Powerful as he was, Mathayus always felt the strain drawing back the taut bowstring—though the weapon was all but a part of him, its use remained a challenge. And when he finally released the bowstring, the arrow seemed to burn through the night, with an impossible power and swiftness ... trailing its catgut tether.
A good quarter mile away, the arrow struck deep, embedding itself firmly in the thickness of a wooden lodge pole. Mathayus's smile was tight as he gazed across the encampment, the tether now bisecting the tent city from this dune to that distant pole. It cut past the sentry platform, just above and to one side of it... but the bored guard had not noticed, at least not yet.
Soon the Akkadian was tying his end of the tether line onto the pommel of his saddle. Slipping the bola over the tied tether—making a decent handgrip of its two iron balls—he nudged the camel to attention. No argument this time, as Hanna pushed to her feet.
Mathayus tested the line, to see if the tether ... and the camel. .. could take his weight. Hanna groaned in protest, but he gave her a hard look— now and then, he had to remind the beast who was boss.
"Stay," he said, firmly, and the animal and the man locked eyes.
And the beast nodded, or seemed to ... and that was good enough for the Akkadian.
He backed up, and began to run and grabbed onto the iron bola balls and went gliding down the tether line, off the dune and over the sands and toward the encampment. Hanna was staying put, and this was easy ... almost fun ... and the Akkadian risked holding on with one hand, to remove from his waistband his hatchetlike kama.
When he swooped past that sentry platform, Mathayus wielded the nonlethal side of the kama, using it like a war club, whacking the guard across the shoulders, knocking the man off his post, sending him spinning head over heels into the darkness, to either unconsciousness or death.
A few minutes prior, elsewhere in the encampment, two of Memnon's most lovingly sadistic torturers—a pair of fat, greasy, bearded, sweaty brutes as interchangeable as a right and left sandal—were heating up a poker in the coals of a campfire. Looking on with considerable interest was a skinny little weasel of a man, his leathers shabby, his face wis-pily bearded; his name was Arpid, and at the moment his world was turned upside down.
Literally.
For Arpid—a thief by trade, a horse thief by specialty—was suspended over the fire, his head so near the flames his scraggly hair was getting singed. Tied by the ankles and hanging from a post like an overripe fruit, Arpid watched from his upended perspective as one of the fat torturers withdrew the poker and displayed its glowing orange tip to his colleague.
Both of the fat brutes gazed lovingly at the fiery tip of the poker. To some men, work is but a job; to these two, imparting affliction was a calling.
They seemed a bit surprised, when a deep, imperial voice emanated from the dangling horse thief. "Stop! You must stop and heed my words—I am a high priest of Set!"
The torturers exchanged expressions of raised eyebrows and crinkled-chin consideration.
"Spare me," the suspended man intoned, "and the gods shall rain fortune upon thee, for all the rest of thy days!"
Now the torturers laughed, and the one with the poker began to raise its fiery tip toward the bare soles of the skinny man's bound-at-the-ankles feet.
Panic shook the skinny swinging frame, and an entirely different voice emerged from the victim, a reedy, whiny thing: "Please! No! Stop! Wait! I was not stealing that horse. I swear ... I was just doing the decent thing."
Now the torturers traded wide-eyed looks; "decent," was it?
"I was just moving that poor animal into the shade," the skinny prisoner avowed. "It was so very hot that day ..."
"Not as hot as tonight," the torturer with the poker pointed out.
As Arpid closed his eyes and waited for the searing pain, an Akkadian assassin—sliding down into the camp on a tether tied to a camel—was nearing this tableau of torture. And Mathayus would have glided on by, had the camel called Hanna not decided, at that moment, that enough was enough. The strain of that tether and all that weight was simply too much stress to endure, even to please her master, and the albino camel sat down.
So did Mathayus—in a way. The tether suddenly slack, the Akkadian was tossed onto the sand, in a rude pile, landing—as an impish fate would have it—right alongside those two fat greasy torturers, who paused prior to burning Arpid's bare feet just long enough to look at Mathayus in amazement.
Their surprise quickly turned to fury, and now both torturers had red-hot pokers in their hands, raised and ready to charge the intruder.
The intruder was having none of that. Mathayus whipped his scimitar from its sheath and dispatched both brutes, who were dead and draining their blood into the sand with nary a cry of alarm from either set of slobbering lips.
The dangling horse thief—the slashing sounds had pried open his eyes—gazed at his upside-down savior with adoring appreciation.
"Thank you, kind sir!" he burbled.
Mathayus glanced at the skinny creature hanging over the flames like a pig being roasted—a scrawny one.
Arpid thanked his rescuer profusely, babbling, "For the mercy you have shown me, the gods shall rain fortune on you for—"
"Quiet," Mathayus said, and elbowed the man in the face, knocking him out cold—or perhaps warm, considering the flames licking up at the thief's hair.
With the tether hopelessly slack, Mathayus abandoned it and slipped into the darkness, heading for the point of rendezvous; soon, deep within the encampment, he had hooked up with his two fellow Akkadians. The trio stood within the shadows and studied a corridor of sorts, between rows of tents.
"That one," Mathayus whispered, and pointed.
The other two saw immediately why Mathayus had singled out this particular tent—this shelter was unlike any other in this camp, and different from any these Akkadians had ever seen. A dome-shaped patchwork of hides, the good-size tent was decorated with symbols of astrology and ideograms of the occult.
Clearly the home of a sorcerer...
They moved stealthily across the open area between tent rows, the only sound the soft snick as they drew their knives, as they closed in quickly on the sorcerer's tent. As they dropped back into shadows, Mathayus's eyes were everywhere, taking in even the rustle of a tent flap, stirred by the night breeze .. .
... revealing the feet of dozens of guardsmen lying in wait!
"Back," Mathayus whispered, halting, arms spread, as he realized the trap they had walked into.
And the other Akkadians stopped short, as well; but it was too late to retreat.
A flap running the length of the domelike tent snapped suddenly open—exposing a dozen archers who instantly let fly their arrows. At almost the same moment, a similar flap along a tent on the opposite side of the corridor snapped open and yanked upward and a dozen more archers were sending arrows their way, catching the Akkadians in a deadly cross fire.
Mathayus had the reflexes of youth on his side, and he leaped up, grasping the overhang of a large tent, flipping onto its tarpaulin roof, arrows flying just beneath him, barely missing him ...
... but not missing his two brother Akkadians, cutting them down.
And Mathayus could only stare down in horror as his companions were overwhelmed by the arrows. No help he could give would save them now . .. they were lost... and he could only surge forward, scampering like a cub across the sagging top of the tent.
So swift had Mathayus's action been, taking himself up and out of harm's way, the soldiers below— moving out from their hiding place into that open area—had not seen his escape. It was as if the third Akkadian had simply disappeared; they searched among the tents, not realizing the tall assassin was high above them, clinging to the very crest of the sorcerer's dome.