“At Misr the number of dead was incalculable; people there did not bury them but contented themselves with throwing them outside the town.”

The streets were narrow from the crowding of the corpses. The huts of the poor had become great vulture nests, the houses of the well-to-do hyena dens. Dogs ran the streets in packs, only the largest and most wolf-like having survived to this stage in the famine. Yusuf was leading them to the center of town beneath the Misr mosque, to the primary well, ten horse lengths from the mosque. The four Turks sat their mounts at the stairs of the mosque, the doorway of which was defended by a dozen ruffians with clubs and stones. The mosque was the center of a learning compound where pilgrims from Egypt and the west might study before continuing their hajj eastward to Mecca. This amounted to a tiny scholarly compound named Karafa.

‘Ibis intoned, “Something is amiss. Babyrs does not wave us forward.”

Yusuf broke in, “Look, rascals and ruffians all around. The Turks are surrounded. We cannot get cutoff. Advance to the well. That puts us within close bow shot and turn-and-charge range.”

Abdul and the boys obeyed the suggestion of the daring adventurer without thought, and Ibis secured their rear, whipping out his great sword and herding them like goats. When a daring man like Yusuf suggests caution wary travelers comply without discussion. They had all caravanned before, and well knew the prudence of cooperation. As they hustled over to the well which was surrounded by a low secondary wall about hip high Abd al-Latif could see a great number of wretched rag-covered rascals, and wenches, as well as lean ruffians with clubs, and double-turbaned heads which made them look monstrous but was a protective measure against the sabers of the raiding horsemen from Cairo who launched weekly culling raids against the flesh-eaters of Misr. These ruffians knew Babyrs well, and seemed intent on avenging untold wrongs now that their oppressor was at hand with so few men.

Ibis shoved him and the boys behind the low wall. “Make the donkeys lay down so they do not knock you into the well.”

Ibis then seized the bucket, slashed the rope a few feet from the end, and tossed it to Abdul. “Lay about with this from behind the wall if they rush us.”

The savage headsmen then draped Abd al-Latif with his unwashed executioner’s cloak as an act of protection and barked at Beadra, “Under the cloak as well woman. If they see your soft flesh I might as well try and hold back the Nile.”

Under the butcher’s cloak the reek of death and iron taste of blood was enough to make him vomit. “Beadra girl” he whispered, “stay safe under here, while I look about. I must be ready to attend the wounded if a battle develops.”

“Oh Master, but it is so foul under here.”

“That’s a good girl—it’s for your own good.”

He then popped his head up and peeked over the rim of the well.

‘Thank God I am the Master and not the slave! Fresh air—and fright. Oh Merciful God lend a hand if you might!’

The three Turks on their ponies surrounded Babyrs and fired into the ravening mob with their singing bows, pinning over-large turbans to grimy heads, and transfixing torsos whose owners fell into the dust only to be replaced by more hungry savages.

“Ibis, why are they so mad hungry. They have corpses stacked like sheaves of grain all about.”

Ibis shouted back to him as dozens of roof tiles came crashing about his feet, “They want fresh meat Master. We will be the sauce in their fricassee; the gravy to the dried bread of the long dead!”

‘And he regards this with humor?’

Babyrs thundered over to them on his snorting charger and shouted to Ibis—cut them down Black Bird. We have a hostage in the mosque—the High Imam of Karafa. He has shouted down from the adhan’s perch that he’s been fattened and about ready to be roasted, the last of the officials to be eaten.”

Niko shouted to Ibis condescendingly, “We are to be roasted not stewed stupid-headed Black Bird!”

‘This is the problem with the lower orders, especially among the unfaithful. If given a single compliment they soon become an authority on everything!’

The three Turks continued to feather the ruffians who pelted them with rocks and roof tiles. Then one went down with a broken head, falling from his horse. A gang of ruffians rushed forward with a disgusting chatter and clacking of teeth and sucking of bloodied gums.

Babyrs rose into a fury and snapped at Yusuf. “Piss, Pants seize the Imam before we are out of arrows!”

