The Mer- Lion

by Lee Arthur

  By the time it was Angus's turn, four more had died but two had escaped their fate for at least one more round. Three riders, including the Taureg, had lost their rings and become targets, but two of the targets had become riders, so there were more riders than targets and the ratio was increasing with every ride.

  Angus succeeded against a courageous but outmatched competitor. The next two targets took rings, but one only because the judges ruled that the slash across his lower throat and chest while bleeding profusely, did not qualify as a properly slit throat.

  John the Rob seized the opportunity to pick that same man, knowing that the blood he was losing would make him vulnerable.. To the one ugly red gash was added a second that split the man's Adam's apple in half and ended his misery.

  A rider lost his third ring and joined the living targets. Two more targets could not escape the flashing swords. Then it was Ogilvy's turn. He called Gilliver's number. De Wynter, riding next, realized instantly what Ogilvy was going to do. De Wynter had been planning the same thing: to sacrifice one of his three rings, that Henry might live.

  "Make it look good," Ogilvy said fiercely to Henry. "We've got to show them you are a bad pick." And he winked at his friend as he wheeled and went to the edge of the circle to await the starting signal.

  Horsemanship brought it off. Ogilvy always managed to have the horse in the wrong position when the target was vulnerable. Yet it looked to all the contestants, the judges, and the crowd as though his mount was being unruly. And Gilliver ran for his life. There was no faking his mad dashing back and forth, his feints and leaps to avoid hooves and slashing blade. No two players ever acted out a more desperate scene. When time ran out, Ogilvy gladly handed over a ring, the first he had lost. And Gilliver, panting and tired, but trying not to show it, mingled in with the other targets, hoping to find anonymity and a welcome respite.

  Gilliver's exhaustion was apparent to de Wynter at least. It called for a change in plans. Henry, tired, would not be able to put on as good a defense -as he had playacting against Ogilvy. Whom to choose? His gaze swept the group and fell on the Taureg who wore gold rings on two fingers of his left hand. Making a quick decision, de Wynter called out the man's number. Never, so long as he lived, would he forget the fearful expression on the nomad's face, replaced, almost immediately and by sheer determination, with a half-smile of calm acceptance.

  The Taureg had correctly read his fate. De Wynter and the gray, working at least temporarily as a harmonious team, were easily the match of any man afoot. But the Taureg was determined to put up a brave fight. At one point, in desperation, he even went so far as to throw himself under the horse's hooves, praying the animal's killer instincts were confined to its rider and that the horse would instinctively^ jump a fallen man's body. The horse wouldn't, but de Wynter would. He made the gray rear and saved the Taureg's life. But only for a minute. Even as he was getting to his feet, the horse was upon him and he found himself pinned against the gray's side, a dagger firmly held at his throat. De Wynter paused only a minute, then, remembering the man's smile, he removed his blade, pushed the surprised victim away and tossed him a ring, his third. While the Taureg, trembling with emotion, ran to claim a horse, de Wynter turned in his saddle to face the royal box and raised his sword high in a mocking salute.

  Damn him, Aisha thought. Is he fearless or is he afraid to take another's life? It did not help her emotional state to notice that the sheikh was applauding the man's compassion. And why not? The man he'd saved was a fellow Bedouin. De Wynter, she realized, could not have done anything that would have pleased the Berbers more.

  The seventh round began with Eulj Ali electing to run his sword through the guts of a target. He was, to the Amira's annoyance, successful. At this rate, she began to wonder if she would have to supply fresh targets. Of course! That was it. Against fresh men, the riders would not be so successful. Again, Pietro the Funny was pressed into messenger service to Ali whose eyes couldn't be attracted for her signed orders.

  Most of those who followed succeeded, but two lost their third rings and became targets, four gave up their second rings, a few their first. Angus was a winner, Fionn wasn't, he gave up a ring to save Gilliver's life. One more ring and Gilliver would be back on horseback. Again, de Wynter rode last. Who this time? he wondered. He dared not give up another ring; he needed one to save himself and one in case he might save Gilliver. This time his gaze dwelled speculatively on another man—the zebra-man, who of all the riders had come into the arena this day prepared to die. And die he did with de Wynter's sword through his belly.

