by Felix Baron
In her haste to reach the depraved torments she’d been promised, Honey dragged her Aunt by the hand, with, ‘Ajale, Aunt. Hurry, for I am so hashiri my concha is on fire.’
‘My sweet nekbat, my horniest of sluts, your flame shall be quenched, I promise.’ She grinned. ‘Doused in man-milk.’ Mahbanov stopped abruptly and said, ‘In here.’
‘Here’ was a walled yard, noxious with vats of night-soil, just big enough to allow its only occupant, a mangy donkey of advanced years, to turn around.
Mahbanov helped her niece up to sit side-saddle on the beast’s sway back and led them out and on, to the edge of town and beyond. A brilliant orange sun was low on the horizon but a full moon was rising. The donkey trudged through sifting sands that were stirred by the night-breeze that always followed sunset. Colour disappeared. The landscape turned to silver and sable, bright but deceptive. When the trio had passed between a pair of dunes that hissed softly with the tumble of individual grains down their sides, Mahbanov halted and helped Honey down.
‘From here you go on foot. Keep your eyes on Dhuruva, the constant star. You will be met by a guide who will lead you to the appointed place.’
The Aunt took her niece’s place on the animal’s bony back and turned its head back towards town. Honey dragged her feet through loose sand, almost hypnotised by the star she followed. After a while, she became aware that she wasn’t alone. A great silvery wolf was padding along beside her. As they mounted a wind-carved dune, Honey knotted her fingers in the beast’s shaggy coat and allowed it to help her struggle up the shifting slope. At the ridge of the dune, she looked down on the ruins of an ancient village. Walls that had been built from sun-baked bricks were now crumbled and ragged, most no more than shoulder-high, many just stubs, like rotted teeth. The wolf guided Honey down and between those walls, threading left and right as they followed streets and alleys that used to be but were no more. Eventually, the grey beast led Honey to a steep slope of rubble that descended between the remnants of walls. The wolf loped; Honey scrambled, down, into what had once been a cellar that opened into another cellar, and yet another, until she saw a door that was whole and new and was outlined by a dull red glimmer. She paused. There was a murmur and a dull thumping from within. The wolf nudged the small of Honey’s back with its great head. She stumbled forward. The door opened.
For a long moment, the impressions that assaulted Honey confused her. The ruddy light was from copper braziers, set on the floor and standing no higher than her slender ankles. Charcoal glowed in each one but was dimmed by layers of smouldering herbs that wreathed the air with languid swirls of dense white smoke. Honey inhaled frankincense and bhang. Above her, through the swirling veil, the stars still shone, but in diminished numbers. She blinked, trying to focus on the revellers – the pack that she would soon belong to.
A man whose bare body gleamed with sweat was pouring arrack into a bronze bowl for a gigantic she-wolf to lap up. A creature – seemingly wolf from his waist up but human male below – was buggering a naked youth who crouched on all fours. The sodomite had four lupine paws instead of hands and feet. Many of the orgiasts seemed part wolf, or were wearing garments made from pelts or perhaps were part-way through magical transformations. A bitch-wolf whose flaccid human breasts hung through slits in her furry skin seemed to be fellating a dog-wolf who was up on his hind legs and had the pale pink pizzle of a human male.
Hands took Honey’s shoulders. Blades slit through her burqa. She watched, bemused, as shreds of her only garment fell to her feet. She felt a twinge of regret when she saw that her slippers were ruined. The iridescent sequins that hadn’t been torn away had been dulled by abrading sand. A blotch of blood stained the woven silk close to her left little toe but she wasn’t aware of having been wounded.
A hand took Honey’s left arm. Fangs closed firmly but gently on her right wrist. Belatedly, she remembered to struggle. Honey was pulled to a low platform that was strewn with pelts. Sprawled spread-eagle, she gladly suffered licks from several tongues. One, she could see now that it was close, projected from a human mouth beneath a lupine half-mask. She tugged against restraining hands, though not too hard. Excitement thudded in her breast. The defilement she’d hungered for was close at hand.
