The three surviving footmen sheathed their blades, seized Rankin, now firmly enmeshed in the silken net, shouldered him, and followed their chief.
"Well," reflected Rankin, as he resigned himself to captivity, "if I'm hacked to pieces at all, it probably won't be in a side street.... I wonder if Ismeddin foresaw this?
"And this only the 11th of Nisan ... two more like this, and I'll be in good training for that black swordsman in the vault....
"They expected me—just staring at that girl had nothing to do with it," Rankin assured himself by way of minimizing the folly of having stared too intently into the eyes of the veiled woman who had that afternoon appraised him from the height of her glittering litter.
But Rankin knew that there was a direct connection between the sanguinary combat of a few moments ago, and the exchange of glances between him and the veiled girl whose gorgeously adorned litter had followed the red-bearded dignitary through the souk. There was but one conclusion: the girl had called the redbeard's attention to Rankin.
Well, and so be it then! For those were the eyes of Azizah who so often had accompanied Suleiman Baalshem in that haunting, recurring dream that for twenty years had driven Rankin the length and breadth of Asia, and across all the lands of Islam. He was attaining his goal, even if only to meet the thirsty blades whereof Ismeddin had spoken.
The chief of his assailants, then, must be the Shareef, Sayyid Yussuf, the girl's uncle and guardian. In which case, all the better: at least Rankin was not in the hands of the devil-worshipers who had been filtering out of Kurdistan to celebrate their dreadful sabbat in that ravine two days' ride from Tekrit ... and thus and thus Rankin speculated ... with never a passer-by to intrude on the unreality of it all.
The chief at last drew up before a massive, iron-studded gate that was firmly hinged to the heavy masonry jamb and wall. He thumped the brazen lock-plate with the pommel of his scimitar. The door opened without a challenge from the porter within. The redbeard dismounted and signaled his men-at-arms to release Rankin from his silken web.
At the end of a long, narrow passage, they turned into a courtyard where fountains sprayed mistily in the moonlight. Rankin's captors released their grip on his arms; and one of them presented Rankin's scimitar, hilt foremost.