by Barry Sadler
But that was a foolish thing to think. He looked over at the ass and said out loud: ''That right, fellow?"
The mule brayed, and Casca felt better. No sense in having his mind entangled in strange ideas. He had Bu Ali to get.
He shed his clerical garb and put on one of the noble's robes. He looked for a weapon. He had a choice between the noble's scimitar and a very good short sword one of the dead bandits had. Casca really preferred the short sword. It was almost a gladius.
He took the scimitar. Now that he had the chance to enter Baghdad without attracting attention there was no point in taking unnecessary chances. The noble had a pretty fair horse that had now wandered back and was grazing on what little grass there was in the rocky area under the rise. He was easy to catch.
It took Casca only a few minutes to assemble adequate gear – including a leather money pouch with more than enough gold and silver coins to finance his expedition into Baghdad. He decided to use the ass as his pack animal. He had grown fond of the beast. Face reminds me a little of Glam, he thought, remembering a barbarian friend, long ago dead. There were times when Casca wished he could be a normal human being, not some immortal freak. The friendship of the ass – Oh, hell! I've got a job to do...
Baghdad. Casca got there when the dying afternoon sun blended all visual details so that, if there were any forgotten indication that he was not what be seemed to be, a travel-weary unimportant noble on a routine visit to the city, the guards at the city gate would not notice it. They did not. He found an inn, had a meal, and rented a room. He was set.
His reconnoitering stroll past the Sultan's palace did produce one incident. A young female slave was being dragged, screaming, back into the seraglio by two huge Nubian eunuchs. The guards at the palace gate were watching, and Casca could hear part of their conversation as he walked past: ''That little Ruth is a pain in the ass. Second time this week she's tried to escape."
"Yeah ... But if you had for a mistress who she has for a mistress... "
"Well... know what you mean.” Pause. "Wonder why she wants to have Jewish slaves."
"Better not wonder where she is concerned."
"Yeah... "
It really didn't concern Casca. But he did feel sorry for the slave girl, although he couldn't afford to help her. And he did wonder who the mysterious "mistress" was the guards had referred to. But again, it was not his concern. There was one thing that Casca wanted that he didn't think he was going to get. A woman.
It would be safer not to look for one. The fewer times he risked his Muslim noble disguise the better off he would be.
Well, he might just walk down this street a little ways and see what was going on. It wasn't much of a street. Narrow, crooked. Stone houses built right up to the edge. Not too prosperous looking, either, though in the darkness of early night that might not be fair to judge. I guess I go by the smell more than anything. It just didn't smell prosperous even though it was only a couple of hundred cubits from the palace–
Bu Ali!
Damn!
Here he had been so busy thinking about smells he had almost missed what his eyes saw. There up ahead of him, maybe four or five houses and shops up was Bu Ali. There was no mistaking that big ass, but he was doubly sure when Bu Ali turned to go into a cafe, and the lamplight showed the profile of his face. Bu Ali, all right.
Go in the cafe after him? Wait until he goes out, then get him? Check to see if Bu Ali uses this same route and goes to this same cafe each night – and set up an ambush?
Casca had had a woman on his mind; now be had to shift his thinking suddenly to Bu Ali. He turned into the dark alley he was abreast of at the moment, ostensibly to piss, actually to sort out in his mind what he was going to do about Bu Ali.
“Psst!"
Well, damn! Looking for a woman and finding Bu Ali. Thinking about Bu Ali and a woman finding him.
Her face was in shadow. Or veiled. But hell! Whores didn't wear veils. She was a shapeless darkness in the shadows against the opposite house wall. Then she apparently pulled open her robe – or whatever it was she was wearing – and her breasts shone like smoked ivory in what little lamplight and moonlight there was in the alley's mouth.
"You want a little?"
Her voice was husky. Almost familiar. That was no problem for Casca. He had known many, many whores. It had been a whore who put the scar on his face. A whore's voice would be familiar, Do matter what the language or country. But–
There was something wrong here. In Casca's brain all kinds of warnings were suddenly being voiced.
She moved slightly, and the breasts seemed to dance provocatively... like the bellies of two Egyptian dancers seen in a three-quarter view.
Interesting.
Yet the voice in Casca's brain still said: Stay away from this woman. He thought he knew why. Though she had only said the one short sentence, and though her voice had the husky sound most whores he had known had, there was just the slightest touch of falsity to it. This woman was no ordinary whore. She either had been "quality" – respectable, prosperous, upper class – or still was. It was the "still was" that set every sensitive nerve alarm in Casca going. He remembered the Roman times of Nero when even that imperial bastard had roamed the midnight streets disguised as a thug. For a thrill.
Roman matrons, highly respected by day, were said to have done the same thing. Just a handful.
Hearsay maybe. But in every time and culture Casca had been in, where there were settled cities there was the rumor of rich, respectable women out on the town. For a thrill.
And that thrill was for them – not for the dumb bastard who let himself be sucked into a weirdo broad's fantasies. Pure poison. Pure poison anywhere. But in a Muslim country... where the ordinary Muslim idea of a woman was of a sex machine operating solely for the benefit of males... Oh, no! This woman was a fake.