  The Moulay was again growing bored. To watch the same way of killing, time after time, rider after rider, was no fun. "Besides," he gleefully pointed out to his women, "you are running out of targets."

  Aisha knew it. Where, she wondered, were the fresh ones she'd ordered Ali get? And where was Pietro the Funny with Ali's answer to her orders?

  "Well?" The Moulay waited for an answer. But not long enough for her to explain that fresh ones were on the way. Instead, he shouted instructions to his wazier: "All the riders with only one ring left now become targets!"

  John the Rob's curse was heard above all the rest. After all of his hard work, and even killing two innocent men, he was to be deprived of what was rightfully his—a horse, a sword, and a dagger. And his life.

  But John the Rob chose not to die yet. Turning to the rider next to him, he rode up close and extended his hand in a farewell gesture. "Good fortune," he said to the surprised combatant. And he passed down the line of those still with two rings, clapping them on the back, shaking their hands, chattering away like a magpie in a show of bravado. Only two, Eulj Ali and a Sicilian, disdained him. Suddenly he wheeled his mount back into the line in his assigned place and waited for al-Hudaij to check rings.

  As he approached, each reached for his rings: one untying his tunic belt where he'd strung his for safekeeping; another feeling along his horse's reins for his; another grabbing for the bag that hung from a chain about his neck and held his ukda; others thumbing the rings they wore on their left hands. The rings were gone! Vanished. All but those owned by the six slaves, the Taureg, Eulj Ali, and the Sicilian. And among seven of these, certain rings had been redistributed to ensure their safety.

  All hell broke loose as nine men realized they were to be made targets. Many would have mobbed John the Rob, accusing him of stealing their rings. While his friends gathered about him and the judges conferred, the Taureg began clapping his hands sharply and frantically. "Djinn!" he shouted. "I see djinn. They did it Beware the djinn." John the Rob and his fellows joined in, clapping and shouting "Djinn." The noise and. the suggestion was infectious. Soon, Arabs among the crowd began clapping, stomping and yelling to scare the djinn away.

  The confused judges rushed to consult with their master, even as Aisha and Ali spoke silently with their hands, she asking what to do, he saying let matters be. The Moulay had come to the same conclusion. He was not eager to delay the games while they searched out a culprit, if there were one. Secretly, he, too, feared the djinn and kept stealing anxious secretive looks about However, again the rules were amended. "A rule change. Judges now will award rings. Still three rings make a target into a rider," al-Hudaij announced. "As for the riders—failure to duplicate a feat immediately makes a man a target."

  "Can he keep his rings?" cried one rider.

  The judges consulted, "He can."

  It was settled. The count? Nine riders, twelve targets. And again Eulj Ali started it off. "Number eleven, to be beheaded." Off he charged. He struck true, but he had underestimated the strength of the neck before him... or else his blade was dulled. Whatever, the head did not come off, the sword wedged in it. While the man bled to death, the judges consulted and awarded the target a ring posthumously. But Eulj Ali had fallen from first. His horse he must forfeit, but his two rings he could keep. The slaves quickly consulted, the Taureg listening in. "For God's sake, don't take on Eulj Ali as a target," wa
s de Wynter's whispered advice. "He's too devious to risk choosing now."

  "Besides," John the Rob added, all practicality, "he already has two rings. A third and he'll be back among us."

  The Sicilian, who would be first—if he beheaded a target—was a brute of a man who had obviously fought many a battle, judging from his scarred hide, and killed unknown numbers of men. He lopped off a head with ease. Angus, Ogilvy, and Fionn were equally, savagely successful. Fionn, in fact, struck so hard that the head flew up into the crowd. The Taureg failed and returned to the pack. John the Rob knew from the beginning that he had not the strength to do the feat, but he tried. Slashing and stabbing and swinging away, he gashed his target a bit, sliced his mount, and nicked his own leg. When his few minutes were up, he, too, joined the targets. Carlby, also, avoided the niceties of combat and tried to disable a target, so that he became stationary and would then lose his head easily. Time defeated him, too, and Carlby joined the targets. De Wynter finished off the man that Carlby had started.

