The Lions of Al-Rassan (36 page)

“More things,” Idar’s father said gravely, “are now explained.” For all the blood that smeared and stained Tarif ibn Hassan’s head and clothing, there was a remarkable dignity and composure to him now.

“One of you ought surely to have been enough,” he murmured. “If I am to be finally defeated and slain, I suppose it will at least be said in years to come that it took the best men of two lands to do it.”

“And neither man would claim to be better than you.”

This fellow, ibn Khairan, had a way with words, Idar thought. Then he remembered that the Cartadan was a poet, to go with everything else.

“You aren’t going to be slain,” Rodrigo Belmonte added. “Unless you insist upon it.” Idar stared up at him, keeping his mouth firmly closed.

“That last is unlikely,” Idar’s father growled. “I am old and feeble but not yet tired of life. I
am
tired of mysteries. If you aren’t going to kill us, tell me what it is you want.” He said it in a tone very nearly of command.

Idar had never been able to keep up with his father, to match or encompass the raw force in him; he had long since stopped trying. He followed—in love, in fear, very often in awe. Neither he nor Abir had ever spoken about what would happen when their father was gone. It did not bear thinking about. There was an emptiness that lay beyond that thought. The white-faced, dark-haired woman with her nails.

The two mercenaries, one standing before them, the other still on horseback, looked at each other for a long moment. An agreement seemed to pass between them.

“We want you to take one mule’s worth of Fibaz gold and go home,” said Rodrigo Belmonte. “In exchange for that, for your lives and that measure of gold, you will ensure that the world hears of how you successfully ambushed the Jaloñan party and killed them all and took all the
parias
gold back to Arbastro.”

Idar blinked again, struggling. He folded his arms across his chest and tried to look shrewd. His father, after a moment, laughed aloud.

“Magnificent!” he said. “And whose is the credit for this part of the scheme?”

The two men before him glanced again at each other. “This part,” said ibn Khairan a little ruefully, “is indeed, I am sorry to have to say, the thought-child of Mazur ben Avren. I do wish I had thought of it. I’m sure that I would have, given time.”

The Valledan captain laughed.

“I have no doubt,” Tarif ibn Hassan said dryly. Idar watched his father working through all of this. “So that is why you killed them all?”

“Why we had to,” Rodrigo Belmonte agreed, amusement gone as swiftly as it had come. “Once they saw my company, if any of di Carrera’s party made it home the story would never hold. They would know we had the gold back in Ragosa.”

“Alas, I must beg your forgiveness again,” Tarif murmured. “We were to do your killing for you and we failed miserably. What,” he asked quietly, “would you have done if we had taken them for ransom?”

“Killed them,” said Ammar ibn Khairan. “Are you shocked, ibn Hassan? Do you fight by courtly rules of war like the paladins of the old tales? Was Arbastro built with treasure won in bloodless adventures?” There was an edge to his tone, for the first time.

He didn’t like doing this,
Idar thought.
He may pretend otherwise, but he didn’t like it.

His father seemed satisfied by something. His own manner changed. “I have been an outlaw most of my life, with a price on my head. You know the answer to your own questions.” He smiled thinly, his wolf’s expression. “I have no objection to taking gold home and receiving the acclaim for a successful raid. On the other hand, once I am back in Arbastro, it might please me to embarrass you by letting the truth be known.”

Ammar ibn Khairan smiled, the edge still there. “It has pleased a number of people over the years to embarrass me, one way or another.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “I had hoped that a loving father’s concern for his sons in Ragosa might take precedence over the pleasure of distressing us.”

Idar stepped quickly forward, but his father, without glancing at him, extended a hand and held him back. “You would stand before a man whose youngest child is dying as we speak and propose to take away his other son?”

“He is far from dying. What sort of medical care are you accustomed to?”

