Dave Duncan – The Living God – A Handful of Men. Book 4

A sailboat lay offshore. A dinghy had almost reached the shore. Kadie stared in astonishment at the four men in it—their hair!

“What . . . I mean, who are they?”

“Mermen,” Thaile said softly. She chuckled. “Fishermen, I expect. They’ve come ashore to fill their water casks. See them in the boat?”

“Blue hair?”

“Yes, merfolk.”

“Can they see the cottages?”

Again the sorceress chuckled. “No. They would if they went inland a little way—but they won’t, because of the aversion spell. There’s a spell on that water, too. Watch what happens.”

The dinghy grounded near the stream mouth, and the men jumped out to heave it farther up the beach. Then they all straightened up and looked around warily. They had very pale skin. Their hair was long and light blue, the color of a jotunn’s eyes. They were bare-footed and bare-chested, their loins and legs swathed in long wraps that glittered silver in the sunlight. They were about imp height, but they lacked impish chubbiness.

They’re only boys!” Kadie realized her hand was gripping the hilt of her sword and released it. What good would a rapier do her against four youths? And what harm could come to her with Thaile here? “They look fairly harmless.” Quite nice, in fact.

“They’re not just boys. Merfolk are all skinny like that. Do you think they’re good-looking?”

“Well, yes . . . Yes, they are, in spite of that blue hair.” Kadie glanced suspiciously at her companion’s grin. “What’s funny?”

“If I weren’t here, you’d be in serious trouble, Princess. Those are mermen!”

“At this distance?”

“Easily!”

“Then I am very glad you are here!” Kadie said uncomfortably. Everyone knew what happened with mermen. It was not nice!

Having made their dinghy secure, the four sailors set off in a group across the sand. Kadie shied, then realized that they were not heading for her. They had not seen her and probably could not see her. Thaile was with her, she had nothing to fear.

In a moment, too, the sailors’ path began to curve seaward. Soon they had reached the waves again. They lined up and together knelt to cup hands and drink. Kadie burst out laughing as each in turn jumped to his feet. Faint sounds of cursing drifted across on the wind.

“What in the world are they doing?” she asked. Thaile was grinning. ”Drinking the sea, of course.”

“But why? What do they think they’re doing?”

“They think they’re tasting the stream, and they think it’s bad water.”

The four sailors marched farther along the beach and tried again. The sea was just as salt there, apparently.

It really was very funny. At this distance, the men did look like boys, or at least adolescents, and they were obviously furious. As a group, they began retracing their steps over the sand, angrily chattering and waving hands.

Kadie put an arm around Thaile and hugged. “Are you doing this?”

Thaile responded with a matching arm. “No, dear. The stream is spelled. One of my predecessors must have laid a curse on it. Don’t feel sorry for them! They know they’re not supposed to come ashore in Thume. I probably ought to give them all a dose of footrot, or something.”

“Don’t! You wouldn’t!”

“Well, I probably should,” Thaile said doubtfully. “But I don’t suppose this lot’ll ever be back.”

The mermen were heaving their boat back into the surf, their casks unfilled.

“No need to bother the Keeper over them,” Thaile said with obvious relief. “There’s some big fat trout in that stream. If I coax them out, would you like to try cooking them tonight?”

“How about a bathe in the sea first?”

“Why not? Race you!”

6

Where the morning sea laved the foothills of the Progistes Range stood the bastion of Quern, around whose towering walls the tides of men had surged for centuries. It had withstood sieges without number, been sacked times without number, been betrayed and looted and rebuilt, again and again and again.

Years ago, the caliph had taken Quern without a struggle, on the strength of his reputation alone. Had it resisted, he would have starved it into surrender and put every living creature within it to the sword, as he had at Shuggaran and Zarfel and Mi’gal. Instead he had offered mercy and delivered it.

Quern was the last outpost of Zark. Westward lay Thume, and the Impire. Now the caliph had returned to Quern at the head of an army such as Zark had not seen in generations. His fleet patrolled the coast to maintain security and guard the massed shipping in the harbor. All other vessels were being seized and sunk. The war had begun.

