Max Allan Collins

by The King

  Then, a tent flew back, and—in a clatter of leather armor and steel weaponry—a pair of guards dragged in a prisoner.

  Jesup.

  Within him, Mathayus felt a wave of despair rise, seeing his brother, his fellow warrior, held by either arm, hauled in like a sack of grain, more dead than alive, body pockmarked with the red wounds of ar­rows. Barely conscious, the elder Akkadian man­aged to raise his head and look across the tent at Mathayus.

  One of the guards at Jesup's side spoke: "As you can see, my lord, this one still lives."

  "How interesting," Memnon said, strolling across the fog-draped floor, stopping to pick up one of Ma­thayus's knives, dropped in combat. "For a race that has all but disappeared from the earth, these Akka­dians seem surprisingly difficult to kill."

  Mathayus, gripped on either side by a guard, watched ruefully as the warlord examined the small throwing blade, an exquisite example of the Akka­dian art of weapon-making.

  "Beautiful," Memnon said, his admiration sincere, flipping the blade in his palm. "Bring the warrior to me. I wish to honor him."

  Rage bursting within him, Mathayus surged for­ward, but the soldiers managed to hold back the caged lion. He watched helplessly as his brother was dragged across the smoky ground and brought be­fore Memnon. Jesup's half-lidded eyes locked with those of Mathayus .. . and the elder's eyes opened bright and strong.

  "Live free," Jesup said.

  "Die well," Mathayus said, resignedly. "My brother.

  And in one vicious if fluid move, the Great Teacher swept forward and slashed with the cap­tured blade.

  Mathayus had lived with death every day of his life; but the pain he felt, as that blade sliced open the elder Akkadian's throat, sent a madness, in both senses ... rage, insanity .. . searing through his brain, his being.

  The brave Mathayus—unknowingly mirroring the reaction of the sorceress—could only turn away from the sight, feeling in the pit of his stomach as though that blade had just been buried there.

  He did not see the sorceress experience her own wave of psychic pain. Cassandra's eyes squeezed tight shut, and she raised a hand to her head, as if testing for a fever—she sensed a deep rumbling, ex­perienced the sound as if it had come from without, a resonant thunder, like the plates of the earth were shifting.

  But when she opened her eyes, she could clearly see that no one else in the tent had heard or sensed this aural sensation, even as its echo reverberated in her mind, blotting out the voices of the men around her.

  Much as she wished to avoid the sight of blood­shed, her eyes suddenly flew to Lord Memnon, who held in his hand the dagger dripping liquid rubies. What she saw no one else in the room beheld: Mem­non's face was edged in silver—his head, ringed with a shimmering halo of light.

  "Never have I used a blade so sharp as this," Memnon was saying, studying the knife. "I wonder if using it has dulled its edge ... if it will hold that edge, a second time ..."

  And the Great Teacher stepped forward, raising the dagger, his eyes on Mathayus's throat.

  Die well, Mathayus thought, and he quickly but thoroughly shifted his gaze from one man to the next—Thorak, Takmet, finally Memnon—and said through a smile, "I will see all of you again... in the underworld."

  Memnon returned the smile. "Oh, but not for a very long time, Akkadian."

  Now the warlord brandished the knife, preparing for a sideways slash across the prisoner's throat.

  "Stop!"

  The sorceress's voice was as sharp as the blade itself; all eyes turned toward her.

  "Wait!" Her voice carried authority, as did her stance, chin up, beautiful eyes narrowed yet hard, glittering like dark precious jewels. "Mathayus shall not die tonight."

  "If that is your prophecy," Memnon said, poised to slash, "perhaps I need a new occult adviser. ..."

  And yet the warlord stayed his blade.

  "Change your future," she said coolly, "if you wish."

  Memnon looked quickly toward her.

  "Should Mathayus die by your hand," she said, "or by any hand you command . .. misfortune will fall upon you. The gods are watching, my king."

  The red-turbaned guards—these mighty warriors who had slain so many, and spilled so much blood— were cowed by the musical voice of this witch. Ma­thayus was almost amused by the awe and even fear on their faces. Memnon noticed this, too ... and the warlord knew, as his soldiers knew, that his battle­field successes had been advanced, in part at least, by the supernatural wisdom of this woman.

