Glen Cook - The Fire In His Hands

There was a natural yet innocent cruelty in the Children of Hammad al Nakir. Their very language lacked a means of expressing the concept “cruelty to an enemy.”

Haroun looked back. He paused when he noticed Radetic watching him. But the urge to impress his brothers overcame good sense. He seized his rudimentary shaghûn’s kit and joined their rush into the street.

Radetic followed. He would not be able to prevent their prank, but might finally penetrate the veil of mystery that surrounded the collapse of the negotiations with Sabbah i Hassan.

Its simplicity was frightening.

A shaghûn was as much stage magician as true sorcerer. Haroun spent an hour a day practicing sleight of hand that would awe the credulous one day. Among his simple tools was a peashooter. He could conceal it within a fist and, with a faked cough, blow a pellet into a campfire or a dart at an unsuspecting enemy.

Haroun chose a dart, and put it into the white horse’s flank.

She reared and screamed. El Murid fell at Haroun’s feet. They locked gazes. El Murid looked puzzled. When he tried to stand, he fell. He had broken an ankle.

Haroun’s brothers and cousins began mocking the injured youth.

A quick-witted priest shouted, “An omen! False prophets inevitably fall.”

Others took it up. They had been lying in wait, hoping for a chance to embarrass El Murid. Pushing and shoving started between factions.

Haroun and El Murid still stared at one another, as if seeing the future, and seeing it grim.

Nassef spied the peashooter. His sword rang as it cleared his scabbard. Its tip cut a shallow slice an inch above Haroun’s right eye. The boy would have died but for Radetic’s quick action.

Royalist partisans roared. Weapons materialized. “It’s going to get ugly. You little fool. Come up here.” Radetic yanked Haroun off the ground and threw him over his shoulder, then hurried toward his employer’s tent. During Disharhun everyone, whether making the pilgrimage to Al Rhemish or not, lived the week in tents.

Fuad met them in the street. He had heard a swift-winged rumor of murder. He was angry. A huge man with a savage reputation, Fuad in a rage was a ferocious spectacle. He had his war blade in hand. It looked big enough to behead an ox with a single blow.

“What happened, teacher? Is he all right?”

“Mostly scared. I’d better talk to Yousif.” He tried hiding the bleeding. Fuad had less self-control than the usual volatile native.

“He’s waiting.”

“I should find an injured child every time I want to talk to him.”

Fuad gave him a poisonous look.

The shouting and blade waving around El Murid had turned ugly. Fighting was forbidden during Disharhun, but the Children of Hammad al Nakir were not ones to let laws restrict their emotions.

Horsemen bearing round black shields emblazoned with the crude red eagle of the Royal Household descended on the trouble spot.

Radetic hurried on to his employer’s quarters.

“What happened?” Yousif demanded as soon as he had determined that Haroun’s wound was minor. He had cleared his tent of the usual hangers-on. “Haroun, you tell it first.”

The boy was too frightened to stretch the truth. “I... I used my blow tube. To hit his horse. I didn’t know he would get hurt.”

“Megelin?”

“That’s the gist of it. A practical joke, in poor taste. I’d blame the examples set by his elders. I did, however, hear mention of Sabbah i Hassan beforehand.”

“How so?”

“In the context, I believe, of a similar stunt. Your children, you know, are even more primitive and literal-minded than the rest of you.”

“Haroun? Is that true?”

“Huh?”

“Did you do the same thing to Sabbah i Hassan?”

Radetic smiled thinly as he watched the boy struggle with the lie trying to break out of the prison of his mouth. “Yes, Father.”

Fuad returned to the tent. He seemed to have calmed down.

“Teacher?”

“Wahlig?”

“What the hell were they doing running the streets? They were supposed to be in class.”

“Be serious, Yousif,” Fuad interjected. “Don’t tell me you’re already too old to remember being young.” The Wahlig was forty-one. “It’s Disharhun. The woman wore no veil. You think the man is a miracle worker?”

Radetic was amazed. Fuad had made it plain that he thought any teacher who did not teach the use of weapons was superfluous. A warrior chieftain needed no other education. Scribes and accountants could be enslaved.

Moreover, he disliked Radetic personally.

What had put him into so good a mood? It worried Radetic.

“Haroun.”

The boy approached his father reluctantly, took his spanking without crying. And without contrition.

Yousif was angry. He never punished his children before outsiders. And yet... Radetic suspected that his employer was not entirely displeased.

“Now go find your brothers. Tell them to get back here and stay out of trouble.”

The boy ran out. Yousif looked at Fuad. “Bold little brat, isn’t he?”

“His father’s son, I think. You were the same.”

Haroun was Yousif’s favorite, though the Wahlig hid it well. Radetic suspected that he had been hired specifically for the benefit of the one boy. The others had been tossed into his classes in a vain hope that a patina of wisdom might stick.

Haroun would have preferred a scholarly life. When away from older brothers he showed the temperament. In fact, he had told Radetic that he wanted to be like him when he grew up. Megelin had been pleased and embarrassed.

For a six-year-old Haroun showed remarkable determination to pursue the mission decreed for him by an accident of birth. He acted twice his age. He was possessed of a stern, stolid fatalism seldom seen in anyone under thirty.

Megelin Radetic hurt a lot for the fated child.

Fuad bubbled over. “Yousif, this is the break we’ve been waiting for. This time he’s given us a good, rock-hard excuse.”

Radetic was startled when he suddenly realized that Fuad was talking about El Murid. It was a revelation. He had not suspected that powerful men were actually afraid of the Disciple. Afraid of a fifteen-year-old who, like themselves, had come to Al Rhemish for the rites of Disharhun, and to see his infant daughter christened before the Most Holy Mrazkin Shrines.

They had been lying to him. And to themselves, probably. Just plain old-fashioned whistling in the dark.

All this fuss over religious nonsense.

“Wahlig, this is ridiculous. Barbarous,” Radetic grumbled. “Even pathetic. The boy is a madman. He crucifies himself every time he preaches. You don’t have to trump up charges. Let him have his High Holy Week. Let him talk. They’ll laugh him out of Al Rhemish.”

“Let me boot this fish-faced pimp,” Fuad growled.

Yousif raised a silencing hand. “Calm down. He has a right to an opinion. Even a wrong one.”

Fuad shut up.

Yousif virtually owned his younger brother. Fuad seemed to have no imagination or aspirations of his own. He was a mirror of Yousif, the Wahlig’s far-reaching right hand, a sledge used to hammer out another’s dreams. Which was not to say that he always agreed. He and Yousif sometimes argued bitterly, especially when the latter was pushing an innovation. Sometimes Fuad won his point. But once a decision had been handed down he would support it to the death.

“Wahlig —”

“Be silent a moment, Megelin. Let me tell you where you’re wrong.” Yousif rearranged his cushions. “This is going to be long-winded. Get comfortable.”

Radetic considered Yousif’s tent to be furnished in garish, barbarous taste. The Children of Hammad al Nakir, when they could afford it, surrounded themselves with intense color. The reds, greens, yellows and blues around Yousif so clashed that Radetic could almost hear their conflict.