Part 1: The Black Horseman
Chapter 5: Children of the Poor

“Flocks of thirsty crows flew hither and thither.”
-Tale of Ten Princes, A.D. 1200

Ibis slashed through the far side of the tent with his saber and rushed into the intervening space. A scuffle, a kick, the crack of brain-filled skull striking a limestone flag, could all be heard. Then his talon like hand reached back into the tent and beckoned them forward.

Abd al-Latif felt useless, a burden, a leaf on the winds of insanity, as he clung to his strong donkey; strong, though it quivered nervously at the smell of death and the doings of men, one in the same he supposed. Little Ibrahm guided him with a sure hand. He felt a cold chill of shame trace the line of his spine upward from where his soft rear part sat the felt-cushioned saddle.

‘A boy leads me. A slave protects me. I lean for solace upon the back of a dumb brute beast! I have yet to make the pilgrimage. It is past time. I must quit this place—no, not like a whipped dog, but in a manner befitting physician. I must combat this terrible calamity and take word of its curse up out of Egypt.’

His stomach flipped as the smell of spilled wine gave way once again to the stench of the bazaar, overflowing as it was with every wretch from the many deserted villages of the countryside.

The saber of Ibis slashed twice and once again they were filing into a tent past the sprawled bodies of two ruffians that had seemingly had the misfortune of Ibis’ brief acquaintance.

‘My, I own quite a boy it seems. Might he ever wish to remain my servant. I must honor him somehow to keep him close and loyal. No, Father said—’

A deep accusatory voice snarled, “Black dog, you intrude upon my space!”

Ibrahm was leading him through the newly made flap in the rather ornate tent. A large black eunuch was holding a club in defense of a sparsely-bearded Berber, who stood to the right of Ibis. To his left stood a black Coptic priest and a Christian wench of Antioch, not very good looking, but young, sleek and fat, who the priest held by a leash attached to a throat collar.

The Berber glanced at Abd al-Latif and fat Awn al-Muzan crowding into the tent behind him. “Sires, I understand you wanting to provision yourself against the coming year. Mind you, whichever of you fine fellows whosoever purchases this fat girl must pay for the damage done my tent as well.”

As he cleared his throat to speak his head fell from his shoulders with a spurting swoosh and the huge eunuch was moaning and clutching at the mass of intestines spilling from his belly. The teeth of the priest were now rattling on the carpet and Abd al-Latif, stunned, found himself with a fat Christian girl draped across his knees.

Awn al-Muzan was now sitting his donkey abreast from him and pinching the plump rear-end of the pale-skinned women with red hair. “Imagine that Berber swindler threatening our purse, adopting that tone with us? Why he’s...a Berber! Good boy Ibis! That the Sultan misses you on execution day it is not doubted.”

The Fat One than patted the catatonic wench on her soft rear end and grinned at Abd al-Latif. “So you have a new love beast friend. If you grow weary, I should like first consideration…”

Ibis hissed, “Masters, she is recently brought in from Syria by her collar, and not for love or serving. The famine must not be raging up in Syria, otherwise she’d be pickling in Aleppo as we speak. Master Abd al-Latif, mind your soft parts. Master Awn al-Muzan, mind your girth in public. Sharp hooks will come for you—keep those Turkic bully boys of your’s close.”

The Fat One seemed taken aback, “Why, your concern is noble if indelicate Old Boy. I have leant my boys to my brother for his tour of the Delta. The Sultan is concerned with rumors of Frankish pirates there. My donkey boys here will keep a look out, and I shall mind my girth as you say.”

Awn al-Muzan then turned to Abd al-Latif as Ibis slashed open the far side of the tent and the donkey boys guided the beasts over the draining corpses. “Colleague, a sack of gold for your old boy, as soon as you are home safe with your host.”

Abd al-Latif was aghast at the idea in terms of his own security and the prospect of his coming pilgrimage without such a guard. He was feeling weak of will though. “I cannot let Ibis go, he being so dear. However, you may freely borrow him for any such errands as this in the future.”

The Fat One nodded thankfully to him, and Adb al-Latif thought he noted fear in his fat pig eyes for once since having first made his acquaintance some few years ago.

The next tent was a wretched hovel where a family huddled together for protection. They moaned in dread at the sides of their tent being opened. The old man groaned, “Oh mercy lords. Now the rascals will have us for dinner. How could you curse us so?”

‘How could we indeed?’

The next tent was empty.

The next tent was a brothel of sorts where, to his horror, Abd al-Latif saw the Secretary to the Vizier loving a small boy in the crudest fashion. A pimp looked on—a pimp Awn al-Muzan was, it seemed, on good terms with, for he diffused the situation with a staying hand to Ibis and a promise and words for the pimp even as Ibis destroyed the far side of the tent. “Ismail, official business; the rascals mean to eat me and off to the Commandant I am bound. Send me a note of restitution. Secretary…uhum… good day there.”

‘The nasty sodomite does not even permit his unholy attentions to slacken in our presence. A pox upon his unclean member!’