The two men then rode for the beleaguered Turks before the mosque. Ibis breathed a sigh of relief as the crowd of rascals that had been menacing them with masonry missiles surged across the avenue toward the fallen Turk who was crawling toward his horse and being seized by the heels by ten dirty hands.

Babyrs charged down on the five fiends who were dragging his man away and bowled them over with the weight of his charger as he slashed down from side to side. The snapping of bones could be heard every time the large stallion brought its hooves down on a ruffian. Blood spurted out across the avenue each time Babyrs sheared a head in half or sent a head flying from its shoulders. His other two men had taken heart and were riding down this and that rascal with their pony while they put a feather into some other rascal.

The wide avenue of Karafa resembled a battle between some ancient Arabs and a horde of desert jinn.

“Ibrahm, ready the dressings and ointment for the Turk that fell.”

The fallen Turk had been hoisted onto the back of his horse and was being led over to the well by a comrade. Babyrs was insane with bloodlust and was attacking the swarming rascals and ruffians, his horse more evil tempered than himself. His eyes were alight with malicious pleasure as he sent arms, hands, legs and heads flying this way and that, and his savage horse trampled the dead and dying with a like fury.

As Ibrahm, Tuman and Shamballah took the man off his pony and dragged him over the encircling wall to the well, Abd al-Latif rose from under the headsman’s cloak and hurried across the small compound, normally beaten only by the feet of slave women and donkey boys. He saw Yusuf on his ornery pony charging up the stairs of the mosque through a doorway crowded by ruffians, leaving bodies trampled and broken in his wake. The clap of his pony’s hooves in the marble interior of the mosque echoed across the chaos.

His hands now on the Turk’s head he saw he was dealing with a simple brain bruise and a scalp cut, for the turbaned helmet of the warrior had saved him. He was concerned for the neck.

“Ibrahm, dress his head wound and stabilize his neck by using the turban as a neck pillow. Shamballah, keep his head from lolling from side to side. Hold it between your hands.”

‘I feel a man of action for once! I am no longer the boy on Mother’s knee.’

‘Beadra, make sure she is safe!’

He turned to see Niko standing over Beadra behind the hunkered down donkeys, and throwing small stones at a burly naked, ash-covered ruffian who charged the well with a two-handed club raised on high. All he had was the swan quill in his turban, which he seized like a dagger as he ran around the rim of the well to intercept the attacker.

Presently surprised by his fleetness of foot Abd al-Latif managed to shove Niko down behind his donkey with one hand and bound over the beast to meet the charging ruffian.

‘I feel suddenly unstoppable; a doctor of the Decency Jihad!’

The reek of the man that radiated from his blood-crusted beard, grease-tufted armpits and filth-matted groin hit the ‘jihad doctor’ like a wall of pause, momentarily shaking his confidence. He then froze from the roar of the man and reeled back on his heels when the mighty stench of his breath blasted him like a sewage-spewing bellows. The man roared with such ferocity that one of his loose rotting black teeth flew from his mouth to ping off of the doctor’s cheek even as the fetid camel spittle from his diseased mouth showered the doctor’s well-groomed face.

There he stood, hesitation incarnate, holding his swan quill like Abraham’s dagger before God.

‘Brave at least!’

The beast of a man took his final bound over the wall, his hairy filth-matted chest at the level of Abd al-Latif’s face.

‘I stand, I die a man!’

Thrilled at the prospect of achieving his most elusive dream, of standing like a man against evil, he lost all sense of time, as if this final defining moment were an entire life.

Just the reek of the ruffian’s rancid body oil became overpowering a singing of steel, like the licking of some dragon’s razor tongue, separated the hips of the leaping ruffian from his body. A belly full of burst guts and splashing blood and bile hit him first, like a wall of muddy flood water across the chest, staggering him back. Then the broad-boned filth-matted chest slammed into Abd al-Latif’s delicately featured face, and drove the back of his head back against something that neighed and snorted.

He could feel Mother’s hard knee in the darkness that engulfed him, only it was driven into the back of his head, not supporting his little bottom.