The Lions of Al-Rassan (64 page)

“Alas, it is true. ‘War feeds like a wild dog upon the hearts of brave men.’ ”

“I know that,” said the king of Valledo suddenly. “That was written by ibn Khairan of Aljais.”

Ammar turned to him and Jehane knew he was surprised, however he might try to conceal it. “At your service, my lord. The line scans better in Asharic.”

The king’s turn to betray astonishment. He looked sharply at Rod-rigo and then back to Ammar. “I had not . . .
you
are . . . ?” He turned to Rodrigo again, eyebrows arched.

Calmly, Rodrigo said, “We were exiled at the same time last year in Ragosa. We have been companions since. He came here, despite a death sentence in Cartadan lands, to bring Ishak ben Yonannon and his wife out of Fezana. Jehane bet Ishak who stands here is physician to my company. Ibn Khairan would have been killed by the Muwardis had they known he was in the city.”

“I daresay there is no love shared there,” King Ramiro murmured. He was a tall, handsome man. He had also recognized a line from a poem by Ammar. “Is there any shared here?” he asked.

“I am attempting to find out,” Rodrigo said. “Ammar, we have always thought that if this army and the other two moved south, Yazir ibn Q’arif would probably be in the peninsula by summer’s end or next spring. Al-Rassan, as it has been, is coming to an end.”

“Sorrowfully, I believe that,” Jehane heard the man she loved say quietly. “Tell me, who will remember the gardens of the Al-Fontina in time to come? Or the ivories in the holy places of Ragosa?”

“I cannot answer that,” Rodrigo replied. “Perhaps you will help us all remember, I do not know. I have more immediate concerns. The king has instructed me that this is to be a Valledan campaign of conquest, not a holy war, though there are clerics with us and it might appear otherwise.”

“Oh,
good
!” Ammar said, too brightly. “Does that mean only those who resist you are nailed to wood or burned alive while the clerics sing paeans to Jad?”

“Something of the sort,” Rodrigo said levelly.

“Almalik of Cartada is a dead man,” King Ramiro interjected quietly, “for what he tried to do to the queen. And the Muwardis, when we find them, will be offered no kindness by me. Not after tonight. But my heart is not set on slaughter, either for its own sake or to make the clerics happy.”

“Ah,” said Ammar in his most sardonic voice, “a
gentle
conquest. Horsemen of Jad waving to happy Asharite farmers as they trot by. And to keep your brave soldiers content—what? Chop up a few Kindath on the way? No one will miss them, will they?”

Rodrigo refused to rise to the bait. “This is warfare, Ammar. Neither of us is a child. It is still Ashar and Jad and there will be ugliness. After several hundred years and with that other army sailing for Soriyya there will be worse than ugliness.”

“What, I wonder, is worse than ugliness?”

“You do not really mean that,” Rodrigo said. “I have part of an answer, though. Worse is when what little space there is for men to move back and forth between worlds disappears because the worlds are lost to hatred. That may happen to us yet.” He hesitated. “It probably will, Ammar. I have no more illusions than you do. There will be no happy farmers where this army passes. We will conquer if we can, and do what we must do, and then we will try to govern here, as the khalifs and the city-kings have governed the Jaddites and Kindath among you.”

“How . . . pragmatic of you,” Ammar said, with an icy smile. He was angry, Jehane saw, and not trying to hide it.

Rodrigo saw it too. He said, “Are we the proper targets for your feelings right now?”

“You are adequate, failing something better.”

“What would you have me do?”
Rodrigo cried suddenly. In the silence that followed, Jehane had a sense, as once before in Ragosa, that for these two men, staring fixedly at each other now, no one else was in the world, just for a moment.

The moment came, and was briefly held, and then it passed. Jehane felt as if she could almost see it happen: something receding from the two of them, faster than any horses could run, into the dark.

“What would I have you do?” Ammar’s voice had softened. He spoke Asharic now. “What you cannot do, I suppose. Go home. Breed horses, raise your sons, love your wife.” He turned to the king of Valledo. “Make your country—all of Esperaña if you can unite it—into a land that understands more than only war and righteous piety. Allow space in your lives for more than battle chants to inspire soldiers. Teach your people to . . . understand a garden, the reason for a fountain, music.”

