Max Allan Collins

voice emanated from the dangling horse thief. 'Stop! You must stop and heed my words—I am a high priest of Set!'

The torturers exchanged expressions of raised eyebrows and crinkled-chin consideration.

'Spare me,' the suspended man intoned, 'and the gods shall rain fortune upon thee, for all the rest of thy days!'

Now the torturers laughed, and the one with the poker began to raise its fiery tip toward the bare soles of the skinny man's bound-at-the-ankles feet.

Panic shook the skinny swinging frame, and an entirely different voice emerged from the victim, a reedy, whiny thing: 'Please! No! Stop! Wait! I was not stealing that horse. I swear ... I was just doing the decent thing.'

Now the torturers traded wide-eyed looks; 'de­cent,' was it?

'I was just moving that poor animal into the shade,' the skinny prisoner avowed. 'It was so very hot that day ...'

'Not as hot as tonight,' the torturer with the poker pointed out.

As Arpid closed his eyes and waited for the sear­ing pain, an Akkadian assassin—sliding down into the camp on a tether tied to a camel—was nearing this tableau of torture. And Mathayus would have glided on by, had the camel called Hanna not de­cided, at that moment, that enough was enough. The strain of that tether and all that weight was simply too much stress to endure, even to please her master, and the albino camel sat down.

So did Mathayus—in a way. The tether suddenly slack, the Akkadian was tossed onto the sand, in a rude pile, landing—as an impish fate would have it—right alongside those two fat greasy torturers, who paused prior to burning Arpid's bare feet just long enough to look at Mathayus in amazement.

Their surprise quickly turned to fury, and now both torturers had red-hot pokers in their hands, raised and ready to charge the intruder.

The intruder was having none of that. Mathayus whipped his scimitar from its sheath and dispatched both brutes, who were dead and draining their blood into the sand with nary a cry of alarm from either set of slobbering lips.

The dangling horse thief—the slashing sounds had pried open his eyes—gazed at his upside-down savior with adoring appreciation.

'Thank you, kind sir!' he burbled.

Mathayus glanced at the skinny creature hanging over the flames like a pig being roasted—a scrawny one.

Arpid thanked his rescuer profusely, babbling, 'For the mercy you have shown me, the gods shall rain fortune on you for—'

'Quiet,' Mathayus said, and elbowed the man in the face, knocking him out cold—or perhaps warm, considering the flames licking up at the thief's hair.

With the tether hopelessly slack, Mathayus aban­doned it and slipped into the darkness, heading for the point of rendezvous; soon, deep within the en­campment, he had hooked up with his two fellow Akkadians. The trio stood within the shadows and studied a corridor of sorts, between rows of tents.

'That one,' Mathayus whispered, and pointed.

The other two saw immediately why Mathayus had singled out this particular tent—this shelter was unlike any other in this camp, and different from any these Akkadians had ever seen. A dome-shaped patchwork of hides, the good-size tent was decorated with symbols of astrology and ideograms of the oc­cult.

Clearly the home of a sorcerer...

They moved stealthily across the open area be­tween tent rows, the only sound the soft snick as they drew their knives, as they closed in quickly on the sorcerer's tent. As they dropped back into shad­ows, Mathayus's eyes were everywhere, taking in even the rustle of a tent flap,