Mage's Blood

by David Hair

  One, a captain, strolled to meet him. He had a scarred face and a world-weary air. ‘Piss off, you little shithead,’ he snapped, to a chorus of laughter.

  ‘But we have no food,’ protested Kazim, ‘and you have plenty.’

  The captain bit off a haunch of chicken and swallowed. ‘Yes, we do,’ he agreed. ‘And you don’t. Get lost, mata-chod.’

  Kazim stood his ground. He was the same height as the soldier and was bigger-built. Still, the soldier had a sword. His eyes flickered to the men behind. They were all armed and would take this man’s side in any fight. This isn’t a good idea. He backed away a little, but tried one last time. ‘Please sir – a chicken – I have rupals.’

  The captain snickered. ‘I have rupals,’ he mimicked mockingly. ‘One chicken? Okay, let’s call it one hundred rupals, shall we?’

  ‘One hundred rupals – I could buy ten chickens for that at home!’

  ‘Then go home!’ The captain turned away.

  ‘Okay, one hundred rupals.’

  The soldier smiled nastily. ‘Price has gone up. It’s two hundred now.’

  Kazim glared angrily, while his stomach wept at the smell of the roasting birds. ‘Okay. Two hundred.’

  The captain pulled a spitted chicken out of a fire and held it out. ‘Money first,’ he said, waving the chicken as if teasing a pet dog. Kazim fought to keep his temper in check. He held out the money, all he had, the captain snatched it, then dropped the chicken to the dirt. As Kazim instinctively dived for it, Jai yelled, ‘Kaz—’

  The captain’s boot crunched into his jaw and light burst inside his skull. He felt himself fly head-over-heels, backwards into an empty nothingness.

  When Kazim came to, his jaw was throbbing, but it didn’t feel like it was broken. He opened his and looked around dazedly. Jai was hunched over him. It can only have been a few seconds, because the captain was still standing over him, laughing. Kazim glared back, memorising his face.

  ‘Come on,’ hissed Jai. He was holding the dirty chicken. The scuffle had brought onlookers, ragged men who were staring at the chicken.

  Kazim spotted a broken stick lying in an open fire and grabbed it, then got unsteadily to his feet. ‘Stay behind me,’ he hissed at Jai, and walked forward determinedly. The first person to try me gets this stick in the face. But no one did; they just parted and let them through, gazing hungrily after them. They split the chicken with Haroun, but Kazim was careful to take the biggest portion. I’m the warrior here, he told himself. I have to stay strong.

  For the next six days all they had to eat was a little bread they’d begged from nearby farms. The soldiers drew their swords when approached. Someone created a Dom-al’Ahm from old bricks, only a waist-high thing, with pots for domes, where Haroun and other scholars led prayers. They prayed for victory over the infidel, but it was the prayers for food that became louder and louder.

  Then the wagons began to arrive. Initially there were just three wagons a day to feed eight thousand men, and eighty per cent of them failed to get anything to eat that first day, but gradually more supplies arrived and at last they could at least feel they were not weakening further. Desertions racked up as the winter sun baked them, and there was wild talk of storming the soldiers’ camps – but they all knew that was suicide. There was nothing to do but pray and make do, or go home.

  Finally, after another week of desperately fighting for food, the captain who’d kicked Kazim rode a horse into the midst of the camp. There were no latrine pits, and with barely enough water to drink no one could wash. Many were ill. The air stank of urine and faeces. The captain wrinkled his nose and announced that they were to march north. ‘Glory awaits!’ he shouted, his face mocking as he ran his eyes over the ragged marchers.

  ‘These are trials to test us,’ Haroun told them as they staggered to their feet. ‘Paradise was never earned without suffering.’ He had been ill for most of the past three days. His eyes were yellow.

  Moving was better than sitting. The soldiers ransacked the farms they passed, forcing the farmers to cook for the passing column, while the younger farm-women were kidnapped and raped. Any men who resisted were spitted on lances and left on the roadside. The fury that Kazim, Jai and Haroun felt mounted with each passing step. This is the shihad, they shouted inside, but words failed whenever the hard-eyed soldiers came near, seeking amusement. A thousand times Kazim thought of turning back, but Ramita was somewhere ahead, and he could not abandon her.

