Shahr Baraz’s staff took up their places behind him in a momentary stillness. The old Khedive was helmetless and the wind swayed the long white hair of his topknot, the two ends of his drooping moustache. His face seemed hardly lined despite his age, and his eyes were almost invisible within their slits. He sat his steed as easily as a young man, in black and gold lacquered armour, his scimitar sheathed at one thigh. His horse, a tall grey gelding, bore a black chamfron and a tall yellow crest, and its tail was bound up with white ribbons.
Shahr Baraz tightened his knees, and his mount started forward into the square at an easy canter.
There was a murmur of sound from the assembled army. As the old Khedive approached the centre of the square it swelled into a roar. The army was cheering him, three sides of the gargantuan space erupting as the thousands upon thousands of throats joined in an air-shaking storm of noise. Then it began to form words, a phrase repeated over and over again:
“Hor-la Kadhar, Hor-la Khadar!”
Glory to God they were chanting, thanking their creator for this moment of triumph, this spectacle of their greatness. And their cheers were directed at Shahr Baraz on his horse near the heart of their formations. Glory to God for this evidence of His love for them, this victory of victories.
“Hor-la Kadhar,” Shahr Baraz whispered, his eyes stinging with tears that he would not let fall. He whipped out his scimitar so that it was a white flash in the sunlight, and the cheering redoubled. They would hear it for leagues, he thought. They would hear the Merduk army giving praise to the One True God, and they would tremble, those unbelievers, knowing at last that the time of the Saint had ended and the time of the Prophet was beginning.
Shahr Baraz sheathed his scimitar. The blood was racing through him like a spring tide, making him young again. The gelding caught his mood and began to dance beneath him. The pair continued on their way to the scaffold that had been set up in the square where the statue of Myrnius Kuln stood looking on with granite eyes, as he had looked on for six centuries in this city he had founded. The Khedive’s staff caught up with him, their silk surcoats flapping like banners, the battle fanions streaming like brightly coloured serpents above their heads.
The cheering abated like a retreating gale, became a murmur again and then a silence, so that the hooves of the Khedive’s entourage were loud on the flagged surface of the square.
When Shahr Baraz reached the scaffold he halted and donned his war-helm. It was black with a long neck guard and full cheekpieces that made the wearer’s face into a mask. Set atop it was a representation of a crescent moon, a curving horn two feet across encased in silver. It was the badge of the Baraz clan.
At the foot of the scaffold Sibastion Lejer stood in tattered rags, a hooded Merduk soldier on either side of him. His dark eyes glowed with hatred.
The last stand of the Torunnans had ended a few leagues outside the city, on a low hillock beside the Searil road. There the remnants of John Mogen’s once great army had turned at bay, to be annihilated by the massed Merduk forces. Only a handful had survived the last savage hand-to-hand struggle, and these, having refused service in the Merduk army, were already on their way eastwards in chains so that the people of Ostrabar might have a look at the soldiers who had defied them for sixty years, since the crossing of the Jafrar Mountains and the first battles between Merduk and Ramusian.
But Lejer—for him a different fate was reserved.
It would be good for the army to watch his death. He had baulked them of a fortune in loot, and left them masters of a dead city. Now they would see their general make him pay for it, and know that he shared their anger.
Shahr Baraz spoke, his voice hollowed by the tall-crested helm.
“I had thought to have you killed by the elephants, like the criminal you are,” he told Lejer matter-of-factly. “You destroyed the jewel of the world out of sheer malice. My people would have made the Aekir you knew into an even more wondrous place, a fit capital for the greatest of the Seven Sultans.
“And yet this I could have forgiven, it being the act of a desperate mind in its greatest extremity. It may be that had your men been knocking on the gates of Orkhan, my own city, I would have burned it rather than see unbelievers trample the prayer mats in the Temple of Ahrimuz.
“And your conduct in the last fight was admirable. You Torunnans will be long remembered by us as the noblest enemy we ever had, and in John Mogen I had a worthy adversary. I would that he had survived, so that we might speak of the future together. The Prophet tells us that all men take different roads to the same place. For men such as us the roads lead to a soldier’s death. We have that in common.
“But you destroyed one thing that cannot be replaced. You took the wisdom of the past ages, the voices of great men, the accumulated knowledge of centuries, and you wantonly burned it, removing it for ever from the earth and ensuring that your people and mine could never enjoy it again. For that you have earned death, and you will die like the traitor to later generations that you are. You will be crucified. Have you anything to say, Sibastion Lejer?”
The man in rags straightened to his full height.
“Only this, Merduk. You will never conquer the west. There are too many men there who love their freedom and their faith. Your God is but a shadow cast by ours, and in the end the Blessed Saint will prevail. Kill me and have done with it. I weary of your philosophizing.”
Shahr Baraz nodded, and gestured to the hooded soldiers. Lejer was forced on to his back and his rags torn away. Other Merduks came, also hooded, bearing mallets and iron spikes. The Torunnan’s arms were stretched out across a stout beam of wood and the spikes poised over his wrists.
The kettledrums of the elephants began a low, thunderous roll.
The spikes were hammered in, blood jetting bright in the sunshine. Then Lejer was hauled to his feet, attached to the heavy beam.
A pair of ropes snaked down and were swiftly tied to the two ends of the beam. Men behind the scaffold began to haul, and Lejer was hoisted up on to it. For the first time his mouth opened in a scream, but it was drowned out by the roar of the kettledrums.
They fastened him to the scaffold, the hooded men clambering up after him. Finally they hammered a last spike through both his ankles before climbing down.
The drums stopped. Lejer’s eyes were wide and white in his filthy face. A ribbon of blood trickled down over his chin where he was biting through his lower lip, but he made no sound. Shahr Baraz nodded approvingly, then twitched his reins and began his stately progress back across the square. His aides and staff officers streamed after him.
“What now, Khedive?” Jaffan, his adjutant, asked.
“I want the men redeployed, Jaffan, as soon as is practicable. We must start planning our next move. You will send the quartermaster-general to me after lunch and we will discuss a new supply route.”
“We are advancing on the Searil, then?” Jaffan asked, his eyes shining.
“Yes. It will take time, of course; time to reorganize and to consolidate, but we are advancing on the Searil. May Ahrimuz continue to bless our arms as he has done in this place. I will call an indaba of general officers this evening to discuss things in detail.”
“Yes, Khedive!”
“Oh, and Jaffan—”
“Khedive?”
“Make sure that Lejer is dead within the hour. With all his faults, he is a brave man. I do not like to see brave men hanging on gibbets.”