Max Allan Collins

canvas-and-animal-hide chamber, Cassandra nodded her confirmation.

Then, a tent flew back, and—in a clatter of leather armor and steel weaponry—a pair of guards dragged in a prisoner.

Jesup.

Within him, Mathayus felt a wave of despair rise, seeing his brother, his fellow warrior, held by either arm, hauled in like a sack of grain, more dead than alive, body pockmarked with the red wounds of ar­rows. Barely conscious, the elder Akkadian man­aged to raise his head and look across the tent at Mathayus.

One of the guards at Jesup's side spoke: 'As you can see, my lord, this one still lives.'

'How interesting,' Memnon said, strolling across the fog-draped floor, stopping to pick up one of Ma­thayus's knives, dropped in combat. 'For a race that has all but disappeared from the earth, these Akka­dians seem surprisingly difficult to kill.'

Mathayus, gripped on either side by a guard, watched ruefully as the warlord examined the small throwing blade, an exquisite example of the Akka­dian art of weapon- making.

'Beautiful,' Memnon said, his admiration sincere, flipping the blade in his palm. 'Bring the warrior to me. I wish to honor him.'

Rage bursting within him, Mathayus surged for­ward, but the soldiers managed to hold back the caged lion. He watched helplessly as his brother was dragged across the smoky ground and brought be­fore Memnon. Jesup's half-lidded eyes locked with those of Mathayus .. . and the elder's eyes opened bright and strong.

'Live free,' Jesup said.

'Die well,' Mathayus said, resignedly. 'My brother.

And in one vicious if fluid move, the Great Teacher swept forward and slashed with the cap­tured blade.

Mathayus had lived with death every day of his life; but the pain he felt, as that blade sliced open the elder Akkadian's throat, sent a madness, in both senses ... rage, insanity .. . searing through his brain, his being.

The brave Mathayus—unknowingly mirroring the reaction of the sorceress—could only turn away from the sight, feeling in the pit of his stomach as though that blade had just been buried there.

He did not see the sorceress experience her own wave of psychic pain. Cassandra's eyes squeezed tight shut, and she raised a hand to her head, as if testing for a fever—she sensed a deep rumbling, ex­perienced the sound as if it had come from without, a resonant thunder, like the plates of the earth were shifting.

But when she opened her eyes, she could clearly see that no one else in the tent had heard or sensed this aural sensation, even as its echo reverberated in her mind, blotting out the voices of the men around her.

Much as she wished to avoid the sight of blood­shed, her eyes suddenly flew to Lord Memnon, who held in his hand the dagger dripping liquid rubies. What she saw no one else in the room beheld: Mem­non's face was edged in silver—his head, ringed with a shimmering halo of light.

'Never have I used a blade so sharp as this,' Memnon was saying, studying the knife. 'I wonder if using it has dulled its edge ... if it will hold that edge, a second time ...'

And the Great Teacher stepped forward, raising the dagger, his eyes on Mathayus's throat.

Die well, Mathayus thought, and he quickly but thoroughly shifted his gaze from one man to the next—Thorak, Takmet, finally Memnon—and said through a smile, 'I will see all of you again... in the underworld.'

Memnon returned the smile. 'Oh, but not for a very long time, Akkadian.'