The Lions of Al-Rassan (58 page)

“I’m not,”
said Alvar, but he rasped it under his breath, and he didn’t think they heard. With the fever gone, the white rage, it was gradually coming to him how many terrified people he had just sent to their god. He looked at his sword. It was clotted with blood.

It was quieter here. In the distance they could hear new sounds, a change in the noise. The Muwardis had come. They would care nothing for the butchered Kindath but would be ruthless in suppressing the violence. And the fires would have to be contained or Fezana would be at the mercy of the Jaddites outside.

But I’m a Jaddite,
Alvar thought. He knelt and began wiping his slippery blade on a clump of weeds by the wall.
This is good for us.

It didn’t feel that way. He stood up and sheathed his weapon. He looked at the others. The little boy was quiet now, clutching the neck of Jehane’s mother. She had carried him all the way here. His sister stood close by, her face white, eyes still wide, still without tears. Jehane’s father was stone-faced and silent, a hand on Husari’s shoulder.

It was Husari who was weeping.

Alvar felt his heart twist for his friend. This was Husari’s city, he would have known so many of these maddened people, he had probably killed men he had known all his life. Alvar opened his mouth and then closed it. There was nothing he could think of to say. There were places into which words could not go. Not the words he knew.

Jehane was on her knees, scrabbling at a stone in the wall. It came loose. She reached in a hand, swore as a scorpion scurried away, and pulled out a key. She stood up.

“Over here,” she gasped. She ran a short distance along the wall to a clump of raspberry bushes. Ducking in behind them, she dropped to her knees again, inserted the key and pulled, hard.

A small, low section of the stone wall swung outwards. The hinging mechanism was ingenious; they had no time to admire it.

“Is this,” said Eliane, “one of the ways out your friends taught you?”

Jehane glanced up at her mother. “How do you know about them?”

Eliane’s expression was bitter. “They warned me. We were too slow to move.”

“Then we must not be now,” said Ammar ibn Khairan. “Come.”

“I’ll go,” Alvar said. “Wait for my signal.” Who knew what lay outside in the darkness? Whatever it was, Alvar was going to be first to meet it.

“There’s another key inside,” Jehane said. “You need to use it to push the outer piece open.”

He slipped behind the bushes and then wriggled into a hollowed-out space in the thick stone city wall. In the close blackness he found the second key by touch and then the keyhole. He inserted, turned, pushed. The outer wall piece swung away and Alvar crawled through. He felt grass, stood up and looked around, blade quickly to hand again.

Only twilight, damp earth by the river, the first stars and a rising white moon. The water rippled just ahead, reflecting the pale moonlight.

“Come on,” he said, mouth to the hollow space in the stone.

The others came through then, one by one. He helped them slip out and then stand outside the wall between stone and dark water. Rod-rigo, last through, dropped the key back inside and pushed the opening shut.

They crossed the water immediately, those who could swim helping the others. The river was very cold this early in the year. They climbed up on the far bank in the dark. Alvar collapsed among the high grass and the reeds, sucking in deep breaths of the clean air. His face stung; it felt raw and burnt.

He became aware of something. Slowly he rose to his feet again. Rodrigo had walked a few steps from the rest of them and was staring out into the darkness. His sword was drawn.

“Who’s there?”
the Captain called.

There was silence. Ammar ibn Khairan also stood up.

Then there came an answer from the dark: “A friend. Someone is here to bid you welcome, Ser Rodrigo.” The speaker had a deep, calm voice.

But it wasn’t the tone, it was the language spoken that caused Alvar to step forward beside Rodrigo, his heart hammering again.

He was close enough to hear the Captain draw breath.

“Light a torch, then,” Rodrigo said. “Darkness offers no true welcome.”

They heard a command. Flint was struck. Light blazed.

“Welcome back, truly,” said the very tall, bearded man illuminated by that torch. Alvar had seen him twice in his life. He forgot to breathe.

“My lord,” said Rodrigo, after a moment. “This is unexpected.”

King Ramiro of Valledo, surrounded by a company of men, smiled his pleasure. “I had hoped it might be. It is rare that any of us are able to surprise you.”

“How come you to be here?” Rodrigo said. His voice was controlled, but Alvar was near enough to know there was effort involved in that. He heard ibn Khairan come quietly up beside them.

King Ramiro’s smile deepened. He gestured, and someone stepped from the group of men behind him.

“Hello, Papa,” said a young boy, coming to stand beside the king.

