Max Allan Collins

Despite the dark acrid clouds already swarming to engulf the room, the captain bravely stepped for­ward, toward the threat, and when the arrow came streaking out from the billowing smoke, it was as if the captain had sought the death that now hit him so hard he was hurled like a snowball across the room.

Jesup smiled; the smoke smelled wonderful to him. He enjoyed the view from his place of honor, as three more warriors—standing at a counter drink­ing wine—were thrust off their feet by arrows from the fireplace, the smoke consuming air like ink in water.

The other warriors were on their feet, drawing their swords—if they wore them—or scrambling for them, if the weapons had been resting somewhere. The women froze, all thought of finding hiding places banished out of fear.

A quartet of warriors bravely charged into the blackness of the smoke, screaming war cries that got cut off in the clattering clash of steel on steel. Then the warriors stumbled out of the dark fumes; Jesup smiled wider, the wenches screamed, as the four men—headless!—pitched to the rough floor where blood spilled from their necks like knocked-over wine bottles.

The other warriors—while brave—were under­standably unnerved by this, and in their moment of hesitation, Mathayus—his muscular frame cloaked in soot—stepped out of the puffing blackness, a massive bow in one hand, scimitar in the other. With the orangeness of flames glowing through the dark smoke, he was wreathed in a hellish aura, his pant-legs on fire, hood too, a demonic vision for these superstitituous fools to consider, along with the headless evidence of their fellow soldiers scattered on the floor before them.

Out of his soot-covered face came wide white eyes and a wider white smile—seemingly crazed— and he said, 'I... am ... death!'

That was all it took.

The rest of the warriors, the wenches too, went running for the door, the effect almost comic as they crawled over each other, squeezing out the passage. Few of them bothered grabbing their furs, and ran willingly into the freezing wilderness.

'Hey!' Jesup said, struggling at his bindings. 'Don't let them go!'

Mathayus, patting out the flames on his legs and hood, ignored this.

'I promised you'd kill them all,' Jesup told him. 'Don't make a damned liar out of me!'

Mathayus sighed, and snarled in mock disgust. 'Lucky for you we share the same mother.'

And the soot-covered Akkadian cut his brother's bonds.

Soon they were on horseback with the fortress in flames at their back—the logs burnt well. Jesup, poised to gallop to freedom, glanced at his brother, who had hesitated for some reason, those dark, piercing eyes studying the sky.

'What is it?' Jesup asked.

Slowly scanning the faded blue above, Mathayus said, softly, 'I feel.. . like I am being ... watched.'

'Well, if you are,' Jesup said, 'perhaps we should leave.'

Mathayus shrugged, cracked the reins, and they pulled away, dragging behind them a wooden sleigh-like apparatus piled with dead warriors. They were mercenaries, after all, and had a bounty to col­lect.

And far away, in the fabled city of Gomorrah, a sorcerer in a winged collar, lost in a vision, indeed watched the Akkadian warrior called Mathayus.

Watched, and waited.

T

oday, many centuries after our tale was lived, the Middle East remains a cauldron of hate, fear and turmoil. How little has changed: before the civilizing time of the Pharaohs, centuries prior to Genghis Khan cutting his bloody swath, long preceding the