The Barbary Pirates eg-4

by William Dietrich

  And so I turned to climb the castle steps and rescue my son and the woman (I realized with a jolt that I had unconsciously come to think of her this way) who was, for all practical purposes, my wife.

  The climb was familiar, taking me up to the reception hall where I’d met Astiza. I passed with disquiet a side tunnel that I remembered led to Omar’s torture chamber. Then I opened the wooden door, pushed aside the concealing tapestry, and entered the throne room. This, I guessed, was close to the harem. The royal chair and pillows were as I remembered them, shadowy in the darkness. Even the African cat was there, locked for the night in its brass cage. I could see the fire of its eyes as I quickly passed through, and the beast made a rumbling purr. I wondered if Dragut’s dragon was lurking about, too, a lizard with the appetite of a polar bear.

  In the rear of the cage a third eye gleamed, and I realized a smaller cage held Yussef’s turban and emerald, ably protected by his cat. Even the leopard earned his keep.

  At the far end I slipped out into a quiet hallway hung with old brass medieval shields. There was a forbidding stillness to the castle as if the building was waiting, and I puzzled that I hadn’t encountered more guards. It was midnight, yes, but was I really this lucky? Where was everyone?

  Up a flight of marble stairs—I must be at the top of the palace now—and there a eunuch doorman, conveniently asleep in the depth of night. There was a flask nearby, and if he was caught in this dereliction he’d no doubt be bastinadoed on the soles of his feet, or hung from a hook on the castle wall. I hesitated, thinking of killing him, but couldn’t do it to a man already cruelly castrated. Instead I tore a drapery and jumped, clouted his head, gagged him, and tied him tight. Another sharp clout put a stop to his squirming.

  Then I went to the wood and brass harem door and listened. No trill of female laughter; the harem was asleep. I was ready to smash its lock with a pistol ball if need be, but instead this door opened, too. Clearly, Yussef was either not expecting an imminent American attack—or had faith in his eunuch guards. I slipped inside cautiously, not wanting to risk a riot by startling the girls. Could I find the duo I was looking for? If we could just creep away, I hardly cared about the mirror. It couldn’t really work after all this time, could it?

  But it had, burning that Spanish ship. As it could burn ours.

  The harem was empty, too.

  I passed through an antechamber and entered the lovely harem court, far more opulent than the merchant’s attic I’d once broken into in Cairo. This room had a central pool and a domed roof pierced by inserts of colored glass. In daytime, a rainbow of colors would filter down. Pillars ran around the chamber’s periphery to form an arcade beneath and balcony above, and doorways opened to what I presumed were the separate bedrooms and kitchen of the women who lived here. Flowers filled a score of vases, and lotus petals floated in the pool. The place smelled of perfume and incense. What would it be like when the concubines lounged and laughed, the beauties of a dozen nationalities just lightly clothed? Limbs dangling in the pool, breasts casually exposed, gossiping as they brushed each other’s glossy hair, smooth shoulders, sweet hips, their great almond eyes lined with kohl, their lips picked out with…

  Focus, Ethan!

  You’re worrying about just one woman now.

  And suddenly I had company. There was the light tread of a slipper behind me to which I might have turned, but at the same instant there was a growl ahead, the bass rumble of a heavy muzzle flecked with saliva and blood. Sokar! The grip on my pistol was suddenly slick as I realized why the castle was so quiet. I’d walked into a trap.

  “Ethan, Ethan, so predictable,” Aurora’s voice came from the shadows where the dog regarded me with its piss-yellow eyes. “We’ve been waiting for weeks.” And there emerged the wolflike bulk of her brutish mastiff, head lowered, shoulders bunched.

  “We were going to let you turn the mirror on your own navy,” another voice said behind me. Dragut! “You could have proved yourself to us, Gage. But now, we’ll just try it on you.” His tone was anticipatory as a gun muzzle as wide as a dog’s mouth nudged my back. “Please don’t move, because I’m holding your friend’s blunderbuss. If my finger slips, the blast will cut you in two.”

  “Hell of a mess in this pretty pool.”

  “We’ve slaves enough to lick it clean, if necessary.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Aurora stepped into better light, holding my longrifle in a hand that also grasped Sokar’s leash. In her other fist was a second leash, this one tied to two figures coming miserably into view. The line led to a leather collar around the neck of Astiza, whose eyes were flickering to search for a means to fight back. And then from her to little Horus, who was walking with a limp and looked tearstained and traumatized.

