Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (21 page)

God, although they thanked Him for it. It wasn't an idea to mention to the priest, nor to his uncle; he tried to tell his friend Aldo once, and failed, and stepped quickly back onto safer ground as soon as he saw and understood the failure. Good boys didn't wonder about such things, certainly didn't ask such questions; and Marron could be good in those days, if Aldo was.

They set their backs against the sun; squinting into its brightness would mean also squinting up at the
castle
. That way lay the girls in their danger, the risk of blame rising again. Better to go the other way, to go nowhere: to walk without purpose as the town came to slow and sullen life around them, to skirt the marketplace, to press through the throngs of boys released from lessons - ignoring how they stared at a Patric face, how those stares were redoubled at their first sight of his eyes - and so to come at last to that high angle of the walls that faced due east, back to the Sands and Rhabat. Nothing was neutral in that direction either, but at least those memories were a story told.

There was a flight of steps leading up to the wall's height, and a man standing watch at the top; truce or no truce, Selussin had learned to be wary. He glanced down as they climbed, but if his face held any expression Marron could not read it. He said nothing, and his body showed no tension; his hand stayed far from his scimitar's hilt.

After murmuring a greeting which brought no response, Jemel led Marron to stand at a little distance.

'He thinks I am mad, no doubt, keeping company with a Patric who dresses like a Sharai and has the eyes of a devil. Mad or heretical, or both. Perhaps he is right, perhaps I am.'

'Mad, or heretical?'

'Both. You have made me both, Marron. You have turned me from my good sense, so that I stand bareheaded in the sun; and you have turned me from my God also, so that I cannot remember when last I prayed and meant it.'

'Do you regret either?'

'No.' He might have said that with a laugh, or with a gesture that would speak of love that overrode both sense and God, but he did not. 'I have one purpose left that you cannot turn me from, one oath yet that you will not make me break; so long as I have that, I am still Jemel. All else that I am is yours, and I do not regret it nor ever will in this body. If God condemns me for it when I am dead, then perhaps will be the time for regrets; but I can always plead madness,' and he still wasn't smiling though he should have been, surely. 'Duty would be a better plea, I think. So long as I follow you and love you, I betray no one and can still hope to fulfil my oath.'

His oath, of course, was to kill Sieur Anton d'Escrivey. Marron harboured his own secret oath, to prevent that by any means in his power. So long as Jemel was mad enough to follow him, he thought he could achieve it; his dream of travelling came back to him, the call of the far lands to the east. That way, perhaps, lay safety among strangers — but not yet. Sieur Anton was still a small world away, in Outremer beyond the mountains; Julianne and Elisande were closer and in peril, in need. Even if he could find no rescue for them, he could not leave them yet.

He gazed outward, feeling the lure regardless, trying to see past all the country he'd walked thus far, into the haze beyond — and was distracted suddenly by something closer, significantly close, a stirring twist of dust that hid dark figures at its heart.

'Look,' he said softly. 'There, do you see?'

'No, nothing. What is it?'

No dispute, no suggestion that perhaps there was nothing to be seen: Jemel had desert eyes, but knew that Marron had the Daughters.

'They are coming.'

At last, they were coming. Marron hadn't realised until this moment came just how much he'd been waiting for it, for them. Waiting more in hope than expectation, perhaps, but waiting none the less. At least he could be sure of something's happening now, something's being forced to happen. A handful of people could sit quiet within a township's walls, perhaps; an army not, and this should be an army. Coren could be patient, Coren could outsit a mountain; Hasan not, and this must be Hasan.

'Who, and how many?'

Marron smiled; even his eyes couldn't make out banners or numbers at this distance. 'You could guess, better than I can see. These are your people. A group of men, though, it's not a column, the dust is settling at their backs; and they're riding swiftly. Outriders, come to scout the land?'

'Of a sort. There will be two dozen men, and I could put a name to each of them. Will you wager?' 'Would I lose?' 'Oh, yes.'

'Name your terms.'

Jemel chuckled, and brushed the back of his hand lightly against Marron's arm as he shook his head. 'Gambling is a sin, forbidden. But I will tell you, and you will see how well I know the tribes, and be impressed.' 'Isn't vanity a sin too?'

A purse of the lips, a rocking motion of the head: 'It is preached against. Does it offend God, or simply courtesy? I am not sure. Ask an imam; I am a warrior. And this I am sure of, that Hasan leads those riders himself, and at his back you will find the sheikhs of every tribe that rides with him. Where else would they be but at the head, how else could they bring the tribes to follow? Besides, this country is known, their coming cannot be hidden; what need of scouts? If any, they would scout themselves, and trust their own eyes before another mans.'

Marron nodded. Hasan, the sheikhs - and one other, sure to be riding in that party.

'One of us,' he said neutrally, 'is going to have to tell Rudel that his daughter has gone into the castle.' When Jemel didn't answer, he went on, 'We could leave it to Coren, perhaps?' Let the diplomat break the news
...

But Jemel was shaking his head, as Marron had been sure that he would. 'No. If there was a fault, it was mine; if there is a storm to come, it is mine to endure.'

Not alone; Marron would stand beside him. But, 'If there was a fault, it was Elisande's, in choosing to go.'

'You did not think so when I told you. Perhaps her father will not think so either.'

'I was wrong, Jemel, and I am sorry for it. And Rudel knows her better than any of us, he will not make the same mistake.'
He knows her better and loves her less,
he might have added for his friend's comfort, except that he didn't believe that it was true.

'You think so? You may be right — but he is still her father. We should go and meet them.'