The wind blew past them. Ibn Khairan shook his head. “Forgive me. I am being extremely foolish. I am tired and I know you are as well. These tidings you bring are not unexpected, but they do mark the death of something I have . . . held dear.”

“I know this.” Rodrigo’s voice was rock-steady. “I would like you to help keep some part of Al-Rassan alive. I said I had a proposal. If the king does not disagree, I would offer you certain offices in Al-Rassan and ultimately the rank of constable of Valledo, shared with myself.”

Jehane heard Alvar de Pellino gasp and saw the king make an abrupt, uncontrolled movement. Rodrigo had just proposed to cut his own position in half and give it to an Asharite.

Ammar laughed softly. He looked at the king and then back to Rod-rigo. “You
do
enjoy surprising people, don’t you? I thought that was my vice.”

Again, Rodrigo did not smile. “It seems simple enough to me. We haven’t nearly enough people to take and settle Al-Rassan. We need the Star-born—and the Kindath—to stay here, farm the land, conduct their business, pay taxes . . . perhaps one day become Jaddites in the same way our people have turned to Ashar here over the centuries. If this campaign succeeds, we will be a very few people in a large land. To keep the sons and daughters of Ashar calm and well-governed we need men of their own faith. A great many of them eventually, but at the moment there is only one man I trust to wield so much power and strive towards this balancing and you are that man. Will you help govern Al-Rassan for us? So much of it as we control?”

Ammar turned to the king again. “He is eloquent when he chooses to be, is he not? Does he persuade you?” The cutting edge of irony was in his voice again. “Does it sound
simple enough
to you?”

The horses were running away in the night. Jehane could almost see them, so vivid was the image for her—manes lifting with their speed under the moons and the racing clouds.

“He has surprised me,” said King Ramiro carefully. “Though not more than I am surprised to discover you in my camp. But yes, Ser Rod-rigo speaks simple truths and I can hear those as well as any man, I hope. Speaking for myself, I also prefer a palace or a chapel with some grace to one that merely keeps out wind and rain. I am not unaware of what Al-Rassan has been. I have read your verses, and that of other poets here. There are those among us who might be hoping for bonfires of flesh as we move south. I would prefer to disappoint their expectations.”

“And your brother? And your uncle?”

King Ramiro’s mouth twitched again. “I would prefer,” he murmured, “to disappoint their expectations as well.”

Ammar laughed aloud. Again Rodrigo did not smile. Absolutely self-contained, he was waiting for his answer, Jehane understood. And he
wanted
this. She thought she understood that too. His son had nearly died tonight. Might yet die. Rodrigo Belmonte did not want to endure another loss now.

Ammar’s laughter stopped. Unexpectedly he looked over at her. She held his gaze, but it was difficult to read expressions in the moonlight. He turned back to Rodrigo.

“I
can’t,
” he said, with finality. In Jehane’s mind the horses were gone now, out of sight.

“It will be the Muwardis,” Rodrigo said quickly. “You know it, Ammar! Ragosa cannot even hold against Jaloña with half its army mercenaries from Jaddite lands. When High Clerics appear outside the walls and speak of holy war—”

“I
know
this!”

“And Fezana falls to us. You know that, too! Before summer’s end.”

“I know this city,” King Ramiro interposed quietly. “I was in exile here in my youth. I observed certain things. Unless the defenses are greatly altered, I believe I can take Fezana, even with its new garrison.”

“It is possible.”

Rodrigo continued, with a note of desperation. “And then Yazir and Ghalib come across the straits to meet us. Al-Rassan is theirs, or it is ours, Ammar. By my god and yours, you must see that! Cartada, Ragosa, your memory of Silvenes . . . they
cannot
be saved. Even you cannot dance that dance between fires. And surely, Ammar, surely you know—”

“I have to try.”

“What?”

“Rodrigo, I have to try. To dance that dance.”

Rodrigo stopped, breathing hard, like a horse reined up too harshly.

