Splinter Of The Mind's Eye

by Glen Cook

  "The word is spreading," Megelin said. "Look. The mercenaries are pulling out. Time we did too. You men. Round up whatever animals and provisions you can."

  "Megelin—"

  "No room to argue anymore, Haroun." Radetic told Bragi, "Watch him. Don't let him do anything silly." He spoke Trolledyngjan.

  "I have to get back to my outfit," Ragnarson protested.

  "Too late, son. Way too late." Radetic resumed arguing with Haroun.

  Haroun gradually accepted Megelin's truth. Al Rhemish was lost—and with it his entire family. He had no one but Megelin and this strange northern youth. Angry, with hatred knotting his guts, he allowed Radetic to lead him into the night.

  Ahmed waited among the dead, holding a limp, frightened Lalla. His personal guards surrounded him, duty-bound despite loathing him for his patricide and treason. A dozen Invincibles watched them, indifferent to the carnage.

  Ahmed's heart ripped at him like some cruel monster trying to tear its way out of his chest. "I did it for you, Lalla. I did it for you."

  The girl did not respond.

  The Invincibles snapped to attention. A darkly clad, hard-eyed man strode in. The hem of his djaballah dragged through a pool of blood. He grunted disgustedly.

  There was blood everywhere, on the walls, the floors, the furnishings, the bodies. The bodies were piled deep. More wore white than the bright colors favored by Royalists. Aboud would explode when he saw... Ahmed giggled. For a moment he had forgotten who had died first.

  The newcomer asked a question Ahmed didn't catch. He had no attention to spare. Lalla was crying.

  A hand closed on his shoulder. Pain lanced through his body. "Stop!" he whined.

  "Get up." The newcomer squeezed harder. Ahmed's guards watched, indecisive.

  "You can't do this. It's death to lay hands on the King." He reached for Lalla.

  "Don't be a damned fool. You aren't King of anything. And you'll never be."

  "Who are you?" Though frightened, Ahmed retained the Quesani arrogance.

  "The Scourge of God. The man with whom you've been corresponding."

  "Then you know I'm King. You agreed to help me take the throne."

  Nassef smiled thinly. "So I did. But I didn't say I'd let you keep it." To the Invincibles he said, "Lock this fool up till we can deal with him."

  Ahmed was stunned. "You promised... Lalla... " He had betrayed his family and murdered his father so he could become King and possess Lalla. It had been her idea initially...

  "I did promise you the woman, didn't I? Lock her in with him."

  "My Lord!" Lalla protested. "No! I did everything you told me."

  "Take them," Nassef said. He turned to a man who had followed him inside. "Get this cleaned up before the Disciple gets here."

  "No!" Ahmed shrieked. He stabbed the nearest Invincible, whirled, slashed at another. His bodyguards jumped in enthusiastically.

  Ahmed faked a rush at Nassef. The Scourge of God stumbled, avoiding the expected blow. Ahmed swerved toward the exit. His guards followed. "After them!" Nassef bellowed. "Kill them. Kill them all." He faced Lalla. "Get her zils. Can't have her playing tricks on us too." He smiled cruelly. "Save her for me."

  Haroun paused halfway up the eastern slope of the bowl, looked back. A third of Al Rhemish was aflame. Fighting persisted, but would not last long. On the far slope the mercenary camp was ablaze. Hawkwind had abandoned it to the Invincibles. "I'm sorry," he told Bragi. "You can catch up with them later, I guess."

  "Yeah. I just wish my brother knew I'm all right."

  Radetic said, "Let's don't waste time, Haroun. They'll be after us soon."

  "Listen!" Bragi said. "Somebody's coming."

  Hooves pounded toward them. Swords leapt out of scabbards.

  "Hold it!" Haroun ordered. "They're not Invincibles."

  Someone snarled, "It's Ahmed." Someone else cried, "Kill him!" Men surrounded the Crown Prince. Curses flew.

  "Back off," Radetic snapped. "You don't know anything against him. The rumors could have been planted. Bring him here, Haroun. Let him tell his story." Privately, Radetic believed the worst.

  Ahmed scarcely had time to admit his guilt. The party topped the ridge and came face to face with the enemy.

  "It's El Murid!" Haroun cried. "Come on!"

