The Damiano Series (96 page)

Raphael cleared his throat. “I see…

“A shop with a brass cup hanging out in front. Another with a wheat sheaf (very dry) impaled above the door. I see a man in trousers striped with red.”

“Keep walking as you talk.”

Raphael strived to obey. “I see a crack of the sun, along that cross street. Shall we take it?”

“The sun or the cross street?” countered Djoura. They giggled together—again.

“Now the sun is gone again. I see an ass pulling a cart of sand— get over to the side, here. And I see three women with very large bottles.

“Children. More women. A black man in the doorway, with green-striped trousers.”

Djoura had to sneak a glance. “A eunuch,” she announced, flat-voiced. “Nothing to me.”

“Now the sun. Another ass. Watch the man lying in the street.”

“Drunk.” Djoura stepped carefully around.

“Two more asses. A man on a horse.” Raphael was panting with the effort it took to speak while picking their way along a street where every house was vomiting forth its inhabitants.

The street DID continue to turn left. It seemed to be a circle. What use was it to travel in a circle like this? And why would anyone build a circular street?

Raphael was about to suggest they turn at the very next cross street, and go right, toward the outside of the circle. Instead he stopped dead.

“I think you should raise your eyes, dear one,” he whispered.

Djoura lifted her eyes toward the odd-dozen black-robed men on their little desert horses who were sweeping arrogantly along the street, sending men, women, and the tiny donkeys fleeing toward doorways.

In front of them came a small fellow, mounted bareback on a horse he was having difficulty managing. Djoura recognized him at the same moment he recognized her, and she saw him pointing and heard him say, “That is her. The black infidel who worshipped the moon before my eyes!”

But Hasiim the Berber did not need such identification. He spurred his mare forward.

Raphael was watching the man come, followed by a mass of pounding hooves which could smash human flesh into the clay of the road. Had Djoura not snatched him by the hand, he might have stood there until overtaken, for he had no experience in running away from things.

Nor was running a very useful endeavor, for the horses were faster than any barefoot man, let alone a woman wrapped in heavy skirts. But Djoura slipped around a corner of the street and pulled him into a doorless entryway.

“Fly-caked pigshit!” she hissed violently. “Infidel, am I? Well, this infidel is going to spit him like a fish!”

Raphael heard horses racketing toward the narrow corner. One came through. Another tripped—slammed the sun-baked wall. A man screamed and the beast went down.

Toward them danced an hysterical Arab horse, with its light bit clenched firmly in its teeth. It tossed its head while the small citizen of Granada bounced unhappily up and down on the animal's withers. His right hand held a cavalry scimitar out in the air, where it wobbled dangerously. His left was caught in the horse's mane. He did not look at the fugitives at all.

Without hesitation Djoura struck, pulling man from mount and the sword from the hapless fellow's grasp. The freed horse bolted forward along the alley, leaving the shouts and screams of the inhabitants in its wake. The disarmed warrior crumbled into a ball before Djoura, also screaming. She lifted the scimitar above her head, then stopped still, an expression of disgust on her face. Finally she kicked the fellow out of the way.

Raphael stood next to Djoura, watching the struggling mass of fallen horses and riders which blocked the alley entrance. One animal urinated in its panic: the air grew sour.

In the sunlit street a small white mare whirled. The black robes of her rider billowed as she was spurred toward the congested corner. Then lifting into the air like a deer she leaped the whole mass and came down perfectly balanced in the alleyway only fifteen feet from Djoura.

Hasiim reined his mare expertly and her hind feet pulled under her. Dropping the reins along the mare's neck, he lifted his sword in a practiced hand.

Djoura hefted hers like a club.

The white mare sprang forward. At that same moment Raphael stepped out into the alley between Hasiim and Djoura. He raised his empty hand toward the beast. “Dami!” he cried. “Old friend, help us! Help us if you are near. If you can. Remember the horses in the pass of Aosta!”

There was nothing to see. No shadow more nor less haunted the alley. Raphael's hope shrank and he chided himself for expecting too much of a friend who had, after all, passed beyond earth's turmoils.

But the horse—Hasiim's war mare—stopped dead in her tracks. Hasiim was slammed hard against her neck. She lowered her head. Nickered softly.