Idar wheeled around. Beside Abir now, on her knees, was a woman. They had said their doctor was a woman. A servant was with her, and she had a cloth full of implements already opened. Idar hadn’t even seen her walk around them to Abir, so intense was his focus on the two men. She was unexpectedly young, pretty for a Kindath; her manner was crisp and precise, though, almost curt.

She said, looking at his father, “I ought to be able to save his life, though I am afraid it is going to cost him the leg. It will need to be taken off above the wound, the sooner the better. I need the place and time of his birth, to see if it is proper to do surgery now. Do you know these things?”

“I do,” Idar heard himself saying. His father was staring at the woman.

“Good. Give them to my assistant, please. I will offer your brother the best care I can here, and I will be pleased to look after him when he returns with us to Ragosa. With luck and diligence he ought to be able to move about with sticks before spring.” Her eyes were extremely blue, and quite level as her gaze rested on Idar’s father. “I am also confident that having his brother as a companion will speed his recovery.”

Idar watched his father’s face. The old warrior’s expression moved from relief to fury to a gradual awareness that he had no resources here. Nothing to do in the presence of these people but accede. It was not a role he had ever played happily in his life.

He managed another thin, wolf’s smile. Turned from the Kindath doctor back to the two men. “Do help an old man’s faltering grasp of things,” he said. “Was this elaborate scheme truly worth a single season’s delay? You must know that King Bermudo will send again to Fibaz in the spring, demanding
parias,
almost certainly a doubled sum.”

“Of course he will,” said ibn Khairan. “But this happens to be an important season and this gold can be put to better use than arming Jaloña for the coming year.” The pearl in his right ear gleamed. He said, “When next he comes Fibaz might refuse him tribute.”

“Ah!” said Idar’s father then. He pulled a bloody hand slowly through his beard, smearing it even further. “I am illuminated! The spirit of Ashar allows me sight at last.” He bowed mockingly to both men. “I am humbled to be even a small part of so great an undertaking. Of
course
it is an important season. Of
course
you need the gold. You are going after Cartada in the spring.”

“Good for you!” said Ammar ibn Khairan, encouragement in his voice and the blue eyes. He smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to come with us?”

A short time later, back in the sunlight of the valley, Jehane bet Ishak prepared to saw off the right leg of Abir ibn Tarif, assisted by Velaz and the strong hands of Martín and Ludus, and with the aid of a massive dose, administered by saturated sponge, of her father’s strongest soporific.

She had performed amputations before, but never on open ground like this. She didn’t tell them that, of course. Ser Rezzoni again:
“Let them always believe you do nothing but this procedure, day after day.”

The wounded man’s brother hovered impotently nearby, begging to be of assistance. She was struggling to find polite words to send him away when Alvar de Pellino materialized beside the man with an open flask.

“Will I offend you if I offer wine?” he asked the white-faced bandit. The look of grateful need was answer enough. Alvar led the man to the far side of their temporary camp. The father, ibn Hassan, was conversing there with Rodrigo and Ammar. He betrayed his distraction by glancing in their direction with regularity. Jehane noted that, then put all such matters from her mind.

Amputations in the field did not have a high success rate. On the other hand, most military doctors had no real idea what they were doing. Rodrigo had known that very well. It was why she was here. It was also why she was nervous. She could have asked the moon sisters and the god for an easier first procedure with this company. For almost anything else, in truth.

She let none of this show in her face. She checked her implements again. They were clean, laid out by Velaz on a white cloth on the green grass. She had consulted her almanac and cast the moons: those of the patient’s birth hour were in acceptable harmony with today’s. She would only have delayed if faced with the worst possible reading.

There was wine to pour into the wound and the cauterizing iron waited in the fire, red-hot already. The patient was dazed with the drugs Velaz had given him. Not surprisingly: the sponge had been steeped in crushed poppies, mandragora and hemlock. She took his arm and pinched it, as hard as she could. He didn’t move. She looked into his eyes and was satisfied. Two strong men, used to battlefield surgery, were holding him down. Velaz—from whom she had no secrets—offered her a reassuring glance, and her heavy saw.

