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Spearmen crowded the door in front of Mohammed and he fell back, staying out of reach of the metal tongues. He tried rushing the man on the right side, but the others covered too quickly. Mohammed snarled at the men. "Uri, finish him and get back to the next room!"
Behind the Quryash merchant, Uri and the Hashim were struggling on the floor, each trying to gain position. Sweat spattered off the Hashim into Uri's eyes. The Hashim's knife hand ground lower, the blade reaching for Uri's face. The ben-Sarid wrenched to the side, escaping the bite of the knife, which scraped on the floor next to his head. Mohammed backpedaled past the two men, jumping over their legs, and- in passing- slashed down with his saber. The curved tip cut into the side of the man's head and blood fountained. The Hashim screamed and tried to roll away. Uri cracked the man's knife hand against the floor, sending the knife skittering away, and drove his own blade sideways into the man's chest.
The Hashim at the door howled in rage and pushed through, filling the room. Uri scrambled past Mohammed, who threw the next door closed. The Hashim were at it in grains, axe blows raining against the decorative ash panel. It began splintering immediately. Mohammed looked around for something with which to reinforce the door.
His daughter's handmaidens had a beautiful sleeping and sewing room, but it was woefully lacking in large heavy objects to block doors with. Uri looked back at him and shrugged his shoulders.
"Back to the next room," Mohammed wheezed. The battle was wearing on him; he was not so young anymore. "Has Sayyqi cut a hole to the roof yet?"
Jalal jogged up the street, twenty or thirty Tanukh and Quryash at his back. Around him Makkah was burning as the pent-up hatreds of thirty years of quiet conflict erupted into open battle. Great mansions on the hill above and below him burned, their windows gaping wide with rushing flame. Clouds mounted to the dark heavens above, lit from below with ruddy light. As the Tanukh had ascended the hill, they passed scattered fighting and many bodies left to lie in the streets. Now they neared the residence of the Lady Roxane, and Jalal slowed. He turned a corner and stopped, raising a hand in warning. Behind him the other Tanukh came to a halt. Some of their number passed the word, even to the clansmen who had joined them in their exodus from the Quryash quarter in the city below.
The ba
Jalal signaled behind him for Shadin. The other man hurried up, a great long sword in his hands.
"There are Hashim at the gate," Jalal whispered into Shadin's ear. " Send the archers forward. Everyone else in two columns- we will go far left and far right, ru
Shadin nodded sharply and moved back down the line of men, whispering commands. At the corner, Jalal drew out his bow and strung it, keeping one eye on the Hashim. Very faintly he could hear the sounds of men shouting in the house. Perhaps there was still some resistance. No matter, he thought, if there is no one left alive, then the captain's funeral pyre will be lit by a mound of foreskins. Jalal gri
More shouting came from within the great house, and the men at the gate turned to look inside. Jalal chopped his hand down and jerked it forward. The bowmen fa
The night suddenly filled with the flashing passage of arrows, and the first man at the gate was gasping in pain, clutching at the sharp sensation in his back, then his neck, before anyone had even turned at the sound of the ru
Jalal swung his bow over his shoulder and drew his saber. "On!" he growled at the other bowmen. "This will be sword work now."
Mohammed spun sideways, his saber catching the downstroke of a Hashim blade. The shock rang up his arm like a hammer on an anvil. He ignored it. The blood fire was burning in his veins, and the whole world had shrunk down to a gray tu
Very faintly, through the enormous sound of blood hammering in his ears, he could hear someone shouting at him from behind. But the Hashim came on again, more men pushing through the doorway to get at him. The floor was slick with blood, and the delicate cushions and silk draperies of his daughter's bedroom were torn and scattered. He had picked up a dagger for his left hand somewhere and when the Hashim came at him again, he blocked one blade into the floor with it, then circle-parried to the right, tangling a man's weapon. The man fell back, freeing his weapon, but Mohammed jumped into the break in the line, taking two blades on his own, and slashed the dagger across the throat of the first Hashim warrior. Blood blinded the other man, and Mohammed gutted him without thinking.
The gray tu
The shouting came again, and this time it registered. His daughter was screaming at him from the hole in the roof, begging him to follow them out. He beat aside the weakening attack of a Hashim spearman, chopped the spear haft in twain, and sank his saber into the man's armpit. Wrenching it out, he leapt backward and swung up onto the great pile of furniture that led to the rudely hewn exit in the roof. Above him he could see Roxane's face and her arm reaching down at him.
A chair toppled away under him, and he grasped at the edge of the opening. Roxane grabbed onto his shoulder, her long nails digging into the torn shirt. Her face contorted as she strained to pull him up. Mohammed's feet scrambled for purchase, and he caught the edge of the other chair, boosting himself up. Roxane managed to catch his belt and heaved, pulling him halfway into the opening. For a moment he was blinded, his head caught in her gown.