And so they were off, the crying and whining of the boy being so nastily attended to by the Secretary to the Vizier muffled first by cushions and further by the tent wall now thankfully behind them…

The next tent was a massive Turkish affair. Ibis hesitated as they all crowded behind him in the intervening space. Awn al-Muzan mused, “I have your sense Old Boy, that this is a tent best left un-entered.”

They looked to right and left and saw ruffians crowding upon an elder to one side and a child to the other, great swarms of vile creatures in human guise. The sight made Abd al-Latif swallow hard, and he quaked visibly—and to his everlasting shame—in his saddle. Taking note, Ibis made three deep cuts and then plunged into what smelled like a carnal house, worse even than the stench in the streets. The boys swiftly led them in upon the backs of their donkeys.

The air was thick with death and smoke.

The interior of the vast tent was dark except for some iron braziers normally used for heating the irons employed for branding slaves, but in this instance, used to smoke the hanging delicacies that dangled, spun, hung, twitched, and swung, from the ends of the slim silk ropes that were tied to the rafter poles. The tent itself was a Turkish yurt of the sort in which Mamluk war slaves were sold to the finest citizens as choice guards. Few indeed were the Mamluk warriors who were not sold en masse to the Sultan, and they came dear.

This tent, however, had been converted into a butcher’s tent. A dozen or so gutted corpses of poor children hung from the ankles, being smoked above the braziers. One child was being marked by a fat spike-bearded fellow as a shopkeeper would grade a water fowl for the market table. There was no time for musing though, or dwelling on the horrors of the smoky ember-lit tent as Ibis and a burly mailed Turk, who wore a turbaned helmet and wielded a broad tulwar and shield, were engaged in a battle that was so violent it was all but impossible to follow in the half light.

Steel sang its melancholy song.

The killers ground their teeth and grunted animal-like in the gloom.

The smoked corpses of children swung as the men and their weapons truck them.

The smoking braziers gave off a lurid red glow which illuminated the scene in such a hellish way that one might be forgiven for imagining that those damned by God for their unholy acts on earth might spend eternity battling so before the throne of Kismet below.

‘Where is Little Ibrahm?’

‘Oh no!’

The little Jew boy had snuck up behind Ibis and yanked his dagger from his girdle. This startled Ibis, who cursed and pitch backward over a brazier with the Turk slashing away with his terrible weapon.

‘What has—’

He was brought from his reverie by movement to his right. The large spike-bearded Turk was advancing on him with a dagger, meaning the fiendish meat-seller seemed bent on running him through where he sat his donkey.

‘Why not the Fat One? Why must I bet set upon so?’

Then three small forms converged on the spike-bearded man. The three donkey boys were wrestling him. Foremost among them was Little Ibrahm who was clinging to the man’s back by holding onto his beard with his one hand and stabbing him repeatedly in the chest and back with Ibis’s dagger held in the other hand.

Awn al-Muzan’s boys were both holding the man’s hands in theirs as they each tangled his legs with their own. And Little Ibrahm, his perky pet Jew, was stabbing this man to death—fountains of blood erupting from his neck and chest as the dagger stuck home again and again.

The Fat One hummed approvingly behind him and, just as Abd al-Latif was about to shout some encouragement, he heard Ibis groan and saw him crash over a heavy trunk which spilled baby skulls upon the carpet and another smoking brazier—the coals scattering all over the matted floor. The burly Turk, not nearly so tall, but broader and half his age, came lunging after him with sword raised high.

Ibis threw himself over the table that the fat spike-bearded Turk had been seated at, and grabbed it up as a weapon, his sword somehow gone in the gloom. Awn al-Muzan groaned in dismay as the Turk easily beat back the table with a kick and cleaved first one leg, and then the other leg, from the fine piece of cedar furniture. Ibis then heaved the remaining portion of the table high at the Turk’s head, who raised his shield and blade to block it. With uncommon speed the old Ethiopian warrior then spun and seized little Ibrahm, who was still maniacally stabbing the dying Turkish slaver.

As the Turk contemptuously knocked the table back over his head with his heavy spiked shield and broad–bladed sword, Ibis grabbed Ibrahm by the ankles and slung him, like a fisherman casting a net, at the Turk.

The tent was momentarily alive with the sounds that Abd al-Latif would forever associate in his mind with this most wretched day: the gurgling of the dying slaver, the sizzling of the coals catching fire to the carpet at their feet, the scurrying of the donkey boys, the bored batting of his donkey’s great lashed eye-lid as it brushed his hand, the snickering of Awn al-Muzan, the grunting groan of Uncle Ibis, the surly grunt of disdain from the Mamluk warrior in his heavy mail coat, and the startled squeal of Little Ibrahm, the bravest little Jew since David, having become a sling stone himself, sailing through the lurid smoke-filled gloom, alive with the swinging corpses of gutted smoked children—creaking so as they spun upon their knotted cords—headed directly for the face of the now slack-jawed warrior, his shield and sword uselessly held over his head in the last act of knocking aside the hurled table…

‘Oh Mother, I fear one of your wolf jinn lay dormant across my lonely lap. Please preserve me against the weirdness of women as well as the evil of men!’