Rodrigo sucked in his breath, his control gone. “
Fernan?
In Jad’s name, what—”

“It was Diego,” the boy said, a little too brightly. He wore light armor and a sword. “He knew where you were, this morning, and told us where to wait tonight.” Rodrigo was silent. “He sometimes knows where you are, remember?” The boy’s voice betrayed uncertainty. “Are you not pleased to see me, Papa?”

“Oh, Jad,” Alvar heard the Captain say. And then, to the king of Valledo, “
What have you done?
Why are my sons with this army?”

“There will be time to explain,” said Ramiro calmly. “This is not the place. Will you come with us? We can offer dry clothing and food.”

“And those I am with?” Rodrigo’s tone was ice-cold.

“They are my guests if you speak for them, whoever they may be. Come now, greet your son, Ser Rodrigo. He has been dreaming of this moment.”

Rodrigo opened his mouth quickly, then closed it. Slowly he sheathed his blade.

“Come to me,” he said to the boy, and with an involuntary sound, Fernan Belmonte ran forward and was gathered fiercely in his father’s embrace. Alvar saw the Captain close his eyes as he gripped his son.

“Your mother,” said Rodrigo, when he finally stepped back, “is going to kill all of us for this, you realize. Starting with me.”

“Mother’s with the queen, Papa. We haven’t seen her yet but there was a message she came south and joined Queen Ines with the rest of the army following us. We tried to cut you off before you reached the city. That’s why we came so fast. Why are you here, Papa? What happened to your moustache?”

“I had friends in danger. I came to get them out. Where is Diego?”

“They are taking great care of him,” Fernan said. “He’s angry about it. They wouldn’t let him come here. They made him stay with the food train, in some village by the river west.”

“Ashar, no! Not there!”

All his days Alvar would remember those words and the expression on Ammar ibn Khairan’s face, crying them. Rodrigo wheeled on him.

“What is it?
Tell me!
”

“Ambush!” snapped the other man, already moving. “The Muwardis. Almalik planned it, years ago. Pray to your god and ride!”

Rodrigo was already running towards the horses.

And so, moments later, for the second time in less than a year, Alvar de Pellino—wet and burnt and cold, pushing past exhaustion and half a dozen small wounds—found himself galloping flat-out through darkness over the plain north of Fezana towards a hamlet named Orvilla.

Ammar ibn Khairan was beside him, against all allegiances, and the king of Valledo was on his other side with Jehane and her parents and Husari and two children and a party of fifty of the king’s guard streaming behind them in the cool, clear night.

Ahead of them all, whipping his mount like a madman under the stars and the white moon, was a father racing time and the turning heavens to his child.

Sixteen

U
ntil the very moment, under the stars and the white moon in Al-Rassan of the infidels, when the veiled ones appeared out of the darkening plain, Ibero the cleric had succeeded in persuading himself that the hand of Jad was upon his shoulder after all, guiding him.

He had shaped his plan on that first morning, riding west from Rancho Belmonte in the rain. It was possible—he’d been forced to admit it—that Miranda had been right. That in furthering the demands of holy faith Ibero had done wrong by the family he so dearly loved. If that were so, he had vowed on that grey, cold morning he would do all he could to ensure that the wrong was contained and redressed. Miranda Belmonte might have turned him away, driven him from his home, but he would not turn his back on her or her family.

He had fallen in with a company of soldiers from the ranch country, heading towards Carcasia in response to the king’s summons: the same summons that had claimed the two boys. He went with the soldiers. This was a holy war, in name at least, and clerics were not unwelcome if they could keep up on the ride. Ibero knew how to handle a horse. Years with the Belmonte had made certain of that.

He found Fernan and Diego among the king’s party seven days later in the plain south of Carcasia, amid the tents and banners of a war camp. Rodrigo’s sons were being treated with evident respect, although the scrutiny afforded Diego by those who knew why he was here made Ibero uncomfortable. Against his will, he was reminded of Miranda’s words: those with the far-sight, or whatever name was given it,
had
been burned in the past. In the not-so-distant past. This, Ibero told himself again, was a more enlightened age.

The boys weren’t entirely pleased to see him, but Ibero had a streak of stubbornness in his nature and he made it clear to all concerned, including the elegant High Cleric from Ferrieres, that where the sons of Rodrigo Belmonte went, Ibero also would go. He didn’t tell the boys he had been driven from the ranch by their mother; perhaps he ought to have, but he couldn’t manage to do it. That meant his presence with them involved a deception, but he trusted the god to forgive him for that. He meant well. He had always meant well.

