that chaos. He had evaded misfortune week after week, making his way toward Portsmouth where the remnants of el Nadim's army yet awaited the Disciple's command.
"Self, am cast-iron fool," he berated himself at one juncture, forty miles from his destination. "Should be bound for easternmost east. Should be headed for lands where good sense is rule rather than exception, where man of skill and genius would have half chance to prosper."
His talents were wasted on this mad country. Its people were too damned suspicious and too impoverished. The to and fro of armies had destroyed tens of thousands of farms. Plunderers had carried off any wealth that had existed there. The natives had to scratch and fight to survive.
He was losing weight. Hunger was a monster trying to gnaw its way out of his guts. And he had no props with which to ply his trade even had he been able to gather the marks. He had had no time, and no money, to assemble a new inventory.
He never stopped asking himself what he was doing in this mad country, and still he went on. He had
to get close to the eastern army. He had toknow. He could not go on wondering if Sajac were out there somewhere, stumbling along on his backtrail, closing in for the kill.
That need to know had become an obsession. It drove him more mercilessly than any slavemaster's whip.
For the first time in his life he fell into the habit of introspection, trying to discoverwhy this was so important to him. He encountered the shadowed reaches of his soul and recoiled. He dared not believe that such darknesses existed within him. He found his love-hatred for the old man the most repulsive monster hidden there. He wanted to be possessed of no feelings for Sajac at all. He wanted to be able to exterminate the old man like the louse he was-if he still existed.
He did not want to care about anybody but Mocker.
Yet he did care, not only about Sajac but about the friends he had made during his wartime adventures. He had grown fond of Haroun and Bragi, both of whom had treated him well and who had been understanding about his constant making an ass of himself.
Often, late in the night, he would waken and find himself afraid. It was not a mortal fear, a fear of this enemy land, nor was it a dread of specific enemies. It was a fear of having no more cause and no more friends and being totally alone.
He did not like that fear. It did not fit his image of himself as a man at war with the universe, beating it again and again by acuteness of wit. He did not want to be dependent on anyone, especially not emotionally.
He began to hear news of the eastern army as he neared Portsmouth. That last remnant of El Murid's might was preparing for a homeward march. An Itaskian force was camped outside the city ready to assume control when the easterners departed.
News was always a few days old. He lengthened his stride. He did not want to arrive only to discover that his quarry had departed by another route.
His always inimical fate must have dozed off. He ran head on into one of his rare strokes of fortune. He reached the city the morning the easterners departed. He ensconced himself on a rooftop for four long hours, reviewing the Host.
Nowhere did he see a blind old man.