Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (60 page)

At least these were real fighting men, he'd thought, there'd be some honour in this hunt and a tale to tell after, more than other tribes could claim.

He'd waited, and the men he'd sent in had not returned. Surprised, impressed, suspicious, he'd listened to the clamour of his people and let larger groups go in search of their brother tribesmen and the foe to follow. He'd warned them to beware of lurking magic, but still he'd let them go.

And had waited then, with what remained of his warriors, while the other tribes caught up; it had been their passing taunts that sent a number more into the maze of fields intemperately, in ones and twos into the unyielding silence.

And none of them, not one had yet come back. He'd have taken all that remained of his men and led them in himself if he hadn't recognised that there was strong magic at work here, and if he hadn't been exceptional. It was patently clear that no spell could be outfaced even by a sheikh in his wrath; it was patently clear also - at least to Bhisrat - that throwing himself into its clutches regardless would be an act of heroic but monumental vanity.

So he had chosen to endure the unspoken contempt of his peers, rather than immolate himself to a foolish badge of courage that could lose himself his life and his people his leadership when they needed it most.

So he sat at the elders' fire where all the sheikhs held council, with his back to the wall behind which he had lost the pride of his tribe; he kept his own pride in check, not to be known as the man who wrecked the hope of all Sharai; he pretended to listen to the older men's talking while he waited for news, any news from what Saren he had left to watch the wall.

There was news, other news from other tribes, where they watched other borders of the camp. Things moved in the dark, they said, that were not men. They had shot arrows without result, or with no result that they could see. None was willing to venture far, to check. Bhisrat thought that the fate of the vanished Saren was perhaps weighing on their minds, turning common cowardice into good sense; it was good sense not to say so, though, so he said nothing and kept his face immobile.

For as long as he could, he kept so. Despite all temptations, all the hostages that fortune laid before him, his control was only broken when there was a stir in the half-light beyond the fire, between this fire and the next; when t
here were voices raised in startl
ement, crying out in disbelief, when two figures came stumbling awkwardly out of a deeper dark than the starlit night and the firelit camp could own between them.

They were awkward because they leaned on each other -no, because one leaned and the other had to support him, and could do that only lopsidedly because he carried something heavy in the opposite hand. Their sudden appearance was shock enough; it was their recognition, though, that made men cry aloud for gladness and for fear, and for rage.

One of the figures was Hasan, and the sight of him raised joy that spread like a fire through the camp, that was as quickly followed by fear because he needed his companions strength to walk, he was pale and scarred and terribly weak who had always been so strong and masterful, master of himself before he mastered any other man. And then there was another kind of fear, as news spread of what the burden was that swung on that companions other side: some grisly trophy, a thing that had never been human, and the tribes had not come here to fight the obscene get of the spirit world
...

The rage was Bhisrat's and his alone, and it made him add his voice to the tumult in a bellow. That companion, with his one hand gripping Hasan and his other raising high the vile thing it carried - that was the tribeless boy, the oath-breaker who offended all the tribes but the Saren specially, he who followed the bastard Patric Ghost Walker and should have died twice by now, twice at least. And he had given a finger to join the Sand Dancers and still he was let live, he was let walk into camp as into Selussin and Rhabat and this folly had to end, how long must Bhisrat endure it
...
?

The boy walked into the firelight, into the heart of the elders' council, and didn't even pretend to be there simply as a
prop to the sick Hasan. He settl
ed his master carefully in the heat, to be sure - but then he straightened himself and turned a full circle, showing what he held to every man that watched.

It was a ghul's head, female and monstrous at the same time. Hewn from its owner after death, it must have been; it had needed more than one stroke to separate that from the neck it had inhabited before. Bhisrat guessed furiously at what blade had been used to do the work, and saw his guess confirmed as the nameless, shameless boy dropped the head and then knelt beside it, with Bhisrat's own good knife in his hand.

There would be no honour in slaying the boy, it was only a necessary duty owed to the dignity of the tribe, a restoration. He would do it in the Sands, on Saren land and under Saren eyes. Even so, this blatant parading called for some response. Half the men around him were waiting for it, he thought, even while they babbled questions at Hasan and were entirely ignored.

'Enough!' he cried, into the general clamour of rising voices; and sure enough, those voices fell silent too quickly to be trusted. Urgent as they were with their own demands, the sheikhs all wanted to hear from him, to see what he would do. Perhaps they thought, very likely some of them hoped that he would heap shame upon shame, take out his temper on the boy's flesh in utter disregard of Hasan, of the situation, of his own oaths and promises.

He did not. He impressed himself with his own forbearance; he spoke to Hasan and said, 'There are many questions, and we will ask them all; but first, tell me how it is that you allow that outcast to strut at your side, even here at the heart of our camp? This is the third time he has forced himself into our councils. His arrogance will earn him brief reward, when the time is right, but I do not understand why you give him your support.'

'It was rather the other way about,' Hasan said softly, drily. 'And is that your chief concern, this night? Well, let it be. He is here because he has something to show you, that I think you ought to see.'

A ghul's head? I have seen one before.'

'Not the head alone, something more.'

'You could have shown us
yourself, why let the boy bring
it?'

'He slew it,' mildly.

'Better it had slain him, saved me the work.' 'See him as a prop to my weakness, if that is easier for you, and a bearer of burdens. I could not have carried that head tonight, and you needed to see it. All of you need to see it. Show them, Jemel.'

The boy wrenched open the dead thing's mouth - too long for a human jaw and too pointed, but still disturbingly female, as though in deliberate mockery - and slipped the blade inside. His hands worked, one gripping while the other sawed; they emerged with the tongue of the ghul hanging like a miscarried foetus, dark and dripping.