“Your faith means so much to you?” King Ramiro’s voice was thoughtful. “I had heard tales otherwise. It means so much that you would serve the veiled ones of the desert, knowing their ways and what they will bring to your land?”

“My faith? I would put it differently, my lord. I would say, my history. Not just Al-Rassan, but Ammuz, Soriyya . . . Ashar in the desert of the homelands under stars. Our sages, our singers, the khalifs of the eastern world.” Ammar shrugged his shoulders. “The Muwardis? They are a part of that. Every people has its zealots. They come, and change, and come again in a new guise. Forgive me for saying this, but if a king of Valledo can be as reflective as you, my lord—a descendant of Queen Vasca of blessed name!—shall I be the one to deny the possibility of like grace descending upon a veiled son of the sands? Perhaps among the seductive fountains, the flowing rivers of Al-Rassan . . . ?”

“You would rather be with them.” Jehane heard the bitterness in Rodrigo’s voice.

Ammar looked at him. “As companions? Friends? Am I mad? Rod-rigo, do I
look
mad?” He shook his head. “But the Muwardis, what are they? Exactly the same as Queen Vasca was, as most of the people of your north still are today. Righteous, convinced, unforgiving. Terrified of anything beyond their understanding of the world. The tribes are uncivilized? I think so. But I confess I find little of value in the cities of Esperaña either. The desert is a hard place, harder even than your northlands in winter. Ashar knows, I have no bonding of spirit with the veiled ones, but I share even less with those who make pilgrimage on their knees to Vasca’s Isle. Would I
rather
be with the tribesmen? Again, put it a little differently, and then leave it, Rodrigo, as my last words, lest we quarrel before we part. I suppose I would rather, if Al-Rassan is to be lost, herd camels in the Majriti than be a shepherd in Esperaña.”

“No! That
cannot
be a last word, Ammar!” Rodrigo shook his head vehemently. “How do I let you ride to them? Do you know what they will do to you?”

Ammar smiled again, wryly this time. “What will they do? Take away my ink and paper? For a start, I will almost certainly be named ka’id of all Cartada’s armies by Almalik II. I expect Ghalib ibn Q’arif and I will one day have a disagreement over who leads our conjoined forces, and I will politely defer to him. I am reliably informed he wears a neck thong made of the foreskins of those who do not defer to him.” He let the smile fade. “After that, I truly do not know. It may come to camel herding, after all. Leave it, Rodrigo, please.” He paused. “There is a question about Jehane, however.”

“No there isn’t.”

She had actually been expecting this and she was ready when it came. The four men turned to her. “Ammar, if I can have some assurance that my parents are safe with Rodrigo and the king, then I’m afraid you must let me come with you—or I’ll kill you before you leave this camp.”

She saw Rodrigo Belmonte smile then for the first time that night, the remembered look softening his face. “Ah. You’ve met my wife, then?” he said.

Jehane turned to him. “I have. The lady Miranda is as gracious and as beautiful as I was told—by others—she would be. Would she let you leave her behind in such a circumstance as this, Ser Rodrigo?”

Ammar said quickly, “It is not the—”

“It
is
the same. Enough so as to make no difference,” Jehane snapped. She was afraid weariness would make her cry again, and she didn’t want that at all.

“Well now,” said the king of Valledo, “I do regret having to add my voice to what seems a matter of the heart, but I need to be told why I ought to allow the self-proclaimed future ka’id of my enemies to depart.”

Jehane swallowed abruptly. Her heart thudded. She hadn’t even thought of this.

“You must let him leave,” Rodrigo said quietly.

King Ramiro looked sharply at him, and Jehane saw his temper, now being kept in check. What he had just said terrified her. In truth, given the war that had begun, she could see no reason why he ought to let them go. Ammar had had his chance, his astonishing offer, and now . . .

“I
must
?” said Ramiro of Valledo. “I am never happy with the word, Ser Rodrigo.”

“My lord, forgive me,” said Rodrigo calmly, “but I have—
we
have—one hundred and fifty men in the army of Ragosa. Trapped there. When word comes that you are in Al-Rassan and I am with you, and that the king of Jaloña has come south as well, I believe Badir of Ragosa will receive counsel that he should eliminate my company before they are deployed against him.”