‘I demand you stop.’
The guards could not understand my words, but the meaning must have been clear enough. An ugly look spread across the nearer man’s face. He stepped forward again, reaching for the sword he had unbuckled. He pulled it from its scabbard and whipped the blade towards me; I retreated, but almost immediately felt the cold stone of the wall against my back. I had no chance of escape. The only way out was the narrow passage, and even if I had managed to squeeze into it my opponents could easily have hauled me back out. And that would have meant leaving the unfortunate boy to his fate. Even as I watched, I saw the second guard lift him off the floor and spin him hard against the wall. Would they make me watch?
The nearer guard was still holding the sword, its point angled towards my heart. A part of my mind refused to believe it: I was an ambassador, after all. Surely they could not afford to sacrifice me so carelessly. But I was alone, deep in a dangerous, crumbling monument. They could kill me, bury me under the rubble and pretend I had suffered an unfortunate accident. Or drag me into the desert and let the sands bury me for ever.
I brushed away those thoughts. This was not the first time I had seen a blade held to my heart, and by more desperate men than these. I tried to swallow the pulsing fear which my heart pumped through me.
‘Let me go,’ I said. ‘I am the emperor’s ambassador. You cannot-’ I broke off as I saw the bored incomprehension on the Turk’s face. He inched closer, and raised the sword a fraction higher. I could hardly look beyond the silver spark of the hovering point, but beyond it I saw the blurry shadow of the second guard approaching the boy with outstretched hands. The muscles in my back tensed, and I had to fight back the urge to hurl myself forward. I would only have impaled myself.
Neither of us moved. The only sound in the chamber was a grunting, fumbling noise by the far wall. I closed my eyes. Then, suddenly, I heard a scraping by my feet, a trickle of cascading pebbles and a half-checked cry of surprise. My eyes flashed open, and before I could even look at what had caused the noise I saw that my opponent’s gaze had been distracted. It was all I needed. I braced myself against the wall and lashed out with my right boot, hammering it straight into his groin. He squealed with pain, though he was too well trained to let go his sword. He bent double, which only served to present his face to my upswinging fist. His nose cracked under the impact.
The guard reeled away, clutching his face with his left hand, and I turned belatedly to see what it was that had distracted him. Even with the blood of battle scorching my veins, I recoiled. A black demon had crawled out of the tunnel, the ghost of some long-dead denizen of this tomb. He stood almost as high as the ceiling; his yellow cloak swirled around him like fire, and his round head was black and featureless as shadow. The sword in his hands smouldered in the lamplight as he advanced into the room.
He turned to glance at me, and I saw with grateful relief that he was no demon. There were white eyes and a mouth in the black face, and the yellow cloak was real enough to have been smeared and stained by his passage through the tunnel. It was Bilal. He strode towards the second guard, spun him around and hurled him against the wall with such force that I almost expected to see the granite crack. He shouted in the man’s face, a furious tirade that needed no translation, and I sagged against the wall in relief.
A shadow fell across Bilal’s back, though he could not see it. The first guard had risen out of the gloom at the edge of the chamber, and if my assault had left him unable to move freely, he still had a sword in his hands and vicious purpose in his arms. I shouted a warning and sprang forward. Bilal turned. The guard heard me too, but that did not matter: he was committed to his attack and too wounded to change course. I struck him and ploughed him to the ground, desperately trying to pin down his sword arm. I could not reach. He reversed his grip and thumped the pommel into my shoulder, loosening my hold. Wet blood streamed over his face where I had broken his nose, but he seemed impervious to the pain as he tried to throw me off. He had almost dislodged me: in a second, I would be on the floor, and he would be over me. I could not expect any help from Bilal, for I could dimly hear him struggling with the other guard behind me.
