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prayer to Allah.
HIM AND ALL HE HAD DELUDED TO STAND WITH HIM.
Satan himself had given back before four angels. What hope had a mortal warrior, however skilled?
Raphael looked at Hasiim and knew he could destroy the man. He stepped out from the buttress, his
scimitar drifting like a leaf in the breeze.
The Berber's eyes widened. Raphael met those eyes.
And Raphael was lost.
This man was not Satan nor had he been bought by him. He was a stubborn and prideful mortal a
man not to Raphael's taste. A dangerous man. But Raphael gazed at Hasiim and felt a peculiar painful
pity.
This hesitation gave Hasiim who felt no similar emotion while glaring at Raphael time to strike
another sweeping cross-hand blow. Raphael countered, but did not press the advantage.
With a strident ululation, another tribesman stood beside Hasiim, sword at the ready. In this man's
face Raphael read plain fear, mastered by the desire to please his commander. This second warrior
slashed fiercely at Djoura, who raised her blade against the attack. But the swordsman feinted away and
licked in beneath the woman's awkward guard.
Raphael snapped the man's blade in two. Djoura opened his face.
Hasiim, losing patience, shoved his subordinate aside and rushed his opponent as though he himself
were still on horseback, slashing in even diagonals as he came. Raphael flung himself down on one knee
before Djoura and his scimitar flashed broadside, clashing against Hasiim's weapon. Then he sprang up
again and knocked the qa'id backward before he could disengage. Taking the swordsman's wrist in his
own, he twisted the hilt of the weapon, trying to pull it from Hasiim's grasp.
They fell and struggled,'breath hissing into one another's face. Next to Raphaels head a sword struck
the ground and sparked. Hasiim's eyes shifted. He cried a few words in his Berber dialect and the attack
was not repeated.
Only a few inches above Hasiim's face hung that of Raphael. It was pale under its sunburn, bearing no
sign of anger or outrage, but rather the sad concentration of a tutor with a very slow pupil. And from
Raphael's neck dangled, like some rough piece of jewelry, the iron slave collar. Hasiim grabbed it in one
hand, while the other hand dropped his blade and fixed itself against Raphael's neck. With one hand he
pulled, while the other pushed, crushing.
Arching back, the blond put his knee against Hasiim's chest, while he worked his two arms between
his opponent's stranglehold. He made no effort to use his sword against Hasiim. His breath came in a
choking hiss. His vision sparkled.
He broke the hold.
Raphael stood above the fallen Hasiim, who looked up with fanatic indifference, expecting death. He
did nothing, but his sword twitched like a cat's tail, warning off the fursan who had witnessed this crude
duel.
A voice was calling out to Raphael: He didn't understand at first. "Drop your sword, giaour. Look up
and drop your sword."
Raphael did look up. Around the frosting-white tiled wall, behind the Berber fursan, stood a
semicircle of humanity. Raphael stared from face to face.
There shuffled a poor Spaniard with confused, rolling eyes, bearing baskets of fish and of peppers.
Next to him stood a proud Moorish householder in silk and muslin, his hands upon the jeweled hilt of a
scimitar which had probably never seen use. Here was a woman so veiled neither her age nor race could
be guessed at, another woman with tawny hair, sans veil but with the ring around her neck. Two teenage
eunuchs, well dressed, who stood carefully not touching anybody. A dark peasant ignoring the squirming
horned kid in his arms to stare, stare, stare&
Each casual figure engraved itself into Raphael's stunned brain, as though within the astonishment,
fear, or unholy excitement expressed in these faces he would find the clue to every mystery. But finally his
eyes found (as they were meant to) the five soldiers who stood with their legs braced, their wicked small
bows drawn and aimed at both Raphael and Djoura.
The woman did not move. Neither did she drop her weapon. The steel of her sword sent glints of
silver over the white mosaic wall, joined by the spark of gold from the coins in her black hair. Her face
not black now but suffused with a ruddy blush, and when she spoke to her companion her voice held a
furious elation.
"When I cry out, Raphael, then we will go forward together. We will give them reason to fear us!"
His face filled with pain. "But they will kill you, Djoura!"
She snorted in her habitual arrogance. "What are these but dogs? They will kill us anyway. This
way&
"& is freedom." She took one step forward.
But Hasiim, who had risen cautiously to his feet, heard her fierce whisper. He replied not to Djoura,
but to Raphael. "My men are not dogs. I say they will not kill you: neither of you, unless you make it
necessary. The woman I have promised to return to her own people and I will do so.
"You& " He stared at the fair figure. Raphael's borrowed clothing had all fallen oft and he stood now
wearing nothing but his eunuchs trousers. The scars on his back were visible around his sides and
shoulders like the tendrils of red clinging vines. "You we will return to your master, and what he may do
to you for this scandal is none of our business.
"Though I say," and here the Moor paused. "Though I say that if I thought I could buy your loyalty
with your sword arm, I would trade ten good horses for you."
Raphael said nothing in reply. Slowly he lowered his blade. Djoura turned upon him a look of infinite
bitterness.
"It gets hotter and hotter," observed Gaspare, shifting his sweaty seat from side to side. "If we have to
go much farther south we'll all burst into flame!"
The black dragon smiled: an action which caused Saara's thighs and knees to tickle. "That is mostly
my own personal heat. It is actually quite cool at these altitudes, even in the south.
"I could cool down by going slower, of course& "
"Don't listen to the boy, snapped Saara, who felt she had been sharing this aerial perch with Gaspare
for too long entirely. "Id rather have the speed. I feel time is pressing."
The dragon's sigh was more disturbing to the riders on his neck than his smile. "I won't ask you why,"
he drawled. "It's probably some sorcery and I'd rather not know about it& " [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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