The Mekkan clans had fought and feuded and spilt each other's blood for centuries, and Mohammed had not thought to change them. He had sought to take the blood-price from the murderers who had left his child dead in his arms. He had hoped to crush the resistance to his adopted house and secure the patrimony of his children. In that, the promulgation of a common law for the people of both cities had been his aim. The friendship of the Ben-Sarid and the obedience of the Quryash had been a welcome surprise. He had not told Jalal or Shadin about his dreams or the full truth of what the voice had said on the mountaintop, but they had followed him forth from the city nonetheless.

They had ridden out before dawn, in full darkness, finding the road only by the faint light of a crescent moon. Even then Mohammed had been wrapped in thought, listening to the echoes of the voice from the air. He had not noticed that the ranks of the Tanukh had swollen as they had ridden north. The appearance of Uri and his Ben-Sarid horsemen had seemed natural, for the Sarid had fought at their side at Yathrib.

Then dawn was almost upon them, and Mohammed had stopped. He knew that the Lord of the Seven Heavens had chosen him to undertake a dreadful task in the world. That thought filled his heart with a sense of rightness that had always eluded him. That emptiness in his soul, that yearning to find something to set his shoulder to, some task worthy of his full devotion, had driven him out from his house and across the face of the world. Now it was filled, and he knew that thanks were owed.

So, with the sun preparing to crawl over the jagged peaks and desolate mountains to the east of Mekkah, he had reined in his horse and dismounted. Without looking up, he had unrolled a blanket from the saddle of his mare and knelt on the gritty sand. Even though the white fire that had filled him that day before the Ka'ba was gone, there was never a moment when he did not feel the distant voice of the stone. He knelt on the blanket and bowed toward the southeast, toward the sacred precincts.

Make your place of worship free of ornament and distraction, the voice had said from the clear air. How can you come to know the mind of the merciful and compassionate god if your eye is assailed by graven images and your ear by the importuning of priests?

Mohammed did not bow down before the Black Stone or the ancient house; he knelt before the Lord of the Wasteland that was in everything he could see or touch. The priests of the temples that his men had torn down had not understood that. In time they would.

When he stood he brushed the sand from the blanket and rolled it up. As he did so there was a susurration in the cool morning air, a rustling and a muted, clinking sound. He looked about, puzzled, and stopped in surprise, the blanket half folded.

Ten thousand men were rising as well all around him. The road behind the clot of Tanukh was clogged with horses and camels and pack mules. Tribal banners and flags fluttered in the air, lending the army a festive air. Men of every tribe in the city, and some he had never seen before, were rolling up their own blankets or swinging back into the saddle. Mohammed raised an eyebrow and turned to find Jalal standing at his side, fists resting on the top of his curved bow. Shadin and Khalid were already seated on their horses, long kaffiyeh trailing in the dawn breeze.

"Who are these?" Mohammed gestured toward the columns of men and the thickets of lances, sparkling in the light of the rising sun. Jalal smiled, his grim, scarred features cracking like a stone splitting under the stroke of a chisel.

"Men who would follow you wherever you may lead them, my lord."

And so they had ridden forth from Mekkah with an army, and made their way into the wastelands of the north, into the barren desolation of the Hedjaz.

A timber, burned through by the inferno raging inside the pepper warehouse, cracked like a sling-bullet against a shield. Part of the roof of the building fell in with a roar, sending sparks and a plume of thick black smoke roiling up. Waves of heat beat against Mohammed's face, and he took a dozen steps back. That left him at the edge of the stone pier, his hand on a stumpy round piling. The inside of the warehouse was a raging red heart as the close-packed barrels of pepper and marjoram burned. Mohammed felt the heat like a blow to his heartthe contents of such a warehouse were worth a thousand times their weight in gold on the trading tables of Constantinople or Rome or Saguntum. Any kind of spice- pepper was most highlyprized- was easy to ship and carry and in vast demand. The Roman fondness for hot spices was legendary across the length and breadth of the world. The craving had made Palmyra and Petra rich. It had made Khadijah and the House of Khuwaylid wealthy, too.

"How did this happen?" Mohammed's voice rasped with repressed anger. To him the contents of these warehouses meant even more than they had to his dead wife or the Palmyrenes. Every ounce of spice that whirled away into the sky or fell as a fine ash over the town meant fewer sheaves of arrows, fewer suits of armored mail, fewer swords and lances and spears for his army.

Jalal squared his shoulders and stepped forward from the company of Sahaba, who had deployed themselves as a cordon around the burning building. His face was carefully blank. The Tanukh captain knew what lost supplies and arms meant to an army on the move. It might be his life that the fire cost, a month from now or more. "We were a fraction late, lord. I tried to take the merchant down with a bow shot, but he managed to get an oil lamp cast inside before he went down."

Mohammed met the man's eyes, and they were steel hard for a moment. " Where is the merchant?"

"There, lord." Jalal pointed with his chin to a huddled form lying at the edge of the dock. A dark stain of dried blood pooled under the corpse.

"Are there others still alive?"

Jalal nodded and motioned to two of his men. The Sahaba spearmen disappeared into the ground level of one of the two-story brick buildings that lined the waterfront. This one had a balcony on the second floor with ornamental railings of crisscrossed wooden slats. Mohammed had seen the style before, in the Roman cities that ringed the Inner Sea. When he had been among the Imperials for a long time, it had seemed natural. Now it seemed wasteful to use wood carted down from the mountains of Syria when brick or stone would do. The guardsmen returned, escorting a thin, worried-looking man with closecropped hair and a smooth-shaven face.

"What is your name and business?" Mohammed felt his Latin come with difficulty. It had been some time since he had needed it. The Palmyrenes and his friend Ahmet had spoken Aramaic, even as he had done since he was a child. The Roman merchant seemed relieved to hear his mother tongue, and shook his arms free of the Sahaba guardsmen.

"I am Marcus Licinus, factor for the House of Flavius. I trade in slaves, fine woods, timber, ivory, and salt."

Mohammed nodded to himself, gauging the truth of the man's words by the style of his tunic, the well-worn leather belt around the Roman's waist, and his scuffed boots. The fellow had callused hands, worn from pulling a sail-rope or handling a horse or camel. This was a working merchant, not someone who grew fat and slothful off of the work of others. The deep tan that marked the Roman was a good sign, too: He had been in Arabia for some time.

"I am Mohammed," the Quryash chieftain said simply. "The warehouses are full here, and ships ride empty in the harbor. Why is that?"

Marcus Licinus' eyes narrowed, taking in the simple white robe that Mohammed had chosen to go over his scaled iron armor and the pearlhandled saber at his side. The Roman spared a glance for the Sahaba standing nearby, too, and Mohammed could see that he was puzzled by the absence of tribal markings. Too, the green banner of the Sahaba, marked only with a curved white sword and a simple crescent moon, was unfamiliar to him.