The Enchanted Crusade
Date: 2021-09-02T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy fiction; Plague -- Fiction; Adventure stories; Magic -- Fiction; Jinn -- Fiction; Crusades -- Fiction

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Title: The Enchanted Crusade

Author: Robert W. Krepps

Illustrator: W. E. Terry

Release date: September 1, 2021 [eBook #66196]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66196

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ENCHANTED CRUSADE ***

Saracen blades held no fear for Godwin; but
now he faced Mufaddal's sorcery with the fate of
the beautiful Ramizail—and England—resting upon

The Enchanted Crusade

By Geoff St. Reynard

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
April 1953
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Just as daybreak burst over the rim of the desert, the dying man heard the crunch of horses' hooves on sand. He lifted his head and croaked as loudly as collapsing lungs would let him, saying thrice over, "In the name of God, help!" Then he pitched on his nose again and lay still, unable to move so much as an eyelash.

There was the grit of sand under the light tread of men, and a voice said, "Name of all camels! What a collection of vulture-victuals this one is!"

"I doubt it was he cried out," said another voice. "He must have been dead for a decade." This voice then rendered a belch of classic proportions. "Damn those figs," it said.

"If you will eat three pounds at a breakfast, Godwin love," said a throaty feminine voice, all full of honey and laughter, "you must expect some few repercussions."

The dying man collected his will and the scraps of strength that were left in his tortured body, and shoving at the sand with one arm managed to roll over on his back. The horizon-cleared sun lanced sickeningly across his eyeballs, adding one more pain to the thousand which beset him. Three vague dark shapes bent above him.

"By the very God, he lives! Give him a drink."

Water, cool and terrible and yet incredibly wondrous to lips and blackened gums that had tasted nothing save blood for what must surely be centuries, dribbled down across his cheeks, ran into his mouth, reached through his rasped throat for his belly. He gurgled and thought he was drowning, and it seemed a splendid death.

But he had something to say, something of such importance that it had dragged him across this endless waste of hellish sand long after a missionless man would have given up and died. He recollected the message and blinked his nearly sightless eyes once or twice, and made futile little motions toward a sitting position. A brawny arm at his back tilted him upright. "Easy, man. You're all but dead. Don't strive so. Die easily."

"Godwin, you're a born diplomat," said the woman's voice. "Why don't you come right out and tell him he looks like two coppers' worth of dogmeat?"

"Well, he does," Godwin said grimly. "No sense in lying to a chap who's about to give up the spirit, Ramizail. No real man wants that."

"Listen," croaked the dying one. "Who are you?"

"Three adventurers," said the voice that had sworn by the very God. It was an elderly voice but full of vigor. "Three homeless travelers pledged to right wrongs and defeat hell's minions wherever they may be found."

"Thanks to the Holy Sepulcher," groaned the dying one. "Perhaps all may be well."

The man holding him up jerked with surprise. "Here," he said, with a kind of tender roughness, "are you a Crusader, man? Are you a Frank?"

"English," said he. "Sir Malcolm du Findley." He made a hideous rattling noise but from somewhere deep in his soul the power came to make him go on. "El Iskandariya. Big ship. Full of rats."

"What's he burbling about?" asked the deep voice of Godwin. "Poor devil's clean out of his head. Rats? Did rats do this to him?"

"Rats are full of plague," said Sir Malcolm faintly.

"Yes, yes," said the girl. "Ship full of rats, rats full of plague. Go on."

"Can a rat have the plague?" asked Godwin.

"Well, can it?" asked the girl. "Mihrjan, answer me."

A fourth voice, one like muted thunder over distant dunes, said, "Assuredly, O Mistress of My Life, though 'tis not known generally by men in this time."

"He knows it, evidently," said the girl. "Do go on, Sir Malcolm. What about these rats?"

"Ship at El Iskandariya. Going to England, spread plague, decimate whole country. No more Crusades. Saracen plot."

"Now by God and by God, no Saracen stoops that low!" shouted the elderly man.

"Yes. Whole crew of them. Leader—"

"Yes, man; the leader?" urged Godwin.

"Mufaddal al Mamun. Big black-faced swine. His gang can do—anything. Say they can wipe out nine-tenths of England with plague rats, then France, Germany. No more Crusades." He widened his bloody-veined eyes and retching, said, "Tell Richard! Get word to Richard! Got to sink that ship, slay Mufaddal al Mamun! Slay his sorcerers! Promise!"

"We promise," said Godwin. "Decimate England, eh? Plague-infested rats, ha? My halidom! I think not!"

Sir Malcolm, with a grimace that might have been a grin, collapsed in upon himself and died, as peacefully as a man can when he has come seventy miles on foot, over baking sand beneath a searing sun of brass, with a third of his skin flayed off.

CHAPTER II

Godwin stood up. "Where's El Iskandariya?" he asked.

El Sareuk rubbed his beard with one slim brown hand. "You call it Alexandria. About twenty-five leagues west it lies, my great-thewed friend, on the banks of the Mediterranean."

The Lord Mohammed El Sareuk was a man of sixty, slightly built, fanatic-faced, whose body always seemed on the point of disintegrating from sheer concentration of energy. His boots were of red Cordovan leather worked with gold thread; his clothing was blue silk and rose samite, topped by the green turban of a Hadji; under the soft robes he wore gold-washed Turkish light armor, and over the whole outfit a black Bedouin burnous. He was weaponed well: from his girdle hung a Damascus steel scimitar, and a beautiful gold-etched steel knife with a silver hilt and a ruby in the pommel. Once this man had led a great harka in the forces of Saladin; but love of Godwin had turned him to a rover, an adventurer who called no tent his own and no man his peer save the tall young Englishman he now addressed.

"What is it, Godwin? Twenty-five leagues to Alexandria, or eighty-odd to Richard the Lion Heart in Jaffa?"

The girl spoke before Godwin could answer. "Oh, heavens, uncle 'tis the twenty-five to the plague ship, without a doubt, because what would Godwin want with a thousand Crusaders at his back when he can wade in single-handed against an unknown number of enemies and grab the glory all for himself? An Englishman won't fight if he can't fight against odds, after all. Need you ask such a silly question?"

The girl, now: as tall and lovely a piece as ever came from the union of a crusading British knight and a Saracen lass who traced descent from Solomon. Her eyes were violet, pure clear liquid violet such as is seen once in a thousand years; her lips were sensuous, full and red; her hair was a rainbow-flashing mass of ink-black curls. Of her complexion nothing derogatory could be said, and of her full-breasted figure even less. She wore copper and cream-colored robes of as fine and yet tough silk as you might find anywhere in the world of 1191, with a black turban to which she managed to give a jaunty and most un-Moslem-like air. Once this girl had been a sorceress, and controlled the entire tribe of djinn by virtue of a golden sigil and ring bequeathed her by her mother; her home and heritage and much of her power she had given up, to be a nomad and traipse about the world, all for love of Godwin.

This Godwin said now, "Ye gods! How can there be any question of Alexandria or Jaffa?" He held up a big hard hand and ticked off points on his fingers. "One: Dick, or Richard the Lion Nose, or whatever the hell they call him, thinks I'm a madman. If I took him a tale of rats with plague being shipped to England, he'd have me locked up for an idiot, and I can hardly blame him. Two: it's a good eighty-five leagues to Jaffa, and then more than a hundred from there back to Alexandria, eating up God knows how many days, the way the Franks travel. We three can do it from here in two days' time. There are decent people in Alexandria who'll fight with us against any such hellish scheme, surely. El Sareuk is a Hadji and has a certain reputation. Can't you command help from the Arabs, old wolf?"

"I can. He has the right of it, my dear."

"Well, at least we can have Mihrjan's djinn transport us there in comfort, and aid us in the squelching of this silly plot of Mufaddal's," said the girl, wiping sweat off her patrician nose.

Godwin frowned. He tugged at his beard. "My dear, you know my sentiments about the djinn. It's not knightly to use their supernatural powers when all one's fighting is a pack of mortals. Besides, it takes the fun out of adventuring. If a man can cry up a legion of ten-foot bogies to do his bidding, how can he call himself a gentleman rover? No, we'll not employ Mihrjan. Not that I have anything against you, Mihrjan," he added hastily.

A voice from the air beside them said, like an enormous drum finding speech in its depths, "O Lord of Ten Thousand, I esteem thy principles without flaw. Truly thou art a man among men, and would be a djinni amongst djinn!"

"Oh, pooh," said the girl, Ramizail. "If I hadn't given you the ring in a rash moment of affection, Godwin, I'd lock it to the sigil and wish you home in England this minute, you hulking wonderful stupid baby."

Invisible Mihrjan chuckled, but made no other comment. Godwin said, "Let's mount and ride. The horses are fresh and even over this abominable sand we ought to make a good distance before sundown."

"What of Sir Malcolm?" asked Ramizail.

"What of him?" said Godwin. "I've laid him out properly. A Crusader doesn't expect to be buried when there's work afoot. Come on, to horse!" He went racing to his great Spanish charger and vaulted into the saddle from behind, a trick left over from his Crusading days, when he could do it in full weight of battle armor.

And this Godwin, what of him? A man of thirty-one hard winters and thirty-one baking summers that had leathered his skin and steeled his sinews, while leaving his spirit boyish and irrepressible. A tiger-muscled, blue-fire-eyed, yellow-bearded man, quick to rage, quick to forgiveness, quick to gorge food and drink and quick to go hungry when needs must. A man educated to horse and hound and every weapon, bred to the saddle and the brawl, reckless and headstrong, generous and full of brag and bounce. A man of six feet and four inches, weighing sixteen stone, with scarce a thought in his handsome head but of war and hunting and being a gentleman according to his lights, of loving Ramizail and trotting happily over the world righting wrongs and murdering villains and being Godwin, Godwin of England.

And there was more to the man than all this, too, for had he not been till this early winter of 1191 the King of England?

It mattered little now, for Godwin was Godwin and no more. Not that that was not quite enough! thought Ramizail, resignedly mounting her bay palfrey. Sometimes it was a vast deal too much. She cast a glance of affection at her affianced. She shook her lovely head. What a man!

CHAPTER III

Mufaddal al Mamun, a tall, bulky, brown-eyed, flat-nosed, dark-faced hulk of a man, was eating his midday meal. It consisted of ful beans fried in samn, millet bread, onions, cucumbers, and hard-boiled eggs, washed down with quarts of strong buzah, beer brewed from fermented bread. It was a poor man's meal, but Mufaddal preferred to eat the cheapest of foods, for he thought that it made him appear fanatical and single-minded and self-sacrificing to his followers. As a matter of fact, they merely thought him a tasteless slob. He held the same warped opinion about his garments, and clad himself daily in a gray gallabiyah, the gown-like dress of the fellahin, with long loose cotton pants and a soiled green skullcap. His cohorts made jokes about it and regarded him with distaste, for many of them were proud Turks and high-blooded Bedouins, who took a ferocious pride in garbing themselves as well as possible and eating the best provender available. They followed him, however, because he was a wild terrible fighter, because he was half-brother to three potent sorcerers, and because he could think up much dirtier plots against the infidel hordes of the Crusaders than any other Saracen alive.

As he popped the last egg whole into his broad gash of a mouth, and smashed it between great yellow snaggleteeth, wishing it were the skull of Richard Coeur de Lion, one of his sorcerers came sliding in the door. There was a cool wind blowing through the house from the sea, which lay not more than thirty yards from its portals; but the sorcerer's presence seemed to heat the breeze and taint it with the stench of sulphur and brimstone. Mufaddal looked even more irritable than usual.

"What do you want, offspring of a leprous unwed camel?"

"May you live a thousand years, Mufaddal, my brother."

"This is a noble sentiment. Did you interrupt my eating—that is to say, my meditation—to wish me long life, imbecile?"

The sorcerer looked meditatively at his left forefinger, which turned into a blue snake and hissed at the big dirty man across the laden cloth. Mufaddal jumped and said hastily, "This, of course, is only my rough manner of speaking, Heraj, and naturally you know you are my favorite brother and may come in any time you like."

"Yes. Well, I was going to say, Mufaddal, that complications are lifting their ugly heads in this business of the plague ship."

"What? Are the rats not loaded into the hold, and the job accomplished with but seventeen fellahin bitten? Did we not slay the seventeen before they could come near anyone? And is the ship not as sound as any ship that sails the Mediterranean, having new sails and a new mast, and her belly caulked no later than last month?"

"Ah, very true," agreed Heraj.

"Does every rat not carry at least one flea, cleverly infected with the plague by your own subtle methods?"

"Fleas and rats are as deadly as any Saracen blade, and the grisly death they carry will spread far and wide when they are let off the ship on the coasts of England."

"And lastly, is all not in readiness to sail come the day after tomorrow?"

"True," said Heraj gloomily. "But we can't send it out before then, as our chosen crew will not be assembled till that morning, especially the far-experienced Nubian slave who is coming from Tripoli to guide the ship on its perilous course; and by the wrath of Eblis, you and I may not live to see the dawn of that day, near though you deem it!"

"What are you talking about?" roared Mufaddal.

"I just had a message from a friend who happens to be a hawk in his present incarnation. He tells me that Godwin is coming."

"This is terrible news indeed," said Mufaddal, fiercely mimicking the sorcerer's worried tones. "I quake with fright. I throw myself on the infinite mercy of Allah." He rose and flexed his arms, that were each as thick as a youth's body. "Heraj, who in the name of the seven hells is Godwin?"

"You may well ask," said Heraj, even more gloomily than before. "Nobody seems to know exactly. I can't get a line on his history before a month ago, when he rode out of Jaffa in company with a renegade Saracen chieftain called El Sareuk and a girl named Ramizail. But he's a brawny young champion, whatever his antecedents, and his girl controls the djinn."

Mufaddal sat down on the floor with vast violence. His dark face turned purple. His yellow teeth showed in a grin of sudden terror. "I betake me to Allah! That Ramizail?"

"Yes, that one. Well, this hawk says—"

"Can you understand the hawk tongue?"

"This one speaks Arabic. He's a fairly talented fellow, for a hawk. He says that Godwin and the others are pledged to go rampaging over the earth, righting wrongs, and they've heard of the plague ship and are on their way to destroy it. And us, I suppose," added Heraj.

"Name of forty goats," said Mufaddal worriedly. "I fear not this Godwin, but the djinn...." He stared up at the sorcerer. "Can't you do something to stop them? You and Pepi and Habu?"

"What? You know my limitations, and I'm the strongest of the three. I can do a lot, Mufaddal, but I can't combat djinn. The chief of them, Mihrjan, even travels with this Ramizail wench, personally. She controls him and his race by a sigil and ring that came down to her from Solomon."

