The Parched sea h-1 Read online

  "We see nothing but wavering forms, and many times the number we know are there," Sa'ar answered, still staring at the wall. "It is as if At'ar has blinded us!"

  "She has," Ruha replied. "Now, come back here."

  Setting their jaws as if riding into a wall of flame, the sheikhs urged their mounts forward and galloped through the sunwarp in two swift strides. When they reached the other side, their faces were as chalky as a white camel and they stared at the witch with expressions of awe and respect. Their mounts were so excited that it was all they could do to control them.

  Sa'ar pointed at a dozen warriors, then directed them toward the Bedine upon whom Ruha had centered the spell. "You men, ring Dahalzel. If he falls, one of you must take his jambiya and continue forward. If that man falls, someone else must take the dagger."

  "I will need my dagger in N'asr's camp!" objected the confused warrior.

  "Don't argue," Utaiba answered, drawing his scimitar. "Your jambiya is the center of the witch's spell."

  The man's swarthy complexion paled to a sickly shade of yellow. "My dagger?"

  A roar of laughter went up from the twelve men assigned to escort Dahalzel. "We will protect you from the enemy's arrows, my friend," said one of them. "But you must look to the gods to save you from the witch's magic."

  "Enough!" Sa'ar roared, guiding his camel into place at Ruha's left side. "Let us attack!"

  With a queasy look, Dahalzel turned his attention up the canyon. He nocked an arrow, then urged his camel forward and led the way toward the Zhentarim camp.

  A few minutes later, the column of nervous warriors emerged from the maze of fissure-laced rock. It stopped at the edge of the sandy hollow where the sheikhs had expected to fight the Zhentarim. As the scouts had claimed, several hundred tents stood in the dale, but there was still no sign of the enemy.

  Sa'ar looked immediately to Ruha. "Is your spell hiding the enemy?"

  Ruha shook her head. "No."

  "It isn't the witch," Utaiba said, motioning six men forward. "I fear we are too late. The Zhentarim are gone." The wiry sheikh sent the men to track the invaders up the canyon.

  "It cannot be!" Sa'ar objected. "What of the asabis? They cannot move during the day."

  "Perhaps they are still in their burrows," Ruha suggested.

  "Perhaps," Sa'ar nodded. He sent a rider back to report the deserted camp to the tribes waiting in ambush, and five dozen men ventured into the dale to probe the sand with their spears.

  The probers spread out across the width of the dale and began searching for sleeping asabis. While one man pushed his spear deep into the sand, a comrade stood by with a drawn scimitar, ready to defend him if the prober got lucky and struck a sleeping reptile. When they found nothing, they moved a yard farther up the canyon and tried again. Occasionally a man fell excitedly to his knees and scooped the sand away, only to uncover a submerged rock or the half-petrified trunk of an acacia tree.

  The rest of the column waited in the sun, fighting the urge to open their waterskins and quench the thirst that always seemed worse when doing nothing. Now and then, the camels belched or roared, as irritated by the wait as their riders were. In hushed whispers, a few men suggested to their fellows what Ruha and the sheikhs had already guessed: the Zhentarim had escaped.

  Ruha's spell fell long before the probers reached the other side of the dale, but it did not matter. The spearmen returned with nothing to report. Though their spears had often sunk clear to the bedrock, they had not found so much as a single asabi burrowed into the sand.

  A few minutes later, one of the scouts Utaiba had sent to track the Zhentarim returned. He reported that the canyon was full of camel tracks, but there was no sign of the asabis.

  "The Zhentarim are running for Orofin!" Utaiba concluded.

  "And they must have left the asabis behind," Sa'ar added, scowling. "But where?"

  Utaiba shrugged. "Let's find out."

  Sa'ar nodded, then ordered the entire column forward. As Ruha and the sheikhs moved into the dale, a muffled clack echoed from a crevice on the north side of the canyon. Ruha heard a hiss, then felt her mount's withers flinch. The beast roared in astonishment and rolled to its left. As the camel's legs buckled, the young witch leaped free. She landed a foot behind the Sa'ar's huge mount, already summoning a spell to mind. She spun around and pointed her hand toward the fissure, raising the other toward At'ar.

