Mage's Blood (45 page)

They rose at dawn. The sun lit the eastern sky red and gold, glorious, remote. There was no wind, no clouds, and the air was dry, but it was clean. They kept to the low places, Jamil occasionally scouting ahead, but they saw no sign of the nomads, even at the site of the massacre, where hundreds of jackals and vultures fought over the unburied corpses. As noon approached they walked the horses on muffled hooves. They saw no Ingashir that day, nor the next, and on the afternoon of the third day Jamil removed the muffling from the horses’ hooves and allowed them to trot. The mute girl wrapped her arms about Jai’s chest and pressed herself against his back, but apart from a small squeal the first time they broke into a trot she uttered no sound.

Kazim began to see signs of life he’d not noticed when marching amidst the thousands of the shihad: the marks that snakes left on the sand, little spider-webs woven between boulders. Tiny birds followed them, swooping about them chasing flies. There were lots of flies.

They prayed five times a day. Jamil joined them as Haroun recited texts from memory to guide them. The girl watched silently, her eyes following Jai wherever he went. One day, as they prepared for their midday nap, Jamil spoke quietly in Jai’s ear and the two of them built a small blood-tent for her, complete with red ribbons. She was reluctant to leave Jai’s side, and only settled when Jai laid his blanket across the flap so that she could see him. Jai had been planning to marry one of the bevy of mindless chatterers who frequented Aruna Nagar Market, yet he was caring for this clinging camp-girl like she was a younger sister.
I guess your life isn’t working out as planned either
, Kazim thought.

He put an arm around Jai’s shoulder at breakfast. ‘How are you, brother?’

‘I’m scared witless,’ Jai admitted, ‘but I have to look after Keita.’

‘That’s her name?’

‘She talks a bit to me. I’ve promised to look after her.’ He set his shoulders. ‘So I guess I have to.’ His voice held a faint tinge of regret, of dreams quietly disposed of, but not quite forgotten.

Kazim hugged him. ‘I’ll look after her too, brother. She will be as a sister to me.’ He looked Jai up and down. He was leaner, his beard and moustache fuller. He looked more adult. He was improving with the scimitar too. They drilled each night before sleep, and Jamil seemed faintly pleased – not that he ever said so. ‘You’re looking like a real Lakh warrior now. Let the Rondians beware.’

Jai’s mouth twitched distantly. ‘I don’t care about the Rondians. I just want to find Mita and Huriya and bring them home. And take care of Keita, of course. She’s from a village near Teshwallabad. We can take her back to her family on the way south.’

‘I hope it’s that simple, brother.’

The only men they met were three Ingashir who appeared before them like ghosts one morning. Jamil went ahead and spoke to them in their own tongue, and the raiders let them pass. Kazim watched their back-trail for the rest of the day, but there was no sign of pursuit. Jamil caught him looking back and praised his caution, but added, ‘You’re better to watch forward, boy. The Ingashir prefer to lie in wait rather than pursue. Come, ride with me and I’ll show you some survival skills.’

So he went ahead with the warrior and learned something of scouting: reading the terrain and using it to approach high places unseen. How to watch where the birds did and didn’t go. Things to look for in the sand and the stones. How to tell how old a campfire was, or when water might be near.

To the west, the hills of Ingash rose stark and brown. On the clearest days, they could see above and beyond them to the remote snow-capped mountains. To the east, the horizon was dead flat, empty.
The Prophet had walked this wilderness, speaking with Ahm and Shaitan for one hundred days. Kazim knew the story, the Great Temptation, and it made him tremble to think they might be walking in the Prophet’s very footsteps, but Jamil just grunted when he said as much. He was scanning the northern horizon, where a faint darkness, brownish-purple, was stirring. There was a faint, acrid wind and the skies had become utterly empty.

‘Let’s go back to that last wadi and await the others,’ he said. ‘We’ll go no further today – or tomorrow, if I’m not mistaken. There’s a sandstorm coming.’

They retraced their journey to the dried-up watercourse set between high banks of rock. Moving hastily, they unburdened the horses and tethered them, then Jamil set Kazim to hammering staves diagonally into the ground so they buttressed the bank before lashing the leather tent to them. By the time the others arrived the wind was beginning to keen. Jamil was everywhere, urging the horses down on their knees and covering them, creating lean-tos of blankets and packs against the riverbanks.

‘But it might rain and fill the riverbed,’ shouted Haroun, worriedly.

