With Mercy Towards None

Chapter Twenty-One:

HIGHWATER

H ard-eyed, El Murid glared at the pylons bearing the names of those who had died for the Faith. There were too many. Far too many. The obelisks formed a stone forest atop the south lip of the bowl containing Al Rhemish. The presence of his family stelae only worsened his mood.

It had taken a great act of will to lay Sidi beside his mother. He had been tempted to throw his traitorous get to the jackals.

"Esmat."

"Lord?" The physician was not pleased that his master had resumed his pilgrimages to his family's graves.

"The Lord charged me with bringing the Truth to the nations. I've been delegating that task. That is why so many have died. The Lord is reminding me of my vocation."

"I don't follow you, Lord."

"I began alone, Esmat. I was a child dying in the wastes when I was called. I brought the Truth out of the badlands. Hearts opened to it. I used them. I wasted them. I'm alone again. Alone and lost in the Great Erg of the soul. If I remain here again this summer, the entire Host of Illumination will be taken from me. More and bolder bands of assassins will remind me that the time alloted for my work is both borrowed and limited. This summer, Esmat, the Disciple becomes a warrior for the Lord, riding with the Host."

"Lord, you swore never to go to war again."

"Not so, Esmat. I vowed not to determine strategy for the Host. I swore I would leave the management of war to my generals. Assemble us an escort when we go back down."

"As you command, Lord."

"If the Lord calls me before thee, Esmat, lay me down beside Meryem. And if ever Yasmid should be found, let her lie at my other hand."

"So it shall be, Lord. Was there ever any doubt?"

"Thank you, Esmat. Come. Let us gird ourselves, for we face the hour of our trial."

"And the Lord our God, Who is the Lord of Hosts, shall trample thine enemies, O Chosen, and they shall drink the sour wine of their unbelief, and they shall be vanquished."

"Esmat! You amaze me. I thought you indifferent to the Teachings. I didn't know you could see beyond your own small ambitions."

The physician shook. How subtle the Disciple was, chiding him in this gentle way! His transgressions were known! They had been forgiven, but not forgotten. "I'm not well enough known, Lord, and by myself least of all. I'm so foolish I try to be something I'm not."

"That's the curse of humanity, Esmat. The wise man leashes it before it leads him into the shadow where pretensions are of no avail."

"I am a child in the light of thy wisdom, Lord."

El Murid gave him a hard look. Was that quote a gentle mockery?

His venture west did not begin immediately. News of el Nadim's demise delayed it. "The Lord has written the final paragraph of his message, Esmat," he said. "I stand alone on the battlefield, naked to the Evil One. I must wrestle his minions now, as I wrestled the Dark One himself in the Shrines."

"Hardly alone, Lord. The Host of Illumination is more vast than ever before."

"Who will wield it, Esmat?"

"Convene a council of leading men, Lord. Let them name candidates."

"Yes. Good. Gather the right people, Esmat."

He selected Syed Abd-er-Rahman, the man least popular with functionaries who obviously wanted a general they could manipulate. El Murid could not recall ever having met the man or even having heard of him. But he was popular with the military.

He started west two days after he granted the appointment.

The news of his coming swept ahead like a scorching wind. It blew his enemies into shadowed corners. It brought his friends forth. Crowds cheered his passing. In town after town he slowed his progress so he could touch the reaching hands of the Faithful, and bless them and their offspring, and sanctify their new places of worship.

"We'll ignore it," he decided when Esmat brought news of the collapse of the siege of Hellin Daimiel. "Let bin Yousif run himself ragged trying to distract me. His conquests mean nothing. He'll win no new followers. We'll eradicate his bandits after we've dealt with the Evil One's northern minions."

Syed Abd-er-Rahman was energetic. He wasted no time putting his own strategy into effect. He kept el Nadim's eastern army separate from the western, ordering it to advance up the coastline from Dunno Scuttari. The other army he sent directly toward Itaskia, after assembling it in the Lesser Kingdoms. He scattered a dozen smaller divisions between the armies, their mission to drift north unnoted. He fought his first battle before El Murid joined him.

Like so many before, it was inconclusive. Greyfells stalled the western Host without shattering it. The Duke had not yet abandoned hope of a successful treachery.

Abd-er-Rahman had predicated his strategy on the Duke's political tunnel vision.

