The stench became worse as the weeping became more clear, though never did the weeping seem loud. What at first sounded like the plaintive call of some weeping bird of great size, came more clearly to his ears as the subdued wailing of a man who does not wish to be heard.

The vultures circled lazily far overhead waiting their turn. He walked past the body of a ruffian—club still clutched in his dead hand—who had been cleaved in half above the waist.

Another ruffian, his knife laid across his knees, sat dead up against the wall of a hut, dead eyes still staring at the two stubs that had once been attached to feet. The pool of blood at his ankles had congealed and baked in the sun into an ochre-like mud.

The weeping was more clear now, from around the garlic-hung hut, which had not been abandoned, for the occupants sat in skeletal death within, unmolested by the flesh-eaters, having died of plague. The sound was all the more pathetic now, as it was clearly the sound of a weeping man, a large man with a deep timbre to his voice.

Ibrahm used all of the considerable stealth he had mustered as a conniving slave-boy to creep around the base of the reed-thatched plague hut. As he inched around the base he saw a pair of twisted feet belonging to some slain ruffian, and on the legs was propped a head belonging to some ruffian woman of most evil aspect. The stench was breathtaking, but still not as disturbing as the weeping, for he now recognized the voice of the weeper, the voice of a man, that though he was not Ibram’s friend, the boy had never imagined experiencing a moment of debilitating sorrow, let alone such a protracted display of shame.

Confident now that he had stumbled upon a fellow slave to Master al-Latif, Ibrahm walked around the hut and found himself in a torturer’s pit of horror. For unlike the slain ruffians around the way, the bodies, limbs, and agonized faces of these ten or more ruffians and rascal women showed all of the signs of having been subjected to the most terrible mutilations prior to their death.

Ibrahm now stood facing Ibis, black, lean, scarred, and stripped naked except for some unappealing leather strapping for his genitals. His great headsman’s saber was placed in the ground point down, and his big dagger was planted in the ground point up. The tall black warrior was showing his years now, hair growing in white on his normally shaven head, and dark lines creasing his face beneath and above the eyes, eyes that now froze with dread.

“Ho Ibis. Nice to find you in this terrible place. Why are you about to throw yourself on your own knife?”

Ibis looked at him with a deep hurt and spoke with a child’s teary gasps channeled through the deep chest of a man. “I have slain more than I can count, and have tormented their very souls to discover your fate. Most knew not. But these last three, they agreed that you were taken by the Pale Horseman from beneath the Baby Tree where I caught those dervishes smoking children to eat. Had I thought to torture one of their number I might have joined you in Hell sooner. Is that it Ibrahm? Was your hatred over my jealousy of Master al-Latif so severe that you have risen in Death’s aspect to bring me to Hell! Can you not wait?”

‘I must look bad if he thinks I’m dead and risen!’

“Ibis, I’m fine—aside from the missing eye. The Pale Horseman saved me from those nasty sword dancers. Before he came one of my last thoughts was that you would appear and rescue me. We boys admire such warriors as you. You should be in a story.”

Ibis, seemingly unwilling to trust his eyes, stammered, “But, it cannot be. The wench there swore that she saw you slain. My faith only recognizes the resurrection of Lazarus and Jesus.”

“Well you big fool of a black baboon, they were Jews you know! Come out of your haunted mania. I am not the Messiah, or some big-talking false prophet’s charity case. I’m Ibrahm, the boy who spied on your love crimes in the stable. This is no time for such a fornicator as you to wax biblical. We need to return to Master al-Latif. I have a new quill for him. You know how he is about the writing of his book, and the strokes being just so.”

Ibis’s face split into a wide child-like grin and he bounded over to Ibrahm like a young man and grabbed him in his arms, kissing, him, and hugging him. “I can return with honor now. I missed you so you terrible brat! I love you!”

‘Oh God deliver me from this uncomfortable predicament.’

Since Ibis was holding him in a chest to chest hug many feet off the ground Ibrahm was able to speak clearly to him. “Ibis, we are naked. Let’s not be mistaken for Turks!”

All of a sudden conscious of seeming un-warrior-like, Ibis set Ibrahm down and began scrambling to gather the boy some clothes from among the less filthy rags of those he had so terribly slain.

We Uzbin seemed to approve.