No reason, really, to delay.

“Hold him,” she said, and began to grind through flesh and bone.

Eleven

W
here’s Papa now?”

Fernan Belmonte, who had asked the question, was lying in clean straw in the loft above the barn. Most of him was buried for warmth, only the face and brown, tousled hair showing.

Ibero the cleric, who had reluctantly acceded to the twins’ morning lessons taking place up here today—it
was
warmer in the barn above the cows, he’d had to concede—opened his mouth quickly to object, but then shut it and looked with apprehension towards where the other boy lay.

Diego was completely invisible under the straw. They could see it shift with the rise and fall of his breathing, but that was all.

“Why does it matter?” His voice, when it came, seemed disembodied. A message from the spirit-world, Ibero thought, then surreptitiously made the sign of the sun disk, chiding himself for such nonsense.

“Doesn’t really,” Fernan replied. “I’m just curious.” They were taking a brief rest before switching courses of study.

“Idle child. You know what Ibero says about curiosity,” Diego said darkly from his cave of straw.

His brother looked around for something to throw. Ibero, used to this, quelled him with a glance.

“Well, is he allowed to be rude?” Fernan asked in an aggrieved tone. “He’s using you as authority for impolite behavior to his older brother. Will you let him? Doesn’t that make you a party to his action?”

“What’s impolite about it?” Diego queried, muffled and unseen. “Do I have to answer every question that comes into his empty head, Ibero?”

The little cleric sighed. It was becoming increasingly difficult to deal with his two charges. Not only were they impatient and frequently reckless, they were also ferociously intelligent.

“I think,” he said, prudently dodging both queries, “that this particular exchange suggests that our rest is over. Shall we turn to the matter of weights and measures?”

Fernan made a ghastly, contorted face, pretended he was strangling, and then pulled straw over his head in unsubtle protest. Ibero reached for and found a buried foot. He twisted, hard. Fernan yelped and surfaced.

“Weights and measures,” the cleric repeated. “If you won’t apply yourself properly up here we’ll just have to go down and inform your mother what happens when I’m tolerant of your requests.”

Fernan sat up quickly. Some threats still worked. Some of the time.

“He’s somewhere east of Ragosa,” Diego said. “There’s a fight of some kind.”

Ibero and Fernan looked quickly at each other. The matter of weights and measures was, for the moment, abandoned.

“What does
somewhere
mean?” Fernan demanded. His tone was sharp now. “Come on, Diego, do better than that.”

“Near some city to the east. There’s a valley.”

Fernan looked to Ibero for help. The straw on the other side of the cleric shifted and disgorged a blinking thirteen-year-old. Diego began brushing straw from his hair and neck.

Ibero was a teacher. He couldn’t help himself. “Well, he’s given us some clues. What’s the city east of Ragosa? You both ought to know.”

The brothers looked at each other.

“Ronizza?” Fernan hazarded.

“That’s south,” Ibero said, shaking his head. “And on what river is it?”

“The Larrios. Come on, Ibero, this is important!” Fenian had the capacity to seem older than his years when military matters were being discussed.

But Ibero was equal to this challenge. “Of course it’s serious. What sort of commander relies on his cleric to help him with geography? Your father knows the name and size and the terrain surrounding every city in the peninsula.”

“It’s Fibaz,” Diego said suddenly. “Beneath the pass to Ferrieres. I don’t know the valley, though. It’s north and west of the city.” He paused and looked away again. They waited.

“Papa killed someone,” Diego said. “I think the fighting is stopping.”

Ibero swallowed. It was difficult with this child. It was almost impossibly difficult. He looked closely at Diego. The boy seemed calm; a little distracted, but it was impossible to see from his face that he was registering events unimaginably far away. And Ibero had no doubt—not after so many trials—that Diego was reporting them truly.