"Curse it, Heraj, if this ship doesn't sail, England will continue to send Crusaders to the East until they have conquered every inch of desert and city! It's got to sail! How did these loathsome adventurers hear of it?"

"They happened across that Englishman who escaped us, Sir Malcolm du Findley. The one that we started to flay last Thursday, before he crawled out a window and treacherously disappeared."

Mufaddal got off the floor. He hitched up his pants and retied the string that held them around his muscular waist. "Heraj," he said grimly, "I give you an hour to think of some way to stop them. Djinn or no djinn, that ship sails!"

CHAPTER IV

By evening they had covered more than half the distance to Alexandria, and Godwin was persuaded to halt for a few hours of rest, the horses being weary with plunging through sand for such a long spell. "We'll ride again with the moon's zenith," said Godwin, as he went about picketing the horses. "Perhaps we can make the city by midday tomorrow."

Ramizail went off and stood by herself. "Mihrjan," she said softly.

"I am here, Beloved of Allah."

"Mihrjan, I'm sick of the same dreary food day after day. Godwin maintains that gentlemen rovers should fare roughly, to toughen their bodies. But I'm not a gentleman."

"Assuredly thou art not," said the invisible djinni, respect and male admiration nicely blended in his great voice.

"Then spread me a real feast! I want couscous, with almond stuffing, and wild rice, and some lemon juice, and certainly some white bread."

"Thy will is sweet, Mistress."

"Then oranges, and asida, and sugar. And about three gallons of sherbet. And Mihrjan, do you remember the time you brought me that confection out of a far time? The one you called silk chocolate?"

"Milk chocolate, O Daughter of All Delights."

"Bring me some of that, too. Put the meal on a damask cloth, with blue gauze to wipe the mouth, and the vessels must all be of purest crystal with gold rims."

"To hear is to obey, Little Queen of My Tribe."

"Be sure there's plenty for all of us, with a bowl of mice for Godwin's falcon Yellow-eyes, and remember that my lord and master eats like two-thirds of a regiment."

"Give me but four minutes, Mistress, and you shall see it spread beneath the trees of this oasis, beside the clear spring that bubbles through the sand."

She strolled back to her uncle and her betrothed, a secret smile on her lips. In the specified four minutes a banquet popped into sight just beside them. Godwin jumped.

"What the devil!"

"I'm hungry," said Ramizail, at once on the defensive.

"Mihrjan!" said Godwin, glaring at her. "You had him do this. How often must I tell you my sentiments concerning all this magic, witch-wench?"

"Never again, Godwin dear, for I know them by heart."

"Ramizail," he said angrily, his eyes sparkling blue, "this is going to stop here and now. When you gave me the ring, and thus shared your power over the djinn with me, you promised not to command Mihrjan to do anything I didn't approve of."

"Oh, well," grumbled the girl, "I'm hungry for real food!"

"Ramizail, give me the sigil!"

Her eyes blazed back at his. "Come and take it, you big oaf!"

El Sareuk leaned against a date palm and smiled to himself. It was always a toss-up as to which of these iron-willed people would win an argument. Godwin strode over to the girl, upsetting a goblet of pale pink sherbet with his foot, and took her by the shoulders. She hit him on the nose. He turned her over and smacked her on her lightly-clad bottom. She screeched and bit his leg. He dropped her on the sand and sat on her.

Mihrjan, invisible but no more than three feet from them, laughed deeply.

El Sareuk said to Yellow-eyes, the old peregrine falcon, who was sitting on his shoulder watching the brawl, "Thy master has met, if not his match, at least a very worthy foe!"

Godwin, after a great deal of fumbling, got hold of the sigil where it hung on a chain round her neck, and opened the clasp and took it off.

"Bully!" shrieked Ramizail. "Swaggering, bragging, girl-defeating bully! Give me that back!"

"Not a chance," said Godwin equably. He moved over and sat in the small of her back. He locked the sigil into the ring he wore on his little finger, and the designs of each caught the other and made a single lump of gold. "Now," he said, "I control the djinn."

"Have them transport me to the Isles of the Western Sea," said the girl savagely, "or by the Crescent and Cross, Godwin, I'll murder you when I get up!"

"Nothing so drastic. Mihrjan!"

"Yes, Lord?"

"I control you now absolutely, don't I?"

"Yes, Lord."

"You follow us for love, I know, but we can't really command you unless one of us holds both these baubles, isn't that so?"

"'Tis so, one of a Hundred Monarchs, though thou knowest I would answer any summons thou or my mistress made, Solomon's Seal or no. But the sigil and ring are life's and death's powers over me."

"Well, Mihrjan, you know my sentiments about the whole business, and by the mass, I'm growing weary of these tricks of hers. She's always having you save me when there's no need, and stepping in when I have a chance at a fight, and making banquets, and showing off your magic as if it were her own. So I want you to go away, Mihrjan."

"Lord?" said the djinn, disturbed and bewildered.

"Well, look, hang it all, I like you, I think you're a splendid chap, really, but this magic gets on my nerves. Now go on away, go besiege a castle, or throw an oyster fry, or take a wife, or something. We have the sigil and ring if we really need you, old fellow, but meantime please do go home. I'm sick of this soft living Ramizail forces on me by your thaumaturgy."

The djinni chuckled. "I see thy point, O King. I go. Remember that the Seal calls me to you in an eye's winking if need arises."

"It'll probably arise, if I know my luck, but I hope it won't. Good-bye, old fellow."

"Farewell, Master. Fare thee well, Moon of Incredible Beauty." There was a swishing noise, a faint scent of attar touched their nostrils, and the air rushed into a sudden-made vacuum beside them. The Moon of Incredible Beauty said ferociously, "If you don't let me up, you son of a jackal, I'll bite you in a vulnerable spot and you won't sit down for a week."

Godwin stood up. Ramizail rolled over and eyed him. There was malice in the gaze, but Godwin only laughed. He tossed her the sigil. She hung it round her neck.

"I'll hide the ring, kitten, so you can't steal it when I'm asleep. Now you're a plain woman, and by our lady, you'll stay that way!"

"What about the banquet?" said she. "I'm surprised you didn't have him take it back."

"Ah well, a man does now and again grow tired of figs and biscuits and water. We'll eat it. Just this once."

They all sat down, El Sareuk gave thanks to Allah and Godwin to his deity for the sumptuous repast, and they fell to. Yellow-eyes dipped her scarred, notched beak into her bowl of plump mice, and emitted a cry of pleasure. Everybody ate until four bellies well nigh burst with good food. Then they rolled up in their rugs and went to sleep.

CHAPTER V

Heraj looked into his crystal ball. Absently he flung out his right arm, which extended for seven feet and allowed the hand to grasp a beaker of honey wine sitting on a taboret across the room.

His eyes lit up greenly at what he saw in the ball. He tossed off the wine and hared out of his apartments, through the room where fourteen lieutenants of Mufaddal's force were playing at dice, and into his master's sleeping room. Mufaddal sat up from his rugs and howled.

"This damnable lack of privacy must cease! I—" Then he saw what his half-brother was doing casually with his left foot, and subsided. "Yes, Heraj? What is it?"

"Listen, al Mamun. I put a thought in Godwin's head this afternoon—just a suggestion, you know. He followed through beautifully."

"Good. Did he hang himself to a tree?"

"No, no. I suggested he get rid of that djinni. He did. Then he hid Solomon's ring, though where I don't know, and forgot where he hid it."

"By Osman ibn Affar, that was well done! Your power over men's minds astonishes even me, Heraj." The dark-faced fanatic was jubilant.

"I didn't make him forget it, he did that on his own hook. He's cooperative that way. He has a child's intellect." Heraj took a sweetmeat out of his ear and ate it. "Now the djinni's gone, Allah knows where, and won't come back till he's called by the sigil and ring. And they haven't got the ring."

"Oh, my brother," said Mufaddal, rubbing his hands together, "if you have indeed put this Godwin at our mercy, I shall give you a racing camel with a ruby-studded saddle!"

"I have, I have. But never mind the camel, I want Richard for my personal slave when we defeat the Crusaders."

"Done!" barked the leader. "Now tell me, subtle one, what will you do with Godwin?"

Heraj regarded his fingernails, which turned into ten little pieces of glass behind which miniature dancing girls performed various interesting contortions. At last he said smugly, "I've done it, Mufaddal. Just wait till that overgrown lout wakes up." He laughed. "What a shock he's got coming!"

CHAPTER VI

Godwin rolled over, opened an eye, and smacked his lips. He always awoke hungry. He scrabbled in the sand beside him until he found his bag of dates, popped one into his mouth, and got up. He pushed a bare toe against the backside of El Sareuk, who erupted with a startled curse. Yellow-eyes woke at that and screamed, and Ramizail sat up.

"Time to ride, old wolf," said Godwin. He went to the spring and drank deep. Then he walked past it toward the horses.

The horses were not there. He scowled, went through the palm trees, and made as if to set foot on the desert sands beyond.

The desert sands were not there.

He fell to his knees. His eyes snapped wide. Two inches before him the oasis came to an abrupt halt. There was nothing there but vacant space. The desert was gone. Everything was gone.

"What in the name of—"

He bent over the edge of the oasis. A thousand feet below him the desert shimmered coldly in the light of the stars. He could see their horses, the three saddle beasts and the two pack animals, standing in a knot with the Arabian camel they kept for emergencies. The creatures looked like insects, so far below him they were. He drew back with a gasp.

"El Sareuk! Ramizail!" he shouted. "Take care! The oasis has floated off its moorings!"

They came running to his side. Ramizail gave a little cry. "Godwin, darling! What's happened to us?"

"Lord knows. We're marooned up here, it seems." He lay down at full length and peered over the edge again. The oasis had indeed been torn from its base, and the roots of the palms dangled below the round disc of it, waving their filaments in the air. "By the rood," said Godwin, "if this doesn't strain the imagination! Does it happen often, old one?"

"Never to my knowledge before this night," said El Sareuk, running a hand through his grizzled beard. "Now by Allah! The sorcerers of Mufaddal have done this thing!"

"The ring, Godwin," snapped Ramizail. She was all business, and no man would have denied her anything in this sudden gust of her serious intent, for when she put by her humor and her playfulness, she was a force to be reckoned with. "We'll have to call up Mihrjan. None of your vaunted swashbuckling will cope with this ensorcelment."

"Yes, I suppose one must fight witchery with witchery, though it goes against my knightly grain." He made as if to take the ring from his finger. "Oh, I forgot. I hid it from you."

"Stupid ox! Give it here."

He groped in his silk and samite robes, then among the crevices of his gold-washed steel mesh Cairo armor. At last he stared sheepishly at her. "I forget what I did with it."

"Oh, you bumbling Englishman!" She leaped to him and ran swift questing fingers over his body. "It's big enough, it ought to make quite a lump. Ninety-nine names of the true One! It isn't here. Did you hide it in the sand?"

"No," said Godwin, blushing with shame. "I put it where I'd always have it near by. But I can't seem to recollect just where."

She put her hands to her head. "You—you—"

"Never mind," said Godwin. "I have an idea. If it doesn't work, you'll have to pick me up with a spoon, but I think it will."

He squared his broad shoulders and walked straight over the edge of the high-floating oasis.

CHAPTER VII

Godwin turned and looked back at them. In the moon's light he was an uncanny figure, standing on lofty immaterial nothingness.

"Well," he said testily, "come on. Can't you see it's all right?"

They gaped at him, eyes round as the declining moon. "How are you accomplishing that, comrade?" asked the Saracen.

"Accomplishing what? I'm only standing here."

"Yes, but on air, for the love of Allah! How can you stand on air?"

"I happen," said Godwin, distinctly and loudly, as though he were speaking to an imbecile. "I happen to be standing on the sands of the desert."

"He's mad, my child," groaned El Sareuk.

"If he is, he's doing as neat a job of being crazy as I ever saw," retorted Ramizail. "Does his insanity affect the pull of the earth?"

"Hmm," said the Hadji, "you're right. Well, let me join him in his madness. But if I vanish abruptly, niece, do you go back and sit by that spring until the oasis sinks of its own accord. I would not have your lovely brains splattered over a league of hot sand." He walked gingerly out to Godwin's side. "He's right, it's the desert!" he shouted.

She looked at the two of them, standing there in midair shaking hands solemnly with each other. She grinned. "Of course, it's a mirage, or a trick!" She went to them, treading on what seemed space, and it turned to solid dunes beneath her sandals. She looked back, and the oasis was there, settled firmly in the heart of the desert, with sleepy Yellow-eyes just flying out of the trees. "A neat stunt," said Ramizail. "Godwin, you're cleverer than I thought, and as brave as forty lions, to have tried such a thing!"

"A man takes his chances," said Godwin modestly.

They mounted and rode off toward the west, toward El Iskandariya and the ship full of rats, rats full of fleas, fleas full of bubonic plague. As they went, Ramizail nagged at Godwin, and Godwin tried unhappily to remember what he had done with the ring of Solomon. But he could not do it. He patted himself all over, and even looked into his Saracen-style helmet, which was a round shining steel cap surmounted by the golden figure of a rampant lion and resting upon a headpiece of soft white cloth that protected his neck from the sun; but he could not discover it. All he remembered was that he had put it in a safe place, a place that would never be farther from him than he could reach.

As the moon touched the faraway dunes, the sun came up. Gilded sands grew fiery beneath the hooves of their animals, and the khamsin, that was like the breath of a devil drunk on hot mulled blood, arose to torture them.

A wide-breasted dune stretched before them. They topped the rise and Ramizail gave a cry, while the men checked their steeds and glanced at each other. "Another illusion?" asked Godwin.

"Who can tell? There are more beasts in the desert than are known to man," shrugged El Sareuk.

In the hollow formed by four dunes' meeting stood an enormous lion, all orange-red of hue, facing them with black mane bristling up like the spines of a porcupine. The odd thing about it, the thing that made it seem somewhat out of the ordinary even to men who had looked on a thousand wonders in their time, was the pair of broad silver wings that sprang from its shoulder blades and spread themselves high to left and right.

"Winged lion," said Ramizail. "No, I cannot call it to mind. I doubt one's been seen before, at least in Egypt."

The lion growled, crouched, and launched itself through the air straight at Godwin's head. El Sareuk shouted, "Allah defend us!" and leaned over in the saddle to slash at it with his scimitar; while Godwin hauled his fifty-pound broadsword from its leathern sheath and flung the point swiftly up before his face. The lion, its gigantic wings flapping like a vulture's, soared up and over him. Yellow-eyes the falcon left his shoulder, giving vent to shrill wrath at this horror of the desert.

