The Saracen: The Holy War by Robert Shea (novels for beginners .TXT) 📕

him. He hung there, the Mask of Clay sobbing and whimpering.

Erculio scuttled over to stand under him, holding a thick stick as long as a man's arm. Daoud's feet were just level with Erculio's head. Leaning on the stick, Erculio looked up at Daoud, appraising his body, and a pink tongue tip flickered under the bristling mustache.

"You have a beautiful body, Messere. Well-proportioned, with powerful muscles. You are un bello pezzo di carne, a fine piece of meat." Erculio walked around behind him and stopped there for a moment, where Daoud could not see him.

"Scars from old wounds, too, I see," the little man said.

Perhaps in this light the scar left by the Tartar's arrow looks old.

Erculio stood before him again. "You look able to endure much, so you will last longer. You may think when a guest comes down here I just pick the first instrument that comes to mind. Not so. I follow a strict order. You will get to know every instrument here, if you live long enough. This will be very educational for you."

"I have been telling you the truth," Daoud moaned. "Will you not believe me?"

"Bugiardo! Liar!" Erculio struck him hard on the shin with the stick. Pain blazed through his leg. Daoud could have remained silent, but he shrieked loudly, knowing that fear, as much as pain, would make the man he was pretending to be cry out.

Turning to the others, Erculio said, "What will you wager against these handsome clothes of his that I get this pezzo di carne to speak the words our honorable podesta wants to hear? A bet makes this game more interesting. What say you, any takers?"

"The man is quivering like a frumenty now," said one guard. "He would have been talking long ago if he had anything to say."

"You think so?" Erculio snapped his fingers. "Good. Bet with me, then."

The guard fumbled in a purse at his belt and drew out a glittering coin. "There you are. A gold florin, not ten years old and barely worn. I won it dicing last night."

Erculio examined the coin. "Twenty years old, and the lilies are a bit wilted. But it's heavy enough, I suppose. Done! Now, Messer Pezzo-di-Carne—I call you that because I do not know your real name—you had better tell us what we want to know, or I will really make you suffer." He dropped the coin on top of Daoud's clothing.

Erculio brought the stick against Daoud's shin, in the spot he had[83] struck a moment ago. The pain shot through Daoud. But Soma turned the pain to a tingling, and Daoud visualized it as a glow that spread from toe to hip. He screamed, as he knew he should, but behind the Face of Steel he felt at peace.

Erculio let out a laugh that sounded more like the clucking of a chicken. "You see, we do not need elaborate instruments. We can inflict unbearable pain with the simplest means—like this!" And he swung the stick to hit precisely the same spot on Daoud's shin he had struck twice before.

Daoud bellowed and felt the tingling and saw the glow in his leg, and the Soma, the drug created by his spirit, preserved his sanity.

How small Erculio looked, crouched down on the stone floor. So man must look to God. God was so infinitely far above man, the miracle was that God was mindful of man at all. But God was inside of man—inside of each human being—as well as above him.

It is blasphemy to liken myself to God.

He called to mind the Koran's admonition, There is none like unto Him.

His mind occupied with God, he barely noticed the activities of the spiderlike creature that crawled about on the floor below him as he hung like a trapped fly. Erculio worked on his legs for a long time, bruising the shins with his heavy stick until Daoud thought both legs must be broken. Then the torturer pressed a red-hot poker against the soles of his feet.

Erculio had the guards let Daoud down and force him to walk on his burned feet to the rack table, where they chained him facedown and stretched him till the ligaments that held his bones together were ready to snap.

The Mask of Clay screamed and pleaded for mercy and insisted he had already told them everything. But the pain lay as far from his consciousness as the sea lies from the desert tent of a Bedouin.

Erculio applied more instruments to Daoud's body, inflicting many kinds of pain—burning, stabbing, bruising, crushing. He kept Daoud awake, and Daoud knew that hours must have gone by, perhaps the whole night.

Daoud's outcries grew hoarser and weaker, and at last Erculio's efforts brought forth nothing from him but soft groans and whimpers.

Daoud saw the clerk, Vincenzo, rise yawning and leave as another clerk, also shaven-headed, but with a short brown beard, came in to replace him. He saw the two guards in yellow and blue sit down on the floor, their backs to the wall, and doze off. He saw after a time the second clerk lower his head on his folded arms. He[84] saw all this while Erculio pranced about him, hurting him and hurting him.

Erculio looked around at the others in the chamber. He left off pushing a needle into Daoud's ankle and rushed over to the guards and shouted at them to wake up. He poked them with his stick. They cursed him and kicked at him and went back to sleep. He scurried to the sleeping clerk.

"You are supposed to be writing down everything the prisoner says. Come now, wake up! Indolento! The podesta will hear of this, I promise you."

The clerk mumbled something without raising his head from his arms. Erculio nodded with satisfaction and hurried across the chamber to Daoud. He stood by Daoud's head.

"As-salaam aleikem, Daoud ibn Abdallah," the torturer whispered.

For a moment Daoud could not believe he had really heard it. The drug that he had brewed in his mind had taken control of his ears. Or else this was their way of tricking him into talking freely.

But if they knew my Muslim name and that I speak Arabic, they would not waste time accusing me of being a Ghibellino.

