Casca 13: The Assassin (11 page)

He was not prepared for the exploding storm that came out of the darkness at him.
Not prepared for the stream of Arabic profanity that poured from the folds of the veil that hid all her face but the hate-slit eyes. "Her" because she was wearing a black burnoose that gaped open showing that she was totally naked underneath and in the moonlight and lamplight it was obvious that she definitely had the other proper equipment to go with the breasts.

"Scream" because the oaths were coming so fast Casca could not keep up with them, particularly the ones he had never heard before, which surprised him to no end since he had not lived the gentlest of lives.

But he was prepared for the pearl-handled dagger.

Maybe it was the lesson learned from the whore who had originally carved the scar on his face, but Casca invariably made it his practice when around whores or ones who might be whores
to watch out for the knife. They came in all shapes and sizes, and women could hide them in the damnedest places. So he caught the striking wrist as soon as the steel glinted in the lamplight. .

There was one surprise, though. This woman held the knife in a way he had never seen before, as an almost straight extension of the arm, butt cradled far back in the palm of the hand, almost to the
wrist, and two fingers resting on top of and extending out over the top of the blade. Hell of a damn way to hold a knife.

Then he got an even greater surprise and promptly lost all interest whatever in the way this woman held a knife. When he caught the wrist he had pushed it up, and since she was coming at him at the time, that threw her up against him, breasts pressed against his robe, belly touching his clothes also. And that close, he could smell her.

Jasmine!

He suddenly remembered his last conversation with Omar Khayyam. He knew of this woman. She had been present when Bu Ali set him up. And her scent had given her away. Now he knew why his intuition had been so strong. This woman was not simply just
poison; she was the ultimate danger. It made no difference whether she was the Sultan's wife or a favored concubine. Hell! This was the Jasmine Lady who had so much power no one would say her name out loud.

He let go of the wrist, but not until he had twisted the knife out of her grasp. He kept the knife and pushed her away from him.
He said, "You better get your ass back to the palace before you get hurt."

That did it. She told him what she was going to do to him when she had the opportunity.

"You don't say." That made her even more furious, which took some doing since she was already just about as furious as a woman could get. "That is a creative way to do it, but I don't think I'm going to let you." He laughed, waiting to see if she would go completely out of control.

She surprised him. Suddenly she was cool.
Regal. She pulled the burnoose together and tied the sash that held it, her long, slim fingers working with deliberation. She looked him directly in the eyes and said, "My knife."

"Like hell."

"Very well." She turned her back on him, and without another word or another glance, walked slowly down the dark street in the direction of the palace.

That decided the Bu Ali matter, of course. He would have to take care of it tonight. He found a good alley to watch the cafe, hunkered down in the darkness, and waited.
A long time. Casca guessed Bu Ali was smoking hashish in the cafe, Despite the overpowering odor of the town Casca thought he caught an occasional whiff of the delightful stuff.

Sometime toward the end of the first watch
– by the Hebrew reckoning – Bu Ali came out of the café, He was not alone. There was a young boy with him.

Casca was too far from the caf
e door to hear what they said to each other; but the young boy went one way down the street, and Bu Ali, after watching the boy go into the darkness, turned and went the other way, toward the palace.

"
Bu Ali!"

Casca's scimitar was free of its scabbard, and he had already stepped into the street when he issued the challenge.

Bu Ali turned, saw Casca, was momentarily shocked at what he saw and thought to himself, The sneaky Frank must have held onto a branch on the side of the Bottomless Pit when he fell in, then drew his own scimitar, and advanced to meet Casca' s attack without saying a word. In fact his return was so swift that it became an attack of its own, and it was Casca who had to parry.

Cut.

Thrust.

Parry.

Thrust.

Cut.

They fought in the dappled darkness of the street where the only light was that of the moon and the only sounds the clash of steel on steel, their labored breathing and the shuffling of their feet on the ancient stone pavement.

Cut.

Thrust.

Parry.

Casca had fought many a man in the centuries since the Jew had damned him. Never though, had he met a man quicker with the blade, faster with the footwork, more adept at every usage of the scimitar. Bu Ali seemed to anticipate every thrust every cut. It was almost as though he could read Casca's mind before Casca could himself. Casca was shocked. He had known the big-assed Mameluke was good, but he had never even considered that he might be this good. The realization was coming to Casca very rapidly that Bu Ali not only was as good as he was – Bu Ali was a damn sight better. Instead of wasting the big Mameluke and getting this over with. it looked like it was going to go the other way.
I don't stand a chance with him in a fair fight
.

