Barid's Story Read online

  ‘It will take days, even weeks, before the effects of the binding will have lifted,’ Boulos said, sitting among a pile of silk cushions. He offered Noor and me a goblet of sherbet from a gold tray. ‘Drink and cleanse the potion’s bitterness from your mouths.’

  ‘Here’s the remainder of the payment,’ Waitimu said, handing Boulos a bag much smaller than the last. ‘With interest.’

  Boulos weighed the bag in his hand. ‘Silver drachm?’

  Waitimu nodded.

  ‘From boys to men,’ Boulos said. He smiled a genuine smile. ‘Perhaps the next payment will be in gold darics. From men to warriors, don’t you think?’

  ‘There won’t be a next payment,’ Waitimu said. ‘We’ve settled everything, as agreed.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Boulos said. ‘There is the matter of confidentiality to be maintained.’

  Noor, Waitimu and I exchanged glances. We all understood what Boulos implied.

  ‘We won’t pay,’ Waitimu said.

  ‘But you will—or at least he will.’ Boulos pointed at Noor. He reached behind a cushion and tossed something to me. I caught it and held my father’s carnelian ring in my open hand. ‘That thing can be found in any bazaar,’ Boulos said, ‘but your book, Noor, now that is a rarity. I wonder what would happen if I were to tell your father how I came by it.’

  ‘I’d kill you first,’ Noor said, standing.

  Boulos shrugged. ‘Kill me,’ he said casually, ‘and, together with an explanatory note, the book will be delivered to your father. And then, after a month or two, if he hasn’t already put himself out of his own misery, some associates of mine will do it for him.’

  A chill washed over me. What I’d felt was Noor’s fear.

  ‘Don’t be rude, Noor,’ Boulos said, the charm gone from his voice. ‘Sit down.’

  It pained me to watch Noor do as he was told.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked.

  ‘Not much,’ Boulos said. ‘Fifteen Imperial darics a year.’ He levelled his gaze at Waitimu. ‘And this time, it’s non-negotiable.’

  ‘But that’s one and a half times what an El’ Zamu makes in a year,’ Waitimu said. ‘For ten years?’

  ‘There are three of you here,’ Boulos said. ‘Half your wage from each of you is all I want.’

  We left Boulos’s house depressed and angry at how we’d been duped. I felt sorry for myself and Waitimu, but I was worried for Noor. He’d already confided in me about how little he looked forward to tomorrow’s riding-out parade. He believed that he hadn’t earned the right to be an El’ Zamu and that his father’s pride in him was misplaced. But now, with Boulos blackmailing us, he wondered whether riding out tomorrow was the right thing to do.

  With neither of us feeling hungry, Noor and I headed for the library. Waitimu, meanwhile, made for the refectory so that he could tell the intake what had happened.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked Noor.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said with a sigh. ‘If it weren’t for my father, I’d go back and slit Boulos’s throat.’

  Again I felt a chill. He was scared more for his father than for himself.

  ‘This whole thing’s gone too far,’ Noor said. ‘I should never have been an aspirant.’ He scoured the library. Certain the handful of aspirants present were concentrating on their books and not us, he placed his hand on mine. ‘Then you’d never have suffered the way you did these past two years.’

  ‘Then I’d never have met you.’

  A smile crossed his face. ‘Sentimental fool.’

  ‘Noor.’ I saw my opportunity.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘For a while, on our way back to the Tabaqa, it felt as if you were going to give up and miss tomorrow’s riding-out parade.’

  ‘If I did, I’d bring shame on Father,’ he said. ‘Whichever way I try to put right what’s happened, I’ll shame him.’ He looked down at his hand on mine. ‘My only option is to stay, become an El’ Zamu, find the right battle—one that we we’re certain of winning—and die.’

  I felt Noor’s resolve and understood his death wish, but that didn’t mean I liked or agreed with it. Until then, I’d never considered life without him around.

  He must have felt my concern and the emptiness I imagined because he squeezed my hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Though the binding’s fading, the bond between us won’t. Some days, I don’t know if I’m more Barid than Noor.’