Hardly had Greyfells blunted the interior thrust than he had to rush west to forestall the coastal. In his absence Rahman rallied the western Host for another thrust.

El Murid joined him at that time.

He attended all the conferences. He listened to all the discussions and studied all the maps. He kept his opinions to himself. Wadi el Kuf still haunted him.

News came that Libiannin had fallen to Hawkwind and bin Yousif. The fighting had been bitter. El Murid shrugged the loss off. "They suffered heavy casualties. Let them spend their strength. If we send more men they'll just flee into the mountains. Let's worry about finishing Itaskia."

Greyfells halted the army on the coast. He had to extend himself to do so. The eastern troops were outnumbered but not war-weary. Their officers were eager to win themselves names.

Abd-er-Rahman started north again.

Greyfells finally recognized the trap. The two armies were going to slap him back and forth like a shuttlecock while Rahman's smaller divisions slipped past and created havoc behind him. If he withdrew and took up a defensive position along the approaches to Itaskia, one or the other army would bypass and cross the Silverbind. If the city itself were threatened he would lose his command and all hope of profiting from it.

He was in a corner, on thin ice, already. He no longer dared visit the city. The mob jeered and threw brickbats. The news from the south, about guerrillas and Guildsmen liberating coastal cities, worsened his position. People wanted to know why bin Yousif and Hawkwind could capture great cities while he could do nothing. Itaskia's allies were near the limit of their patience.

He had to win a big one.

Esmat stole glances hither and thither as he approached his master. There were no witnesses he could detect. "Lord," he whispered, "There's an enemy delegation to see you."

El Murid was startled. "Me?"

"Yes, Lord. The ones who contacted you several years ago."

"That Duke?"

"His people."

"Show them in." This might lead somewhere. If Itaskia's stubbornness could be neutralized... Endless warfare did no one any good. His dream of greening the desert would never bear fruit if all the empire's energies had to be devoted to reducing intransigent enemies.

The Greyfells proposal remained unchanged. El Murid did not. His readmittance of the shaghûn to the army was but one sign.

"What I'll do," he told the emissaries, "is nominate the Duke viceroy over all the northern territories. Not just Itaskia, but Dvar, Iwa Skolovda, Prost Kamenets and Shara. He'll have plenipotentiary powers within the scope of the Empire and Faith. In return he must acknowledge the Empire's suzerainty, allow free movement of missionaries and produce a modest annual subscription for the restoration of the great works of Ilkazar. In time of war or unrest he'll have to produce levies for the defense of the Imperium."

The emissaries looked dubious, though El Murid was practically offering Greyfells an empire within his Empire. They said they would relay the proposal.

The Duke found it better than he had hoped. He was composing his acceptance when events intervened.

Abd-er-Rahman overtook the Itaskians at the Five Circles.

The Five Circles were the remains of a vast prehistoric monument. They formed a cross in the center of a grassy plain astride the main road from Itaskia to the Lesser Kingdoms. The plain was surrounded by hardwood forests. The natives avoided the megaliths. The Power was strong there. Witch covens gathered among them for their bizarre midnight rituals.

Neither Greyfells nor El Murid could halt events once the armies sighted one another. Abd-er-Rahman was anxious to bring the battered Itaskians to battle. He knew one sharp defeat would strip them of their allies. He accepted the plain as a site of battle, though the circles would serve the enemy as strongholds if their formations broke.

He hit fast and hard, sending the whirlwind of his light cavalry first, following with his heavy horse. The northern knights scattered. Rahman's horsemen ploughed into the Itaskian infantry. But for the circles, they would have been slaughtered.

The fighting continued till dusk. The Itaskians could not escape. Rahman's men could not overrun the outer circles. Wherever they threatened to do so, troops from the larger central circle sallied in support of their comrades.

El Murid abandoned all thought of negotiation. At the evening council he announced, "Tomorrow we eschew the mundane. Tomorrow I call down the might of the Lord of Hosts and seal the northern doom."

A hundred eyes stared curiously.

El Murid stared back. These men were warriors before they were disciples. Their faith was incidental to their profession. The spirit of the Lord no longer impelled them.

He would refresh their ardor.

"Tomorrow I shall challenge the heathen. I shall show them the wrath of the Lord. I shall smite them with the fire of retribution and leave them weeping for their dark master's protection. I shall set them running like whipped dogs. Shaghûns, attend me."