A fair fight, though, was not the point. The point was taking out Bu Ali. Casca gave ground, desperately trying to come up with some way to overcome Bu Ali's advantage. By now he was sweating. And by now Bu Ali was forcing him ever closer to the paIace grounds. Soon the sound of their swordplay would reach the guards.

Have to do something about this... damn quick...

The ropes came from nowhere.

Behind him. Beside him. Above him. It was all confused in his mind. All he knew was that he was suddenly entangled, like a fly in a spider web, and Bu Ali was readying his scimitar to end it all.

"No!"

Bu Ali stopped in mid-motion as though he were frozen into marble. "Yes, my lady."

Casca saw her then. This time she was in a dark purple burnoose of cloth of Chin or some similar material.

In the moonlight the touch of color was like that of the best steel. And she wore a matching dark purple mask. The jasmine smell was now so strong that he could smell it even from where he was standing. Bu Ali moved, bowed deeply before her, and on rising said, "My compliments to your guards, my lady. I will now take this dog to–"

"No, you will not. You will be rewarded for this night's work.
Richly rewarded. But, as for this one–" She did not finish the sentence, but merely said to the big eunuch beside her: "You know where to take him."

Even if he had wanted to resist, Casca never got the chance. One of the eunuchs calmly brained him with something very hard and very heavy...

He was in the seraglio now, strapped to two tables, stripped naked. One table was at a convenient working height for the women with the knives. His legs were stretched out on this
one, feet bound down on either side to spread apart the area of concern. The second table was propped against the wall at an angle, the upper part of his body bound to it. His head was free to move so that he could see what was going on. His mouth was free of any gag – so that he could scream.

There was an enormous amount of light in the seraglio, lamps everywhere,
even great torches flaming dangerously close to the cloth wall hangings.

Silence.
The women – here were no eunuchs present – were waiting for something:

Or someone...

Silence.

Whoever they were waiting for had to be pretty important.
Or...
Are they doing this to make it worse on me? Give me time to imagine the worst?

But Casca already knew the worst... He remembered the Quadii in the northlands... the freed women slaves... and what they had done to the men who had raped them.

But at least those women had a reasonable excuse. He got the idea that the ones that would be going after him would be sick, because there were only three of them at the table with the knives. The rest of the harem was standing back, quite a ways back, and from the look on their faces most of them did not want to be there. They had tightened the muscles around their mouths in that implication of extreme disgust that only a woman can express. And one, the little slave girl, Ruth, whom Casca had seen trying to escape, was being forcibly held by a tough old bitch.

They were all fuIly-clothed. Except for the three at the table with the knives, there was not the slightest suggestion that this crowd of women existed only as sex mac
hines for the Sultan. Nor did this particular room have sexual overtones. It was a large room, very tastefully decorated. There was much use of skillfully carved wooden pillars, excellent and expensive wall hangings, a beautiful tile floor, and intricate wooden panels on the ceiling. In comparison with Hassan al Sabah's "Paradise" – which looked like a brothel this "private brothel" looked more like an anteroom to Paradise itself.

Except, hell! Casca knew it was not going to be Paradise for him, not after the three with the knives came after him. He wondered which of the three
was the Jasmine Lady, but he had no way of knowing.

These three were clothed differently from the other women. Each wore only a single filmy, gown
-like garment woven of such thin threads that the cloth was almost transparent – or maybe seemed so because it clung so closely to their bodies. The curves ... the hard tits ... the triangular bush ... These did shout sex! But it was unpleasant sex, twisted, dark sex, though the gowns themselves were white. Like priestesses in some diseased cult... Sweat was beginning to form on Casca's face, and not just from the heat of all the burning lamps and torches, either. There was something perverse and sick going on here. The cloth that covered the table, for instance. White cloth of Chin. Incredibly expensive. For a torture room?

And the charcoal braziers that heated the pots of boiling oil. One was gold.
Another silver. Anyone throwing wealth around that way had to have something wrong with him. Casca had lived long enough in this world to know that, when you got right down to it, it was ultimately riches that made a man respectable.

