The soldier galloped alongside the wagon. It was Jamil, and the captain took them all in with one glance and to their shock yelled, ‘Kazim Makani, stay close!’ Then another nomad attacked, forcing Jamil to spin away and parry. The captain fought deftly, blue sparks coruscating weirdly along his blade as the metal belled.
A youth from Lakh running behind them took a flying leap at the running-board. ‘Help, help!’ he called, pulling himself aboard, slowing them further, then a nomad drove a lance into the boy’s back, blood erupted as the boy screamed, and then he was gone, just another dead shape on the desert floor. The nomad ululated savagely and spurred his horse alongside, just out of reach. With an evil smile he drew his bow.
‘Haroun!’ Kazim shrieked, but before the archer could fire, Jai’s arm went back and with a throw that bettered anything he had ever shown on the kalikiti pitch at home, he skewered the man’s shoulder with the dagger. The man howled and pulled away. They burst through a crowd of their own men and found open sand before them. They were at the rear of the column, and behind them was a confused string of unarmed men running hither and thither, panicking – and doomed.
Kazim slapped Haroun on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go! This lot are dead already!’ Haroun cracked his whip and they accelerated again – then a lone horseman galloped out of the press towards them.
‘Go! Haroun, go!’ Kazim shouted as he stared back at the pursuing rider. Haroun lashed the horses up a short rise and into a dell, and
the battle dropped out of sight behind them, though the cries of the trapped and wounded rang clear enough. The lone rider topped the rise and plunged after them. It was Jamil. Kazim spat and prepared to fight anyway.
They were a good two hundred yards south of the fighting when the captain caught up. He had a slash down his right arm and his scimitar was limp in his hand. His eyes focused on the girl. ‘The girl’s mine, Chicken Boy,’ he shouted.
‘Come and get her then,’ Kazim snarled back.
The soldier closed in, wincing as he hefted his blade. ‘Don’t be a fool, Kazim Makani,’ he gritted.
‘You’re not having her, you piece of dung.’
Haroun slowed the wagon. ‘Stop it, stop it – we are all brothers here,’ he cried. ‘The enemy is back there!’ He pulled the horse to a standstill. ‘We are brothers here – please, put up your blades!’ For the first time, Kazim realised his friend was weeping for the shihad.
He looked down at the girl, who whimpered as she clung to Jai. She was plump and soft-looking, utterly out of place here. ‘Who is she to you?’ he snarled at Jamil.
‘Mine, is who she is. Release her.’
Kazim stood his ground, his scimitar raised, unwavering. He
knew
he could take the man, and he was longing to do so. ‘Get lost, Jamil. We don’t want or need you. Go, before the Ingashir come.’
‘If any of you touch her, you’re all dead.’
‘Piss off, you ugly prick,’ Kazim shot back.
He thought the man would attack, but he didn’t. With a fierce scowl, he wheeled his horse and galloped away towards the west. He watched him until he was out of sight. Then he leapt into action himself. He and Jai unharnessed the horses and loaded them with provender: food, precious water, blankets, then mounted the girl on one and led the rest. They chose to go southwest, where the shadows still clung to the dells and the sand was harder. Behind them, distant screams could still be heard as the Ingashir hunted down the remnants of the column. After a few hours they found rocky ground to cover their hoof-prints, and then a low-lying dell
where they hid for the rest of the day, wondering how on Urte they had survived.
No one came near in the daylight hours and at dusk they roused themselves. Jai had spent the entire day with his arm about the girl, who had not said a word but was fully able to cry at great volume if not comforted. Haroun had been praying all day, asking Ahm why he had seen fit to have his own warriors destroyed. His constant mutterings were driving Kazim slowly insane, but he restrained his temper. They were all afraid, and who could guide them to safety if not Ahm Himself?
‘Are we not your children, Great One?’ Haroun wailed bitterly. ‘Do not the Ingashir worship you, even as we do?’ But by evening his face had hardened. ‘An example has been made,’ he told Kazim. ‘This has been an object lesson in failure. There must be an accounting.’
Kazim thought this the understatement of a lifetime, but he had more practical concerns: where now? North, into the unknown, or south, though that would be the end of his dreams? How could they avoid the Ingashir? Was there enough food and water? Was it better to travel during the day or the night? The answer to each question was: ‘I don’t know.’
At least there was food, and they ate a cold meal of dried meat and breads, washed down with a small flask of arak and some water, all from the wagon’s spoils. Tanuva Ankesharan’s best cooking could not match so wondrous a feast as this scavenged meal. ‘What shall we do now?’ he asked Haroun afterwards.
