Max Allan Collins

back from his piss, having noticed the absence of the horse thief, Arpid. The other guard was busy, sitting on the ground, using his feet to try to draw back Mathayus's bow, still without any luck.

The guard moved a few feet down the slope, eyes searching a landscape littered with stones, skulls, ants and one buried-to-his-head Akkadian.

'Where did that little turd go?' the guard asked Mathayus, as if the prisoner weren't already busy staring at a moving mound of fire ants, fifteen feet away, the insects closing the distance at a slow but determined pace.

In fact, Mathayus didn't see, at first, Arpid com­ing up behind the red-turbaned guard, hauling a thick tree branch, which the thief swung into the back of the man's head, as if hitting a ball. The guard dropped onto the rocks, face first, dead to the world.

The other guard, his attention finally drawn away from the massive bow with which he was struggling, abandoned the effort and scrambled to his feet. But he wasn't quick enough, as another swing of the tree branch sent him toppling down the incline, into the gully, colliding with ... and knocking over .. .sev­eral of the massive anthills. Within moments the guard was blanketed with swarming insects, who seemed undeterred by the man's screaming and thrashing about.

Another tide of fire ants, however, was rolling in an inexorable black wave toward the Akkadian, steadily closing the distance ...

'Arpid!' Mathayus yelled. 'Come on!'

The thief was now sitting on the same rock the knocked-cold guard had been, sipping from the fel­low's wineskin, enjoying a long, slow pull. When he'd finished the drink, he wiped his skimpily bearded face with the back of a hand, and glanced down at Mathayus with an expression that said, Oh—are you still here?

'Get me the hell out of this!' the Akkadian yelled, ants marching toward him.

Arpid arched an eyebrow, perched casually on the rock. 'And why should I do that?'

Stunned by this response, Mathayus stared up at him for a moment, then howled, furiously, 'Because if you don't, I'll kill you!'

Two ants, real leaders among their species, had gone out on a scouting mission, and were climbing the Akkadian's head; he shook it violently, and they responded with stings and bites.

Arpid shook his head in mock sympathy. 'You're going to have to survive those hideous bugs to do me any harm ... and that doesn't seem likely. You see, skeletons don't get up and walk around, much less kill someone.'

And indeed that swarm of ants had devoured the flesh of the fallen guard, leaving him a pile of bones draped with precious few shreds of flesh.

'Isn't that disgusting?' Arpid said, and shivered.

'Get... me ... out... of... here!'

Arpid seemed to be considering that possibility. He plucked a torch from the sand, where one of the guards had embedded it, and took a few quick steps down into the pit. Then he paused.

'Mathayus ...'

'Yes!'

'What would you give me for helping you?'

'You'd bargain for my life! You little weasel...'

'Don't you know you get more with honey than vinegar? Ask your little friends ... they'll tell you— between bites.'

Mathayus had managed to fling the two ants off himself, but the others were advancing, a grotesque battalion of antennae and bug eyes and pinchers. .. .

'Forget it,' Arpid was saying, heading back up.

'Wait! Wait!'

Arpid stopped, turned, glanced back down the slope. Eyebrows lifted.

In the midst of a slow burn,