noise.”
The Wahlig’s horsemen had ridden out at nightfall, several hours earlier, in hopes of scouring the area of enemy spies. Now the main column was under way. The Guildsmen would guard its rear. The Wahlig hoped his getaway would not be noticed till he could not be overhauled.
“Ragnarson.”
Bragi faced Lieutenant Sanguinet. “Sir?”
“Too much noise from your crowd. Tell Kildragon to keep it down or I’ll leave him for the jackals.”
“Yes sir. I’ll gag him if I have to, sir.”
That should have been it. But Sanguinet remained rooted, staring. Bragi began to wilt. Once the man finally did leave, Bragi told Haaken, “He knows. He has to pretend he don’t on account of if he doesn’t he’ll have to do something about it. Even if we did save the Wahlig’s kid. We’re going to be walking on eggs. He’ll be looking to get us on something else. Reskird, you better pretend you never learned to run your mouth.”
“What did I do? I just said what everybody is thinking.”
“Everybody else has sense enough to keep it to themselves. Let’s move out.” Bragi left el Aswad and never looked back. A glance over his shoulder would have been a glance into his past, and he did not want to rue his decision to enlist. A fool’s decision, that, but he was here now, and he was of that stubborn sort which insists on enduring the consequences of its acts.
Looking ahead, he saw nothing promising. He expected to shed his life’s blood somewhere on the sand of this savage, alien, incomprehensible land.
Haroun did look back. He had no choice. The litter he rode, despite insisting he could ride a horse, faced the castle.
He wept. He had known no other home, and was certain he’d never see it again. He wept for his father and Fuad, for whom el Aswad meant even more. He wept for all the valiant ancestors who had held the Eastern Fortress, never yielding in their trust. And he wept for the future, intimations of which had begun to reach him already.
Megelin joined him, and walked beside him, sharing a silence no words could give more meaning.
Before dawn arrived the column vanished into the Great Erg, unmarked by a single unfriendly eye.
Chapter Thirteen
Angel
Stunned by unexpected shifts of fortune, El Murid retreated into his fastness in Sebil el Selib. He did but one thing before further retreating into the fastnesses of his mind: he summoned Nassef from the Throyen front. He did so in a message sufficiently strong that it would be subject to no misinterpretation. Nassef must appear or face the wrath of the Harish.
Nassef made record time, urged on more by the Disciple’s tone than by what he actually said. He feared El Murid might fall apart. He was not reassured when he arrived. His brother-in-law acted as if he did not exist.
For six days the Disciple sat on the Malachite Throne and ignored everyone. He drank little and ate less while venturing deep into labyrinths of self. Both Nassef and Meryem became deeply disturbed.
Nassef. Cynical Nassef. Unbelieving Nassef. He was half the problem. He was an infidel in the service of the Lord. El Murid prayed that his God forgive him for compromising. He should have shed the man a decade ago. But there was Meryem to reckon with, and there was Nassef’s unmatched skill as a general. And, finally, there was the grim chance that some of the Invincibles now felt more loyal to their commander than to their prophet. It had been a mistake to hand them over to Nassef.
But the heretics within would have to wait till he had cast down the foes of the Lord without.
But Nassef... He took bribes from Royalists willing to buy their lives. He sold pardons. He appropriated properties for himself and his henchmen. He was building a personal following. If only indirectly, he was suborning the Movement. Someday he might try to grab it all. Nassef was the Evil One’s Disciple within the Lord’s camp.
But no spiritual malaise had driven El Murid into the wasteland of his soul. No. Nor was it so much the debacle before the Eastern Fortress. That hadn’t proven as bad a defeat as it had seemed at the time. The enemy had loafed at the pursuit, fearing another ambush. The cause of his inturning was the decampment of the Wahlig of el Aswad.
It had come too suddenly, and was too out of character. The man was a sticker, a fighter, not a runner. Flight made no sense after his having resisted so bitterly for so long.
Yousif’s withdrawal left the Disciple without focus. His plans, for so long, had been thwarted by one man’s stubbornness, that he had given up looking beyond Yousif’s defeat. He did not know what to do.
Yousif was gone, but he remained foremost in El Murid’s mind. Why had he gone? What did he know? Finally, the Disciple summoned Nassef and put the question.
“I don’t know,” Nassef replied. “I’ve interviewed el Nadim and Hali repeatedly. I’ve talked to most of the men. I’ve lost a week’s sleep over it. And I can’t tell you a thing. Aboud certainly didn’t summon him. Nothing is happening at Al Rhemish.” Nothing that transpired in the capital escaped Nassef. He had an agent in the Royal tent itself.
“Then he knows only what we do,” El Murid mused. “What fact is he interpreting differently?”
“That foreign devil Radetic is behind it.”
“Perhaps. The outland idolaters must hate me. They must sense the hand of God upon me. They must feel, in His wrath, the knowledge that I shall be the instrument of their chastisement. They are the slaves of the Evil One, struggling to prolong his sway over their wicked kingdoms.”
Was that a suppressed smirk on Nassef’s lips?
“Papa?”