A fur-clad form clambered on to the platform between her feet. An indistinct shape loomed above her. Paws, or gloved hands, parted Honey’s young thighs. The animalistic figure descended upon her. She twisted and squirmed, as she’d been instructed to do. The great shaggy head came lower. Honey froze as if either in terror or in an ecstasy of anticipation. Sharp teeth bracketed her throat and closed on it, just firmly enough to threaten. Something hard, hot and wet, nuzzled her sex.
Honey, convinced that her moment was upon her, lifted up her loins to receive her pack-leader. He tensed for his first thrust …
There was a splintering crash from above. Something enormous dropped to the cellar’s floor.
Nine
A HAND SHOOK my shoulder. I covered it with my own, ready to pull Selin down but a more delicate voice than her earthy tones said, ‘Effendi! My Master bids me tell you that the time has come.’
The female form was cloaked in a burqa, so I guessed who she was. I blinked back to sensibility and swung my feet to the floor. My quartet of slender bed-mates were standing ready with Reverend Longfellow’s clothes. Western garb was more suited to combat than Arab robes. Two sylphs knelt to lace my hobnailed double-soled black parson’s boots tightly around my ankles. Another daubed my face with kohl while the fourth handed me my belt, with my .44 holstered on the right, my sabre in its sheath to the left and my Bowie clipped behind.
Two mounted men awaited me outside, with a third steed ready saddled.
‘The widow and her niece are being trailed,’ one told me. ‘We will ride with you for part of the way, if the effendi permits?’
‘Just so we don’t get close enough to be detected.’
‘As you command, effendi.’
Our horses made very little sound in the soft sand. I was led to tracks that were already filling in.
‘They have a donkey,’ one of my companions told me, ‘but they can’t mean to travel much further. It’s a beast I wouldn’t feed to my dogs.’
‘Then I should proceed on foot,’ I said.
‘Effendi! Look!’
A lone figure on a tired-looking donkey was trudging towards us from out of the desert. The rider’s head lifted. The rider pulled hard on the reins and kicked the poor beast with its heels. The animal shuffled off at right angles at its best speed.
‘That must be the Aunt,’ I said. I dropped from my mount and tossed the reins to one of my companions. ‘Catch her and return to wait here for me, unless you hear gunfire. If you do, I’d appreciate your speedy help.’
My escort wheeled and broke into a gallop, towing my steed. I marched on, on foot. The donkey’s trail, reinforced now by having been made twice, led me directly towards the North Star. When the hoof prints came to an end, I simply navigated by the constant star that has guided mariners since time immemorial. Sinbad must have followed that same small bright light, though I couldn’t recall reading any such account.
Sand dragged at my feet but a determined man, well shod and with sturdy limbs, is hard to slow down. My calves had hardly started to ache when I crested a rise and looked down on what I presumed to be my destination, a ruined village. I descended into a labyrinth of broken and eroded walls. There was no visible sign of life but the air conveyed traces of aromatic smoke to my twitching nostrils. As a military man, I knew to take the high ground, so I explored by striding along the tops of crumbled and uneven walls. Ere long, I discerned a faint glow and made for it.
Someone had fabricated a crude roof to the cellar beneath me. It consisted of nothing more substantial than criss-crossed wands overlain with a scattering of reeds. I stooped to see what I could make out in the dim red light below. Directly beneath me, a small but shapely female form lay pinned on a crude bed, held
down by four fur-clad, or furry, beasts. A fifth figure was arched above the girl in a position I knew well. There was no doubt in my mind. The victim had to be Honey and in a few short seconds I would be too late to save whatever honour remained to her. Without a further thought, I drew my sabre and my revolver – and leaped.
I landed in a shower of debris, stiff-ankled, at the foot of the platform the girl lay on. My right arm thrust but the creature who had been about to penetrate Honey rolled aside before my blade reached him. I turned my thrust into a slash that took half the hand off another of the girl’s captors. He didn’t seem to feel the wound but leaped at me, teeth bared and snarling. The guard of my sabre came up under his chin, snapping his head back and toppling him into the press.