  ‘Or both,’ I said.

  He smiled and nodded. ‘You see. How can we ever be apart?’

  By the time Noor and I reached the dormitory, the intake had reached a decision. Waitimu beamed his delight.

  ‘Each of us only needs to pay that bastard Boulos a little over seven drachms a year,’ Waitimu said. ‘Seven drachms!’

  ‘You’re not making sense,’ I told him. ‘He wants fifteen darics.’

  Waitimu explained.

  After hearing what had happened, eighteen of the aspirants had offered to contribute some of their pay. Waitimu had tried to convince everyone to give something, however little, but for two of them, a contribution every year for the next ten years was going too far.

  I learned that evening that not everyone was as committed to Noor as I was, and that such an expectation was naïve. For some, goodwill toward another is finite. I knew then I’d have to stay close to Noor when we fought, that it was unrealistic to expect others to make sacrifices for him because of his frailness. I knew then that I would willingly die for him.

  27

  Spies, similar to Isah Tawfeek, were dotted among the Tamuda, a clan here and a clan there. The Empire’s war with the Dragonfolk required considerable resources, and so the plains that were once the traditional camping grounds of the Tamuda were cleared of them and closed off to make way for grazing or crops. As the Empire pushed westward, the Tamuda were squeezed northward until a fair number of the clans had no choice but to enter the desert of Tun Do.

  At first, we treated them as refugees, tolerated the Tamuda because they had no interest in our gold and diamond mines. But when the drip-drip-drip of clans became a wave that dried our wells and oases, the sultan sent the El’ Zamu to eject the clans and close the borders. What was supposed to have been an operation, planned to last no more than two months, became a war that occupied the latter two thirds of my ten-year military service. Now not only did the El’ Zamu have to guard and fend off any untoward interest in the sultanate’s mines, we had to do the same against the Tamuda when it came to our kots and tuls.

  According to our spies, the Tamuda were playing some kind of waiting game. And while they waited for an outcome to the war between the Empire and the Dragonfolk, they sustained themselves by organising raiding parties that attacked either caravans travelling the Imperial Highway or some of our kots and small tuls on the southern border.

  Initially, such attacks were easily thwarted. We were well trained and disciplined. But as the years passed, it became apparent that the Tamuda used each defeat as a lesson to be applied during their next raid. Furthermore, and more worryingly, the clans were starting to group, to form tribes, so that a raid no longer consisted of ten or twenty men. By our eighth year of service, the Tamuda would often send a hundred men, even two hundred, to raid a tul and its oasis.

  As mounted archers, the Tamuda are formidable. On horseback, a Tamuda could manoeuvre his pony and fire arrows with sickening accuracy. The first Tamuda bows we recovered were a composite of bamboo and animal sinew, their tips stiffened with bone. The arrows came in two sizes, the smaller for piercing from a long distance and the larger, with its broad arrowhead, for discharging at close quarters. Such discoveries taught us to treat the Tamuda with more respect than the nomadic brigands we first took them for.

  Going out to meet the oncoming Tamuda and their rain of arrows was certain death. So instead, we added to the string of fort
s along our southern and eastern borders, the tip of the Sinkian Range a natural defence on our west flank. And it was in one of these forts that Noor and I, together with the remainder of the intake, lived for the rest of our military service.

  Fighting was sporadic. We could never tell when a raid would occur or how often. We remained vigilant and, between battles, were kept busy strengthening our border fortifications. We were rarely bored, but we did consider ourselves lucky if we were given escort duty. It was a chance for up to three of us, along with El’ Zamu from the other forts, to guard a caravan as it made its way to and then along the Imperial Highway. It provided us with an escape from routine and the opportunity to explore fertile landscapes and experience new tuns and tuls. To be selected brought with it the brotherly obligation of buying anything that would break the monotony of a warrior’s life: spices, snuff, honey, scrolls and books, new games. It always took the edge off the jealousy the others couldn’t help themselves from feeling.