"Coming back! Diving!" roared the Hadji. Godwin flung himself from a sitting start, straight over the head of his stallion. The extended claws of the terrible beast grazed his back as he fell and ripped four gashes in the silk of his outer robe. Yellow-eyes beat her wings about the lion's head, trying to confuse and harry it.

Still holding his weapon, Godwin of England rolled over on his back. Flying sand had sprayed his face and a grain had lodged in his left eye, making him squint and curse. The lion hovered over him, then dropped like a boulder, ignoring the peregrine. Godwin twitched the point of the sword upward and at the first prickling contact with its belly the monster screeched and shot forward beyond him.

El Sareuk made his horse leap, and stood by Godwin till he rose. "It's coming back," he said. "You are its target, obviously, lad. 'Tis no natural beast, I'll take oath on the Koran!"

The winged red lion came rushing at Godwin, half on sand and half in air, giving itself little pushes with its earth-touching paws. Godwin half-knelt, waited till it was within striking range, then gave a mighty slash with his iron sword. He missed, but the strange being, startled, rose up. Godwin saw one massive hind leg coming straight at him. He had no time to lift the broadsword again; neither could he drop in time to avoid a crushing stroke of the leg. Quicker than thought he let go his sword and flung his arms before him.

The leg struck him on the chest, but to ease the force he had already wrapped his swift arms about it. The lion beat its way upward, and before he knew it Godwin, clinging like death to the hind leg, looked down and found himself a hundred feet over the desert. El Sareuk's astonished shout and Ramizail's piercing scream of terror came up to him, dim and half-heard in the rushing wind of their passage. The falcon followed, skirling her anger.

The lion paused and writhed round on itself like a common bazaar cat going after a louse. Godwin swung his body up and kicked it on the nose. It coughed dismally as one sharp spur caught its tender snout and gashed a bloody trench. It snapped at him again, its big teeth missing by a fraction. Yellow-eyes thrust her beak at its eyes and it turned from Godwin to bite out at her.

Godwin tightened the grip of his left arm and let go with his right. He drew his curved Persian dagger from its thonged sheath and judged his blow. Then he struck.

The lion, its neck slit from ear to gullet, spewed blood and uttered a horrible gurgling bellow. Slowly it began to sink toward the earth. Godwin risked a quick look down. His head reeled. He was still a good eighty feet up. If the lion died too soon, he would be smashed to a pulp beneath its dead weight. He had thought only of slaying the thing, not of how he might land safely. He swore vividly.

"This proves Ramizail's contention that I have a one-track brain!" The winged beast drifted down in spirals, its hindquarters drooping, its wings feebly beating the air, and its head jerking back and forth. Godwin held his breath. It folded its wings and plummeted straight for sickening yards, then making a last try at rising, extended the pinions once more. Godwin saw that he was no more than ten feet off the ground. He loosed his hold. The dunes came up with a rush to meet him and he lit and rolled over. The lion above gave a final roar and crumpled, smacking the sand a yard from Godwin's feet. The warrior arose and wiped his forehead with a bloodied hand, as Yellow-eyes alit on his shoulder, ruffling her feathers.

"Whew! Lady, that was no illusion."

El Sareuk brought him his sword and charger, and mounting, he turned its head again to the west.

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.

CHAPTER IX

"Godwin dear," said Ramizail, in a voice which for her was small and deferential indeed.

"Yes?" he said. He had been dreaming in the saddle of battles he had fought and brawls he would engage in.

"Godwin, my own, I'm seasick."

He stared across at her. El Sareuk said, "Niece, you were straddling a pony before you could toddle! This is unworthy of you."

"I don't care. I'm seasick." Her face was pale and beads of sweat stood on her forehead. "I'm afraid I'm going to disgrace myself," she said, and promptly did.

Godwin started to laugh. Then he stopped, and put a hand tentatively to his own belly. "El Sareuk," he said, "I don't feel so sprightly myself."

The Arab chieftain nodded. "You look like a poisoned camel, my friend. What ails you?"

"God knows. I too was almost born a-horseback. But, hang it, there's something the matter with this steed. He keeps going buckety-clomp."

"What?"

"Buckety-clomp, that's what it feels like."

El Sareuk said, "Now that you mention it, my own fellow has developed a sort of stagger. Could they have drunk bad water?"

"They drank what we drank. Damn," said Godwin miserably. "You know what it is? It's some more sorcery. Those thrice-cursed warlocks of Mufaddal's are up to something again. Mohammed, we'll never get there at this rate."

"Cheer up, thou stalwart smiter of satans," said El Sareuk. "Despite their worst efforts, we've covered four-fifths of the distance already, and 'tis no more than midday!"

"I expected to be in Alexandria by now."

"I cannot imagine what this trick may be that works on you," went on the Saracen. "But luckily it leaves me untouched. As I am when in the saddle no more than an extension of my horse, I am naturally not susceptible to—"

After a long pause, Godwin cleared his throat and said, "Susceptible to what?"

"Never mind," said El Sareuk sorrowfully, and his lean face was faintly green. "I find that, after all, I am."

They rode on grimly, until at last Ramizail said, "I'm sorry, I've got to get off and rest a while. I'm sick."

The two men thankfully reined in, and the party dismounted on the top of a dune. They all sat down. Shortly Ramizail said, "It's no good. I still feel awful. The desert's going up and down in front of my eyes."

"I noticed the same phenomenon," said Godwin.

"And I," agreed El Sareuk. "The sorcerers have poisoned us, surely."

There was another silence.

Godwin murmured, "That's curious."

"What?" asked El Sareuk, who was striving with might and main not to throw up.

"Well, I was watching the horizon swell and sink, swell and sink, swell and—"

"For heaven's sake, shut up," groaned Ramizail.

"And all of a sudden I noticed my horse doing the same thing." He turned his face toward them. "I mean he was watching it too, nodding his head. You know, it isn't just us. It's the land. It is rising and falling. The dunes are rolling like ocean waves."

Ramizail raised herself on her elbows and stared out across the sands. "They are! We stopped atop a dune, now we're in a valley." She spat. "If this isn't the messiest miracle ever worked, and the dirtiest, and the foulest, then I am not the mistress of the djinn!"

"What'll we do?" moaned Godwin. "How can you fight a shifting desert? How can you make it lie down and be good?"

El Sareuk stood up. Strong though he was, strong as so much whip-thong and steel encased in leather, he could fight this nausea no more effectively than a puppy might engage in warfare with an active volcano. "Allah punishes me for sinful pride," he said, gagging. "Pride in my horsemanship. I, who have been to Mecca, still to harbor pride!" He shaded his eyes from the blazing sun, which was the only stable object in sight. "The magic cannot stretch from edge to edge of the desert, for such a thing is beyond the power of even the djinn."

"Speaking of which, have you found that ring, Godwin?" queried Ramizail with weak petulance.

"No, let me be," said the tallow-faced Godwin.

"I was going to say," continued El Sareuk, "that if we manage to survive for the few miles, I think we will pass these rolling sands. Can you stick on your horses?"

"While I'm alive, I can ride," said Godwin, but without much conviction.

"If you two can stand it, I can," nodded the girl.

Yellow-eyes, huddled on the cantle of her master's saddle, croaked out something that sounded like a blasphemy. The horses drooped their heads, and the camel bubbled and wailed. They made a pitiful group. But the humans mounted, and the falcon flew up, and the beasts staggered forward. They would start to plow up a dune, and slowly like a wave in slow motion, it would shift until they were heading down into a valley. The horizon before them was a shifting, mutable line. Never had any of them been so ill. They had all lost their breakfasts, and seemed to be trying to recall the supper from night before last. Not a one of them but would have been happy to lie down, could he have been sure that he would die. But they pressed on, taking a weak courage from each other.

And at last El Sareuk, who in his way was stronger even than the champion Godwin, blinked watery eyes and said, "We've passed it!"

They lifted incredulous heads, and found it was true. The shifting sands had stilled and the desert lay wrapped in its customary peace.

CHAPTER X

They were almost within sight of Alexandria before they found what they were seeking. Then, just at the last possible moment, they sighted a large cluster of the black tents of the Bedouins. "Await me here," said El Sareuk urgently. "I shall collogue with these men and see whether I cannot raise us an army." He galloped away to the encampment.

Shortly there was a bustle and stir therein, and many small energetic men of the Bedouin tribe came running toward the central tent, into which El Sareuk had vanished. The Bedouins were a cheerful and healthy lot, inured to hardship, habituated to a rough nomadic life. They were short and lean, and often looked fragile, but they were fiery, intractable fighters when aroused.

When some time had passed, Ramizail said, "He will win them. You'll see they'll be wild with desire to help us, and to avenge the soiled honor of Islam. That's the tack he's using—how Mufaddal has betrayed the dignity and integrity of the Moslem world by this fiendish trick of the pest ship, and how these Bedouins can expunge the stain by following us against his forces."

"Can you do soothsaying without the help of Mihrjan?" asked Godwin curiously. There was a great deal he did not know even yet about this strange tall child of Solomon's line.

"Oh, no. I'm just well acquainted with my uncle's ways of thinking and speaking and acting. I've seen him whip a crowd of assorted Saracens—Turks and Mamelukes and Arabs and Soldarii and Turcomans—into such a frenzy of fanatical zeal that they attacked a force nine times as large as their own, and cut it to ribbons. He's an old spell-binder."

And it turned out as she predicted, for quite soon El Sareuk came riding toward them at the head of a gang of horsemen, some half a hundred in all, waving their swords and bows over their heads. Godwin knew instinctively what to do. He rose in his stirrups and threw up his tremendous broadsword and howled in Arabic. "Death to all who defile the name and honor of Islam!" Although he was a good Christian knight this war-slogan did not seem inappropriate to him in the least; and it pleased and flattered the Bedouins no end, for El Sareuk had told them of this mighty-chested warrior who had dedicated himself to wrong-righting and oppression-ending, leaving the Crusade to travel for this purpose in company with an Arab prince and half-caste girl. They answered his hail with lusty yells and riding up to him and Ramizail they pressed upon them all manner of foods, roast lamb in palm leaves, legs of fowl, delicacies of every sort, goats' milk for Godwin and asses' milk for the woman. Greedily they ate and drank as they rode west, and finished the last crumb as they sighted the outskirts of Alexandria.

"We'll ride straight in," said Godwin, now grim and businesslike. "They're expecting us, so watch out for surprises. Their sorcerers have told them we're coming, I'll wager my left eye upon it. We'll find out which wharf the plague ship's moored to, and burn her to the water's edge. Then we'll seek out this Mufaddal swine, and pin him by his ears to an ant's nest!"

His band gave an ululating shout, and the horses were booted into a gallop.

It was then about two hours before sunset.

They rode down one of the principal streets, a rather dirty, narrow thoroughfare, overhung by the houses on either side. Above the roofs to their left they could see the pinnacle of Pompey's Pillar, the towering column of red granite which had stood in Alexandria for eight centuries. "'Twould be moored in the West Harbor, I think," said El Sareuk, who knew the city to some extent. He nudged his horse slightly into the lead and preceded the force through the heart of the place.

Few signs of life were in evidence. The air was hushed, even the wind off the sea had drawn back to avoid this silent city, and an atmosphere of expectancy held the blindly staring buildings. Only an occasional fellah or more substantial citizen would appear now and again, stare for a moment at the intent horsemen, and disappear from sight like a startled wild thing. Godwin tugged at his beard. They were not, as he had predicted, wholly unexpected. Word had somehow flown through the streets and bazaars of their coming, and of the imminent brawl. Perhaps magic was at work, too, though he felt and saw nothing to indicate it.

They approached the docks, catching glimpses of them at intervals in the houses, and Godwin grew even more tense and watchful. Then, as he and Ramizail and the chief of the Bedouins all abreast, with El Sareuk four hand-breadths in advance, galloped round a turn, the attack was launched upon them.

From the roof of a house on the corner a great net, like those used by fishermen, was flung out, weighted and tossed by experienced hands; it fell upon the four of them, an entangling, encumbering, maddening enemy, knocking Ramizail out of the saddle, tipping Godwin's helmet over his eyes, snaring all their drawn weapons and seeming to writhe about them as though it were a sentient creature. Godwin shouted, "Use your blades!" and began hacking away at the cords with his broadsword. It was not the razor-keen instrument that El Sareuk's scimitar was, however, and the old Saracen had to release him after cutting free himself. Ramizail was dodging on hands and knees between the legs of the terrified horses. The Bedouin leader yelled, "leave the beasts;" and Godwin realized that they must. It would take minutes to slice the net sufficiently to unscramble the steeds. He slid off his Spanish charger, picked up Ramizail by the waist, dodged under a reaching fold of the net and gained the free ground.

Men were attacking from the mouth of every alley, Turks in Persian armor with three-foot scimitars and little round shields, mercenary Turcomans with stout short bows and fists full of arrows, Mamelukes in yellow tunics carrying battle-axes. The Bedouins pirouetted their horses to meet them. Some of the enemy were mounted, many on foot. Battle-cries arose, and this was the strangest thing about the fight, for both sides lifted the same cry, the howling chant of Islam: "Ul-ul-ul-ul-ul-ul-allah akbar! Allah il-al-lahu! Ul-ul-ul-ul-allah akbar!"

Godwin, still carrying Ramizail, parried a vicious thrust by a Seljuk Turk and swung his broadsword. A wave of terrible and utter happiness swept through him. For this had Godwin of England been born and trained. His blade smashed down through helmet and skull to clunk dully on the neckpiece of the Turk's armor. Then he had jerked it free and turned and driven it squarely into the back of a foeman who was duelling with the dismounted El Sareuk. Again he whipped it out, whirled it above his head and smashed its broad flat against the bearded and grimacing face of a Turcoman. Blood and brains exploded like seeds and pulp from a shattered pumpkin. Godwin roared gleefully. Having cleared the space around him, he set Ramizail on her feet and said, "Stand back to back with me, sweet. My halidom! This is something like it!"

She slammed her back against his. An etched-bladed knife was in her capable hand, and she had the look of a ravening demon.

El Sareuk, wiping his dripping scimitar on the djelabie of a fallen opponent, said, "Where's Yellow-eyes?" for he had grown very fond of Godwin's battle-scarred old peregrine.

"I don't know. Trust her to come safe through this!" And in a moment, as Godwin engaged in swordplay with two Moslems, the falcon did indeed slant down from the sky, to beat her wings fiercely in the eyes of one of the enemy who was trying to slash at Ramizail under Godwin's arm.

"Thou beauty!" said Godwin, dividing the blinded gentleman neatly at the waist. "Thou cleaver of storm-clouds! Always art thou here when Godwin has need of thee!" Only to his falcon and his horse did Godwin speak in this affectionate fashion. It sometimes made Ramizail jealous.

