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feeling he approved.
"This is the end of it, then. If it chokes you, tough. Treat your neighbors as
equals. We need their help."
Rebellion smouldered in el Senoussi's men. Haroun glared back. The old man
needed replacing. He commanded too much personal loyalty.
Few of the camp leaders were enthusiastic about him. Some were spiritual
brothers of El Murid's generals: born bandits smelling opportunity in chaos.
Others simply did not like being commanded by an untried youth.
He drifted westward, accompanied only by his bodyguards. He met and assessed
all his captains. Then he began to seek allies.
He discovered that a claimed kingship opened no doors.
"We'll see," he grumbled after yet another rejection. "They'll sing a
different song when the Scourge of God begins hammering the Lesser Kingdoms."
"Let them burn," one guard suggested.
"Will he really come?" another asked.
"Someone will. My old teacher called it historical inertia. Nothing can stop
it. Not even the deaths of Nassef and El Murid."
"Many men will die, then."
"Too many, and a lot of them ours. The Disciple doesn't know what he's doing."
He tried. He tried bravely and hard, and won no support anywhere. And he went
on, his mission driving him mercilessly. His guards began to fear he was
obsessed.
Finally, he admitted defeat. There would be no help while the Lesser Kingdoms
were not directly threatened. He returned to the camps.
He was in el Senoussi's encampment when Harish assassins found him again.
Three teams attacked together. They slew his bodyguards. They slew half a
score of Shadek's men. They wounded Haroun twice before el Senoussi rescued
him.
"Dismiss me, Lord!" the old man begged. "My failure cannot be excused."
"Stop that. It couldn't be helped. Ouch! Careful, man!" A horse trainer was
dressing his wounds. "We have a savage, determined enemy, Shadek. This is
going to keep on till we're killed or we destroy him."
"I should have seen through them, Lord."
"May be. May be. But how?" Haroun grew thoughtful. The attack had shaken el
Senoussi, yet he seemed more upset because it had happened at his camp than
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because it had happened to his king.
El Senoussi, Haroun recalled, was an appointee of King Aboud's, a lifelong
functionary. He'd spent decades shunning blame and appropriating credit.
"Forget the Harish, Shadek. They're like the weather. We have to live with
them. Meantime, we have fires to put out." The assassins had started several.
Billowing smoke still climbed the sky.
The log blockhouse that was the camp's bailey, and a hutment against the
palisade, stubbornly resisted the firemen. The swiftness with which the flames
had taken hold bespoke careful preparation.
"Why did they go to the trouble?" Haroun wondered. "They could have killed me
if they hadn't wasted the time."
"I don't know, Lord."
The answer came three hours later.
A sentinel called, "Invincibles!"
"Here?" Haroun demanded. "In Tamerice?" He peered over the stockade.
Horsemen were coming out of a nearby wood. They wore Invincible white.
"Must be a hundred of them, Lord," el Senoussi estimated. "The fires must have
been a signal."
"So it would seem." Haroun surveyed the encampment. Women and children were
moving provisions into the charred blockhouse. They looked scared, but were
not panicking. El Senoussi had drilled them well.
"Lord, escape while you can. I only have eighty-three men. Some of them are
wounded."
"I'll stay. What good a King who always runs away?"
"He's alive when his moment comes."
"Let them come. I was trained in the Power." He spoke from bravado and
frustration. He wanted to hit back.
El Senoussi backed away. "A sorcerer-king?"
Haroun saw the fear-reflections of the kings of Ilkazar gleaming in the man's
eyes.
"No. Hardly. But maybe I can blow a little smoke into their eyes."
The Invincibles knew what they were doing. Their intelligence was perfect.
Their first attack penetrated the stockade despite Haroun's shagh nry and a
ferocious defense.
"They're getting through where the hutment burned," Haroun shouted. He
whirled. El Senoussi was barking orders. Warriors grabbed saddle bows and sped
arrows into the throng in the gap, but the Invincibles entered the compound
anyway.
"Go to the blockhouse, sire," el Senoussi urged. "You're just one more sword
out here. You can bedevil them with your witchery from there."
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Haroun allowed himself to be guided through the tumult. He saw the sense of
Shadek's argument.
He was more effective from the blockhouse. He did little things and quickly
betrayed individual enemies. The Invincibles gave up.
"That was close," Haroun told el Senoussi.
"It's not over. They're not going away. They're circling the camp."
Haroun looked over the palisade. "Some are circling. Some look like they're
going for help."
"You'd better leave tonight, Lord."
It was the practical, logical, pragmatic course, but Haroun did not like it.
"They'll be waiting for me to try. Or for somebody going after help."
"Naturally. But would they expect us to attack? They believe their own
reputation. If we sallied without trying to get away... "
"It might confuse them because it doesn't make much sense."
"It does if it gets you away, Lord."
"I don't understand you, Shadek."
"Don't try, Lord. Just go. And send help."
Haroun fled during el Senoussi's third sally. He went afoot, creeping like a
thief, grinding his teeth because his wounds ached. He trudged doggedly
through the night, ignoring his pain.
Dawn caught him fifteen miles northeast of the encampment. That put him just
twenty from Tamerice's capital, Feagenbruch. The nearest refugee camp was more
than forty miles away. He decided to try the capital.
It was risky. Tamerice's nobles might be so timorous they would ignore this
compromise of the kingdom's sovereignty.
If they did react, though, they would make independent witnesses to an
agression. Tamerice and its neighbors might assume a more bellicose stance
toward El Murid.
That chance was worth the risk. El Senoussi's was only an interim encampment.
Its loss would not constitute a significant defeat.
The Invincibles wanted to destroy him, not the camp, anyway. The big,
important camps they would like to raid were all in the far north.
Haroun was known in Feagenbruch, and not well liked. He had aggravated the
lords of that city with his importunities before.
He used his wounds, youth, and title to obtain entree. He spoke well while
explaining to the king's seneschal. He spoke even better once shown into the
presence of the king himself.
"It's an outrage, Majesty," the seneschal opined. "We can't let such arrogance
go unchallenged."
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"Then gather what knights you can muster. Lead them yourself. Cousin," the
king told Haroun, "accept my hospitality while this temerity is being
rewarded."
"I thank you, Cousin," Haroun replied. He smiled softly. Indirectly, the man
had recognized his claim to the Peacock Throne.
At week's end news came that the Invincibles had been defeated and harried
back into the Kapenrung Mountains. El Senoussi's people had survived.
The shock waves of the incursion would, in time, course throughout the Lesser
Kingdoms, stimulating the growth of animosity toward El Murid.
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