A pervert who didn't respect gold ... Shit! He could expect the worst. It must be
the Sultan himself they were waiting for.

There were two great, carved wooden doors at the far end of the room. These now opened, swinging back to the other side, and through them walked someone in a scarlet burnoose, wearing a black mask of cloth of Chin and black leather boots. The person was flanked by two Nubian slave
eunuchs who carried no weapons. Their skin was oiled until it shone, and they each wore only a black loincloth. If this one in the scarlet burnoose was the Sultan, he sure as hell had kinky tastes – and the Jasmine Lady Casca had seen in the streets must be very, very close to him; it was his clothing she had copied.

The one in the scarlet burnoose stopped just short of Casca and the three women. The two Nubian eunuchs stepped forward loosened the burnoose, pulled it back, and slipped it from the shoulders of the one in the mask. The slaves bowed in deep abjection, turned and marched back through the doors which were then closed and barred. The sound of the heavy wooden bar falling in place echoed like very distant thunder in the room, and the one who had just come in now walked to the table, selected a knife, and approached Casca.

It was not, of course, the Sultan, but a nude woman who smelled of jasmine. She leaned across the bound Casca, the tips of her breasts brushing provocatively against the hair of his chest, and tested the ropes that held him to the table. Then she took the knife, holding it in the odd way she had in the street, and carved a single Arabic letter on the flesh of his forearm.

"So...
" she said. "We begin... "

What they did to him he tried to erase from his mind, and after the pain had become totally unbearable it seemed that he had no mind left. There was only pain. And his screams.
All the years of conditioning as a soldier, all the courage to bear pain, all that went for naught. And they deliberately prolonged his agony, working slowly... slowly... slowly.

There came a time when the pain bad become so great that it went beyond feeling. He no longer felt it. The
nerves bad been shocked beyond their endurance... or... that strange healing power in his body was in balance with what they were doing to him.

The four women had overreached themselves. In their desire to make him suffer the greatest length of time they had unwittingly slowed their torture to the point that his healing power was taking over. Besides, it was obvious that the three women in the white gowns were turned on sexually by his suffering, and they were taking every opportunity now to bump into each other, to rub close to each other. They wanted sex with one another.

The Jasmine Lady, though, was not so easy to decipher. It was his body she rubbed her naked flesh against, not the three other women. In fact, she kept a distance between herself and them. From time to time she amused herself by leaning over him and cutting more letters in his bloody forearm. So far he could make out no word that made sense, but each time she leaned across him those pendulous breasts, the nipples puckered and hardened, came closer and closer to him, once even brushing across his lips as he lay screaming.

Now, with the pain no longer blinding his mind, he did not have to scream, but he continued to do so while something formed slowly in his mind. Something
– it was not yet a plan. But the healing power was bringing his thinking back into play.

There was no hope that the other women in the harem might help, though most of them plainly found what the gang of four were doing so repulsive that they refused to watch. Early on the young slave, Ruth, had thrown up. Later some of the harem women followed suit.

What was strange was the silence. Except for his screams there was no human sound. When he slowed his screams and made them sound as if he were getting weaker and weaker, he could hear the breathing of the women with the knives; could, it seemed, even hear the faint whisper of sound the burning torches on the wall made.

The Jasmine Lady bent over him again, and suddenly he had the plan...
Casca waited for his chance. The next time she came over him, breasts hanging mockingly just above his face, the gleaming knife in her right hand catching the light, razor-sharp edge held in that flat, odd way that made the knife seem an extension of her hand – or the single deadly steel claw of a beast – he tried to gauge the angles involved, to time the right moment to act. But the effort was almost more than he could manage. By now the pain, though beyond actual feeling, was in some dark region of his brain affecting his thinking and vision. He felt that he was going mad. He fought the silent storm in his brain, knowing that he might be just seconds from unconsciousness.

Then...
She halted her movement. To taunt him.

Casca lunged.

Threw his head upward all that he could move. He had only inches to work with, but that was enough; the end of her pendulous breast was in his wide-stretched mouth. Immediately he bit down, bit with all his strength. She screamed. Blood spurted, momentarily blinding his left eye. This close he had no depth perception with the single eye, so he had to guess for the timing of the strike with his fingers as her wrist with the knife jerked down. He was off.