Many of their Bedouin allies had fallen to the arrows and swords of the attackers. Now men appeared on the nearest roofs, armed with huge slings and round stones. Mufaddal evidently desired to take prisoners, and knowing that Godwin's forces would fight to the last man, had chosen this way of stunning some of them. A flight of stones laid out three-quarters of the remaining force, including El Sareuk; Godwin took a couple on his shield—he was the prime target—and wished he had an arbalest; he'd bring 'em down from those aeries! Then a rock caught him at the base of the skull, and he groaned and buckled over and struck the ground with a crash. Yellow-eyes fluttered up and hung over him, screeching. Ramizail bent above him, crying out with horror. Then big rough hands were on her, her knife was twitched away, and she was hauled off, keening like a banshee, to the house of Mufaddal al Mamun.

CHAPTER XI

The black-faced slob who led the troops of the Saracens in Alexandria was seated cross-legged on a rug, eating a bowlful of dry rice. He squinted at Ramizail where she stood, defiant and tear-stained, across the room from him. "Bring the slut here," said he. Two slaves dragged her forward. They took their hands away when they had stationed her in front of him; she immediately hit one of them in the eye and kicked the other on the shin. Then she bent over and thrust a finger under Mufaddal's nose.

"Watch who you're calling a slut, you pig-eyed ape-visaged son of a buck-toothed jackal!" she said in a low but quite audible snarl. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

He made as if to shrug, snatched her by the wrist and flung her prone on the rug before him. "I know who you are, you viper mouthed hell hag. You're Ramizail, who once controlled the djinn."

"I still control them, you bat-eared offspring of a pock-marked toad."

"Oh no you don't, you mildewed bowlegged harridan," said Mufaddal. With the "bowlegged" epithet he went too far, as any student of women, and especially of the vain Ramizail, could have told him. She rolled over and smiled up at him and before he knew what she intended, her teeth had met in the flesh of his calf. He leaped straight up with a full-throated bawl of pain.

She sat back and crossed her legs Moslem-fashion and said, "Now that the pleasantries are done with, let me tell you that the chief of all the djinn, y-clept Mihrjan would—and could—do anything for me. So just watch your step, you greasy-handed scheming scum, or you'll find yourself hanging by your—"

"Mihrjan would indeed have done anything for you," said Mufaddal, rolling up his cheap cotton trousers and dabbing at the blood on his leg with a piece of the equally cheap rug, which he tore off for the purpose. "But your friend Godwin sent Mihrjan away and told him to stay till he was called. And now he's lost the ring of Solomon, and you're helpless. Ouch!" he yipped as the rug rasped over his wound. "Well, almost helpless. I suppose I'll have to have all your teeth pulled before I make you my concubine."

"Before you make me a concubine, you draff of the Cairo gutters, you'll have to pull my teeth and draw my nails and hamstring me and break my arms, and even then I'll gum you to death!" she yelled.

He regarded her out of the corner of his eye, and thought that perhaps she was right, and that he should give up this idea. Certainly there was always the chance that her djinni might come looking for her against Godwin's orders; but he took a second look and decided the djinni could go hang. She was as luscious a piece of loot as had come his way in years. She was standing now, hands on hips. He motioned one of the slaves up.

"Let's see what she looks like under all those layers of drapery," he said.

The slave grinned, whipped out a knife, and before Ramizail could turn he expertly ran its razor-honed blade up her back, within a millimeter of her spine. Her robes fell forward, slit from waist to neck, and she saved her modesty only by a quick grab at the front of them. Whirling—and Ramizail when she wished could move like a tornado in a hurry—she snatched the knife from his careless grasp, shifted it to a comfortable position in her hand, and with a lightning stroke cut the belt of his scarlet satin pantaloons. The slave clutched at them desperately ... just too late. He turned to flee this demon-wench, the trousers entangled his ankles, and he sprawled headlong across the floor. The other slave came warily forward, groping out toward the girl.

She menaced him with the knife. "Want to lose your pants too, little man?" she asked.

He was a shy and sensitive soul at heart. He glanced at his trousers, at the knife, turned pale, moaned, and dashed for the door. Ramizail faced Mufaddal, who was nursing his calf and gaping appreciatively at the slim brown back exposed by the slave's blade.

"Turn around for a minute, al Mamun," she hissed, "while I fix my robes. If you don't, the last thing you'll see will be this silver sliver!" She flashed the knife within an inch of his popping orbs. He hastily swiveled round and faced the wall.

"One would think you were deficient in the body, and ashamed of it," he growled.

"If you would care to see just how extremely undeficient I am, you big baboon," she said, slicing off the whole top of her cream-colored outer robe and knotting it around her ample bosom in the form of a halter, with the copper-hued gown caught beneath it to chastely cover her diaphragm, "then you have only to snatch one peek over your shoulder. I assure you it would give you a moment of supreme pleasure, immediately before you died." A low estimation of her own attractions was never a failing of Ramizail's. "And you would die, Mufaddal. They tell me a sliced gullet can be painful. Do you want to find out?"

"No," said Mufaddal sullenly, staring hard at the wall. What a long-clawed cat from the alleys of Hell! he thought. Had she been less beautiful, he would slay her in this instant. But he wanted her, and without blemish or scar, so he sat motionless until she said, "All right, turn around. But no more clever ideas from you, or I'll really grow angry." She tucked the knife into her girdle as he pushed himself around to face her.

"Very well," he said, "I'll buy you. I respect your spirit, woman. 'Tis a trait I like in my women. How now, if I heaped your lap with emeralds and nephrite jade?"

"Green was never one of my favorite colors," said she, sitting down comfortably across the rug from him. She cast about for a way to show her absolute contempt, bethought herself of her playing cards which she always carried with her, and drew the pack out of a purse she wore on her girdle.

"What are they?" he asked, intrigued in spite of himself, as she began to lay them out on the rug.

"Playing cards. My djinn brought them to me from a far future time. They haven't even been invented yet," said she, studying the faces of those upturned.

"What does one do with them? Not that I care," he added, remembering his carefully-built reputation for single-minded fanaticism.

"One plays many games. I might teach you one, were you not as stupid as a hog and as dull-witted as an aged camel."

"I am as intelligent as you," yowled Mufaddal. Then, since she was a mere woman, "More intelligent, blast your smirking face! Teach me a game!"

"The best one is called Poke Her," said Ramizail. "But to really play properly, we need four people."

Mufaddal threw a dish at the remaining slave, who was sitting in a corner trying to repair his belt. "Go fetch me Heraj and Pepi," he ordered. "Also bring some food. Something to munch on. And some fermented-bread beer." The slave trotted out, gripping his ravished pants.

Presently the two sorcerers came in, Heraj very glum. "What's wrong with you, lemon-lips?" asked Mufaddal.

"What'd you do with Godwin and his crew?" asked Heraj.

"You know very well."

"Yes, I know. You threw them into the jail with those captured Crusaders and the others. I don't like the risk, brother. You ought to kill the whole lot of them now. You underestimate that big Englishman. And the renegade El Sareuk is no babe, either."

"The cell is as well guarded as a prince's harim," said Mufaddal.

"Yes, but any man who can slay a winged lion is a match for fifty seraglio guards. Kill 'em, I say. The plague ship sails with the early morning tide. Why take unnecessary chances?"

"I have several simple but pleasurable notions in mind for Godwin and his misguided cohorts. Come here, I'll whisper one of them to you." Heraj stalked over and bent down. Mufaddal sputtered wetly and intimately in his ear. Presently the sorcerer began to grin.

"Not bad. I guess it's worth the risk. I'll be extra cautious, anyway." He sat down beside Mufaddal. He extracted a goblet of saffron-yellow bubbling wine from his brother Pepi's yataghan pommel and drank it off. "What did you call us in for?" he asked, gazing at Ramizail with the expression of a starving vulture catching sight of a prime steak.

"This wench has a game to teach me, and it needs four players. Go on, girl," said Mufaddal, with as close an approach to amiability as was possible for him to assume.

Ramizail dealt out five cards apiece, having unobtrusively stacked the deck, and began to teach them the exotic game of Poke Her.

CHAPTER XII

The dungeon of al Mamun was a squat brick square, with a flat clay roof and tiny slit windows, erected at a little distance from the main building of his establishment, between the wharf and the barracks that housed his common soldiery. In its stinking, superheated confines now lay a score of Crusaders, captured a month before while on detached patrol duty from Richard's forces; twenty-seven Bedouins, the remains of Godwin's army; fourteen assorted Saracens, in jail for one offense or another against Mufaddal; El Sareuk and Godwin himself.

There was barely enough floor space for each man of the sixty-three to stand upright, or to sit, if he didn't mind jostling his neighbors. Godwin was standing by a window looking out at the dock from which the dark plague ship, a tall obscene blot against the descending moon, had a quarter of an hour before set sail. El Sareuk was beside him, making suggestions.

"How if we all formed a kind of wedge, Godwin, and began battering the door with the point? A few would be crushed, certainly, but the door might be torn down."

"Well, we'll try it, old wolf, if nothing better occurs to us." Godwin leaned in the little embrasure, tugging fretfully at his blond beard. "If I had my sword...!" He clanked his leg chains with anger; they had chained him and El Sareuk and a couple of the brawnier Crusaders. Damn all, he thought to himself. The ship is gone, what does it matter if we get out or not? Except to save Ramizail, of course. If I could remember what I did with that bloody ring! Mihrjan could sink that ship like an oaken chip.

And then, as the moon touched the far crest of the sea, the door opened and a Mameluke thrust in his head.

"Godwin! Godwin's wanted!"

The prisoners all burst into raucous speech, invitations and curses.

"Come and get him!"

"Do venture within, jailer, and let us show thee something pretty!"

"Enter, thou fuzz-bearded son of a dung heap, and fetch him!"

Godwin pushed his way to the door. The Mameluke retreated behind it. "Step out, Godwin," he said, nervously prodding the Englishman with his sword. "Mufaddal wants you."

Godwin grinned evilly, and stepped forth. The Mameluke, who Godwin now saw had a file of soldiers at his back, slammed the door on the execrations of the prisoners. "Come along," he growled.

El Sareuk, watching from a window, saw Godwin disappear with a firm step into the waning night, clinking his leg chains jauntily.

For long he did not come back. The old Arab harangued the sixty-one men who were left, urging that they forget their feuds and crusades and band together against their captor; and they agreed whole-heartedly with him, and fell to making plans for escape and vengeance. Not a man of them but hated Mufaddal, and most of all for his loathsome scheme of the plague ship.

They all sat down, crowding up to one another in the heat and stench of the prison, and made a narrow aisle through the center of the place so that El Sareuk could pace up and down while he talked and gestured and plotted, rattling the iron fetters on his legs.

"If we can get out, and I say we can, even if we leave half our number dead on the floor behind us, then we must make a dash for the house, and pulverize this devil before he can concoct any more foul designs!" he shouted.

They all roared. The building seemed to quiver on its foundations. El Sareuk smote his forehead. "Now by Allah and again by Allah! Is this our answer? Remember the walls of Jericho, O Brothers!"

They caught his meaning at once, and at the upswing of his hand every man let loose a full-throated bellow. A Crusader edged into a corner shouted, "The walls shuddered! The force of the sound shook them!"

They repeated the clamor, and dirt from the roof sifted down over them. For five minutes they raised a thunderous din, and might have gone on doing so till the sun rose, had not the door drawn open just then.

They all peered round, and a gorilla walked in. It was chained around the ankles and had a quizzical expression on its broad flat face.

They were brave men, but unarmed, and they all shrank away from it with indrawn breath and small fearful cries. El Sareuk, pale, clutched automatically for his absent scimitar.

The door slammed. The gorilla scratched its head, leaned against the jamb, and remarked in a loud disgusted voice, laden thick with English accent, "What the hell is the matter with you white-livered ruffians? You think I'm going to eat you?"

CHAPTER XIII

The gorilla stood by an embrasure, resting its elbows on the sill and staring moodily off toward the wharf. The sky was growing light with the approach of dawn. There is a small tide in the Mediterranean, much smaller than those of the greater oceans. It had been running now for nearly an hour. The pest ship, all sails spread, was hull down on the horizon.

The gorilla said gruffly, "El Sareuk, there is a sick void in my vitals that makes the shifting sands appear a mild holiday by comparison! The ship is gone—we've lost our fight to save England!"

The Saracen scratched his beard. "You have fleas, friend, and you're giving them to me.... Godwin, how did this terrible witchery come to pass? I mean this new form of yours?"

Godwin, the gorilla, grunted. "They hauled me into a room where the big dish-faced swine, what's his name—"

"Mufaddal."

"Yes, Muffin-face or whatever. He was sitting on a blanket with two of his sorcerers and Ramizail. She'd taught them one of her games with those 'playing cards.' The senior sorcerer, Heraj, had won about a bushel of assorted jewelry and gew-gaws, and Ramizail had stacks of gold coins like a rampart in front of her. They were all bleary-eyed with lack of sleep, but the game has such a hold that none of them, not even Ramizail, stopped playing for full five minutes after I had been brought in."

"It must have been Poke Her. No game has such a fascination."

"Yes. Then Muffin-face tipped Heraj a wink, and the camel's bastard went into a trance or something, and the first thing I knew I was scratching myself on the rump where a flea had bitten me. I imagined he'd presented me with a plague of fleas, till I realized that I wasn't scratching good armor, but bare hide with fur on it!"

"What a horror!" said El Sareuk, shuddering. "The man must have Satan's powers."

Godwin's shaggy head nodded. "'Twas he made it possible for the pest ship to be cargoed. Well, I looked myself over, and then knocked down a guard and took his polished shield away from him. They all had their swords out in a trice, but I only wanted to see my face in it. To have attacked them then would only have meant throwing my life away uselessly. I looked into the shield and—this is what I saw." He turned the gorilla's sad-somber visage toward his friend. "Heraj exchanged my body with this animal's, which it seems inhabits a savage jungle country far down in Africa. So somewhere in a forest my own body walks beneath the trees, clad in my robes and armor, thinking a wild beast's thought!"

"This Heraj must be powerful beyond thought!"

"He said deprecatingly to his filthy master that he had his limitations, but I cannot imagine them. What a bit of sorcery! Anyhow, Mufaddal then bragged that he would make Ramizail his concubine, and chain me to the bedchamber wall in the guise of a household pet. I had all I could do to keep my fingers from his throat. But I bethought me of Ramizail at the mercy of this pack of devils with me dead, and held my rage. Then she came to me, unhindered by them, because they wanted to see the spectacle of a maiden embracing a brute; and under cover of her embrace, she slipped this into my hand, and I hid it under my fur." He withdrew from his armpit the knife which Ramizail had taken from the slave.

