Book 5 - With Mercy Toward None Read Free Page A

burned and plundered city. Their skirts wore dots of sagey green, suggesting the occasional kiss of rain.
    "We'll rest there." Haroun indicated the shadow. His companions did not lift their eyes.
    They went on, tiny figures against the immensity of the waste, Haroun leading, three boys straggling in his footsteps, a mercenary named Bragi Ragnarson in the rear, struggling continuously with animals who wanted to lie down and die.
    Behind somewhere, stuck to their trail like a beast of nightmare, came the Scourge of God.
    They stumbled into the shadow, onto ground as yet unscorched by the wrath of the sun, and collapsed, oblivious of their beds of edged and pointed stones. After half an hour, during which his mind meandered in and out of sleep, flitting through a hundred unrelated images, Haroun levered himself up. "Might be water under that sand down there."
    Ragnarson grunted. Their companions—the oldest was twelve—did not bestir themselves.
    "How much water left?"
    "Maybe two quarts. Not enough."
    "We'll get to the mountains tomorrow. Be plenty of water there."
    "You said that yesterday. And the day before. Maybe you're going around in circles."
    Haroun was desert-born. He could navigate a straight course. Yet he was afraid Bragi was right. The mountains seemed no closer than yesterday. It was a strange land, this northern corner of the desert. It was as barren as teeth in an old skull, and haunted by shadows and memories of darker days. There might be things, dark forces, leading them astray. This strip, under the eyes of the Kapenrungs, was shunned by the most daring northern tribes.
    "That tower where we ran into the old wizard... "
    "Where you ran into a wizard," Ragnarson corrected. "I never saw anything except maybe a ghost." The young mercenary seemed more vacant, more distant than their straits would command.
    "What's the matter?" Haroun asked.
    "Worried about my brother."
    Haroun chuckled, a pale, tentative, strained excuse for laughter. "He's better off than we are. Hawkwind is on a known road. And nobody will try to stop him."
    "Be nice to know if Haaken is all right, though. Be nice if he knew I was all right." The attack on Al Rhemish had caught Bragi away from his camp, forcing him to throw in his lot with Haroun.
    "How old are you?" Haroun had known the mercenary several months, but could not recall. A lot of small memories had vanished during their flight. His mind retained only the tools of survival. Maybe details would surface once he reached sanctuary.
    "Seventeen. About a month older than Haaken. He's not really my brother. My father found him where somebody left him in the forest." Ragnarson rambled on, trying to articulate his longing for his distant northern homeland. Haroun, who had known nothing but the wastes of Hammad al Nakir, and had not seen vegetation more magnificent than the scrub brush on the western flanks of Jebal al Alf Dhulquarneni, could not picture the Trolledyngjan grandeur Bragi wanted to convey.
    "So why did you leave?"
    "Same reason as you. My dad wasn't no duke, but he picked the wrong side when the old king croaked and they fought it out for the crown. Everybody died but me and Haaken. We came south and signed on with the Mercenary's Guild. And look what that got us."
    Haroun could not help smiling. "Yeah."
    "How about you?"
    "What?"
    "How old?"
    "Eighteen."
    "The old guy that died. Megelin Radetic. He was special?"
    Haroun winced. A week had not deadened the pain. "My teacher. Since I was four. He was more a father to me than my father was."
    "Sorry."
    "He couldn't have survived this even if he hadn't been hurt."
    "What's it like, being a king?"
    "Like a sour practical joke. The fates are splitting their sides. King of the biggest country in this end of the world, and I can't even control what I see. All I can do is run."
    "Well, your majesty, what say let's see if there's water down there." Bragi levered himself up, collected a short, broad knife from the gear packed on one