  And so it was on one morning in our eighth year of service, Noor, I and the others woke with anticipation and—no denying it—a little excitement. Waitimu was due to return from escort duty, no doubt his saddlebags bulging with every kind of simple luxury he would have cajoled from the merchants and shop owners he had met during his month away.

  Our excitement was forgotten when, standing atop the fort’s rampart, we saw a caravan of laden camels beneath a tall dune. I counted seven men sitting in a semicircle, their backs to us.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Noor said.

  ‘They were there at dawn,’ one of the watch said, addressing the Captain next to Noor.

  As if hearing us, one the camels turned our way. It began to hop casually toward the fort, one of its forelegs bent and strapped to prevent it from straying. None of the seated men got up.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ I said.

  ‘Why would they set up camp so close to the fort?’ Noor added.

  ‘I doubt those men are alive,’ the Captain said. ‘It’s obviously a trap.’

  ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘we can’t just leave them out there.’

  One of the Tamuda’s tricks was the false retreat. A small band of them would pretend to run after a failed raid, disappearing behind a dune and causing our warriors to give chase. Once past the dune, the pursuers would come face to face with a horde of Tamuda and become the pursued. We fell for that ruse once and never again. Now, it seemed, the Tamuda had found another way to draw us out.

  ‘I want five men to go down there and investigate,’ the Captain said. ‘And I want archers positioned behind them in case there’s trouble.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Noor said.

  ‘I will too,’ I quickly added. I knew that, like me, Noor was thinking about Waitimu and what had become of him.

  Thirteen of us set out on foot. One hundred and fifty paces from the fort, eight of them, the archers, stopped and nocked arrows to their bows. The rest of us—dressed in chain mail and armour—continued on, our shields raised and scimitars drawn, me at point, two men slightly behind and flanking me.

  A camel snorted at our approach. If there was anyone hiding behind the dune just ahead of us, they would have heard it. I signalled for the others to stop, then took the remaining fifteen steps to reach the seated men.

  To my right, I saw the tops of wooden stakes driven into the sand. Two of the seated men, merchants I recognised, had been lashed to the stakes. I gritted my teeth when I saw the merchant farthest from me, his mouth and eyes open. I knew then that we had walked into a trap. I set down my shield and stepped around the man in front of me. I knew it was Waitimu before I knelt and faced him. I wanted to remove my helmet, as much out of respect as to look upon him unhindered by a visor, but there wasn’t time. Unlike the merchant, his eyes were closed. Still hoping, I checked for a pulse.

  I glanced up and over at Noor. I shook my head.

  Noor raised his scimitar, pointed at the edge of the dune to my left. ‘Run,’ he yelled.

  Before I could turn, an arrow struck me just beneath my cuirass and with such force that I toppled onto Waitimu and passed out.

  When I regained consciousness, I looked up to see some twenty mounted Tamuda giving chase, the hobbled camels scattering as best they could out of their path. I pushed myself off Waitimu and cried out as the lower edge of my cuirass pressed down on the arrow. Without any thought for the consequences—it would be too painful to run—I reached behind me and pulled out the arrow. Fortunately, the arrowhead was neither barbed nor deeply embedded in my hipbone, but nonetheless, I got the feeling, a faint prescience, that doing so had put me in further danger.

  Using my scimitar as a crutch, I pushed myself up on to one knee, then gulped down the pain. There no way I was going to remain among the bodies of the merchants and one of my brothers. And I wasn’t going to live with the shame of crawling back to the fort after the fighting had ended.

  Grasping my scimitar’s hilt with both hands, I ran.

  I had no idea what I’d do if I caught up with the Tamuda or if I were to run into them as they rode back to wherever it was they’d been hiding. All I cared about was making sure Noor had safely reached the fort and then for me to do the same.

  A camel lurched past me, heading in the direction of the fort. Ignoring the fire in my hip, I increased my pace until I caught up with it and could use it as a moving shield.

  I nearly stopped, however, when up ahead and just to my right, I spotted a fallen El’ Zamu. He lay head down in the sand, his helmet knocked from his head, a bloody gash between tight dark curls. Remembering that just yesterday I’d cut Noor’s hair, I gasped with relief and pressed on.