  The Disciple's bodyguards and household far outnumbered them, but the guards were scattered. The main party were dismounted, either seated or sleeping.

  "Maybe there is a God after all," Radetic mused as he spurred his mount. One bloody stroke could turn the war around. Without El Murid there would be no Movement.

  With Bragi beside him, Haroun slashed through the Invincible pickets. He chopped down at unprotected noncombatant shoulders and heads. Women screamed. People scattered. Royalist war cries filled the night.

  The Invincible bodyguards threw themselves at the Royalists with an insane fury. They valued their prophet more than their lives.

  "Where are you, Little Devil?" Haroun shouted. "Come out and die, you coward."

  Ahmed urged his mount up beside Haroun, opposite Bragi. He fought with an abandon no one would have believed possible an hour earlier.

  A boy scampered across the rocks ahead of Haroun. He spurred his mount. Another horse hurtled in from one side, turning his attack. For an instant he looked into the eyes of a girl. He saw fire and iron, caught a glimpse of a soul that could be intimidated by nothing. And something more... then she was gone, dragging the boy toward safety. Haroun shifted his attention to a woman chasing the pair.

  He was startled. He knew her. She was the Disciple's wife. Veilless again. He slashed. His blade found flesh. She cried out. Then he was past, wheeling, searching. The Disciple himself had to be somewhere nearby.

  Something slammed into him. He felt no pain then, but knew he had been wounded. Bragi hacked at the Invincible responsible while Ahmed engaged another two. A fourth closed in. Haroun forgot the Disciple, fought for his life.

  Five minutes passed. They seemed eternal. He heard Megelin shout in a voice filled with pain, rallying the Royalists, ordering a withdrawal. He wanted to overrule Radetic, to stand and fight. This chance dared not be wasted... But he understood why Megelin wanted to go. Outnumbered, the Royalists were now getting the worst of it. Half were down. Most of the rest were wounded.

  "Haroun!" Megelin cried. "Come on! It's over!"

  Bragi brushed a sword aside, grabbed Haroun's reins. Haroun wobbled in his saddle. His wound was deeper than he suspected.

  Though gravely injured, Radetic directed the withdrawal. "Capture some horses!" he snapped. "Some camels. Anything. We've got wounded with nothing to ride."

  The Invincibles might have taken them then had they not been more interested in the welfare of their prophet and his family.

  "Let's go. Let's go," Radetic grumbled. "You men. Help those two get onto their animals."

  Haroun looked back once. The battleground was littered with dead and dying. The majority were followers of the Disciple. "Did we get him?" he croaked at Bragi. "Do you think we got him?"

  "No," the northerner said. "We didn't."

  "Damn! Damn damn damn!"

  Bragi snorted wearily. "If he doesn't have a god on his side, he has a devil. Ride. They'll be after us as soon as they get themselves sorted out."

  Chapter Fifteen

  King Without a Throne

  T wenty-one horses, twenty-three men and eight camels made up the caravan. They straggled across a bleached-bone desert beneath a savage noonday sun. Only the most gravely wounded rode. Those afoot cursed and coerced the faltering beasts along the rocky, dusty, wind-whipped bottom of a dry wadi. Humiliation, despair and the anticipation of death were their marching companions. Ahmed's treachery was an agony each man bore like a brand, but no man wore it more painfully than did Ahmed himself.

  For each man only the will to resist, to survive long enough to avenge, remained. The kingdom had been lost, but its blood, its Crown, lived on and would be preserved
against tomorrow.

  These things didn't occur as discrete thoughts. The men were too weary. Determination was baked into their bones. Consciously they were preoccupied with the heat, with thirst, with exhaustion. In the short run only one thing mattered: taking another step.

  The wadi dissolved into a badland of tent-sized boulders. "This is the place," Ahmed croaked.

  "I forbid it," Haroun replied. "I'm King now. You deferred to me. I forbid it."

  Ahmed gestured. Men took positions among the rocks. "God go with you, sire."

  "Damn it."

  "Haroun." Radetic's voice was half whisper, half groan. "Let the man die the death he chooses."

  "He's right," Bragi said. He began to collect the remnants of water carried by those who would stay in ambush.

  Haroun agonized. These men hardly knew him. It was not meet that he should leave them to die. "Ahmed—"

  "Go, sire. Their dust draws close. We die for the Blood. By choice. Just go."

