A phalanx of guards had gathered below, and one of them pointed up at the scientist's window, and then dispatched several of the well-armed, red-turbaned brutes, obviously on their way to come calling.
"Oh my," Philos said to himself, blinking. "I'm going to have to assume my tenure here is over...."
And he went to the carpetbag he kept snugged under a nearby wooden table and began to quickly pack, taking time to include a certain Chinese parchment. ...
Elsewhere, in the open-air marketplace of Gomorrah, outside a wine merchant's tent, the scrawny thief Arpid sat on a bench, drinking. He was not quite drunk, but neither was he entirely sober; however, when the horns and trumpets of the palace guard began to blow their piercing alarm, the horse thief snapped to alertness.
Then Arpid sighed, thinking, Well. .. I warned the fool.
He rose and raised his glass to his fellow tavern-crawling reprobates and said, "A toast—to my friend the Akkadian... let him rest in peace. Or pieces, as would seem more likely."
The drunks and bandits and general lowlifes around him responded with a hoist of their goblets. This was a group that would drink to anyone, even a member of the Akkadian tribe, who all men knew (except this idiot proposing the toast) had long since vanished from the earth.
The wine of his toast had barely passed Arpid's lips when a cluster of red-turbaned guards came clattering through the bazaar, brandishing their weapons. The thief shielded his face until the soldiers had rushed on; then he rose, bowed to his distinguished fellow scoundrels, saying, "Alas, gentle friends, I must now take my leave...."
And he left.
On a nearby street, just over from the marketplace, bedouin women were washing their clothes in a large, central fountain. Even when the soldiers of Memnon were on the march, a cry of alarm blaring through the city, life went on. The child of one of these women, tagging along with his mother, studied a tarnished coin that he'd found on the dusty street.
The hoy had never had a coin before, and didn't know what to do with it; but as he studied the fountain, he suddenly knew: a wish!
The boy tossed the coin, and—seemingly in cause-and-effect fashion—from beneath a floating linen garment, a beautiful naked woman burst from the water.
"Gods be praised!" the boy said, and for the rest of his life he would be a believer.
Cassandra leaned on the fountain, heaving for breath, as the wide-eyed boy took in the unclad delights of her lithe form. Then, from behind her, gasping for breath, came the Akkadian.
The boy frowned and shook his head, disappointed by this additional apparition. Then his mother covered the child's eyes and hustled him away. A crowd began to congregate, but at the same time gave this magnificent materialized god and goddess breathing room.
They stood panting for a while—the pair had had quite a ride down that drain, flying out a hole in a wall, splash-landing inside a dank water chamber, finally finding their way up and through to air and sunlight—and now it was as if they were living statues adorning the fountain.
Then the sorceress—her long hair streaming with water, her golden skin beaded with droplets— whirled at Mathayus, no longer in the grip of their shared predicament, her regal bearing returning in full force. Her long-nailed fingers turned to claws and her hands flew toward the assassin's face.
Mathayus gripped her wrists, tight, hard, even as she exploded in fury.
"How dare you touch me!" she snarled. "Your head will ride a post, your eyes will feed the birds, your entrails will be strung from the highest—"
He yanked her close, as if to kiss her; but instead he spoke softly, if firmly, his message for her, not the gathering crowd.
"Sorceress," he said sweetly, "I am an Akkadian engaged to kill you."
Her eyes flared, outrage wedded with fear.
"Now I find myself in a position where you are of more use to me alive," he said, "than dead.... Try not to give me cause to change my mind."
She said nothing, her chin high... but trembling, perhaps with the chill of the water ... perhaps from something else.
"I suggest we find you something to wear," he said. "You may catch cold in your bare skin ... and more unwanted attention."
A few coins bought bedouin robes and scarves from a washerwoman, and within minutes the Akkadian and his hostage were at the front gates of Gomorrah, which was conveniently understaffed at the moment. Apparently those horns pealing general alarm had summoned the bulk of the gate guards to other duty.
So it was that Mathayus the Akkadian and Cassandra the Sorceress—wrapped in the robes and scarves of simple desert people—departed from the city of Gomorrah, unimpeded, walking past the guards, seemingly lost in a lovers' embrace, made no less intimate by the dagger the assassin held to the witch's side.
As for the Akkadian's "partner," the little horse thief had already benefited from the slack attention of the guards at the undermanned gate. Leading a camel as he was, looking deceptively respectable, Arpid had tagged along with a wealthy fellow astride a horse.
Beyond the gates, Arpid attempted to turn the wealthy traveler into a customer, offering the vile creature Hanna to him for a mere forty duranas. It wasn't that the thief couldn't use a ride, even when provided by a beast like this; but the camel was uncooperative, would not allow him to mount her. Better to let someone else beat sense into the animal, while Arpid would buy a horse, a decent mode of transport, even if he would have to sneak back into the city to do it.
The wealthy rider, however, was ignoring him.
"Did I say forty duranas?" the thief asked humbly. "Sir, what I meant to say was thirty. Have you ever seen its like? These white camels are rare, good sir. . . ."
No response.
And Arpid could barely pull the stubborn creature any farther.
He yelled to his potential customer: "Why, at that price, this camel is practically stolen!"
No sale.
"Come on, you fleabag," Arpid said to Hanna, yanking on the camel's reins, doing his best to make her move.
But Hanna's only response was to bellow'—a loud, indignant, honking cry ...
... that echoed across the harsh landscape to where the Akkadian and his beautiful hostage trudged along, in their bedouin garb.
"Stop," Mathayus told her, raising a hand.
She obeyed.
The assassin listened, and the wind carried him a familiar snort; then another....
He grinned. 'That's my camel, all right."
"What?"
"Quiet..." And the Akkadian lifted two fingers to his lips and let go with a loud, firm, distinctive whistle.
And, a distance away, Hanna—paying the pleas and tugs of the horse thief no mind—snapped her head around, ears perking at the familiar sound-
"What... ?" Arpid shook his head. "What is it now, you mangy ... hey!"
The camel had tugged back on those reins, and now the little thief was yanked off his feet as the camel sprinted off, heeding her master's summons.
Before long, Mathayus—who had been waiting patiently, hands on his hips—grinned wide as his beloved camel came pounding over the nearest rise. The creature was dragging something, or—someone .. . Mathayus squinted, to see through the sand dust his camel was stirring... ah! The horse thief, Arpid, was being hauled rudely along by the reins.
The camel came to a stop at his master's side, and the Akkadian reached up and scratched the animal's neck.
"Good girl," the Akkadian said. He glanced back at Cassandra. "You see? She knows how to behave."
The sorceress folded her arms and glowered at him, then turned her gaze away, in disgust.