  A bolt of white fire burst from her fingers and streaked into the fissure, then a tremendous boom echoed from the canyon walls. A limp asabi flew out of the crevice amid a hail of stones and dropped to the canyon floor.

  "Ambush!" cried Sa'ar, waving the column back down the canyon.

  No sooner had he spoke than dozens of muffled clacks sounded from the canyon walls. A flurry of black streaks crossed in both directions. As the crossbow bolts found their targets, men cried out in pain and camels bellowed in astonishment. The canyon erupted into a cacophony of alarmed shouts and cries of warning.

  Sa'ar's big camel swung around in front of Ruha, and she saw the sheikh's brawny hand reaching down for her. She jumped up and grabbed at the arm, then felt her feet leave the ground as the burly man pulled her onto his mount's back. They sprang a few yards down the canyon, then ran into a confused mass of riders that had been at the end of the column when the asabis opened fire.

  Realizing that those at the back of the column still did not realize that the front of the column had been ambushed, Ruha tugged at Sa'ar's amarat and yelled, "Blow the retreat!"

  As the sheikh raised his horn, another round of bolts tore out of the crevices. More men screamed and more camels bellowed, then the rumbling tones of Sa'ar's amarat echoed off the cliffs. The back of the column immediately reversed direction and rode back down the canyon, clearing the way for their trapped fellows. Within moments, the entire line was trotting away from the ambush.

  On the other side of the winding narrows, the procession met Lander and the sheikhs galloping up the steep valley. Behind them, in a long line that stretched all the way down to the mamlahah, were the rest of the Bedine warriors.

  The warriors of the Raz'hadi and the Mahwa neatly parted ways to allow the Lander and the sheikhs to pass through unhindered. As they approached Sa'ar, the thirteen men stopped whipping their camels. The drained beasts ceased their running immediately.

  "What happened?" demanded Didaji. His brown turban was half-unwrapped, and he was self-consciously holding its tail over his lower face.

  "Ruha found the asabis for us," Sa'ar said, hitching his thumb over his shoulder at his passenger.

  "They ambushed us when we started into the dale," Utaiba added. "But not very well. They're hiding deep in the fissures to keep away from At'ar, so their field of fire is not very wide."

  Lander moved past the other sheikhs and stopped his mount alongside Ruha. "What happened to your camel?"

  "Shot from beneath her," Sa'ar explained.

  The widow was pleased to see the Harper's brow furrow in concern. He started to reach for her hand, but quickly withdrew it when Sa'ar moved to intercept it. "I'm glad you are well."

  "Of course she's well," Utaiba responded. "I promised you that Sa'ar and I would take care of her, did I not?"

  "Your messenger told us the Zhentarim were gone," Didaji interrupted. "Was he wrong? Is our plan spoiled?"

  "The plan is spoiled," Utaiba responded. "But only because the Zhentarim abandoned their asabis. They're heading toward Orofin."

  Didaji cursed.

  "Why are you upset?" Lander asked. "Yhekal has made his first big mistake. Now that he's split his force, it will be a simple matter to wipe them out separately."

  "It's not going to be as easy as you think," Utaiba responded. "An ancient fort guards the well at Orofin. The Zhentarim can hold out inside for weeks. As short as our water supply is, we cannot last nearly that long."

  Sa'ar pointed toward the dale. "There is no way to ride around the ambush, but if we ride through it at a gallop, we wo
n't suffer too many casualties. With luck, we'll catch the Zhentarim by tomorrow afternoon-a half-day before they reach Orofin."

  "No," Lander said, shaking his head in disappointment. "That's what they want. If we bypass the asabis, we'll be caught between the hammer and the anvil."

  "What do you mean?" asked Sa'ar.

  Lander held one hand out flat. "Here are the Zhentarim," he said. "Whether we catch them before Orofin or at it, we'll have to stop and fight." He formed a fist with the other hand, then brought it down into his open palm with a loud pop. "When that happens, the asabis will smash us from behind, just as a hammer smashes against the anvil."

  Utaiba frowned. "I see what you mean." He turned to the other sheikhs, then said, "I agree with the Harper. If we don't pause now, we'll regret it later."