  He brightened a little as he recognized me across the pool. “Papa! Dog bit me!”

  I wanted to shoot the damned beast right then, but if I did the blunderbuss would go off and Astiza and Harry would be finished. My naval pistol was damned inaccurate at that distance anyway, and the one I’d taken from the dead guards no better. I might shoot and miss.

  “Serves you right for stabbing my foot, you wretched cretin,” Aurora snapped.

  Her foot still bore a bandage, I saw, and I couldn’t help but smile. The apple didn’t fall so far from the tree, did it? Less than three and Harry already made me puff with pride. First he’d stabbed a little mouse, and then a bigger rat!

  “That dog won’t frighten you much longer,” I called.

  “No, it won’t,” Aurora said, “because you’ve doomed your bastard to the most hideous kind of slavery. This slut who spawned him is going to be roasted by the reflected rays of the sun. You can watch her catch on fire, Ethan, just before we test the mirror on you. That’s what you get for killing Osiris! Then we’ll let whatever boat dropped you here come in close to rescue your blackened husk, and set them ablaze as well. Bright as a bonfire.”

  “You really should have been a dramatist.”

  “A month ago I offered you the world and myself. And now? We only had to wait for you to come. Omar sent word that he had intruders. That eunuch you trussed was playacting. Janissary guards let you stupidly slip by. Any friends foolish enough to accompany you should already be dead. Everything you touch turns to disaster, and every person you befriend comes to grief. You do not control the lightning but are lightning yourself, a bolt of misery everywhere you alight.”

  “Which explains why I’m more than a little baffled by your attraction to me. Of course, you’re not exactly a Saint Nick yourself.”

  “Oh, I will be revered, never doubt. Winners are always honored by posterity. The most powerful become gods and goddesses. It’s the ruthless who are worshipped.”

  “Brave words when you sic a mongrel on a near infant and have me outnumbered a hundred to one. You’ve never been anything but a bully, Aurora. Too much the tart to ever win a real man, a dabbler in the wilderness dependent on her brother, a female with the mothering skills of a Gorgon, and a sportsman with the shooting expertise of an English fop.”

  She stiffened, her habit when hearing the truth. “You saw me shoot this gun in Canada!” And she held up my own beloved rifle. It had traveled perhaps fifteen thousand miles since its forging in Jerusalem, and my heart quickened when I saw it. “I can outshoot any man in this fortress!”

  “You can’t outshoot me. Remember what I did to your brother, twice.”

  She flushed. “The one shot at Cecil was lucky and the other almost point-blank.”

  Astiza had gone still as deep water during this exchange, waiting for me to make a miracle. I saw one, or at least a tiny chance.

  “I’m still better than you.”

  “It’s my rifle now, Ethan.”

  “Let me prove it. You’ve never shot against me.”

  “You propose a competition?”

  “I’m just saying it’s easy to boast when your opponent has a blunderbuss in his back and a hundred soldiers stal
king him. But at anything like fair terms, you’d never win. Especially in a shooting match.”

  She laughed, and Sokar barked. “Pick a target!”

  “Aurora, we’ve no time for this nonsense,” Dragut protested.

  “Now that we have him, we have all the time in the world. Pick a target!”

  I looked, and pointed upward. “That glass pane in the dome, no bigger than a hand. I’ll hit it before you, and when I do…you have to give us a minute head start.”

  “That’s so absurd, given your situation, that I’d spit on it and you if I wasn’t so certain I’m the better marksman! Let’s make it interesting, instead. I’ll bet the head of your son.”

  “No! Leave Harry out of this!” But I secretly knew this monstrous idea of hers that I’d triggered was our only hope.

  “Yes,” she said, almost speaking to herself, “his terror from your absurdity. Hamidou, keep your gun on Gage because he’s full of tricks! Ethan, we’re going to put a glass flute on your little monster’s head and aim for its stem. I’ll go first, and I guarantee I will completely miss the boy and clip the stem if his mother holds him still enough. Then you can have a turn, and if by a miracle you break the glass more times than I do without blowing off the head of your child, I’ll give you your little race, with Sokar in pursuit. It will be amusing to watch him run you all down and hear the screams, since I had to hear my brother’s.”