Only by a little, but off.
Desperately he curled his fingertips inward, felt the sharp edge of the knife, and, though he cut as much of his own flesh as he did the silk rope when he forced the blade back, he made the slash. He was now free from the forearm to the fingers.

Immediately he swept his arm in the only arc possible to him, hoping that his fingers would reach the burning lamp. They did.
With room to spare. The lamp upset. The hot oil it had held flamed up, lighted by the wick, and the burning oil fired the cloth of Chin on the table where he was bound.

Now, if he could only ignite his ropes...

Clawing with his fingers on the returning sweep of his arm, he did manage to grab the burning cloth and jerk it toward him. He did not wait to see if the oil that spilled on the ropes would burn them through.

He
had other things to do. Just as his arm made the return arc, he released the bloody bit of her breast and at the same time got her wrist with his fingers. He had correctly guessed that she would jerk back, and with a rolling motion of his finger grip, he broke the knife free from her grasp and had it in his hand.

The oil was burning. Marching fingers of flame were circling his body, and where they touched the ropes, the ropes themselves caught fire.

Though he had the knife, he could not use it to get at the ropes that held his elbows. And at that moment one of the women bending over his penis dropped her knife. The point cut into his scrotum. The temporary numbness in his mind was overthrown, and he screamed with unbearable pain. Yet he could still use the knife on the other wrist.

He swept the blade across his body cutting the wrist ropes and immediately reached up with both hands
, plunging the knife into her unhurt breast. When she grabbed for the breast, with almost a continuation of his movement, he caught both of her wrists and pulled down with all his might.

The leverage was difficult, but her involuntary movement down helped somewhat. He managed to pull her part-way across his chest, far enough so that he could force her mask into the fire. The flaming oil caught the black cloth of Chin mask immediately. The face was ablaze.
Then her hair. She ran shrieking around the room.

Casca strained at the ropes. They were breaking but taking, it seemed, an eternity. The flimsy clothing of the three women at the table was now ablaze
, and the women were screaming. One rushed toward the window. Another, blinded by the flames, rushed straight into the wall. The collision of her burning body with the wall hangings set that material afire. In seconds the whole room was aflame, and now the women who watched were also screaming.

The screams of the women brought the eunuchs.

Casca was not yet free, and he could see the head eunuch coming for him, a huge scimitar in his hands. But be could also see the set, determined face of the little Jewish slave girl. Ruth. He could see her push over the huge amphora of oil so that it spilled into the path of the eunuch. The eunuch slipped, and the scimitar fell from his grasp and hit the tile floor, its clatter lost in the rising screams of the harem women.

But Casca was now free. He tried to get over the edge of the table, but pain and weakness held him back. He, too, was afire
, the ropes that clung to his bloody flesh, the oil spilled on him, both burning.

"Please
, help me!"

The little Jewish girl was calling to him for help.

The third harem torturer, though dress afire was heading toward her, dagger in hand. Casca yanked the knife from the breast of the screaming Jasmine Lady and threw it. The blade turned over twice in the air, and then the point buried itself into the back of the neck of the woman, and she pitched forward, falling just short of the young girl.

The effort gave Casca a second burst of strength.
He managed to get off the table and get the scimitar.

But he was still bent over when the second eunuch was upon him, swinging a sword. Casca pulled the scimitar upward in a sweeping circle, somewhat ragged because of his weakness, and slit the eunuch's throat. Not expertly, but it did the job. Then he slashed the first eunuch across the face and saw blood, and then saw the nose disappear.

He was losing consciousness, and his eyesight was going, coming back only in short, blurred bursts. He had a vague image of eunuchs with swords slipping in the blood and oil and tangling in a burning, twisting heap as the oil caught fire and blazed up, but it may have been only a wish, a dream.

All dreams.

He was gone now.

"Come, stranger. Come. There is a secret way out."

This dream, this voice seeming to sound in his brain, was even stronger than the others. He could even imagine a touch – that he was holding the hand of Ruth the young slave girl.

But, again, he had slipped into darkness.

Still, ragged pieces of dreams, like ravenous birds, bit at his mind. None of them made sense. There were moments when he had images of cold stone walls. Of dampness. A tunnel? None of it mattered, it was only the breaking up of a dying man's brain. Then there were no dream pieces.

Only blackness.
The strangest dream of all. No images. Only words. He heard Ruth callout the name Miriam.

Then another voice.
Miriam the whore? "We'll have to carry him."