She towered above the ramparts, very high above the ramparts, with a killer figure and blood in her eye, beautiful in her rage, raising a boulder in her fist to aim at the wall. “Summon him, I say!” Her voice was thunder, making the stones shake. “Where is this craven, this churl, this limb of Shaitan? Hale him forth to answer me, or I shall demolish your castle!”
“Spare us, O Fairest of the Djinn!” the captain of the guard pleaded.
“Yes, spare us, Princess Lakshmi, I beg of you!” Ramon cried. “Of which limb of Satan do you speak?”
“Your son, wizard, and do not think to cozen me with your handsome face and fair words! I speak of Matthew Mantrell! Bring him forth to me on the instant, or all your lives are forfeit!”
Infantry marched before them, clearing a way through the people who thronged the boulevard, salaaming and acclaiming the Caliph. He rode on a white mare, Matt following him on a brown, side by side with a suspicious-looking man with the indefinable aura of a wizard.
Matt tried for professional rapport. “What spells have you tried against these unbelievers?” “Everything we can think of,” the wizard snapped, and turned away, glowering.
Matt sighed and reined in his horse as the Caliph did, then dismounted and followed him up the steps to the parapet on the city wall. Somewhere along the way he had lost Balkis. He told himself not to worry, that she was as adept at survival as he was, if not more so—but he couldn’t help a trace of anxiety all the same.
Outside the city, drums began to throb—not the rattle of snare drums, but the deep grumbling of tympani. They climbed the wall to see a dark mass surging toward them in the deepening dusk. The parapet too was dark, with only an occasional torch to relieve the gloom.
“You learned that light on the wall only blinded you to what your enemy was doing, eh?” Matt asked.
The Caliph looked up in surprise. “Even so, Lord Wizard. Have you fought at night before?”
“Not against an army,” Matt said, “but hand-to-hand was bad enough.”
Several people glanced at him, startled, the Muslim wizard among them, and Matt realized they had heard about his battle with the evil giant. The wizard quickly looked away, mouth thinning, but the others eyed Matt warily—the fact that he hadn’t boasted about it outright made him even more formidable.
Matt didn’t tell them that he knew about eyes adapting to darkness from junior high school science, or that the giant would have crushed him if a stronger titan, Colmain, hadn’t come to his rescue.
On the other hand, it had been his magic that waked Colmain … both giants, in fact …
The mass of barbarians rolled closer and closer. Along the wall captains cried, “Nock arrows! Draw!”
Suddenly, the darkness at the base of the wall seemed to become deeper, totally lightless for a space of fifty feet out, embracing the front ranks of the barbarians. They disappeared into it.
“First spell, wizard!” the Muslim magus snapped. “How shall you counter it?”
Scaling ladders slammed against the parapet, and with bloodcurdling shrieks the barbarians came swarming out of the darkness at the foot of the wall.
“Light!” a captain cried, and soldiers lit fire-arrows. “Loose!”
The flaming arrows lanced down into the dark cloud. For a minute or so they gave enough light to show stocky silhouettes moving toward the bases of the ladders; then the darkness seemed to fold in on them and they were gone.
But the light had lasted long enough for the archers to take aim. “Loose!” the captain cried again, and hundreds of arrows lanced half the Tartars. They fell backward cursing, and knocked other dozens off as they plunged.
The other half came howling over the wall.
CHAPTER 14
The Muslim soldiers met them with scimitars and shields, and for a few hectic minutes it was slash and parry. More and more barbarians crowded onto the parapet, ganging up on the Muslim soldiers three to one.
Matt couldn’t understand how the defenders had ever lasted a single night of such slaughter. Time to think about it later; for now, he chanted,
Light blossomed inside the gloom at the foot of the wall—blossomed, brightened, and swelled, seeming to shove the darkness back physically. The barbarians stood in a merciless glare, waiting their turns at the ladders.
The few Muslim bowmen who were free of enemy soldiers shouted with glee and started picking off individual targets. Turks, Manchus, and Kazakhs screamed and died.
But the glare didn’t stop there. It shot upward in rays, illuminating the whole of the top of the wall, showing the Muslims their enemies as clearly as by daylight. Afghans and Khitans faltered, looking about them nonplussed, and Arab swords ran them through. The barbarians turned back to the business of slaughter with shouts of vengeance, but a third of them had fallen.
Vast voices roared in rage, and huge shapes rose from the back of the army, humanlike forms but with staring eyes, tusks for teeth, and arms knobbed and burled with muscle. There were two of them, but three more came plummeting from the skies.
“Djinn!” the soldiers wailed, cowering away.
“Worse—afrits!” the Arab wizard cried.
The barbarians laughed with delight and swung their swords. Some Arab soldiers woke from supernatural dread in time to parry; some did not.
“Not that much of a problem!” Matt raised his arms. “I’ll just command them back into their lamps and rings!”
“Lamps?” The Arab turned to stare at him. “These are no creatures propelled by sorcerers’ wishes, foolish Frank—they are wild afrits, far more powerful and dangerous than any djinni, and they have come of their own will, not that of others!”
“Converts!” Matt groaned. “Arjasp persuaded them to back his play!” Then he brightened. “But if they aren’t captives, they can be soon enough!” He started a verse.
As one, the afrits all cupped their hands and windmilled their arms. Fog gathered in their cupped palms, thickened, and solidified into huge boulders which the great humanoids hurled at the city.
Matt dropped the spell-in-progress in favor of a more immediate need.
The hurtling boulders exploded like gargantuan grenades. Silicate shrapnel sprayed the barbarians. Men howled in pain and fell. The Arabs ducked down behind their wall, and most of the fragments went whizzing over them. A few men cried out in pain as a shard struck here and there on the parapet; more cried out from the city below; but most of the dead and wounded lay among the men for whom the afrits fought.
Matt went back to his first verse.
With a howl of surprise and anger, one of the afrits went shooting toward the city. The Arab soldiers ducked involuntarily as it shot overhead—then down toward them, where an empty water bottle lay against the wall. The soldiers near it dove for cover, but the afrit shot tail-first, bellowing with pain and anger, into the neck of the bottle. It roared a curse that made all the Arabs blanche, and for once, Matt was sorry he understood the language—the afrit had promised a lingering and painful death for the presumptuous mortal who dared to imprison it.