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like we lose this one."
"Don't it?"
"We've got a problem."
"Besides looking at a cold night, what?"
"They're using sorcery."
"I haven't seen any... They wouldn't. They're El Murid's men."
"Yeah? Go remind them. The one in black turns up anywhere we're doing okay."
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"Hmm. Well. Get the wounded ready. We'll get out after dark."
Haaken thudded back downstairs. Bragi looked into the road. Several
Invincibles were in easy range. He let fly. His arrows stalled their advance.
The man in black appeared. Bragi sped a shaft that missed.
The man turned slowly. His gaze climbed the church tower. His left hand rose,
one finger pointing. A bluish nimbus surrounded him.
A monster voice bellowed in the belfry. Flat on the floor, Bragi clapped his
hands to his ears. It did no good.
The sound went away.
A quarter inch layer of blue haze masked everything in line of sight of the
man in black. Sorcery! Bragi thought,Haaken, I'm convinced!
The haze faded. He examined the wood underneath. It had turned an odd grey
color. It flaked when he touched it.
He examined his bow. It looked sound. He peeped outside. The wizard faced the
inn, his arm extended again.
"You sonofabitch, you asked for it."
His bow creaked at its moment of greatest tension. His arrow did not fly true.
It smashed through the man's elbow.
"Well, damn my eyes! I never seen such whining and carrying on."
Several Invincibles hustled the wizard into a captured house. His departure
did not alter the outcome. The explusion of Guildsmen continued.
Bragi nearly waited too long. He had to fight his way out of the church.
Haaken's only comment was, "We've got to quit fooling around here, Bragi.
We're going to have too many people hurt to get them all back to camp."
"Scavenge all the warm clothes and blankets you can. And tools so we can build
shelters. Find some harness animals and carts... "
"I took care of it already."
"You're not supposed to plunder... "
Haaken shrugged. "I'll worry about it when they court-martial me. What's the
difference? These people will hate us no matter what. Which you already
thought about or you wouldn't have told me to clean them out."
"I got that wizard."
"Shagh n."
"What?"
"Shagh n. That's what they call a soldier-wizard."
"Like Haroun is supposed to be? What's he doing here? With Hali, of all
people?"
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Haaken shrugged.
"He's going to be damned mad. Who's in good shape? We've got to let Reskird
and Amin know what's going on."
"I sent Chotty and Uthe Haas right after Hali showed."
"You're getting too damned efficient."
A soldier approached them. "Captain, they're moving into this block."
Ragnarson withdrew as the sun set. The Guildsmen marched dispiritedly,
sullenly, weakly. The cold was gnawing their wills. Bragi had to remind them
that theywere Guildsmen.
Several of the wounded died during the night. The company paused to bury them
next morning. A messenger from Metillah Amin overtook them while they were
chopping graves in the icy earth.
Amin had heard the Hali was on the middle road. The messenger bore a belated
warning and the news that Amin was on his way to help.
"We're back in business," Bragi announced. "Haaken, take some men to those
woods over there and start building shelters."
"You're not serious." Haaken wore a look of disbelief. "You are serious."
"Damned right I am. And get some fires going first thing."
Haaken grumbled away with the men. Their disenchantment was unanimous. For a
moment Bragi feared he faced a mutiny.
Guild discipline held. He concluded his conversation with the messenger.
He joined his men at their hastily built fires. They huddled near the flames,
taking turns rushing into the cold to assemble shelters of boughs and packed
snow.
When he felt half toasted on each side he rose and trudged toward Arno, to see
for himself what Hali was doing.
Twice he had to hide from Invincible patrols. They were not strong and not
enthusiastic about their job. They were not ranging far from town.
Hali was doing nothing but keeping warm. He seemed content to wait till the
cold spell passed. Neither his men nor his animals were fit to face prolonged
exposure.
Bragi crawled into a haystack to sleep that night. When he finally returned to
camp he found Amin and his men crowding the fires and looking forlorn. He
decided to give them a day of rest.
The temperature did not drop that night, and it rose next day. It kept rising
and the snow began a fast melt. The ground was soggy during the march on Arno.
"Looks like the cold is over," Bragi observed.
"Yeah," Haaken replied. "Our buddy, Hali, will be getting ready to move."
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Hali was getting ready, but not to move. He had his shagh n, and the shagh n
could see beyond the range of mortal eyes. The Invincibles were cooking up a
little surprise.
Bragi walked into it. The fighting became savage. Amin's men were in a bloody
mood. Hali's people, backboned by the shagh n, stomped the eagerness out of
them. Come nightfall, with only a few houses retaken, Ragnarson sent a whole
train of casualties back to his camp in the woods.
"This is stupid, Bragi," Haaken declared. "It's like the time Father got into
it with Oleg Sorenson."
"What?" Amin asked.
"My father and another man got into a fight one time," Bragi explained. "They
were both too proud to give up and neither one was strong enough to drop the
other. So they beat each other half to death. They couldn't get out of bed for
a week. And nothing had changed when they did. They went right at it again."
"That shagh n has to go," Amin said. "They'll eat us alive if he doesn't. We
can eat them if he does. It's that simple."
"So go do something about him."
Amin smiled. "You mock me. All right. Loan me three of your best bowmen."
Bragi peered at the man. "Do it, Haaken."
"You sure?"
"He is. Give him his shot."
"Whatever you say." Haaken went looking for men.
"Still testing?" Amin asked.
"Always. You know it."
Amin was one of those curiosities which turn up in every war, the soldier of
schizophrenic loyalties and ideals. He was twenty-seven years old. He had been
fighting for ten years. For the first seven he had served El Murid. He had
been one of the Scourge of God's Commanders of a Thousand.
He had become disenchanted with his fellow officers during the invasion of the
west. They were making a mockery of the Disciple's law, and he saw little
evidence that El Murid himself cared. When Nassef perished and el-Kader
assumed command, Amin expected wholesale looting in the recovered provinces.
He deserted.
Time had proven him wrong, but by then it was too late for Metillah Amin. He
went to the mountains and swore allegiance to the King Without A Throne. His
name was entered on the Harish lists.
Metillah Amin was an unfortunate man, and the more so because he knew no life
but that of the warrior. In the tale of the El Murid Wars he was to have
little significance save that he symbolized all the thousands of young men who
found the conflict a slayer, not a mother, of dreams.
Bragi and his brother watched Amin's team vanish into the darkness. "That's a
man looking for death," Haaken observed.
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