  "What of Orofin?" countered Didaji. "Surely they will poison all water that lies outside the fort. Our tribes will die of thirst."

  "The asabis must have water with them," Sa'ar said. "It will be enough to get us to Orofin so that we can attack. After the battle, we'll have all the water we want, or we won't have need of any."

  "Before the Zhentarim started poisoning oases, I would never have agreed to such a plan," Utaiba said, addressing the other sheikhs as well as Didaji. "Now that I know how corrupt they are, it is clear that we must drive them from our home, even if it means risking everything."

  Didaji reluctantly nodded, then turned to the closest warriors. "Pass the word to dismount and come forward with lance and sword. We must pry these lizards from their dens."

  The fourteen tribes spent the rest of the day in the canyon, working carefully and methodically. Starting at the near end of the dale, four or five warriors approached each fissure and tried to draw the asabi's fire by throwing rocks into the crevice. Usually, that did not work, so they drew lots and the loser had to jump past the front of the crevice, at the same time throwing his lance into it. Most of the reptiles fired their crossbows as the decoy flashed past and, more often than not, deftly avoided the lance.

  Several other warriors then leaped in front of the crevice. One of them threw a torch into the crack to illuminate the target, and the others pierced the creature with their long spears. Once it died, they pulled the lifeless asabi from the crack, took its waterskin, and moved on to the next fissure.

  When the mercenary refused to fire its crossbow even at the decoy, the warriors resorted to smoke. They pulled a withered bush and lit it with their torch, then reached around the edge of the fissure and stuffed the burning brush inside. If the resulting smoke flushed the asabi out, they sliced it to pieces with their scimitars as it rushed out of the crevice. Otherwise, three or four of them leaped in front of the fissure and probed into the smoking crack with their lances until they heard the reptile's death hiss. They tried to avoid this last option whenever possible, however, for one of them usually took a crossbow bolt before the asabi died.

  Sometimes, after the decoy threw his lance and drew a crossbow bolt from the crack, the warriors discovered that there were two or three mercenaries in a single fissure. As the Bedine leaped in front of the fissure to attack, several unexpected bolts flashed out and took them square in the chest. A short pause followed while a dozen men fetched their bows, then they positioned themselves twenty yards from the fissure and fired into it until the crossbow bolts stopped coming back at them.

  Once in a while, the warriors ran into a problem they could not solve, such as an asabi crouching behind cover or hiding in an unusually deep crevice. On these occasions, Utaiba or Sa'ar would call upon Ruha to flush out the mercenaries. With Lander standing close by to defend her, she would cast a spell and fill the crack with poisonous smoke, send in a sand lion to maul the reptile, or funnel so much of At'ar's heat into the fissure that the asabi literally fried to death. Her spells were so much faster and more effective than the warriors' attacks that Ruha wished she could have used them on every fissure in the canyon. Unfortunately, that was impossible. She had a limited number of spells compared to the hundreds of crevices around the dale.

  By the time dusk fell, the Bedine had worked their way to the far end of the dale and the warriors were no longer finding asabis in the fissures. The Bedine were so exhausted by the hot, tedious work that Ruha was the only one who bothered to pitch a tent. Unfortunately for her, as soon as she finished, it became the center of camp. The sheikhs gathered a few yards away to discuss the day's events before retiring to their own sleeping carpets.

  "All in all, I would say this was not a bad day. I had a man count the asabi bodies," Sa'ar boasted, his voice carrying through the tent walls as if he were standing inside. "There are almost a thousand."

  Ruha lit a candle and took Qoha'dar's spellbook from her djebiras. In order to replenish all the spells she had used during the day, she had several long hours of study ahead of her.

  Outside her tent, Utaiba said, "We lost only a hundred and nine warriors ourselves. I think we can call this battle a Bedine victory."

  Yawning, the widow turned to the first spell she had used that day, the sunwarp.

  "It wasn't much of a battle. It was more like digging mice from their dens," Didaji objected.

  Ruha found herself hearing the gaunt man's words instead of concentrating upon the runes in the book. Sighing in frustration, she set the book aside and started toward the door of her tent. That was when Lander's voice said, "If it's a battle you want, Didaji, wait until Orofin."