El Sareuk's lean face lit with a fanatic fire. "Why, we are weaponed, then! And we have this body, which they've given you, like a crew of imbeciles and village idiots, when its strength must equal that of ten Godwins!"

"Well, not that damn strong," said the gorilla reproachfully. "After all, I was no weakling."

"Yes, yes, but look here, friend; between the weapon and the new body, can we not force an escape from this hole? Subdue the caitiffs, take a ship and pursue the plague vessel! The thing is surely within our power now!"

The gorilla shook his head dully. "You are staring, old comrade, at the work of this Heraj. Do you think he couldn't stop an attack by us with a wave of one finger?"

El Sareuk hissed fiercely, "Where's the Godwin I knew aforetime? Has the magician exchanged your guts with some sheep's?" He clapped the beast on the shoulder. "And see, I have bethought myself of something. Ramizail never does anything without plan, and witty, clever plan at that. She is playing cards with these magicians, true?"

"They were back at their game before I'd been hauled out of the room."

"I see her strategy as plain as though I had laid it myself! She has found the chink in the sorcerer's armor. He is engrossed with the game, to the exclusion of all else. We can make our break, and with any luck, burst into that room before he knows something's amiss! Then one swift twitch of your paw—forgive me, I mean your hand—and he's carrion!"

The gorilla considered long. At last he said, "It's a slim chance, but by the rood, we'll take it! Better a slim chance now than no chance after they chain me to the harem wall. And 'tis a thought, that of pursuing the plague ship. I had given up all hope when it left its moorings. I never thought of another ship."

"Your brains are addled by the change in form, or you'd have riddled it all out before I did," said the Arab generously. "Now then, how shall we go about it?"

They talked in low voices for a few minutes. The day brightened beyond the window. At last El Sareuk said, "That's it. The best possibility, I think."

"One other thing," said Godwin. "Around the knife when Ramizail gave it to me was wrapped this." He showed the Saracen the sigil of Solomon, the chain of which he had placed about his neck, with the seal hanging down behind among his black fur. "What d'you make of that?"

"Why, she hopes you'll find the ring, and if you have both, you can call the djinn. Obviously the sigil is no good to her alone."

"Fat chance I've got to find the ring," moaned the gorilla. "It's jiggling around a jungle somewhere, a thousand miles south."

"Yes. Ah well, we asked Allah for adventures when we left Jaffa for a nomad life," said El Sareuk philosophically. "Though little did we dream they'd come in battalions like this!"

CHAPTER XIV

The gorilla was as tall as Godwin had been in his proper form, four inches over six feet. The Crusader standing on his shoulders was the tallest of their lot, six feet two. His head came within a hand's breadth of the roof. Balanced by a palm on the ceiling, he was digging away at the baked clay with Ramizail's smuggled knife.

The mob was singing. Once a guard had opened the door and bawled at them to stop that infernal racket before they all had their throats choked with dirt, but they had cursed at him so impressively that, sword or no sword, he had retreated hastily and barred the door behind him. The mob had gone on singing. The Crusaders had sung ditties of England and home and beauty, with the Saracens humming and beating time; then the Saracens had taken over with chants of Islam and Bedouin love tunes, while the Crusaders accompanied them in muted bass choruses of hmm-hmm-hmms.

This din had effectively covered the scraping of the knife, which was chipping away the old roof at a good clip.

Now a bit of sunny sky showed through. The Crusader grinned, got a firm purchase with his bare toes on Godwin's hairy shoulders, braced his left hand above his head, hooked his right into the hole, and tugged downward. A big chunk of brick fell on his upturned face. He shook his blond head and chuckled. A trickle of blood ran into his mouth. Nothing could have tasted sweeter.

Gradually the hole widened, till at last it was the width of a man's body and more. Godwin, the gorilla, said in Arabic, "Enough! Now onto the roof, a dozen of you!"

Swiftly they swarmed up over him as though he were a scaling ladder. Slim Arab fought silently with big-bodied Englishman for the honor of being in the vanguard. Then Godwin barked again, "Enough!" They drew back, those who had not gone up through the hole, and he flexed his knees and gave a tremendous spring. Ape's muscles and man's know-how carried him straight upward; his paws caught the rim of the hole. Some clay crumbled beneath his weight, which was more than six hundred pounds. But sufficient held to give him a moment's grace. He hurled his bullet head and huge shoulders into the gap, the clay wedged his belly in for an instant, then he had burst through and was floundering on the roof, chained legs still dangling within. El Sareuk's tough old hands took him by the wrists and hauled. He was safe.

Crouching, he led his party to the edge of the flat roof, walking with legs spread so his tight fetters would not clank. It was the landward side of the prison, facing the barracks of Mufaddal's soldiery. Before the barracks paraded two sentries. Below Godwin's gang were two more, dungeon guards, one posted at each corner. The sun was brilliant on their steel helmets as they stood silent, foreshortened by the height, unconscious of any harm.

Godwin singled out two of his men, pointed to their targets, and went with his colleagues to the wall above the door. From here they could see two more sentries at the other corners, and four stationed at the door itself. He allotted Bedouins to the remaining corner guards, gave a signal, and launched himself into the air with a war-cry that began in his belly and strangled in his throat, so that for fear of alarming the barracks guards all that emerged from his mouth was a sibilant fierce hiss. Behind him his silent henchmen followed him off the roof. Within the jail, the fifty-one men still prisoner were raising echoes with a rousing drinking song imported from Germany.

Godwin, as the gorilla, smashed down upon two guards who had been sleepily cursing together the tyranny of their master Mufaddal. They never knew what crushed them.

The other guards, inundated by a wave of angry captives, died as quietly; while the men at the corners did their work with practiced, pitiless hands. Godwin skipped up to the corner of the jail and looked toward the barracks, some seventy yards away. As he had hoped, the two pacing sentries were oblivious of the slaughter. Their turns were made toward the barracks, so that only by an accidental or inquisitive turn of the head during their march would they take in the prison. He glanced behind him. El Sareuk was unbarring the door, while others were donning the distinctive chest armor and helmets and picking up the weapons of the dead guards. Three of them shortly went off toward the garrison building. They were all men who had formerly soldiered for Mufaddal, and Godwin hoped they could carry through their masquerade for the few seconds necessary to insure silence.

They did. The sentries died with never an outcry. Two of Godwin's men took up the pacing rounds. The others dragged the bodies down to the prison. They were rolled into it, together with those who had preceded them in death, and the dank stinking place now contained ten naked corpses, where a scant ten minutes before had lain sixty-two men and a gorilla.

The gorilla now said to El Sareuk, who was opening shackles with a key taken from the chief guard, "The biggest mistake Mufaddal ever made was when he turned me into this monster and then sent me back to the dungeon to frighten you fellows with his dark powers. We've broken his jail, and now we'll break his house. And then, by God, I think we may even break his plague ship!"

"How? How?" asked the old Saracen fiercely.

"No time now, old one. Let's make for the house." He stationed four of his men at the corners and two before the door; these last two he regretfully deprived of weapons, for an assault on Mufaddal's own stronghold demanded at least four scimitars and a knife or so. Then he led his grim-faced legion across the heated earth toward the palace.

CHAPTER XV

"El Sareuk, are you sure you want to do this?" Godwin said anxiously, as he stood in the shadow of the building's north side and plucked tufts of fur out in search of an elusive flea. "There's small danger, true, but your dignity!"

The Saracen turned on him the face of a natural-born but long-frustrated thespian. "I would cut down the man who presumed to keep me from it," he said loftily.

"Very well. Be careful, venerable wolf. Remember that I don't know how fast this hulking body can run."

"I shall be as circumspect and as wily as the hungry small jackal."

"Then go to it, and Godspeed!"

El Sareuk peered round the corner of Mufaddal's house. The facade was a hundred and fifty feet long, and the door was set in the very center, with four Turcomans to guard it. He cleared his throat as though he were going to give a speech, hiked up his robes, and went bounding out to the dock, which ran parallel to the front of the house and a little more than ten yards from it.

The soldiers were chatting among themselves, and did not notice his advent on the dock, nor whence he came.

At once he began to croon, as if singing himself songs, and to leap up and down, ruffling his rose samite and blue silken robes out like broken wings, spreading his black Bedouin cloak by twirling as fast as a dervish, all the time mowing and grinning like a demented thing. The four turned from their conversation and stared at him. He appeared to see them for the first time, and diving forward with his head down like a battering ram, rocketed forward almost into their midst.

Two of them drew scimitars, but one of the others said angrily, "Seest thou not he is afflicted of Allah?" They put up their weapons, shame-faced.

He began to do a jig, little by little drawing away to the south so that they wheeled to watch him. Over their shoulders he saw the blunt skull of the gorilla poke round the corner. It was his last chance to ham it up. He doubled over and gave his feet a flip and was standing on his head, all the while singing a rather tuneless song of his own composition, about the amours of a pascha, to drown out any noise that Godwin might make.

One of the men cried, "Look, brothers, look! He wears gold-washed armor beneath his robes!"

They drew their scimitars, for no idiot of the byways of Alexandria wore the armor of a prince.

Godwin covered the seventy feet in six bounds. Two of the men he clutched by an ear apiece and knocked their heads together, almost a gesture in passing, a thing to be done without thinking. Before the clang of their helmets had died away he was doing the same to the other pair. His new frame was, as El Sareuk had said, far more potent even than the human body which had stood up many a time to thirty opponents. The quartet lay stretched on the ground, gray ooze and red blood spilling from their broken skulls.

And so he had eight scimitars, nine knives, and six sets of body armor, together with six helmets. "Not so bad," said he, as his men stripped the corpses. "Now for the house!"

Those Saracens who were dressed as Mufaddal's men went first into the house. Godwin followed, with El Sareuk (whose yen for acting was now glutted) and the forty-seven others, the Crusaders and Bedouins, treading on his heels. No one opposed them in the cool hall.

Godwin considered. Then, "Fan out," he whispered loudly, so that they all heard him, "and search the house. Slay all you find save women. El Sareuk, pick two Englishmen and two Bedouins and come with me."

Straight for the room of the card-players he went, his huge gray-black body speeding like a falcon's flight, with the five behind having trouble in keeping up with him. Through one room, in which five men sat eating, he raged silently; and before their astonishment at seeing such a brute appear in a civilized household would let them yell, they were dead on the parquet floor. Scimitars dripped gore and the gorilla's paws and thick trunk-like arms were spatted with it. Then they reached the room they sought.

Yes, they were still at the cards, even as he had hoped. Ramizail's game had held them fascinated, though Mufaddal had had to send out for more cash and gems half a dozen times. Surely, thought Godwin, surveying them for one fleeting moment from the doorway, surely this girl was as clever as the wisest sage in England! She had known that he would make good use of the dagger she had smuggled and the hours she had won him.

Heraj, luckily, had his back to the door. Ramizail and Mufaddal himself faced it. Pepi had retired to a corner to snore, while the third sorcerer, Habu, had taken his place.

Mufaddal was squinting at his hand. He had four aces, but if his usual luck held, either Ramizail or Heraj would have a straight flush. Seven times that night the accursed wench had taken a pot with a royal flush. Seven times! It seemed to him a rather high number. He was becoming a Poke Her fiend, nevertheless.

He looked up to lay a bet, and froze as his eyes met the small fierce orbs of the gorilla in the doorway. A coward would have screamed, but a man of Mufaddal's boasted courage would have sprung over the heads of the players to close with the beast.

Mufaddal screamed.

CHAPTER XVI

Heraj uncoiled like a spring, his mind hastily flitting through mental file cards for an appropriate spell against gorillas. He had no doubt that it was the gorilla. He was turning to check, and had just decided on the brief but pithy incantation which sent victims to the plains of Afghanistan, when a large firm paw smote him on the nape of the neck, and the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.

Habu clutched for his wand. He was a very minor warlock and needed a wand to do anything more complicated than the three-shell trick. His hand never reached the ebony stick. Godwin picked him up and threw him contemptuously at the wall, which he hit so hard that his backbone was telescoped into itself and some twenty-nine of his other bones were fractured in more or less intricate ways.

Pepi woke up, saw the tip of El Sareuk's sword held steadily at the hollow of his throat, and closed his eyes as if he had been sand-bagged. "One move of those lips, witch-man," said the old Arab pleasantly, "one small spell begun, and you will be breathing through several more orifices than nature intended." Pepi lay as silent and motionless as a defunct stork, which he vaguely resembled.

Mufaddal was waving his scimitar in arcs before him, bellowing for his soldiers, calling on Allah to smite these heathen devils, and cursing the magic of Heraj that had turned a plain man into this ghastly demon-thing advancing on him. He had entirely forgotten that it had been his idea to change Godwin to an animal for vengeance's sake.

Ramizail lay on her back and drummed her heels on the floor and laughed with delight at the spectacle of her beloved—and despite his present shape, he was her beloved—wading in amongst the enemy in such headlong fashion. "Smear the big hellhound all over the wall, darling!"

"Ramizail," said the gorilla, maneuvering for advantage, "that is not ladylike. Get up off the floor and stop swearing." He then feinted with one paw, caught the scimitar by the flats with the steel fingers of his other, twitched it out of Mufaddal's horrified grasp, stepped up to him and gave him a splendid uppercut on the point of the jaw.

Mufaddal joined his sorcerers on the floor.

"Now then," said Godwin, rubbing his paws briskly together, "fetch me that necromancer, El Sareuk!"

Pepi, milk-faced and shaking, was led into the center of the room. Had he been Heraj, he could have mumbled a spell ventriloquially and relegated them all to the top of a pyramid. Luckily he was not Heraj.

Godwin regarded him for a moment. Pepi found that the direct gaze of an angry gorilla is not a thing to put heart in a man. He gave a tiny moan, almost a squeak. The gorilla expanded his chest, which measured seventy inches, and said, "You're Pepi, if I recall correctly?"

"Y-y-yes, O Magnificent One," said Pepi.

"Pepi, I want you to transport me to the plague ship. Instanter."

"Oh, I couldn't do that," said the bony wizard, turning if possible a little paler than before. "I can only do small things, such as—"

"Then I guess you may as well die too," said Godwin regretfully, and reached out a paw.

Pepi nearly collapsed. "Wait a m-m-m-m," he said. "I mean wait a s-s-s-s. Maybe there's a way."

"Think of it fast, scrawny one," said El Sareuk.

"I'm thinking," said Pepi hurriedly. "I'm thinking."

Godwin just then gave a cry of pleasure. He had spied his broadsword in its leather sheath, hanging on the wall above Mufaddal's inert form like a trophy, together with his Saracen helmet and kite-shaped shield and his curved Persian dagger. He bounded across and tore them down.