In the moment of the Berber's amazement, Raphael was up behind him. He took Hasiim's sword arm in both of his and struck it against the alley wall.

Hasiim cursed his mare's infidelity. He cursed enchantments. He dropped the sword.

Raphael took it in both hands and was off.

Outside the alleyway and in the wider street beyond, the desert horses stood locked in a pleasant dream. Neither spur nor quirt led to more than a fly switch of the tail. The horses who had fallen now climbed to their feet and stood together, completely blocking the entryway.

The townspeople of Granada remained where the onslaught of the fursan had driven them, watching from windows or huddled in black doorways, and what emotions this humiliation of the Berber cavalry raised in their several Muslim or Christian breasts were theirs to cherish.

Raphael passed the sword from one hand to the other, until suddenly its weight settled in his grip and he knew what to do with it.

THERE WERE FOUR OF US: MICHAEL, GABRIEL, URIEL, AND MYSELF. WE DROVE HIM OUT—HIM AND ALL HE HAD DELUDED TO STAND WITH HIM.

Raphael darted back to Djoura, and their two swords faced the light.

“What was that?” hissed the woman. “What happened to his horse?”

Raphael opened his mouth, but hardly knew what to say. “A… deed is redeemed: a deed done years ago, in the high mountains of the north. It is my friend who has helped us—he of whom I told you. The pebble.”

“The pebble?” Djoura's startled eyes shifted from the danger ahead to the strange fellow beside her.

“Off your horses!” Hasiim spoke in the hill Arabic of Morocco. (Down the darkened alley Djoura heard him and cursed in the same tongue.) “Off your horses and after me!”

A more slender shape appeared among the equine silhouettes blocking the corner. One man squeezed through. Another.

With no other coign but a bolted doorway from which to fight and over a dozen swordsmen slipping toward them, the fair man and the black woman turned together and fled down the alley.

It was dank: the cobbles both slippery and odorous. Djoura ran with a focused, arrowlike urgency, like a person who knows refuge is just ahead. Raphael followed her in similar fashion, not because he believed there was such a refuge (no, he knew it was only Djoura's unquenchable confidence which led them) but because he did not want to lose her. The woman's dusty black skirts were hiked, and her scimitar bobbed in her hand. This weapon scattered once more the mothers, children, and men without employment who frequented the alley. Again shrieks and bellows.

The fugitives passed the small man's horse, the runaway, as it was being led by eager dirty hands through a doorway of clay daub toward some illicit fate. The sound of foot pursuit echoed behind them, giving wings to their own steps.

Then they were out in the morning sun again: first Djoura, whose clothes drank the brilliance and gave nothing back, but whose head flashed with coins, then Raphael, wound—no, tangled—in shawls over his striped household trousers, his fair hair flying like a horse's mane. Their eyes watered in the light and before them rose a wall: the north wall of the city of Granada.

It was impossibly high, and here and there the poor had built mud-wasp huts of clay against it, narrowing the street to a mere donkey track. Djoura turned to the left and as she bolted forward she shrieked, “The gate! We must find the gate!”

Raphael's breath rasped in his throat. He felt his nose bleeding again. He pressed behind Djoura through a blockade of dirty children, while a dog with pointed ears and a curling tail barked sharply at the confusion.

Was that a gate ahead, round arched and trimmed with tile? It was: the north gate of the city, as high as a house, and the wall around it was ornamented with lapis cut into the words of the Koran. Djoura sprang toward it and stopped, for in its shadow were framed five swordsmen, with the Qa'id Hasiim in the front.

Raphael crashed into Djoura from behind. He put one arm around her shoulder and glanced about them.

On their right the city wall, far too high to climb. On their left, a potter's shed. The street was Uttered with clay pots and with broken fragments of clay.

What had this wild flight gained them, besides burned lungs and a head full of panic? No matter. Djoura was not about to flee again. She backed against the white wall, where a buttress stood out a few feet. There she was as obvious as a fly on sugar, but there was no longer hope of hiding. Shouts from left and right told her she was surrounded by her enemy.

