Distinguishing friend from foe was impossible in the ongoing refugee chaos.
"Beloul, I can't stay here," Haroun declared after the third attack left eight followers dead. "I'm a sitting target. They won't stop as long as they know where to find me."
"Let them come. I'll strip every newcomer and look for the Harish tattoo." The cultists wore a tattoo over the heart. It faded after death, purportedly when the soul ascended to paradise.
"They'll send men without it. I'm moving out. I'll drift from camp to camp. I have to show the flag anyway, don't I?" Winter boredom moved him as much as did the attacks. He was driven by a youthful eagerness to be moving, to be doing. He selected a half dozen companions and departed.
The camps heightened his appreciation of his mission. He was appalled.
The break with Hammad al Nakir meant a break with a fragile culture and briefly settled past. In some places the ancient desert ways, the nomadic, pre-Royal ways, were reemerging.
"What's wrong with plundering foreigners?" asked a captain in a camp run by an old functionary named Shadek el Senoussi.
"We are the foreigners here, you idiot!" Haroun glanced at el Senoussi. The man's face was a mask. "And these people are more understanding than I would be were our roles reversed. I'll tell you a thing, Shadek. If your men bother your neighbors again I'll swing the headsman's blade myself. Quesani law endures, even in exile. Its protection extends to everyone who welcomed us in our extremity."
"I hear, Lord." The old man wore a slight smile now. Haroun had a distinct feeling he approved.
"This is the end of it, then. If it chokes you, tough. Treat your neighbors as equals. We need their help."
Rebellion smouldered in el Senoussi's men. Haroun glared back. The old man needed replacing. He commanded too much personal loyalty.
Few of the camp leaders were enthusiastic about him. Some were spiritual brothers of El Murid's generals: born bandits smelling opportunity in chaos. Others simply did not like being commanded by an untried youth.
He drifted westward, accompanied only by his bodyguards. He met and assessed all his captains. Then he began to seek allies.
He discovered that a claimed kingship opened no doors.
"We'll see," he grumbled after yet another rejection. "They'll sing a different song when the Scourge of God begins hammering the Lesser Kingdoms."
"Let them burn," one guard suggested.
"Will he really come?" another asked.
"Someone will. My old teacher called it historical inertia. Nothing can stop it. Not even the deaths of Nassef and El Murid."
"Many men will die, then."
"Too many, and a lot of them ours. The Disciple doesn't know what he's doing."
He tried. He tried bravely and hard, and won no support anywhere. And he went on, his mission driving him mercilessly. His guards began to fear he was obsessed.
Finally, he admitted defeat. There would be no help while the Lesser Kingdoms were not directly threatened. He returned to the camps.
He was in el Senoussi's encampment when Harish assassins found him again. Three teams attacked together. They slew his bodyguards. They slew half a score of Shadek's men. They wounded Haroun twice before el Senoussi rescued him.
"Dismiss me, Lord!" the old man begged. "My failure cannot be excused."
"Stop that. It couldn't be helped. Ouch! Careful, man!" A horse trainer was dressing his wounds. "We have a savage, determined enemy, Shadek. This is going to keep on till we're killed or we destroy him."
"I should have seen through them, Lord."
"May be. May be. But how?" Haroun grew thoughtful. The attack had shaken el Senoussi, yet he seemed more upset because it had happened at his camp than because it had happened to his king.
El Senoussi, Haroun recalled, was an appointee of King Aboud's, a lifelong functionary. He'd spent decades shunning blame and appropriating credit. "Forget the Harish, Shadek. They're like the weather. We have to live with them. Meantime, we have fires to put out." The assassins had started several. Billowing smoke still climbed the sky.
The log blockhouse that was the camp's bailey, and a hutment against the palisade, stubbornly resisted the firemen. The swiftness with which the flames had taken hold bespoke careful preparation.
"Why did they go to the trouble?" Haroun wondered. "They could have killed me if they hadn't wasted the time."
"I don't know, Lord."
The answer came three hours later.
A sentinel called, "Invincibles!"
"Here?" Haroun demanded. "In Tamerice?" He peered over the stockade.
Horsemen were coming out of a nearby wood. They wore Invincible white.
"Must be a hundred of them, Lord," el Senoussi estimated. "The fires must have been a signal."
"So it would seem." Haroun surveyed the encampment. Women and children were moving provisions into the charred blockhouse. They looked scared, but were not panicking. El Senoussi had drilled them well.
"Lord, escape while you can. I only have eighty-three men. Some of them are wounded."
"I'll stay. What good a King who always runs away?"
"He's alive when his moment comes."
"Let them come. I was trained in the Power." He spoke from bravado and frustration. He wanted to hit back.
El Senoussi backed away. "A sorcerer-king?"
Haroun saw the fear-reflections of the kings of Ilkazar gleaming in the man's eyes.
"No. Hardly. But maybe I can blow a little smoke into their eyes."
The Invincibles knew what they were doing. Their intelligence was perfect. Their first attack penetrated the stockade despite Haroun's shaghûnry and a ferocious defense.
"They're getting through where the hutment burned," Haroun shouted. He whirled. El Senoussi was barking orders. Warriors grabbed saddle bows and sped arrows into the throng in the gap, but the Invincibles entered the compound anyway.
"Go to the blockhouse, sire," el Senoussi urged. "You're just one more sword out here. You can bedevil them with your witchery from there."
Haroun allowed himself to be guided through the tumult. He saw the sense of Shadek's argument.
He was more effective from the blockhouse. He did little things and quickly betrayed individual enemies. The Invincibles gave up.
"That was close," Haroun told el Senoussi.
"It's not over. They're not going away. They're circling the camp."
Haroun looked over the palisade. "Some are circling. Some look like they're going for help."
"You'd better leave tonight, Lord."
It was the practical, logical, pragmatic course, but Haroun did not like it. "They'll be waiting for me to try. Or for somebody going after help."
"Naturally. But would they expect us to attack? They believe their own reputation. If we sallied without trying to get away... "
"It might confuse them because it doesn't make much sense."
"It does if it gets you away, Lord."
"I don't understand you, Shadek."
"Don't try, Lord. Just go. And send help."
Haroun fled during el Senoussi's third sally. He went afoot, creeping like a thief, grinding his teeth because his wounds ached. He trudged doggedly through the night, ignoring his pain.
Dawn caught him fifteen miles northeast of the encampment. That put him just twenty from Tamerice's capital, Feagenbruch. The nearest refugee camp was more than forty miles away. He decided to try the capital.
It was risky. Tamerice's nobles might be so timorous they would ignore this compromise of the kingdom's sovereignty.