  Instead he focused his hatred on the soldiers, and most especially on Jamil, the one who had kicked and humiliated him. Whenever he saw Kazim he smirked and mimed eating a drumstick. The soldiers of his company revered him, but to Kazim he was Shaitan incarnate.

  He barely noticed the miles and miles of road and dust on this endless march. Diarrhoea beset them, and they squatted in rows beside the path and shat liquid. The grim humour of the other marchers sustained him, joking about bleeding feet, runny bowels and rank water. But Kazim and his friends stayed aloof from the rapes. ‘We are not animals,’ Haroun said. ‘Others might forget who they are and why we are here, but we will not.’

  Haroun talked to those around them as they walked, finding out their stories. A surprising number were converted Omali, men bereft of home and family, seeking companionship or wealth or just food. None had ever seen a Rondian, or had a personal quarrel with them – but the Infidel had stolen the Holy City, they were quick to add, so they must die. They listened dutifully to Haroun’s pious admonitions to duty, but still they stole and raped their way north remorselessly. Only big towns with active garrisons were spared, and even then there was violence.

  Everywhere they went, Kazim would ask whether an old ferang with two Lakh women had passed through, and several villages and towns remembered such a caravan, coming through more than a month before – they were probably on the other side of the Kesh desert now, an old man told him as he smoked beside a well. The oldster offered him a puff of ganja as he watched the resting marchers lying about like casualties. ‘You’re losing ground by the day, travelling with this lot,’ the old man remarked.

  ‘We’re going to fight the Rondians for you, old man,’ Kazim told him harshly

  ‘Good luck, boy. I doubt they are trembling at the prospect.’

  Kazim surveyed the prone marchers, searching for a retort, then gave up. The old bastard is probably right.

  Over the following weeks the column crawled forward, barely managing more than a few miles a day. They bypassed the northernmost cities of Kankritipur and Latakwar and instead camped beside the Sabanati River, where they bathed in the muddy water and drank their fill – only for many to come down with dysentery afterwards. Crocodiles took a few more.

  Kazim, Jai and Haroun escaped pretty much unscathed, having latched onto the supply-wagon that followed Jamil’s men, the best-fed soldiers they’d seen, and made it to the verge of the great desert in better condition than most. They were listening in as Jamil lectured his men about the desert, telling them their worst enemy would not be the raiders, but the heat, which would make their armour hot enough to boil eggs on. There was no water, so they must carry it.

  Haroun calculated that there were only one thousand water-flasks, and there were more than three thousand marchers preparing to cross, so they prepared: Kazim mugged a weak-looking fellow after dark and stole his flask, and Jai did likewise, while a dying man gave his to Haroun in return for prayers. That put them in better stead than most, but there was barely enough food for a third of their number, and the soldiers kept the weapons locked in the wagons – they would be armed in Kesh, they were told. They are wise, Kazim reflected, because if we could get blades, they would all be dead. The marchers were given no tents, uniforms or boots; only the soldiers had these.

  We’ll be lucky to ever get to Hebusalim, Kazim thought grimly, staring out over the desert, watching crows and vultures and kites circling high above. They themselves had been reduced to frying lizards and small snakes; they would have
to move if they were not going to be forced to eat the rations set aside for the crossing – but still they weren’t moving, and the reason was in plain sight: an Ingashir scout on a camel, watching them from a high rock to the northwest. The soldiers were nervous about setting off while the raiders were watching their every move.

  ‘I can’t see we have much choice,’ said Kazim. ‘The Ingashir will find us whatever we do. Can’t they at least give us spears?’

  ‘God’s will be done.’ Haroun intoned flatly. As usual.

  His piety was beginning to grate, but it was about all that could be said about their situation. Kazim looked at Jai, who had been very quiet for the past two weeks. Kazim was beginning to suspect why: his friend always managed to get them water … and he was a good-looking boy. There were rumours about certain of the captains – but water was life here … It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  They set out the next evening under cover of darkness, and of course it was a fiasco. Without torches to see what they were doing, half the gear got left behind, and none of the units were where they were supposed to be in the order of march. The trail of animal and human faeces marking their passage meant a blind man could track them, let alone an Ingashir scout.