"A chap may be given the lineaments of a gorgon," he said, buckling the sword around his waist and clapping the helmet atop his round animal's head, "but he still seems naked without his weapons. By heaven, I feel better already! Now, Pepi, the method."

"Well, look, O Superb and Generous Prince," stammered the sorcerer, "I think I might work it with a carpet."

"I fail to see your point, sirrah."

"A flying carpet, O—"

"Never mind the O's. What's a flying carpet?"

"Not a very hard trick, really. You get on a carpet and say a certain incantation, and you're flying."

"How fast?"

"As fast as you will it."

"And you can do it? You can turn a carpet into a bird, as it were?"

"I think I can," said Pepi doubtfully. "No, no," he added hastily as Godwin flexed his biceps, "I'm sure I can."

"Do it, then. El Sareuk, put your blade across his neck. At the first out-of-the-ordinary thing that happens, except for the carpet's enchanting, deprive him of his head."

El Sareuk laid his scimitar to Pepi's throat with a warm smile.

Pepi looked at a rolled-up Persian carpet in a corner of the room, the only corner that did not seem to be jammed full of bodies. He muttered something under his breath. The carpet slowly unrolled.

"By the diamonded pillars of Hell!" gasped El Sareuk. "I believe he can do it!"

Pepi brightened up as his magic drifted the carpet across the floor toward them. "If you will sit on it, O Magnificence, it will carry you to the ship, be it so far as a hundred leagues to sea."

"How do I work it?" asked the gorilla suspiciously.

"Merely sit cross-legged upon it and think. It will speed or slow as you desire. It is attuned to the wishes of the rider."

"That's right," put in Ramizail. "I have ridden many a carpet, dear. Nothing to it."

Godwin tugged at his bare chin, where in happier times there had been a yellow beard. He dropped his shield on the blue and red surface of the carpet, which was now floating leisurely an inch off the floor. It seemed solid enough. "Listen, old wolf," he said. "See you take care of the girl till I come back."

"Have I not done so for nineteen years?" asked El Sareuk reproachfully.

"And send these lads out to fortify the house as well as possible. The barracks will be sure to find out sooner or later that something's amiss over here. I hope I'll be back in time to help you, when the brawl erupts; but the ship's the important thing just now."

"By Allah, it is! If we all die, 'twas in a worthy cause."

"We won't," said Ramizail complacently. "I feel it in my bones." She smiled at Godwin. "Good fortune, my dear."

"Thanks. I'd ask you to kiss me, but I've seen this face. By the way," said he to Pepi, at whose neck the blade of El Sareuk still pressed lightly but insistently, "can you give me back my own body?"

"Only Heraj could have done that," said Pepi wanly.

"Damnation. Oh, well," said the gorilla, and without more ado climbed onto the carpet and sat down. "Good-bye, all," he said. His short brow furrowed. Great fangs bared briefly in a grin of concentration. Nothing happened.

"Give it t-t-time," yipped Pepi, as the Arab's sword just nudged his throat.

The carpet gave a preliminary lurch, like a horse testing its muscles of an early morning, and then with a whoosh shot through the door and disappeared. From the other rooms that lay between them and the front of the house rose shouts of astonishment, as Godwin's forces observed him sail past them, clawing madly at the front edge of the rocketing carpet.

At that moment Mufaddal gave a low groan, unheard by anyone there; and Heraj the senior sorcerer opened his eyes and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.

CHAPTER XVII

Making a test flight on the blue and red carpet in the house was tantamount to bestraddling a horse for the first time and having to jump him over a series of rivers and log falls and then gallop along a precipice edge, thought Godwin. He wished he had carried or led the thing out of doors before he got aboard. He missed the first door jamb by a fraction, canted over dangerously to skirt a startled Bedouin, aimed for the second door and saw he was too far off the floor, ducked his head just in time to escape a crack from the lintel, had the almost overpowering urge to close his eyes and let himself be buttered all over the ceiling, missed another door by a nice margin, grinned proudly, and saw that the front door was shut fast.

"Open it!" he bawled, something of the timbre of the gorilla in his frantic voice. "Open it, you pygmy-brained nincompoop!"

The Crusader on guard at the door flung it wide. It was an involuntary reaction, not in any way due to Godwin's command; he merely meant to dash through it himself. But carpet and gorilla slanted sidewise and flew at him, he dropped prone with a screech that four hundred Saracen foes would never have drawn from his lips, and the apparition sailed over him at thirty miles an hour, the gorilla hanging on to the edge for dear life.

Outside, Godwin righted the carpet and sped across the docks and over the Mediterranean. Now he took thought. He had controlled the carpet, it seemed, more by the quick fears and desperate hopes of his mind, than by any conscious direction of its flight. He would have to calm down. He exercised his iron will to the utmost. The carpet gave a couple of jerks, like a fractious horse being brought under control of the reins, and settled down to a smooth straight course. He glanced over his great hairy shoulder. The land of Egypt was receding rapidly behind him. Below, the choppy waves were blue and green with white caps, and the ocean looked extremely deep.

"God and the Holy Sepulcher defend me!" gasped Godwin. He pushed down on the carpet with an experimental finger. It gave slightly, but appeared to be quite safe. He tried a banking turn and then another which brought him to his straightaway course again. Courage returned with a rush. He laughed deep in the enormous chest. "This is pleasant, by my halidom!" he shouted.

His shield had fallen off the carpet somewhere back in Mufaddal's house. His sword was safe, as was the Persian dagger in its thong about his neck, and his Saracen-style helmet. The sigil of Solomon was still hung round his bull throat.

He speeded up a trifle. The wind sang in his small flat ears. He shoved his broad ugly muzzle forward, drinking in the rushing air. Never had he known a sensation such as this. It made horses seem like snails. He increased his velocity again. There was evidently no limit to the acceleration possibilities. He nearly forgot his mission in the joy of this stimulating experience.

He made the carpet swoop toward the sea, confident in his new-found skill; it plunged like a diving eagle at the waves, which reached hungrily up for it. "Tantivy, tantivy!" roared the great ape deliriously. "Gone away! Lu wind 'em, boy!" At the last second he skidded the carpet level and shot along above the surface, just skimming the crests of the waves, laughing like a maniac. Then once more he rose into the heavens and slammed forward, small sharp eyes now searching the horizons for the dark blot of the plague ship, on its way to England with a cargo of hideous all-conquering death.

Shortly he sighted a sail. It might or might not be the vessel he sought. He headed the carpet for it. It grew swiftly, until he was circling over it at a height of perhaps two hundred feet. He slowed the carpet till its motion was scarcely perceptible, until it finally hovered motionless above the ship. Then he lay prone on his belly and peered over the edge.

In the windy upper air the carpet rocked just a trifle, as a cork rocks on a pond caressed by a summer breeze. Godwin cocked an ear. From the ship below came the horrid din of thousands of imprisoned rats, squealing and keening and skirling their ghastly song of destruction.

He had found the plague ship. He drew back and grinned. Now....

Canting off to a spot some distance to the port side, he dropped the carpet, until it nearly touched the choppy sea, then aimed it at the side of the ship. He reasoned that he would be less likely to be seen if he came in at the level of the waves, rather than from above. There might be some element of terror about his descent from the clouds, but these men would be used enough to Heraj's spells to take a flying carpet in stride. Surprise was what he needed on his side, and if he could climb over the side without being seen, he might be able to reconnoiter the deck for a moment before beginning his attack.

He was then about two hundred feet from the vessel.

Abruptly, without any warning, the carpet dropped out from under him; crumpled, became a very ordinary red and blue carpet instead of a magical winged steed, and hit the waves, where it floated for an instant until his body struck it in falling; when it collapsed and sank into the depths of the Mediterranean Sea.

Some distance below, a forty-foot white shark, called also a man-eater, peered eagerly up at the commotion.

CHAPTER XVIII

Heraj opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling.

He had the grandfather of all headaches. He attempted to recall the spell against headaches, but it eluded him. He tried several others, but none of them would come out right. Evidently the blow at the base of his skull had somewhat addled his memory. He closed his eyes and resignedly waited for the thumping ache to pass.

He heard shouts of fear in other rooms, and then after a minute or two Pepi's voice nearby said plaintively, "Don't you think you might remove that blade now?"

Pepi was Heraj's favorite brother. He seemed to be in trouble. Heraj made a valiant effort and rolled his head, ache and all, to one side, opening his eyes as he did so. He saw the soles of Mufaddal's cheap shoes, in the left one of which was a large hole with the dirty foot showing through; disgustedly he swiveled his gaze and saw Habu, than whom he had never seen anyone deader.

He lifted his gaze and saw El Sareuk standing beside Pepi, one arm about the sorcerer's shoulders holding him steady, the other presenting a scimitar to the poor fellow's throat.

Heraj worked through the spell of immobility in his mind. He felt he had this one right. He flung it at El Sareuk.

El Sareuk did not move a muscle.

Heraj, uncertain that he had accomplished his purpose, glanced about at the half dozen Crusaders and Bedouins who were in the room. He gave them each a repetition of the spell. He enchanted Ramizail, who was eating dates. Then he cautiously rose to his knees.

No one moved, not even Pepi.

"All right, boy," said Heraj, standing. "They're stuck."

"So am I," groaned Pepi.

His sound of sorrow was echoed by Mufaddal, who sat up and felt his jaw tenderly. "Allah smite everybody," said Mufaddal. "Everybody!"

"Move, Pepi," said Heraj encouragingly. "He's immobilized."

"So am I, you lunkhead. Can't you see his arm and sword encircle my neck?"

"Oh," said Heraj. "Hum. Well. Can't you force back one of his arms?"

"They're like stone. Ouch!" The edge of the scimitar had cut him a little. "I tell you I don't dare move!"

"Neither can I," said Heraj, holding his head. "My stars and thaumaturgy, what a knock I took! Which wall fell on me?"

"The gorilla fell on you," said Mufaddal spitefully, "and if you think I'll turn a finger to aid either of you two fumble-handed fat-brained cretins, you're badly mistaken. My jaw feels like a boil about to burst."

Heraj took a step and winced. "I can't do it, damn the pain, I can't move for a minute."

"I'm off balance," shrilled Pepi. "I can't stand here forever."

"Look," moaned Heraj, really wanting to help him but unable to bear the skull-cracking ache, "I'll take the spell off him for a tenth of a second. You get ready to push with all your might on that arm. It'll give you enough leeway. Ready?"

"I'm pushing," said Pepi.

"Here goes, then."

El Sareuk had heard all this as he stood motionless with his sword at the wizard's throat. He chuckled deep in his vitals, even though he could not move so much as an eyelash. A whole tenth of a second, eh?

Pepi was pushing with insane strength at the arm. Heraj took off the spell and immediately put it back on. There was a swish, a grating sound, and a dull squashing thunk.

Pepi, a bumbler to the last, had pushed on the wrong arm. Indeed, he had pressed so hard that El Sareuk in his new immobility now held it straight before him. But the scimitar had been gripped in the capable fist of the other arm. Pepi's head lay on the floor, an expression of astonishment on its homely and now blood-bedabbled features.

Heraj raised a howl of anguish. He did not know that at the instant Pepi died, the flying carpet with Godwin aboard it, no longer supported by Pepi's incantation, had fallen into the sea almost on top of the man-eating shark.

CHAPTER XIX

Godwin was a strong swimmer, and the body he now inhabited was as muscular as any in the world. After swallowing a pint of salt water and thrashing about for a moment below the surface, he struck out toward the plague ship. He was not sure what had happened, but he was afraid it boded ill for his beloved and his friends. Nonetheless, he was glad that the carpet had carried him at least this far. The destruction of the vessel was their major problem and he felt superbly confident that he could accomplish it.

The heavy iron broadsword weighed him down, dangling stiff and perpendicular from his waist; but he could not jettison it. It was just as well, though, he thought, swimming with vigorous strokes, that he had lost his shield before he left the land. Otherwise he would regretfully have had to abandon it to the deep. That old shield had been with him in many a tight spot.

The white shark kept pace with him, some twelve feet below, looking up at him and considering which portion of this strange hairy beast might prove most succulent for an appetizer. At last it decided upon a leg. It lifted and turned in the water, opening its terrible mouth with row behind row of huge razor-sharp teeth that could tear a man in two with one snap. Godwin fortunately had just thrust his head under the surface as he brought an arm over and down, and saw the quick flash of the white belly below him. Automatically he contracted his whole body, hauling his legs up and then propelling himself forward with a tremendous flailing of his long arms. The shark missed its snap.

Godwin glanced at the ship and saw it was too far off for him to gain its side before the huge fish had had several more tries at him. The wind had sprung up, too, and the vessel was making away from him at a good clip. Cursing, he turned in the water and shot down through its depths, searching for the man-eater.

A flicker of white showed off to his left; he twisted, waited, holding his breath and thanking heaven for the capacious lungs of the gorilla.

It came straight at him, revolving to bring its underslung mouth into play. He maneuvered a foot to one side, and hurled himself upon it, catching it by a pectoral fin. With every ounce of power the gorilla's body could command, he tore at the fin. It ripped from the shark's side, sluggishly, loosing a slow torrent of blood into the dark waters.

The man-eater writhed around toward him. He caught the jaws, upper and lower, with both hands, and wrenched them apart. Even the terrible potency of the shark's mouth could not withstand the strength of the gorilla and the whole-hearted will to win of Godwin of England. The hinges cracked and the lower jaw hung useless.

Godwin backed off, shoving himself through the encumbering waters, even his spacious lungs straining by now for air; but before he surfaced he meant to finish this brute. He hauled out the iron broadsword from its sheath, advanced once more toward the furiously thrashing white shark, and thrust half a dozen times. Then he swam upward, leaving behind him an ever-expanding blotch of blood and a quivering, twitching, forty-foot piece of dead meat.

The ship was far away. He sheathed the sword and set out to overhaul her where she sailed serenely, dark sail spread, with her cargo of obscene death.

"Even Godwin in his proper form could never have caught her," he thought to himself. "Heraj's baneful magic will win the day for England yet!"

Slowly he crept up on the ship. At last he reached out a paw and touched the slimy wooden hull. He gave a little quiet laugh. Now!

Dripping salt water, he hauled himself up the side. Cautiously his blunt head in its steel helmet poked over the bulwarks.

The vessel was fairly long for a lateen-rigger, with a low poop deck and a high rail, the great triangular sail, with a pair of quite small auxiliary sails, flapping merrily overhead, and the eternal quarrelsome noise of the rats pervading all the air within a quarter mile. The watch, four Mamelukes, were dicing on the poop. At the tiller lazed a tall black Nubian slave, his loins wrapped in a bright orange cloth. Godwin presumed a crew of about six more, who were probably below in a portion of the hold shut off from the rats' quarters. Mufaddal would want a good handful of men for a job like this. He envisaged them loosing the rats in the seaports of England, likely at night, and slipping away on the tide, leaving their gruesome messengers to spread the bubonic plague far and wide. The picture gave him added strength and determination; though God knew he had needed no more than already boiled in his veins!