Yet, that might not be so. Societies changed. All he knew of the present Muslim world he had seen from the viewpoint of a slave – and he hadn't been in the cities enough, except on "business", to know what went on there. Maybe walking the streets was the way a whore worked in Baghdad. Still... baring the boobs bothered him. Better check this out. Maybe a little friendly conversation first. A jest or two. So he said: "Those skinny little muskmelons you got there, do they have tits on the ends of them?"
He was not prepared for the exploding storm that came out of the darkness at him. Not prepared for the stream of Arabic profanity that poured from the folds of the veil that hid all her face but the hate-slit eyes. "Her" because she was wearing a black burnoose that gaped open showing that she was totally naked underneath and in the moonlight and lamplight it was obvious that she definitely had the other proper equipment to go with the breasts.
"Scream" because the oaths were coming so fast Casca could not keep up with them, particularly the ones he had never heard before, which surprised him to no end since he had not lived the gentlest of lives.
But he was prepared for the pearl-handled dagger.
Maybe it was the lesson learned from the whore who had originally carved the scar on his face, but Casca invariably made it his practice when around whores or ones who might be whores to watch out for the knife. They came in all shapes and sizes, and women could hide them in the damnedest places. So he caught the striking wrist as soon as the steel glinted in the lamplight. .
There was one surprise, though. This woman held the knife in a way he had never seen before, as an almost straight extension of the arm, butt cradled far back in the palm of the hand, almost to the wrist, and two fingers resting on top of and extending out over the top of the blade. Hell of a damn way to hold a knife.
Then he got an even greater surprise and promptly lost all interest whatever in the way this woman held a knife. When he caught the wrist he had pushed it up, and since she was coming at him at the time, that threw her up against him, breasts pressed against his robe, belly touching his clothes also. And that close, he could smell her.
Jasmine!
He suddenly remembered his last conversation with Omar Khayyam. He knew of this woman. She had been present when Bu Ali set him up. And her scent had given her away. Now he knew why his intuition had been so strong. This woman was not simply just poison; she was the ultimate danger. It made no difference whether she was the Sultan's wife or a favored concubine. Hell! This was the Jasmine Lady who had so much power no one would say her name out loud.
He let go of the wrist, but not until he had twisted the knife out of her grasp. He kept the knife and pushed her away from him. He said, "You better get your ass back to the palace before you get hurt."
That did it. She told him what she was going to do to him when she had the opportunity.
"You don't say." That made her even more furious, which took some doing since she was already just about as furious as a woman could get. "That is a creative way to do it, but I don't think I'm going to let you." He laughed, waiting to see if she would go completely out of control.
She surprised him. Suddenly she was cool. Regal. She pulled the burnoose together and tied the sash that held it, her long, slim fingers working with deliberation. She looked him directly in the eyes and said, "My knife."
"Like hell."
"Very well." She turned her back on him, and without another word or another glance, walked slowly down the dark street in the direction of the palace.
That decided the Bu Ali matter, of course. He would have to take care of it tonight. He found a good alley to watch the cafe, hunkered down in the darkness, and waited. A long time. Casca guessed Bu Ali was smoking hashish in the cafe, Despite the overpowering odor of the town Casca thought he caught an occasional whiff of the delightful stuff.
Sometime toward the end of the first watch – by the Hebrew reckoning – Bu Ali came out of the café, He was not alone. There was a young boy with him.
Casca was too far from the cafe door to hear what they said to each other; but the young boy went one way down the street, and Bu Ali, after watching the boy go into the darkness, turned and went the other way, toward the palace.
"Bu Ali!"
Casca's scimitar was free of its scabbard, and he had already stepped into the street when he issued the challenge.
Bu Ali turned, saw Casca, was momentarily shocked at what he saw and thought to himself, The sneaky Frank must have held onto a branch on the side of the Bottomless Pit when he fell in, then drew his own scimitar, and advanced to meet Casca' s attack without saying a word. In fact his return was so swift that it became an attack of its own, and it was Casca who had to parry.
Cut.
Thrust.
Parry.
Thrust.
Cut.
They fought in the dappled darkness of the street where the only light was that of the moon and the only sounds the clash of steel on steel, their labored breathing and the shuffling of their feet on the ancient stone pavement.
Cut.
Thrust.
Parry.
Casca had fought many a man in the centuries since the Jew had damned him. Never though, had he met a man quicker with the blade, faster with the footwork, more adept at every usage of the scimitar. Bu Ali seemed to anticipate every thrust every cut. It was almost as though he could read Casca's mind before Casca could himself. Casca was shocked. He had known the big-assed Mameluke was good, but he had never even considered that he might be this good. The realization was coming to Casca very rapidly that Bu Ali not only was as good as he was – Bu Ali was a damn sight better. Instead of wasting the big Mameluke and getting this over with. it looked like it was going to go the other way. I don't stand a chance with him in a fair fight.
A fair fight, though, was not the point. The point was taking out Bu Ali. Casca gave ground, desperately trying to come up with some way to overcome Bu Ali's advantage. By now he was sweating. And by now Bu Ali was forcing him ever closer to the paIace grounds. Soon the sound of their swordplay would reach the guards.