He stood in full sunlight on the battlements of the fortress, with his sirdars around him. They were watching Fourth Panoply drill on the dusty plain below. The men were good, but not good enough. Gurrak had sworn by the bowels of his sons that he would have the Fourth licked into shape before the army moved out. He had come close, very close. But not close enough. So now Azak must either pretend a satisfaction he did not feel, or select a replacement for Sirdar Gurrak.

Replacements were always a problem, and they seemed to be needed ever more often now as his original lieutenants died off, for one reason or another. Each new appointment shifted all the subtle balances of power and intrigue around the person of the caliph. They changed the balance of the army itself—ten years ago Fourth Panoply had been the cream, the staunch reserve that could turn the tide when all seemed lost. Now it was saber fodder, the trash he rolled in first to tire the enemy’s arms.

Still, he had a good staff of sirdars. A couple were cousins of his, three were survivors of other royal families, and two were so far removed from any throne as to be almost commoners. One and only one was a son. To give a possible successor command of thousands of crack troops was not the act of a prudent man. Too much prudence, of course, might be interpreted as timidity. Nuances were important. Thus one son a sirdar and only one—so far. Admirals were less dangerous.

Tomorrow they moved against the Impire. Everything Azak had done for nineteen years had led inexorably to this. Historically, the Impire’s invasions of Zark were beyond counting. Only three times had the djinns ever seriously returned the favor, and never as a united people. Unity came hard to a land that was basically a chain of isolated cities around a waterless waste, and only a need to evict invaders had ever united them in the past. Now Azak had done it for them. From Ullacarn in the south all the way around to here, Quern, the continent acknowledged the rule of the caliph. The Caliphate of all Zark, his life’s work.

Far below, a bugle called. The camel corps exploded into a charge. Ah! Now that was better! One moment lines of stationary mounts and riders like statues—barely ant size from this height the next a rolling cloud of dust and potential death. Perhaps the camels’ performance could be allowed to ransom the wretched Gurrak. Some of the sirdars muttered appreciation as the camel corps wheeled around the infantry squares.

“That is good,” Azak said softly. He did not look; he could feel Gurrak’s spasm of relief at this hint of praise. He could also smell the rankness of fear on the man.

“The credit must go to my emir of camels, Sire,” Gurrak said hoarsely. “But he has done no more than we expect of an ak’ Azak.”

Others murmured quick agreement.

Fear and flattery. Flattery and fear. They were all the same—sirdars, sultans, princes—all terrified, all sycophants, all sickening. On the other hand, there must be some truth in what the craven said. Those camels were doing better than the First’s had yesterday, much better. So young Tharkan might really be as good as he thought he was. How interesting! How old now? Azak made a quick count. Almost eighteen, of course, because Tharkan had been one of the first among his second family, the crop of sons born to him after the hiatus created by the meddling sorceress Rasha. Tharkan ak’Azak ak’Azakar, bome by . . . what was her name? The thin one from the hills. She’d produced nothing but daughters after Tharkan.

A mutter from the sirdars and a stifled sob from Gurrak drew his attention back to the massed specks of humanity moving on the earth far below. The horse corps was in turmoil, their mounts panicking as the camels charged past. Men were being thrown and trampled; the entire corps was on the point of stampeding. Execration! That was unforgivable! What sort of trash was he supposed to lead into battle?

Order was being restored, but he could not pretend to overlook that debacle. So now the problem was to choose Gurrak’s replacement. To have to change sirdars on the very eve of departure, that was infuriating! He must promote someone within the panoply itself, a man who would know the other emirs. After that camel demonstration, the choice was obvious. Of course it would set up young Tharkan as a potential challenger, but that might slow the others a little in their endless plotting. Tharkan probably thought of himself that way already. At his age Azak had kept four assassins on his personal staff and had known as much about poisons as all of them put together.