Fernan had none of that calm just now. Grey eyes gleaming, he stood up. “I’ll bet you anything this has to do with Jaloña,” he said. “They were sending a
parias
party, remember?”

“Your father wouldn’t attack other Jaddites for the infidels,” Ibero said quickly.

“Of course he would! He’s a mercenary, he’s being paid by Ragosa. The only promise he made was not to come with an army into Valledo, remember?” Fernan looked confidently from Ibero to Diego. His whole being was afire now, charged with energy.

And it was Ibero’s task—as tutor, guardian, spiritual counsellor—to somehow control and channel that force. He looked at the two boys, one feverish with excitement, the other seeming a little unfocused, not altogether present, and he surrendered yet again.

“You are both going to be useless for the rest of the morning, I can see that much.” He shook his head darkly. “Very well, you are released.” Fernan whooped: a child again, not a commander-in-waiting. Diego hastily stood up. Ibero had been known to change his mind.

“One condition,” the cleric added sternly. “You will spend time with the maps in the library this afternoon. Tomorrow morning I am going to have you mark the cities of Al-Rassan for me. Major ones, smaller ones. This matters. I want you to know them. You are your father’s heirs and his pride.”

“Done,” said Fernan. Diego just grinned.

“Then go,” said Ibero. And watched them hurtle past him and down the ladder. He smiled in spite of himself. They were good boys, both of them, and he was a kindly person.

He was also a devout man, and a thoughtful one.

He knew—who in Valledo did not, by now?—of the holy war being launched this coming spring from Batiara, an armada of ships sailing for the eastern homelands of the infidels. He knew of the presence in Esteren, as a guest of the king and queen, of one of the highest of the clerics of Ferrieres, come to preach a war of the three kingdoms of Esperaña against Al-Rassan. The Reconquest. Was it truly to come now, in their lifetime, after so many hundreds of years?

It was a war every devout man in the peninsula was duty-bound to support and succor with all his being. And how much more did that apply to the clerics of holy Jad?

Sitting alone in the straw of the barn loft, listening to the milk cows complaining below him, Ibero the cleric of Rancho Belmonte began a hard wrestling match within his soul. He had been with this family most of his life. He loved them all with a fierce, enduring passion.

He loved and feared his god with all his heart.

He remained up there, thinking, for a long time, but when he finally came down the ladder his expression was calm and his tread firm.

He went directly to his own chamber beside the chapel and took parchment and quill and ink and composed then, carefully, a letter to the High Cleric Geraud de Chervalles at the king’s palace in Esteren, writing in the name of Jad and humbly setting forth certain unusual circumstances as he understood them.

W
hen I sleep,” said Abir ibn Tarif, “it feels as if I still have my leg. In my dreams I put my hand down to my knee, and I wake up, because it isn’t there.” He was reporting it, not complaining. He was not a man who complained.

Jehane, changing the dressing on his wound, nodded her head. “I told you that might happen. You feel tingling, pain, as if the leg were still attached?”

“That is it,” Abir said. Then, stoutly, “The pain is not so great, mind you.”

She smiled at him, and across the infirmary bed at his brother, who was always present when she visited. “A lesser man would not say that,” she murmured. Abir looked pleased. She liked both of them, these sons of an outlaw chieftain, hostages in Ragosa for the winter. They were gentler men than she might have expected.

Idar, who had developed an attachment to her, had been telling stories through the winter of Arbastro and their father’s courage and cunning. Jehane was a good listener, and sometimes heard more than the teller intended. Physicians learned to do that. She had wondered before about the price paid by the sons of great men. This winter, with Idar and Abir, she addressed the question again. Could such children move out from under that huge shadow into their own manhood? She thought of Almalik II of Cartada, son of the Lion; of the three sons of King Sancho the Fat of Esperaña; indeed, of Rodrigo Belmonte’s two young boys.

She considered whether the same challenge confronted a daughter. She decided it didn’t, not in the same way. She wasn’t in competition with her father, she was only trying, as best she could, to be worthy of his teaching and his example; deserving of the flask she carried as heir to his reputation.

