Over a thousand, all told. Within Hazganni and patrolling its walls were more than twice that number.
Accepting the cup Jefar offered him, Alessid sat on a flat rock and addressed his qabda’ans. “Aqq’im, my esteemed brothers, we cannot storm the walls of this city. They will see us coming for miles, even at night with a dark moon. It seems to me there are two alternatives. Either we face them in open battle on the plain outside the city, or we destroy them from within.”
They all knew that neither would be easy to accomplish. Why should the Qoundi Ammar come out to do battle, when all they need do was laugh atop the towers? And how could anyone get inside a city so tightly shut that not even a snake could slither inside unremarked?
“If we could get inside,” mused Addad, “the people might aid us. Surely they know what we’ve done for others, what we hope to do for them.”
“Grandson,” said Razhid, “when Sheyqir Za’aid first came here, the people of Hazganni capitulated rather than fight for their city and their freedom. After nearly twenty years, can you think they would suddenly rise up?”
Addad sighed. “You’re right, of course, Grandsire. But surely there must be some who would aid us.”
“And how could we find them? Sneak someone inside and have him knock on doors asking if anyone would care to open the gates for us?” Razhid echoed his grandson’s sigh. “There may be some, as you say, who would help us—but there will be many, many more who would gladly sell us to the Sheyqir.”
Alessid nodded. “I don’t think it’s possible to get enough warriors secretly inside to make a difference. Yet how can we lure them out of their security into battle?”
“Do we have to?” asked Azadel Tabbor, a fiercely bearded man whose shoulder muscles bulged beneath his robes. “Could we not starve them out?”
Alessid raised a hand as if to ward off such an occurrence. “The people of the city would be burying each other long before the Sheyqir feels even the slightest pang of hunger. Our enemies are the soldiers of the Qoundi Annam, not the forty thousand people of Hazganni.”
“Al-Ma’aliq,” said Kammil, giving his father the formal title rather than calling him Ab’ya, “may I point out that we have what the Sheyqir does not?”
“More horses?” Tabbor asked, frowning. “Finer warriors? A better commander?”
Kemmal nodded acknowledgment of the compliment to his father, then glanced at his twin. “Those, certainly,” he agreed. “But I believe my brother has something else in mind.”
Two days later, his eldest sons came to Alessid’s tent and presented him with a plain wooden box. Inside, resting on black silk, was a simple rectangular plaque, three inches high and two wide, depicting an ibis in low relief. Inspecting it without touching it, Alessid listened to his sons explain.
“We reworked an existing piece,” Kemmal began, “for as you know we’re both terrible at design and crafting. Grandfather Razhid remembered that his grandfather had an ibis hazzir, for what purpose he didn’t recall, and that it had been passed to youngest sons at their marriage.”
“And now—?” Alessid prompted.
“Magic—both the silver and the bird. We set the sapphire eye to give dreams of loss. It was done in late morning, when it is most powerful.”
Kemmal said, “And the onyxes were done at midnight. One stone on the breast for doubts, the other atop the head for terrifying dreams.”
“Have you a plan for getting this to the Sheyqir? It is a magnificent piece, and he is greedy, like all of his kind, but suspicious. I can’t just send it to him.”
“There is among us one who volunteered to ‘betray’ our people,” Kammil told him. “He will say it is out of concern for relatives inside Hazganni, but he will make it obvious enough that he is simply a coward terrified of the coming battle—”
“A nice impression for them to have of us!” Alessid approved. “Go on.”
“This will be in his possession, but we haven’t decided if it is a token of his good faith, stolen from someone important—perhaps yourself, Ab’ya—as a gift for the Sheyqir, or if it would be more subtle to make it a family treasure with which he is reluctant to part. He feels confident that he can make either work and can get it into the Sheyqir’s hands.”
“And who is this supposed traitor?”
The twins exchanged half-glances. “Jefar.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Ab’ya—”
“No.” He stared at the hazzir for a time. “Should this reach the Sheyqir, will this frighten him enough?”
“Over time, yes.”
“How much time?”
They traded looks again. Kammil answered, “Perhaps a month.”
“We don’t have a month.” Alessid shut the box. “Make it more powerful.”
“Ab’ya—” Kemmal bit his upper lip. “These are things the mouallimas caution against. We Haddiyat learn the sigils and the properties of the gems, but there are certain applications—”
“—that are not done,” Alessid finished for him. “Do you see any mouallimas here? Do they ride with us, their swords ready to take Hazganni? Make it stronger, Kemmal.”
“With respect, Ab’ya—”
“Acuyib give me patience! If a man’s family is starving and a sheep is available to him and he knows how to slaughter it, he slaughters the damned sheep!”
“But if it is the only one left, his family will soon starve anyway.” Kammil met his gaze squarely. “Should we work this hazzir to be more powerful—to do actual harm rather than merely suggesting certain things to the Sheyqir’s mind—”
“Enough!” Alessid slapped his hands on his thighs. “I want this man frightened out of his wits. I want him sick with fear—in both his mind and his body. I want him plagued and tormented and leaping at the smallest shadow. Do you understand me? Either make this more powerful or think up something else.”
“Yes, Ab’ya,” they said together, and departed his tent.
Eight days later, on a fine, fair evening just before dusk, Alessid rode to a promontory overlooking Hazganni. The setting sun glowed behind him, turning his robe and his horse’s cream-gold hide to molten sunlight. The soldiers on duty in the tower saw him at once. An alarm drum pounded, and the walls bristled silver with swords and spears.
Alessid watched. A stray bit of whimsy left somehow inside him observed that the city looked rather like a prickleback hunching to bristle its spines: silly and ineffectual against anything larger than a snake. There was a lesson in it, he mused—the little animal trusted too much to its defenses against a particular enemy and had not the wit even to realize that other enemies could be much more dangerous.
Too, he thought, the wayward amusement diverting him again, it was a clever snake that knew a mouthful of spines was avoidable. All it had to do was find a single slender gap in all those defenses, slither through it, and strike.
At length, in a voice honed by years of training his cavalry in the wide wilderness, he shouted, “Soldiers of the Qoundi Ammar! Tonight your sleep will bring you dreams of the future! We show you these visions in warning of what is to come!”
Behind him, out of the soldiers’ sight, his men began to chant: “Ah-less-eed ! Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed!”