Max Allan Collins

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The Akkadian hopped down off Hanna, and helped the woman down, and from a saddlebag withdrew a blanket, which he handed her. His eyes held hers, speaking volumes; but the only words he gave her were: 'Cover up.'

Then he swung back up into the saddle and spurred Hanna down off the dune.

As he rode, the Akkadian reached down into an­other saddlebag and plucked out a narrow strip of leather, greased, odd looking—a slitted cut across it, making an eyehole. Though the sand guard's prime function was protection, it also served as a bizarre battle mask, providing the assassin a fearsome vis­age. He tied it on with one hand as he spurred Hanna, even harder, her hooves pounding the sand, stirring tiny storms of their own.

On a flat stretch of desert, the red-turbaned com­pany of twelve had paused, when their leader held up a hand—he'd heard something ... someone'... fast approaching. Thorak knew it couldn't be the Akkadian—a man alone would not dare attack thir­teen; it must be a courier from one of the armies, sent by Memnon.

A red-turbaned warrior pointed. 'There!'

And coming down over a slope was one man— a leather-masked brute on a white camel... the Ak­kadian! Was he mad, charging them like a one-man army?

'He's attacking ... alone?' one warrior said to another.

'The sun has baked his brain,' the other said, the tracker among them. 'He's been seized by desert madness....'

And from their midst came Thorak's booming voice: 'A thousand duranas to the man who brings me his head!'

Thorak's men were loyal, that was unquestioned; but the smell of money sparked these warriors to seek new heights of valor. Swords whipped from belts and the bare- chested, red-turbaned warriors spurred their horses and galloped toward the lunatic, soldiers bellowing war cries that would have chilled the blood of any normal man.

Mathayus, of course, was no normal man: he was the last of the Akkadians, on a blood mission, gal­loping at full speed. But he was not, as his foes surmised, a man alone—he rode at the head of an army of his own ... an army of sand.

As he came down over the rise, the sandstorm— the length of the horizon, a brown swirl of destruc­tion—came up behind him, miles wide, as tall as Memnon's palace, a churning, burning wall of flying particles.

A thousand duranas or not, the riders panicked— the sight of the madman—featureless in the ghostly leather mask with the narrow eye slit, hunkered over, waving a scimitar, and racing toward them, with a sandstorm at his back—was a living night­mare, and they reined in their horses.

Then the sandstorm overtook the Akkadian, rac­ing on ahead of him, and even as the brown swirl enveloped camel and rider, the two did not break stride.

Staggered by the man's audacity, realizing at once the assassin's bold plan, Thorak watched in helpless shock as the charging warrior disappeared into the storm, while Thorak's fabled Red Guard broke their own charge, their horses rearing, their ranks scattering as the whirlwind hit full force, swal­lowing them, the world a harsh vortex of sand, bit­ing the flesh, blinding the eyes, the wind knocking men from saddles, onto the desert floor, and when they tried to stand, knocked them down again.

But Thorak did not succumb—he remained astride his fine steed, a battle-ax in one hand, reins in the other—and he screamed, 'Akkadian bastard,' and rode into the storm, searching in naught visibil­ity for the object of his rage.

The world was a terrifying, blinding blur of fall­ing bodies, whipping sand, and frightened, rearing horses. The supreme fighting men who were Tho­rak's red-turbaned warriors had been reduced to whimpering fools, wheeling about in isolation though the screams of others were all around them, only a few still on horseback.

And Mathayus—prepared for this hellish wind, relishing it—popped in and out of the pockets of iso­lation, looming over his disoriented adversaries like the personification of grim death itself. His blade flashed, splashing the brown world with red. He leaped from his saddle and