  ‘Maybe all this fertiliser will cause the desert to bloom,’ Haroun joked wearily.

  By dawn the column was being watched by a dozen Ingashir, who trotted away disdainfully whenever the soldiers tried to whip their horses towards them. Birds of prey swarmed above, calling incessantly. Sand got into every fold of clothing, into mouths, nostrils, ears, hair. Kazim felt like he was shitting grit, his nethers were so raw.

  The marchers quickly began to weaken. The first day, those who fainted were given room on the wagons, but by the second day they were just left behind. Kazim hated them for giving up; he hated the watching Ingashir, arrogant and untouchable – but most of all he hated the soldiers, who cared nothing for them. He longed for an Ingashir archer to fell Jamil and all his smirking men, but the nomads kept their distance, and after two weeks they disappeared altogether, which encouraged everyone. As the oppression of being watched lifted, the men sauntered along in a more relaxed fashion, boasting of what they would have done if the nomads had dared come closer.

  Haroun pulled Kazim to one side. ‘The Ingashir are still out there, even if we cannot see them. Be on guard, brother.’ He slipped something hard and cold into Kazim’s hand. It was a curved dagger. ‘Given to me by a soldier. I can think of no more worthy recipient than you, my lionheart.’

  Kazim embraced Haroun quickly. ‘Thank you brother. Thank you from all of my heart.’ But his eyes sought Jamil, not the Ingashir.

  The Ingashir attack came three days later, on the seventeenth of the desert crossing, after another night marching under the waxing moon, at the point where turning back was beyond them and the next oasis far in the distance. They came at dawn, as the marchers were about to make day-camp. The guards were tired and lax; the men were exhausted, thirsty and hungry. The Ingashir came from out of the rising sun so that they were difficult to see, and any defending archers would have the sun in their eyes. It was so perfect it could have come from a military textbook.

  For the hour before the attack, Kazim had been trailing the third supply wagon with a crowd of others who’d broken ranks to try and ensure they would not go hungry. The faces around him were dulled with weariness. The dry wind that had risen out of the north sent stinging gusts of sand into their faces, so every man had wrapped a scarf around his head, impairing visibility. As the eastern sky lightened and the moon sank in the west the soldiers began calling the halt, and Kazim shoved his way towards the supply-wagons. Around him men jostled, but no one pushed him, not even those who fought in packs: they were all wary of his speed and ferocity.

  A beady-eyed youth from Kankritipur was pointing towards the rising sun. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s what?’ someone replied as a shaft of red light stabbed the gloom and hands rose to shield eyes.

  ‘I thought I saw something moving over there,’ the boy maintained. ‘See?’

  Kazim peered: a flock of birds had taken to the air, a great black cloud of them. He blinked as the birds arched upward and dived towards them. Not birds – arrows!

  ‘Watch out!’ someone called, but the men were transfixed, their mouths open in curious wonder.

  Kazim dived behind the line of men, but no one else moved.

  A shaft struck the Kankritipur boy in the chest and exploded from his back, pinning him to the ground as he fell, his feet kicking and arms jerking like a dropped puppet. Then the rest of the flight of arrows decimated the column, taking men in the chest, the belly, the limbs, through eyes and mouths. Three men in front of Kazim went down; one silently, dead immediately from a shaft straight to the heart; the other two screaming and clutching limbs. There was a momentary respite, then a second flight of arrows flew and the desert floor trembled with the rhythm of hooves. The column disintegrated, the marchers running westwards, or seeking shelter. Kazim ran to the nearest wagon, stuffed small bags of lentils into his belt-pouch and snatched a flask from the driver, who was slumped sideways in his seat, an arrow jutting from his chest. Two of the horses were down.

  More arrows flew as an ululating cry erupted from the east: the Ingashir were ready to charge.

  Kazim estimated the nomads would reach him in about sixty heartbeats. He grabbed some cured meat, then ran back to where he had last seen Jai and Haroun, keeping low to the ground. ‘Jai!’ he called, as the rumbling of hooves from the east grew louder. The soldiers were forming a line, facing east. A cloud of arrows struck them and they wavered. ‘Haroun!’

