Nassim was reluctant to risk his weapons.
Az said, “Give them the four-pounder from Haeti. It’s brass. No iron in it. He might not detect it till he’s too close.”
Er-Selim had it all worked out. That falcon had been installed on an approach to an Ansa encampment already, in a defile where its bite could not be avoided. He found little ways to deflect er-Rashal’s supernatural superiority. Most hinged on the sorcerer’s natural arrogance.
A crack! rolled across the slope. A cloud of smoke rolled up, then began to shred in the air moving up the Mountain. “Oh, my!” Az said. “Look at him go! That old devil is spry for his age.”
A man in brown flashed across a clear space several hundred yards away and slightly downhill. He limped. One arm hung lifeless. Still, he put distance between himself and the ambush. He changed course, headed toward the Haunted City. His condition hampered his climb.
Nassim said, “Where are the archers who should be chasing him?”
And Az, “Proof of concept. That ambush hurt him.”
“He walked away, though,” Nassim objected. “How did the falcon crew do?”
“He got hit, that’s for sure. He’s really dragging, now.”
Nassim harrumphed.
“We can pull the noose tighter. We can get up where we can see the Haunted City all the time.” That prospect, set forth, thrilled the Master of Ghosts not at all.
Al-Azer er-Selim had been to Andesqueluz before.
The cost of embarrassing the Rascal became evident quickly.
Three of the falcon crew had suffered convulsions so violent that they had broken their own bones. Two might never walk again.
Az murmured, “It’s time the Ansa shouldered more of the burden.”
Nassim agreed. The Ansa were not stupid. They would let outsiders do as much of the suffering as they could.
The Mountain said, “Let them keep the falcon. Teach them to use it. Give them four charges and powder for four firings. If they do some good I’ll give them more. And what the hell is he doing?”
He pointed downhill. Bone was climbing the Mountain.
Az suggested, “Let’s go meet him so he don’t kill himself before he can tell us why he’s all worked up.”
Bone being out here could only be an evil omen. “I’m not sure I want to hear it.”
* * *
Alizarin’s foreboding was sound. Bone had no wind left when Az and Alizarin reached him. The man had to get his breath back. “We have been summoned to Shamramdi.”
“We?”
“All of us. Indala is gathering every man who can heft a blade or spear.”
“But … why?”
“There was a battle with the crusaders who call themselves the Righteous, in the Muterin Valley, near Sailkled.”
Nassim did not know those places. If the Righteous were involved, though, those must be in the Antal somewhere, presumably in the Praman principalities. “I can assume the outcome did not favor the Believers?”
“God averted his face. The Qipjaq and Osmen princes lost twenty-two thousand warriors. Fewer than two thousand escaped.”
This was ghastly news. The Pramans of the Antal would no longer be able to withstand the predations of the Eastern Empire.
Az muttered, “So Captain Tage has lost touch with his roots.”
Bone said, “Not the Captain. His lieutenants and some nobles from the Grail Empire.”
Nassim grunted. No matter. Else Tage had sent them.
Bone continued, “Sailkled is one hundred thirty miles northeast of Souied ed Dreida.” Souied ed Dreida-just Souied to most-was the second city of Lucidia. Or the first, if you asked its own people. It lay fewer than two hundred miles north of Shamramdi. “Souied has no garrison but old men and boys.”
That was because Indala did not trust the men of Souied, with reason. He had sent the best to Dreanger last year. Most had not returned. This year’s levies had gone east to resist any incursion by the Hu’n-tai At.
The Great Shake had expected the crusaders to come down to the coast of the Holy Lands, never threatening the cities behind the Neret Mountains.
“So. They surprised us by taking an eastern route through the Antal.”
“Some did,” Bone said. “Two other columns are bound for Shartelle.”
Nassim left the Mountain. He made the Ansa understand that he was not doing so by choice. By way of showing his true feelings he left another falcon and ammunition for a dozen firings. He wished them the grace of God and begged them to accept at face nothing involving er-Rashal till they killed him, dismembered him, burned the pieces in widespread fires, then scattered the ashes on the wind.
Nassim was not sure that would be enough. There were folk tales about demons who pulled themselves together after treatment equally harsh.
The Mountain had not yet reached the foot of the Mountain when echoes of falcon fire overtook him.
Az said, “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Maybe they’re amusing themselves.”
The second falcon barked just moments later. Az just muttered, “That can’t be good.”
34. Creveldia: The Unseen Path
The Ninth Unknown materialized in the square of the former Krulik and Sneigon manufactory in the Eastern Empire. It was high noon on a cool day. The tribal people who saw him thought that he had no shadow. They fled.
A woman materialized a dozen feet from the old man. She cast no shadow, either. Neither did two more women who arrived immediately.
A slim blonde just coming to her full beauty marked the eastern corner of a square aligned with the points of the compass. She sniffed. “They were here, maybe last night. Definitely since the last rain.”
Heris occupied the southern corner. Mildly envious, she said, “How can you tell? I spent more time with them. I practically snuggled up with Copper and Korban.”
“Bet they loved you running your fingers through their beards,” Cloven Februaren cracked.
Vali chided, “Maybe you snuggled so close you got used to the smell.”
Heris refused the bait. These days the girls lived to get a rise out her. Vali had a particular knack for implication wrapped in an innocuous observation. It was all in the timing, tone, and inflection.
The girl was a menace.
The old man was amused but threw no oil on the flames. The girls would not spare him.
They were not malicious, really. They were just two young women making sure the world paid for their having to suffer the indignities of puberty. Malicious mischief, really.
They were past the worst. Everyone hoped.
Februaren said, “We ought to take care of business and go before some idiot decides to test us.”
Lila responded with a snort. Despite the wonders she had witnessed lately she still considered the Ninth Unknown eighty percent blowhard. The old devil encouraged the underestimation. Someday that would let him teach a valuable lesson.
Vali sniffed. “I smell animals. And filthy people.” No surprise there. Heris had predicted that.
The Devedians had built well. The mountain people would have been foolish to let such good shelter go to waste.
Februaren said, “Let’s watch ourselves. Let’s not get hurt.”
His companions stared as though wondering what he meant.
“This way,” Lila said. “The scent is stronger from the building with the concrete foundation.”
Heris said, “That was where the owners and managers worked and lived.” She had come here before.
The girls had, too, and Februaren nearly as often as Heris. Heris growled, “That’s where Korban and his thugs took the falcons away.” The falcons Piper had left so she would have weapons to use in the Great Sky Fortress. Those falcons were, no doubt, now in the hands of the Aelen Kofer, being radically improved.
Februaren entered the building wondering loudly why the women of the family had to be so determinedly contrary.