Fernan and Diego had obviously been up to mischief on the way here and since arriving. They were high-spirited and too clever for their own good sometimes. It was judged useful to have their tutor about for discipline. There was a tale doing the rounds of the camp about the rock-laden saddlebags of one of the soldiers who had brought them here. It was quite a funny story, but Ibero was practiced at not encouraging his charges with visible amusement.

Soon afterwards they rode south through the no-man’s-land with the army of reconquest; with the vanguard, in fact, for Diego and Fernan were kept close to the king himself.

Ibero had never seen his king before. Ramiro of Valledo was a handsome, impressive man. Worthy, the little cleric thought humbly, to be the instrument of Esperaña’s reconquest. If the god allowed. He was acutely aware that all the men in this army were a part of something momentous. The king kept speaking of a limited campaign, a tactical capture of Fezana, but even Ibero the cleric knew that once Valledo was in Al-Rassan the shape and tenor of their age would have changed forever.

The lean, elegant constable, Count Gonzalez de Rada, hovered unsettlingly close to the boys all the way south. Ibero knew that Ser Rod-rigo and this man had no love for each other, but he also remembered that de Rada had sworn to guard Belmonte’s family when Rodrigo had been exiled. Ibero hoped—and prayed, each morning and when the sun went down—that the sardonic constable’s proximity was a manifestation of that vow and nothing else.

South of the two small
tagra
forts the king’s vanguard began to open a distance from the rest of the army, with outriders galloping back and forth to keep communications flowing.

This was how Ibero learned that Miranda Belmonte d’Alveda had also become a part of their army, joining the entourage of Queen Ines, who had chosen to come with her husband into the lands of the infidels. When he told the boys they seemed unsurprised. Ibero was disconcerted by that until he remembered the obvious.

Diego’s gift was difficult to deal with at times. He would have known before the messengers came, Ibero realized. A little reluctantly, he admonished Diego.

“You ought to be telling the rest of us if you . . . see anything. It might be important. That is why we are here, after all.”

Diego’s expression had been comical.
“My mother?”
he asked. “Ibero, my mother’s arrival is important to the war?”

Put that way, he did have a point. Fernan, predictably, had a different perspective entirely.

“Isn’t this wonderful,” he had exclaimed indignantly. “Our first campaign and everyone from home comes trotting along. Who else should we expect? The cook, our nurses from childhood? This is ridiculous! Are you here to make sure we keep warm at night?”

Diego had laughed. Ibero was too uneasy about the tidings of Miranda to be amused or chastising. Fernan’s words were disrespectful, but Ibero could understand how a young man on his first campaign might feel . . . crowded by his tutor’s arrival, and now his mother’s.

Nothing for it. If the boys felt unhappy or the soldiers teased them they would have to deal with that themselves. The truth was, they
were
too young to be here, and would not have come had Diego not been what he was. And had not Ibero sent a certain letter to Esteren.

He sent another letter—a formal message to Miranda by one of the outriders. He reported his own presence and the good health and respectful treatment of the two boys. No word came back.

They did hear, indirectly, that the queen was entirely recovered from her unfortunate accident and that she had great faith in her new physician, a doctor from one of the
tagra
forts.

The story was that he had saved Queen Ines’s life at the very brink of death. Diego, in particular, was fascinated by the tale and ferreted out all the details he could from those who had been at that meeting of the three kings. Fernan was more interested in upcoming events. He managed to attach himself to the king’s entourage, staying close to Count Gonzalez, in fact. It was Fernan who explained to the other two why they were leaving the Asharite farms and hamlets untouched as they rode.

They had passed a number of them since leaving the
tagra
lands. The villagers and farmers had fled into the hills with most of their belongings, but it had always been customary, in the wars of Ashar and Jad, to fire the houses and fields.

Things were different this time.

Despite a visible disagreement emanating from Geraud de Chervalles, King Ramiro was insistent on the point. This was not a raid, Fernan reported the king as saying. They were coming south to take Fezana and to stay. And if they did that, they would need Asharites to resettle these villages and farmhouses, to pay taxes and till the fields. Time and steady governance would bring Jad back into Al-Rassan, the king had declared, not burnings and destruction. Ibero wasn’t entirely sure how that meshed with holy doctrine, but he kept silent in the presence of his betters.

Fernan would spend the time after twilight prayers, before dark and bed, drawing maps for his brother and the cleric, explaining what might happen when they reached Fezana, and after. Ibero noted, a little wryly, that he was entirely conversant now with the location—and the proper spelling—of all the major cities and rivers in Al-Rassan.

Four more days passed. The spring weather remained mild; they made steady progress, drumming hooves and the dust of an army moving over the grasslands of Al-Rassan.

Then Diego announced, shortly before they broke camp one morning, that he had seen his father riding west.

