The crescent of the white moon lay almost upon the sea. Yazir watched as it slipped down and out of sight. The innumerable stars were everywhere in the sky and the innumerable sands were about him.
He heard a footfall, and knew it.
"You asked me to come at white moonset," his brother said softly, crouching on his haunches beside Yazir's spread cloak. "Do we cross? Do we wait? Do we sail for the homelands?"
Yazir drew a breath. There were deaths and deaths to come. Man was born into this world to die. Best do it in the service of Ashar, essaying those things that could truly be done.
"Soriyya is too far," he said. "I do not think either of us are destined to see the homelands, my brother."
Ghalib said nothing, waiting.
"I would be happier in spring," Yazir said.
His brother's teeth showed in the darkness. "You are never happy," Ghalib said.
Yazir looked away. It was true, of late. He had been happy once, as a young man, without any great cares, in the Zuhrite lands south of where they were tonight. Before his feet had been placed on a path of righteousness carved in blood.
"We will cross the straits," he said. "Beginning tomorrow. We will not allow the Sons of Jad to burn any more of the Star-born, or take any more cities, however far our people may have strayed from Ashar's path. We will lead them back. It comes to me that if the city-kings lose Al-Rassan to the Jaddites, we are the ones who will be answerable before the god."
Ghalib rose to his feet. "I am pleased," he said.
Yazir saw that his brother's eyes were gleaming, like those of a cat. "And the Kindath sorcerer?" Ghalib added. "The letter that came?"
"Go to my scribe," Yazir said. "Wake him. Have him write a reply and have it carried across the water—tonight, before the rest of us depart."
"What reply, brother?"
Yazir looked up at him. "It shall be as has been written."
"That is all?"
"That is all."
Ghalib turned and walked back to his camel. He made it kneel and then he mounted up and rode. Yazir remained where he was. So many stars, so many, many sands, the blue moon high in the clear night.
He could still see his message crossing the straits, men riding, a bird flying. A hidden opening in the walls of Ragosa, perhaps in the grey hour before dawn. A man walking out, alone, towards the watchfires of his enemies.
Slowly, he nodded his head, picturing all this in the eye of his mind. It was Ashar's will, Ashar's law: no Kindath was to hold sway over the Star-born. It had been written. And that sorcerer in Ragosa would not be the first, nor would he be the last man—brave or otherwise—to die in the days of blood to come.
The autumn seas were mild and generous the next morning and the next as the children of the desert, veiled before the wonder of the god's creation, knelt in holy prayer and then sailed on an unfamiliar element to the redeeming of Al-Rassan.
A little less than a year later two women stood, late on a windy summer's day on a hilltop near the sad ruins of Silvenes, in the moments before the ending of the world they both had known.
White clouds hurried overhead and laced the western horizon where the sun was low. Banners snapping and blowing, two armies lay beneath them north of the swift and gleaming Guadiara.
The forces of Ashar and Jad had finally come together after a summer and autumn and then a spring of siege and skirmish, bracketing a harsh winter with its enforced inactivity. A great many people had died that winter, of hunger and cold and the illnesses that followed on the heels of hardship and war. It had snowed as far south as Lonza and Ronizza, and Ardeno in the west.
All three cities were Jaddite now.
Rodrigo Belmonte, commanding the joined armies of Ruenda and Valledo and Jalona, had taken them this spring. At Ardeno—first of the three to fall—he'd led the western part of the Esperanan army himself in a first engagement with the tribesmen, and he had killed Ghalib ibn Q'arif.
No man had so much as wounded Ghalib in combat since he'd ridden east beside his brother more than twenty years ago. Men had lost count of the times he had championed the Zuhrites and Ashar's visions against the best man of another tribe in the ritual combat before a battle began. There had been no such rituals at Ardeno. Rodrigo Belmonte had singled him out, though, on the difficult side-slipping ground east of the city, and he had broken Ghalib's helm and shield with a blow, and thrown him from his horse, and then, leaping down, had gashed his thigh to the bone and almost severed one arm before killing him with a swordstroke down through neck and collarbone.
No one in either army had ever seen a man fight like that.
It was understood that Ser Rodrigo's son had very nearly died in a Muwardi ambush the summer before. It was pointed out that Ardeno marked the first time the new constable of Valledo had been able to confront an army of the veiled ones on open ground.
Leaving the citizens of Ardeno, for the moment, to their fate, the Muwardis had retreated south, though in good order and doing damage to those who pursued too rashly.
They had fallen back towards Silvenes, where Yazir and the bulk of his forces—both those of Al-Rassan, and newly arriving tribesmen—were assembling.
Rodrigo Belmonte had left the king of Ruenda with the western army to pin down the Asharites there. With only his own band of one hundred and fifty men he had raced east towards Lonza and King Ramiro.
The walls of that small city were breached fifteen days after he arrived. Further east, Ronizza on the River Larrios, under siege from Jalonan forces that had bypassed still-unconquered Ragosa, surrendered immediately when word of the fall of Lonza came.
Ronizza's gates were not opened, however, until Ser Rodrigo's own herald arrived with a company of Valledans to accept their surrender. There had been lessons learned from the occupations of Fezana and Salos the year before.
The northern armies left a garrison and a governor in each city. A number of people were executed to promote order but, for the moment, the transitions were calm. There were no burnings. King Ramiro and his constable had firm control of the northern forces now. The armies of Jalona and Valledo joined ranks and doubled back west to merge with the Ruendans north of Silvenes.
What was left of the Ruendans, that is.
The strong army on its high ground that Belmonte had left behind had been chopped to pieces by a beaten foe.
Yazir ibn Q'arif—visibly shaken by his brother's death, wearing a grey veil of mourning now—had wasted no time in naming the new leader of the Asharite forces in Al-Rassan. It was not a popular choice among the tribesmen, but Yazir had had a winter and spring to learn the way of things in this peninsula—who knew how to lead, who could be trusted, who needed to be watched—and he did not hesitate once the rites for his brother were done.
Ammar ibn Khairan, the newly named ka'id, had regrouped the Muwardis, linked to them a fresh contingent of soldiers from Cartada, and surprised the Ruendans with a two-pronged attack from south and east. The timing, on difficult ground, had had to be flawless, and it was. He had chased the northerners all the way back into Ardefio.
The Muwardis, grieving for Ghalib, had been impossible to control in that pursuit. Prisoners weren't being taken anywhere in this war, but the captured Ruendans were savagely abused before and after they were killed. When the surviving northerners were safely within the walls of Ardefio, they promptly began nailing men and women to wood and burning them, by way of response.