by Barry Sadler
"So... " she said. "We begin... "
What they did to him he tried to erase from his mind, and after the pain had become totally unbearable it seemed that he had no mind left. There was only pain. And his screams. All the years of conditioning as a soldier, all the courage to bear pain, all that went for naught. And they deliberately prolonged his agony, working slowly... slowly... slowly.
There came a time when the pain bad become so great that it went beyond feeling. He no longer felt it. The nerves bad been shocked beyond their endurance... or... that strange healing power in his body was in balance with what they were doing to him.
The four women had overreached themselves. In their desire to make him suffer the greatest length of time they had unwittingly slowed their torture to the point that his healing power was taking over. Besides, it was obvious that the three women in the white gowns were turned on sexually by his suffering, and they were taking every opportunity now to bump into each other, to rub close to each other. They wanted sex with one another.
The Jasmine Lady, though, was not so easy to decipher. It was his body she rubbed her naked flesh against, not the three other women. In fact, she kept a distance between herself and them. From time to time she amused herself by leaning over him and cutting more letters in his bloody forearm. So far he could make out no word that made sense, but each time she leaned across him those pendulous breasts, the nipples puckered and hardened, came closer and closer to him, once even brushing across his lips as he lay screaming.
Now, with the pain no longer blinding his mind, he did not have to scream, but he continued to do so while something formed slowly in his mind. Something – it was not yet a plan. But the healing power was bringing his thinking back into play.
There was no hope that the other women in the harem might help, though most of them plainly found what the gang of four were doing so repulsive that they refused to watch. Early on the young slave, Ruth, had thrown up. Later some of the harem women followed suit.
What was strange was the silence. Except for his screams there was no human sound. When he slowed his screams and made them sound as if he were getting weaker and weaker, he could hear the breathing of the women with the knives; could, it seemed, even hear the faint whisper of sound the burning torches on the wall made.
The Jasmine Lady bent over him again, and suddenly he had the plan... Casca waited for his chance. The next time she came over him, breasts hanging mockingly just above his face, the gleaming knife in her right hand catching the light, razor-sharp edge held in that flat, odd way that made the knife seem an extension of her hand – or the single deadly steel claw of a beast – he tried to gauge the angles involved, to time the right moment to act. But the effort was almost more than he could manage. By now the pain, though beyond actual feeling, was in some dark region of his brain affecting his thinking and vision. He felt that he was going mad. He fought the silent storm in his brain, knowing that he might be just seconds from unconsciousness.
Then... She halted her movement. To taunt him.
Casca lunged.
Threw his head upward all that he could move. He had only inches to work with, but that was enough; the end of her pendulous breast was in his wide-stretched mouth. Immediately he bit down, bit with all his strength. She screamed. Blood spurted, momentarily blinding his left eye. This close he had no depth perception with the single eye, so he had to guess for the timing of the strike with his fingers as her wrist with the knife jerked down. He was off.
Only by a little, but off. Desperately he curled his fingertips inward, felt the sharp edge of the knife, and, though he cut as much of his own flesh as he did the silk rope when he forced the blade back, he made the slash. He was now free from the forearm to the fingers.
Immediately he swept his arm in the only arc possible to him, hoping that his fingers would reach the burning lamp. They did. With room to spare. The lamp upset. The hot oil it had held flamed up, lighted by the wick, and the burning oil fired the cloth of Chin on the table where he was bound.
Now, if he could only ignite his ropes...
Clawing with his fingers on the returning sweep of his arm, he did manage to grab the burning cloth and jerk it toward him. He did not wait to see if the oil that spilled on the ropes would burn them through.
He had other things to do. Just as his arm made the return arc, he released the bloody bit of her breast and at the same time got her wrist with his fingers. He had correctly guessed that she would jerk back, and with a rolling motion of his finger grip, he broke the knife free from her grasp and had it in his hand.
The oil was burning. Marching fingers of flame were circling his body, and where they touched the ropes, the ropes themselves caught fire.
Though he had the knife, he could not use it to get at the ropes that held his elbows. And at that moment one of the women bending over his penis dropped her knife. The point cut into his scrotum. The temporary numbness in his mind was overthrown, and he screamed with unbearable pain. Yet he could still use the knife on the other wrist.
He swept the blade across his body cutting the wrist ropes and immediately reached up with both hands, plunging the knife into her unhurt breast. When she grabbed for the breast, with almost a continuation of his movement, he caught both of her wrists and pulled down with all his might.
The leverage was difficult, but her involuntary movement down helped somewhat. He managed to pull her part-way across his chest, far enough so that he could force her mask into the fire. The flaming oil caught the black cloth of Chin mask immediately. The face was ablaze. Then her hair. She ran shrieking around the room.
Casca strained at the ropes. They were breaking but taking, it seemed, an eternity. The flimsy clothing of the three women at the table was now ablaze, and the women were screaming. One rushed toward the window. Another, blinded by the flames, rushed straight into the wall. The collision of her burning body with the wall hangings set that material afire. In seconds the whole room was aflame, and now the women who watched were also screaming.
The screams of the women brought the eunuchs.