As silently as he could make the cumbersome body move, he hoisted himself over the rail.

Then he stood erect, all six feet four of gray-black hideous-visaged brute, drew the broadsword from its scabbard, set his thews for quick action, and pounding his naked chest with his left paw, so that a hollow drumming boom-boom drowned for a moment even the racket of the rats, he opened his saber-fanged maw and gave vent to a terrible cataclysm of sound, an utterance wholly at variance with his usual war-cry, which seemed to come not from his human spirit, but from the body of the jungle beast—an ear-shattering, soul-searing mixture of highpitched barks, raging shrieks, deep-bellied howls and half-joyous, half-oddly-sad roars, roars which spoke of peaceful days beneath great sheltering trees now left forever for the crash and thunder of grim yet gratifying war.

Godwin of England had come aboard.

CHAPTER XX

The Mamelukes were stunned. To say this is an understatement. They were shaken, terrified, horror-struck, and a thousand more emotions—all bad—filled their hearts than they could ever have catalogued.

They were very brave men indeed, but they had never seen a gorilla, and certainly never a gorilla that appeared out of the sea to stand waving a Crusader's broadsword on their deck. As one man they stiffened, and gaped, and were lost. For Godwin, with a somewhat shortened repetition of his initial greeting, was bounding into their midst before they could budge.

One man died with the dice in his hand. Another lost his head before he could recover his wits. A third put hand to hilt and was cloven with a leer of terror still on his face. The fourth managed to get his scimitar cleared. Precious little good it did him. It came from the sheath only to clatter on the deck.

The Nubian slave at the tiller was a different proposition. He was as tall as Godwin, a thick-legged old warrior, with broken teeth and scarred face to attest his many battles. Leaving his post, and catching up a naked scimitar (that was easily six feet in length) as he passed the rail where it had lain propped, he ran at Godwin full tilt, yelling a battle slogan from his homeland far to the south.

Godwin thrust out his blade to parry the first vicious swinging cut. The swords clanged like hammer on anvil. The black was skillful. Godwin had all he could do to keep the singing steel from his chest. He tried a two-handed swipe, which the slave ducked blithely, and the scimitar came licking in to draw a thin scarlet line across the gorilla's belly. Half an inch further and Godwin's guts would have been spilt on the sun-hot boards.

Godwin's new reach, a stupendous one, was an advantage. In ferocity and broadsword skill he was unbeatable, but a long scimitar was a terribly formidable weapon in the hands of such a swordsman as his opposite number. He parried, parried and cursed the fact that this tall grinning half-naked black should keep him at bay so long. From the corner of an eye he saw more Saracens emerging from a hatch up forward. It was no time to stand and fight according to gentlemen's rules. He had a job to do, and this Nubian might very well cry halt to that job. Given equal weapons, Godwin would have dueled with him thus by the hour; but now he needed quick victory.

"Sorry about this," he grunted, in apology for the dirty trick he meant to play. He did not need to play it. The Nubian fell back, eyes and mouth starting wide.

"It spoke!" he cried out, and flung down his scimitar. "Oh, Allah, it spoke!" He turned and ran for the rail and dived over it like a man fleeing the wrath of Eblis. Godwin could not help laughing. Evidently, to this fellow's way of thinking, a gorilla that climbed out of the sea and fought with a broadsword was acceptable, but one that did these things and spoke in Arabic also was an intolerable wonder and a thing to boggle the mind. There was a loud splash. Another foeman was dispensed with.

There were half a dozen coming up the deck toward him: his estimate of the crew had been right. He saw two bowmen among them. Bad! He tucked his broadsword into its sheath and bent his knees and leaped for the yard of the lateen sail, caught it by both paws, hoisted himself like a gymnast up and over and knelt on the yard, balancing by a palm on the bellying sail. Carefully he got to his feet, which were prehensile enough to grip the round yard and give him a feeling of confidence in his balance. Commending his soul to his God, he ran straight down the yard until he had reached the mast. Behind him four arrows had thunked through the sail as the bowmen shot at the places they thought he might be.

He shinnied up the mast, which was on the opposite side of the sail, luckily, from the crew, and cautiously peered round it. Something out on the ocean caught his gaze, and he saw it was a small black dot, rapidly receding from the ship. The Nubian swordsman was still in a hurry.

The bowmen would be on his side of the sail in six jumps. The only solution to his plight burst into Godwin's brain like a crossbow bolt from the sky. He slid down the mast, came to a teeth-jolting stop as his feet hit the yard, took the mast between both powerful paws and shook it. It was stout, but thin compared with the masts used in other rigs. Fangs bared with effort, hind feet curled and braced round the yard, he exerted all the lusty power of the gorilla's arms, all the brawn of the strapping torso, all the pent-up energy that roiled and pulsed beneath the tough old hide. One mighty heave he gave, and another, and a third.

The mast complained, creaked like the nine-mile-high gate of Hell opening, and splintered in two as if struck by lightning.

Of all Godwin's feats of strength—and they were many—this was surely the greatest. As the mast crashed downward, carrying the ripping sail with it to the deck, he stood on the swaying yard and ostentatiously dusted his hands together. Suppose it had been done by the body of a jungle beast? Was he, Godwin, not inside it?

The broken mast struck with a crash that shook the ship and brought a chorus of piercing squeals from the imprisoned rats below. The yard swung violently and its end thudded to the deck, so that Godwin was knocked off balance and only saved himself by a quick kneeling and grab with both paws.

A large area of the main deck was covered by the collapsed dark sail, beneath which struggled a number of formless lumps that were the crew. Godwin picked himself up again and ran like a tightrope artist down the slanted yard to the poop, where he leaped off and turned at bay, teeth and claws and broadsword all bristling and ready.

The bumps in the sail moved about futilely, hunting an exit. The invisible rats made the air hideous with their unclean, abominable rantings.

The thing to do was go down and wade into those lumps with his sword. It may not have been precisely a fair attack, but Godwin was not absorbed with fairness at that time. He had taken two steps, the short ferocious steps of the gorilla, when an archer found the edge of the sail and rolled out from under it, an arrow nocked on his bow. He sighted Godwin at once and the bowstring tightened. Lying on his back, he took swift aim at the chest of the slavering horror on the poop deck.

There was no time to reach him, no barricade to dodge behind, and the distance was too long to fling his sword accurately. Godwin jerked his head round. A brazier of burning coals stood on a brass trivet at his side. Quicker than thought he had caught up the pot of them and in the same sidearm motion flung them down at the bowman. The man saw them coming, let fly his arrow and tried to roll out of range. Several coals took him in the face and neck. Seared and scorching flesh sent up an acrid, nauseous stench as the poor wretch screamed with agony. His arrow had gone wild by the slimmest of margins.

The other archer emerged from the opposite edge of the sail, shaking his head. He was bleeding from the nose and his eyesight had gone slightly awry. He leaned on the bulwarks and rubbed a fist into his eyes. He looked up and saw the gorilla coming at him over the crumpled, heaving sail.

He plucked an arrow from his belt and fitted it hastily to the string. He did not understand in the slightest how this awful creature had appeared aboard his ship, but it had fled once from his bow and so it might be slain by a mere mortal. He was a Seljuk Turk, this archer, proud and cruel and infinitely superstitious; he felt sure that Godwin was a spirit of some kind, yet he knew that spirits may be slain and all the odds seemed to be on his arrows.

The first one twanged out from his short sturdy bow.

Godwin saw it hurtle at his breast, and in his proper shape might only have watched it strike him, for he had no shield and only the smallest fraction of a second in which to take thought. But the gorilla's body was made of faster muscles, quicker reflexes, than ever a knight possessed. One arm flicked across his chest, and the arrow was caught in flight, three inches before it would have buried itself feather-deep in his thorax.

The Turk, a second arrow already on the string, froze. Before he could force action into his petrified hands, the gorilla was upon him. Great black paws took him by throat and groin, he was lifted over the brute's head, and the air whistled around him as the waves of the Mediterranean reached up to assuage their age-old hunger for living flesh.

Godwin watched him vanish into the sea. Weighted by his armor, he never came up. Godwin grinned.

Unnoticed behind him, the coals from the brazier had started a fire in the fallen sail, a fire which was rapidly spreading in a score of directions.

CHAPTER XXI

Godwin the gorilla bethought himself of the four men remaining under the sail. He turned about and saw the fire, which was now licking up fiercely.

"God defend the right!" he gasped. "Here's a rare hazard!"

Two men had succeeded in freeing themselves from the smothering confines of the sail. They came at him warily, side-stepping the flames, their curved Damascus blades at the ready.

"Beast or Satan," shouted one, "prepare to perish!"

"Ho ho," said Godwin throatily in Arabic, "you'll have to back that threat with action, little man!"

The fellow halted, turned a sickly green hue, and buckling at all his joints pitched over in a dead faint.

The other was affected in quite another fashion, and leaped toward Godwin, scimitar flashing.

Godwin yanked out his long sword and batted down the first attack. The Saracen was a swift and elusive fencer. His point darted through Godwin's guard and slashed a long wound down the biceps of his left arm, laying bare the dark flesh for a moment before red gore covered it and trickled out through the fur.

Godwin yelled and swung his weapon in an arc, knocking off the other's helmet and inflicting a nasty gash across his scalp.

The Saracen stabbed straight. Godwin twisted his body sidewise, and the keen blade cut through all but a thread or two of the belt that held his scabbard.

Before the enemy could recover from his lunge, Godwin brought his wounded left arm over and down in a hammer blow. The doubled paw caught the man exactly on the center of his skull, and he fell like an arrow-pierced hare, kicked a time or two, and lay still.

Two foemen remained beneath the sail. One of these had been knocked unconscious and now lay smothering to death. The other, crippled by the falling mast, was slowly dragging his broken body along in search of the open air when the fire burst into crimson bloom about him. He wailed like a tormented soul on a spit, broke his nails on the deck in a mad endeavor to crawl to safety, and at last struck his forehead on the coaming of a hatchway.

Forgetting the rats below, he threw all his waning vitality into a heave that sent the hatch cover up and flat on the deck. Then he pushed himself over the edge and fell, to escape the flames among the ravenous horde of great gray rodents.

In the frightful din of crackling flames, gibbering rats, and lapping sea, Godwin never heard him scream at all.

He stared narrowly around him now, scratching absent-mindedly for an annoying flea in the small of his back, and saw that no one moved on the deck of the plague ship. By good fortune, by the grace of God, and by his own skill and brute force, he had obliterated the crew. Even the men who had fainted had inhaled flame and died. Godwin stood alone on the deck, while beneath him sounded the perpetual vociferant clamor of the rats.

The flames spreading dangerously close to his bare flat feet, he skipped along the bulwarks and up to the poop, which was as yet untouched by fire. Here he watched it eat out across the deck, devouring sail and broken mast and at last portions of the deck itself.

The heat in the hold became unbearable for the rats then, and they began to fight savagely to get at the open hatchway, the sail above which had burnt away. Their bodies piled up beneath its square of smoky light, and the pile grew and grew....

Godwin in his gorilla body stared glumly at the flames. "What a way to die," he growled aloud. "What an end for Godwin, who was once king of all broad England! Look at the damned water; probably a million hogsheads of it within spitting distance. Look at the damned fire. Look at the two of them, and here am I, who can't begin to bring the one to the other until the ship sinks under me! What a finish!"

For the first time in his life he felt total despair. He had saved his home country, aye, but it was not likely that his deed would go down in song and story, for El Sareuk and Ramizail and the others were in all probability dying at this very moment under the swords of Mufaddal's three hundred scum. If only, he thought, one small ballad might be written about this geste!

He stiffened the gorilla's backbone and put such selfish wishes behind him. He had saved England, whether anyone ever heard of it or not. That was worth dying for! That was even, God save the mark, worth Ramizail's death or enslavement as a concubine! Much as he loved the wench, the population of England outweighed her in the end.

If there were but some chance at survival. If only there were a small cockleshell of a boat he could put off in, even the material for a makeshift raft. But there was nothing, nothing but the sea and the sky and the ship in flames, and the raging rats below him.

The sky! What now, if stout old Mihrjan the djinni were to come swooping down out of that clear hot sky!

But no, Godwin must needs relegate Mihrjan to other parts, must forbid him by the Seal to follow them, because of stubborn pride and petty resentment against Ramizail's harmless tricks!

His wound hurt him. He felt the gorilla's body yearning to tend it, to lick it clean and start the healing processes. For a moment he was disgusted at the idea, and then hopeless, for what did it matter if the wound began to heal, when he was doomed to a terrible death by fire or water? But the instincts of his body would not be denied.

With a long sigh, Godwin of England sat down on the rough planks of the poop and began to lick his torn biceps with a rasping tongue.

Simultaneously with his seating himself, the first rat clambered up the pile of torn corpses and launched itself out of the hatchway and onto the deck.

CHAPTER XXII

"Well," said Mufaddal, who was eating a hard-boiled egg in a sloppy manner, "did you get to the barracks?"

Heraj picked up a cold towel from the air near his knees and wrapped it around his head. "I did. Wow! I had to cast immobility spells on two more of these devilish Crusaders, who were stationed at the back door. But I made it to the barracks. The soldiers are even now deploying around the palace. Oosh! What an ache!"

"I don't see why you can't collect yourself and put the whole pack of them under a spell," said Mufaddal irritably.

"I've told you and told you, I have a headache, that's why I can't do it, curse you," said Heraj. "I have all I can do to keep the ones in this room and those two back there motionless. I have to keep concentrating and it hurts like seven devils in my brain. Then I've flung a force wall around this room, so no one can get in or out except myself, and that takes concentration. I tell you, I never went through anything like it. All I can recall are these two spells and the one for curdling milk. I could no more bewitch all these benighted villains than I could—could fly to the moon."

"Incidentally, did you find the gorilla? Godwin?"

"No I didn't, and I hope I never do. I don't want to come within range of those ham-sized fists again, not even with a legion of fiends at my back."

"Is he still a gorilla, if he's alive, I mean? Or did he switch back when you swooned away?"

"No, he's a gorilla. That's a different sort of spell from force walls and immobility. But to hell with Godwin. I want to nurse this lump. And you're confusing me, too. My spells are wobbling. I just saw El Sareuk there move a good half inch. If you want those swine kept alive for torture and other pleasantries, I've got to concentrate. Oh, my newts and bat-wings! I shall die!" He went over and collapsed in a corner, where he stared moodily at the corpses of his two brothers and mumbled to himself.