There were but a handful of the witch-brethren with Abd-er-Rahman's force. They were so few and their wizardry so pitiful, Rahman seldom bothered using them. El Murid spent an hour closeted with them.

Morning came. The Host arrayed itself. The Disciple strode forth clad in purest white. Two Invincibles accompanied him, bearing the standards of the Lord and of the Second Empire. The black-clad shaghûns followed. El Murid halted on a mound a long bowshot from the southernmost circle. The shaghûns formed a shallow crescent cupping him and his standard-bearers.

Enemy faces lined the top of the tumbled rock barrier. The Itaskians had felled the megaliths during the night. The Disciple felt the full weight of their nervousness and fear.

He dropped to one knee, bowed his head, offered up a prayer. Then he rose, surveyed his enemies, flung arms and face toward the sky.

"Hear me, O Lord of Hosts! Thy servant beseechest thee: Empty the cup of thine wrath upon these who cast dung upon thy Truth. Lend thy servant thine immeasurable power that he might requite them for their iniquity. Hear me, O Lord of Hosts!"

Few of his enemies understood who he was or comprehended what he screamed. But they did not need that knowledge to realize that a mighty doom was upon them.

El Murid's amulet blazed, cloaking him in blinding light. Cries of despair rose within the circle. Panic-driven arrows darted toward the man of fire. The Disciple's shaghûns turned the shafts.

El Murid flung his hands downward. Thunder groaned across the sky. The earth trembled. Stones cracked, broke, tumbled, crumbled, flew into the air and plunged down again. Lightning stalked the plain. Men shrieked.

El Murid lifted his arms and flung them down again. Again the sky spoke and hurled down its spears. Again mighty rocks cracked, broke, flew about, collapsed into mounds of gravel. The surviving Itaskians shrieked and wailed and looked for places to run.

El Murid signalled Abd-er-Rahman.

A light horse regiment swept forward. It scoured that circle clean. The men cowering in the other circles were too stunned to support their fellows.

El Murid and his escort stalked to a hummock facing the westernmost circle.

Arrows darkened the sky before the Disciple commenced his prayer. The shaghûns were hard-pressed to turn them. One did crease a standard-bearer as El Murid flung his fiery hands at the world's blue ceiling.

The Host scoured that circle. And the eastern one too. And cheered their Lord almost continuously. At long last this stubborn foe was to be put away.

Some of the men in the northern circle tried to flee. Rahman flung his cavalry after them. They died before they reached the woods, before comrades who could do nothing to save them.

The plain stunk of fear. The Host was showing no mercy at all, even refusing to take knights and lords for ransom.

The Host grew quiet. The Disciple had turned his eye to the central circle, where half the northern army awaited its doom. He took his station atop rubble left from the scouring of the southern circle. The Host crowded up behind him, eager for blood and plunder.

The Duke and his captains were waiting. As the arrows began to fly and the light to surround the Disciple, a dozen bold knights charged.

Rahman sent men to meet them. But not in time. El Murid's shaghûns were compelled to shift their attention to stopping them. The last fell twenty feet from El Murid.

The arrows fell like heavy winter snow while the witch-men were distracted. The standards went down. Two shaghûns fell. The arrow-storm thickened. The remaining shaghûns could not turn it all.

El Murid's blazing power did not shield him.

His concentration was such that the first shaft bothered him less than a bee's sting. He brought the lightning down. Inside the circle a hundred men died.

A second arrow passed through the Disciple's upraised right hand. Again he brought the fire down. Boulders hurtled about. Men and animals screamed. Rahman's riders moved up close enough to use their short saddle bows.

The third arrow buried itself in El Murid's left breast. Though it missed heart and lung, its momentum spun him around and flung him to the earth just as the lightning came down again and shattered the last of the megaliths protecting Greyfells' army.

Abd-er-Rahman attacked immediately, hoping to finish the enemy before his own men realized what had happened to their prophet. The Host swarmed into the central circle.

Esmat reached his master before the glory of the amulet faded. He shielded his eyes with his hands. "Lord?"

El Murid groaned. He should have been dead. The terrible vitality that had seen him through the desert in his youth and through the hellish aftermath of the defeat of Wadi el Kuf remained with him. Perhaps his amulet assisted. Esmat grabbed the fallen standards. He snarled at the shaghûns, "Help me make a stretcher." The witch-men stared dumbly. "Strip one of the bodies, you nitwits!" He glared toward the central circle.