  Then, while the Sicilian was deciding on his next feat, the four slaves consulted together. They were being boxed into a corner. Of the seven targets left, three were companions and the fourth—the Taureg—a brave man they respected. The contest could not go on much longer before they were faced with butchering their friends or else joining the targets.

  The Sicilian, not unaware of the conference among his fellow horsemen, interpreted it as fear of him. He gloated and decided to reinforce that fear by coming up with the most impossible stunt he could think of, for he already knew his next target. While he savored his triumph, he kept glancing up into the royal box. Why the hell did the woman have to go veiled? He laughed to himself. What difference did it make? His way with women, he never saw their faces anyway. Besides, bedding her was only part of winning. Mostly he was here for the power. Once he had broken her to his ways, he'd be next in line to the throne. Let her sit on her butt on the throne, he thought, he'd skewer her butt and make her love it!

  He named his next feat: "Daggers only! I shall skewer the man whose number I call through the neck." Before he named him, however, he threw aside his sword and waited for the rest to drop theirs. Only when that was done did he call out his target: number seventeen—Gilliver.

  Even as the Sicilian clapped his legs against his horse and moved him forward at a trot toward the circle where a somewhat dazed Gilliver was being pushed, the other horsemen moved forward as one, only to be checked by Ali and his mounted silent ones, who interposed their horses between the four other competitors and the circle where the conclusion of this game would be played out.

  The Sicilian had been right in his choice of target. Poor Gilliver didn't even think to pull his shoulders up to protect his heck. He simply ran. And ran. And ran. Within seconds of riding into the circle, the Sicilian knew he could have his man whenever he

  wanted. So he played with him, as a ferret would a mouse. Only when Gilliver was about to drop of exhaustion and could run no longer... only when he turned to face his pursuer and the last grains of sand were about to fall through the funnel within the sandglass... only then did a dagger whistie through the air in a blur of silver and pierce the poor young Scot's neck, entering in the front, exiting in the back.

  As his friends watched, Gilliver grabbed ineffectually at the weapon that was killing him, then his knees buckled and he fell forward to the ground, his head staring at them, held up grotesquely by the hilt of the dagger that had killed him.

  The four companions didn't move, paralyzed by horror. Then they heard a voice from among the targets: "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die."

  As Carlby continued, de Wynter knew what he had to do. He kicked his horse forward, "Angus, Ogilvy, if you love me, dismount and join the targets. You, too, Fionn. Pray for me."

  Angus and Ogilvy did not ask why. They simply kicked off their stirrups and slid out of the saddle. Fionn hesitated. "What do you do?"

  "I win our freedom and mayhap avenge Henry Gilliver, too. Wish me luck. Now, go." De Wynter smiled at the giant reassuringly.

  As the giant dismounted, the crowd screamed its displeasure. Coward was the kindest word shouted at him. And when words seemed to have no effect on him or the two black-haired men who went before him, looking neither left nor right, many in the crowd reinforced their screams by throwing food into the arena. The three Scots ignored that also, instead joining Carlby and John the Rob where they knelt and kneeling with them, blending their voices with theirs: "The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence..."

  As de Wynter sat his horse, watching the silent ones try to quiet the crowd and clear the arena, he, too, spoke the words of the psalm and found them peculiarly fitting: "The Lord is thy defense upon thy right hand; so that the sun shall not burn thee by day, neither the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; yea, it is

  even he that shall keep thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in, from this time forth—'*

  Ali interrupted him, shouting, "Jamad ja'da, do you continue to compete?"

  "Aye, Amir l’al-assa, I still compete."

  "Know you that if you skewer your target, there will be another round, but if you fail, the man from Sicily wins?"

  "I know. And if I win, do my companions go free?"

  Ali hesitated a minute. "As free as you!"

  "Then I ride."

  "Name your target's number."