Have to do something about this... damn quick...
The ropes came from nowhere.
Behind him. Beside him. Above him. It was all confused in his mind. All he knew was that he was suddenly entangled, like a fly in a spider web, and Bu Ali was readying his scimitar to end it all.
"No!"
Bu Ali stopped in mid-motion as though he were frozen into marble. "Yes, my lady."
Casca saw her then. This time she was in a dark purple burnoose of cloth of Chin or some similar material.
In the moonlight the touch of color was like that of the best steel. And she wore a matching dark purple mask. The jasmine smell was now so strong that he could smell it even from where he was standing. Bu Ali moved, bowed deeply before her, and on rising said, "My compliments to your guards, my lady. I will now take this dog to–"
"No, you will not. You will be rewarded for this night's work. Richly rewarded. But, as for this one–" She did not finish the sentence, but merely said to the big eunuch beside her: "You know where to take him."
Even if he had wanted to resist, Casca never got the chance. One of the eunuchs calmly brained him with something very hard and very heavy...
He was in the seraglio now, strapped to two tables, stripped naked. One table was at a convenient working height for the women with the knives. His legs were stretched out on this one, feet bound down on either side to spread apart the area of concern. The second table was propped against the wall at an angle, the upper part of his body bound to it. His head was free to move so that he could see what was going on. His mouth was free of any gag – so that he could scream.
There was an enormous amount of light in the seraglio, lamps everywhere, even great torches flaming dangerously close to the cloth wall hangings.
Silence. The women – here were no eunuchs present – were waiting for something:
Or someone...
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Silence.
Whoever they were waiting for had to be pretty important. Or... Are they doing this to make it worse on me? Give me time to imagine the worst?
But Casca already knew the worst... He remembered the Quadii in the northlands... the freed women slaves... and what they had done to the men who had raped them.
But at least those women had a reasonable excuse. He got the idea that the ones that would be going after him would be sick, because there were only three of them at the table with the knives. The rest of the harem was standing back, quite a ways back, and from the look on their faces most of them did not want to be there. They had tightened the muscles around their mouths in that implication of extreme disgust that only a woman can express. And one, the little slave girl, Ruth, whom Casca had seen trying to escape, was being forcibly held by a tough old bitch.
They were all fuIly-clothed. Except for the three at the table with the knives, there was not the slightest suggestion that this crowd of women existed only as sex machines for the Sultan. Nor did this particular room have sexual overtones. It was a large room, very tastefully decorated. There was much use of skillfully carved wooden pillars, excellent and expensive wall hangings, a beautiful tile floor, and intricate wooden panels on the ceiling. In comparison with Hassan al Sabah's "Paradise" – which looked like a brothel this "private brothel" looked more like an anteroom to Paradise itself.
Except, hell! Casca knew it was not going to be Paradise for him, not after the three with the knives came after him. He wondered which of the three was the Jasmine Lady, but he had no way of knowing.
These three were clothed differently from the other women. Each wore only a single filmy, gown-like garment woven of such thin threads that the cloth was almost transparent – or maybe seemed so because it clung so closely to their bodies. The curves ... the hard tits ... the triangular bush ... These did shout sex! But it was unpleasant sex, twisted, dark sex, though the gowns themselves were white. Like priestesses in some diseased cult... Sweat was beginning to form on Casca's face, and not just from the heat of all the burning lamps and tor
ches, either. There was something perverse and sick going on here. The cloth that covered the table, for instance. White cloth of Chin. Incredibly expensive. For a torture room?
And the charcoal braziers that heated the pots of boiling oil. One was gold. Another silver. Anyone throwing wealth around that way had to have something wrong with him. Casca had lived long enough in this world to know that, when you got right down to it, it was ultimately riches that made a man respectable.
A pervert who didn't respect gold ... Shit! He could expect the worst. It must be the Sultan himself they were waiting for.
There were two great, carved wooden doors at the far end of the room. These now opened, swinging back to the other side, and through them walked someone in a scarlet burnoose, wearing a black mask of cloth of Chin and black leather boots. The person was flanked by two Nubian slave eunuchs who carried no weapons. Their skin was oiled until it shone, and they each wore only a black loincloth. If this one in the scarlet burnoose was the Sultan, he sure as hell had kinky tastes – and the Jasmine Lady Casca had seen in the streets must be very, very close to him; it was his clothing she had copied.
The one in the scarlet burnoose stopped just short of Casca and the three women. The two Nubian eunuchs stepped forward loosened the burnoose, pulled it back, and slipped it from the shoulders of the one in the mask. The slaves bowed in deep abjection, turned and marched back through the doors which were then closed and barred. The sound of the heavy wooden bar falling in place echoed like very distant thunder in the room, and the one who had just come in now walked to the table, selected a knife, and approached Casca.
It was not, of course, the Sultan, but a nude woman who smelled of jasmine. She leaned across the bound Casca, the tips of her breasts brushing provocatively against the hair of his chest, and tested the ropes that held him to the table. Then she took the knife, holding it in the odd way she had in the street, and carved a single Arabic letter on the flesh of his forearm.