Rudi nodded.?I?m sorry if we?ve brought ill luck upon your folk,? he said.
Thorlind looked up.?You haven?t. Whoever?s attacked us has. If you owe me anything-? ?That I do, lady, and freely I acknowledge it.? ?Then give me blood for my blood! I will raise a nithing -staff and curse whoever did this, but I need a sword to do the work.? ?I will that,? Rudi said gently.?By the Morrigu I swear, and by Macha and Badb Catha, and by the greater One that the Three make.?
Then his voice went hard and brisk.?We need a scouting mission. I?ll lead it.?
Ingolf cocked a brow.?That?s grunt?s work,? he said bluntly. ?Your more-balls-than-brains Majesty,? he added, with a dry tinge to his voice.?Grunts can be idiots. They mostly just get themselves killed. Bossmen… Kings… can?t afford to be stupid. Your life isn?t your own to throw away anymore.?
Rudi looked at him. It was on the tip of his tongue to say if I?m the King, I give the orders. But…
But nobody is less able to indulge a whim than a ruler, if he wants to be a good one. Ingolf has the right of it.
He sighed.?You?ve talked me into letting someone else do the work, you silver-tongued bastard of a man. I can deny you nothin?.?
Then he looked about.?Mary, Ritva, you?re going. And Edain. Are any of you Bjornings familiar with the land here? Fighters only,? he added.
The Norrheimers looked at each other. A few raised hands uncertainly. Asgerd cleared her throat. ?I?ve come here six times… no, seven, but I was a little girl the first time. My father brings hides and wool and butter after the first hard snow to trade for cloth and tools and stockfish. We stay a week or two, and I know the neighborhood a little.?
Rudi flicked his eyes quickly to Edain and his half sisters. They all nodded, quick slight jerks of the chin. ?Good, you?re the fourth,? he said aloud.?You?re also the youngest and least, and don?t forget it. Get me what I need to know, Edain, then get back, and quickly. The rest of us will move forward, but slow and cautious. We?ll sprint the last bit, I expect.? ?I wish we had our destriers,? Odard said.
Rudi grinned.?I doubt there?s room for a charge of knights here, my lord Gervais. Now, Asgerd, show me on the map how we can approach. I?m thinking the main trail is a bad idea the now, until we know exactly who it is has come calling at Kalksthorpe.? ?Be patient with them, Jawara,? Abdou said.
He hunched his shoulders against the cold wind off the sea, and even more against the itching feeling of being immobilized here ashore while his ships swung at anchor. The sea was his element; this continent was alien and hostile. He liked feeling that way. It kept you alive. ?Supposedly they?re some sort of Muslims,? he went on.
Abdou al-Naari was a tall lean man in his thirties, with skin the color of old saddle leather, part-owner and captain for his kin-corporation of the corsair schooner Bou el-Mogdad, named after a fabulous ship of the ancient world. His subordinate Jawara was shorter, a little younger than his thirty-six, thicker-built and ebony black, with three scars like chevrons on each cheek; he had named her sister ship Gisandu -Shark.
Jawara looked over at the men they were now allied with, the core of disciplined ones in the reddish-brown armor with the rayed sun sign on their chests and the rabble of savages around them. When he spat, it was for the benefit of both groups; and perhaps also for the man in the green robe and turban who was standing and talking with them. In the old days that dress would have meant he was a hadji, one who?d made the pilgrimage to Mecca. A few men bold enough or mad enough or lucky enough or all three had made the journey across the length of the Sahel and the Red Sea since the Change and found nothing human left in the Holy City except dry gnawed bones. Now the green cloth merely meant a pilgrimage to Touba, where Cheik Bamba of the Mouride Brotherhood had dwelt.
Jawara?s voice held a sneer as eloquent as the gobbet of spittle: ?If they?re Muslims, I?m the Emir-and I?m not freezing my balls off here. I?m sitting in my palace at Dakar, sipping coffee and smoking good khif this very moment under a screen grown with jasmine, while pretty girls bring me plates of cheb-ou-jen with yete.?
