Mufaddal al Mamun, a tall, bulky, brown-eyed, flat-nosed, dark-faced
hulk of a man, was eating his midday meal. It consisted of _ful_ beans
fried in _samn_, millet bread, onions, cucumbers, and hard-boiled
eggs, washed down with quarts of strong _buzah_, beer brewed from
fermented bread. It was a poor man's meal, but Mufaddal preferred to
eat the cheapest of foods, for he thought that it made him appear
fanatical and single-minded and self-sacrificing to his followers. As
a matter of fact, they merely thought him a tasteless slob. He held
the same warped opinion about his garments, and clad himself daily in
a gray _gallabiyah_, the gown-like dress of the fellahin, with long
loose cotton pants and a soiled green skullcap. His cohorts made jokes
about it and regarded him with distaste, for many of them were proud
Turks and high-blooded Bedouins, who took a ferocious pride in garbing
themselves as well as possible and eating the best provender available.
They followed him, however, because he was a wild terrible fighter,
because he was half-brother to three potent sorcerers, and because he
could think up much dirtier plots against the infidel hordes of the
Crusaders than any other Saracen alive.
As he popped the last egg whole into his broad gash of a mouth, and
smashed it between great yellow snaggleteeth, wishing it were the
skull of Richard Coeur de Lion, one of his sorcerers came sliding in
the door. There was a cool wind blowing through the house from the
sea, which lay not more than thirty yards from its portals; but the
sorcerer's presence seemed to heat the breeze and taint it with the
stench of sulphur and brimstone. Mufaddal looked even more irritable
than usual.
"What do you want, offspring of a leprous unwed camel?"
"May you live a thousand years, Mufaddal, my brother."
"This is a noble sentiment. Did you interrupt my eating--that is to
say, my meditation--to wish me long life, imbecile?"
The sorcerer looked meditatively at his left forefinger, which turned
into a blue snake and hissed at the big dirty man across the laden
cloth. Mufaddal jumped and said hastily, "This, of course, is only my
rough manner of speaking, Heraj, and naturally you know you are my
favorite brother and may come in any time you like."
"Yes. Well, I was going to say, Mufaddal, that complications are
lifting their ugly heads in this business of the plague ship."
"What? Are the rats not loaded into the hold, and the job accomplished
with but seventeen fellahin bitten? Did we not slay the seventeen
before they could come near anyone? And is the ship not as sound as any
ship that sails the Mediterranean, having new sails and a new mast, and
her belly caulked no later than last month?"
"Ah, very true," agreed Heraj.
"Does every rat not carry at least one flea, cleverly infected with the
plague by your own subtle methods?"
"Fleas and rats are as deadly as any Saracen blade, and the grisly
death they carry will spread far and wide when they are let off the
ship on the coasts of England."
"And lastly, is all not in readiness to sail come the day after
tomorrow?"
"True," said Heraj gloomily. "But we can't send it out before then, as
our chosen crew will not be assembled till that morning, especially the
far-experienced Nubian slave who is coming from Tripoli to guide the
ship on its perilous course; and by the wrath of Eblis, you and I may
not live to see the dawn of that day, near though you deem it!"
"What are you talking about?" roared Mufaddal.
"I just had a message from a friend who happens to be a hawk in his
present incarnation. He tells me that Godwin is coming."
"This is terrible news indeed," said Mufaddal, fiercely mimicking the
sorcerer's worried tones. "I quake with fright. I throw myself on the
infinite mercy of Allah." He rose and flexed his arms, that were each
as thick as a youth's body. "Heraj, who in the name of the seven hells
is Godwin?"
"You may well ask," said Heraj, even more gloomily than before. "Nobody
seems to know exactly. I can't get a line on his history before a month
ago, when he rode out of Jaffa in company with a renegade Saracen
chieftain called El Sareuk and a girl named Ramizail. But he's a brawny
young champion, whatever his antecedents, and his girl controls the
djinn."
* * * * *
Mufaddal sat down on the floor with vast violence. His dark face turned
purple. His yellow teeth showed in a grin of sudden terror. "I betake
me to Allah! _That_ Ramizail?"
"Yes, that one. Well, this hawk says--"
"Can you understand the hawk tongue?"
"This one speaks Arabic. He's a fairly talented fellow, for a hawk. He
says that Godwin and the others are pledged to go rampaging over the
earth, righting wrongs, and they've heard of the plague ship and are on
their way to destroy it. And us, I suppose," added Heraj.
"Name of forty goats," said Mufaddal worriedly. "I fear not this
Godwin, but the djinn...." He stared up at the sorcerer. "Can't you do
something to stop them? You and Pepi and Habu?"
"What? You know my limitations, and I'm the strongest of the three.
I can do a lot, Mufaddal, but I can't combat djinn. The chief of
them, Mihrjan, even travels with this Ramizail wench, personally. She
controls him and his race by a sigil and ring that came down to her
from Solomon."
"Curse it, Heraj, if this ship doesn't sail, England will continue to
send Crusaders to the East until they have conquered every inch of
desert and city! It's got to sail! How did these loathsome adventurers
hear of it?"
"They happened across that Englishman who escaped us, Sir Malcolm du
Findley. The one that we started to flay last Thursday, before he
crawled out a window and treacherously disappeared."
Mufaddal got off the floor. He hitched up his pants and retied the
string that held them around his muscular waist. "Heraj," he said
grimly, "I give you an hour to think of some way to stop them. Djinn or
no djinn, that ship sails!"