The tall lanky Berber warrior in his mail made a slick oblique lunge to cut Yusuf off from the man with the missing hand who was crouching in shock looking at his lost member, and who Yusuf had the notion to use as a shield.

Their eyes met and he read utmost confidence.

Yusuf turned and darted for the spit, upon which the body of the young woman was now roasting unevenly, as the spit-turners on this side had been knocked to their broiling death by the hindquarters of El Frank, who had hopefully escaped the vicinity. The Berber took a lunging leap like a cat after a rat, and before Yusuf could hear the song of the saber he ran through the turning forks and along the pole—such had always been his agility. He grinned to himself at the curse let out by the Berber and considered an apology to the soul of the roast lady over whom he was about to tread, but had not the time. When one runs along grease-slicked irrigation poles one runs quickly or falls into the hellish embers crackling below.

Rather than look below to the blackened blazing humans and shimmering coals he looked ahead to the two rascals who had been turning the spit—once burly and now lean, but still strong. There was a lack of agreement as to their course, for one attempted to spill Yusuf by turning the spit while the other reached for a club. Had they both thought to turn the spit he would have been charcoal.

The devious one was turning the spit to Yusuf’s right which the far-traveled adventurer felt beneath him. He corrected for this by running slightly to the left of where the spit was run through the woman’s torso—then disaster! His foot caught between her legs and he fell face forward, smacking his cheek on the roasting pole. His cheek sizzled, and in one furious gambit he tore his foot loose, pressed it on her broiled breast and launched himself with both arms outstretched—despite the searing pain in his left shoulder—at the spit-turning rascal.

The world outside the roasting pit barely seemed to exist. He was cognizant of it as nothing but a raging battlefield of fiends and shadows. He had no thought beyond reaching this flesh-eater with knife and hand. There was no time to consider that he was doomed no matter, as the entire swarm of flesh-eaters would be upon him by the time he made his way clear.

There was an enlivening lightness of being as he flew to his enemy, floating for perhaps three paces over an inferno which singed his eyebrows and beard hairs and made his last breath a burning hell of its own. But, for that moment, Yusuf bin Yiju felt free. He had stuck his dirty finger in the eye of The World countless times in the past, just so he could experience that small snatch of freedom. It was fitting that he should end it all in such a defiant act.

The club man was stepping to with club in hand. The spit man had stopped rotating the roasting pole and stared plaintively, open-mouthed, unbelieving of his own eyes, as Yusuf’s wave-patterned Moroccan blade glinted in the lurid ember-light and then pierced his body below the breastbone.

Yusuf could feel the pleasing fishtail action of the knife as it made its gory way down through the man’s guts.

He could taste the man’s foul breath as their faces collided, the knock of their skulls like a distant rap on wood.

He could feel his shoulder burn as he grabbed the rascal’s elbow and pressed it into the sand.

He could feel his pants burn away in the heat of the pit and his feet begin to bake in his smoking boots, dangling as they were inches above the inferno.

His loins, still numb from Miriam, reminded him that he was alive when his pelvis slammed into the edge of the pit.

He was falling, falling in—no!

Yusuf pushed the blade left and downward, twisting it in the bursting guts of the rascal that was exhaling his last pained breath into Yusuf’s very mouth. With a crunching in his low back he swung his feet up right as he pulled the man left with his aching arm and pinned him to the ground with his plunging knife.

He was up, on earth, lower half smoking, rolling free of the gutted spit-turner—only his knife was caught in the guts of the man who had served as his ladder out of hell.

He yanked with a guttural oath and rolled, reeling out the dying man’s intestines and hopelessly entangling his knife hand.

Something thumped on his shoulder, and thumped again on his back as he lunged to his feet. The club man was before him, a broken oar held high to split his skull.

An instinctive fighter since the day he saw his father eaten, Yusuf let the knife go like he would any clinging whore and dove at the man with teeth bared and bloody hands clawing. The man was taller, stronger, but not ruthless enough, still wedded to the idea of braining Yusuf with his club as he was. Yusuf bit the man’s nose and tore it free like the grey-streaked hound had done to Father—bloody mucus spraying the night. He then smashed his head into the chin like an ornery goat. As they reeled away from the pit and the man’s head went back Yusuf grabbed both elbows and pinned them to the man’s side and flung him into the pit to roast.

He turned, to face the Berber and die like a man. Reeling on his smoking heels he looked on an astonishing scene. Rascals were running and falling, cut down by armored horsemen directed by a towering black-turbaned warrior on a great Arabian stallion, who had a wretched fisherman standing by his side, holding onto his stirrup like some waif having a vision of an angel.

An extremely burly armored Turk on the most vicious warhorse Yusuf had ever seen charged past him at the other Berber, still on his mount. Instead of clashing swords the Turk turned his horse into the smaller scouting mount of the Berber and bowled horse, rider, and the three ruffians who had gathered out of fear behind the last flesh-eating warrior left standing, into the smoking pit. The sound of the shrieking men—and particularly the horse—roasting alive on those coals drove like a knife through his heart.

Other rascals could be seen running in the distance, mere shadows pursued by larger swifter shadows with swords held high glinting under the moon. The Turkish warrior now walked his mount over to Yusuf, and with an effort reigned in his blood-mad charger, which seemed intent in trampling Yusuf under its bloody hooves. The man’s voice bespoke confidence, brutality, and a bit of misplaced humor, “Aye Kabob, you are the luckiest dinner ever to go uneaten. Welcome to Cairo Piss-pants.”

It was then he felt the moisture around his loins, felt shame, and sought to hide it with some humor of his own.

“Cairo? I thought this was the ass-end of Hell, what with all you smelly Turks as thick as fleas on a Crusader’s ass.”

The heel of the Turkish boot, soled with the horn of some immeasurably hard-headed beast, slammed into his nose, putting an end to his night, and to his good looks as well.

Continued inChapter 7: The Horseman’s Wife

If you would like to read more about Yusef, and the 1201 A.D. people-eating Apocalypse that actually occurred, checkout Black & Pale at www.amazon.com or use the link below.

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