My tumbling charge had taken us near the pile of rubble at the end of the room. In desperation, I let go with my right arm and flung it out, scrabbling on the ground for a loose stone. One was too heavy, another little more than a pebble. Meanwhile, my one-handed grasp was not enough to hold the Turk. He heaved up and rolled me over, just as my free hand closed around a fist-sized stone. I barely felt the weight; I lifted it, and swung it against the side of the guard’s head with every ounce of strength I could muster. It struck him on the temple and I felt his skull shudder; I struck him again, and this time the stone came away stained with blood. Perhaps the sight should have sickened me, but instead it gave a deeper, savage power to my blows as I struck him again and again, until at last he went limp and fell away.
I stood, trembling, and let the stone drop to the floor — suddenly, it felt like the foulest object imaginable. I looked around. Bilal was standing, wiping his sword on a crumpled object by his feet, the unmoving body of the second guard. The boy, no longer in danger, had crawled away and was struggling into his tunic. Bilal stroked his head and murmured a few gentle words, then turned to me.
‘I followed them when I saw them come after the boy,’ he said. ‘I did not know you were in here too.’
‘I heard the boy’s cry and came to look.’
Bilal crossed to my side and stared down at the guard, though I could hardly bear to look at the matted stew of hair, blood and bone I had pounded out of his skull.
‘Is he dead?’ I asked.
Bilal gave no answer. Instead, he turned his back on me and knelt beside the wounded guard. He lifted the man’s bloody head and cradled it on his knee, staring down into the slack face. He shook his head, then reached across and stroked his hand gently across the man’s neck. It was only as he suddenly leapt back, and as blood and air began bubbling out of a broad cut he had left, that I saw the gleam of a small knife in Bilal’s hand.
‘You — you killed him.’
‘Only to finish what you had begun.’ Bilal removed his cloak and his outer tunic, folded them, and placed them in one of the stone niches in the wall.
‘But what he did is a crime — surely, even here? Better that he should have been punished in public.’
Bilal glanced at me with contempt. ‘Do you think we are barbarians? Of course it is a crime. But it is more. . complicated.’ He turned away and crouched by the fallen masonry. ‘Help me.’
The air in that deep chamber had become a heady potion of smoke and oil, blood and dust. Together, Bilal and I pulled away some of the stones, laid the two corpses by the foot of the wall, and heaped the rubble back over them. There was not nearly enough to hide them.
‘If they are found, it will look as if they were killed in a rock fall,’ said Bilal.
‘It must have been sharp rocks, to stab one and slit the other’s throat.’
Bilal grunted. ‘The desert is full of scavengers. In two days, all trace of their wounds will have vanished with their flesh.’
‘And their companions, the rest of the guards? What will you tell them?’
‘That the two men deserted.’
Slowly, my wits began to return. ‘But they were criminals. They would have raped the boy and murdered me — and you, when you found us. Why should we have to hide them?’
Bilal was hastily pulling on his tunic. ‘Do you remember Fustat? The ruined city you saw from the boat?’
‘You said it was destroyed in a civil war.’
Bilal wrapped his cloak around his shoulders and clasped it at the neck. ‘That was a war between the black legions and the Turkish legions in the caliph’s army. It raged for years and desolated the country. Eventually the vizier, al-Afdal’s father, stopped it by bringing in his Armenian troops who hated Turks and Africans equally. But the wounds are not forgotten. That is why no one must know that a black man has killed two Turkish guards.’
He spun around and advanced on me. ‘I know it is probably to your emperor’s benefit if we tear ourselves apart, but you must swear not to tell what has happened here. If you had not followed them. .’
‘Then the boy would have been raped in secret, and no one would have known or cared. Is that what you would have preferred?’
Bilal had come very close to me, blocking the light of the fading lamp. Once again, he looked as he had first appeared in that chamber, a featureless void in the shape of a man. I shivered. Then he smiled, his white teeth breaking the darkness, and touched my arm.
‘I am glad you did what you did.’
‘And I am sorry for what came of it. I will keep it a secret, you have my word.’
‘Then we should leave this evil place.’