  “I like a girl with enthusiasms.”

  She tied my family’s tether around a pillar with the assuredness of a sailor, testing its tightness. “Whore, crouch and hold your child like a statue,” she ordered Astiza. “If he twitches an inch, one or the other of us might miss.”

  Trembling, her expression toward Aurora exhibiting the purest hate I’d ever seen, the woman I loved kneeled, noose at her neck, and took our two-year-old darling into her arms. “Horus,” she whispered, “you must be very, very still. Mama will hold you to be safe.”

  My boy was crying again, completely confused by what was going on. Aurora put the goblet upon his head, which wobbled as he snuffled, and walked around the bathing pool to where I waited, bringing my rifle. She brushed my cheek with a kiss—it was like the lick of that reptile in her satanic ship’s hold—and took my pistols from my belt, tossing them into the pool. With a plonk, they sank out of reach. Then she turned and raised my gun with the assurance of the trained marksman. The muzzle of my weapon was steady as a rock as she aimed.

  I held my breath, terrified that Harry would bolt into the path of the bullet. There was a flash, roar, and a high ping as the glass stem was clipped in two by the ball. The cup of the goblet fell and shattered while poor Harry screamed and wept. Astiza clung to him even tighter, whispering in his ear.

  There were shrieks and cries from the harem’s concubines, no doubt jammed into the back of this complex by their anxious eunuchs. The bullet had ricocheted above them.

  The woman I’d once lusted after slammed the butt of my rifle onto the marble floor, took out a cartridge of powder and shot, and reloaded with the efficiency of a deadly huntress. Then she handed my weapon back to me, first drawing her own pistol to aim at my head.

  “Put the next glass on his head!” she called to Astiza. Then she turned to me. “I warn you, if that rifle barrel strays even minutely away from your wretched offspring, we’ll kill you in an instant and turn the two of them over to the slavers.”

  “What’s the matter, Aurora? Afraid I might equal you and that you can’t get lucky a second time?”

  “Just shoot and miss. And then beg for my mercy.”

  Astiza and Harry had absolutely frozen, mother murmuring into her son’s ear. The glass flute was bright as a diamond.

  “Remember, if you do miss, the game is over,” Aurora said.

  I aimed as carefully as I ever had, drawing breath, holding, and then letting a slow hiss escape as I pulled the trigger, the gun aimed at a target I could barely see in the gloom.

  I fired, the flash and bang cacophonous in the marble chamber. The harem women screamed.

  And the leash of my loved ones snapped, cut in two by the ball as I intended! The end of their collar flapped loose in the harem air.

  Our ears rang with the report of the gun. For the briefest fraction of time everyone was frozen, surprised at my shot.

  Then I popped the stock atop my shoulder and rammed my rifle backward, catching Dragut full in the face with its butt. He reeled, his blunderbuss swinging away. I twisted to grab it and deliberately fell to the floor as Aurora’s pistol went off, the ball singing over my head. I then swung my own piece like a scythe to try to break her ankles. She jumped and fell, both our guns empty now.

  I scrambled up, wrenching the blunderbuss from the stunned Dragut. “Run!” I cried. I longed to use the gun on our tormentors, but guessed I’d need it on the stairway outside. The blunderbuss in one hand and the longrifle in the other, I waited for my lover and son.

  Astiza tucked Harry, frozen and mute, under one arm and dashed past us, the end of her tether flapping. Then I was up and after her before Dragut or Aurora could recover their wits. My longrifle felt as if a lost limb had been restored, even if the weapon was empty. In my left hand was Smith’s loaded thunder gun. We burst out the harem door, slammed it shut, and hurdled the tied eunuch. Janissaries sprang up from where they’d waited in ambush on the marble stairs and I cut loose with the blunderbuss. The gun bucked, there was a spray of bullets, and the gang of them parted like the Red Sea, men screaming as they somersaulted down the stairs. I swung my rifle for good measure, knocking aside a couple of obstinate ones like tenpins. Then we were plunging down the stairs past them to the royal reception room below, even as all the eunuchs began screaming.

  Behind us came Aurora’s sharp command: “Sokar! Kill!” And then to Dragut: “Get to your ship, idiot, and cut off whatever boat they have to escape!”