  Memnon lowered the knife, but his eyes locked with those of his prisoner. "A puzzle, then ... how to kill you, without using my hand ... or any hand I command . .. What was it you said, Akkadian? Die well?"

  Mathayus said nothing, but his gaze conveyed all the contempt he could muster.

  The warlord responded with an air of mock con­cern. "Dying well, a noble death, that's important to you, eh? ... I will do my best to serve you."

  Mathayus watched as Memnon turned, moving toward the sorceress, and the Akkadian did not see the blow coming, when Thorak swung his fist into the prisoner's jaw, knocking him not into the next world, but a dark mind-chamber of this one.

  When the assassin came to, the sun was bright above—Mathayus had been unconscious for many hours, because the night had been replaced not by morning, but day—and he knew at once he was im­mobilized. His vision, low to the ground, took in a view of a gully of sand and rocks and the occasional sun-bleached skull, sticking up out of the desert floor.

  Those skulls, disconcerting though they might be, were not the worst of it: surrounding him in the shallow pitlike gully were at least a dozen earthen hills, cones ranging from three to six feet in height, with openings at the top. Into and out of these por­tals scurried large insects—fire ants—scampering with the intensity of their well-focused existence.

  And by now the Akkadian realized he was buried in the sand—up to his neck.

  A pair of red-turbaned guards sat on rocks along the lip of the gully. One of them rose from his boul­der perch and made his way through the cones and rocks, carrying some oily rags in one hand and bear­ing a torch, flaming like the sun, in the other. Method­ically, the guard began setting fire to the rags ... and dropping them down into the cones.

  A reedy voice to his right spoke to the Akkadian, almost casually: "Fascinating, isn't it?"

  Turning his head slightly to one side was about the only movement Mathayus was capable of mak­ing, and he did so, taking in the sight of that horse thief, the one who'd been suspended over those flames last night, also buried up to his scrawny neck, beside the Akkadian.

  "The smoke spooks the ants," the horse thief was saying, in a detached manner, "making 'em abandon their homes. You see?"

  The guard was jumping back, as the huge insects, thousands of them, came boiling up out of the cones.

  "All the sooner," the thief said, "to feast on our naked heads."

  Mathayus had barely been listening to this, more intent on trying to free himself, though his strug­gling seemed in vain. "You find this funny, do you?"

  "You're Akkadian, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

  "I heard the guards talking. I thought your kind was all dead."

  "Not yet."

  "Not till those ants get you, you mean?"

  "Your humor eludes me."

  "Name's Arpid. Honest man accused of theft. You are?"

  "Mathayus ... Laugh at me, please. The anger may help me escape."

  "I don't think so. You see, that's what I find funny. A pitiful specimen like me, and a brawny brute like you ... and yet I am about to escape ...

  while you are about to die a horrible death, no doubt brought about by a dire destiny earned by you for leaving me to die last night!"

  "You? You're about to escape."

  "That's right. Men like you... all muscle, no brains ... poor man, you only see the surface, don't you?" The wispily bearded thief managed to nod toward the two guards seated on their rocks ar
ound the gully's edge. "They're just like you . .. While they were burying us, I was pretending to be a-sleep.. . only I was actually sucking air into my lungs, till they were the size of a camel's bladder."

  The guard who'd been distributing the fiery rags to the anthills was now returning to his rock at the gully's edge. Mathayus watched as the man lifted a wineskin and drank. The other guard was examining the haul they'd made: a cache of weapons that had been Mathayus's ... including the massive bow, which the guard quickly discovered he couldn't be­gin to draw back.

  A tiny smile etched itself on the Akkadian's lips, but it didn't last long: now, striding into the buried assassin's view, came rows of fire ants, an army marching from the surrounding cones with a single objective: Mathaysus's head.

  "If you're going to escape," Mathayus said to his fellow prisoner, as the ants moved toward him, "what are you waiting for?"

  "You see that one?" Arpid asked, referring not to one of the oncoming ants, but to the nearer of the two guards, the fellow drinking wine from a skin.

  "What about him?"

  "Nothing. Just, he's been drinking that yak piss for about an hour now, and very soon nature's going to run its course and . .. ah! What did I tell you."