She finished with Abir’s dressing. The wound had healed well. She was pleased, and a little proud. She thought her father would have approved. She’d written to him soon after their return to Ragosa. There were always some hardy travelers who could carry messages back and forth through the winter pass, though not swiftly. Her mother’s neat handwriting had conveyed Ishak’s reply:
This will be too late to be useful, but in cases when you operate in the field you must watch even more carefully for the green discharge. Press the skin near the wound and listen for a crackling sound.

She had known about this. Such a sound meant death, unless she cut again, even higher—and few men survived that. But Abir ibn Tarif’s wound did not turn green and his endurance was strong. His brother seldom left his side and the men of Rodrigo’s company seemed to have taken a collective liking to the sons of ibn Hassan. Abir did not lack for visitors. Once, when Jehane had come to attend upon him, she caught a lingering trace of the scent favored by the women of a certain neighborhood.

She had sniffed the air elaborately and tsked her disapproval. Idar laughed; Abir looked shamefaced. He was well on the road to recovery by then, however, and secretly Jehane was pleased. The presence of physical desire, Ser Rezzoni had taught, was one of the clearest signs of returning good health after surgery.

She checked the fitting of the new dressing a last time and stepped back. “Has he been practicing?” she asked Idar.

“Not enough,” the older of the brothers replied. “He is lazy, I told you.” Abir swore in quick protest, then apologized even more quickly.

This was a game, in fact. If he wasn’t watched carefully, Abir was likely to push himself to exhaustion in his efforts to learn how to get about with the shoulder sticks Velaz had fashioned for him.

Jehane grinned at both of them. “Tomorrow morning,” she said to her patient. “It looks very good, though. By the end of next week I expect you can leave this place and go live with your brother.” She paused a moment, for effect. “It will surely save you money on bribes here, when you have company after dark.”

Idar laughed again. Abir turned red. Jehane gave his shoulder a pat and turned to leave.

Rodrigo Belmonte, booted and cloaked, leather hat in one hand, was standing by the fire on the far side of the room. From the expression on his face she knew something had happened. Her heart thumped.

“What is it?” she said quickly. “My parents?”

He shook his head. “No, no. Nothing to do with them, Jehane. But there are tidings you ought to know.”

He crossed towards her. Velaz appeared from behind the screen where he made his salves and tinctures.

Jehane straightened her shoulders and held herself very still.

Rodrigo said, “I am presuming in a way, but you are, for the moment, still my company physician, and I wanted you to hear this from me.”

She blinked.
For the moment?

He said, “Word has just come from the southern coast, one of the last ships in from the east. It seems a great army from several Jaddite lands has gathered in Batiara this winter, preparing to sail to Ammuz and Soriyya in the spring.”

Jehane bit her lip. Very large news indeed, but . . .

“This is a holy army,” Rodrigo said. His face was grim. “Or so they call themselves. It seems that earlier this autumn several companies attacked and destroyed Sorenica. They set fire to the city and put the inhabitants to the sword. All of them, we are told. Jehane, Velaz, I am so sorry.”

Sorenica.

Mild, starry nights in winter. Spring evenings, years ago. Wine in the torchlit garden of her kinfolk. Flowers everywhere, and the breeze from the sea. Sorenica. The most beautiful sanctuary of the god and his sisters that Jehane had ever seen. The Kindath High Priest with his sweet, laden voice intoning the liturgy of the doubled full moons. White and blue candles burning in every niche that night. So many people gathered; a sense of peace, of calm, of a home for the Wanderers. A choir singing, then more music after, in the winding torchlit streets outside the sanctuary, beneath the round, holy moons.

Sorenica. Bright city on the ocean with its vineyards above. Given to the Kindath long ago for service to the lords of Batiara. A place to call their own in a hostile world.

To the sword.
An end of music. Trampled flowers. Children?