"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 of the camels. The camels were bearing up still. Haroun drew his belt knife. They went down to the thread of sand. "I hope you know what you're looking for," Bragi said. "All I know is secondhand from your warriors back at el Aswad."

"I'll find water if it's there." While Megelin Radetic had been teaching him geometry, astronomy, botany, and languages, darker pedants out of the Jebal had instructed him in the skills of a shaghûn, a soldier-wizard. "Be quiet."