Casca was not yet free, and he could see the head eunuch coming for him, a huge scimitar in his hands. But be could also see the set, determined face of the little Jewish slave girl. Ruth. He could see her push over the huge amphora of oil so that it spilled into the path of the eunuch. The eunuch slipped, and the scimitar fell from his grasp and hit the tile floor, its clatter lost in the rising screams of the harem women.
But Casca was now free. He tried to get over the edge of the table, but pain and weakness held him back. He, too, was afire, the ropes that clung to his bloody flesh, the oil spilled on him, both burning.
"Please, help me!"
The little Jewish girl was calling to him for help.
The third harem torturer, though dress afire was heading toward her, dagger in hand. Casca yanked the knife from the breast of the screaming Jasmine Lady and threw it. The blade turned over twice in the air, and then the point buried itself into the back of the neck of the woman, and she pitched forward, falling just short of the young girl.
The effort gave Casca a second burst of strength. He managed to get off the table and get the scimitar.
But he was still bent over when the second eunuch was upon him, swinging a sword. Casca pulled the scimitar upward in a sweeping circle, somewhat ragged because of his weakness, and slit the eunuch's throat. Not expertly, but it did the job. Then he slashed the first eunuch across the face and saw blood, and then saw the nose disappear.
He was losing consciousness, and his eyesight was going, coming back only in short, blurred bursts. He had a vague image of eunuchs with swords slipping in the blood and oil and tangling in a burning, twisting heap as the oil caught fire and blazed up, but it may have been only a wish, a dream.
All dreams.
He was gone now.
"Come, stranger. Come. There is a secret way out."
This dream, this voice seeming to sou
nd in his brain, was even stronger than the others. He could even imagine a touch – that he was holding the hand of Ruth the young slave girl.
But, again, he had slipped into darkness.
Still, ragged pieces of dreams, like ravenous birds, bit at his mind. None of them made sense. There were moments when he had images of cold stone walls. Of dampness. A tunnel? None of it mattered, it was only the breaking up of a dying man's brain. Then there were no dream pieces.
Only blackness. The strangest dream of all. No images. Only words. He heard Ruth callout the name Miriam.
Then another voice. Miriam the whore? "We'll have to carry him."
Then only the merciful darkness. The silence: The nothingness...
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"You ready to wake up, son?"
Casca opened his eyes.
The face bending over him was that of an old Arab – or was it? The face was fully-bearded, and the beard was gray. The eyes were world-weary but kindly. And the voice was gentle.
If I'm dead, wherever I've gone, the people here sure don't fit the descriptions given out by any of the religions I've known.
He was going to close his eyes again and start this dream all over when he saw beyond the man leaning over him the faces of two women – the grinning, redheaded Miriam, the whore from the Cafe of the Infidels; and the shy, smiling Ruth, the slave girl from the Sultan's seraglio.
"What–" he began, but the old man put gentle fingers on his lips.
"No. There's no point in you asking the questions. It's obvious what you want to know, and it won't take long to tell you. But, first, lie quietly and listen. Your healing still has a long way to go." The old man's voice was soft, but it carried a great deal of authority.
Casca's first reaction was that it was a very clear, rational voice. Then it suddenly dawned on him that–
What he was thinking must have shown in his face, for the old man smiled slightly and said, "Yes, Latin. I can use Arabic if you wish. Or Aramaic. Or any of half a dozen other languages you prefer, but in your delirium you were crying out in Latin, a language neither of these girls speak, so they called me. If Latin is your native language, why then we will use it, though of course that means the two girls here will not know what we are talking about."
The old man sat down on a stool beside Casca's bed, and it was then that Casca realized that he was in some kind of very narrow bed, in a very, very small room. There was something extremely odd about the room, but he couldn't tell what it was.
What he could tell, though, was that under the soft covers, something bound him to the bed.
Again the old man anticipated him and smiled. "For your protection. To keep you from thrashing about and re-opening the wounds. I think the girls can take them off now, but perhaps we shouldn't be in too big a hurry. Agreed?"
Casca nodded. Somehow he trusted this old Arab... though, come to think of it, the man might not be as old as he seemed. And there was something just a little non-Arab about the structure of his face.
This time the man laughed aloud. "You are perceptive, aren't you? All right, then, we'll satisfy your curiosity by starting with me rather than with where you are. I am the Sheikh Faisal ibn Said, a partly senile, partly-addled old Bedouin who has a small, poor team of the best Arabic calligraphers in all of Islam. Wood, stone, metal, parchment – you name it. If you want the letters of the Koran written with style and flourish-and pious devotion, of course why, wait until poor old man Faisal shows up in your neighborhood. And, he works cheap."
The glint of amusement in Faisal's eye was as impish as that of a small boy. "So you're liable to see Faisal almost anywhere. Harmless old fellow. Even has a small harem, as any good Muslim should."
Casca grinned. He suddenly remembered what Mamud had told him long ago about the caravan they had passed on their way to Baghdad, the one with the calligraphy on each cart bearing an ancient quotation from the Koran. Faisal again touched his lips.
