Snare

Warkannan glanced around the table. Arkazo was leaning onto the table on his elbows, watching, unusually solemn, while Soutan lounged back in his chair.

‘This might be a good time to make something clear to everybody,’ Warkannan said. ‘It’s dangerous out on the grass. I spent fifteen years of my life there, and I know. When we ride out, I’m the officer in charge of this little venture. Understood?’

‘Of course, sir,’ Arkazo said.

Soutan sighed, long and dramatically. ‘I was waiting for this,’ he remarked to the air, then looked Warkannan’s way. ‘Someone needs to be in charge of the boys – oh, excuse me, our young men, I mean – but no one orders me around, Captain. Understood? If not, you can try to find Jezro on your own.’

Warkannan took a long breath and let his anger ebb.

‘Let’s hope we don’t get ourselves into the kind of trouble where orders are necessary,’ Warkannan said at last. ‘But if there is trouble, sorcerer, then I’ll have to put the safety of the other men first, Jezro or not.’

Soutan got up, bowed to Kareem, and strode out of the room. He slammed the door behind him so hard that the wall bounced. Kareem let out his breath in a long whistle.

‘I don’t envy you this ride,’ Kareem said.

‘Thanks.’ Warkannan managed a smile. ‘The Cantons aren’t that large. If worse comes to worst, we should be able to track the khan down sooner or later.’

‘Well, inshallah.’ Kareem spread his hands wide. ‘All right, Tareev and Arkazo. You’d better have weapons with you. Let’s go to the armoury and see what’s there.’

Later that evening Kareem invited Warkannan to his study for a glass of arak. They settled themselves in comfortable chairs while servants lit oil lamps and bowed themselves out of the room. Once they were alone, Warkannan asked Kareem if he regretted putting his son in danger. Kareem shook his head no.

‘If he’d wanted to stay home safe, I’d have had some harsh words for my wife. I’d have known he wasn’t mine.’

‘I’ll do my best to keep him out of trouble.’

‘Let’s pray you can. If the Chosen have taken a hand in this –’ Kareem shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

‘That’s true, unfortunately. That reminds me, I’ve got something I want to leave with you. Suppose the Chosen decide to eliminate me and Soutan – I don’t want them getting their ugly paws on this.’

From his shirt pocket Warkannan took out a roll of rushi, protected by a leather cover stamped with a design of two crossed swords below a crescent: Jezro Khan’s crest. Kareem kissed it, then slid the rushi free with a snap of his wrist that unrolled the letter. The sheet had one long torn edge, as if the khan had ripped a blank page from a book in his haste.

‘It’s Jezro’s handwriting, sure enough,’ Kareem said. ‘Thanks be to God, merciful as well as mighty!’

Warkannan had read it so many times that he knew every word by heart.

‘To Indan, Warkannan, and all my friends in Kazrajistan,’ the letter began. ‘That is, of course, assuming I have any friends left. I wonder what you’ll say when you find out I’m alive. Will you celebrate, or will I only be seen as a damned nuisance, a ghost who should have stayed dead? I don’t even know what things are like in the khanate now. Warkannan, do you remember me? Consider this an invitation to come have a couple of drinks with me. I have some interesting things to tell you. I don’t dare say where I am, but Yarl Soutan has agreed to help me. All I can do is pray to God that he’ll bring you back with him without my brother finding out. Maybe a couple of men can slip over the border unseen. Yours as always, Jezro.’

The signature had touched Warkannan deeply, just a simple name, no longer the honourable and regal titles, just Jezro. With a sigh, Kareem finished the letter and began rolling it up.

‘Well, he’s going to find out what loyalty means, isn’t he? From what you’ve been telling me, Warkannan, we can count on four thousand men the minute he crosses the border.’

‘At least. And there’ll be plenty more as soon as we start marching.’

‘Should pick the khan’s spirits right up. I never thought to see the day when he’d sound so dispirited.’ Kareem tapped the roll on his palm. ‘But exile’s hard on a man.’

‘So it is,’ Soutan said. ‘And Jezro loves his homeland.’

