CHAPTER XI

The black-faced slob who led the troops of the Saracens in Alexandria was seated cross-legged on a rug, eating a bowlful of dry rice. He squinted at Ramizail where she stood, defiant and tear-stained, across the room from him. "Bring the slut here," said he. Two slaves dragged her forward. They took their hands away when they had stationed her in front of him; she immediately hit one of them in the eye and kicked the other on the shin. Then she bent over and thrust a finger under Mufaddal's nose.

"Watch who you're calling a slut, you pig-eyed ape-visaged son of a buck-toothed jackal!" she said in a low but quite audible snarl. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

He made as if to shrug, snatched her by the wrist and flung her prone on the rug before him. "I know who you are, you viper mouthed hell hag. You're Ramizail, who once controlled the djinn."

"I still control them, you bat-eared offspring of a pock-marked toad."

"Oh no you don't, you mildewed bowlegged harridan," said Mufaddal. With the "bowlegged" epithet he went too far, as any student of women, and especially of the vain Ramizail, could have told him. She rolled over and smiled up at him and before he knew what she intended, her teeth had met in the flesh of his calf. He leaped straight up with a full-throated bawl of pain.

She sat back and crossed her legs Moslem-fashion and said, "Now that the pleasantries are done with, let me tell you that the chief of all the djinn, y-clept Mihrjan would--and _could_--do anything for me. So just watch your step, you greasy-handed scheming scum, or you'll find yourself hanging by your--"

"Mihrjan would indeed have done anything for you," said Mufaddal, rolling up his cheap cotton trousers and dabbing at the blood on his leg with a piece of the equally cheap rug, which he tore off for the purpose. "But your friend Godwin sent Mihrjan away and told him to stay till he was called. And now he's lost the ring of Solomon, and you're helpless. Ouch!" he yipped as the rug rasped over his wound. "Well, almost helpless. I suppose I'll have to have all your teeth pulled before I make you my concubine."

"Before you make me a concubine, you draff of the Cairo gutters, you'll have to pull my teeth and draw my nails and hamstring me and break my arms, and even then I'll _gum_ you to death!" she yelled.

He regarded her out of the corner of his eye, and thought that perhaps she was right, and that he should give up this idea. Certainly there was always the chance that her djinni might come looking for her against Godwin's orders; but he took a second look and decided the djinni could go hang. She was as luscious a piece of loot as had come his way in years. She was standing now, hands on hips. He motioned one of the slaves up.

"Let's see what she looks like under all those layers of drapery," he said.

The slave grinned, whipped out a knife, and before Ramizail could turn he expertly ran its razor-honed blade up her back, within a millimeter of her spine. Her robes fell forward, slit from waist to neck, and she saved her modesty only by a quick grab at the front of them. Whirling--and Ramizail when she wished could move like a tornado in a hurry--she snatched the knife from his careless grasp, shifted it to a comfortable position in her hand, and with a lightning stroke cut the belt of his scarlet satin pantaloons. The slave clutched at them desperately ... just too late. He turned to flee this demon-wench, the trousers entangled his ankles, and he sprawled headlong across the floor. The other slave came warily forward, groping out toward the girl.

She menaced him with the knife. "Want to lose your pants too, little man?" she asked.

* * * * *

He was a shy and sensitive soul at heart. He glanced at his trousers, at the knife, turned pale, moaned, and dashed for the door. Ramizail faced Mufaddal, who was nursing his calf and gaping appreciatively at the slim brown back exposed by the slave's blade.

"Turn around for a minute, al Mamun," she hissed, "while I fix my robes. If you don't, the last thing you'll see will be this silver sliver!" She flashed the knife within an inch of his popping orbs. He hastily swiveled round and faced the wall.

"One would think you were deficient in the body, and ashamed of it," he growled.

"If you would care to see just how extremely undeficient I am, you big baboon," she said, slicing off the whole top of her cream-colored outer robe and knotting it around her ample bosom in the form of a halter, with the copper-hued gown caught beneath it to chastely cover her diaphragm, "then you have only to snatch one peek over your shoulder. I assure you it would give you a moment of supreme pleasure, immediately before you died." A low estimation of her own attractions was never a failing of Ramizail's. "And you would die, Mufaddal. They tell me a sliced gullet can be painful. Do you want to find out?"

"No," said Mufaddal sullenly, staring hard at the wall. What a long-clawed cat from the alleys of Hell! he thought. Had she been less beautiful, he would slay her in this instant. But he wanted her, and without blemish or scar, so he sat motionless until she said, "All right, turn around. But no more clever ideas from you, or I'll really grow angry." She tucked the knife into her girdle as he pushed himself around to face her.

"Very well," he said, "I'll buy you. I respect your spirit, woman. 'Tis a trait I like in my women. How now, if I heaped your lap with emeralds and nephrite jade?"

"Green was never one of my favorite colors," said she, sitting down comfortably across the rug from him. She cast about for a way to show her absolute contempt, bethought herself of her playing cards which she always carried with her, and drew the pack out of a purse she wore on her girdle.

"What are they?" he asked, intrigued in spite of himself, as she began to lay them out on the rug.

"Playing cards. My djinn brought them to me from a far future time. They haven't even been invented yet," said she, studying the faces of those upturned.

"What does one do with them? Not that I care," he added, remembering his carefully-built reputation for single-minded fanaticism.

"One plays many games. I might teach you one, were you not as stupid as a hog and as dull-witted as an aged camel."

"I am as intelligent as you," yowled Mufaddal. Then, since she was a mere woman, "More intelligent, blast your smirking face! Teach me a game!"

"The best one is called Poke Her," said Ramizail. "But to really play properly, we need four people."

Mufaddal threw a dish at the remaining slave, who was sitting in a corner trying to repair his belt. "Go fetch me Heraj and Pepi," he ordered. "Also bring some food. Something to munch on. And some fermented-bread beer." The slave trotted out, gripping his ravished pants.

Presently the two sorcerers came in, Heraj very glum. "What's wrong with you, lemon-lips?" asked Mufaddal.

"What'd you do with Godwin and his crew?" asked Heraj.

"You know very well."

"Yes, I know. You threw them into the jail with those captured Crusaders and the others. I don't like the risk, brother. You ought to kill the whole lot of them now. You underestimate that big Englishman. And the renegade El Sareuk is no babe, either."

"The cell is as well guarded as a prince's _harim_," said Mufaddal.

"Yes, but any man who can slay a winged lion is a match for fifty seraglio guards. Kill 'em, I say. The plague ship sails with the early morning tide. Why take unnecessary chances?"

"I have several simple but pleasurable notions in mind for Godwin and his misguided cohorts. Come here, I'll whisper one of them to you." Heraj stalked over and bent down. Mufaddal sputtered wetly and intimately in his ear. Presently the sorcerer began to grin.

"Not bad. I guess it's worth the risk. I'll be extra cautious, anyway." He sat down beside Mufaddal. He extracted a goblet of saffron-yellow bubbling wine from his brother Pepi's yataghan pommel and drank it off. "What did you call us in for?" he asked, gazing at Ramizail with the expression of a starving vulture catching sight of a prime steak.

"This wench has a game to teach me, and it needs four players. Go on, girl," said Mufaddal, with as close an approach to amiability as was possible for him to assume.

Ramizail dealt out five cards apiece, having unobtrusively stacked the deck, and began to teach them the exotic game of Poke Her.