Beloul's purpose was to inform Sidi of his standing. The Disciple's son was but a boy, yet from what the fat man said he had qualities that would set sparks flying if he saw a chance for power.
The winter was a cold one and hard on the war-torn lands where marauding troops from both sides stripped the peasantry of its food stores. Anger stalked the snowy land like some hungry, legendary monster.
Everywhere, high and low, men schemed against the coming of spring, when they might seize their own particular breed of fortune and bend it to their will.
Chapter Sixteen:
THE MIDDLE WARS
A ssigning blame is not the task of the historian. Neither should he deny guilt where it exists. In later days even the chauvinist historian would admit that the north, personified by Duke Greyfells, provoked the second El Murid War.
Itaskian apologists pointed at the Guild and Haroun bin Yousif's Royalists and argued that the first summer of fighting did not possess a separate identity because those belligerents never made peace. But the Guild and Royalists were fighting different wars. Theirs merely shared some of the same battlefields as that of the allies. The Kingdom of Peace had established treaties with those enemies who could accept an accommodation short of annihilation. Even Itaskia's highest leadership, despite verbal belligerence, had accepted El Murid's redrawing of the western map. Once winter settled in, the first El Murid War was over.
The real question was when and why the next would begin.
Only the Disciple himself knew his intentions for his second summer of conquest. His warriors came from their homes and tribes, more numerous than ever. Remote, maundering, El Murid blessed them on Mashad, and sent them to join el-Kader in his watch on the Scarlotti. There they were joined by thousands of converts and adventurers from the recovered provinces.
El-Kader waited, daily expecting an attack order from Al Rhemish. The instruction did not come. El Murid had lost interest in the reconquest. His dream of greening the desert and his effort to conquer his addiction had become obsessions.
Among the faithful it was whispered that the Evil One himself had come to Al Rhemish and the Lord in Flesh was wrestling him within the confines of the Most Holy Mrazkim Shrines.
El-Kader distributed the Host along the Scarlotti in accordance with an order of battle mentioned by the Scourge of God months before his death. El-Kader's posture remained strictly defensive.
He sat. He waited.
Lord Greyfells and Itaskia's allies bullied several small states whose lords had concluded treaties with the Disciple. They abbrogated treaties at will, at swordpoint crossing kingdoms which had agreed not to permit passage of belligerents. They promoted palace revolutions and imprisoned uncooperative nobles. Greyfells' arrogant treatment alienated the masters of the smaller states.
Emissaries came to el-Kader begging him to withhold his wrath. Some volunteered intelligence in hopes of staying the fury of the Host. A few even petitioned its intercession, begging protection from the arrogance and rapacity of the Duke.
Greyfells did little to conceal his desire to carve out an empire of his own.
El-Kader bided his time, awaiting the will of the Disciple, allowing Greyfells to make himself ever more obnoxious.
His petitions to Al Rhemish went unanswered. El Murid could not stop wrestling the Evil One long enough to concern himself with his opponent's manifestations on the frontier.
El-Kader finally took the initiative. He summoned his captains. He presented them with the order of battle and told them that unless they heard otherwise they were to cross the Scarlotti in fifteen days. They were to speak of the plan to no one till the last minute. Certain kingdoms were to be treated as allies, not foemen.
He waited. He even went so far as to pray for word from Al Rhemish.
Responsibility had changed Altaf el-Kader. His office left him too busy with command to waste time profiteering.
The day came and still there was no command from Al Rhemish. He prayed once more that El Murid would forgive him for taking this on himself. Then he left his tent and crossed the river.
The Host of Illumination rolled north like a great tsunami, unexpected, unstoppable, everywhere swamping its foes. Greyfells, caught unprepared, found his rebuilt army adrift in enemy waters. War bands swarmed around it, nibbling at its extremities. He spent all his energies keeping it intact and avoiding battle with the Host. He showed his positive qualities in retreat.
Suffering inconsequential losses, el-Kader seized all the territories south of the River Porthune. Though the Scourge of God had expected that to take a season, el-Kader finished by Midsummer's Day.
In the absence of contrary instructions, smelling the blood of reeling foes, el-Kader breached that line while momentum and morale remained his allies. Some of his war bands ranged as far as the Silverbind, well within the Itaskian domain. A large force camped within sight of the city walls, and departed only when the whole garrison came out to fight. Panic swept the north. The grand alliance was within a whisper of collapse.
From the south frontier of Ipopotam to the Porthune, the west had been returned to the Empire. Only two small enclaves of resistance remained. Hawkwind's stubborn Guildsmen still directed the defense of Hellin Daimiel. El-Kader ignored the city. It could do nothing to discomfit the Host.
Of High Crag he was not so tolerant. The home and heart of the Guild had to be destroyed. The warrior brotherhood backboned the resistance in the reoccupied provinces.
Ere ever he crossed the Scarlotti, el-Kader summoned Mowaffak Hali from Ipopotam and handed the Invincible the chore of reducing High Crag. Hali accepted the task with reservations. He doubted that it could be accomplished.
Mowaffak Hali was a thorough, methodical leader. He did not hurl the remnants of the Invincibles against High Crag's ancient walls. He gathered information and men of talent, and such additional warriors as he could obtain, for a slow, systematic reduction of the fortress. He built great engines. He employed miners. He did whatever needed doing to neutralize his opponents' advantages.
He might have succeeded had events elsewhere not compelled him to abandon the siege.
Far to the north, el-Kader had the misfortune to, at last, catch the elusive Greyfells.
The nearest town, Liston, gave the battle its name. The engagement was unusual. El-Kader amassed heavy cavalry for the first time in the Host's history. And Greyfells abjured the traditional western use of knights. Once el-Kader closed his trap and battle became unavoidable, the Duke ordered his horsemen to fight afoot.
Greyfells made his stand on the face and top of a rocky hill flanked by woods, with his pikemen and knights massed before his archers. The bowmen of Itaskia were renowned, and in this engagement justified their fame. While the pikemen, supported by disgruntled noblemen, valiantly absorbed charge after charge, the archers darkened the sky with arrows.
Had el-Kader not grown over-optimistic, had he not been overconfident, had he listened to his advisers and waited a few days till the whole of the Host had gathered, he would have obliterated the northern might. Liston would have been the battle memoralized as ending the resistance to El Murid's Second Empire.
But he did not wait, and he did not try getting behind his enemies. And still he came within a gnat's eyebrow of success. In the end, he simply ran out of ready bow-fodder before his foes collapsed completely.
Greyfells had the advantage of him in that his troops believed that they had nowhere to run. They believed they had to win or perish. And win they did—in the sense that they compelled el-Kader to withdraw.
The importance of Liston could be weighed only in its effects on the hearts and minds of men. The number of dead on the field was of no consequence. That Greyfells could do nothing but lick his wounds afterward meant little. That el-Kader had not committed his whole strength was overlooked everywhere.