He let the sound wash past him, flowing down the rise to surge against the city walls like the ocean few of them had ever seen. If there was laughter among the Qoundi Ammar, and he knew there would be, it was drowned in the rhythmic tide of his name.
He smiled and rode away.
That night, wrapped in black cloaks and protected by potent hazziri, Kemmal and Kammil walked down the hillside. Silent as shadows and as invisible, they worked with swift thoroughness. On each of the four towers and at the midpoint of each connecting wall, they wrote and drew. By midnight, Hazganni was encircled with Shagara magic, delineated in al-Ma’aliq blood.
The next evening, just at dusk, Alessid once more rode golden Qishtan down to the hillock. The response was the same, with soldiers scrambling to their posts, but this time someone threw an axe at him. He watched it thunk harmlessly to the ground far from where he sat his horse, and smiled.
“Soldiers of the Qoundi Ammar! Tonight every bond in the city will loosen! Listen while stones shift against their mortaring, and know that the walls of the al-Ammarizzad are beginning to topple!”
“Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed!”
Over dinner that night, Razhid observed, “Our old friend Abb Shagara, may his soul find splendor with Acuyib, would have loved this. And Fadhil would have been appalled—or at least feel compelled to give the appearance of it before laughing himself out of breath.”
Alessid poured more qawah for them both. “Ayia, if I didn’t keep Abb Akkil Akkem Akkim Akkar strictly out of my thoughts as I bellow at the top of my lungs, I’d be laughing so hard I’d fall from my saddle. And think what an inspiring picture that would be!”
His wife’s father eyed him. “Alessid, did you just make a joke?”
He thought for a moment, then smiled. “I believe I did.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” After a wry grin, Razhid grew serious. “How are the boys feeling?”
“Fine. Is there a reason they shouldn’t?”
“Surely you know what they’re using to write with.”
“Of course. I’m their commander.”
“And their father! They worship you, Alessid. And they’ll spend themselves for you,” he warned, “completely and unselfishly.”
“I know.” He thought of Mirzah and refused to let her father see his pain.
When his sons returned very late that night, Alessid was waiting for them with strong wine, fresh fruit, and new-baked bread. “How many more nights can you do this?” he asked.
“As many as you require of us, Ab’ya.”
But Kammil was almost too tired to lift the cup to his lips, and Kemmal didn’t say anything at all. Razhid had been correct; they were spending themselves for him without thought to their health. If they returned to their mother’s tent as wilted and pale as they were now, Mirzah would slit Alessid’s throat.
And she wouldn’t even wait until he was sleeping to do it.
“I think we will let the Qoundi Ammar wait before the next working,” he said to his sons. “Wait, and wonder, and grumble about the Sheyqir—” He had been speaking almost at random, trusting his mind to come up with reasons convincing enough that would save his sons’ pride, but now he smiled in genuine liking for the idea. “—and exhaust themselves inspecting every wall in Hazganni!”
Kemmal dutifully smiled back; Kammil dutifully protested, “We can continue as originally planned.”
“I believe it would be better to wait a day.” He said the words in such a way that they knew they were not to argue.
The next day while they slept, he took care of the restive elements among his cavalry. After a spring and summer of battles, every man was brashly convinced that he could defeat fifty Qoundi Ammar without breaking a sweat. They wanted to fight, and they wanted to do it now. Alessid appreciated and approved their zeal, but if all went as planned, they would do very little actual fighting for Hazganni. Where would all this energy go once they returned to their tents and the admiration of their people? It was a question that had been occupying his thoughts for quite some time.
That afternoon Alessid found a quiet place away from the camp and sat down to consider. His men would return to their tribes and renew the ancient balance of life in the wilderness: work, family, seasonal travel from one place to another. These places had been claimed by them forever; Sheyqir Za’aid had perturbed the natural equilibrium between the wasteland and its people, but had not Alessid done the same thing even while he was attempting to restore it? The men of the Za’aba Izim knew now how to make war to take back what was theirs; would they ever use these skills to take what was not theirs?
For one of the few times in his adult life he called up memories of his father, so that he could review his father’s memories. Rimmal Madar; Dayira Azhreq; the lying, greedy sheyqas who, not content to throw out barbarian invaders, had taken what had belonged to the al-Ma’aliq and made it theirs. Or attempted to. The al-Ma’aliq lands had never truly belonged to the al-Ammarizzad, any more than Hazganni and all the other towns and fields and forests and mountains of this country would ever belong to them. In truth, he could think of only one place and one people belonging entirely to and with each other: the desert and the Za’aba Izim.
As he sat through the long hours of the night, gazing down at the city—and especially the ruined groves—it was with a slow and certain understanding that he discovered why.
The Seven Names, the desert. The tribes were the land’s. They knew it, used it, cared for it. They knew the places where water, grazing, even fruit could be found; they hunted its animals and harvested its plants; they never lingered so long in one place as to deplete its resources. But how had it happened that the desert belonged as well to the Za’aba Izim? For Alessid knew it did; he had sensed it on some deeper level of his soul. It was not because they put walls around the desert, or drew adamant lines on maps, or defended it with their blood, or—
No. That was the reason. The blood. Especially the blood of the Shagara.
The sun and wind and water, the ground from which food grew—the herbs for medicine and the herbs for seasoning—all these things were within the Za’aba Izim and had been for uncounted lifetimes. Their bones and flesh and blood were made of the desert. In the Shagara, for reasons unknown and unknowable, that blood had turned into power.
The land itself had given them the means with which to protect and defend it. The land was theirs.
Not his. Not Alessid’s. He knew that. He no more belonged to this country than it could ever belong to him. He had not given it enough.
Mother, father, sisters and brothers, friends—
But not his blood.
Not until now.
It was nearly dawn before he roused himself. In the dirt he drew a rough map. The mountains here, the coastline there, Hazganni and Sihabbah and Ouaraqqa and other towns marked by pebbles. To the south was the Barrens; to the west, fine grazing and growing land; to the east, more wastes and then the Ammarad; and to the north, the Ga’af Shammal and beyond it the barbarian domains. None of it was needed, none of it even coveted. But great swaths of it were there for the taking.
An army’s purpose was to make war. Alessid had crafted an army that had defeated the best that Sheyqir Za’aid could field against him. This was not so remarkable as it appeared, as Meryem had pointed out.
“The Qoundi Ammar have no homes here, no families, no sheep they have tended or fields they have plowed. But look at the Tabbor—initially reluctant to fight, until their lands were threatened. And then they fought like demons. The wonderment of it is that once their own interests were taken care of, they continued to fight to reclaim the lands of others. Do you see what you’ve done, Alessid?”