The young scriptualist was rocking back and forth on his haunches, hugging his knees. ‘Brother, I know not. My head tells me we should return south and demand retribution for these dreadful losses – more than three thousand men, underfed, under-provisioned and unarmed, thrust across the hostile desert, only to be ravaged by nomads? It is intolerable – where was the protection? Where was the leadership? Why were we not armed and trained in Lakh before setting out? Why did so many of our brothers have to die so needlessly?’ He was distraught and angry, stabbing the ground with his
knife, as if pouring his grief and anger into the sand. ‘The Ingashir will be watching the back-trail. We do not have the provender to go back. It is six days northwards to the next oasis, I heard a soldier say last night. Perhaps we can find it? All I know is this: Ahm has spared us three.’ His eyes flicked to the girl. ‘Maybe even us four, alone of all those men. If ever you have doubted, cast that doubt aside. Ahm is with us and He will guide us.’
Kazim looked at Jai, sitting with his arm awkwardly about the soft Lakh girl with big moist eyes, not made for deserts and danger. She clung to Jai as if he were her personal messiah.
‘I want to go home,’ Jai said miserably.
Kazim took a deep breath. ‘So do I, brother. But I came to rescue Ramita from the ferang demon. If Ahm is with me, I shall not fail.’
A dry chuckle echoed about the stony dell and Kazim leapt to his feet, spinning here and there, brandishing his new scimitar.
A shadowy rock on the edge of the dell rose and became Jamil. ‘What “demon” do you speak of, Kazim Makani?’ His blade was sheathed and he was moving freely, no sign of the wounds inflicted that morning.
How did he get there? How long ago?
Kazim thrust his scimitar towards him. ‘Stay away from us!’
‘Hush boy – do you want the Ingashir to hear you?’ Jamil stalked closer, his hands open. ‘See, I come in peace. I am here to help you.’
Kazim took a step forward. ‘Liar! You’re just here to take our water and this girl. She can’t even speak now, you piece of dung!’
Jamil halted. ‘You wrong me, boy: I have not harmed the girl. I found her like that on the second day into the desert. Some fools had smuggled her into the march and misused her. I’ve been protecting her ever since. And I’m not here to steal anything. You may not believe me, but I have been looking out for you. Who do you think gave Jai water during the march? Who warned the worst of the marchers to leave you alone? Who ensured you were always fed during camp? I’ve been watching out for you since before we met.’
‘You kicked me in the head!’
Jamil shrugged. ‘My orders were to ensure my watch over you was not obvious. But I don’t really care whether you believe me or not. If you want to survive, you’ll travel with me.’ He looked at Jai. ‘And if your friend abuses the girl, I’ll disembowel him.’
‘Jai wouldn’t hurt a girl,’ Kazim shot back. He made a gesture of dismissal. ‘We don’t need you.’
Jamil gave an arid laugh. ‘Do you not? You’ve no idea where to go, how even to ride your horses. I would say that you desperately need me. Come now, maybe your pious little friend here can give us a sermon about Ahm having sent me to guide you. There is none better He could have sent: I’ve lived among the Ingashir, and I know the desert. I can get you across, and all the way to Hebusalim too.’
‘But why are you looking out for us?’ Kazim asked.
He shrugged. ‘Those are my orders. And because of your father.’
Kazim stared. ‘My
father
?’
‘Yes, Kazim, son of Razir Makani. My
benefactor
commanded that I seek you among the march after you left Baranasi.’ He put one hand on his scimitar hilt. ‘I know why you march – I even know the name of the “demon” who stole your woman.’
Kazim felt a frisson of fear and excitement.
Who is this Jamil?
‘I must rescue Ramita!’ he cried.
‘Indeed. I can help you – if you let me.’
Kazim looked at Jai. ‘Is it true about the water?’
Jai nodded, looking embarrassed. ‘He told me not to tell you.’
Kazim turned back to Jamil. ‘How can we trust you?’
Jamil shrugged, pulled out his sword and sent it spinning into the sand to Kazim’s right. He followed it with his dagger. ‘Will that do? Keep them until you are ready to trust me.’
‘Don’t expect them back soon.’ Kazim took a deep breath. ‘You say you know the name of the Rondian who stole Ramita?’
‘I do, and I shall tell you when we reach Hebusalim.’
Kazim bristled. ‘Tell me now!’