  He shall not be warned, de Wynter thought, urging the gray forward, taking him from a standstill to a full gallop within a few strides. Straight for the Sicilian he went. "He has no number... he was the first!" The Sicilian could not believe his eyes for a moment, then weaponless, turned and fled. De Wynter's dagger caught him fair in the neck, the point entering through the back, exiting from the front of his neck.

  The games were over. The fickle crowd went wild with joy. Even the Moulay applauded the audacity of the Scot's coup. Ali and his father exchanged knowing looks. As de Wynter slowed his horse down to a canter, someone in the crowd started the chant: Jamad Ja'da! Jamad Ja'da! Jamad Ja'da!" On and on it went, echoing and reverberating through the stadium as the rider went where his horse would go, tears blinding his eyes. It was Ali's firm grip on the reins that brought the gray to a stop, and Ali's bronzed hand that gently wiped tears from the other's eyes.'

  "Come, my friend. You have done well. Now, it is time to rest."

  De Wynter felt too drained emotionally to protest; he let his horse be led off without lifting a hand. Before they left the arena, he roused himself long enough to say, "And my friends?"

  "They shall soon join you. Come, you are tired and dirty and in need of food and drink and rest. We go to my tent."

  As the silver-haired one on the gray left the arena for the last time, silent ones, rounding up the rest of the horses, would have escorted the other survivors out of the amphitheater. However, all but Eulj Ali refused to leave. The rest would accompany their dead friends' bodies and see them properly buried.

  As Ali and de Wynter left the arena by the Gate of Death, Aisha and Ramlah hurried out of the royal box. There were wedding preparations to be made. The crowd too, the games over, gathered their belongings together and prepared to make their way home. Only the Berbers and the Moulay lingered. The former because they were in no hurry. They and their sheikh would not leave until the morrow when he hung the bloodstained sheepskin upon the pole outside the wedding tent. Besides, here where the events were still fresh in their minds, they could compare and rehearse the stories they would bring back to their campfires, there to be retold, fact after fact, from beginning to very end—the six days of the games of the Amira Aisha.

  The Moulay lingered longest. He was still there when the galleries emptied of all other spectators, and slaves entered carrying in
huge stakes arid armfuls of wood. Where the target had been dug for the javelin throw, fresh stakes were sunk in the ground. Where the three circles had been for the gladiator fights grew a ring of more stakes. Where the camels had waited to be milked or ridden or loaded, tall empty stakes stood waiting. Where the two ostriches had been beaten to death a pair of stakes were pounded into the ground. Where Gilliver had bled his last, and the Sicilian had taken the dagger through his throat... there the two largest stakes were sunk through the red-colored sand into the ground.

  The Moulay looked on approvingly. Now the arena was ready for games of his kind. And through the gates at the far end came men bound together by ropes about their necks. Some had been losers in the actual games; others were losers by association—the servers and slaves who had inhabited the camp of the contestants for the last six days—they were here now to lose a final time and give up their lives for the amusement of a madman.

  CHAPTER 39

  While de Wynter slept as if dead in Ali's tent and hundreds of other men died the death of the damned in fire and torment within the arena, six of the remaining survivors watched as the silent ones dug two graves and gave Cameron and Gilliver Moslem burials. In its shallow grave, each body, washed and wrapped in a simple shroud, lay curled on its side, facing toward Mecca. As an iman spoke the simple words of the Islamic faith, attesting to their belief, too, in a life after death, Carlby's church-trained voice, beginning quiedy, gained momentum and soon overpowered all others:

  "Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; hefleeth as if he were a shadow'and never continueth in one stay. Unto you Almighty God, we commend the souls of Henry Gilliver and George Cameron departed, and we commit their bodies to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  For a long moment, there was silence, none daring to breathe deeply or rasp sand by shifting his weight from foot to foot. Then, Fionn's deep voice began, "Our Father who art in..." He spoke—as Gilliver and Cameron and Drummond and Menzies would have wanted it—not in Latin but in Scots-Gaelic, and Angus and Ogilvy joined in.