"Where are we now, Esmat?"
"In Vorhangs, Lord. Just a few days from Dunno Scuttari. We can convalesce there."
"Send a message to the garrison commander. Tell him I'm alive. Tell him to send couriers to all our captains apprizing them of that fact. Tell him I want a general armistice declared. Tell him to announce my offer to hold a general peace conference in Dunno Scuttari next month."
"Lord? Peace? What about the new Empire?"
"We'll settle for what we get out of the negotiations."
"We have enemies who won't make peace, Lord."
"The Guild? Bin Yousif's bandits? You said they're all but destroyed. We will invite High Crag, by all means. They must be war-weary enough to give up the sanctions they declared when the Invincibles massacred those old men. But there will be no peace with Royalists. Ever. Not while bin Yousif and I both live.
"Esmat, that battle is all I have left. They've killed everything else. My wife. My babies. Nassef. Even my faith in God and my Calling."
Esmat responded with quotations from his Teachings.
"I was naive then, Esmat. Sometimes hate is all a man has." And maybe it was that way for everyone he had labelled a minion of the Evil One. The drunk, the gambler, the whoremaster—maybe each gravitated to his niche not because of a devotion to evil but because of some need only an odious life could fulfill. Maybe some men needed a diet rich in self-loathing.
His entrance into Dunno Scuttari made a grand excuse for a holiday. The Faithful turned out in their thousands to weep and cheer as if he had brought them a triumph for the Chosen. There was a threat of carnival in the river-tainted air. The happy-storm was not long delayed. The costumes and masks came out. The bulls were run in the streets. Believer consorted with infidel and shared tears of happiness.
El Murid blessed the revelers from a high balcony. He wore a thin smile.
Esmat wondered aloud at their joy.
"They rejoice not for me but for themselves, Esmat."
"Lord?"
"They rejoice not for any accomplishment, nor for my return. They rejoice because by surviving I've put the mask back over the secret face of tomorrow. I've relieved them of uncertainty."
"Then they'll be disappointed when they find out how much you'll yield to make peace."
The Disciple had decided to defy his God. His mission, he told himself, was to establish the Kingdom of Peace. He had been unable to do that sending men to war...
"What of the painkiller?" he asked as an aside. "Is there a supply?"
"You once called me a confounded squirrel, Lord. We held Ipopotam for years. I acquired enough to last several lifetimes."
El Murid nodded absently. So long as there was enough to divert him from thoughts of his true motive for defying the Lord: pure childish spite for the arrows of betrayal that had fallen upon him at the Five Circles.
He returned to Esmat's earlier question. "They don't care which mask the unknowable wears. They just want it to wear one."
Allied emissaries began arriving two weeks later. "They seem serious this time," the Disciple observed. "Especially Greyfells."
"Perhaps they sense your own determination, Lord," Esmat replied.
"I doubt it." Already they were hard at their backstabbing and undercutting. Yet he was impressed. He would be dealing with men honestly able to make commitments and undertake obligations, all in an air of great publicity. Even the Guild had entered its delegation, captained by the formidable General Lauder. The Itaskians had sent their redoubtable War Minister as well as the slippery Greyfells. Something solid would come out of the sessions.
Within the formal process there was little dissent or maneuver. No one held a position of strength. After a week, El Murid told Esmat, "We're going to get there. We can wrap it in a month. We'll be in Al Rhemish before your old cohorts can put back everything they stole when they heard I was dead." He chuckled.
He had become an easier El Murid, taking a juvenile pleasure in disconcerting everyone with his frankness and new cynicism. People recalled that he was a salt merchant's son and muttered that blood would tell.
"Not long at all, Esmat. The only real thieves are the Itaskians, and they defeat themselves by working at cross-purposes. We'll come out better than I anticipated."
He had concluded a covert, long-term understanding with Duke Greyfells almost immediately. In private, the Duke showed a pragmatic honesty El Murid appreciated.
"And what of the Second Empire, Lord? Do we abandon the dream?"
"Not to worry, Esmat. Not to worry. We but buy a breathing space in which the dream may build new strength. The Faithful carried the Word to the shores of the Silverbind. They have sown the thunder. Those fields will yield up a rich bounty when next the Chosen come harvesting."
Esmat stared at his master and thought, Yes, but...
Who would provide the magnetism and drive? Who would deliver the spark of divine insanity that made masses of men rush to their deaths for something they could not comprehend?
Not you, Lord, Esmat thought. Not you. You can't even sell yourself anymore.
He looked at his master and felt a great sorrow, felt as though something precious had been taken away while he was distracted. He did not know what it was. He did not understand the feeling. He thought himself a practical man.
Chapter Twenty-Two:
LAST BATTLE
H aroun and Beloul stared down at their enemies. The encircling camp grew larger every day.
"This could get damned nasty, Lord," Beloul observed.
"You'd make a great prophet, Beloul." Haroun glanced along Libiannin's crumbling wall. Heavy engines would have no trouble breaching it.
The enemy really needn't waste time on engines. A concerted rush would carry the wall. He and Hawkwind hadn't the men to defend it, and the natives refused to help.
"What's happening, Beloul? Why haven't they attacked? Why hasn't the Itaskian fleet shown? They must know what's going on. They'd want to take us out, wouldn't they?"
He had had no contact with the world for weeks. The last he had heard, El Murid was reported slain in a huge battle with the Itaskians. His hopes had soared like exultant eagles. He had sent out messenger after messenger, till it seemed an endless parade of fishing smacks were leaving harbor, never to be seen again.
"We're marooned, Lord," Beloul said. "The world is getting on with business and has forgotten us. Maybe on purpose."
"But with the Disciple dead... "
"Lord, nobody but us Royalists gives a damn if you ever sit the Peacock Throne. The Itaskians? They're glad to have us howling around down here keeping the Disciple's men busy. But are they going to spend lives for us? It wouldn't profit them."
Haroun grinned weakly. "Have mercy, O Slayer of Illusions."
"Here comes Shadek. He looks like a man about to slay a few dreams."
El Senoussi's face did have a grim cast. Haroun trembled. He smelled bad news.
"A boat came in, Lord," Shadek puffed.
"Well?"
"It brought a Guildsman, not one of our men. He's with Hawkwind now. He had a funny expression when he looked at me. Kind of a sad, aching look. Made me think of a headsman about to swing his sword on his brother."
Haroun's back suddenly felt cold. "What do you think, Beloul?"
"I think we better take care to watch our backs, Lord. I think we're going to find out why our messengers never came back."
"I was afraid you'd say that. I wish I'd pursued my shaghûn studies to the point where I could perform a divination... Would they really turn on us?"