One of the Alexandrian guards took a sword in the throat, and another lost both hand and sword from the hacking blow of a khopesh. The tired guard were outnumbered, and they were slowly being overpowered by the zealot warriors.
Lucius heard Arsinoe scream in the corner. The leader had grabbed her, but she had managed to tear herself free, ripping open the front of her garment in the process. Now her bare breasts lay exposed with the Eye of Horus dangling between the dancing flesh. The camel leader shouted something in a language Lucius did not understand, but Lucius suspected it was a cry of elation at having found the sacred amulet. The other camel warriors certainly understood the words. A few of them allowed a quick glance in their leader’s direction, and it proved fatal for the one engaged with Lucius. Taking advantage of the distraction, Lucius stabbed the man through the narrow opening left by the crescent moon shield and then kicked the body out of his way. As Lucius moved in to assist one of the guardsmen struggling to fend off the repeated blows of a hacking camel warrior, he heard another scream from Arsinoe. The camel leader had sheathed his sword and now held a curved dagger in his hand as he approached the trembling queen. Lucius could not get there in time, but then he saw the befuddled-looking eunuch huddling somewhat near the queen.
“Do something, Ganymedes!” Lucius shouted across the tent.
The eunuch seemed startled to hear his name called out in the middle of the melee, but it did spur him to action. Picking up one of the field stools, Ganymedes threw it at the leader. The leader simply batted it away with his shield, but the pause gave Arsinoe time to dart behind the large open trunk that held her royal clothing.
Lucius could see that the pressed guardsman was weakening under the camel warrior’s blows. It would only take Lucius two breaths to dash over to his aid, but there was not time. He had to choose between saving the guard or the queen, and he instinctively chose the latter. Lucius leapt at the camel leader who was too preoccupied with the Eye to notice his approach, but then another warrior, rushing to the defense of his master, suddenly appeared in Lucius’s path. With one fluid motion, Lucius threw the pugio underhanded, striking the warrior squarely in the groin. As the man doubled over in pain, Lucius brought the hilt of his sword down hard on the back of the man’s head, shattering his skull. It had not taken long, but it was enough of a delay to allow the leader to turn and face Lucius’s attack, and he now bashed Lucius aside with a thrust of the crescent moon shield. The black-turbaned leader was a strong man, and the blow was enough to send Lucius flying over one of the queen’s tables and knock the gladius from his battle-weary hand. Lucius’s sword was quickly snatched up by the leader, who now gazed down at him through the slit in the black headdress with eyes burning with hatred. Lucius groped for one of the fallen weapons nearby, but his efforts were abruptly stopped as his own gladius was used to stab him through the arm. The pain seared through him, and his forearm ran red.
A quick glance around the tent told him that he was the only one left alive from the group that had accompanied him. The guardsmen lay strewn about the floor, their blood streaming out onto the queen’s ornate carpets. Lucius now looked up to see the leader invert the gladius like a dagger. He was preparing to kill Lucius with a single downward thrust. But before he could raise the weapon for the killing strike, his bloodshot, hate-filled eyes suddenly transformed into a pained expression. Lucius heard a shrill cry and realized that it had come from Arsinoe. She had stabbed the leader in the back with a pin-like foot-long dagger, and now she stabbed again and again, crying out with each pull and thrust, until she had pierced him a dozen times.
Oddly, the leader did not turn to face her, but simply stared straight ahead. One of the dagger thrusts must have punctured his heart, because Lucius saw the life leave his eyes. Lucius reached up and retrieved his gladius as the man fell to the floor dead.
The remaining camel warriors cried in horror at the sight of their slain leader. They looked fully intent on slicing Lucius and Arsinoe to ribbons, but they paused when a voice from the other side of the tent began speaking to them in a strange language. It was Ganymedes, and he was speaking in a tongue that the warriors obviously understood, because they stopped their attack, seemingly at his bidding. They simply watched as the eunuch moved over to the confused queen who was still holding the bloody dagger. Ganymedes looked down at Arsinoe now with an arrogant expression that Lucius had often seen on the eunuch’s face but never when Arsinoe was around. Then, quite unexpectedly, Ganymedes struck the young queen hard across the face and swiftly took the dagger from her hand. Lucius moved to stop him, but the eunuch quickly had the queen in a firm hold from behind with the dagger held to her throat. The fresh blood on the dagger left red streaks on her skin.
“Do not move, Roman, or I will kill her!” he said. “I know how fond you are of her.”
Arsinoe appeared puzzled, but not entirely frightened. “Ganymedes,” she said. “What is the meaning of this?”
“The meaning, my queen, is something I think even your crocodile brain can figure out before long. Now, take the Eye from your neck and put it around mine.”
“What?”
“Do it, I say! If you want to live, do it!”
With slow and steady hands, Arsinoe pulled the band away from her neck, and turning slightly, draped it around the eunuch’s.
“If you harm her -” Lucius started, but was cut off by Ganymedes.
“Quiet, Roman dog!” He then turned to the camel warriors, who seemed stunned by the action, and proceeded to tell them something in quite lengthy terms in the foreign tongue. Apparently Ganymedes had convinced them that, since he now wore the Eye, they must serve him. Either that, or he had made some sort of promise to return it if they did what he said. Several times during his dialog, he gestured at Lucius, as if he were giving the camel warriors instructions regarding Lucius’s fate.
“If they make one move toward me, eunuch,” Lucius snarled. “Yours will be the first neck I cut!”
Ganymedes gave him a patronizing glance, then cut his eyes once at the queen, as if to imply that Lucius’s threat had no teeth as long as the queen remained under the eunuch’s dagger. He then snapped a two word statement at the warriors that sounded like a command. Whatever the words meant, Lucius suspected they were not in his favor.
The camel warriors began moving toward Lucius, their blood-drenched swords ready to hack him to pieces. Lucius knew that he could not take them all on at once. There were five of them, and his sword arm had been pierced through. But he was resolved to take as many as he could before breathing his last. He was about to try to catch them off guard by rushing them, when a dozen men surged through the door. At first, Lucius thought it was more of the black-clad warriors, but then he saw Demetrius at their head, his sword instantly swinging in a horizontal arc that caught the nearest camel warrior under the chin and struck off his jaw in an eruption of blood and teeth. The remaining four were run through by the royal guards that had entered with Demetrius.
Examining the carnage in the tent and prompting his men to check on the fallen guards, Demetrius gave an appreciative nod to Lucius and then turned his attention to Ganymedes who still held the dagger to the queen’s throat.
The eunuch’s malevolent eyes looked once at Lucius and then back to Demetrius. Then, as everyone in the tent watched, a metamorphosis took place. The eunuch’s expression suddenly softened and the playful grin once again returned to his face.
“Well,” he said, releasing Arsinoe and handing her the dagger. “Good thing I can think on my feet.”