Haroun considered Ragnarson thoughtfully. He was afraid Bragi might be right. Megelin would have agreed. His father would not have. It was to their often antagonistic memories and shades that he answered.

They'd certainly lost their illusions, he thought. And maybe more, that they hadn't known they had. Bragi was right about one thing. They were just surviving, trying to get through a winnowing of survivors.

What Bragi didn't see was that it couldn't end till El Murid was overthrown. That beast would never stop fighting. He would do anything to make his mission bear fruit. Anything.

Ragnarson marched toward Hellin Daimiel. The lands through which he passed were preoccupied with spring planting. War was a terror of long ago or far away. There was little evidence of El Murid's occupation.

Each town had its missionary, and each county its imam, trying to convert the unbeliever. They had had their share of luck. Bragi saw scores of new places of worship built in the desert style.

The occupation had had its greatest impact on civil administration. The Disciple's followers had started from scratch in the desert and had brought new concepts with them, bypassing traditional forms. Though the feudal structures persisted, the old nobility was in decline.

Ragnarson found scant welcome along the way. The Disciple's propaganda effort had been successful. People were content with El Murid's Kingdom of Peace, or at least indifferent to it.

Ragnarson was near the bounds of the former domains of Hellin Daimiel when the rider he had sent ahead returned. The man had gotten through. Sir Tury Hawkwind agreed with Haroun's strategy.

Haroun and his Royalists were somewhere to the south, moving faster. They would deliver the first blow against Hellin Daimiel's besiegers. Curving in from the north, Ragnarson would deliver the follow-up. While the besiegers reeled, Hawkwind would sally with the city garrison.

El Murid's force at Hellin Daimiel was not big, nor was it comprised of the desert's best. Native auxiliaries, old men, warriors injured elsewhere... Its value was psychological. Haroun figured its defeat would have repercussions far beyond the numbers involved.

Ragnarson encountered fugitive desert warriors while still a day away from the city. Haroun's punch had been sufficient. He and Hawkwind had broken the siege.

"I'll be damned!" Ragnarson swore. "We run our butts off and we're still too damned late. What the hell kind of justice is that?"

Haaken peered at him. He wore what looked like a sneer. "Be grateful for a little good luck, nitwit."

"That any way to talk to your captain, boy?"

Haaken grinned. "Captain for how much longer? We get to the city, you're going to come down a peg or nine. We'll be back with the real Guild. And real Guild officers. No more of this Colonel Ragnarson stuff."

Ragnarson stopped walking. His troops trudged past.

He had not thought of that. He was not sure he could handle falling back to corporal. He had been on the loose too long, running things his own way. He watched his men march by. They were not real Guildsmen, despite the standard heading the column. Not one in fifty had ever seen High Crag. Only sixty-seven of his original company survived. They were the officers and sergeants, the skeleton but not the flesh of his little army.

"You planning to make a career of blocking the road?" Haaken asked.

"It just hit me how much has happened since we left High Crag."

"A ton," Haaken agreed. Something struck him. "We haven't been given our allowances for three years. Man, can we ever have a time."

"If they pay us." Suddenly, Bragi's world was all gloom.

He did not find himself deprived of his makeshift army. When he reached Hellin Daimiel, Hawkwind and bin Yousif were already headed south, intent on liberating Libiannin, Simballawein and Ipopotam. "Guess they're trying to draw strength away from the fighting in the north," he hazarded.

Haaken did not care about the big picture. His attention was taken with the city.

The siege had been long and bitter. Some all-powerful monster of a god had uprooted all the happy, orderly, well-fed citizens of yore and had replaced them with a horde of lean, hard-eyed beggars. The rich merchants, the proud scholars, the bankers and artisans of olden Hellin Daimiel had come into a ghastly promised land. It flowed not with milk and honey but with poverty, malnutrition, and despair.

"What happened?" Ragnarson inquired of a girl not yet too frightened to talk to strangers. He had to explain several times to make her understand that he wanted to know why the city was in desperate shape when the Itaskian naval and mercantile fleets had been supporting the city all along.

"Our money ran out," the girl explained. "They wanted our museum treasures too. They forgot whom we are," she declared haughtily. The Diamiellians long had arrogated to themselves the roles of conservators and moderators of western art and culture. "So they send just enough to keep us barely alive."

"Thank you. I taste politics, Haaken."

"Uhm?"

"The Itaskians have destroyed Hellin Daimiel more surely than the Host could have by sacking it. Wearing a mask of charity. That's bloody cruel and cunning."

"What do you mean?"

"Remember Haroun telling about that Itaskian War Minister? He got what he wanted. He's let the siege ruin Hellin Daimiel. And all the time he was probably reminding their ambassadors of the great things Itaskia was doing for them. Maybe that's why Greyfells piddled around."

"Politicians," Haaken said. He expressed an extreme disgust with that word.

"Exactly." Bragi was just as indignant. "Let's see if we can't find someplace to get crazy. I've got three years in the woods to get out of my system."

The vacation lasted only two days. One of Ragnarson's men brought the bad news. "El Murid has left the desert, Colonel. They don't know where he's headed. The Daimiellians are in an uproar. They figure he'll come straight here."

"Damn! Well, let's see if we can't give him a warm welcome."

Chapter Twenty-One:

HIGHWATER

H ard-eyed, El Murid glared at the pylons bearing the names of those who had died for the Faith. There were too many. Far too many. The obelisks formed a stone forest atop the south lip of the bowl containing Al Rhemish. The presence of his family stelae only worsened his mood.

It had taken a great act of will to lay Sidi beside his mother. He had been tempted to throw his traitorous get to the jackals.

"Esmat."

"Lord?" The physician was not pleased that his master had resumed his pilgrimages to his family's graves.

"The Lord charged me with bringing the Truth to the nations. I've been delegating that task. That is why so many have died. The Lord is reminding me of my vocation."

"I don't follow you, Lord."

"I began alone, Esmat. I was a child dying in the wastes when I was called. I brought the Truth out of the badlands. Hearts opened to it. I used them. I wasted them. I'm alone again. Alone and lost in the Great Erg of the soul. If I remain here again this summer, the entire Host of Illumination will be taken from me. More and bolder bands of assassins will remind me that the time alloted for my work is both borrowed and limited. This summer, Esmat, the Disciple becomes a warrior for the Lord, riding with the Host."

"Lord, you swore never to go to war again."

"Not so, Esmat. I vowed not to determine strategy for the Host. I swore I would leave the management of war to my generals. Assemble us an escort when we go back down."

"As you command, Lord."

"If the Lord calls me before thee, Esmat, lay me down beside Meryem. And if ever Yasmid should be found, let her lie at my other hand."