“I saw in them no sign of astonishment or horror—which surprised me rather more than the crime itself.”

Already feeling the blade in his back as the tall Berber ran across the table and the short one knocked aside the diners, he grabbed the door ring and yanked—and it opened. He swung it open behind him and charged up the plank stairs as he drew his knife.

He heard sounds up ahead beyond the curtain at the top of the stairs. As he reached the third stair from the top he dove head first under the curtain and rolled over, he was beneath and between the feet of a groggy guard armed with a spear and naked except for his gown.

‘My luck is holding.’

“The Sultan needs another eunuch!” he yelled as he ran his wave-shaped long knife up through the man’s groin deep into his guts, and rolled out from under his legs before the fool fell, leaped up behind him, and shoved him down the stairs into the charging Berbers. He ducked and felt a blade glance off of the top of his head, spraying blood off to his right. He spun and drove his knife deep into the armpit of this gowned saber man and threw him down the stairs likewise.

He then leaped to the side to avoid the thrust he knew was coming from behind and saw that he was alone in the room, which had a hatch in the ceiling through which a ladder was obviously dropped from the level above to permit access.

The only other portals in this room were three narrow windows hung with silk netting to admit the breeze but not the insects. The men were slashing through the curtain behind him.

He had no time to look. As the Berber war cry rang out behind him and he heard the spear being snatched he ran at the window in the far wall, down the long length of the room. Expecting any moment to be transfixed he made it nearly to the wall when the spear head tore through the outside of his left shoulder and the deflecting shaft pitched him forward. He went with the blow and dove through the window headfirst tumbling so he could land on his back.

Rotten boards gave beneath him and the sound of splintering rot and a rain of sand and dust filled his eyes and ears. He landed in a heap of hay, soaked and clumped with masses of horse manure.

‘Oh seven hells!’

Yusuf scrambled forward slipping in manure and knocking over the stable keeper’s lantern. He immediately hoped for a fire, but the wet manure was so thick the lamp turned on its side and guttered out.

A neighing of horses ahead and the opening of the stable door—the two burly mustached Turks with sabers drawn framed in the moonlight—enabled him to see that El Frank’s evening was going no better as the hind hooves of the Arabian mare kicked the pony sideways across the stable. The boy was unconscious on the ground and Yusuf gave not a thought to the little extortionist as he leaped over him on top of El Frank’s bare back—‘great, the saddle and bow are gone now too!’

El Frank seemed both surprised and glad to have him there so he kicked savagely with his boot heels at his flanks and directed him at the Turks. He had to hold on to the mane by his teeth as the blade was in his right and the left did not work. He slashed at the Turk on the right and the other one dove for his life and they were off, out into the night, headed out of town to the south, anywhere to get safely away from this cursed city of man-eaters and mesmerists.

“Come on boy get my ass out of Cairo!”

They were galloping down the road that turned into a track within two bowshots and then paralleled the Nile toward Upper Egypt, away from the sea, away from this accursed famine.

Moments later horses could be heard pounding the hard-packed earth behind them.

‘Oh God, their horses are fresh and he’s spent. This is it.’

They were beyond cover now, out in the countryside, clearly visible under the moon. He turned and looked to see the two Turks and the two Berbers charging after him on mounts that should not have been saddled but were!

‘This was an ambush, a ruse, my doom and I walked into it.’

He looked ahead over El Frank’s neck and saw a cluster of palms around the glowing embers of a fire that seems to have died and just consisted of embers glowing brightly on the ground.

“There boy, so I can let you loose to run free and put my back to a tree. I want to take one of these armored ass-merchants with me.”

The ember-lit palms grew closer, yet he despaired of making it there before being overtaken.

The fresh stallions pounded closer and easily overtook his tired pony on the flat track. Then a strange thing happened. The Turks slowed to keep pace with him from behind and drive him on from a few lengths, and the Berbers flanked him, staying even with him.

‘Well Father, here I am, half a world away, being coursed as if by wolves to my appointed doom. What do you think of that Dog-meat?’

‘Ironic aye old man?’

As he neared the palms he could make out a pit between six palms, in which a deep bank of dung embers and charcoal glowed red and even white where the desert breeze fanned it. Around the pit reclined a score or more ruffians all eyes on the object that roasted over the pit, a basted and blackened female form being turned by four strong men—two to each side—on a great spit made of an irrigation pole.

‘This was not the way to ride.’

‘My luck has run out.’

As he neared the people around the pit began to look at him and to his pursuers. By the time he reached the ring of palms he was in a cold fury as a tall bald man shouted to the riders that were closing in at a walk, “Bengar el-Fez is generous indeed. We shall feast to Dawn’s first finger!”

“El Frank, just like the baggage handlers outside Tripoli—go!”

As the men gathered for the feast stood around the pit and the horseman attempted to cut him off, El Frank—with Yusuf screaming like the desert wind from his back—charged into the mass of them bowling them over this way and that, nearly half of the first ten being pitched screaming into the smoldering pit where they did a macabre dance, lurching in unimaginable agony as they melted into the smoldering embers.

As the hideous dirge went up around and the rascals grabbed their clubs, backed up by the four riders, Yusuf dismounted and slapped El Frank on the ass. “Get asshole! Go!”

The horse bolted straight away, trampling two feasters and mule-kicking another one into the pit, where he too was added to the hellish conflagration, before running off to leave Yusuf to the mercy of the score of survivors.

His left arm was lame and numb. He was a devil with the knife though. Two feasters came in swinging clubs and he dropped an arm and a foot in the dust. As the two dismembered fools shrieked their agony the others gave way and formed a semi-circle.

With his back to the smoldering, shrieking, dung-smoking and charred-flesh reeking pit, Yusuf spat at them, “Afraid hyenas? Afraid of the long knife of Yusuf bin Yiju!”

The tall hawk-eyed Berber dismounted, drew his saber, and walked forward through the parting band of ruffians. The saber was a foot longer than his knife, and the wielder a foot taller—armored, with two good arms. The Berber took a knife from one of the rascals for his left hand, and advanced without a word into the glowing light, the groans and shrieks of the maimed and roasted having now died away with their deserving authors.

‘Not this bastard!’