  "You too, Lander?" Ruha muttered under her breath. "I thought you'd have better sense than to disturb a witch's study time."

  Oblivious to Ruha's whispered admonishment, the Harper continued, "When we storm that fort, I promise there'll be plenty of fighting."

  Ruha shook her head, then slammed her spellbook shut and blew out her candle. "I might as well sleep," she hissed to herself, half-amused and half-angered by her girlish reluctance to speak crossly to Lander. "When I'm upset, I can never concentrate anyway!"

  Seventeen

  After the Battle of the Fissures, the Bedine army rode straight to Orofin. The warriors did not tarry to let their camels graze upon the heaths of salt brush they passed, and, though they traveled through the finest gazelle country in Anauroch, they wasted no time hunting. Even with the skins they had recovered from the asabis, the fourteen tribes were short of water, and that meant they were short of time. They had to reach Orofin, and then they had to storm it.

  It took the army four days of hard travel, stopping only a few hours each night to sleep, before they crested a ridge and Sa'ar pointed into the broad valley below. In the center of the dell, a stand of swarthy foliage stained the tawny ground, its lush color muted by the graying light of dusk.

  "Orofin," Sa'ar said. "If we hurry, I know a good place from which to inspect its battlements."

  The sheikhs ordered their tribes to encircle the fortress with their camps and eat the best meal they could manage. After the orders had been given, Sa'ar led the sheikhs down into the valley, into several acres of ruins, then finally stopped at a two-story bridge that spanned a canal of stagnant water.

  Like Anauroch itself, the bridge was at once stark and beautiful. The square pediments were made of granite blocks, now entirely covered with a lush growth of thick green moss. Above the pediments stood two tiers of roadway, consisting of three arcades each. The arches were shaped like horseshoes and crowned by a shallow point, reminding Lander of Sembia's cottonwood leaves. A colored-stone mosaic of different geometric patterns faced each arcade, save that the central arch on both tiers was decorated with a diamond motif.

  Lander forced his camel to kneel. He cast a longing eye at the waterway, but didn't even consider drinking from the obviously poisoned streams. Twilight was almost upon Anauroch, but the valley was quiet. No raptors welcomed the lengthening shadows with their eerie screeches, no lions roared a challenge to the newcomers, no hyenas betrayed their presence with cowardly yelps. The silent animals all lay within a few yards of the water, their bodies bloated
and rank from exposure to the sun. Even the vultures that had come to prey on their carcasses lay dead.

  The scene in the water itself was more gruesome. The gentle current had carried dozens of human corpses down the canal and heaped them against the east side of the bridge. They were floating in the murky dark water, bloated and inert and reeking of decay.

  Utaiba pointed a finger at the terrible scene. "The Ju'ur Dai," he said.

  "I thought they were the Zhentarim's allies," commented Didaji.

  "Perhaps they were," Lander answered, fighting the urge to wretch. "They outlived their usefulness. Yhekal would not want to risk having them change sides in the middle of the battle."

  "They got what they deserved," Sa'ar grunted, spitting into the canal. "Without the Ju'ur Dai to guide them, the Zhentarim might not have realized the importance of Orofin."

  The stout sheikh led the way up to the second tier of the ancient bridge. As the others followed, the Harper could see why the sheikh had selected this vantage point. From the added height, he could see that Orofin had once been a mighty city, with four canals radiating outward from a fortress guarding the deep well at its heart. Not much remained of the metropolis now. Wind-blown silt covered the foundations of long-fallen buildings, crisscrossed here and there by crooked lines that had once served as avenues and alleys. Thick hedges of green briars, interspersed with acacia and wild apricot trees, lined the four canals that still divided the city into quarters. A grand avenue, connecting this bridge to three others that spanned the other canals, formed a great circle around the entire oasis.

  Lander and the sheikhs were more interested in the fortress than in the city. It still stood in the center of the oasis, its crumbling ramparts breached in nine or ten places by man-sized gaps. Dark shadows skulked among the ancient crenelations topping the walls, reminding Lander more of underworld spirits than distant Zhentarim soldiers.

  "How should we attack?"