Abdou spat himself, and shivered as it froze on the ground with a slight audible crackle. The thought of good hot coffee and some decent food was enough to make him want to howl. They were both bundled in furs and wool over their armor, and the wind off the estuary was still enough to make a man feel as if he was walking about while three days dead. Gray sky, gray water, dun-colored patches of rock, dark green pine, pale snow; it was all calculated to convince you that you?d become a ghost without noticing it.
The memory of mangroves alive with brightly colored birds beneath cerulean skies, of blue, blue breakers turning to white foam as they went crashing on silver sands beneath rustling palms seemed infinitely distant. He was hungry for it, the sights and the warmth and the very smell of smoked fish and onions and tomatoes cooking in peanut oil. ?The Marabout says they are believers,? Abdou said.?And he?s supposed to be a very holy man.? ?If he?s a holy man, I?m not the Emir. I?m his third wife,? Jawara said.
Abdou grinned.?I thought you were his catamite with a bottom sweet as a ripe mango?? he said innocently.
Jawara made an obscene gesture at him, and they both laughed. Abdou did have his own doubts about the Marabout. Supposedly he was in favor with the new Grand Khalif of the Mourides, and the captain had welcomed him along on this venture when he turned up asking for a place-it reassured the men and made them feel God?s blessing to have a cleric around.
He himself wasn?t so sure. His own family were of the older Tidjiane brotherhood anyway, not the Mouride. And he was an educated man, literate in Wolof and in his native Hassaniya dialect and in the classical Arabic of the Holy Book, and even a little in Francaise, the dead kufr language of the sciences; also he spoke enough English for trade and war. He?d spent time at the Emir?s court, as well, and he inclined to orthodoxy. The brotherhood founded by Cheik Bamba had been powerful in his land for a very long time and more so since the Change, but the reverence the Mourides paid to their hereditary religious leaders struck him as little short of sherk, idolatry.
What need of intermediaries? There is the word of God, and God; that is enough for a believer. But you had better not say that where one of the Mourides can hear you, especially if it?s a Baye Fall madman.
There were two of them always with the Marabout, wild-looking men with their hair in plaits and great brass-bound ebony clubs in their hands. Both loomed like giants, and Abdou was not a small man.
And… how did he know where to find these so-called Muslims? It was as if they were waiting for him here on this begotten-of-Shaitan wilderness shore. ?Well, at least the plunder should be good,? Jawara said, working his hands in his gloves; one dropped caressingly to the pearl-encrusted hilt of his scimitar.?This nest of pagans has been scouring the God-smitten cities on these coasts longer than we have. And they make some very clever things themselves.? ?And they?re a nuisance when they clash with our people,? Abdou said.?Yes, we?ll probably get a richer cargo than we could scavenging the ruins ourselves. But I hate losing good men getting it. This will cost us more than fighting a few ignorant cannibal savages in the dead lands. These Norrheimers may be pagans, but they know too cursed much how to make good armor and war engines and fight in ranks, for instance. Bad as fighting the Ashanti.?
Jawara brightened.?There?ll be women, at least, when we take the place. That warms a man up!?
Abdou shrugged. The dwellers here were polytheists and so legitimate prey by sharia, the holy law, but experience had shown these northern peoples were useless as slaves. If you took them back to a civilized climate they just sickened and died of the fevers. On balance it was a good thing, because it made it impossible for the English Nazarenes to invade the House of Peace rather than just make punitive raids. Besides, he found the fishbelly skins and skeletal faces of whites repulsive; even after so long at sea, he?d wait until he got home to Fatima. ?Get your mind out from between these hypothetical womens? thighs, Jawara: first we have to break their wall and beat their fighting men,? he said sourly.? And hope no English ships come by before we can. This is far too close to the Gezira-al-Said, the Isle of the Prince; may God sink it.?