My left hand squeezed off three quick deafening shots, more to spread confusion than anything, but I was gratified to see two creatures spin and drop. My iron-shod heel crunched naked toes. An enormous wolf leaped at me. He was met by my cold steel and skewered his own throat. I shook the beast off my blade and whirled, slashing low and severing both an Achilles tendon and a femoral artery. One man-beast backed away from me and tripped on a low brazier, scattering hot coals. In a moment, the rushes on the sandy floor were smouldering. The chamber filled with choking smoke and the stench of burning wolf-pelts. A fleeing female in a wolf-skin cloak brushed past me but I gutted the man who tried to follow her with a moulinet, a tight twisting cut that carved a neat circle from the flesh of his belly and let his guts spill into a pool at his feet.
A she-wolf lunged for my thigh. I took a standing backwards jump on to the dais and thrust down, penetrating the animal’s nape and severing its spine. Something hit me behind my knees. My feet shot from under me. I landed on the base of my spine with a painful jolt and had no sooner shaken the stars from my eyes when an enormous thud to the back of my head rendered me unconscious.
Ten
MY HEAD WAS filled with roaring white light. The rim of a delicate bowl brushed my lips.
‘For the pain,’ Benim’s voice told me.
I sipped the hot bitter brew gratefully. A familiar musk told me that the satin pillows beneath my face were Selin’s smooth thighs. ‘The girl?’ I asked.
‘Gone. Abducted or escaped.’
‘My weapons?’
‘I have them safe.’
‘Tell me?’
‘You slew three men and two wolves. My men took three prisoners, not counting the treacherous widow, Mahbanov. The rest escaped.’
‘Five of them, I think. Tell me, the ones I killed – did they die from my gunshots or by my blade?’
‘One run through, one disembowelled and one bled to death from a wound in his thigh. Why do you ask, Richard?’
‘I shot at least two. Werewolves – silver? My sabre is chased with it. My bullets are simple lead.’
Benim snorted. ‘That’s just superstition, my friend.’
I shrugged and regretted moving my head. ‘I’ve seen things, Benim …’
‘I shall have silver bullets cast,’ he offered, ‘if it will comfort you.’
‘Crosses carved into the tips of my leaden ones will serve.’ I sipped more of the medicinal tea. ‘I’m sorry, Benim. I failed you.’
‘Nonsense! No man could have done more, and anyway, the game is still afoot. We have the three men we took and Mahbanov. They are being put to the question even as we speak. Unless my persuaders have lost their touch, we’ll discover the fleeing couple’s destination before morning. As for the other survivors, Satan take them but they’ll have gone to ground by now.’
He proved right, though all his torturers were able to elicit from their prisoners was an address, ‘At the Sign of the Alembic, Street of Silken Veils, Baghdad.’
‘An apothecary,’ I surmised.
‘A disreputable one, no doubt,’ Benim added, ‘for it is located in a notorious street of whores. No doubt its primary business is the dispensing of abortifacients and simples against the pox.’
‘The Czar’s agents utilise a system of “cells”,’ I offered. ‘Each group of spies knows how to contact only one member of one other group, as a precaution. I have no doubt but that the Baghdad group will disperse as soon as it learns the cell here has been destroyed. I must move swiftly, Benim, or the trail will end.’
‘I have fifty horsemen awaiting your command, Richard, but first you must heal.’
‘My skull is thick. I’m healed enough. I don’t think much of my chances of leading a small army through the mountains of Kurdistan, though. Better, Benim, I should go alone. If I travel fast enough, perhaps I will catch up with Honey and her abductors before they reach Baghdad.’
Datis, Honey’s father, interrupted with, ‘Bring me back my dearest child, Richard, and I will heap untold riches upon your head.’
Benim gave the man a wry look and asked, ‘Untold, Datis?’
‘A talent, by volume, of gold coins – two talents if she is still pure.’
‘The coins will be English guineas,’ Benim insisted.
Datis hesitated before mumbling, ‘Of course.’
No doubt he’d had it in mind to reward me in some debased currency, half lead and half gold. I dismissed the ‘two talents’ as impossible to collect, but even one talent – by volume – was a tidy fortune. A cubic foot of gold wasn’t to be sneered at.
