The guard roared his pain and his surprise. His fat body went backward, off balance. He fell heavily, directly in the arched doorway of the goldsmith shop.
The starving man went after him. The sight of that scimitar hanging in its belt chains had put a frenzy in his blood. His hand came down about its braided hilt. With an oath on his parched lips, he tugged it free. The blue steel came out into the sunlight and went yellow as the sunbeams caught it.
“Now, you Tripolitan pig, get on your feet!”
The guard lay back on both elbows and shouted. “Sa’ad! Jibran! To me! Out here in front of the shop!”
The crowd in the street paused to stare. There was a stirring among them. This naked wildman with a bared blade in his hand was a sight that struck to their hearts. A voice or two called for someone to break the neck of this crazed infidel.
The blue blade moved, and the voices fell still.
Stephen Fletcher felt the pride stir in him, driving out the anger and the madness. Not in a year and a half had he felt like this, with a weapon in his hand and his enemies ringing him in. That long ago, the U. S. frigate Philadelphia had run aground on the rocks east of Tripoli. He had been wearing the uniform of a marine lieutenant on that October day.
The Philadelphia had hit the rocks while chasing a Tripolitan corsair. Fletcher could still feel the grating crunch underfoot. Remembering what had happened then made the sweat come out on his face. They had worked hard to free it, with Captain William Bainbridge shouting orders, with the creak of davit ropes lowering a stern boat interrupting his voice, with sailors overhead loosing the topgallant sails. They were caught fast, and the Barbary pirates knew it. They came flocking in their little feluccas and barquentines, pounding the big frigate while American axes chipped away at the foremast. The foremast fell, taking the main topgallant mast with it. Guns were thrown overboard to lighten the ship forward.
As if sensing the helplessness of the big frigate, the Tripolitan gunboats swarmed in with their sakers blasting. They shot away the masts, but spared the hull. This was a prize that the corsairs would not duplicate soon again. Besides, by sparing the hull, they spared the lives of the crew, and healthy Americans would bring good prices in the slave market.
Stephen Fletcher grinned mirthlessly, remembering those hectic moments when the pirates had come aboard, fighting and wrestling with the Americans. There had been steel bared, and fists flashed here and there, as proud men sought to go down fighting. In all that wild tumult one face stood out: a hawk face, as brown as old leather, twisted into a mask of berserk rage and hate, with a small black beard below sullen, full lips and a straight, thin nose. A topknot hung like a horsetail from that shaven head, making the face seem even more sinister. Dark eyes, lighted with inner fires, bright with triumph, fastened on him and on the other marines who fought at his side. Fletcher knew the man for a reis, a sea captain, as he came swinging down on a rope hastily flung above a yardarm, his curving scimitar in a brown fist.
Fletcher had gone to meet his steel with his own service sword. Their blades had clanged twice in thrust and parry before the corsairs had swept into them and whirled them apart. But even now, all these months later, he could still see that face, in a contorted spasm of hate, and the overbright eyes glittering with triumph.
The fight had been a short one. To save his men, Captain William Bainbridge surrendered his sword to the dark man with the feverish eyes. Mustafa reis, his own men called him, with something of fright in their voices.
Most of the prisoners were to be taken before the pasha. They would be housed in the castle dungeons and held for ransom or for a prisoner exchange. There were some chosen for a different fate. Mustafa reis did the choosing. He went striding across the deck planks of the big frigate, his eyes touching the faces of the sullen prisoners. Some he pointed at, and as he pointed, corsairs came and hurried these men away.
When Mustafa reis came to Stephen Fletcher, he barked something in the coast dialect and let his eyes rest on the big marine. Fletcher saw death for him in those eyes and in the hard brown contours of that face. Whatever it was the corsair captain had barked to the half-naked men at his back, the American knew it would not be a pleasant thing. Within two hours he was at the slave market. Next morning he had been sold to Ali ben Sidi, the stone merchant. For a year and a half, he had been working in the quarries, breathing stone dust and eating rotten garbage that cost his master nothing.
Now he had a chance to fight his enemies like a man. There was no broken deck under his feet, no officer roaring a command at him to lay down his arms.
He moved the curving blue blade again, and his laughter was hard and cold.
“Take it away from me! Take it—if you can!”
The crowd fell back a little, and now Fletcher saw that men were coming from the goldsmith’s doorway, guards who wore the same royal green colors of the man who lay at his feet, still shouting.
A big man followed the guards out into the street. He wore a gold brocade barracan trimmed in black fur, and pointed slippers of red Cordovan leather. There was arrogance in the tilt of his chin, and in the glowing eyes that stared at the naked infidel. The brown hairs of his tiny beard quivered as he felt the defiant mockery of the American slave.
Yussuf Caramanli was the pasha of Tripoli. His thin, lightly sneering lips and bright eyes betrayed the pride that had fed on a century of power here in this coastal city. In 1714 his ancestor Mamet had come into power by murdering the Turkish soldiers who served Ahmed III. The Caramanlis had held tight to their power, using murder and treachery as their allies. When Hamet, Yussuf’s brother, had come to power some years before, it was Yussuf who deposed him and assumed the throne.
Now all Europe paid him tribute. Even Napoleon Bonaparte, at whose frown the Continent shook in fear, sent him gold. London gold and Italian silver, Greek jewels and German monies, all came flowing into his great, brassbound coffers. The world acknowledged the sea might of Yussuf Caramanli and paid him gold and silver and jewels for his personal enrichment, to keep his slim corsair ships from their coastal waters and his gundeck cannon from their heavily laden merchant ships.
All the world paid tribute, except for a young nation on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. A nation of revolutionists, who had won their freedom from England only a quarter of a century ago. One of those Americans stood here before him now, with a naked sword in his hand.
Yussuf Caramanli smiled thinly. His dark hand twisted on the gold braid of the daggerhilt whose scabbard he wore, like all Moslems, in the brocaded silk sash at his middle. He spoke quickly to the man crumpled at his feet.
“What happened, Kefas? Why do you grovel like a dog before this nasrany?”
“He assaulted me, highness. Knocked me down and stole my steel!”
The starving man had never seen Yussuf Caramanli. He said boldly, “I was reaching for that melon. He kicked me and put his foot on it.”
The pasha grimaced in disgust. By the black stone! These unbelievers had no pride at all! He said harshly, “Get up, Kefas! Sa’ad, give him your blade. I want this man cut in little pieces. Slowly, Kefas!”
The heavyset guard grinned and took the blade his fellow handed him. On feet that were astonishingly light for a man of his bulk, he moved toward the infidel. The starving man did not wait for him. His scimitar went high and came curving down in a molinello for the head that altered swiftly into a slanting cut at the ribs. Only for the fact that the attacking man’s bare foot slipped on the pulp of the ruined melon, Kefas the Fat would have lost half his side. As it was, he got his own blade up just in time. The keen edge of the scimitar scratched his arm into red wetness, then fell away.
Steel clashed as those blued blades fell and lifted. The naked man slid and crouched, and the madness in him gave his starved muscles strength. He used the molinelli in prime and tierce until the steel seemed to blur. The bright eyes of Yussuf Caramanli followed every play of that scimitar with understanding and a little envy.
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