Splinter Of The Mind's Eye

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 ca

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.