The Assassin

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By the beard of the Prophet! I'll have their asses for taking so damn long!

Mamud ibn Said, slaver, had run out of patience with his Mamelukes, the hand-picked slave soldiers of the Faoud Pasha. They had ridden far on this raid into Circassia, and up until now everything had gone smoothly.

But at the moment a scruffy little handful of Circassian warriors, positioned in a nest of large, smooth granite boulders, had them pinned down. A simple little raid for slaves had developed into a full-scale fight.

Why?

Mamud intended to find out.

Only his eyes showed from the carefully-placed fold of his turban, set so it protected his mouth and nostrils from the dust stirred up by his horsemen. They were dark brown, almost black eyes, and they flickered now with the fire of his impatience, a sure sign there was going to be hell to pay for his Mamelukes.

He kicked his horse in the flanks and rode to where he could get a better view of what was going on. True, some delay was to be expected when one wanted captives, not kills. But this was taking entirely too long. His men outnumbered the men in the rocks five-to-one. And they were better armed. Better trained. The rocks should have been overrun and the captives hooked up into the slave coffle and on the trail for the markets at Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris over an hour ago.

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