‘In Hebusalim,’ Jamil repeated inflexibly, ‘and not before. I will not argue this point. That is my last word on the subject.’ He stood waiting, his face expressionless.
Kazim hissed in frustration, glancing at Haroun, who gave a warning shake of the head. ‘Very well,’ he sighed, ‘for now, you can guide us.’
Jamil gave a low, mocking bow. They all stared at him, waiting for direction. Eventually Haroun asked him, ‘Well, Captain, where should we go?’
Jamil half-smiled. ‘Nowhere, yet. You must learn much before you are fit to travel this desert.’
Jamil kept them in the dell for two days, until he deemed them ready and the Ingashir gone. During the daytime he showed them how to halter the horses with ropes and trot them about the dell, always on muffled hooves. He never missed a detail, a badly set blanket on a horse or a poorly muffled hoof. Jai and Haroun were clearly terrified of him, but Kazim felt more unease than fear. The question of the identity of Ramita’s abductor gnawed at him.
The girl mostly slept, flinching when anyone but Jai approached her. Only Jai could coax her to eat or drink, and at night she huddled against him, causing him embarrassed discomfort.
‘How could this have been allowed to happen?’ Haroun asked Jamil on the second night, his face disillusioned. ‘All my life I have been told of the great shihads: huge armies of men drawn together by their love of God, marching as one to purge our lands of the infidel. But what we have seen was dreadful. How the Rondians must laugh at us.’
Jamil had no words of comfort. ‘Blame the Mughal of Lakh, if you want, or Salim, the Sultan of Kesh. Or the zealots, who couldn’t organise a fuck in a whorehouse.’ He spat. ‘Shihad has been declared by the Convocation, but Salim refuses to allow the mughal to move armies into Kesh – of course the mughal’s armies pillaged southern Kesh during the Second Crusade, so you can’t entirely blame him. Kesh and Lakh have fought many more wars against each other than against the whiteskins and the hatreds run deep. I myself have slain more Lakh than Rondians in the two previous Crusades.’ Kazim wondered how old the man was; he had to be at least forty
to have fought in two Crusades, yet he looked younger than that.
Jamil went on, ‘The official routes are closed by Salim’s armies and the mughal is sulking, but the Godspeakers of the Lakh Domal’Ahms wanted to feel important, so they issued the call to arms regardless, and it was answered by people like you: untrained, ill-equipped, with no provision made for food or supplies. And because they cannot cross the deserts to the east where Salim is guarding the best roads, some fool decides they must march across the western deserts, right under the noses of the Ingashir! Pure genius! None of the marchers are armed, in case they mutiny. Each column divides into a few thousand so that they can be provisioned, therefore making them small enough that the Ingashir can wipe them out piecemeal. Did you know you’re the third column to march out this winter? To the best of my knowledge none have arrived. The Ingashir are laughing like jackals.’
Haroun looked up from where he was sitting, his head buried between his knees. ‘You make it sound so hopeless.’
‘It is hopeless.’ Jamil shrugged. ‘Until Mughal Tariq stops pouting and comes to an agreement with Salim, nothing can be done. Men arrive, the local area can’t sustain them, so essentially they are thrust out into the desert to fend for themselves. And Mughal Tariq is fourteen, so don’t expect mature decisions from him any time soon.’ He leaned forward. ‘In truth, Vizier Hanook rules Lakh, and that shifty bastard won’t be losing sleep over a bunch of poor Amteh-Lakh perishing in the sands. He’s Omali, you see; he wants Lakh purged of the Amteh.’ He spread his hands. ‘So you see, my young friends, if we’re going to make it, it’s up to us.’ He looked at Haroun. ‘Keep faith, young scriptualist. Ahm protects best those who protect themselves. We’re going to make it, if you do as I tell you.’
Kazim stared at his feet. What he told them was nothing like the world he had imagined, with rulers with high purposes and noble aspirations, but it fitted well with the world he had seen on the march: sordid, squalid and brutal, and meaningless. ‘Who are you, Jamil? How do you know all these things?’
‘I’m just a man of the Amteh, Chicken Boy. I have lived in many
places, by my sword and my wits. The mughal’s army was a convenient place to be, not for the first time. Just know that my masters mean you well.’ He looked up at the stars. ‘Get some sleep. We rise before dawn and we ride all day.’
‘We’re travelling in the daytime?’ Kazim was surprised.
‘Indeed. It is in fact the safest time for us to travel, while the Ingashir rest.’