But then was there anyone on earth who was not Djoura's enemy? Not the people of her home, anymore, nor the Spanish giaour who stared at her now from buzzing clumps in the street. Only Pinkie— Raphael—with his weak skin and strange eyes as blue as a blind man's, who stood by her now, back to back, with his scimitar fluttering in his hands lightly as a bird. She pressed against him.

Hasiim's men erupted into the sun and when they spied their quarry at bay they gave out a noise like hounds. They came with the fury and undiscipline of men who are not used to fighting on foot.

And they slid to a confused halt, for there was no flaw or opening in the defense of the blond European who stood with back against the chiseled wall. And the black woman beside him, with her weapon held up rigidly like a headsman's sword… All knew she was mad, and in league with spirits besides, but who knew what strange arts she possessed to do harm?

Hasiim then came forward, for he was a pure Muslim and without superstition, and he had a wealth of injured pride to avenge. He glanced from Raphael (with only professional interest) to the black Berber. He was armed once more.

Raphael shifted his balance so that he faced Hasiim and stood silently to the front of Djoura. He caught the warrior's eyes with his own and held them. Djoura, seeing that her Pinkie knew more of this business than she did, took one step back. Then Hasiim struck: a feint toward the black woman which ended as a stroke at Raphael's wrists.

He met steel, and the blond flexed his blade in a tiny circle. To Hasiim's immense surprise he felt his weapon loosen in his grasp. The scimitar hit the earth. Hasiim flung himself back.

To take a breath. To consider. To demand another scimitar from his milling followers.

Raphael did not drop his eyes from Hasiim's. He saw the Arab blink, shift from foot to foot, breathe a prayer to Allah.

HIM AND ALL HE HAD DELUDED TO STAND WITH HIM. Satan himself had given back before four angels. What hope had a mortal warrior, however skilled? Raphael looked at Hasiim and knew he could destroy the man. He stepped out from the buttress, his scimitar drifting like a leaf in the breeze.

The Berber's eyes widened. Raphael met those eyes.

And Raphael was lost.

This man was not Satan nor had he been bought by him. He was a stubborn and prideful mortal—a man not to Raphael's taste. A dangerous man. But Raphael gazed at Hasiim and felt a peculiar painful pity.

This hesitation gave Hasiim—who felt no similar emotion while glaring at Raphael—time to strike another sweeping cross-hand blow. Raphael countered, but did not press the advantage.

With a strident ululation, another tribesman stood beside Hasiim, sword at the ready. In this man's face Raphael read plain fear, mastered by the desire to please his commander. This second warrior slashed fiercely at Djoura, who raised her blade against the attack. But the swordsman feinted away and licked in beneath the woman's awkward guard.

Raphael snapped the man's blade in two. Djoura opened his face.

Hasiim, losing patience, shoved his subordinate aside and rushed his opponent as though he himself were still on horseback, slashing in even diagonals as he came. Raphael flung himself down on one knee before Djoura and his scimitar flashed broadside, clashing against Hasiim's weapon. Then he spring up again and knocked the qa'id backward before he could disengage. Taking the swordsman's wrist in his own, he twisted the hilt of the weapon, trying to pull it from Hasiim's grasp.

They fell and struggled, breath hissing into one another's face. Next to Raphael's head a sword struck the ground and sparked. Hasiim's eyes shifted. He cried a few words in his Berber dialect and the attack was not repeated.

Only a few inches above Hasiim's face hung that of Raphael. It was pale under its sunburn, bearing no sign of anger or outrage, but rather the sad concentration of a tutor with a very slow pupil. And from Raphael's neck dangled, like some rough piece of jewelry, the iron slave collar. Hasiim grabbed it in one hand, while the other hand dropped his blade and fixed itself against Raphael's neck. With one hand he pulled, while the other pushed, crushing.

Arching back, the blond put his knee against Hasiim's chest, while he worked his two arms between his opponent's stranglehold. He made no effort to use his sword against Hasiim. His breath came in a choking hiss. His vision sparkled.

He broke the hold.

Raphael stood above the fallen Hasiim, who looked up with fanatic indifference, expecting death. He did nothing, but his sword twitched like a cat's tail, warning off the fursan who had witnessed this crude duel.

A voice was calling out to Raphael: He didn't understand at first. “Drop your sword, giaour. Look up and drop your sword.”