Maybe she could have, too. She’d pleasantly surprised Hajjaj once or twice before. Kolthoum had been right, as usual; Tassi made a splendid amusement. But she hadn’t even begun when someone tapped on the bedchamber door. She let out a startled squeak. Hajjaj was a little startled, too; he always slept lightly, and his retainers knew better than to bother him in the night without urgent need. “What is it?” he called out in Zuwayzi.
“Your Excellency, you are wanted at the crystallomancer’s.”Tewfik ’s voice came from the other side of the door. “It isGeneralIkhshid.”
Despite the summer heat, ice ran up Hajjaj’s back. “I’ll come, of course,” he said, and got out of bed.
“What’s wrong?” Tassi asked in Algarvian, not following the quick conversation between the two Zuwayzin.
“I don’t know,” Hajjaj answered in the same tongue, though he feared he did. “But I had better go and find out.”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, lad,”Tewfik said as Hajjaj stepped out into the dimly lit hallway. The wrinkled old majordomo’s laugh had a leer in it. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“No,” Hajjaj said, and let it go at that. “You can go back to bed now yourself, Tewfik. I’ll take care of whatever needs doing.”
ButTewfik shook his head. “I’m up. I’ll stay up. You may need more from me before the morning comes.”
How much did he know? How much did he guess? Hajjaj had no time to find out. Whatever his majordomo knew, Tewfik would keep it to himself. Hajjaj did know that. He hurried down the hall toward the chamber where the crystallomancers kept this isolated clanfather’s house in touch with the wider world.
Sure enough, GeneralIkhshid ’s image stared out at him as he sat down in front of one of the crystals there. As soon as Ikhshid saw him, the Zuwayzi officer began to speak: “Well, your Excellency, the whoresons have dropped the other boot.”
“The Unkerlanters?” Even now, Hajjaj could hope he was wrong.
But Ikhshid nodded grimly. “I’m afraid so. This isn’t just another raid on Bishah. They’re pounding us all along the front-pounding us hard, I mean. They aren’t playing games any more, your Excellency. They’ve got a demon of a lot of men and behemoths and dragons and egg-tossers.”
“Are we holding?” The Zuwayzi foreign minister asked the question he had to ask, and asked it with more than a little dread.
“For now-mostly,” Ikhshid said. “That’s by the reports I have right this minute, mind you. I don’t have reports from the whole line yet, and that worries me. Some of our brigades may not be reporting because they aren’t there to report any more. And if they aren’t…” His bushy white eyebrows came down and together in a frown.
“If they aren’t, Swemmel’s soldiers are liable to be pouring through the gaps,” Hajjaj said. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
Most unhappily, GeneralIkhshid nodded. “Aye. And if they are, powers above only know how we’re going to stop them.”
“We gave them a good fight when they attacked us almost five years ago,” Hajjaj said. That was true. Also true was that the Unkerlanters had prevailed in the end.
And Ikhshid said, “What worries me most, your Excellency, is that they’re a lot better than they were back then. We haven’t changed all that much, but they’ve had three years of lessons from the Algarvians. You don’t get any better schoolmasters than Mezentio’s men.”
That didn’t sound good. No, it doesn’t sound good at all, Hajjaj thought gloomily. He asked, “Have you toldKingShazli yet?”
“I don’t mind so much waking you up,” Ikhshid said. “I thought I’d let his Majesty sleep till morning-if the Unkerlanter eggs will.”
“Wake him. He is the sovereign, and he needs to know,” Hajjaj said. “Don’t tell him you’ve told me first. Tell him you’re about to let me know, and that he doesn’t have to. I’m going to head down into the city right now.”
“All right. I’ll do it just as you say.” Ikhshid nodded to someone Hajjaj couldn’t see-presumably his crystallomancer, for the crystal flared with light and then went inert as the etheric connection was broken.
Hajjaj went out into the hall. He wasn’t surprised to findTewfik waiting. “I’m going to need a driver right away, I’m afraid,” he said.
The majordomo nodded. “I’ve already got him out of bed. He’s harnessing up the carriage.”
“Thank you, Tewfik,” Hajjaj said. “You are a wonder.” The ancient retainer nodded, accepting the praise as no less than his due.
By the time Hajjaj got down into Bishah, the Unkerlanter dragons had flown off to the south. A bit of smoke hung in the air. The moon was down, or Hajjaj judged he would have seen dark columns rising into the sky. Eggs had fallen close to the royal palace, but not on it. A few minutes after Hajjaj got to the foreign ministry, Qutuz came in.
“DidGeneralIkhshid have a crystallomancer get hold of you, too?” Hajjaj asked his secretary.
Qutuz shook his head. “No, your Excellency. The attack seemed bigger than usual, so I thought I should be here in case something was going on. I gather it is?”
“You might say so,” Hajjaj answered. “The Unkerlanters have struck the lines down by our southern border, and they’ve struck hard.”
“Are we holding?” Qutuz asked anxiously.
“We were when I spoke to Ikhshid,” Hajjaj said. “I hope we still are.”
GeneralIkhshidhimself strode into Hajjaj’s offices a little past sunrise. As he had on the crystal, he wasted no time: “They’ve broken through in several places. I’ve ordered our men back to the next line of positions farther north. Ihope we can hold them there.”
“You hope so?” Hajjaj said, and Ikhshid nodded. Like a man picking at a sore, Hajjaj elaborated: “You may hope so, but you don’t think so, do you?”
“No,” Ikhshid said bluntly. “We may slow ‘em up there, but I don’t see how we can stop ‘em. The next line north ofthat is on our old frontier. That’s a lot deeper, because we spent years building it up between the Six Years’ War and the last time Swemmel’s buggers hit us.”
“Can we stop the Unkerlanters there, then?” Hajjaj asked.
“I hope so,” Ikhshid answered, in much the same tones he’d used the last time he said that.
Hajjaj ground his teeth. That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear, nor anything close to it. He hadn’t thought he would ever wish Ikhshid weren’t quite so honest. “What should the kingdom do if the soldiers can’t hold along that line?” he asked.
“Make peace as fast as we can, and get the best termsKingSwemmel will give us.” Again, GeneralIkhshid spoke without the least hesitation. “If the Unkerlanters break through at the old frontier, powers below eat me if I know how we can stop them-or even slow them down very much-this side of Bishah.”
“It’s summer,” Hajjaj said, looking for hope wherever he might find it. “Won’t the desert work for us?”
“Some,” Ikhshid said. “Some-maybe. What you have to understand, though, and what I don’t think you do, is that the Unkerlanters are alot better at what they’re doing than they were the last time they struck us a blow. We’re some better ourselves: Thanks to the Algarvians, we’ve got more behemoths and dragons than we did then. But curse me if I know whether it’ll be enough.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a young captain hurried past Qutuz and saluted. “Sir,” the junior officer said to Ikhshid, “I’m sorry to have to report an enemy breakthrough atSabAbar .”
Ikhshid cursed wearily. Odds were he hadn’t slept all night. He said, “That’s not good. SabAbar is in the second defensive line, not the first. If they’ve got through there already… That’s not good at all.”
“How could they have reached the second line so fast?” Hajjaj asked. “How could they have broken through it so fast?”
“They probably got there about as fast as we did,” Ikhshid said unhappily. “It’s not a neat, pretty fight when both sides are moving fast, especially if the whoresons on the other side have got their peckers up. And the stinking Unkerlantersdo, powers below eat ‘em. They think they can lick anybody right now, and when you think like that, you’re halfway to being right.”