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In the moment of the Berber's amazement, Raphael was up behind him. He took Hasiim's sword arm
in both of his and struck it against the alley wall.
Hasiim cursed his mare's infidelity. He cursed enchantments. He dropped the sword.
Raphael took it in both hands and was off Outside the alleyway and in the wider street beyond, the
desert horses stood locked in a pleasant dream. Neither spur nor quirt led to more than a fly switch of
the tail. The horses who had fallen now climbed to their feet and stood together, completely blocking the
entryway.
The townspeople of Granada remained where the onslaught of the fursan had driven them, watching
from windows or huddled in black doorways, and what emotions this humiliation of the Berber cavalry
raised in their several Muslim or Christian breasts were theirs to cherish.
Raphael passed the sword from one hand to the other, until suddenly its weight settled in his grip and
he knew what to do with it.
THERE WERE FOUR OF US: MICHAEL, GABRIEL, URIEL,
AND MYSELF. WE DROVE HIM OUT----HIM AND ALL HE HAD
DELUDED TO STAND WITH HIM.
Raphael darted back to Djoura, and their two swords faced the light.
"What was that?" hissed the woman. "What happened to his horse?"
Raphael opened his mouth, but hardly knew what to say. "'A& deed is redeemed: a deed done years
ago, in the high mountains of the north. It is my friend who has helped us he of whom I told you. The
pebble."
"The pebble?" Djoura's startled eyes shifted from the danger ahead to the strange fellow beside her.
"Off your horses!" Hasiim spoke in the hill Arabic of Morocco. (Down the darkened alley Djoura
heard him and cursed in the same tongue.) "Off your horses and after me!"
A more slender shape appeared among the equine silhouettes blocking the corner. One man
squeezed through. Another.
With no other coign but a bolted doorway from which to fight and over a dozen swordsmen slipping
toward them, the fair man and the black woman turned together and fled down the alley.
It was dank: the cobbles both slippery and odorous. Djoura ran with a focused, arrowlike urgency,
like a person who knows refuge is just ahead. Raphael followed her in similar fashion, not because he
believed there was such a refuge (no, he knew it was only Djoura's unquenchable confidence which led
them) but because he did not want to lose her. The woman's dusty black skirts were hiked, and her
scimitar bobbed in her hand. This weapon scattered once more the mothers, children, and men without
employment who frequented the alley. Again shrieks and bellows.
The fugitives passed the small man's horse, the runaway, as it was being led by eager dirty hands
through a doorway of clay daub toward some illicit fate. The sound of foot pursuit echoed behind them,
giving wings to their own steps.
Then they were out in the morning sun again: first Djoura, whose clothes drank the brilliance and gave
nothing back, but whose head flashed with coins, then Raphael, wound no, tangled in shawls over his
striped household trousers, his fair hair flying like a horses mane.
Their eyes watered in the light and before them rose a wall: the north wall of the city of Granada.
It was impossibly high, and here and there the poor had built mud-wasp huts of clay against it,
narrowing the street to a mere donkey track. Djoura turned to the left and as she bolted forward she
shrieked, "The gate! We must find the gate!"
Raphael's breath rasped in his throat. He felt his nose bleeding again. He pressed behind Djoura
through a blockade of dirty children, while a dog with pointed ears and a curling tail barked sharply at the
confusion.
Was that a gate ahead, round arched and trimmed with tile? It was: the north gate of the city, as high
as a house, and the wall around it was ornamented with lapis cut into the words of the Koran. Djoura
sprang toward it and stopped, for in its shadow were framed five swordsmen, with the Qa'id Hasiim in
the front.
Raphael crashed into Djoura from behind. He put one arm around her shoulder and glanced about
them.
On their right the city" wall, far too high to climb. On their left, a potter's shed. The street was littered
with clay pots and with broken fragments of clay.
What had this wild flight gained them, besides burned lungs and a head full of panic? No matter.
Djoura was not about to flee again. She backed against the white wall, where a buttress stood out a few
feet. There she was as obvious as a fly on sugar, but there was no longer hope of hiding. Shouts from left
and right told her she was surrounded by her enemy.
But then was there anyone on earth who was not Djoura's enemy? Not the people of her home,
anymore, nor the Spanish giaour who stared at her now from buzzing clumps in the street. Only
Pinkie Raphael with his weak skin and strange eyes as blue as a blind man's, who stood by her now,
back to back, with his scimitar fluttering in his hands lightly as a bird. She pressed against him.
Hasiim's men erupted into the sun and when they spied their quarry at bay they gave out a noise like
hounds. They came with the fury and undiscipline of men who are not used to fighting on foot.
And they slid to a confused halt, for there was no flaw or opening in the defense of the blond
European who stood with back against the chiseled wall. And the black woman beside him, with her
weapon held up rigidly like a headsman's sword& All knew she was mad, and in league with spirits
besides, but who knew what strange arts she possessed to do harm?
Hasiim then came forward, for he was a pure Muslim and without superstition, and he had a wealth of
injured pride to avenge. He glanced from Raphael (with only professional interest) to the black Berber.
He was armed once more.
Raphael shifted his balance so that he faced Hasiim and stood slightly to the front of Djoura. He
caught the warrior's eyes with his own and held them. Djoura, seeing that her Pinkie knew more of this
business than she did, took one step back. Then Hasiim struck: a feint toward the black woman which
ended as a stroke at Raphael's wrists.
He met steel, and the blond flexed his blade in a tiny circle. To Hasiim's immense surprise he felt his
weapon loosen in his grasp. The scimitar hit the earth. Hasiim flung himself back.
To take a breath. To consider. To demand another scimitar from his milling followers.
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