“We’ll have to fight him there,” Nassef told El Murid. “There’s no choice. We can’t get to Al Rhemish without watering there. This is what he’s been waiting for all these years. The chance to get us into a conventional battle. It looks like he wants that chance so badly that he doesn’t care about the numbers.”
“Give him what he wants. Let’s rid ourselves of him once and for all.”
Nassef guessed right most of the time. But he had erred in calling in all of El Murid’s supporters. By so doing he stripped the desert of his sources of intelligence. He and El Murid would not learn the truth about Yousif’s stand till it was too late.
Nassef selected twenty thousand men. El Murid took twenty-five hundred Invincibles. They left a substantial force to defend the pass in their absence.
It was a morning many days after departure. The sun hung low in the east. They moved up on the waterhole by Wadi el Kuf.
The wadi was a shallow, broad valley a mile and a half east of the waterhole. It was filled with bizarre natural formations. It was the wildest badland in all Hammad al Nakir.
Nassef and El Murid raised the Lord’s standard atop a low hill a mile south of the oasis, and an equal distance from the wadi. They studied the enemy, who was waiting on horseback.
“They don’t seem impressed by our numbers,” Nassef observed.
“What do you suggest?”
“It seems straightforward. Hold the Invincibles here, in reserve. Send the rest in one wave and overwhelm them.”
“This is a strange land, Nassef. It’s so silent.”
The stillness did seem supernatural. Thirty thousand men and nearly as many animals faced one another, and even the flies were quiet.
El Murid glanced at the wadi. It was a shadowy forest of grotesque sandstone formations: steeples, pylons, giant dumbbells standing on end. He shuddered as he considered that devil’s playground.
“We’re ready,” Nassef said.
“Go ahead.”
Nassef turned to Karim, el-Kader and the others. “On my signal.”
His captains trotted their horses down to the divisions they commanded.
Nassef gave his signal.
The horde surged forward.
Yousif’s men waited without moving. They had arrows ready on the strings of their saddle bows.
“Something’s wrong,” the Scourge of God muttered. “I can feel it.”
“Nassef?” El Murid queried in a voice gone small and tentative. “Do you hear drums?”
“It’s the hoofbeats....”
El Murid did hear drums. “Nassef!” His right arm stabbed out like a javelin thrust.
The devil’s garden of Wadi el Kuf had begun to disgorge a demon horde.
“Oh, my God!” Nassef moaned. “My God, no.”
King Aboud had harkened to Yousif’s importunities at last. He had sent Prince Farid to Wadi el Kuf with five thousand of the desert’s finest soldiers, many of them equipped after the fashion of western knights. With Farid, in tactical command, was Sir Tury Hawkwind of the Mercenary’s Guild. Hawkwind had brought a thousand of his brethren. They were arrayed in western-style lances of a heavy cavalryman, his esquire, two light and one heavy infantrymen.
Nassef had time to think, to react. Heavy cavalry could not charge at breakneck speed across a mile of desert and up a slight hill. And Hawkwind obviously meant to bring his shock power to bear.
“What do we do?” El Murid asked.
“I think it’s time for the amulet,” Nassef replied. “That’s the only weapon that will help now.”
El Murid raised his arm. Without a word he showed Nassef his naked wrist.
“Where the hell is it?” Nassef demanded.
Softly, “At Sebil el Selib. I left it. I was so excited about coming, I forgot it.” He had not worn the amulet for years, preferring to keep it safe within the shrines.
Nassef sighed, shook his head wearily. “Lord, choose a company of Invincibles and flee. I’ll buy you all the time I can.”
“Flee? Are you mad?”
“This battle is lost, Lord. All that remains is to salvage as much as we can. Don’t stay, and deprive the movement of its reason for existing.”
El Murid shook his head stubbornly. “I see no defeat. Only more trouble than we anticipated originally. We still outnumber them, Nassef. And no matter what, I won’t leave the field while men are dying for me. Not when they have it in their hearts that I am commanding them. What would they think of my courage?”
Nassef shrugged. “We can but die with honor, then. I suggest you form the Invincibles to meet the coming charge.” A moment later, after studying the enemy banners, he murmured thoughtfully, “I wonder what Hawkwind is doing here.”
