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

The archers would be next. Fourth Panoply had been noted for its archers even back when Kirthap ran it. If Gurrak had let them slip, then he would have to suffer for it before he died.

Azak blinked in the intolerable sun and wished he could wipe the sweat from his eyes. Nineteen years. Nineteen years of blood and struggle. Fifteen battles, three long sieges, four massacres, seven rebellions, innumerable executions. After the first year or two he had been sorely tempted to give up and just hold what he had already collected, but that would have been certain suicide. And the same again, two years ago, when he had been routed at Bone Pass and nearly died himself. In the end he had always just pressed on, because he had never had any real choice. Nineteen years ago he had mounted a tiger. He was still aboard and the tiger was still running. Tomorrow he would ride it westward at last. He could never dismount from the tiger alive.

The single target was ready. A flag waved. A line of arrows flew, invisible from this height. Then they seemed to congeal like a rush of smoke and the target leaped backward under the massed impact. The sirdars sighed in approval. Azak waited for the misses to be counted and signaled. Every arrow bore its owner’s mark, of course.

The archers swung around and prepared for the rapid-fire demonstration. He raised his eyes to the hills, black with men and tents and livestock. The city in the distance was packed from wall to wall. The harbor beyond was floored with shipping, all of it just a . . .

Arakkaran! His eyes were not what they had been, but that could only be Arakkaran entering port. What was that idiot Quarazak up to? Why had the admiral deserted his fleet?

Azak’s mind floundered through a dozen possible explanations and could find none that would stand up to a second thought. He realized that he had clenched his fists and gently opened them again. Some of his companions must have noticed the dhow even before he did; they must be wondering as he was. He would not give them the satisfaction of knowing that he had not expected this.

“Well, who are the true djinns amongst us, sirdars? Can you see? Is that my dilatory son at last?”

A chorus confirmed that the vessel was indeed the flagship. “About time!” Azak snapped his fingers and a herald ran forward. “See that the prince admiral is admitted to our presence the minute he arrives.”

The man bowed head to knees and was running before he had even straightened up again.

What was Quarazak dreaming of? Had he brought news of a battle, perhaps? Had he sunk the Imperial Navy? No, he would have sent a dispatch boat.

The rapid shoot was completed. The drill was over. At Azak’s side the massed sirdars waited in frozen apprehension to hear his decision. Probably they all knew what it must be. Those horses! Who could he put in Gurrak’s place at this late date?

For some reason he thought of Krandaraz, and sighed. In almost thirty years of breeding sons he had produced only one Krandaraz. Krandaraz had been the only diamond in the shingle. Krandaraz should be here now, first among the sirdars—he would outshine them all.

He would also outshine Azak.

The caliph turned to his tense associates. They could guess what was about to happen. They waited to hear his choice of victim. He selected the youngest, Azakar, Sirdar of the Sixth, the only one of his sons to command a panoply—at the moment.

“Ak’Azak? What do you think of Fourth’s performance?” The lad pursed his lips. Had he licked them, his father would have struck him.

“Much improved, Sire.” He blinked garnet eyes warily. His beard was oddly forked and still notably thin, although he was one of the first family and no longer a boy. Gods! He must be twenty-three or so, older than Azak had been when he proclaimed himself ruler of the continent and set out to prove it.

“But not,” the sirdar continued, mouthing each word with care, ”quite up to the standards of . . . others . . . we have seen here in the last few days.”

Not bad. Not bad at all. It did not commit either way. Which was as it should be.

“Not up to expectations, you mean?”

Azakar grabbed at the hint thus offered. “Disappointing, really, Sire.”

Azak nodded.

Gurrak made a curious coughing noise.

Azak looked at him sorrowfully. He quite liked Gurrak, a splendid horseman himself, an excellent man on a hunt. The terror in his face now was heartbreaking, but his voice remained remarkably steady.

“I commend my sons to your service, Sire.”

“I judge men by their deeds, not their fathers, Sirdar.” Sweat was streaming down Gurrak’s face, but he knew he had been given all the guarantee he would get. He bowed. Then he scrambled up on the parapet and stepped off. Azak snapped his fingers twice, for two heralds. “Inform Prince Tharkan ak’Azak that Sirdar Gurrak has met with an accident and he is to assume command of the Fourth . . .” He glanced at Azakar, but saw nothing in his eyes to contradict the pleased smile of the mouth. “. . . temporarily. And you—direct the Secretariat to issue the necessary commissions.” The men ran.

Yes, another contender would give little fork-beard Azakar something to think about. There was always the chance that the two of them would gang up on their old man, of course, and bring a quarter of the army against him, but ganging up required some minimal amount of trust and trust did not run in the family. Never for long, anyway. And this appointment would be a general message to the first family that their innumerable younger brothers were now to be taken seriously. Tharkan must look to his own safety from now on.

Azak walked away, eager to go in out of the sun and start work on the mountain of documents awaiting him. And in a little while he would find out just what that idiot Quarazak was dreaming of in disobeying orders and returning to port.

Zark might very shortly be going to need a new admiral, as well as a new sirdar.

Azak approved of the fortress of Quern, which was barren and functional and nondecadent. The room he used as a presence chamber had probably been a mess hall in the past, perhaps other things, also. It was eminently plain, a stone vastness full of hollow echoes, dimly lit by windows that were mere tunnels through walls several spans thick. Even now, just ten days or so short of Longday, it was cool. The secretaries swarmed like black insects over the document tables by the entrance; he sat at his desk at the far end. There was another door at his back, just in case.

As a further advantage, the room was shielded against sorcery. Furkar had seen to that many years ago. Furkar had shielded a chamber for the caliph’s use in every one of the many palaces he used on his travels about Zark.

Quarazak was eerily sure of himself. Even as his son came in through the wide doors and began marching across the slabbed stone floor toward his desk, Azak registered that curious absence of fear. He waved the secretaries away, and they scurried off like beetles, their black kibrs swirling around their ankles. They bowed to the prince in passing and then settled in around the tables of documents at the far end of the shadowed hall. Dung beetles.

So now caliph and eldest son would have a private talk, overseen but not overheard. Quarazak stopped and bowed turban to knees.

Amazingly sure of himself, he was, for an admiral who had flouted his orders when at battle stations. In the last hour a large portion of Azak’s nimble brain had been wrestling with that problem while the rest of it attended to the endless edicts and requisitions and proclamations. He had found no conceivable explanation.

Mutiny at once suggested revolution, but he could not believe that it would be done like this. Now, on the very brink of war, he was probably safer than he had ever been since he first laid the sash of Arakkaran over his shoulder twenty-one years ago. And when it did come, it would be done with a blade or a vial, not a ship—not when he was half a league from the sea

It might be done by sorcery. Just for a moment he let his eyes shift to the ominous black-clad figure sitting alone in the farthest comer—Furkar, court sorcerer. If Furkar ever changed sides, then everything would be over very quickly. Yes, Furkar might do it like this.

But not with Quarazak. The eldest prince was good, but not good enough, and he knew it. Furkar knew it. By the standards of ordinary men Quarazak was outstanding—tall and handsome, ruthless, quick of hand and mind. He was very nearly a duplicate of his father as he had been at that age, but not quite. Compared to Krandaraz he was nothing. He knew that, too. More than anything else in the world, perhaps, Quarazak would like to know where Krandaraz was. It was the last thing in the world Azak would ever tell him.