T
he king and the constable and the tall cleric from Ferrieres had asked all sorts of questions he couldn’t answer.

Once, such questions had made Diego feel inadequate, as if he was letting the questioners down by not being able to reply. He didn’t like disappointing people. Later, though, the queries—even from his parents—had begun to irritate him, betraying, as they did, such a failure to understand the limits of his capability. Diego had made himself practice being patient at such times. The fact was, people
didn’t
understand his limits; they couldn’t possibly, because they didn’t understand how he did what he did.

Not that Diego really understood his own gift; where it came from, why he had it, what it meant. He knew some things, of course. He knew that what he could do marked him as different from others. He knew—from his mother long ago—that there was some undefined danger associated with being different in this way, and that he was not to tell others about what he could do.

All that, of course, had changed now. Horsemen had come from the king of Valledo and taken him to war. Fernan, naturally, had come too. Fernan was the one who really wanted to go to war, but when they had reached the encampment by Carcasia’s walls it had become clear—during a first intimidating meeting with the king himself and the cleric from over the mountains—that Diego was the one they wanted. He’d had to explain, shyly, what it was he could do.

Not so much, really. He could see their disappointment. At times over the years, he had wondered about all the secrecy and anxiety. It wasn’t a complicated gift: he could sometimes tell where his family was, even when they were far away. His father, his mother, his brother, though Fernan was never far from him, and his mother very seldom was.

Also, he could sometimes sense danger coming for any of the three of them. As to that, it had almost always been his father. His father’s life involved quite a lot of danger.

Fernan wanted to be exactly like their father. He dreamed of it, practiced for it, had rushed through his childhood hungry for a man’s weapons, and war.

Fernan was stronger and quicker, though they had been born identical. There were times when Diego thought their father preferred Fernan, but there were other times when he thought otherwise. He loved his father without reservation. Other people found Rodrigo intimidating, he knew. Diego thought that was funny. Fernan didn’t; Fernan considered it useful. They differed in such small things.

It didn’t much matter, really. Nothing was ever going to separate the sons of Rodrigo Belmonte; they had realized that, definitively, when they were very young.

Fernan was enjoying almost everything about the campaign they had joined. Diego thought it was an interesting place to be, certainly better than another summer on the ranch, but he had a recurrence of his old feelings of anxiety when it appeared that he was disappointing those who had brought him here to help. At that first meeting he had answered the sharp questions from the High Cleric as best he could, and a few from the constable and the king, too. He liked the king most, though he supposed it wasn’t really his place to
like
the king or not.

In any case, he couldn’t be much help to them and he did his best to make that clear. Some days ago he had sensed his mother’s arrival among the main body of the army, half a day behind them. He had told Fernan, of course. He’d considered telling the king and the cleric from Ferrieres just to have something to offer them, but thinking about his mother led him to keep quiet.
Her
movements, surely, weren’t a part of this campaign. It felt like a kind of betrayal to talk about her, and so he didn’t. Besides, he knew why she had come. Fernan did, too. It made Fernan prickly and angry; Diego just felt sad. They probably ought to have waited for her to come home that day before riding off. He’d been thinking guiltily about that since they left.

He knew she would not have let them join this army had she been at the ranch when the soldiers arrived. Fernan had scoffed at that suggestion when Diego mentioned it, pointing out that their mother, forceful as she might be, was hardly likely to have defied a direct summons from the king.

Diego wasn’t so sure about that. He found that he missed his mother. She was gentler with him than with most people. He knew Fernan missed her too, but his brother would deny that if Diego spoke of it, so he didn’t. They talked about their father, instead. It was all right, the way Fernan saw the world, to miss their father.

Then one morning Diego woke with an image of Rodrigo in his mind. It was blurred, because his father was riding very fast, and the landscape changed too quickly for Diego to get a clear picture. But he was coming towards them from the east, and he wasn’t far away.

Diego lay under his blanket for a little while, eyes closed, concentrating. He heard Fernan wake up beside him, and start to say something. Then Fernan was quiet. He could usually tell when Diego was reaching out, or reaching in. It was hard to know the right words for this.

The landscape refused to become clearer. He saw that his father was with only a few people, not a large company, and there seemed to be a river beyond him—which would make sense, if Diego remembered the maps correctly. Rodrigo would be riding along the Tavares. He seemed to be agitated about something, but Diego had no sense of immediate danger. He tried casting his mind a little away from his father, to see if he could place him more exactly. He saw the river, grasslands, hills.

Then, vividly, an image of a city and its walls. That
had
to be Fezana.