"No. Now you are anticipating me. And, yes, there is another Faisal – though the name is not Faisal, the race is not Arabic, and the religion is not Islam. I am a Jew. Every drop of blood in my body is Jewish blood. Religion? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Occupation? Well, yes, I am a good calligrapher. The best, as a matter of fact. It is true, however, that I also have a sideline, a small personal interest of mine that I have practiced for a number of years now without getting caught once. Well, I probably shouldn't brag about the once part. Once is all it would take. Even suspicion would be enough. My sideline? Why, my Roman friend, very simple. I believe in freedom. Freedom for all men – and women. And dignity. If one's idea of the Deity doesn't make his life richer and fuller, why, my friend, I would say his idea is wrong. But enough of religion since I am what is known as a 'liberal' in these quarters, and who the hell wants to listen to a liberal?
"Well, now. My sideline. All abstract words. Of course, a calligrapher lives with words, so that shouldn't be considered unusual. But the trouble with abstract ideas is that you can't feel them or touch them or taste them or see them, or do anything constructive with them until they are translated into concrete acts or things. So my sideline was long ago translated into one very concrete act. The Arabs have enslaved many a daughter of my people, so, whenever I get the chance – and I get chances, my Roman friend – I steal the daughters of my people from their slavery and take them where they can be free. That's the reason for all the trappings of this caravan. These women are not my harem; most of them are rescued slaves I'm taking to freedom.
"Now, you. The only way I can hide you is to put you here with the women. Even when you're well enough to move about." Faisal smiled. "You see why I wouldn't let you ask questions? I like to talk, my Roman friend. I like to talk. And I cultivate the oddities in my personality so that I can continue to seem addled to the Arabs. He reached down and smoothed the bedcover under Casca's chin... as a father might an ill child. "I leave you to the women."
After Faisal's clear Latin, Miriam's Arabic at first sounded stilted in Casca's mind.
“Thou hast suffered much, O one with the scarred face," she said softly as she bent over him to pull back the covers. He could feel her fingers on his wrist unloosing the knots of the cords that held him, but he was studying the profile of her face, so he was not looking at his own body.... or clothes.
There was a gentleness in her face that drew him.
Then–
"Damn!"
''What is it, O scarred one?"
The slave girl, Ruth, who had started to help Miriam, was also startled. Her brown eyes were wide.
"My clothes! What have you got on me?"
Now both women laughed.
“These look like women's clothes!"
"Ah, yes. But they are."
"Women's clothes?"
"But, of course. How else would one be dressed in the birthing wagon?"
"Birthing wagon?"
"Look, Roman Nose, we had to hide you. The Sultan was wild with rage when he found his palace afire. His men searched every inch of Baghdad. We had what they were looking for – you – bloody, out-of-your-head, raving you. So Faisal said put you in the birthing wagon, strap you down, make it look like you were just about to give birth, but give you something to keep you unconscious. It worked in Baghdad, so we decided to keep it up. And after a couple of days, after you had healed up enough so we could move you a little, we dressed you. Just in case. Good thing, too. Just the other day we were stopped, and one of the Sultan's men even insisted on looking in the birthing wagon. When he saw what you looked like sleeping, he was satisfied. By the way, how do you like your hair?"
"Hair?" Casca jerked his hand up to his scalp.
There was still hair there. Plenty of it. What in Hades was she talking about?
Ruth brought him a small brass minor and stood back, grinning.
"Damn!"
The hair was red – even in one of the silver mirrors favored by Egyptians over the brass ones like the Hebrews lik
ed, it would still be red – the same red as Miriam's had been when he first saw her in the Cafe of the Infidels.
But it wasn't just the hair that shocked Casca.
"By Mithra! What in Hades have you done to my face?"
''Oh, Roman Nose, you didn't really think we women were born with the smooth faces you see, did you? A little something here. A little something there. A little rice flour. A touch of kohl. And a few other things." She smiled impishly. "We're pretty good, aren't we? How do you like your new face, the one that's saved your neck so far?"
Well, she had a point there. He held the mirror up again and liked what he saw even less than he had the first time. They had shaved his face so smooth it was impossible to see where the hairs had been, and they had put something on it halfway between paint and oil, so that even his scar – in which Casca had a certain pride – was no longer visible. He couldn't tell what they had done to his eyebrows – cut them, trimmed them, something – but now they had a thin, even line. His eyelids were darkened. It was no longer his face; it was the face of a woman. Not, however, a beautiful young woman. They had known the limitations of the material they were working with, and they had made him up as a woman a little the worse for wear.
"We women are magicians, are we not?"
Hmpf! We women... where did she get that shit? Sudden fear gripped Casca.
"Er...”
"What is it, Roman Nose?"
"Am I... er..."
"Are you what?"
"The women... did they–"
Miriam laughed uproariously. "No! We got to you just in time. And I've never seen anybody heal as fast as you do. But it was a near thing."
"Then I'm... all right?"
"I hope you are. Because I intend to test you just as soon as you're able... to perform at your best, that is. I've never had a man of my own choosing, one I put together myself, so to speak. No, Roman Nose, I'm betting – and hoping – you'll be as good as new. Now, drink this. It will put you back to sleep again."