"It'll be a while," Meryem told him. "Why don't you relax in the pool? You haven't had a chance all week."
"Me too!" Sidi yelped.
El Murid laughed. "You're going to grow scales like a fish if you spend any more time in the water. All right. Come on. Nassef, when we reach the sea we'll make Sidi our admiral. I can't keep him away from the water."
Nassef rose. "I'll join you. This old skin hasn't been clean for two months. Sidi, I've got a job for you. Show me how to swim. I might need to know if your father is going to take us to the sea."
"What about me?" the girl demanded. She hated the water, but did not want to let her uncle out of her sight. She was beginning to remind her father of her mother at an earlier age.
"You're a girl," Sidi told her. His tone suggested that that was cause enough for her to be thrown into stocks, let alone banned from the bath.
"You might melt, sugar," her father told her. "Let's go, men."
Lying in the cool water, letting it buoy him up, allowed him a relaxation that was missing even in Meryem's arms.
Her relaxed for half an hour. Sidi and Nassef squealed and splashed and laughed and dunked one another. Then he said, "All right, Nassef. Now."
His brother-in-law did not pretend to misunderstand. He hoisted Sidi to the edge of the pool. "Time to get out. Dry yourself off, get dressed and go help your mother."
"How come I have to leave whenever anybody wants to talk?"
"Do as he says, son," El Murid told him. "And make sure you're good and dry before you get dressed."
Sidi was gone in a minute. Nassef said, "I'm beginning to be sorry that I never married. I miss having children."
"You're not too old."
"No. But I'm in the wrong business. Taking a wife would be tempting fate too much, wouldn't it? Fuad would catch me the first time I took the field."
"Maybe you're right. Maybe a soldier shouldn't marry. Too much strain on the family."
Nassef said nothing for several seconds. Then, "We're alone. No ears to hear. No hearts to offend. Can we speak as brothers? As the two who rode out of El Aquila together, and who fought the desert side by side? Simply as Nassef and Micah, men who have too much in common to be at odds?"
"It's a family occasion. Try to keep it at a family level."
"I will. You married my sister, who is my only true friend in this world. I am your brother.
"I'm deeply troubled. We're embarking on a doomed enterprise. My brother, I tell you this out of my love for you, and for no other reason. We can't take Al Rhemish. Not yet."
El Murid conquered his anger. Nassef was following the rules. He could do no less. "I don't understand why not. I look and I listen. I see hosts pass through Sebil el Selib. I hear that we can summon a horde to our banner. I'm told that much of the desert is with us."
"Perfectly true. Though I can't say how much of the desert is on our side. More with us than with our enemies, I think. But it's a big desert. Most people don't care one way or the other. What they really want is for us and the Royalists both to leave them alone."
"Why, then, do you urge me to delay? That's the argument you want to present, isn't it? And I remind you of your own observation that we're alone. You can be as frank as you like."
"All right. Stated simply, twenty thousand warriors don't make an army just by gathering in the same place. My forces are only now beginning to coalesce. My men aren't used to operating in large groups. Neither are the Invincibles. And the men from areas that we've controlled a long time have lost their battle edge. Moreover, there isn't a man among us, myself included, who has the experience to manage a large force."
"Are you claiming we'll be defeated?"
"No. I'm telling you that we'd be risking it, and that the risk will go down every day that we put off fighting them on their own terms. Which we would be. They would know we were coming. They have their spies. And they have men who do know how armies work."
El Murid said nothing for a minute. First he tried to assess Nassef's sincerity. He could not fault it. Nor could he challenge his brother-in-law's arguments. His frustration at being trapped in Sebil el Selib returned.
He could stand his containment no more. He would tolerate it not one minute longer than it would take to assemble the host.
"My heart tells me to go ahead."
"That's your decision? It's final?"
"It is."
Nassef sighed. "Then I'll do everything I can. Maybe we'll be lucky. I do have one suggestion. When the time comes, take command yourself."
El Murid scrutinized his brother-in-law narrowly.
"Not because I want to shirk responsibility for any defeat. Because the warriors will fight harder for the Disciple than they will for the Scourge of God. That might be the margin between victory and defeat."
Again El Murid had the feeling that Nassef was being sincere. "So be it. Let's go see if Meryem is ready for dinner."
It was a quiet family meal, with few words spoken. El Murid spent much of it examining his ambivalent feelings toward Nassef. As always, Nassef was hard to pin down.
Nassef had argued no harder than a man of conscience should have. Had El Murid misjudged his brother-in-law? Was the news reaching him becoming distorted by the Invincible minds through which it passed?
His frustration mounted as the days turned into weeks. The army grew, but the process was so damnably slow! His advisers frequently reminded him that his followers had to come long distances, often pursued by Royalists, and as they approached Sebil el Selib they had to contend with Yousif's patrols.
But the time came at last. The morning when he could kiss Meryem good-bye and tell her that when next they met it would be within the Most Holy Mrazkim Shrines themselves.
More than twenty thousand men responded to Nassef's call. Their tents were everywhere. Sebil el Selib reminded El Murid of Al Rhemish during Disharhun.
Yousif's people had been quiet for nine days. They had ceased contesting the passage of the warrior bands. Nassef had been telling anyone who would listen that he did not like it, that it was a sign that the Wahlig had something up his sleeve.
Then the news came. Yousif had mustered every man he could, some five thousand, and had installed himself at the oasis near Wadi el Kuf. His neighbors had loaned him another two thousand men.
"We'll have to fight him there," Nassef told El Murid. "There's no choice. We can't get to Al Rhemish without watering there. This is what he's been waiting for all these years. The chance to get us into a conventional battle. It looks like he wants that chance so badly that he doesn't care about the numbers."
"Give him what he wants. Let's rid ourselves of him once and for all."
Nassef guessed right most of the time. But he had erred in calling in all of El Murid's supporters. By so doing he stripped the desert of his sources of intelligence. He and El Murid would not learn the truth about Yousif's stand till it was too late.
Nassef selected twenty thousand men. El Murid took twenty-five hundred Invincibles. They left a substantial force to defend the pass in their absence.
It was a morning many days after departure. The sun hung low in the east. They moved up on the waterhole by Wadi el Kuf.
The wadi was a shallow, broad valley a mile and a half east of the waterhole. It was filled with bizarre natural formations. It was the wildest badland in all Hammad al Nakir.