  As initiates and warriors, we had been acclimatised to wearing chain mail and armour under the desert sun. So, I knew the warm slickness running down the back of my left leg wasn’t just sweat. I was losing blood, fast, each step feeling heavier and harder to take than the last.

  I leaned against the camel, hoping to steer it further to the right and the fort’s entrance, but the animal would have none of it. If I continued alongside it, I’d pass the fort. Unsure of when my legs would give way, I let the camel overtake me.

  A cluster of mounted Tamuda traded arrows with El’ Zamu standing on the ramparts. One of the Tamuda had reached a buttress but had taken an arrow in the throat. The double doors of the fortress were sealed, but the wicket gate in the right door was ajar. A warrior stood in the space. He had removed his helmet. It was Noor. He waved his arm, his words swallowed by the surrounding din.

  Holding my scimitar in one hand—and lacking the energy to go around it—I dashed directly into the melee. My hope was that while our arrows would keep the Tamuda busy, I wouldn’t connect with any of them.

  Jostled by the ponies, I was lucky not have been kicked by one of them. I held the scimitar at shoulder height and in front of me. Even if I wanted to—and I lacked the strength for such a thing—there wasn’t enough room for me to swing the weapon. Barging my way past the riders sapped me. Luckily, bouncing off one pony on to another prevented me from falling.

  Some of the Tamuda I passed kicked at me—I lost count of the knocks to the back and side of my helmeted head, which added to my already-hazy vision. I expected but never felt a sword blow. That was, not until I reached the edge of the fray.

  No more than thirty paces from the wicket gate, strangely aware of the sweet-and-sour odour of human and horse sweat, something struck me from behind with such force that I’d have sworn that the back plate of my cuirass had fused to my spine.

  I hit the sand belly first, winded. No longer wearing my helmet, I tried to raise my head. My vision had turned misty grey. Above the thud of hooves and the twangs of bows, Noor called my name. I fought for one last breath, and then, for the second time during the battle, I passed out.

  28

  I heard voices. One of them belonged to Noor and another was mine. The third, an impatient voice, belonged to the fort’s magus. I was concussed, I heard him say. He in
sisted I stay awake. He then explained—I wasn’t sure if it was to me or to Noor—that I needed to return to the Tabaqa, where the magi were better equipped to stop, rather than partially staunch, the internal bleeding. I heard Noor volunteer for a binding. I don’t know how coherent I was when I tried to protest: with me still bleeding, the binding, which would last a full day’s journey back to the Tabaqa, would severely drain Noor.

  I lost consciousness before I heard the magus’s reply.

  29

  When I woke, I saw Noor lying in the cot next to mine. He was pale but awake. A quick glance at the barrel ceiling and I knew we were lying in the Tabaqa’s infirmary. Except for the two of us, the place was empty.

  ‘Welcome back,’ Noor said. ‘For a while, I thought I’d lost you.’

  I tried to raise my head.

  Noor pushed himself up. ‘You’re still weak. You need to eat. I’ll get you some broth.’

  He returned with a bowl and an orderly. The orderly helped me into a sitting position, the pain in my hip making my eyes water.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Noor told the orderly, ‘I’ll feed him.’

  After the fifth spoon of the salty broth, I held up my hand. ‘I can feed myself.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ With a full wooden spoon close to my mouth, he said, ‘Just do as you’re told and eat.’

  I rolled my eyes.

  As he fed me, Noor had this faraway look.

  After he put down the empty bowl, I said, ‘What’s wrong? What’s bothering you?’

  He looked everywhere except at me. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

  ‘Remember, we were bound for two years. I know when you’re lying.’

  Perched on the edge of my cot, Noor studied his hands. ‘That’s just it, Barid. You’d know. You knew everything about me back then.’ He snorted, then shook his head. ‘But you, on the other hand, you had your secrets.’

  I felt sick, but it wasn’t because of the broth. ‘What do you mean?’