  Bragi finished gathering the water. "Haroun, will you come on? Do I have to drag you?"

  "All right. All right." He started walking.

  There were six of them now, all but Megelin walking. Radetic rode, his guts slowly leaking onto his animal's back. Haroun led his horse. Bragi tried to keep the animals and three youngsters together.

  I'm a king, Haroun told himself. A king. How can that be?

  Ali was dead. Yousif was dead. Fuad was dead, as were his sons. Ahmed had chosen to die in atonement. Now there was only Haroun bin Yousif. After him, the Scourge of God.

  He would not permit Nassef to take the kingdom.

  It wasn't much of a kingdom, he reflected. And one he could claim only at the cost of fortunes in blood and tears. If he tried... He glanced back. There was no sign of the ambush. He sent Ahmed a grudging, silent salute.

  In the final extremity, in the hour of crisis, Ahmed had shown more character than anyone expected. He had the mafti al hazid of old, the high death-pride that had made Ilkazar's legions stand fast even in the face of certain destruction.

  The dust raised by the pursuit was close. Nassef himself was on the trail. No one else would press so hard.

  Haroun saw Bragi stumble as he forced a recalcitrant camel into line. The youngsters were about done in. There was no hope left. Not if he tried to save the whole party.

  "All or none," he told himself. "All or none." He thought he and Bragi could make it if they abandoned the others.

  Carrion birds planed the air, patiently awaiting the death their presence guaranteed. Nassef needed but chase them to track his prey.

  Haroun swung his gaze to the ground ahead. "Step, step," he muttered again and again. Slowly, he coaxed Radetic's mount in the shadows at the bottom of another wadi. How far to the mountains? he wondered. Too far. Already his flesh strove to betray his will, to surrender to the inevitable.

  A smile cracked his lips. They had gone after the Disciple like mad dogs, hadn't they? Almost got him, too. Almost got his wife. Almost captured the pearl of his seraglio, the daughter who would finally receive a name this Disharhun.

  Her wide-eyed, wild look, struck over awe and determination, all overridden by hard determination to save her brother, haunted him still.

  His smile widened. Meryem must have been hurt worse than he had thought. Nassef's pursuit was implacable and tireless, the relentless hunt of a man obsessed with a personal debt. He must be killing his men trying to catch up.

  Haroun's wound, on the outside of his left arm, was shallow but painful. He was proud of it, carried it as a badge of courage.

  Radetic groaned. Haroun glanced up at the old man. Poor Megelin. So pale, so shaky. He had come so far, in the pursuit of knowledge, and his heart had betrayed him. He should have gone home when his contract expired. But he had lost his affection to a family, and a place, and was about to pay the ultimate price for that indiscretion. Haroun bin Yousif had been forced to become a man and warrior within a matter of hours. Now he faced becoming a leader, a king. While lost in an unfamiliar desert, punished by heat and thirst, aided by one bewildered foreigner, with El Murid's jackals yapping at his heels.

  He would survive! He would avenge his father and brothers, his uncle, and even his mother. And Megelin. Megelin most of all. Beloved Megelin, who had been more father than Yousif...

  He paid little attention to his surroundings. He clung to the meandering wadi as long as its tendency was northward, toward the Kapenrung Mountains and the border of Hammad al Nakir. Bragi and the youngsters stumbled along behind, satified to follow his lead. Grudgingly, the wadi walls provided protection from the sun and wind.

  Haroun's thoughts drifted to El Murid's daughter. What was it that he had seen in her face? Someday...

  The fall of Al Rhemish would leave one vaguely palatable taste in the Royalist mouth. The Invincibles had been badly mauled. The Disciple would be unable to press his advantage quickly. The scattered loyalists might have time to regroup and counterattack. Ahmed's sacrifice would steel thousands of wavering hearts. It was the sort of gesture Hammad al Nakir loved.

  Haroun tried to banish the heat and misery by dwelling on the larger picture. He considered the faithful. Some would scatter according to plans long ago formulated by his father and Radetic. If necessary they could regroup outside Hammad al Nakir. The gold in the banks at Hellin Daimiel would finance their war of liberation.

  If he accepted the challenge of fate, if he became their king, could he gather and wield them? Without Megelin? The old man would not last much longer...

