The soldier grinned and called to a groom, “Bring some hay and some sticks!”
“You are the cruellest torturer of all!” Achmed groaned “Others twist a man’s limbs… but you would distort my soul!”
“Would you like some wine with that ham?” Matt gestured to the soldier who was lighting the fire. The man nodded to the groom, who ran off toward the kitchens “You know it is forbidden! I shall never drink of the fruit of the vine, unbeliever!”
“But there are Muslims who do,” Matt pointed out “I don’t know if you’ve heard of Omar Khayyam, but his verses go like this
“How can this be?” Achmed cried “I lust for this wine you speak of now… and I have never tasted of it!”
“Probably won’t be as good as you’re imagining,” Matt consoled him “But then, what ever is?”
The soldier held the ham bone over the little fire, and the first trace of a delightful aroma filtered through the air “You shall regret this corruption of one of the Faithful, minion of Shaitan!” Achmed cried “You may doom my soul, but Nirobus shall give my colleagues enough magical power to set you aflame like the Hell to which you would send me!”
Matt went very still “Nirobus? I think I’ve heard that name before. But he’s very far away… too far to send you any reinforcements.”
“He can and he will! Already he has given us the power to strengthen the arms and the swords of the Moors!”
“Really?” Matt said, bright with sarcasm “And what piffling little service does he expect you to perform for this power? Conjuring demons? A little contract in blood, maybe?”
“Only what any good Muslim would do if he could… inspire a jihad, a holy war to spread the faith of Islam to enlighten the whole world!”
“Light a fire that will sweep through all of Europe, huh? Won’t work, Achmed. You can inspire men to fight, but all you’ll have then is a mob. You have to have a general if you want to make them into an army.”
“Do you think me a fool?” Achmed said, his voice acid with contempt. “We have such a Mahdi, a young man of devout faith and burning zeal, a veritable genius at stratagems and battles! He needed only a little persuasion to make him see that he could conquer all Europe for Allah, and the Moors needed even less to acclaim him as their Mahdi!”
“Sounds like the only power Nirobus needed to give you was finding that military genius and starting rumors of invincibility,” Matt commented “How old is this Mahdi, anyway?”
“Perhaps twenty-five. Soon all the world shall know his excellence!”
“Twenty-five,” Matt repeated, deadpan. “A really tried and proven soldier, huh?”
The sarcasm went right by Achmed. “He has fought five great battles already, and has driven the Christian knights into a strip of land along the northern coast of Ibile! His arm is strong with the might of Allah, his sorcerers bold with the power of Nirobus!”
“Oh,” Matt said “The armies win by magic, huh?”
“The armies triumph over the cumbersome, bulky knights of Christendom as his sorcerers defeat the weak magic of the Christian wizards! You cannot stand against him! Yield, and he will treat you with kindness!”
“As long as we convert to Islam, that is.”
“Nay! He will not force you, only encourage you to see the benefits of Islam, of surrender to the will of Allah!”
“Only encourage us,” Matt said, nodding. “Of course, Christians will have to pay heavier taxes than Muslims, and Christian dukes and earls will have to give up their castles and lands to Muslim aristocrats, and the Muslim judges will tend to decide in favor of Muslims who are suing Christians… but that’s just the fortunes of war, right?”
“Even those mild punishments need not be yours, if you surrender to Allah.”
“So you’re not just promising your soldiers victory… you’re promising them loot from Christians who won’t convert. Tell me, just how did you manage to defeat King Rinaldo’s wizards?”
Achmed seemed to expand with pride, his eyes burning with arrogance. “Nirobus does indeed send us power from his distant land, unbeliever… a new sort of power, that strikes deep into a sorcerer’s soul and swells him with strength. There is no feeling like it! When I draw on Nirobus, I feel as though I were more intensely alive than ever before, filled with the strength of three, four, five lives, even more!”
“Matthew,” Papa said, “the new drug in the neighborhood… while they are under its influence, the boys go limp, with foolish grins. Indeed, some must stand guard while the others are under its influence. And even when they are sober, they seem to be weaker, slower, less vital… “
“So that’s why they weren’t fighting as well as they used to!” It was galling for Matt to realize that his victories might not all have been due to his new strength and skill. “How do you think the addiction will end, Papa? With each of them completely drained of his life force, dying as a shriveled husk of his former self?”
Achmed frowned. “Of what do you speak? Nirobus would never leach the souls of the living!”
“Not their souls, maybe, but their vitality.” Matt held up a hand to forestall the sorcerer’s protest. “Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t doubt that your Mahdi is a good man, or even that you and your fellows aren’t sorcerers at all, but good and virtuous men by the tenets of your Faith, wizards who mean only to draw on the powers of Goodness.”
“Then what is this talk of weakening young men?”
“I think Nirobus has pulled off the world’s biggest con,” Matt said, his face somber. “That means a cheat, a fraud. I think he’s managed to persuade you all that he’s a holy and righteous man who’s only trying to advance the cause of your Faith.”
“Assuredly he is!”
Matt shook his head. “Afraid not. At best, I think your Nirobus might be out to advance the cause of himself, to let your Mahdi conquer the world for you, then kill him off and Nirobus himself become emperor of all.”
“It cannot be!” But doubt shadowed Achmed’s eyes.
“Oh,” Matt said. “You don’t want to know the worst, then?”
“I do not!”
“I’ll tell you anyway,” Matt said softly. “Who is the Father of Lies, Achmed? Who is the Sultan of Fraud? The worst of it might be that Nirobus isn’t trying to conquer for himself at all. He might have a master, a very evil master.”
Achmed writhed and gyrated, trying to shrug off his bonds. “Free my hands to cover my ears! I shall not hear your blasphemy!”
“It’s not blasphemy to say that you and your fellow sorcerers are credulous fools who have let an amoral predator convince you of what you want to believe,” Matt said, “that you have let yourselves be convinced that Nirobus wants to bring all the world to Allah… “
Achmed began to scream, thrashing about in his bonds.
“But he doesn’t want the world for Allah!” Matt shouted. “The master he really serves is Satan, and he really wants to put us all into the power of Hell!”
“I did not hear you!” Achmed cried. “I did not hear the words of blasphemy!”
But they both knew he had, and knew that it wasn’t God that Matt was indicting.