  The guard was rising from his rock, heading over to another pile of boulders; soon, he was relieving himself, his back to the prisoners down in the sandy gully.

  "Damned if you weren't right..." Mathayus be­gan, turning toward his fellow prisoner ...

  ... but he was talking to an empty hole in the ground! Arpid was gone, slithered up and out of that hole that would seem only large enough for a man's head. But if that slender fellow had truly filled him­self with air...

  And now Mathayus was alone down in the gully—or almost alone: he still had his friends, the fire ants, less than twenty feet away.

  The Akkadian was as brave as any man in his world, but nonetheless, panic consumed him, in ad­vance of the ants doing the same, and he struggled madly within his prison of sand, to no success.

  "Hey!" someone yelled.

  It was the guard, on his way back from his piss, having noticed the absence of the horse thief, Arpid. The other guard was busy, sitting on the ground, using his feet to try to draw back Mathayus's bow, still without any luck.

  The guard moved a few feet down the slope, eyes searching a landscape littered with stones, skulls, ants and one buried-to-his-head Akkadian.

  "Where did that little turd go?" the guard asked Mathayus, as if the prisoner weren't already busy staring at a moving mound of fire ants, fifteen feet away, the insects closing the distance at a slow but determined pace.

  In fact, Mathayus didn't see, at first, Arpid com­ing up behind the red-turbaned guard, hauling a thick tree branch, which the thief swung into the back of the man's head, as if hitting a ball. The guard dropped onto the rocks, face first, dead to the world.

  The other guard, his attention finally drawn away from the massive bow with which he was struggling, abandoned the effort and scrambled to his feet. But he wasn't quick enough, as another swing of the tree branch sent him toppling down the incline, into the gully, colliding with ... and knocking over .. .sev­eral of the massive anthills. Within moments the guard was blanketed with swarming insects, who seemed undeterred by the man's screaming and thrashing about.

  Another tide of fire ants, however, was rolling in an inexorable black wave toward the Akkadian, steadily closing the distance ...

  "Arpid!" Mathayus yelled. "Come on!"

  The thief was now sitting on the same rock the knocked-cold guard had been, sipping from the fel­low's wineskin, enjoying a long, slow pull. When he'd finished the drink, he wiped his skimpily bearded face with the back of a hand, and glanced down at Mathayus with an expression that said, Oh—are you still here?

  "Get me the hell out of this!" the Akkadian yelled, ants marching toward him.

  Arpid arched an eyebrow, perched casually on the rock. "And why should I do that?"

  Stunned by this response, Mathayus stared up at him for a moment, then howled, furiously, "Because if you don't, I'll kill you!"

  Two ants, real leaders among their species, had gone out on a scouting mission, and were climbing the Akkadian's head; he shook it violently, and they responded with stings and bites.

  Arpid shook his head in mock sympathy. "You're going to have to survive those hideous bugs to do me any harm ... and that doesn't seem likely. You see, skeletons don't get up and walk around, much less kill someone."

  And indeed that swarm of ants had devoured the flesh of the fallen guard, leaving him a pile of bones draped with precious few shreds of flesh.

  "Isn't that disgusting?" Arpid said, and shivered.

  "Get... me ... out... of... here!"

  Arpid seemed to be considering that possibility. He plucked a torch from the sand, where one of the guards had embedded it, and took a few quick steps down into the pit. Then he paused.

  "Mathayus ..."

  "Yes!"

  "What would you give me for helping you?"

  "You'd bargain for my life! You little weasel..."

  "Don't you know you get more with honey than vinegar? Ask your little friends ... they'll tell you— between bites."

  Mathayus had managed to fling the two ants off himself, but the others were advancing, a grotesque battalion of antennae and bug eyes and pinchers. .. .

  "Forget it," Arpid was saying, heading back up.

  "Wait! Wait!"

  Arpid stopped, turned, glanced back down the slope. Eyebrows lifted.

  In the midst of a slow burn, Mathayus reached inside himself and found a smile. "Where are my manners?"

  The swarm of flesh-eating death was less than three feet away, now. The Akkadian gritted his teeth and forced that smile onward....