The melee was wild and bloody. The warriors of the Host continued pouring in. Some quick-witted foeman was howling, "The Disciple is slain!"

Too many warriors saw Esmat and the shaghûns flee with the stretcher. They believed the cries.

Shouting, the physician tried to assemble El Murid's bodyguard. A handful of Invincibles remembered their honor.

Fickle, insane panic filled the Host as it teetered on the brink of final victory. Victory slipped away.

Esmat concealed himself and his master in a woodcutter's cottage ten miles south of the Five Circles. A dozen Invincibles accompanied him. Most remained in the woods watching for enemy patrols. Two he retained for their muscles.

Out in the dusk the Host was in dismayed flight, small bands of warriors flying hither and yon to escape the Itaskians, who were so bewildered by their good fortune they were doing nothing to follow up.

"Hold him!" Esmat snapped. "Forget who he is. We're trying to save a man, not a myth." The white robes remained unconvinced. Esmat argued, "If we don't save him, who will speak for the Lord?"

The Invincibles leaned into it. Esmat began with the simplest arrowhead.

El Murid groaned and screamed.

A sentry burst in. "Can't you keep him quiet?"

Esmat sighed. "The will of the Lord be done." He took drugs from his kit. He had wanted to avoid them. The Disciple had had so much difficulty whipping his addiction.

El Murid bled a lot, but remained too stubborn to die. Esmat removed four steel barbs.

"How soon will we be able to move?" the leader of the bodyguard asked.

"Not soon. He's hard to kill but slow to mend. We might have to stay here for weeks."

The white robe grimaced. "The will of God be done," he whispered.

They stayed put a month. Twice the Invincibles exterminated small Itaskian patrols. They endured. The Disciple banished his despair with repeated pretenses of agony. Esmat gave him drugs out of fear of the Invincibles. His master became an addict once more.

The Host had collapsed. The survivors had fled so swiftly their enemies hadn't been able to overtake them. Abd-er-Rahman had been unable to rally them. But the collapse affected only the one force.

Where there were commanders of will and energy the Faithful hung together. Two of the small divisions penetrated the domains of Prost Kamenets. Another crossed the Silverbind and brought fire and sword to the unguarded Itaskian midlands. The army on the coast, after one savage encounter with the remnants of Greyfells' force, stunned the Itaskians by driving north and occupying their great harbor city of Portsmouth, where they settled in for a siege. Other divisions lurked near Greyfells, harassing his foragers.

A stalemate, of sorts, had been achieved.

Greyfells could not move south while strong formations threatened his homeland. The Faithful hadn't the will to resume the offensive.

In the south, Haroun and Hawkwind continued to whoop from town to castle, cutting a broad swath, rooting out supporters of the Disciple. They captured Simballawein and roared on into Ipopotam.

The military governor of the occupied provinces let them spend their vigor and spirit. Once they were far away, he collected scattered formations and reoccupied Libiannin, putting all unbelievers to the sword.

An overconfident Haroun badgered Hawkwind into racing north to recapture the city.

The trap snapped shut in a narrow valley a day's march from Libiannin. Hawkwind and bin Yousif left eight thousand dead upon the field. They had had only twelve thousand men going in. The survivors managed to get inside the unguarded walls of Libiannin. They were not welcomed as liberators. The enemies leagued them up.

"News of a great victory, Lord," Esmat said, having heard of southern events in the village he had just visited.

They were moving south in small stages. "The Royalist and Guild forces were all but destroyed in a battle near Libiannin. The survivors are trapped in the city."

The Disciple was alert and lucid. He saw the ramifications. And yet he could not rejoice.

He had done the Lord's work and the Lord's will and the Lord had betrayed him. The Lord had allowed him to be struck down an instant before the moment of victory. He had endured every possible humiliation, had suffered every possible loss for the Faith... He had left the corpse of his belief sprawled between the bodies of his standard-bearers.

"Where are we now, Esmat?"

"In Vorhangs, Lord. Just a few days from Dunno Scuttari. We can convalesce there."

"Send a message to the garrison commander. Tell him I'm alive. Tell him to send couriers to all our captains apprizing them of that fact. Tell him I want a general armistice declared. Tell him to announce my offer to hold a general peace conference in Dunno Scuttari next month."

