“…Northerners, in fact, latter opened meat restaurants in the sophisticated bustling southern capital of the Sung Dynasty, Hangchow. Dishes made from the flesh of old men, women, girls, and children all had special names—and presumably special tastes. The meat was referred to euphemistically as two-legged mutton.”

The table of Bengar el-Fez and its terribly savory repast yet haunted him even as he lay in his half sleep. He had eaten of the flesh of man and was sickened to death by it, glad there was no mutton to be had in the barracks he shared with the Turkish contingent. He rolled toward the wall on his couch, a cushioned rug laid in a notch in the stone wall which was hung with thick tapestries. His saddle was his pillow as it always had been in the wild. He and the Turks were alike in this, and little else.

The morning sunlight filtered through the night portal above—off center so as never to permit the sun to beat directly into the room—the dancing motes of dust playing in the rays before his eyes as he regarded the pattern of the rug absently.

He could smell the blood of Efran the whore monger as it was sprayed across the room by the Khwarzim, the faceless silent warrior that served the Commandant according to some strange pact, for he was not of this land, but a visiting emissary from the Caliph in Bagdad. That dog Efran chose not to remember selling whore babies for food—oh well, he could remember in hell. But why did the stink of his blood—his particular wine-soaked stink—have to lodge forever in Yusuf’s nose?

‘If I have to live a lifetime smelling your reeking death-gout I shall never sleep again Efran. I will come to meet you in a foul mood fat man!’

Leaving Christian Navarre in his youth had been a boon. But for all that he hated the Franks they did have furniture, things made of wood. He recalled counting coin and reading the Torah on Father’s table. He recalled the creak of his bed when he rolled over in the night, tiny though his cot was. Such furnishings rarely existed in the Muslim world that had been his haunt since Father was eaten by the hounds. However, there had always remained fantasies, of furnishing a Christian style house, of having a table and chair, not always reclining on mats and couches, and squatting like a barbary ape around the bowl stand.

‘And so another fond memory dies traveler. For after supping on your fellow man at the table of Bengar el-Fez you shall never look upon such a board with serenity again!’

His wounds were healed, which vexed him. As Beadra no longer came to nurse him and he no longer had an excuse to keep the doctor’s company. Soon their company would strike out north in support of Doctor Abd al-Latif’s medical pilgrimage. The good doctor, after the return of his weird boy messenger and savage black man servant from the hellish countryside of Misr, had concocted a sparrow-brained plan to investigate the supposed source of the flesh-eating plague—which he claimed was caused by a miasmic humor lurking over the marshlands to the north. Indebted to the doctor, both Abdul Matin and Yusuf had agreed to accompany him.

‘Maybe the fool has something. That mesmerist fakir was a creature of the marshlands if every I saw one.’

He shivered at the memory of the plaintive piping, of the caw of the ravens that swooped down for his eyes, the winged ‘woosh’ of the hawk that took his turban, the terrible sucking horror of those mud mad hands that had sought to drag him down to hell!

‘Oh seven hells, how am I to heal this shoulder so that I might draw bow again and transfix that fakir head with an arrow should it blink its glassy eyes at me again, if I cannot sleep!’

‘Yes, Beadra, think of Beadra; plump, pale, fire-haired Beadra; uninhibited Christian girl of my dreams! There will surely be occasion to duck behind a wall of reeds, perhaps under the moon beneath a weeping tree—goddamned mud hands leave my mind’s eye!’

‘This is useless. I shall never sleep again. Roll over on your sword arm you donkey’s ass. The bow arm needs to heal in a limber way if you are to draw and loose again like the old days, when you took rabbits for the spit above Valencia. A bad little bastard with a bow you were.’

The motes danced before his eyes, finally seducing him to sleep in the mid hours of morning on this lazy day after an entire night failing to rest as his drunken Turkish mess-mates slept off the wine that had been pillaged from the deserted Christian quarter. Yusuf did not go in for wine. The Butcher of Navarre, murderer of his father and ravisher of his mother, had been a drunk. The monk that had brained his first partner had been a drunk. That damned half-assed Berber donkey doctor Abdul Matin had been drunk when he botched that arrow extraction from his ass after…and finally sleep claimed him.

Groans rose from all around as heads heavy with last night’s wine attempted to gain the day. A hard booted tread disturbed his minutes’ long slumber. Never mind, Yusuf was sleepy, sleepy for once.

“Piss Pants!”

‘No, not this horse’s ass!’

Yusuf rolled onto his other side facing the wall, covering his ears to muffle the grumbling of the damned Turk hetman.

‘I fart in your grandfather’s beard Turk. Let me sleep.’

A sharp pain racked his ribs as the hard boot of Babyrs, the insufferable leader of the Turkish contingent, and the breaker of Yusuf’s once perfect girl-charming nose, slammed into his back. His grating voice followed, “Piss Pants, the Doctor wishes you to ride with us as a plague assessor. Wake up you dried slit of an old mare! We’re off to mow down some flesh-eaters! The Khwarzim has tracked them to the Isle of Raudha, waylaying passersby.”

He could sense the next kick coming and twisted, catching the foot and turning it enough to unbalance the irritating Turk. Within the blink of an eye he was on his feet ready to fight, glaring at the Turk, hand on hilt. He could tell by the dark cast of those brown eyes that if the men had seen this, if they had not still been moaning groggily and coming to their senses, that this would have been their final crossing of words before the crossing of blades, which was from this moment inevitable.

No words had to pass between the bandit and the soldier. Their eyes spoke the finality of their hate, even as Yusuf grinned his beard-tugging grin and Babyrs bawled to his men, “For the stables and the north road you saddle whores. We have flesh-eaters to cut down today.”

He then added with a piercing glare into Yusuf’s eyes, “And I’m up for a slaughter!”

The Turk then turned his back and kept bawling at his men as he kicked their asses off their couches, every Turkish butt standing in for Yusuf’s wan grin.”

‘One day Pointy Beard; one day I’ll slit your throat-apple and the world will be spared your babble. I swear it by my Mother’s teary eyes.’