Jamil laughed bitterly. ‘It won’t rain here for another seven months, Scriptualist. Save your breath and work!’ He lashed together another tent and shoved the girl inside. He thrust some food into Jai’s hands and pushed him inside after her, crying, ‘Seal it off!’

The wind began to scream, frightening the horses as much as them.

‘Won’t the horses run off?’ shouted Kazim.

‘Where to?’ the warrior shouted back. ‘They’ll stay put, don’t worry. Distribute the packs and water. You’re with the scriptualist. Pray hard!’

The sand began to lash them, stinging blasts that made them stagger, but they were almost done now. Haroun was sealing the last few gaps with rags. Kazim crawled in beside him. Jai waved from the mouth of his tent, then pulled it shut and fastened the ties. Jamil stalked towards them. He put something into Kazim’s hands: a shovel. ‘Stay inside and you’ll be fine, Ahm willing,’ he shouted, then he was gone. Kazim tied the flap shut.

The tent quivered in the wind, which let loose a menacing wail. Kazim was pressed up against Haroun. The young scriptualist looked at him and brandished a flask. He took a sip, then held it under Kazim’s nose and the sweet smell of arak filled his nostrils. ‘It won’t be all bad in here, brother,’ Haroun shouted as he leaned back against the wadi wall. ‘One day Ahm will have perfected me so that I do not need such earthly pleasures. But thankfully, that day is not yet at hand.’

Kazim settled in beside him and accepted a sip. The bitter liquid burned its way down his throat. Jamil had said it could last for days. It was almost too loud to talk, so as long as the tents held, there was nothing to do but pray or sleep. Or drink.

‘Haroun, did I do right, back at the ambush?’ he asked much later, when the noise outside dipped momentarily.

Haroun blinked. ‘You saved our lives, Kazim. You were magnificent.’

‘It doesn’t feel that way. I killed a raider – I pulled him under the wagon wheels – but I also rode down one of ours, and I threw another fellow off the wagon so he wouldn’t slow us down. So I killed one enemy and two friends – in fact, I have killed three Amteh so far on this shihad, and if you count the men whose food I stole, I may have killed more. Will Ahm forgive me?’

‘You know better than that, brother,’ Haroun said. ‘A dead man cannot redeem your woman. Ahm loves you, Kazim Makani; that I know. But let us pray, and it will ease your spirit.’

So they prayed, and he gained a kind of peace from it, but as usual, his mind couldn’t dwell on higher things for long. He was alive and others weren’t.
You have to go on
, he told himself.
Don’t dwell on it
. He settled down to wait out the storm, wishing he could trade places with Jai and have a soft female to press against.
Lucky bastard!
Though Keita probably wasn’t interested, so perhaps it was worse for Jai, locked up with a girl who wouldn’t screw, knowing Jamil would gut him if he forced himself on her – not that Jai would ever force a girl. So he was probably just lying there with a rock-hard cock and nothing to do with it. Kazim grinned at the thought.

Outside the noise rose to deafening. The sand slashed at their tents, making them shudder, but so far they were holding. When they had to pee or shit, they used the lee-ward corner, and buried it; Jamil had left a small hole unlaced there, so the smell never became unbearable. Though it was midday, the dirty brown darkness was more like twilight. There was nothing else they could do, so they shared the arak until it was gone, and finally, feeling lightheaded and bored, they were tired enough to sleep.

Some indeterminable time later, Kazim woke to a narrow shaft of sunlight pouring in through the little air-hole. Outside he heard the keening call of a kite, and a horse nickered softly. The air inside was sour, and Haroun was muttering in his sleep. He looked at the spiritualist: his beard was fuller than when they’d first met, and curly, falling to his collarbone. His white robes were frayed and stained under the armpits. It was strange to think they had met just a couple of months ago. It felt like for ever.

Kazim rubbed his own burgeoning beard. He wondered if Ramita would like the look, or if she’d nag him to shave. He tried to picture her face, wondered where she was. Did she still think of him as he did of her, or was she with child already, and caught up in her own cares?

He shook away these depressing thoughts and examined the tent flap. He could feel sand banked halfway up it, so he unlaced the top and crawled out over the mound. His legs were aching from being bent for so long; straightening them was agonising. Outside, he light was dazzling, but the air was still. Sand had piled everywhere; the wadi was full almost to the lip on the other side, but Jamil had sited them in the lee, which had got off far more lightly. Jamil himself was saddling one of the horses. He smiled with genuine warmth and called, ‘Sal’Ahm.’

