Takmet shrugged. "My father was a forgetful old fool."
The words chilled Mathayus ... one word, anyway: was.
"He deserved no better from the son he slighted." The slender heir to the throne of Ur turned to the warlord. "The old man paid for underestimating me ... he was terribly shocked. You can tell by the look on his face."
And Takmet dipped his hand into the leather pouch and withdrew the head of his father.
Indeed, the expression on King Pheron's face was one of surprise.
Sickened, Mathayus scowled at this excuse for a man, and the guards around, even Thorak himself, frowned; the sorceress turned away, not in womanly fright but in distaste. Only Lord Memnon seemed pleased . .. and darkly amused.
Brandishing the severed head high, clutching it by its gray hair, Takmet said, rather formally, "With my father's head, I pledge my allegiance!"
With a casual gesture, Memnon said, 'Takmet, your loyalty is proven.... You shall command my left wing, and serve as governor over Ur, after its capture."
Thorak, at Mathayus's side, frowned a little.
Perhaps glimpsing this, Memnon turned toward his second-in-command, saying, "And with Thorak leading my right wing, we shall lay waste to all who dare challenge our might."
Mathayus despised this creature who was Memnon, but even he knew the man had a charismatic way about him—the red-turbaned guards were hanging on the warlord's every word.
"And by the rise of the demon moon," the Great Teacher was saying, "my armies will sweep to the sea... and I will ascend the throne as the king of ancient legend, favored ruler of the gods.... Just as the prophecy decrees."
Across the smoky floor of the canvas-and-animal-hide chamber, Cassandra nodded her confirmation.
Then, a tent flew back, and—in a clatter of leather armor and steel weaponry—a pair of guards dragged in a prisoner.
Jesup.
Within him, Mathayus felt a wave of despair rise, seeing his brother, his fellow warrior, held by either arm, hauled in like a sack of grain, more dead than alive, body pockmarked with the red wounds of arrows. Barely conscious, the elder Akkadian managed to raise his head and look across the tent at Mathayus.
One of the guards at Jesup's side spoke: "As you can see, my lord, this one still lives."
"How interesting," Memnon said, strolling across the fog-draped floor, stopping to pick up one of Mathayus's knives, dropped in combat. "For a race that has all but disappeared from the earth, these Akkadians seem surprisingly difficult to kill."
Mathayus, gripped on either side by a guard, watched ruefully as the warlord examined the small throwing blade, an exquisite example of the Akkadian art of weapon-making.
"Beautiful," Memnon said, his admiration sincere, flipping the blade in his palm. "Bring the warrior to me. I wish to honor him."
Rage bursting within him, Mathayus surged forward, but the soldiers managed to hold back the caged lion. He watched helplessly as his brother was dragged across the smoky ground and brought before Memnon. Jesup's half-lidded eyes locked with those of Mathayus .. . and the elder's eyes opened bright and strong.
"Live free," Jesup said.
"Die well," Mathayus said, resignedly. "My brother.
And in one vicious if fluid move, the Great Teacher swept forward and slashed with the captured blade.
Mathayus had lived with death every day of his life; but the pain he felt, as that blade sliced open the elder Akkadian's throat, sent a madness, in both senses ... rage, insanity .. . searing through his brain, his being.
The brave Mathayus—unknowingly mirroring the reaction of the sorceress—could only turn away from the sight, feeling in the pit of his stomach as though that blade had just been buried there.
He did not see the sorceress experience her own wave of psychic pain. Cassandra's eyes squeezed tight shut, and she raised a hand to her head, as if testing for a fever—she sensed a deep rumbling, experienced the sound as if it had come from without, a resonant thunder, like the plates of the earth were shifting.
But when she opened her eyes, she could clearly see that no one else in the tent had heard or sensed this aural sensation, even as its echo reverberated in her mind, blotting out the voices of the men around her.
Much as she wished to avoid the sight of bloodshed, her eyes suddenly flew to Lord Memnon, who held in his hand the dagger dripping liquid rubies. What she saw no one else in the room beheld: Memnon's face was edged in silver—his head, ringed with a shimmering halo of light.
"Never have I used a blade so sharp as this," Memnon was saying, studying the knife. "I wonder if using it has dulled its edge ... if it will hold that edge, a second time ..."
And the Great Teacher stepped forward, raising the dagger, his eyes on Mathayus's throat.
Die well, Mathayus thought, and he quickly but thoroughly shifted his gaze from one man to the next—Thorak, Takmet, finally Memnon—and said through a smile, "I will see all of you again... in the underworld."
Memnon returned the smile. "Oh, but not for a very long time, Akkadian."
Now the warlord brandished the knife, preparing for a sideways slash across the prisoner's throat.
"Stop!"
The sorceress's voice was as sharp as the blade itself; all eyes turned toward her.
"Wait!" Her voice carried authority, as did her stance, chin up, beautiful eyes narrowed yet hard, glittering like dark precious jewels. "Mathayus shall not die tonight."
"If that is your prophecy," Memnon said, poised to slash, "perhaps I need a new occult adviser. ..."
And yet the warlord stayed his blade.
"Change your future," she said coolly, "if you wish."
Memnon looked quickly toward her.
"Should Mathayus die by your hand," she said, "or by any hand you command . .. misfortune will fall upon you. The gods are watching, my king."
The red-turbaned guards—these mighty warriors who had slain so many, and spilled so much blood— were cowed by the musical voice of this witch. Mathayus was almost amused by the awe and even fear on their faces. Memnon noticed this, too ... and the warlord knew, as his soldiers knew, that his battlefield successes had been advanced, in part at least, by the supernatural wisdom of this woman.
Memnon lowered the knife, but his eyes locked with those of his prisoner. "A puzzle, then ... how to kill you, without using my hand ... or any hand I command . .. What was it you said, Akkadian? Die well?"
Mathayus said nothing, but his gaze conveyed all the contempt he could muster.
The warlord responded with an air of mock concern. "Dying well, a noble death, that's important to you, eh? ... I will do my best to serve you."
Mathayus watched as Memnon turned, moving toward the sorceress, and the Akkadian did not see the blow coming, when Thorak swung his fist into the prisoner's jaw, knocking him not into the next world, but a dark mind-chamber of this one.
When the assassin came to, the sun was bright above—Mathayus had been unconscious for many hours, because the night had been replaced not by morning, but day—and he knew at once he was immobilized. His vision, low to the ground, took in a view of a gully of sand and rocks and the occasional sun-bleached skull, sticking up out of the desert floor.
Those skulls, disconcerting though they might be, were not the worst of it: surrounding him in the shallow pitlike gully were at least a dozen earthen hills, cones ranging from three to six feet in height, with openings at the top. Into and out of these portals scurried large insects—fire ants—scampering with the intensity of their well-focused existence.
And by now the Akkadian realized he was buried in the sand—up to his neck.