Warkannan stifled a yelp and turned to see the sorcerer standing by the door. Soutan had a way of gliding into a room that set Warkannan’s teeth on edge.

‘The last time I saw the khan,’ Soutan went on, ‘he talked about Haz Kazrak as if it were Paradise.’

‘Well, there’s something about the place a man’s born in.’ Kareem glanced at the letter in his hand. ‘But it’s a shock to see him so hopeless. Especially since you were going to deliver his letter.’

‘He thought I’d never reach the khanate alive.’

‘I wouldn’t have bet good money on it, either.’ Kareem smiled, then turned thoughtful. ‘Ah God! When we were all young and on the border, if someone had told me that I’d end up a traitor to the Great Khan I’d have slit his throat!’

‘I’d have done the same,’ Warkannan said.

Soutan stood hesitating, then found a chair and sat down uninvited. Warkannan decided that the only way to smooth over the incident at dinner was to pretend it hadn’t happened; he handed the sorcerer a glass and the bottle of arak. Soutan smiled in what seemed to be a conciliatory manner and poured himself a drink.

‘I take it you served with our khan, too?’ Soutan said.

‘I did, and proudly,’ Kareem said. ‘The stories we could tell, huh, Warkannan?’

Perhaps it was the arak, or the shadows dancing around the ChaMeech skulls on the wall, but they ended up telling a lot of those stories that night. Soutan sat unspeaking, seemingly profoundly interested in tales of too much fighting, drinking, whoring, and the resultant hang-overs or disciplinary actions.

‘What surprises me,’ Soutan said at length, ‘is that the khan seems to have been treated just like any other officer.’

‘Exactly like,’ Kareem said. ‘When you’re riding down a pack of screaming ChaMeech, there’s no time for giving yourself airs.’

‘Imph, no doubt.’ Soutan tented his long pale fingers and considered Kareem over them. ‘Back in the Cantons we tend to think of the Kazraks as rigidly hierarchical – everyone knowing their place, everyone afraid to leave it, that sort of thing. What I’ve seen and heard while I’ve been here makes me think we’re wrong.’

‘Well, yes and no.’ Warkannan waggled a hand in the air. ‘The cavalry is one place a man can rise above his birth.’

‘And the university,’ Kareem put in. ‘Get a good religious education, and the faith will take you far.’

‘True,’ Warkannan said. ‘In the cavalry you get your education the hard way. At the end of a spear.’

The pair of them laughed while Soutan smiled, thinly but politely.

‘Jezro told me once,’ Soutan said, ‘that a man can rise from an ordinary trooper, get himself commissioned, and then be accepted as an officer.’

‘He can, yes,’ Kareem said. ‘And you can start off as an officer and get yourself broken down to the ranks, too, if you don’t obey orders. What counts in the cavalry is whether or not you meld with your unit. There’s no room for individual heroics or individual slackers, either. A lot of young aristocrats can’t seem to understand that.’

‘Quite so.’ Warkannan glanced at Kareem. ‘Men from the ranks – they know they live or die together. If they’re smart and capable, they can rise far. Remember what’s his name? The sergeant from First Company.’

‘Yes, I do, the man with only three fingers on one hand.’ Kareem looked exasperated. ‘Damn my memory! His name’s gone right out of it. And then there was Zahir Benumar. A damn good sergeant who made an even better officer.’

‘Ah,’ Soutan put in. ‘That name rings a bell. I think the khan may have mentioned him.’

‘Probably he did.’ Kareem turned in his chair to speak to Soutan. ‘Now if Zahir were drinking with us tonight, we wouldn’t be having all this trouble with people’s names. He had a phenomenal memory, Zahir.’

‘He certainly did,’ Warkannan said. ‘Unlike mine. Do you know where he is now, Kareem? He was transferred off the border, of course.’

‘Suddenly, too, now that you mention it. To the Bariza Second Lancers, wasn’t it? I lost track of him about then.’

‘So did I, and I’m sorry I did.’ Warkannan considered for a moment. ‘I did write him care of his new unit. Either they didn’t forward it, or he wasn’t interested in answering me.’