The slaves under the guard of the Mamelukes were worth much gold.
So they were going for it.
There were sixty bandits. The leader, known only as Yousef, was a small, wiry man with eyes that showed a touch of the Orient in them. Right now he was thinking himself especially clever for daring to raid this deep into the heartland of the Seljuk empire, almost on the doorstep of Baghdad itself. He had gambled on the guards becoming less alert as they approached nearer to what they thought were secure lands.
He had set twenty archers on the high grounds around the camp, arrows notched, target on the guards. The rest of his men were out of sight, just beyond the mound, waiting for the first flight of arrows. Then they would attack.
They had followed the Mameluke caravan for two days, waiting for the right place and moment to attack. Now, with most of Mamud's men immobilized in prayer, the time was right.
Casca's sudden problem was purely biological; he had to piss. And he knew enough about religious people, especially Muslims, that he had better wait until after prayers were over. Mamud would take a very dim view of any act that might "profane" the sanctity of this moment.
The urge, though, for Casca was abnormally strong. Whether it was the tea he had drunk during the night, some trick of his mind, or all the time he had spent wool-gathering, or musing when he should have been "performing his morning ablutions," he didn't know. All he knew was that he had to piss — and badly.
And, of all mornings, this had to be the one when Mamud, never before an innovator in anything religious, chose to extend the ritual.
Shit! One of the things that could be said for the Muslims was that they had things down so simple. Just a handful of memorized words and a few acts, and that was it. But now Mamud, inspired no doubt by the night of stories, felt called upon to recite a couple of Suras from the Koran and to explain to Allah — in long and flowery sentences — just how good He had been to His servant Mamud during this raid.
And all the time Casca was needing more and more to relieve himself.
Hell! He never should have remembered the wise men speaking of the qanats. The idea of all those underground rivers flowing was overpowering.
Would Mamud never finish?
Frantic for help — any kind of help — Casca lifted his eyes toward the high ground outside camp.
That was when he saw Yousef's archers.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ambush!
And a damn good one.
Something not quite right on the hillside had caught Casca's eye — the glint of metal in the morning sun, the unnaturally straight line of a bowstring, the wrong kind of shadow on the naked rocks. Not much. But from Casca's earliest days of soldiering in barbarian lands he had learned to use his eyes if there were hostiles around, which could be damn near anytime.
Looking closer, he was certain of the archers being there, but he couldn't tell how many or who they might be. But if there were archers, then on the other side of the rise there were probably horsemen.
Damn! Mamud's Mamelukes were probably going to have their hands full. Particularly if Casca let nature take its course, which he thought about doing. Hell, it was not his fight. And if the strange hostiles jumped the Mamelukes, well, he might just be able to get his ass out of there.
On the other hand… he knew what Mamud was like. He had no idea who the commander of the hostiles might be, but if the son of a bitch had chutzpah enough to attack Mamud this close to Baghdad, then he was probably a pretty tough bastard.
Still…
Shit! I'll split it down the middle. Warn the Mamelukes, but just watch the battle. So he yelled, pointing toward the rise.
One thing could be said for the Muslims: they could quit praying and go to fighting fast enough even to satisfy Casca. He watched in approval as they sprang for their weapons (and smiled to himself, wondering how many battles had been affected by some soldier wanting to piss… Oddly, now he had lost the urge.)
But the archers had been sighted almost too late. In fact, probably the reason Casca had seen them was that they were preparing to fire. Now the volley came.
Scrawny little bastards, Casca thought. Bandits. Probably from the hills.
But he had to admit their aim was deadly. And they were fast. They were getting off a second volley by the time the horsemen, yelling like a legion from Hades, topped the rise and swept toward the camp. They would Damn!
Casca had been standing watching the battle, his legs spread a little with one foot on a small rock, when one of the bandit arrows whished between his legs, not the width of a single alif from the family jewels.
That was too much!
It was bad enough having to live for centuries waiting for the Jew to return.
But to wait castrated…
Without the solace of women…
Casca was damned if he was going to stand for that.
Roaring like a bull who sees his herd being taken away from him, Casca grabbed the jirad of a Mameluke downed beside him and hurled it at the archer who had shot at him. All Casca's rage was behind the throw, and the weapon smashed through the bandit's guts as fast as through thin air.
"Kasim!"
Casca turned.
A grinning Mamud threw him a scimitar.
Then the horsemen were upon them.
To meet a shower of jirads from the Mamelukes.
Casca's warning had been almost too late, but not totally so. A few Mamelukes even had time to draw their bows. The whistling arrows and raining jirads knocked enough of the bandits from the saddle to break the charge just as it was ready to overrun the camp. Most of the battle was joined on foot.
A downed bandit, dirty, yelling, came at Casca, the short sword in his hand not unlike a gladius. Casca swung the scimitar. The curved blade, red in the morning sun, sliced down through the bandit's suddenly upthrown left arm almost as though there were no bone there, only flesh, and landed solidly in the bend of the bandit's sword arm, neatly cutting the forearm away and spraying red blood into the morning light, the bandit's sword tip coming within a handsbreath of Casca's face before falling away. Casca's scimitar glistened as he pulled it back on the follow-through stroke, blood and morning sun now indistinguishable on the damascened steel.
Damn fine weapon…
But there was a horseman coming at him from the left.
Casca whirled.
No need.
There was Mamud beside him, grinning, scimitar flashing — and when a jirad from behind them downed the bandit, Mamud made short work of the hostile.
"Allah be praised, Kasim! Great sport, eh? Glorious work!" He swung the scimitar and grinned from ear to ear as it sliced into the belly of a particularly ugly bandit.
The bastard really enjoys fighting. Casca could see that Mamud was one of those rare commanders who are happiest when they themselves are in the thick of the battle.
He could see something else, too.
The Arab slaver was a pretty good tactician. He had Casca on his right; Bu Ali on his left, in a kind of arrowhead formation with himself as the point. And when Casca risked a glance backward he saw that all the Mamelukes had taken up the same rough "arrowhead" groups, the points facing out toward the incoming bandits. They had probably kept the idea from the Greek Sassanids of Persia, who continued the phalanx formation for centuries after the death of Alexander. In some cases it was pretty effective.