Papa frowned. “I don’t think you have the quotation quite right.”
“Good enough to get by you, though.” Matt squirmed past him, then turned back to cut off his protest.
“Besides, you can do a better job keeping his attention.”
“I can?” Papa asked, wide-eyed. “How?”
“However you did in the Marines! Just keep him shooting, if you can do it safely… the less ammunition he has, the better.”
Matt left him thinking and crawled on down the streambed. He didn’t know what Papa was planning, only knew that every now and then, he heard a burst of firing behind him. He hoped Papa wasn’t getting reckless, and began to be afraid… the veteran seemed to be determined to take a risk. He reminded himself that his father had always been the cautious sort and crawled on.
The streambed widened out where it joined a drainage ditch coming from another field. Matt sat up on his heels, considering. He could crawl up the ditch to the hills, but that would take so long a time that the enemy might have fled, and Matt had no great desire to have a sniper following them. On the other hand, what kind of magic could bring him in behind the other man unnoticed?
A dust devil suddenly boiled up from the streambed. Matt shrank back, hissing, “Keep down!”
The tiny whirlwind fell in on itself into voluptuous, if diminutive, contours, and Lakshmi stood before him in miniature. “I thank you for your kind thoughts, wizard, but I had already realized the need for discretion.”
Coming from her, that wasn’t entirely reassuring. “Uh… good to see you again,” Matt said lamely. “Sorry I can’t talk just now, but I have to go kill off somebody before he kills me.”
“So I see,” Lakshmi told him. “I shall be glad to take you to him… for a price.”
Somehow, Matt had a notion what the price would be. “Thanks, but my mommy told me not to talk to strange women.”
“Ah, but you know me well by now.”
“Yeah, but you’re one of the strangest women I’ve ever met.” Matt held up a palm. “Sorry, no offense… but you are the first female genie I’ve seen, if you don’t count the one on television, and she was just an actress.”
“Actress?” Lakshmi frowned. “A player, you mean?”
“Not in any game I’ve ever heard of, no. Sorry, but I can’t afford to take on any more debts right now, I’m in up to my neck as it is.”
“Perhaps I should slay this cowardly assassin for you, then.”
“Nice thought,” Matt said, with what he hoped was a grateful grin, “but I need him alive, at least temporarily. I have to ask him a few questions.”
“He will be in more of a mood to answer them when I have done with him,” Lakshmi said ominously, and turned into a whirlwind again… a small one, that died down as quickly as it had come.
Matt stared at the pattern it had left with a sinking heart. He turned and started crawling back to Papa. A flock of crows flew overhead, toward the sniper. He wondered who had sent them.
Then suddenly, there was a wild burst of machine-gun fire. The crows came shooting back, cawing frantically. Then the machine gun went silent, and Matt pushed himself to his feet and sprinted, doubled over. Somehow he suspected what had happened and wanted to be there before Lakshmi.
“Matthew! Get down!” Papa called as he came into sight. Matt shook his head, though, and came panting up just as the whirlwind careered down from the sky and dumped a black-clad bundle into the ditch before it turned into Lakshmi, ten feet tall and glowing with anger. “The fool had the audacity to strike at me!”
“They went through her!” the black-clad bundle howled, still curled in a ball. “They went right through her, and she didn’t even notice!”
“Oh, I noticed, well enough!” Lakshmi snapped. “They were quite painful, I assure you!” She turned to Matt. “You will understand, therefore, if he is not completely unharmed.”
Matt frowned. “I don’t see any blood.”
“It is not a cut or a wound, but knots tied in certain muscles,” Lakshmi said evenly. “It is well I went in your place, mortal man, for this is truly one of the hashishim.”
“The original assassins?” Matt stared.
“The same. He is dazed with hashish, or something much like it, and sent to slay you so that he can obtain more from his master.”
“Thank you,” Matt said, feeling totally inadequate. “Thank you very much. I… I’m sorry I can’t show my gratitude in any more tangible way.”
“I am scarcely in the mood for it now! See if you cannot find better company to keep!” Then the whirlwind kicked up about her, absorbing her, and disappeared.
Matt nudged the black bundle with his toe. “She’s gone. You can come out now.”
“For real?” The assassin unwound enough to risk a peek. “Really gone?”
Papa stared. “Luco?!??!?”
Mama sat in her chamber, brushing her hair with long, languid strokes, singing a pensive melody, ostensibly alone.
The air shimmered, a heat-haze that slowly thickened until it disappeared with a soft explosion. Mama turned, wide-eyed, heart racing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The sorcerer-commander stood there in her boudoir, but he had changed his camel rider’s habit for a white silken robe with a purple sleeveless surcoat, and a turban of cloth-of-gold. He bowed, touching forehead, lips, and breast. “I greet you, O Fairest of the Fair!”
“I am not fair, but dark!” Mama’s voice trembled.
“Hair like a raven’s wings, eyes like those of a gazelle,” the sorcerer breathed. “I am Beidizam, commander of the forces at your gate… as you know.”
Mama came to her feet in one lithe movement, raising a quivering hand to ward him off. “What do you in my chamber, sir?”
“What should a man of youth and vigor wish, in the chamber of a beautiful woman?” Beidizam breathed.
“Sir!” Mama cried. “You insult me!”
“I certainly did not intend to do so.” But Beidizam’s eyes glittered with contempt as well as lust. “I wish only to give praise where it is due, and to establish a feeling of friendliness.”
“Friendliness?” Mama drew back a little more, eyes wary. “Strange words, for the man who besieges my city!”
“Ah, but though we are enemies, surely we may converse in civil tones,” Beidizam protested, “for it has occurred to me that a conference between the two commanders might be of benefit to us both.” The sorcerer raised a palm to forestall her objections. “Do not deny it… I felt your regard as I sat before my tent, reflecting upon the wizardry of the ancient Greeks. For my part, I have watched you on the battlements, and have seen that, although the Witch Doctor and the Black Knight command with you, it is as often your spells that balk my army as theirs. No wonder, when they are cast by a lady of such loveliness!”
“I am only one castellan of three!” Mama objected. “I cannot answer for all of us! You must speak to us in unison, sir, or not at all!” She frowned. “But surely you know that. Why do you seek me out separately?”
“What man would not seek to be alone with such a beauty?” Beidizam stepped forward and caught her hand. “You are a woman of passions, long estranged from your man… and the ways of the Franks are well known, how they make gods of their women, and the women grow willful and wanton thereby. Oh, the attitudes of the Frankish women are famous, I assure you.” He pressed her hand to his lips.
Mama snatched it away. “But you may not know of the loyalty of Frankish women, of our devotion to our husbands and to the chastity our Church so praises!”
“As you do not know of the skills of Muslim men,” the sorcerer said, voice low and husky, “of how intimately we know women, of the heights of ecstasy to which we… “