Some, it appeared, wept tears of laughter.
Michael waited for all the mirth and hilarity to die down. When Nuri ceased laughing, the others stopped too. He said something, very rapidly in his harsh language, that Michael failed to understand. “Say you Devil,” said Nuri, “yet you know not my speech? How is this?”
“Everyone knows the Devil is an Englishman,” said Michael, and when Nuri translated this the crowd went as crazy as any audience at a West End vaudeville show.
But this time Nuri only smiled; he did not laugh. He motioned for quiet and got it.
He examined Michael’s bruised face and swollen left eye at a distance of a few inches. He looked at the arm in the sling. He shook his head sadly. “You no Devil. You hurt, maybe crazy headed fool.”
“This is my disguise,” said Michael. Nuri didn’t seem to understand, so Michael amended it. “My mask.”
The Fireman reached under his robe and brought out a knife with a curved blade. He put it to Michael’s jawline. “Nuri cut your mask off,” he said, his eyes glittering in the torchlight. “Then know your real face.”
Michael had to brace himself. He had to hold himself steady. He had the feeling that now was not the time. The time was coming, very soon, but this was not it.
He said easily, “I’ve come all the way from Hell, Nuri. A long way. Won’t you show me a little of your village before I destroy you?”
The tip of Nuri’s knife dug into Michael’s flesh, but not quite hard enough to draw blood. Nuri began to laugh again. It was a low laugh, a dark and twisted laugh, and it was echoed by only a few of the others. Nuri lowered the knife and grinned. “All Hell,” he said, opening his arms wide to encompass the world. “Everywhere. Me. King of Hell. Me. King of all devils. You only fool with madness here.” He touched his own skull with the handle of his knife. “Where you from come? Do not know. Where you go… Nuri do know.” He called out what sounded like a series of commands. A rifle barrel came up between Michael’s shoulderblades and a pistol was aimed at the side of his head. Nuri turned away and walked through the throng. The rifle barrel shoved Michael forward. A man with three teeth darted in, chattering, and looked to be measuring Michael’s boots against his own well-worn sandals. Michael let himself be moved, as the crowd moved around him. At least, he thought, he was headed in the right direction, toward the waterhole.
He noted that the watchman had returned to his post and that Nuri, certainly no fool, had sent a trio of men with rifles out into the dark to see if any more devils lurked nearby. Gantt and the boy were on their own.
Michael was paraded through the Dahlasiffa village. Women, children and dogs kept pace with the knot of armed men who surrounded him. One dog in particular came running up and started barking and spewing spittle with such abandon that Michael thought it was going to take a bite from his leg, and then a man gave it a kick that sent it reeling back amid its more reluctant brethren. These were not gentle people. Michael knew that whatever was in store for him would be a kind of Dahlasiffa hospitality that he might not appreciate.
He was stopped somewhere within the village. Torches and oil lamps ringed him. The guns were everywhere, and they were all pointed at him.
The crowd parted once more as Nuri the Fireman approached. He again got up almost face-to-face with Michael. “Village mine,” he said. “People mine. Nuri rules here. You say different, Devil?”
Michael stared into the man’s eyes without flinching. “I say Nuri will soon be on his knees. I say Nuri will soon be begging for mercy.”
That brought a huge smile and a clap of the hands. Evidently Nuri was enjoying the baiting, as Michael had hoped a hardened killer would. He doubted that anyone in this world had ever spoken to Nuri thus. And who else would have the courage to say this to him, but the Devil himself?
“Devil,” said Nuri, “meet my son.”
A boy about fourteen appeared, hobbling on sticks covered with gauze bandages likely scavenged from a dead medic’s pack.
The boy, wearing a loosely-fitting white shirt and a pair of red-dyed trousers, resembled his father. Except his right leg was gone at the hip, and there was only enough remaining of his left foot to grip a small piece of ground. It was, really, the shape of a cloven hoof. Michael recognized the injury. It was what happened when you stepped on a mine. Even if you survived the blast, some body parts did not. Looking into the boy’s sunken eyes, Michael wasn’t sure how much had actually survived. The right eye was a white, rolled-back orb, sightless. That side of the face kept twitching violently as injured nerves spasmed.
“Hasib mine,” Nuri said quietly, up close to Michael’s ear. “Eldest son. Such pride. Is handsome boy? Say speak, Devil.”
The boy stared at Michael with as much hatred as Michael had ever dreaded to see. If this boy had a gun, the little play would be over. The hate was a living thing. It felt like a lizard with a skin of spines, and it smelled like a world on fire. Michael knew this boy. He knew him well. This boy was every sufferer that war had made, every orphan, every widow or widower, every amputee, every brutalized corpse in a shallow ditch, every piece of flesh that used to be a man, every silent scream.
He knew this boy well, and he felt terror to his soul.
“Handsome,” whispered Michael Gallatin.
“Ah!” said the Fireman, smiling. “Thank you so.”
Michael felt a night breeze blow past. He heard the rattle of the palms and he smelled the enticing perfume of the waterhole. The urge to drink fell upon him, and still stunned by this vision of war’s corruption he was seized by a moment of rare weakness.
“I would like some water,” he told Nuri.
“Thirsty is the Devil? How this?” Nuri’s head cocked to one side. In his eyes evil festered. “Drink,” he said, and he spat into Michael’s face.
The crowd shouted its sincere approval. They hollered and danced, and some of them fired their weapons upward into the night. It seemed to Michael that it was nearly time indeed.
Nuri spoke another series of commands. Hands grasped Michael by the arms—both arms, which caused him to grit his teeth and put his head down so they might not see him on the verge of crying out—and half-pushed, half-dragged him along. The entire Dahlasiffa nation seemed to be out in force, and like a sea in the desert they moved along with him in dusty waves.
They took him to the pit.
He lifted his head and saw that it was about six meters long and three meters wide. Across its length was the trunk of what had been a sturdy palm tree, secured on either end by piles of sandbags. Various clay jars stood alongside the pit. The crowd was festive, the musicians began playing once more, and Michael wondered what the hell he’d gotten himself into.
He was able to have a look into the pit. By the light of the flickering torches, he saw it was about a meter and a half in depth and had a short ladder leaning against one side. At the bottom, some scurrying around and others sitting deathly still, were perhaps three hundred scorpions. Pale brown ones, Michael noted. Those gave a nasty sting but were not poisonous. He was pushed and dragged along to one end of the palm log, and standing there with his right hand on his broken shoulder he saw Nuri take up position on the far end.
Nuri motioned to the crowd, and they were quiet. “Devil!” he called out. “Have we a contest!”
Michael remained silent. Two dozen guns from three nations were aimed at him.
Nuri stepped out onto the palm log. His balance was sure. He was grinning broadly. “Devil!” he said. “Meet us in…” He was having trouble with the translation.