Kazim looked about. The sun was low to his left, which must be east if this was morning. ‘Is all well?’

‘All is well. Rouse the others; we should eat.’ He indicated a small camp-fire, where a tin pot was steaming, and Kazim’s stomach growled in hunger.

Buoyed by the thought of food, Kazim woke Haroun, and then tramped up to Jai’s still- closed tent. He peered through the air-hole. Jai’s eyes were closed. The girl’s head lay on his chest, her hair loose over her bare shoulder. She was also asleep. He sniffed, and at the smell of sweat and bodily fluids thought,
My friend’s a lucky bastard
, then shouted, ‘Jai, wake up!’

His friend opened his eyes and peered up at the air-hole. ‘I am awake,’ he whispered, with a smile of puzzled contentment.

‘Then get your arse out here and do some work,’ Kazim told him. ‘Unless you are so weakened from screwing you can’t walk?’

‘I’ll be five minutes,’ Jai said, running his fingers through Keita’s hair. She stirred and murmured something throaty. Jai grinned up at Kazim. ‘Or maybe ten.’

They wound their way north as the moon waned and vacated the night sky. Weeks flew by, each day like the other. Though supplies ran low, Jamil kept strict rationing and they did not go short. The captain was no longer scouting ahead; he said there was no need. The ground was rocky now, and the sand coarser, and small spiny bushes grew in the lee of the rocks. Fat blue-black flies hummed about them ceaselessly, but avoided Jamil. That wasn’t the only unusual thing Kazim had observed: sometimes he saw a faint blue light within his tent, and sometimes he appeared to be talking to himself in one-sided conversations. But he’d been true to his promise to guide them safely, and he treated them all with more respect now; When he called Kazim ‘Chicken Boy’ now, he was teasing.

Kazim felt a kinship with them all unlike any he’d felt before. They had survived the massacre and the sandstorm and crossed the desert. They prayed together and ate together, and if Jai was the only one allowed to screw Keita, no one complained. The girl cooked for them now, and she was losing some of her baby fat, turning into a woman. Of course, her belly would be swelling soon enough if Jai wasn’t careful. Kazim mentioned this as they walked the horses to a tiny muddy pool Jamil had found.

‘She’s a dark moon bleeder,’ Jai replied, ‘so we were careful last
week. She’ll need the blood-tent again any day. Jamil says we’re only a couple of days from Gujati, the most southern settlement in Kesh.’ He glanced back the way they had come. ‘I’m going to miss the desert, sort of.’

‘Me too. There’s something about it … but I’ll be glad of a bath.’ He cast his mind forward to Hebusalim, to Ramita, imprisoned somewhere: the caged bird he would free.
We’re coming, my love
.

Two days later as the setting sun cast long shadows into the darkening east, they topped a rise to find a cluster of thirty-odd mud-brick huts before them, gathered about a well. They were too tired to enjoy this moment of triumph – they had been on the march for three months and the new year was already two months old. But they were finally in Kesh.

Some enemies come bearing weapons and uttering blasphemies and so you know them. But worse are enemies who come with gifts and gracious deeds. You know them not as foes, until too late
.

S
ALIM
K
ABARAKHI
II, S
ULTAN OF
K
ESH
, 922

Hebusalim, on the continent of Antiopia
Moharram (Janune) to Awwal (Martrois) 928
6–4 months until the Moontide

Ramita and Huriya paced the gardens of Meiros’ palace in Hebusalim, wishing they had wings and could fly over the walls. It felt like a prison, when there was so much to see outside. The central courtyard was sixty paces square. The crushed marble underfoot glowed in the sunlight, and the carved reliefs of the marble buildings shone
so brightly that the girls covered their faces with gauze headscarves. The sky was clear, the air was scented with the fragrance of the flowerbeds. Somehow the smells of the city never reached this place. Water tinkled musically in the fountain of carved fish exploding from stone shaped as spume – more water wasted in a minute than Ramita’s family used in a day. She had thought it was drinking water, until a condescending servant had told her, ‘If madam wanted a drink, she had only to ask.’ The fountain water was not drinkable, the servant said, though it looked fine to Ramita, a lot cleaner than the water she used to lug home from the Imuna. People here were clearly over-delicate. There were plants blooming here that she did not recognise; she couldn’t work out how they would be used, but Huriya giggled and told her they were decorative.