"Good heavens. A disaster."
"A hell of a coup if you're Nassef. He's carved the heart out of the Quesani. You know who's left? Who our beloved Crown Prince is now? Ahmed."
"Ahmed? I don't know the name."
"With reason. He's a nothing. I wish I didn't know him. He's a damned woman, if you ask me. I wouldn't be surprised if he prefers boys."
"No wonder Yousif was so grim."
"Megelin?" Haroun piped. "Does that mean it's over? Uncle Fuad? Did we lose the war when we weren't looking?"
Fuad laughed sourly. "A good turn of phrase, Haroun. A fine way to say it. Yes."
"No," Radetic countered. "It's never over till you surrender. In your own heart."
Fuad laughed again. "Bravely spoken, teacher. Fine talk. But it doesn't change the facts."
Radetic shrugged. "Haroun, let's see if they're ready with that spoon trebuchet."
The crew was cranking the machine for a test shot when they arrived. Radetic watched while they ignited a bundle of brush, tipped it into the spoon, then flipped the blazing missile over the New Castle wall.
"Will it start a fire, Megelin?"
"Probably not. But it'll keep them nervous."
"Why do it, then?"
"Battles can be won in men's minds, Haroun. That's what I meant when I told your uncle it's not over till you surrender in your heart. The sword isn't the only weapon that will wear an enemy down."
"Oh." Haroun's face took on that look he got when he wanted to remember something forever.
Two days passed. And still Nassef did not come. Megelin could feel the contempt radiating from the coast. Nassef did not consider them dangerous.
He would learn.
Megelin sent for Yousif, who wore a bright expression when he appeared. The Wahlig seemed to have made peace with himself.
"I'm going to bring her down now," Radetic told him. He gave a signal. "Fuad, get the men ready. The way we rehearsed it."
Fuad muttered something uncomplimentary and stalked off. A gust of activity swept the valley. It became a gale. Yousif's warriors gathered for the assault.
The trebuchets ceased pounding the old castle. The wall had held, but barely.
The engine crews dragged their machines around to face the New Castle.
An hour passed. Yousif became impatient. "When's something going to happen?" he demanded.
Radetic indicated smoke trailing out of cracks at the base of the wall. "When you mine a wall you have to shore it up with timbers. When you're ready to bring it down you fill the chamber underneath with brush and set it afire. It takes time for the timbers to burn through. Ah. Here we go."
A deep-throated grinding assailed the air. The cracks grew. Pieces of masonry popped out of the wall. Then, with a startling suddenness, a twenty-foot-wide section dropped straight down, virtually disappearing into the earth.
"Perfect!" Radetic enthused. "Absolutely perfect. Fuad!" he shouted. "Go ahead! Attack now!" He turned to Yousif. "Don't forget to watch the New Castle for a sally."
The gutting of the old fortress took under four hours. It was almost a disappointment. There weren't enough defenders to slow the assault.
Radetic turned his attention to El Murid's New Castle immediately. The capture of the old was barely complete when word came that an enemy column was in the pass. Yousif roared off to spring the ambush Radetic had suggested.
The tardiness and weakness of the relief column underscored Nassef's contempt for el Aswad. He did not come himself. He sent el Nadim and two thousand green recruits from the coast. Yousif carved them up.
Nassef himself came four days later. He brought twenty thousand men and did not spare their lives. It took him just eight days to reverse roles and surround el Aswad.
The siege of the Eastern Fortress persisted for thirty months and four days. It was as cruel to the enemy as Yousif had hoped. El-Kader, in command of the besiegers, though nearly as competent as Nassef himself, simply could not overcome Yousif, his environment and the sickness that ravaged his camp.
El-Kader's own most potent weapon, starvation, remained untested because Nassef was unable to spare the besieging army sufficiently long.
Nassef himself remained on the coast. After the successes at Es Suoanna and Souk el Arba he found the going more difficult. The narrow, rich, densely populated littoral was nearly four hundred miles long. Those miles revealed a lot of towns and cities with no sympathy for El Murid's cause.
And there was Throyes.
El Murid was compelled to fight a foreign war before he had won over his own people.
When it came, the Throyen land grab was so brazen and extensive that El Murid found it politically unendurable. The nationalist sentiment it generated forced him to react.
Nassef's need for warriors on that front drew the besiegers away from el Aswad. He left just a thousand men in the province, commanded by Karim. They were to distract Yousif from Sebil el Selib.
Once his environs were open Yousif began corresponding with neighbors and Royalists whose thinking paralleled his own. The Kasr Helal Gold Seam was reborn. Trustworthy friends and acquaintances of Megelin Radetic made quiet arrangements in the west.
To an extent, the defenders of the Eastern Fortress had surrendered in their hearts.
Yousif stood in a windswept parapet watching the smoke of a brush fire burning twenty miles south of el Aswad. It was a huge blaze. Fuad was using it to herd one of Karim's battalions into a deathtrap. Haroun, practicing his shaghûnry at last, was with his uncle.
The boy had been a tremendous asset since the end of the siege. He always accompanied his uncle now. His shaghûnry instructors said he had enormous potential. They had taken him to their limits without pushing him to his own.
The Wahlig spied a rider coming from the northwest. Another whining message from Aboud? He did not bother going down to find out.
His royal cousin was becoming a royal aggravation. His bluster, wishful thinking and vain edicts would not alter the situation one iota.
Radetic joined him a few minutes later. He looked grim. He was becoming ever more dour and remote as el Aswad's position became ever less tenable.
"Another command to victory?" Yousif asked.
"More like a petition this time. But he has started to realize what's happening. After all this time. I mean, Nassef has got to be more than a bandit if he can fight a war with Throyes. Doesn't he?"
"Eh?" Yousif turned. "You mean he said something positive? That he's going to take us seriously? Now that it's too late?"
"A little. A little too little too late. He's hired Hawkwind again. He's sending him out here."
"Hawkwind? Why a mercenary?"
"He didn't explain. Maybe because no one else would come. The messenger says the negotiations have been on since Prince Farid's death. For three years! Hawkwind was reluctant—But Aboud finally made a sufficiently convincing presentation to the Guild generals, and paid over a handsome retainer. And he put huge bounties on El Murid, Nassef, Karim and that lot. Hawkwind is on his way already."
Yousif paced. "How many men?"
"I don't know. I was told a substantial force."
"Enough to change anything?"
"I doubt it. We both know there will be no more victories like Wadi el Kuf."
"But why won't he send Royal troops?"
"I think all is not well in the Royal camp. Some wahligs apparently refuse to send men into the witch's cauldron. They want to sit tight and let El Murid come to them. It seems if he wanted to send anyone, it had to be mercenaries. He did the best he could in the circumstances he faces."
"But not enough." Yousif smote the weathered, lichened stone of the parapet.