Max Allan Collins

But her lips were not moving!

The voice, the lovely, musical voice, was in his mind! He squeezed shut his eyes, opened them, and sighted down the drawn arrow as he spoke.

'You know my name?' he asked her.

She nodded. In his head, her voice said, 'And I know why you're here... but I'm afraid you will not find me so easily slain.'

As he stared at his beautiful target, Mathayus felt a strange, perhaps sorcery-induced sensation ... time seemed to slow, even while his mind raced.

'So kill me,' she said, aloud this time. 'If you can.

Her eyes seemed to delve deep within him, to his very soul; he felt weak, the strain on his arm, how­ever massively muscular, was enormous.

He let the arrow fly ... but his target was not the sorceress.

A red-turbaned guard had stepped inside the tent, just behind Cassandra, and the arrow took him off his feet and out of this life.

As Mathayus—alert, himself again—notched an­other arrow, the sorceress viewed him with ineffable sadness.

'I am sorry, Akkadian,' she said aloud, as if she meant the words. As if she had wanted to die. 'You lost your chance.'

Another guard in helmet and leathers came charg­ing at him, sword swinging. Mathayus threw down the bow, and whipped his scimitar from its sheath, with his right hand, and with his left withdrew the kama. When the guard was upon him, Mathayus de­flected the sword blow with the scimitar, and swung the kama into the man's midsection, dropping him to the smoky floor to bleed and die.

The next one came up from behind, and the Ak­kadian swiveled and traded blows of blades with the man, then slashing him across the chest and elbow­ing him to the ground. Two more were on him then, their swords flashing, and the assassin swung his blade around, killing one instantly, wounding the other, but dropping both men. He finished the sur­viving one—the sorceress was chilled by the ice-cold expression of the assassin hard at work—with a downward stabbing blow, and was catching his wind, when suddenly they were everywhere, red tur­bans streaming into the tent.

Like a machine designed for killing, he fought them with a skill and ferocity that astounded the sorceress, much as her beauty had taken his breath away.

But their numbers overwhelmed Mathayus, until they swarmed over him within the confined space, and he did not see Memnon himself enter, in the company of his second-in-command, the scarred hu­man demon called Thorak, who—trident in hand— advanced toward the one-man army.

Surrounded by red-turbaned guards, who had fought him to a standstill, Mathayus was preparing for one last glorious assault, to carve a bloody breech through them on his way to dying well, when the trident thrust forward, and its three prongs pinned him to the central tent post.

And in his mind he heard the voice of the sor­ceress again, genuinely sorrowful: / am sorry, Ak­kadian. I am sorry.

                  _{Desert Death}

T

he sea of soldiers parted around Mathayus, who remained pinned by Thorak's trident to the tent post, allowing him to see his host approaching. No introduction was needed: the man in golden chain mail, whose regal bearing did not diminish the aus­tere cruelty of his handsome features, could be no one but Memnon himself.

The Teacher of Men paused, appraising his brawny guest, saying, 'A living, breathing Akkadian ... What a rarity ... what an uncommon pleasure.'

And Memnon strode forward to Mathayus and planted himself before the warrior with a fearless­ness that had nothing to do with the assassin's cap­tive state.