"Wa aleikem salaam," he replied. The uprush of joy he felt at finding a friend here in this terrible cellar momentarily shattered the Face of Steel. What madness this was, that the friend should be the source of all his torment? He bit back hysterical laughter.

"Like you, I serve El Malik Dahir," Erculio said in Arabic. Hearing that title, Daoud thought it even less likely that the little man was trying to trick him.

"I have been watching you since Lucera, My Lord," Erculio went on. "You have done well, even if it has been God's will that you should not succeed. You have been clever. But you should have taken the tawidh off before you surrendered. Do you think there are no Christians who can recognize Arabic numerals?"

Now Daoud was sure the little man was an ally of some sort.

In Arabic he said, "Does the scar on the back of my leg look fresh?"

"It has healed so completely that no one would believe you got it a few months ago. They know nothing of our Islamic medicine. You bear another wound, though, that would have much to say to the observant—your circumcision. That was why I had them put a loincloth on you and lay you facedown on this rack."

"Lucky for me you were here," Daoud said.

"Not luck," said Erculio. "El Malik deemed it wise that, should[85] you be made a prisoner, one of his men ought to be among your captors."

Even here, Baibars's hand reaches out to me, thought Daoud, feeling a rush of gratitude.

"Help me to escape," said Daoud. "The guards and the clerk are asleep."

Erculio brought his small hand downward in a gesture of flat rejection. "There are a hundred men-at-arms on duty up above. The podesta himself will be down here in an hour. Why can you not make up a story that will satisfy him? Say you are a Ghibellino. That is what he believes, and since it is not true, it will not help him. In a thousand years he would never guess the truth."

"No. The only way I can protect those close to me is to admit nothing."

Erculio shook his head, and his black eyes were liquid with sadness. "What a pity. Your case is hopeless, then. Ever since I saw you in Lucera I have felt sorry for you. How can El Malik expect one man to change the course of nations? You are like a man trying to hold apart two ships about to collide." He sighed. "I have done all I can for you. I have hurt you as much as I can without doing you permanent injury—so far. There is only one other service I can perform for you."

"What is that?" said Daoud, though he felt sure he already knew the answer.

"You would not want to reveal under torture that you are an agent of the Sultan of El Kahira, and provoke the very crusade you were sent here to prevent. You would not want to give your friends away. If you break, I will see to it that you die before you might speak."

"I will not break," said Daoud. "And when it is all over, and d'Ucello has killed me, he will at last come to believe that I was telling the truth. Because he believes that no one can hold out against torture to the very end. But promise me one thing."

"Insh'Allah, anything."

"If you must cripple me, see that I do not leave this dungeon alive."

Understanding and respect glowed in the black eyes peering at Daoud over the edge of the rack. "As you wish, My Lord."

He knew he should be grateful that he had this man here to guarantee him a decent death. But a great sadness came over him at the thought that his life must end miserably in this dungeon. He had always hoped that he would meet his fate amid the glory of jihad, holy war.

Well, this is jihad of a kind.[86]

The respite was over. Erculio fell upon Daoud with renewed vigor, driving needles under his toenails and fingernails and beating him with a whip of knotted rawhide cords that tore open his back. Daoud felt the blood running down his sides and pooling underneath him. The little man took a red-hot poker and pressed it, hissing, against the scar made by the Tartar's arrow and Lorenzo's knife. That, Daoud realized, would make it impossible to tell what sort of wound it had been.

The pain seemed to be happening to someone miles away as Daoud converted it to ripples of light passing through his body. He understood that Erculio was applying tortures whose effects could be seen. The podesta would be satisfied that Erculio had done his work well.

Daoud did his part too. The rest had restored his strength, and now Daoud screamed so loudly he woke the guards and the clerk. Erculio set the guards to work replacing the burned-down candles in the sconces around the dungeon. When Daoud turned his throbbing head to look at the candles, he saw hazy rings around them and rays radiating from them. Sweat stung his eyes.

The thick wooden door of the cellar swung inward, and d'Ucello entered. He walked over to where Daoud lay on the rack, and stood staring at him with his peculiar, glazed expression. D'Ucello's face was more sour than usual, and his eyelids were puffed. He looked just awakened from a sleep that had given him little refreshment. His mouth twitched under the thin mustache.

Daoud noticed that in one hand d'Ucello held a small silver flask with a narrow neck and a glass stopper. D'Ucello clenched his hand around it tightly, as if he feared to drop it.

"What has he said?" he demanded, turning to Erculio.

"Just much screaming, Signore." Erculio looked across the room at the bearded clerk, who nodded vigorously.

"You have not hurt him enough, then, Erculio," said the podesta. "He should be offering us something by now. To withstand torture for so long almost smacks of sorcery."

"Perhaps he really has nothing to tell," Erculio ventured.

"Nonsense!" D'Ucello glared at the dwarf. "Even an innocent man would make the torture stop, if he had to lie to do it. And this man is not innocent."

By that one remark Erculio risks much for me, thought Daoud, praying the little man would not again endanger himself.

"Attenzione," said d'Ucello, coming close to Daoud's head and holding the flask so Daoud could see it. He withdrew the stopper,[87] a long icicle of glass. He held the flask low over the rack table and tilted it momentarily. A