CHAPTER VIII
About the time that Godwin and his friends were fording the Rosetta Branch of the Nile, Heraj the sorcerer interrupted his leader again.
"He riddled out the levitating oasis, Mufaddal, and he slew the winged lion. I thought you'd like to know what sort of man is coming after us."
"If you had done your job at all well--" Mufaddal paused to thrust a piece of millet bread into his maw, and his half-brother interrupted him.
"You know my limitations. Allah curse it, what man ever stood up to the winged lion before today?" He took a piece of paper out of Mufaddal's chin, or seemed to, at any rate, and read a few words that were scribbled thereon. "Well, the dog is crossing the Rosetta now. I have a horrible feeling he can't be stopped." Heraj sprinkled salt on the scrap of paper and ate it meditatively. "Pepi wants to try the rolling sands stunt. I suppose we may as well. But this Godwin ... by the _schedim_, what an opponent! Djinn or no djinn, I like him not!" He left, and Mufaddal, having lost his appetite, went off to inspect the plague ship for the hundredth time that week.
It was his own idea. He was as proud of it as of his skill at torturing captured Crusaders, a score of whom languished now in his dungeon awaiting his displeasure. The ship lay at the wharf, a black swift vessel with dark lateen sails slanting high above her deck. A company of Seljuk Turks and other Saracen allies stood about the dock, on guard lest some ill-advised person attempt to board her. More were stationed on the ship, and from beneath their feet in the sealed hold came the frightful squeakings and squealings and multitudinous rustlings of thousands upon thousands of great gray rats, imprisoned there to fight and breed and die and wait their chance at sunlight again--sunlight that Mufaddal devoutly hoped they would view on the shore of England.
He massaged his hands together. What a picture it was! All these beauties, scampering over England, biting people, infecting masses of men and women, gnawing on children's feet, carrying the plague hither and yon until the whole island lay gasping out its fading breath, nine-tenths of its population covered with the applesized tumors and hideous purple spots of bubonic. Then let them see who sent out Crusaders! It would be Saracen hordes overrunning Britain, rather than red-faced Englishmen defiling the Holy Land!
Some six hundred and forty-eight years before, the plague had lashed through Constantinople, and slain ten thousand souls in a day's space. Say, conservatively, then, that ten thousand per day would die in England. How many days would it take....
He went aboard, the better to hear the gibberings of his ghastly phalanxes. The boards were hot under his bare feet. The grisly ravening of the packed throngs of rats rose all about him, and in an ecstasy of delight he knelt to lift a hatch cover, yearning to gaze on them once more.
"Lord!" A voice burst out behind him. "O Lord, do not open the hatch! Think what thou doest!"
* * * * *
Mufaddal turned, to see a Mameluke, an ex-slave converted to Islam and now a fine soldier, who was running toward him and waving his arms excitedly.
Mufaddal stood erect, a giant flat-nosed man of black face and blacker heart. He kimboed his arms and hissed, "What is this you say, slave?"
The Mameluke came to a halt before him. "O Lord, think if thou shouldst allow even a single rat to escape! Thou might be bitten, and we should have to drop thee into the sea!"
Mufaddal reached out. Very slowly his hands went around the soldier's neck, and the Mameluke was too startled to step backward. Mufaddal said softly, "Shall I throttle you? Hmm. No. There lies no pleasure in the strangling of a worm. Shall I heave you into the ocean, as you would do with me should I be bitten? Bah! Too easy a death, and you might be able to swim. Shall I drop you into the hold?" The Mameluke gave a half-stifled howl. "I think I shall. The pets need nourishment. I can't have them eating each other."
He bent, still holding the gasping Mameluke by one clamped-tight fist, and raised the hatch cover and propped it with his foot. Then he lifted the soldier by his neck, swung him a little so that his flailing heels kicked out behind, and lobbed him into the opening. There was a squashy sort of splash, as the man fell full length upon a turbulent blanket of milling, screaming rodents. At the same time there burst upon the upper air a horrible carrion stench, like that of a charnel house a hundred times augmented. The Mameluke gave a cry of pitiable terror, and another, and then was still. Perhaps he fainted, or perhaps the rats found his life in that instant.
Mufaddal knelt above the hatchway, chuckling in his greasy beard. His brown eyes lit with soft venomous delight.
Suddenly there shot from the blackness of the hold a single enormous rat, fascinated by the square of light and throwing all its nervous energy into one superb attempt to gain the outer world. Mufaddal quailed back in panic as it flew past his face and landed on the deck, slithering and floundering in an effort to regain its balance after the magnificent leap.
Lest more of them make the try, he dropped the lid to the coamings. He drew his scimitar. The rat, nearly blinded, jerked its blank gaze from side to side. Slowly he advanced on it, weapon lifted. It saw him, opened its evil mouth and squealed insane defiance.
He made a swipe at it, it dodged and leaped upon him. Its tiny sharp teeth met in his _gallabiyah_, and it swung from the cloth, snarling like an angry cat. Frantic, he knocked it to the deck with the flat of his sword, slicing off a small portion of his own belly in the process. Then he smashed down the blade. It split the rat in two and clove into the deck, so deeply that it took him three hearty tugs to disengage it.
Bleeding, cursing, and shaking with the after-effects of fear, he stamped off the ship and across the dock to his house, where he called his private surgeon to bind up the wound. He began to think about Godwin, and eventually the Englishman and the rat became thoroughly confused in his dark mind; so that his impersonal hatred for Godwin became a very personal loathing and desire for vengeance.