Mufaddal peered out the window. It was too small to negotiate, but wide enough to command a partial view of the back grounds. He saw a dozen of his men go dashing from the shelter of one outbuilding to that of another.

"In a minute or two," he said confidently, "in a very few minutes, by Allah, these renegades and infidels will see what a real besieging is like!"

And at the thought, he stroked his greasy beard and crinkled up his soft brown eyes, and giggled like a maniac.

CHAPTER XXIII

Godwin looked up from his wound-cleansing. He had had a glimpse of a gray shape scuttling across a field of crimson flame. He stared, and saw a score of large rats eyeing him from the lower deck. He bounded to his feet, thick gorilla toes and fingers curling with a fear that no amount of bravery could still. The plague! The ravishing, filthy, obscene plague! Even from a flaming ship in the midst of a waste of waters, there might be some escape at the last moment: but from the bite of one of these rats would come a foul death that nothing could turn aside, not even the djinn themselves!

He canvassed the poop. No high pedestals on which a man (or a great ape) might perch, no protective armor of any description to foil the attack of the rats. Here he stood, alone, armed with a broadsword and a dagger, a helmet and a golden sigil. There was but a single chance. He might squat on the bulwarks at the very stern, for they were high and would give him the advantage of being a little above his squealing enemies. He leaped and balanced and squatted, and his naked iron broadsword hung down between his bent knees as he awaited their first move.

This was not long in coming. The poop was the only part of the ship which was not being ravaged by fire. The rats headed for its temporary safety. As they poured over it, a repulsive and horrible crew, snapping and snarling at one another, their fangs yellow as amber slivers, their hides mangy and often showing the first signs of plague, the leaders spied Godwin roosting unhappily on the rail. They halted, considered, twitched their whiskers, and then made for him. He was meat.

The first rank charged in and were slain eight at a blow, by the sweeping sword. The second rank fared likewise. The rats drew back and stared beadily at him. He could fairly hear their odious, menacing thoughts. He waited. A gigantic rodent, half its fur gone in some hideous battle below decks, came flying at him. The perfect reflexes of the gorilla flicked the sword out and spitted the beast through the guts. It hung on the sword, squirming and piping weakly, as Godwin whipped the blade back and forth and clove the small skulls of a dozen more.

A myriad of the grisly horde came tumbling up to the poop deck. Godwin was now mangling and mutilating constantly, as more rats poured upon him. Some of the devils were already feasting on their defunct cousins.

And so, for minutes that dragged like weeks, Godwin of England fought off the rats, and waited without hope for the inevitable end, when even his mighty muscles should grow weary and his eye become slow, and at last they should reach him.

A close-packed group of them attacked him from the right, and some of them even leaped upon the rail and came at him. He flailed his sword frantically into the brown of them, sending them slithering along the deck, knocking them into the sea, or spoiling them where they stood by messy divisions and squashings. Then a legion came from the left, and he leaped up to his feet and balanced precariously on the bulwarks as he bent and swiped back and forth.

The closest any of them had come yet was in this moment, when three great bullies of rats, all fat and evil and ugly, leaped upon his swaying leathern scabbard and clung there. They might have crept up it and bitten him before he could slay them, except for the fortunate stab of the late Saracen fencer, which had all but severed his sword belt. The last few strands parted now, and the sheath fell to the deck, carrying rats and belt with it.

Something rolled out of the sheath and made a small metallic sound as it struck the overturned brazier. Godwin risked a glance at it. It gleamed dull yellow in the sunlight.

"By the rood, mass, book and candle!" yelled Godwin, startling the rats so that they drew back in haste, "the ring of Solomon! So that's where I put it! In the bloody scabbard! Of course, I remember. Someplace where 'twould be always near my hand!"

Nothing, not ten thousand times as many rats, could have kept him from that ring. He leaped from the rail, half-squatting to bring his sword hand near the deck, and the blade was a flaming scythe in his grip. It mowed down rats by dozens, by scores, by hundreds as they came crowding at him. They leaped, and the point shot up and down more swiftly than the eye could command, and they had died in mid-jump. They crouched in at him, and the tops of their heads were torn off or jellied by the sweeping broadsword. Then they drew back, for a rat is intelligent, and even their hunger was not enough to force them out against that invincible weapon without some thought on the matter.

In the few seconds' respite Godwin leaped, scooped up the ring, dived back to his seat on the rail. The rats came forward once more. With his left hand he locked the ring to the sigil on its chain about his neck, and in a voice of joyous thunder he shouted, "Mihrjan! I cry up Mihrjan!"

Spang in the midst of the rats, shod with sandals of blue-white fire so that the gruesome beings scrambled back from his vicinity, appeared the ten-foot form of Mihrjan the djinni, turbanned with ivory silk, pantalooned with lustrous purple velvet, and exuding an aroma of attar of roses.

He salaamed deeply.

"The Lord of My Life," said Mihrjan sonorously, as the rats retreated down the poop deck, "would seem to have need of my humble services. I am his to command!"

CHAPTER XXIV

Godwin the gorilla sighed. He had never uttered a more fervent and thankful sound in all his life. "Mihrjan," he said, "I must say, yes, by gad, I will say, I'm glad to see you."

Mihrjan cast a look about him. "Thy sentiments are understated, Lord. It is a trait of thy race."

"Yes, well, never mind that. Look here, can you get rid of these damned slimy things? My arm's weary with swatting 'em."

The djinni gestured; a wind arose and swept along the poop, and the rats were tumbled down onto the main deck, where they commenced to brawl among themselves again, on the edge of the fire.

"And see here, while I think of it, there's a black fellow swimming out there somewhere. Can you see if he's still at it, or has he sunk?"

Mihrjan vanished and returned before the air could rush into the vacuum his passing had created. "He swims, Master, but weakly."

"Well, he's a good chap, albeit misguided into serving under that lousy Mufaddal beggar. He's one of the best swordsmen I ever faced. Can you transport him home to Nubia?"

Mihrjan grinned. "It is done."

"Good. I felt rotten about him. Poor devil jumped overboard because I spoke to him. Which brings up this: can you make me myself again? That is to say, take this ape's body back where Heraj got it, and give me my own?"

Mihrjan scowled. His mind seemed to be wandering among far countries. At last he said, brightening, "I see how 'twas done. I can undo it."

"Then by all means—" Godwin found that the paw with which he was gesticulating had become a strong brown hand, a bit grubby, perhaps, but still his own natural hand. He stared down. His robe and armor were in tatters. They had evidently seen some life and hard times in the jungle. The body appeared to be whole, however, and tingled pleasantly as Godwin's personality took it over once more.

Mihrjan said, "Suitable raiment is in order," and Godwin was wearing white samite and sky-blue silk over gold-washed armor of meshed steel. His broadsword hung in a new scabbard, bedecked with gauze, and his beard and hair were freshly cut and combed. His skin felt clean, and seemed to have been bathed within the hour.

"What a talent you have there, Mihrjan, old fellow," he said admiringly. "May heaven beshrew me if I ever part with you again."

"'Tis wise to allow me to stay within call." The djinni frowned. "And my mistress, O King? She is safe?"

"I hope so, but I left her quite a while back. Had to sink this ship, you know. It was going to England with a cargo of plague. Oh, you know that, you were there when we found Sir Malcolm. We'd better get back to Mufaddal's palace at once, Mihrjan. Just one more request: will you sink this pest ship for me?"

"It already sinks of its own accord, My Lord." And indeed, the deck was slanting beneath their feet. Down at the bow the rats were huddled, quarreling and fighting among themselves and making their revolting chorus rise up to foul the heavens.

"Good. Then let's go."

Mihrjan placed a hand under his elbow, and suddenly they were five hundred feet above the Mediterranean, looking down at the ship which Mufaddal had fondly hoped would be the death of the British nation. Even up here Godwin fancied he could hear the final squeals and horrible wailing shrieks of the cargo of great gray rats. Then Mihrjan headed landward, and the plague ship disappeared behind.

CHAPTER XXV

They stood together in Mufaddal's private chamber. The spell of immobility had been transferred to the dark-faced Mufaddal and his chief sorcerer, while Ramizail and El Sareuk with their allies the Bedouins and captured Crusaders were free to move where they chose. They clustered now about the ten-foot djinni.

"What of my eight men at the prison and barracks?" asked Godwin.

Mihrjan said, "Slain, O King, cut down by surprise without a chance to defend themselves."

"Damn. And my falcon, Yellow-eyes?"

"She perches on a roof-top in the heart of Alexandria, watching anxiously for a sight of thee."

"Bring her here, please."

The old bird, looking rather wind-blown and surprised, appeared on Godwin's mailed shoulder. She thrust her notched beak into his ear affectionately, and he said with fervor, "Ah, thou!"

"And now, O Master of My Being, shall I vanquish the foemen without the house by a whirlwind from the plains of Hell, or lightning from the clouds? Shall I bubble their eyes from their heads with gouts of searing flame?" asked the djinni fiercely.

"No, man, no! We'll beat 'em in fair fight. Only keep this Heraj's magic cancelled out, send him and Mufaddal out there now, and give me a hundred more allies."

"That will still be two to one against thee," said Mihrjan, as the pair of plotters vanished.

"Naturally. More fun. And don't bring me a hundred of the djinn, either, but a hundred desert fighters or good tough Frankish champions. And see my other lads are weaponed properly."

"They await your orders in the forepart of the house," said Mihrjan resignedly.

"Then I'm off. El Sareuk, ready? Mihrjan, keep that fire-eating woman of mine out of the thick of things, will you? Come on, boys, up and at 'em!" He charged out toward the front door.

Mihrjan said to Ramizail, understanding her nature as well as she did herself, "Wouldst watch the battle, little one?"

"Oh, yes, Mihrjan, yes!"

"Then come." He gathered her in his monstrous, tender arms, and flying upward, caused their atoms to pass between those of the clay and timber, so that in a wink they were high above the earth, and hovered there comfortably, peering down on the tiny figures of Mufaddal's soldiers deploying around the house. Two standing by themselves and pointing this way and that with shouts unintelligible at this height, were the black-visaged Mufaddal himself, and his one-time potent sorcerer Heraj.

From the door issued a running warrior, who at once engaged six men in dazzling swordplay; behind him came others, many others, until a hundred and fifty-five men had emerged. Hand-to-hand combats were joined all over the grounds. Ramizail cried out with delight.

It was like observing two bands of toy soldiers endowed with the power to move and fight and maneuver. Both the girl and the djinni were enthralled. Godwin's force fanned out, coalesced, drove through Mufaddal's ranks and turned and came back and drove again, till the enemy broke and fled in hapless confusion. The Crusaders and Bedouins pursued them, hacking them down from behind, forcing them to stand and die in little knots. Two who fled toward the dock, casting away their weapons, Mihrjan pointed out as Mufaddal and Heraj. After them bounded a great figure in white, sky-blue, and gold, flourishing a long sword above its head. "Godwin!" said Ramizail, biting her nails with excitement. "Oh, Mihrjan, go lower! I want to see!"

The djinni sank until their feet were no more than ten yards from the wharf. There they drifted along above the pursued pair.

Mufaddal panted out, "Only chance! Under the dock!"

Heraj gasped, "We might stand and fight him," with no conviction in his voice at all.

"Ha," said Mufaddal, and with one desperate leap plunged off the wharf into the sea. Heraj was one step behind him. Godwin came to the edge and halted, baffled. Their heads did not show above the water.

"Mihrjan," whispered Ramizail, "they'll escape!"

"Observe," said the djinni equably. He gestured with a finger, and a section of the dock became transparent to her gaze. Beneath it, Heraj and his master were clambering up, dripping, onto a shelf of boards some twelve feet from the outer edge of the wharf. Godwin still scratched his head in bafflement. Obviously he could not see through the pier as she could.

The two conspirators crouched there, watching the sea apprehensively. "Now look," said Mihrjan. Ramizail, staring intent, saw a gray snout poke up into view behind them, followed by a multitude more. "Rats!" she breathed.

"Aye, rats. All those who live beneath the wharf, mistress, called here by the scent of their dinner."

It was as though the lead rat had given a signal. In a trice the legions of furred ghastly beings had poured over the two squatting men.

Screams of pain and horror came up through the boards of the upper dock. Heraj straightened as though to stand, cracked his head on the wharf, and sank down, half-conscious, into the midst of the swarming rodents. He gurgled and flung his arms in the air as their small sharp unclean teeth found his throat, his belly, his eyes.

Mufaddal flung himself into the water. His gallabiyah snagged on a projection, and held him fast, thrashing and squalling, only his head above water. For a wonder, the cheap cloth did not give way. The rats leaped down onto his head, slipping into the water, swimming back to tear at his face, perching on his bare head and clawing insanely at his scalp. And so, held helpless by the clutch of chance, Mufaddal died as hideous a death as anyone might have wished him.

El Sareuk came up to Godwin. "What were those fearful sounds just now, companion?" he asked, wiping the sweat of honest battle from his lean bearded face.

"Mufaddal and Heraj, I take it, though how and where they died I can't tell."

Mihrjan settled to earth with Ramizail in his arms. "Lords," he boomed, setting the girl on her feet, "they perished in a niche beneath the wharf, as they should have perished, shut from the light of day, with the teeth of their own evil minions fastened in their gullets. Now is the stain they put upon Islam cleansed with a vengeance."

"By gad," said Godwin, as Yellow-eyes fluttered down to perch on his shoulder, "then it's finished, and as neat a case of poetic justice as ever came my way." He looked about him. Mihrjan had on his own initiative sent the Bedouins and Crusaders back to their own places. Only corpses met his eye. "To horse, friends!" he bellowed gleefully. "This battle's done, and there are a power and lashing of wrongs left in the world to be righted!"

"Oh, heavens," groaned Ramizail. "Don't you even want to rest a week or two, swashbuckler?"

"Rest is for the dead and the aged, witch-wench."

El Sareuk nodded fiercely. "The work for willing swords is never done, lass."

Ramizail rolled up her beautiful eyes and shrugged, a slight smile of resignation on her full lips. Mihrjan pointed out their horses, saddled and champing at a little distance. "O Lord of My Life, I know a wrong in Egypt that needs four, or it might be eight, strong hands," said he.

"We are in Egypt, by coincidence," said Ramizail.

"This Egypt lies three thousand years in the past," said Mihrjan.

"Can you transport us back?" asked Godwin eagerly.

"Assuredly, Sire."

"Well then, let's go!" he roared. He put an arm over the shoulder of El Sareuk and another about the slim waist of Ramizail, and ran them toward the horses. And Mihrjan's great laugh of fierce pleasure boomed thunderously through the desert air....

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Table of Contents

- The Enchanted Crusade

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