Working God's Mischief

33. Lucidia: The Mountain and the Mountain

The Mountain was on the Mountain. The Rascal had grown that weak. Nassim and the Ansa dared, occasionally, to move into visual range of Andesqueluz.

The subsidies from Indala let the Ansa spare men to watch. Alizarin kept his lightest falcons deployed, too. Despite the firepowder shortage his crews had permission to fire if they got a good shot. Sometimes a crew moved fast enough. The effects were small but cumulative.

Er-Rashal fought back, ever less effectively.

“What is he eating?” Nassim once wondered. “He was never the sort to garden.”

Az replied, “The Ansa say some of their people have disappeared.”

“He ate them?”

“So the Ansa believe. It’s one more reason they’ve gotten aggressive. They’re terrified of what he could become if he resurrects Asher.”

Nassim stared across the barren slope. He saw only shades of brown flecked by points of sage gray. Not much lived up there. “What are we doing, Az? Is this really God’s work?”

“One must consider the impact on the Faithful of er-Rashal being successful at recalling his devil.”

“One should, yes.”

“The Ansa fear that he will soon begin capturing sacrifices to finish his ritual.”

“Sacrifices? On top of cannibalism?”

“So they say. The missing people were probably sacrifices that he ate afterward.”

“Why would they think like that?”

“They have tribal recollections of the old ways.” Az shrugged. “They’ve been setting traps. Some of them are quite clever-and appallingly ugly. They want to borrow a falcon.”

Nassim was reluctant to risk his weapons.

Az said, “Give them the four-pounder from Haeti. It’s brass. No iron in it. He might not detect it till he’s too close.”

Er-Selim had it all worked out. That falcon had been installed on an approach to an Ansa encampment already, in a defile where its bite could not be avoided. He found little ways to deflect er-Rashal’s supernatural superiority. Most hinged on the sorcerer’s natural arrogance.

A crack! rolled across the slope. A cloud of smoke rolled up, then began to shred in the air moving up the Mountain. “Oh, my!” Az said. “Look at him go! That old devil is spry for his age.”

A man in brown flashed across a clear space several hundred yards away and slightly downhill. He limped. One arm hung lifeless. Still, he put distance between himself and the ambush. He changed course, headed toward the Haunted City. His condition hampered his climb.

Nassim said, “Where are the archers who should be chasing him?”

And Az, “Proof of concept. That ambush hurt him.”

“He walked away, though,” Nassim objected. “How did the falcon crew do?”

“He got hit, that’s for sure. He’s really dragging, now.”

Nassim harrumphed.

“We can pull the noose tighter. We can get up where we can see the Haunted City all the time.” That prospect, set forth, thrilled the Master of Ghosts not at all.

Al-Azer er-Selim had been to Andesqueluz before.

The cost of embarrassing the Rascal became evident quickly.

Three of the falcon crew had suffered convulsions so violent that they had broken their own bones. Two might never walk again.

Az murmured, “It’s time the Ansa shouldered more of the burden.”

Nassim agreed. The Ansa were not stupid. They would let outsiders do as much of the suffering as they could.

The Mountain said, “Let them keep the falcon. Teach them to use it. Give them four charges and powder for four firings. If they do some good I’ll give them more. And what the hell is he doing?”

He pointed downhill. Bone was climbing the Mountain.

Az suggested, “Let’s go meet him so he don’t kill himself before he can tell us why he’s all worked up.”

Bone being out here could only be an evil omen. “I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

* * *

Alizarin’s foreboding was sound. Bone had no wind left when Az and Alizarin reached him. The man had to get his breath back. “We have been summoned to Shamramdi.”

“We?”

“All of us. Indala is gathering every man who can heft a blade or spear.”

“But … why?”

“There was a battle with the crusaders who call themselves the Righteous, in the Muterin Valley, near Sailkled.”

Nassim did not know those places. If the Righteous were involved, though, those must be in the Antal somewhere, presumably in the Praman principalities. “I can assume the outcome did not favor the Believers?”

“God averted his face. The Qipjaq and Osmen princes lost twenty-two thousand warriors. Fewer than two thousand escaped.”

This was ghastly news. The Pramans of the Antal would no longer be able to withstand the predations of the Eastern Empire.

Az muttered, “So Captain Tage has lost touch with his roots.”

Bone said, “Not the Captain. His lieutenants and some nobles from the Grail Empire.”

Nassim grunted. No matter. Else Tage had sent them.

Bone continued, “Sailkled is one hundred thirty miles northeast of Souied ed Dreida.” Souied ed Dreida-just Souied to most-was the second city of Lucidia. Or the first, if you asked its own people. It lay fewer than two hundred miles north of Shamramdi. “Souied has no garrison but old men and boys.”

That was because Indala did not trust the men of Souied, with reason. He had sent the best to Dreanger last year. Most had not returned. This year’s levies had gone east to resist any incursion by the Hu’n-tai At.

The Great Shake had expected the crusaders to come down to the coast of the Holy Lands, never threatening the cities behind the Neret Mountains.

“So. They surprised us by taking an eastern route through the Antal.”

“Some did,” Bone said. “Two other columns are bound for Shartelle.”

Nassim left the Mountain. He made the Ansa understand that he was not doing so by choice. By way of showing his true feelings he left another falcon and ammunition for a dozen firings. He wished them the grace of God and begged them to accept at face nothing involving er-Rashal till they killed him, dismembered him, burned the pieces in widespread fires, then scattered the ashes on the wind.

Nassim was not sure that would be enough. There were folk tales about demons who pulled themselves together after treatment equally harsh.

The Mountain had not yet reached the foot of the Mountain when echoes of falcon fire overtook him.

Az said, “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Maybe they’re amusing themselves.”

The second falcon barked just moments later. Az just muttered, “That can’t be good.”