  I could hear the baying of the mastiff and the skitter of its nails on the marble flooring as it chased after us. I slammed the throne room door, threw its light latch, and watched the wood stretch like canvas as the big dog slammed against the other side, howling and slavering. I’d little time to reload, but I could buy a few seconds. “Save our boy! Past that tapestry is a stair to the dungeon! A companion waits there!” I had just time to pour powder, but not yet ram patch and ball. Then there was a gunshot, the edge of the door exploded into splinters, and the frenzied dog burst through, howling for blood.

  My longrifle club met the dog midleap. The animal grunted as I knocked it to one side of the room, and I prayed I’d cracked a rib.

  Aurora burst through the doorway after her pet, hair flying, mouth wide as a banshee’s, a pistol smoking and Dragut’s sword held high. “I’ll kill you all!”

  But Astiza, instead of fleeing, had thrust Horus in one corner. Now she grabbed the edge of one of the carpets and yanked. Lady Somerset fell, cursing like a sailor, and Astiza pounced, wrestling for the sword. The women rolled, bit, and scratched. They were a blur of struggling limbs and tangled hair, fighting at a pitch of wild fury. The dog came at me again as I fished for a bullet and this time it leaped to catch my rifle in its teeth, chewing and growling. I was knocked backward, landing on the pillows, and the beast was astride me, one hundred pounds of quivering malevolence, breath hot, flecks of foam flying, its growls primeval. I tried to use the weapon to twist his head away from mine, but its neck was as strong as my arms.

  “Mama!” It was poor Harry, crying amid the chaos. I could hear a frenzied snarling and realized that Yussef’s leopard was banging against its own cage, frantic at the sight of the black mastiff that had invaded its domain.

  Aurora used the hilt of her sword to clout my woman, stunning her, and then tried to pry her wrists free of Astiza’s desperate hands so she could run her through. With the ferocious protective instincts of motherhood Astiza twisted back and with a cry from both women the sword suddenly flew free, ringing as it fell on marble tiles.

  Then the real havo
c happened, a blur of animal reflexes.

  With a yowl the spotted leopard suddenly shot free of its cage and the dog launched itself off me to meet it. The mastiff was as big as the cat and probably expected it to bolt, but instead the leopard twisted and the two collided at the apex of their leaps, spinning in the air. If the dog was powerful, the leopard was swift. They writhed, dueling with their jaws. Then the mastiff yelped, suddenly terrified as the leopard caught at its throat. The two animals tumbled over each other on the Persian carpets, the leopard hissing and tearing. The dog frantically pawed the air, its legs no match for the cat’s lethal claws.

  “Sokar!” Aurora screamed and heaved Astiza to one side, my lover’s head striking a marble pillar. Harry’s mother slumped, dazed. “Your bastard let the leopard out!” Aurora crawled for her sword and then turned toward little Harry, her eyes completely mad as the boy shrank in the corner. I finally fed a bullet in the muzzle and began ramming the shot, but squeezing the lead down the tight barrel takes an eternity. Aurora rose like a crazed Valkyrie, wild with frustration as she aimed to stab my son, and now I was scrambling to stop her, trying to think of a distraction.

  “Save your dog!”

  At my cry Aurora twisted, confused, her purpose momentarily incoherent, and then suddenly stepped toward the fighting animals, presumably to kill the cat. It was the only sacrificial thing I ever saw her do.

  So the leopard sprang, ten feet through the air in a perfect gyration of predation, and flew past her sword arm to land against her body, claws gripping flesh and jaws splayed wide to close over her face.

  Aurora didn’t even have time to scream. There was a sickening crack of bone as the leopard bit, and her head disappeared under the animal’s.

  Behind them the ugly dog was in ruins, its throat and flanks pumping blood.

  Aurora thrashed frantically on the floor, Yussef’s pet leopard on top of her and pinning her down. The beauty that had transfixed me in America was being clawed to ribbons, each swipe leaving parallel red streaks and ribbons of flayed flesh. Her feet slid frantically on the rugs and marble, heels making streaks of blood. Then the cat was at her throat. Her face had already caved, her eyes gone. I finally reloaded, but there was no need to waste a precious shot as leopard and victim twisted. Her head flopped loose, her neck bitten half through. Finally she went limp, the big cat batting at her and growling, and then there was a bustle at the door as eunuchs and janissaries crowded to see. They halted abruptly at the sight of the freed leopard, frozen by the bloody tableau.