Suffer No Princes

The haboob died suddenly, its energies spent until it couldn't roar any longer. After hours of howls and the rumble of lightning that marched to and fro across the land, silence was an ominous relief. Phillip reappeared with his turban, caftan, and face covered in red-tinged dust. He handed off the red crystal and allowed another disciple to say the cleaning prayer. The guard who acted as his valet belted him with his harness of equipment and a sword.

"Come and see. Bring them," the Pasha said, indicating the prisoners with his eyes. "Separate the prince."

Firm hands held Zaid while a disciple unwound the seamless rope from his leg. They stood him up, and soon he was walking through the narrow side tunnel with twenty or thirty people between himself and the Pasha. His numb legs didn't like the pace but his jailers didn't allow him to fall. A few hundred meters along they found stairs, and climbed them to the surface.

The sky was orange, fading to brown nearer to the ground. The exhausted air was still and smelled like sharpened bronze. They stood on ground scoured clean of vegetation, rimmed by bodies piled up by a cyclone into a circular berm. Men and appalons mingled together, rendered inseparable by violent wind and searing lightning. They couldn't be counted, but it was easy to imagine all his survivors from the Neck were there, an army transformed into meaningless tangles of charred corpses.

"Kneel." The word weighed so much in Zaid's ears that, almost, he knelt before he remembered he was a prince. Heavy hands pressed him to his knees.

"Make the rest kneel over there." As the score of captives were moved to face Zaid from several meters away, an acrid scent of fear seeped into the dead air. Those who had surrendered wondered if it had been a poor idea after all.

"Find the survivors," ordered the Pasha, "and bring them if they surrender. Otherwise, kill them."

Teams of healers and hunters walked along the circular pile of corpses, trying to find anything living. As he waited, Zaid stole a glance at the Pasha and was surprised: he knew the young man's expression well. It was the look of someone who didn't want to bloody their hands but chose to do it anyway, detached and resolved. He wouldn't stop until the last of his enemies was dead. The Pasha wasn't going to offer him another chance to surrender, and Zaid would not have taken it. Among princes, mistakes could be forgiven; Total failure could not. Zaid had given his best as Princeps, and it hadn't been enough. Not anywhere near enough. Or maybe this was his destiny, to die here and make room for whatever or whoever came next.

Forty-three. That's how many survivors the healers found, caked with dirt and blood. Some could walk but most were dragged to kneel or lie beside the other captives, to witness the Princeps' end. The fear was building in Zaid now. He didn't want to die, but the hands that held him were disciple-powered. It was futile to try to pull away and run. They pulled his uniform shirt apart, snugged it to the elbows of his restrained arms, and held him fast.

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"Five hundred years." Pasha Phillip's voice came down at them from the orange sky, filling the stilled air. "That's how long the Tyrants of Kashmar have tried to conquer the desert. Five hundred years, all spent in vain. The princes have told you all your lives that they are destined for many great things." Phillip favored the captured Princeps with an appraising look. "And maybe that's even true. But they are not destined to rule the desert. Even when they conquer it, they lose it again. Why?

"Because they don't belong here." The Pasha drew his sword and swept it over his audience. "You do not belong here. Yours was the greatest army raised since men crawled to the surface, all the forces that could be summoned from Kashmar, Enclave, and Hyskos, and yet your army was defeated because it does not belong here. The lesson is so simple even the lowest pikeman can understand.

"In the desert, the Hadith Line has no destiny."

The hands released Zaid, who was getting bored of Phillip's speech. He was far more involved in the shiver of his limbs. Facing death in battle was one thing, but waiting around for it ate at him. Dignity was all he had left to die with, and he'd bite his own tongue off before he whined or cried for mercy. He was so focused on clenching his arms to stop his shaking, that he barely registered the Pasha's sudden motion, a blur so fast he didn't have time to flinch. The pain that set fire to his neck couldn't dull his final thought.

The kid could go far.

The captives watched, but they disbelieved. They couldn't comprehend how their Princeps, the man who had led them fearlessly, whom death seemed unable to hold, could die. Not a sound passed their lips until the proud leonine head hit the ground with a dull, wet thud. Then they cried out as if in agony, like their own limbs had been severed. His end was the end of everything: their hope for glory, their army, their trust in Hadith's Line, their place in what used to be a certain world.

The Pasha soon hushed them with a glare that raked them in silver light and set neck hairs on their panicked ends. He lifted dead Zaid's head for all to see. His mane and mouth hung limp, and his lifeless eyes betrayed the fear that must have always lingered inside him. Already on their knees, the prisoners bowed their heads to the ground. Who could stand against the one who called a storm and set sheets of lightning on his enemies?

"I have allowed you to keep your lives for one reason, and one reason only: to tell your homeland what you learned here today. The desert will not suffer a prince to live. Whatever destiny Hadith's Line may have, it lies in the north."

With their foreheads pressed to the ground, the captured Kashmari didn't see him put the head into a box or give instructions to his field commander. They were too afraid to lift up their eyes, so they didn't see him mount his appalon and ride with two disciples and a bulwark of twelve. They were relieved when he was gone and his terrifying silver aura with him. Death had passed them over, and they could breathe again.

When the water came, and then the food, they were all the beaten soldiers could think about. They took measured sips in silence. They ate without talking. They slept hard. Many dreamed of breathing in fire and burning from the inside out; of thirst so dire they shrank and dried until they were walking skeletons; of being crushed by flying rocks; or worst of all, standing alone and unharmed amidst hundreds who had suffered these fates and died. They had those dreams, and many others like them, then woke without speaking. They drank, ate, and rested a second time. And then they were told to resume walking.

They were going home.