Balkis was caught; she knew it, and didn’t like it. Glaring at Matt, she admitted, “I wish to learn more about magic than I know, and I shall not learn it playing with your babes in your absence.”
Matt frowned down at her, considering. He was beginning to develop doubts about her species, and he ordinarily screened his helpers very thoroughly. “There are many wise women and village wizards who could teach you.”
“I’ve learned all the best of them can teach,” Balkis snapped. “She bade me seek out you.” “Oh, she did?” Matt felt unreasonably flattered. “Who was this woman?”
“Idris.”
“Don’t know her.” Matt frowned. “Where does she dwell?”
“In the Black Forest.”
“I’ll have to look her up the next time I’m out that way.” Matt saw Balkis’ look of alarm and hastened to reassure her. “Don’t worry, I don’t pick quarrels with good magicians—I have too much need of every one I can find.”
Again the guarded look. “Need for what?”
“To combat evil, and most especially evil magic,” Matt explained. “It helps to know who I can call on in every place I may find myself. You don’t really think you’re going to learn magic just from watching me, do you?” He had a notion she had intended just that, and realized with a start why she’d been so interested in the bookshelves.
Balkis watched him with a cat-steady stare, then said, “I had hopes you might teach me.”
“But just in case I wouldn’t, you planned to spy on me as much as possible?”
“Cats have the right to observe everything everywhere,” Balkis told him loftily.
Matt stared deeply into her eyes, frowning. “There’s something more you’re not telling me.”
Balkis’ gaze shifted, then came back to him. “How did you know?”
Matt shrugged. “Call it a wizard’s hunch. What is it?”
“Nothing for which I can find words,” Balkis said slowly, “only that, when I heard you were going to the Orient, something within me compelled me to go along, much though I mislike the discomforts.”
“I never argue with a geas.” Matt had labored under just such a compulsion himself once. “But you could have gone with Lord Sauvignon and the army, with a good deal more safety—at least until they reached the Holy Land. Why didn’t you simply wait for them to march?”
“I might have been left behind, deemed unfit to accompany an army,” Balkis said.
Matt shook his head. “You’re fishing for excuses.”
The cat looked angry, but admitted, “My compulsion is too strong to let me wait.”
Matt stared into her eyes again, weighing her words and judging that they smacked of truth. He decided to let her off the hook. “You sure this doesn’t have anything to do with wanting to get away from a couple of kids?”
Balkis looked surprised, then sheepish, if you can describe a cat that way. “They are too small to know how to treat a cat properly,” she admitted.
“Wolves and bears might be less of a danger,” Matt agreed, then let a little admiration show. “Definitely smarter than the average cat.”
Balkis fluffed herself up in indignation. “There is no such thing as an average cat! We are all superior to every other species of creature, and I am superior to all other cats.”
Said with all feline modesty, Matt reflected—every cat seemed to feel that way. “I suppose ‘every other species’ includes humans?”
“Of course,” said Balkis in surprise. “Why else would you be willing to serve our food and open and close your doors to let us in and out?”
CHAPTER 6
From the ramparts, Caliph Suleiman could see nothing but tents stretching away from northeast to southeast, all the way to the horizon and, said his spies, well beyond it. The clangor of smiths at work rang over the plain, echoed by the banging of carpenters’ hammers.
“I can see a catapult taking shape,” reported a sharp-eyed sentry.
“Yonder is a rude wheeled tower.” Another sentry pointed toward the east, where a rectangular shape was rising.
“Rude, but effective,” Suleiman said grimly. “In a day, perhaps two, they will strike.”
“We cannot hold against them,” his general said, watching him with dread. He feared to say unwelcome words, but pressed on from the need to have them said. “Their catapults will break our gates, they will pour over our walls from their siege towers. Our soldiers will slay them by the dozens, but will themselves be slain, and in the end there will be none to hinder these barbarians from running loose in the city.”
“There is no help for it,” the Caliph said darkly. “We cannot wait, for the armies from North Africa and Ibile may come too late. We must retreat.”
A barely heard sigh of relief breathed all about him.
“They will slay us all if they see us sally forth,” the general pointed out.
The Caliph nodded. “But they have only a few scouts watching the western walls. Let our footmen and archers build ladders and go pouring down from the ramparts even as our cavalry goes charging out the western gate.”
“Well thought, my lord.” The general nodded slowly. “By the time their scouts can bring their main army, perhaps we will have found a proper ground for a battle.”
“High ground, where our archers can slay them by the hundred,” Suleiman agreed, “and in their eagerness to catch us, perhaps they will neglect the city.”
“When they have finished with us?” the general asked dubiously.
Suleiman’s grin flashed in the sunlight. “Then we must make sure they do not finish with us. Give the orders for the retreat. We shall quit this city when the left hand of dawn is in the sky.”
As the sun rose, Matt drowned his campfire, shouldered his pack, mounted his horse, and set off down the southern road.
Balkis poked her head out of the saddlebag and complained, “You choose a horribly early hour to be on your way!”
“Serves you right for staying out all night,” Matt retorted. “How was the hunting?”
“Very poor,” the cat said, disgusted. “There are many owls by this stream, and they took all the mice. I caught only three voles.”
“How were they?”
“Not as good as those of Allustria.”
“Must be the soil,” Matt said judiciously. “Merovence grows great grapes, but that doesn’t say it’ll do as well for minor mammals.”
“They were tough and stringy.”
Matt nodded. “Had to burrow through. Too much clay, no doubt. Made ‘em muscular.”
“Scarcely worth the effort,” Balkis agreed. “You could at least let me sleep.”
“Hey, what’re you griping about?” Matt countered. “You’ve got a nice comfortable saddlebag all to yourself-I moved the rest of the cargo into the other one. Just settle down and nap.”
“If l can, on a swaying beast,” Balkis griped, but the small head disappeared. The saddlebag rippled for a bit, then stilled.
Matt shook his head. “Just had to have the last word.”
“I did not,” snapped a meowIy voice.
Matt grinned and had sense enough not to answer.
It was a pleasant ride, in the early morning—down a winding road by a stream, leaves stirring in the dawn breeze. Even as the day grew hotter and the road swung away from the water, the landscape was pleasant to watch—hedges dividing fields into a patchwork of different shades of green, lavender, or rose where a fallow field had sprouted flowers. Yes, it was a very pleasant ride until the blunt object struck the back of Matt’s head. He had only time for a feeling of outrage before the darkness closed in.
The eastern sky washed pale with the predawn twilight, and in its silence hundreds of scaling ladders thrust over the western walls of Baghdad, lowered to the ground, and filled with a steady stream of soldiers. They climbed down as quickly as they could, none speaking, all moving as quietly as possible. In similar noiselessness, the doors of the great western gate swung open, and the cavalry rode out at a trot that turned quickly to a canter.