  Someone crouching behind one of the wagons waved: Jai. Kazim ran towards him, shoving aside men racing in the opposite direction. The arrows were sporadic here as the raiders concentrated their fire on the soldiers. The ground was already littered with the dead and wounded, and most of the marchers were now pelting westwards willy-nilly.

  Kazim leapt onto the wagon Jai was hiding behind; the driver was gone, but the horses were whole and holding firm. He snatched up the reins, shouting to Jai and Haroun, ‘Get on, brothers!’

  The eerie wailing cry of the Ingashir grew louder. Kazim cracked the whip and the wagon jerked into motion as the first of the Ingashir, all in white and riding pale horses, topped the ridge and surged down the slope, waving curved swords and screaming to Ahm. A thin line of soldiers stood between them and Kazim’s wagon. He hoped they were as good at fighting Ingashir as they were at bullying their own. ‘Fill a pack each with rations,’ he yelled over his shoulder. ‘Be prepared to jump if we have to!’ He whipped the horses into a trot and guided them towards the west.

  Somewhere behind him a girl screamed, and Kazim glanced back incredulously. Haroun had lifted a blanket and there she was, curled in a ball. There was no time to dwell on it. Kazim flogged the horses while the Ingashir tore towards the waiting soldiers, but the defenders were too few and too thinly spread. The nomads blasted through them like arrows through cloth. The few survivors tried to gather in spiky clusters. Nomad archers fired into them from point-blank range, but most rode on, seeking easier prey. Several saw the wagon moving and spurred towards it.

  Kazim expected an arrow at any moment; he hunched over involuntarily. The horses had poor traction in the soft sands and the wheels were slewing wildly. He heard the girl shriek again, and Jai shouting, Haroun praying as they careered into a running man and went over him in a wet crunch. Kazim lashed the horses and they began to catch up with the fleeing marchers – then a chorus of dismay came from ahead and first one man and then others spun and ran back, flinging aside their meagre burdens. ‘We’re trapped!’ someone howled.

  ‘There are raiders to the west as well,’ Haroun shouted in Kazim’s ear. ‘Go south!’ He clambered up alongside and seized the reins. ‘I will drive, Kazim; you must fight!’

  Kazim rolled back into the wagon as a complete stranger tried to leap aboard
. He was another marcher, but Kazim smashed him in the face with his boot and he was gone. The girl clung mutely to Jai, her face terrified. Then she seemed to focus on something behind Kazim, who turned as an Ingashir raider galloped in, his raised blade angling towards Haroun. Without pausing to think, Kazim lunged forward and thrust his dagger into the path of the blow. Steel rang and his arm was jarred numb, nearly knocking the small blade from his grip. Narrow eyes focused on him and he felt a small thrill of dread: this was it, the real thing, live or die. An overarm blow lashed down on him, but he jerked aside and let it pass, then lunged as far as he could and plunged his dagger into the rider’s arm, right up to the hilt. There was a gasp of pain, and the scimitar dropped from the raider’s splayed hand onto the wagon seat. He grabbed the man’s sleeve and pulled, and the rider screamed as he came off his horse and went under the wheels of the wagon. Haroun and Jai threw themselves about to prevent it from rolling, righting it only as a second rider galloped up behind them.

  Kazim grasped the fallen scimitar. He tossed the dagger to Jai, then leapt to the back of the wagon. He landed on one knee, scimitar raised to parry, as Haroun brought the wagon about to face south. The second rider reared before him and attacked. Kazim blocked two heavy blows, then slashed and missed, almost overbalancing. More blows rang on his blade, then the wagon bounced and knocked him off his feet. For an instant he was helpless. but the girl startled them all by throwing a pack, which struck the nomad, knocking him half out of the saddle. Jai whooped as a mounted soldier came up behind the dazed rider and swung at his back. The nomad yowled and plummeted to the ground.

  The soldier galloped alongside the wagon. It was Jamil, and the captain took them all in with one glance and to their shock yelled, ‘Kazim Makani, stay close!’ Then another nomad attacked, forcing Jamil to spin away and parry. The captain fought deftly, blue sparks coruscating weirdly along his blade as the metal belled.