'They'll be a while yet.' Indeed, Jemel was still straining to see what was so clear to Marron, the distant figures and the dust-cloud of their passage; the watchman close by hadn't sighted them at all. 'No point walking so far out that we have to run back at their stirrups.' Marron could run all day, with the Daughter's strength allied to his own; Jemel only thought that he could. 'Wait a little, and watch.'

'If we wait much longer, he' - the watchman, indicated with a contemptuous jerk of the head - 'will see them at last,' for all the world as though Jemel saw them clearly himself, 'and strike his alarm,' an iron ring suspended from a tripod at his side.

'And then?'

'And then they will close the gates, and we will be prevented from leaving the city.'

Only Jemel could call this little township a city; surely only Jemel could imagine that it would have fire enough in its belly to defy an army of the Sharai. Marron smiled, and said, 'Wait. If they will not let us out, then we will wait until they let Hasan in. I do not think it will be long.'

It was long enough before the watchman spotted the approaching riders — so long, indeed, that Marron was tempted to go to him and point them out.

At last the man stiffened and stared, muttering nervously into his beard; then he snatched up a bar and belaboured his alarm-ring, crying out above its clatter to reinforce its warning.

Marron turned to watch the streets below, and saw the panic that he'd been expecting: people spewing from every house amid a rising babble of voices, men and boys milling uncertainly, looking for leadership and finding none while the women came running in from the fields, herding their daughters before them and trying vainly to gather in their sons. Some of the men carried arms, and some of those came to the walls, but more were hurrying to the temples where their greater confidence lay, their better chance of another survival.

'We should go
to the gate,' Jemel said urgentl
y. 'If you think so.'

It was easier to make their way along the wall than through the streets, there was far less press of people. The men who had climbed up stood for the most part numbly clutching a useless scimitar or spear, or eke gripping the parapet two-handed, gazing at the plume of dust that foretold their greatest fear. Some were silent, some spoke of the supposed truce, of the faithlessness of the Sharai; more than once Marron had to drag Jemel on, where he would have stopped to dispute that.

When they reached the gates in this south-easterly wall, they found them still standing wide, abandoned even by their guards. Jemel exclaimed aloud; Marron grinned, and led his friend down the steps to ground level.

'Why slam a door, only to have it broken down and needing repair after? These people cannot stand against the Sharai, Jemel, they know that as well as you do. They will welcome Hasan as they have welcomed my people before this, and yours again before them; they will starve themselves to feed his army, and pray only that he leaves or is driven back into the Sands before they starve indeed.'

Even as he said it, here came the welcoming-party: a group of flustered elderly men in ornate robes, clutching talismans or plucking at their beards with fretful fingers. They arrayed themselves in
the road below the gateway, jostl
ing for precedence or seeking to deny it, some of them, pushing others forward in their stead. Jemel hissed in irritation; Marron swallowed a chuckle, and pulled him into the shadow of the high gate.

The harsh, doleful tol
ling of the alarm stopped abruptl
y. The whole township seemed to be holding itself in stillness, all the clamour of the last minutes fallen to nothing. Marron gazed up at the baked mud of the arch above the gate and thought he could feel how ancient this place was, and how weary as it faced yet another force of men, yet another invasion. Weary but strong, strong in patience and in faith: and that faith would be rewarded, that patience would win in the end. This army would leave in the end, as every army before it. Selussin would remain.

Strength to endure, simple survival - it was a quality that Marron admired, envied, hungered for. Every living man is a survivor, of course; every man endures everything he meets until he fails, until he dies. Marron had endured more than many and survived it, he expected to endure more yet and to survive that too; but it wasn't his own strength that had brought him this far or would take him further.
The Ghost Walker is traditionally very hard to kill.

The boy in him - what was left of the boy in him, when he could find it - yearned for another kind of life, but could not speak of it even to Jemel, especially to Jemel. He was ashamed of his own dreams, because even if there could be a life for him without the Daughter, it still wasn't his own strength that he dreamed of. He still wanted to live in strengths shadow, sooner than be strong himself.

He'd seen many kinds of strength since he came to the Sanctuary Land. Here about Selussin was the simplest form, high walls that were undefended, that could do nothing but stand; and here came a couple of strong men who were anything but simple, who rode veiled against the dust they raised, whose hearts were as obscure as their deeds were daring.

Hasan and Rudel, side by side: and even that could be significant, where the two dozen men who followed were indeed tribal chieftains and could each have claimed the place of honour at Hasan's elbow. Perhaps Rudel only rode there to save the others fighting for it; that was not impossible. Or perhaps Sharai had come to an accommodation with Surayon,
thus far and no further,
that was possible too. That could be hoped for, at least for a little longer...

Any man arriving so, out of the Sands with a band of seasoned warriors at his back and first signs now of a greater force behind, any such must have caused the priests great anxiety. When such a man threw back hood and veil, gazed down and said with quiet authority, 'I am Hasan,' pure terror showed for a moment on their faces. All the world knew that Hasan was hungry for war with Outremer. If he'd chosen this time and this place to fight it, they could see the final end to Selussin's long history played out in blood and destruction, their libraries burned and their temples ransacked, their people s lives and their own consumed in blood and pain.

The eldest among them, gaunt and white-bearded, recovered himself quickly. He took a slow pace forward, leaning on what might have been a staff of office or else simply a support for unstea
dy legs; he bowed his head lightl
y, a gesture of respect from priest to warrior but nothing more, no hint of a surrender; he said, 'Hasan, our gates are open to you as they are to all who follow the true faith, if you come in peace.'

The gates were open in any case, however he came. Hasan bowed in his turn, though, and said, 'Always in peace to you, most holy.'

'Your numbers do not suggest a mission of peace,' which was a challenge more direct than Marron or possibly Hasan had expected.