  "Good sir," the assassin said through his glazed smile. "If you please ... would you kindly get me the hell out of here?"

  Arpid shrugged. "That was a little better.. . Promise not to kill me?"

  "Yes! On my oath!"

  "You're an Akkadian, remember—you make an oath, you always keep it, right? That's your way, your code, huh?"

  "Yes. Yes. That's right."

  Another scouting party of ants was climbing the Akkadian now, perhaps a dozen, or a baker's dozen, nibbling at him, just warming up. Blinking, shaking his head, Mathayus did his best to cast them off. One climbed his lips and he bit the thing in two and spat it out.

  "When you make an oath," Arpid said, in a rhe­torical tone, "do you honor it, even if it's one you come to regret?"

  "Yes! Yes!"

  The little thief, torch in hand, was approaching. "Then promise to take me with you... as your trusted partner and companion . . . and share with me, equally, the spoils of battle."

  "Fine! I swear! I promise!"

  Arpid thrust the torch in the path of the ants, which sent them scurrying away. Then he knelt be­fore the head sticking up out of the sand.

  "All right, Akkadian ... hold still."

  And the thief began carefully picking the ants off the assassin's face.

  Within minutes, Mathayus was up the slope and gathering his weapons, while the surviving guard re­mained an unconscious sprawl on the rocks and sand. The scrawny horse thief was animated, filled with enthusiasm, though not helping the Akkadian in his recovery efforts.

  "What a splendid turn of events," the thief was saying. "Wherever you go, there'll be death, and lots of it! I mean, look at you—strapping specimen. And where there's death, there's bodies, and where there are bodies, there are pockets, waiting to be emptied ... gold, silver, who knows what treasures we'll share! After all, we'll split everything straight down the middle, both money and work. I'll handle the stealing and you . . . well, you'll take care of the slaughter. Fair enough?"

  Mathayus's intricately carved bow caught the eye of the bouncy little thief, who went over to it and picked up the massive weapon.

  Then somebody was picking the thief up—by the scarf around his neck—
and hauling him several feet off the ground.

  Mathayus glared at the thief, nose to nose now, and plucked away the bow and said to him, "Don't touch this again. Not ever."

  Arpid managed to speak, through the narrow hole of his choked-off windpipe. "Well... I think we're off to a very good start... don't you?"

  Mathayus let loose of the thief, as if discarding him. Then the Akkadian whistled, loud, sharp. The thief glanced about.

  "Who are you calling?" Arpid asked.

  "My ride," Mathayus said.

  Before long the albino camel came loping up over a nearby ridge. The assassin walked to his mount, stroked the beast's neck, and swung up into the sad­dle.

  And rode off.

  "So!" Arpid called. "Where are we headed?"

  Mathayus said nothing; he nudged the camel to more speed, and the animal complied.

  "Hey!" the thief yelled. "We struck a bargain!"

  The little man on foot trotted after the bigger man astride the albino camel.

  "All right," the thief chattered breathlessly as he ran after the Akkadian, "I'll tell you where we're going! You came to kill that woman—that witch! Only you failed ... You saw how comely she was, and your bread started to rise, and you choked!"

  Mathayus glowered back, as he rode; then he spurred the camel to a full gallop.

  Desperately, Arpid ran faster, too, yelling, "So now you have to save your honor! And kill the wench!... Only, you don't know where she is, where Memnon's taking her... and I do!"

  Scowling to himself, Mathayus kept right on rid­ing.

  But slower.

  Sin City

  T

  hough its reputation was of sin and decadence, Gomorrah bespoke order and control, or at least its outward appearance did. At the heart of a rocky valley, as spectacular as it was imposing, this for­tress city—heavily guarded by the red-turbaned minions of Memnon—was dominated by the battle­ments and turrets of the Great Teacher's palace.

  The sandstone throne room of that palace was a magnificent space worthy of so renouned a war­lord—gilded, pilastered, adorned with stark, muted (though colorful) designs that anticipated Egyptian culture of centuries to come; torch lamps—dark metal bowls of fire on spindly legs—threw a golden hue across the vast chamber, rife with lush drapes, intricate tapestries, oversize urns, and furnishings of strong simple design.