"Lord? Peace? What about the new Empire?"

"We'll settle for what we get out of the negotiations."

"We have enemies who won't make peace, Lord."

"The Guild? Bin Yousif's bandits? You said they're all but destroyed. We will invite High Crag, by all means. They must be war-weary enough to give up the sanctions they declared when the Invincibles massacred those old men. But there will be no peace with Royalists. Ever. Not while bin Yousif and I both live.

"Esmat, that battle is all I have left. They've killed everything else. My wife. My babies. Nassef. Even my faith in God and my Calling."

Esmat responded with quotations from his Teachings.

"I was naive then, Esmat. Sometimes hate is all a man has." And maybe it was that way for everyone he had labelled a minion of the Evil One. The drunk, the gambler, the whoremaster—maybe each gravitated to his niche not because of a devotion to evil but because of some need only an odious life could fulfill. Maybe some men needed a diet rich in self-loathing.

His entrance into Dunno Scuttari made a grand excuse for a holiday. The Faithful turned out in their thousands to weep and cheer as if he had brought them a triumph for the Chosen. There was a threat of carnival in the river-tainted air. The happy-storm was not long delayed. The costumes and masks came out. The bulls were run in the streets. Believer consorted with infidel and shared tears of happiness.

El Murid blessed the revelers from a high balcony. He wore a thin smile.

Esmat wondered aloud at their joy.

"They rejoice not for me but for themselves, Esmat."

"Lord?"

"They rejoice not for any accomplishment, nor for my return. They rejoice because by surviving I've put the mask back over the secret face of tomorrow. I've relieved them of uncertainty."

"Then they'll be disappointed when they find out how much you'll yield to make peace."

The Disciple had decided to defy his God. His mission, he told himself, was to establish the Kingdom of Peace. He had been unable to do that sending men to war...

"What of the painkiller?" he asked as an aside. "Is there a supply?"

"You once called me a confounded squirrel, Lord. We held Ipopotam for years. I acquired enough to last several lifetimes."

El Murid nodded absently. So long as there was enough to divert him from thoughts of his true motive for defying the Lord: pure childish spite for the arrows of betrayal that had fallen upon him at the Five Circles.

He returned to Esmat's earlier question. "They don't care which mask the unknowable wears. They just want it to wear one."

Allied emissaries began arriving two weeks later. "They seem serious this time," the Disciple observed. "Especially Greyfells."

"Perhaps they sense your own determination, Lord," Esmat replied.

"I doubt it." Already they were hard at their backstabbing and undercutting. Yet he was impressed. He would be dealing with men honestly able to make commitments and undertake obligations, all in an air of great publicity. Even the Guild had entered its delegation, captained by the formidable General Lauder. The Itaskians had sent their redoubtable War Minister as well as the slippery Greyfells. Something solid would come out of the sessions.

Within the formal process there was little dissent or maneuver. No one held a position of strength. After a week, El Murid told Esmat, "We're going to get there. We can wrap it in a month. We'll be in Al Rhemish before your old cohorts can put back everything they stole when they heard I was dead." He chuckled.

He had become an easier El Murid, taking a juvenile pleasure in disconcerting everyone with his frankness and new cynicism. People recalled that he was a salt merchant's son and muttered that blood would tell.

"Not long at all, Esmat. The only real thieves are the Itaskians, and they defeat themselves by working at cross-purposes. We'll come out better than I anticipated."

He had concluded a covert, long-term understanding with Duke Greyfells almost immediately. In private, the Duke showed a pragmatic honesty El Murid appreciated.

"And what of the Second Empire, Lord? Do we abandon the dream?"

"Not to worry, Esmat. Not to worry. We but buy a breathing space in which the dream may build new strength. The Faithful carried the Word to the shores of the Silverbind. They have sown the thunder. Those fields will yield up a rich bounty when next the Chosen come harvesting."

Esmat stared at his master and thought, Yes, but...

Who would provide the magnetism and drive? Who would deliver the spark of divine insanity that made masses of men rush to their deaths for something they could not comprehend?

Not you, Lord, Esmat thought. Not you. You can't even sell yourself anymore.

He looked at his master and felt a great sorrow, felt as though something precious had been taken away while he was distracted. He did not know what it was. He did not understand the feeling. He thought himself a practical man.