  Rationality deserted him when Megelin fell. The old foreigner meant everything to him. Yousif had given him life. Megelin had nurtured and loved him, and had sculpted him into the man he would become.

  He tried to lift Megelin and found that the old man's heart had stopped. "Megelin. Not now. Don't give up now. We're almost there. Megelin! Don't die!" But even the command of a king cannot stay the Dark Lady.

  Radetic's death was the final straw's weight. He could withhold his grief no longer. "Damn you!" he shouted toward the south. "Nassef! Micah al Rhami! You will die a thousand deaths for this. I will take a vengeance so cruel it will be remembered for a thousand years." He ranted on, madly. One remote, cool part of him told him he was making a fool of himself, but he couldn't stop.

  His companions didn't care. They simply sat on rocks and waited for the vitriol to burn away. Bragi did try to comfort him momentarily, ineptly, recalling his own agony at his father's death.

  Haroun's recovery began with a fit of self-loathing when he cursed Bragi for showing solicitude. The northerner withdrew, sat on a rock and ignored him. That hurt Haroun, exposing him to yet another level of pain. Was he insane, offending the only friend he had?

  In a still moment he heard distant sounds of fighting. Men were selling their lives. He must not belittle their sacrifices. He had to go on and, if it came to that, had to let the desert claim him before he yielded to the Scourge of God.

  Eyes still moist, he kissed his teacher's cooling cheeks. "I mourn, Megelin. This wasteland is no resting place for a don of the Rebsamen." Vulture shadows ghosted along the wadi walls. "But I have to leave you. You understand, don't you? You were always a student of necessity." He rose. "Bragi! Let's go. They'll be through the ambush in a few minutes." The sounds of fighting were diminishing already.

  He pushed on, into the night, knowing darkness would not stop Nassef. Only the Dark Lady herself would stay the Scourge of God. The three youngsters grew progressively weaker. Horses halted and refused to go on. The camels grew increasingly balky. Bragi became fractitious. He did not know how to handle the animals.

  Haroun slaughtered the weakest horse, caught its hot blood, passed it around. Their water was gone. He prayed to no certain god for strength, for guidance, for a miracle. His future kingdom became confined to that narrow and perhaps endless passage of the desert.

  Deep in the night, under a silver, uncaring moon, the wadi faded. If he paused to listen Haroun cou
ld hear men and animals in the distance. Nassef was gaining again.

  Moments after he departed the wadi he halted, confused. Before him stood a strange old tower. He recognized the type. Ilkazar's emperors had erected hundreds to house local garrisons. Their ruins could be found wherever the Imperial legions had passed. He was baffled because he hadn't expected to encounter evidence of human habitation in the waste.

  Bragi came up beside him. "What's that?"

  A sad keening came from the tower.

  Haroun shook his head. He glanced back. The boys had collapsed.

  The keening came again.

  "That's no animal," Bragi said.

  "The wind?"

  "Maybe it's a ghost."

  Haroun reached out with his shaghûn's senses. Incompletely trained, attenuated by hunger and exhaustion, they told him nothing. "I don't get anything."

  "Look!" A wan light illuminated a face behind an archer's embrasure.

  "That's no ghost."

  "Maybe we can get water."

  "Could be a bandit hideout. Or a demon's lair. Or a sorcerer hiding from El Murid." But if the magical or supernatural lurked there, his shaghûn's senses should have warned him.

  He listened. The sounds of horses and men hung just on the edge of hearing. "I'm going to investigate."

  "Nassef is too close."

  "I might find something. Water, at least."

  "Yeah. Water."

  "Let's go." It was hard to get moving again. His joints ached, his muscles begged for respite. His wound sent wires of pain crawling toward his shoulder. He was afraid it would fester. Somehow, he had to elude Nassef long enough to cleanse and cauterize it.

  Bragi cuffed horses, camels and boys and got them moving again. Battered sword in hand, Haroun approached the tower step by leaden-footed step. Once around the tower he stalked, seeking an entrance.

  "Find anything?" Bragi asked.

  "No."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Look again. You stay here."

  "What about Nassef?"

  "I won't be long." He went around the tower again. And this time he found a black cavity at its base, facing south. He was perplexed. The opening hadn't been there before, yet he could sense nothing magical. Was he so weak his shaghûn's senses had fled him completely?