Hecht grunted. He did not want to rely too much on the Shining Ones. He did not want to remind the world that the Commander of the Righteous was strange. He troubled the world enough already. “Tell me about the tower overlooking the main barbican.”
Titus said, “Practically a wonder of the world. Almost two hundred feet tall. Called the Tower of the Bats. Come sundown you can see why. They come out by the thousands. It has collapsed twice during earthquakes. They built it back taller and stronger each time.”
“Can we make it fall on the barbican?”
“Maybe with firepowder smuggled in by our supernatural friends.”
* * *
Another day. Hourli was back from seeing Heris, whom she had had trouble finding. “I have a better idea who has to be protected, now.”
Hecht grunted. He was distracted. His engineers, after interviewing captives who knew the Tower of the Bats, said that it could not be dropped onto the barbican. The stonework would not tilt enough without breaking up first. A wave of rubble might do some damage, though.
“Let’s drop it, anyway,” Hecht said. “Just to show that we can.”
Hourli said, “We’d be more useful picking off key men.”
Hecht grunted again. That would cause confusion.
Hourli continued, “I hate to add to your worries. There is another problem developing that will shape every choice you make from the moment I tell you.”
“Now what?”
“The Empress Helspeth has decided to join you. She is in Hypraxium. The ascendant and the Bastard are with her. I asked Wife to watch over them.”
Hecht gaped. Impossible! But … she would. Helspeth would indeed, likely gathering the men she trusted least into her escort. No doubt her deadly uncles would be with her, too, to keep the circus manageable.
The woman was crazy.
He should have seen it coming. It was more in character for her than it had been for Katrin.
Her father would have done it, too. It was in the Ege blood.
“Oh, sigh! I don’t like it even a little but there won’t be any way to change her mind. I’ll have to make the Holy Lands safe before she gets here.”
Impossible, of course, even with the enthusiastic assistance of the Shining Ones.
36. Shamramdi, Lucidia: When God Averted His Eye
Nassim Alizarin watched the disguised Ansa leave the Shamramdi house, youthful shoulders slumped. “Bone, I wish we could do something. But Indala has tied our hands.”
Indala al-Sul Halaladin was distressed and severely depressed by the ease with which the crusaders crushed any who resisted them. Each engagement left the Believers involved defeated in detail. The Righteous seemed to know the very secret intentions of the commanders of the Faithful. Only the rare minor patrol and unknown captain enjoyed any success.
Nassim grumbled, “He doesn’t fully see the horrors possible if we allow er-Rashal to indulge his madness.”
“Could that be worse than the Arnhander invasion?” Young Az demanded.
Nassim glowered at Mohkam, who said, “He just bulled past me, sir!”
“Those who rise in the shadow cast by a great man sometimes confuse that shadow with their own, thinking it relieves them of the burden of civil behavior.” He met the boy’s eyes.
Young Az reddened. He opened his mouth twice, probably to apologize. But he did not do so.
“Why am I gifted with this intrusion?” Nassim asked with none of the warmth that he could not help showing the boy normally. Azim did not miss that.
“That strange boy. He had tattoos under his eyes. Who was he?”
There was no reason to dissemble. “One of the Ansa, begging for help. Er-Rashal has started taking children.”
Worse news, er-Rashal had discovered a way to make firepowder explode from afar. The discharges Nassim had heard while descending the Mountain had been the sorcerer’s test of the new spell formula. That time the madman had not been wise enough to stay well back. That had cost him valuable weeks recuperating.
The Ansa could have gotten him then had not tribal politics interfered. Those who wanted to pretend that er-Rashal was no real threat attained ascendancy till the sorcerer started stealing children.
There was no helping the Ansa now. Perhaps next week, or next month, if Indala discovered a formula for success against the approaching crusaders. They had left a third of their strength to garrison captured cities while fugitives from those cities had joined Indala. Today the Great Shake’s army outnumbered the Unbelievers by ten thousand.
Scouts were looking for the perfect place to destroy them.
Nassim was not optimistic. Indala’s captains wanted to fight where horsemen could gain glory, ignoring the fact that similar horsemen had been defeated repeatedly already. The captains argued that those fools had chosen constrained battlegrounds where horsemen had inadequate maneuvering room.
Nassim thought that the crusaders would ignore the Believer cavalry-along with the pride of their own equestrian class.
Captain Tage had chosen intimates who could think in whole-force terms and least-cost victories, disdaining individual combats and heroics. Those men compelled their followers to conform. Continuous success had a way of eroding objections.
Young Az suffered the blindness of his class. He would not see. “We will sweep in and tempt them to charge. We will flee. They will pursue. We will keep on till their mounts are exhausted, then we will turn.”
The Mountain did not tell the boy that the man who had created the Righteous knew eastern light-horse tactics intimately. He did say, “They will ignore you.”
“We’ll soon find out, Uncle. I came to warn you that the army moves north tomorrow.”
Nassim sighed. “May God be generous.”
Old Az agreed. “He has delivered punishments enough, lately.”
The morning news from Shartelle said that the crusaders had sailed fireships into the northern harbor. Most friendly shipping had been consumed. The men operating the chain had thought they were welcoming a relief convoy from Dreanger. The ships were Dreangerean but had been captured by the fleets of the Firaldian trading republics. Rumors said those fleets had had supernatural assistance.
Marines captured one of the towers guarding the harbor entrance, too. Shartelle was cut off from the sea, now, too. Heavy firepowder weapons had been installed to discourage relief efforts from that direction.
The Righteous were using stone from the captured tower to create a causeway leading to the low point in the wall facing the harbor.
Mischief was happening inside Shartelle, too, evidently by crusader agents who had infiltrated before the siege began-though none of those agents had yet been identified.
As Indala’s host drifted northward, in theory thirty-eight thousand strong, levies and militias tried to relieve Shartelle. Commanded by Indala’s cousin Kharsa, they were tasked with investing the crusaders from outside, besieging the besiegers. Their numbers and their fighting skills proved insufficient. Few were motivated, either. The Righteous obliterated them. Prisoners were put to work as siege labor.
The Commander of the Righteous led from the fore, as terrible in the fighting as an angel of death. None withstood him. Kharsa himself, renowned across Qasr al-Zed, fell to the Commander’s lightning spear.
Meantime, Indala’s host trickled onto the Plain of Tum, which his captains had chosen as the place where the invaders would be humbled. The omens were uniformly excellent.
“This is not good,” Mowfik grumbled. The renegade Sha-lug were at the head of the van, Indala being confident that Nassim Alizarin would see more clearly than most.
The Mountain saw despair in the offing. He saw disaster.
The Righteous had arrived already. They were camped on the south bank of a stream beneath low hills marking the northern verge of the plain. They were positioned exactly as Indala had prayed they would be, arrayed to come onto the field as he would have them do.