Book 4 - The Fire in His Hands Read Free Page A

neighbors. He himself would travel among the tribes and villages along his father’s caravan route. If he could find some way to bring them salt . . .
    “Here we are,” Meryem announced. There was a musical note in her voice Micah found
    strange in one so young.
    “Soup again, but this time I brought some bread. You can soak it. Sit up. You’ll have to feed yourself this time. Don’t eat too fast. You’ll make yourself sick. Not too much, either.”
    “You’re kind, Meryem.”
    “No. Nassef is right. I’m a brat.”
    “The Lord loves you even so.” He began talking softly, persuasively, between bites. Meryem
    listened in apparent rapture.
    He spoke for the first time in the shade of the palms surrounding the el Habib oasis. Little
    but mud remained of that once reliable waterhole, and that had begun to dry and crack. He
    made of the oasis a parable paralleling the drying up of the waters of faith in the Lord.
    His audience was small. He sat with them as a teacher with students, reasoning with them
    and instructing them in the faith. Some were men four times his age. They were amazed by his
    knowledge and clarity of thought.
    They threw fine points of dogma into his path like surprise pitfalls, baiting him. He
    shattered their arguments like a barbarian horde destroying lightly defended cities.
    He had been more carefully schooled than he knew.
    He made no converts. He had not expected to do so. He wanted to start them gossiping
    behind his back, unwittingly creating a climate for the sort of speeches that would win converts.
    The older men went away afraid. They sensed in his words the first spark of a flame that
    could consume the Children of Hammad al Nakir.
    Afterward, El Murid visited Mustaf. “My father’s caravan? What became of it?” he asked the
    chieftain. Mustaf was taken aback, for he did it as an equal, not a child to an elder.
    “Ambushed. All wiped out. It was a sad hour in the history of Hammad al Nakir. That I
    should have lived to see the day wherein men turned upon a salt caravan!”
    There was something a little evasive in the way Mustaf had spoken. His eyes had become
    shifty.
    “I have heard that the men of el Habib found the caravan. I have heard that they pursued
    the bandits.”
    “This is true. The bandits crossed the Sahel to the country of the western infidel.”
    Mustaf had become nervous. Micah thought he knew why. The hetman was essentially
    honorable. He had sent his own people to extract justice for the al Rhami family. But there was a little of the brigand in all the Children of Hammad al Nakir. “Yet there is a camel outside which answers to the name Big Jamal. And another which responds to Cactus. Could it be sheer
    coincidence that these beasts bear names identical to those of camels which belonged to my
    father? Is it coincidence that they bear identical markings?”
    Mustaf said nothing for nearly a minute. Coals of anger burned briefly in his eyes. No man
    was pleased to be called to account by a child.
    “You are observant, son of al Rhami,” he finally replied. “It is true. They were your father’s animals. When news came of what had happened, we saddled our best horses and rode swift and
    hard upon the trail. A crime so hideous could not go unpunished. Though your father’s people
    were not of the el Habib, they were of the Chosen. They were saltmen. The laws shielding them are older than the Empire.”
    “And there was booty to be had.”
    “And there was booty, though your father was not a wealthy man. His entire fortune could
    scarcely repay the cost we paid in horses and lives.”
    Micah smiled. Mustaf had revealed his bargaining strategy. “You avenged my family?”
    “Though our pursuit carried beyond the Sahel. We caught them before the very palisades of
    the heathen traders. Only two passed the infidels’ gates. We were gentlemen. We did not burn
    their wooden walls. We did not slay the men and enslave the women. We treated with their
    council of