I’ve never been a mercenary, exactly, but when, in the course of doing my duty, a few ownerless baubles have presented themselves to me, I haven’t been so foolish as to ignore them. I see no harm in accepting rewards, even for deeds I’d have performed without the spur of avarice. The Koran allows a warrior anfal – spoils of war.
Benim provided me with a fine pair of mounts. They weren’t racing camels – thoroughbreds haven’t the legs for the mountains – but they were magnificent beasts, none the less. I’d got as far as the foothills of Mount Nemrut before I felt a familiar chill at the base of my skull. With slow and deliberately overt movements, I drew a Whitney Percussion ‘Good and Serviceable’ .58 calibre rifle from its sheath at my side and loaded it. Being very careful to keep the muzzle pointed at the sky, I fired.
The echoes were still rolling back from the hillsides when my watchers revealed themselves. There were five of them, small, wiry, swarthy, tough as hobnailed boots. Each cradled a long-barrelled flintlock, with the lock cocked. As soon as the one who seemed their leader was close enough, I tossed my rifle to him. He snatched it from the air one-handed and inspected it with the carefully blank face of a man who is impressed but refuses to show it.
‘I bring gifts,’ I told him in Turkish.
‘Why?’
‘I ask leave to pass through your lands. I’m headed for Baghdad.’
At the word ‘Baghdad’ he hawked and spat.
‘To kill some men,’ I added.
His face brightened at the mention of his favourite topic. ‘Why?’
‘Vendetta. A matter of honour.’
He nodded. ‘A woman?’
‘A girl – dishonoured.’
‘By Persians?’
‘Persians, and some Turks.’ Kurds hate both Turks and Persians. I hoped that my talk of killing men of both races should ingratiate me a little.
‘You come from Turkey.’
‘I am Egyptian,’ I lied. To a Kurd, Egypt was likely as distant a land as he’d heard of. Turkey was on the brink of war with Egypt and Kurds believe in ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. I continued, ‘I come fresh from killing Turks in Turkey. Now I go to Persia, to kill Persians.’
He sat motionless for perhaps a quarter of an hour. I kept still, except for the trickle of cold sweat down my spine. My life depended on his deliberations. I reckoned my chances at about six to five in my favour. I’d have preferred better odds.
At last, he asked, ‘Gifts?’
I sucked air. ‘Six rifles. A case of ammunition. A small purse – all the treasure I have,’ I lied again. ‘I expect to die in Baghdad.’
‘Purse?’
; I tossed him a leather pouch containing a handful of coins. A Kurdish bandit wasn’t going to leave me with any cash, no matter how sympathetic to my cause he might be. ‘And a camel,’ I added.
He nodded. One of his companions strode to my mount’s flank and drew a short, very sharp, knife. I held my breath. To my relief, he used his blade to shear a pattern into my beast’s woolly pelt – a peak and three wavy lines. When he stepped back, done, the leader told me, ‘Free passage.’
I loosened the reins that connected the animal I was riding to my second camel and rode away slowly, although my every instinct demanded I spur into a gallop.
It took me a week to pass through the mountains. I was watched the entire way. Sometimes I glimpsed a solitary figure on a crest. Mainly, it was the chill on the back of my neck that told me I wasn’t alone.
The Kurd was more than true to his word. I was close to descending into Persia when a water-hole I was seeking proved to be no more than a puddle of mud. I’d have died of thirst if it hadn’t been for the goatskin of fresh water that lay close by, on a rock. Truly grateful, I salaamed to the cardinal points before I took the lifesaver up and put it to my dry lips.
I joined the Tigris at Mosul. From there it was grassy plain with patches of marshland as far as Baghdad. I pressed on as quickly as my camel would take me but to no avail. The fugitives had to be moving at least as fast as I was.
In Baghdad, a leering beggar directed me to the Street of Silken Veils. The apothecary was no more than a shack, sagging between a tavern to the left and a brothel to the right. The entrance was so low I had to bend almost double to pass within. I wasn’t given time to straighten up. Two cudgels struck my skull, one from each side. The floor smacked my face and I remember no more.
