Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [81]
MUSTAPHA: “They're Fatimids—claim descent from the Prophet, may Allah bless His name, through His daughter Fatima—”
Mustapha deliberately drops back a little.
MUSTAPHA: “They hate the monkish Almoravids who now rule Spain.”
MUSTAPHA (grins): “Any enemy of theirs is a friend of the Fatimids!”
Elric is already growing weaker. He's almost asleep in Mustapha's saddle. Mustapha is now riding beside Isaak:
MUSTAPHA: “He's blank. As if he left his soul in that sword he lost.”
Isaak has crested the hill a little ahead—he's impressed at what he sees below.
ISAAK: “Great Moses! Who would have guessed it? An Arab army on the march!”
They are riding over the sand-dunes down on to the rack—the stoney semi-desert, dotted with the odd scrubby bush on which goats graze. There are herds of goats and sheep attached to the tent city of a semi-nomadic Berber clan. Standards fly here and there, designating the various families of the clan. The tents are elaborate and magnificent, as old as many houses. They are woven of the heavy black wool and decorated with vivid designs—many of them representational, for the Berbers have adopted their own form of Islam which is dissimilar to the Arab.
Around the tent city a low earthworks has been raised, mostly to keep in the herds, but also for defense.
It appears that Mustapha has been a little over-confident about their automatic friendship, however—
The Sharif—a glowering hawk-nosed patriarch who looks as if he could personally hold the Khyber Pass—signs for the box to be placed at his feet—and shows a more than fatherly interest in the veiled Rebecca.
SHARIF: “Kill the leper and the old man and bring the girl to my tent.”
MUSTAPHA: “But we are friends …”
The chest is now open and the Sharif looks at it disdainfully.
SHARIF: “Friends bring better presents than a few books nobody can read!”
MUSTAPHA: “It is written that you shall not draw the blood of guests!”
SHARIF: “True …”
Last panel has Elric and Co. staked out in the sand—but from the Sharif's tent where the Sharif and Rebecca are shown in silhouette, the Sharif is backing off from Rebecca whose veil has dropped to one side and he's screaming with terror and outrage.
SHARIF (in silhouette): “Eeh! Eeh! Take it away! Take it away!”
Dawn…
The Taureq attack. These magnificent blue-veiled Caucasians, with glaring blue and green eyes, blue skin (from the dye in their costumes) and tattooed foreheads and cheeks, with spears and bows thudding everywhere in the Berber camp, charge down on the tents, their magnificent pure-blood horses hardly seeming to touch the ground.
They are led by a gigantic black man. He looks a bit like Jimi Hendrix (and very like Sam Oakenhurst from Moonbeams and Roses) but you can't tell what his whole face is because it, too, is loosely veiled—the veil threatening to rip off as he leads his warriors in a savage and canny attack—descending on the camp on four sides. This is Lo-bin-Gha, the Desert Wind, the most feared Taureq chief of all time, whose own story is a strange one. He is from the far south of the continent.
LO-BIN-GHA: “Faster, my children! For God—and victory!”
Isaak looks up from where Rebecca is staked beside him, swathed in a heavy winter djelaba, as if to keep her entirely from sight. Elric looks somewhat further gone.
ISAAK: “Are we saved?”
It was Lo-bin-Gha—the Desert Wind—
Now the Taureq are mopping up, killing the wounded, the old and the sick. Seeing to the herds, sorting boys and girls, men and women, to sell as slaves. The Sharifs tent has been trampled. He lies in the ruins looking as if he died horribly—but rigor mortis has set in fast, it seems. Mustapha, too, is dead with à lance through his head.
The magnificent leader of the Taureq rides up to the three staked people and issues an order to his men—
ISAAK (tries to speak civilly to him): “Good morning, sire. Now at least we can resume our conversation—”
Lo-bin-Gha doesn't even look at him.
LO-BIN-GHA: “Kill the leper and the old man and put the girl with the others.”
PART