'So the boy is an incompetent butcher. And what?'

'Look

The boy himself had still said nothing, and he said nothing still. He probed the point of the blade into the heavy wet meat of the tongue, found something, grunted his satisfaction.

And cut it out, and held it up for all to see: not a growth, nothing that could be natural even to so unnatural a thing as a ghul. A small stone, a large seed: something like an olive-pit, except that it was itself the size of an olive.

'What is that?'

'A spell, an enchantment; a whip, perhaps. Break it, Jemel, or Esren leaves you stranded here.'

The boy placed it on a broad, flat stone near the fire, that had been used an hour before for baking bread. He still held the dagger, Bhisrat's own blade in his other hand; now he reversed it, and brought the pommel slamming down. Bhisrat cried out in protest at seeing his knife so abused, but this time he was ignored.

The little thing had been a stone indeed, and had broken open under the blow. Stained dark on the outside by the body or the blood of the creature it had inhabited, it showed its golden heart in the firelight. Now half a dozen voices asked the same question ag
ain while the boy went on silentl
y, heedlessly ruining the daggers fine hilt, using the weight of it to crush the stone to powder.

'What is
that?' the voices asked, and answered themselves in a ragged and rising chorus. 'It
’
s a stone, that's all, just a piece of rock, what was it doing in that thing's tongue, what's this about?'

'It was fetched over from the land of the djinn,' Hasan said; and quiet, tired as he was, his voice cut through the sheikhs' uproar as they all sought to outshout each other.

They gaped at him, so many fools with their beards hanging loose. Bhisrat wore no beard, but still he could feel his own startlement writ large on his face in the firelight. No way to recover that, only a brief opportunity to seize leadership again, before another man stepped into the silence.

'Hasan, I - we - do not understand.'

'It is, it was a pebble from the land of the djinn,' he said again, more clearly, 'fetched over by the 'ifrit to be a tool, to make the ghul a tool to their will. There is some virtue if you would call it that, some glamour in the rock of that place, that gives it power here. The 'ifrit have used it to bind a djinn, the same that brought us here — but you know that, you were in Rhabat and saw what came of it. They use it also to bind ghuls. Those are ghuls that haunt the borders of your camp tonight, but they are ghuls with a stronger mind behind them. They are being driven against you, and it's the 'ifrit that drive them. I do not know why, but the 'ifrit have attacked us before; they have attacked others along this river this day.'

'It is obvious why,' Bhisrat growled. 'The 'ifrit are bound or in allegiance to these Patrics of Surayon, and are sent against their enemies.'

'It was the Patrics of Surayon that saved my life today,' Hasan returned mildly, and an 'ifrit that threatened it.'

'Seeming so. And as a result you come to us, you are returned to us - to say what? I do not think to lead us to Ascariel, or to plunder. Have they turned your head, Hasan?'

'Have they? No, I don't believe they have. You are right, though, Bhisrat of the Saren. This much I am convinced of, that the 'ifrit are the greater enemy and the greater cause tonight. We must fight and defeat them before we think to fight further for our land, that the Patrics stole from us. Not to forget that, but to put it aside for now; and if that means we must fight alongside the Patrics for a short time, then let it be. When men ride out against the spirit world, they do well to ride in numbers. And I do not think it will be for long.'

Bhisrat snorted, was ready to say that he did not think it would be at all, that the Sharai were too wise to be so trapped. He was forestalled, though, by the oathbreaker.

'Bhisrat of the Saren,' the boy murmured, loud enough to carry. 'Yes, indeed. And where are your Saren tonight, Bhisrat? I remember all their faces, and I don't see any of them hereabouts
...'

He could not have seen in the dark, in the crush of bodies packing in around the firelit circle. He must have known before; and of course he did, because he had come with Hasan, which meant he had come from those Patrics who had snared the Saren in their cursed labyrinth. True warriors of the tribe, of the Sharai, and they were being sneered at by this boy of shifting allegiance, who had long since forgotten how to spell his loyalty or what oaths he'd broken and to whom.

Bhisrat's roar of fury was building in him like sand blown in a storm against the tent of his resistance. He must break his own oaths now, at any moment, he must draw his scimitar and smite that reckless, feckless boys head from his dishonest shoulders, let it fall down beside the ghul's and lie there, kind by kind
...

But again Hasan cut in, just a moment before Bhisrat must have lost control; again the breathy fragility of his voice was somehow a quality that must be listened to.

'Jemel, enough. Don't be petty. Go and fetch them now.'

'Very well, Hasan.'

With half a smile and a mysterious glance that was meant surely to infuriate further, as it surely did, the boy rose easily to his feet and began to walk towards the wall that hid the ensnaring
maze. That route took him directl
y towards Bhisrat, wh
o had chosen that place explicitl
y so that he could be seen not to give even a glance at the wall.

They came face to face and Jemel said nothing, only waited politely for Bhisrat to move aside.

Instead, he stood four-square in the boy's path and — almost choking on the effort to speak, grinding the words out - he said, 'You know where they are.'

'Oh, yes.' For a moment, he held that same mocking smile; and then, relenting, 'They are not dead, Bhisrat, only lost and wandering; and they have been my brothers all my life, till now. I will fetch them out.'

'They are my tribe, outcast. I will fetch them.'

'Oh? Go, then,' with a courteous gesture. 'I will wait with Hasan; he needs me, if the Saren do not.'

'You know I cannot fetch them without your help.'

'And you should know that I will not help you to fetch them. What, shall I lead you through your confusion, while you dog obediendy at my heels?'