About the time that Godwin and his friends were fording the Rosetta Branch of the Nile, Heraj the sorcerer interrupted his leader again.
"He riddled out the levitating oasis, Mufaddal, and he slew the winged lion. I thought you'd like to know what sort of man is coming after us."
"If you had done your job at all well—" Mufaddal paused to thrust a piece of millet bread into his maw, and his half-brother interrupted him.
"You know my limitations. Allah curse it, what man ever stood up to the winged lion before today?" He took a piece of paper out of Mufaddal's chin, or seemed to, at any rate, and read a few words that were scribbled thereon. "Well, the dog is crossing the Rosetta now. I have a horrible feeling he can't be stopped." Heraj sprinkled salt on the scrap of paper and ate it meditatively. "Pepi wants to try the rolling sands stunt. I suppose we may as well. But this Godwin ... by the schedim, what an opponent! Djinn or no djinn, I like him not!" He left, and Mufaddal, having lost his appetite, went off to inspect the plague ship for the hundredth time that week.
It was his own idea. He was as proud of it as of his skill at torturing captured Crusaders, a score of whom languished now in his dungeon awaiting his displeasure. The ship lay at the wharf, a black swift vessel with dark lateen sails slanting high above her deck. A company of Seljuk Turks and other Saracen allies stood about the dock, on guard lest some ill-advised person attempt to board her. More were stationed on the ship, and from beneath their feet in the sealed hold came the frightful squeakings and squealings and multitudinous rustlings of thousands upon thousands of great gray rats, imprisoned there to fight and breed and die and wait their chance at sunlight again—sunlight that Mufaddal devoutly hoped they would view on the shore of England.
He massaged his hands together. What a picture it was! All these beauties, scampering over England, biting people, infecting masses of men and women, gnawing on children's feet, carrying the plague hither and yon until the whole island lay gasping out its fading breath, nine-tenths of its population covered with the applesized tumors and hideous purple spots of bubonic. Then let them see who sent out Crusaders! It would be Saracen hordes overrunning Britain, rather than red-faced Englishmen defiling the Holy Land!
Some six hundred and forty-eight years before, the plague had lashed through Constantinople, and slain ten thousand souls in a day's space. Say, conservatively, then, that ten thousand per day would die in England. How many days would it take....
He went aboard, the better to hear the gibberings of his ghastly phalanxes. The boards were hot under his bare feet. The grisly ravening of the packed throngs of rats rose all about him, and in an ecstasy of delight he knelt to lift a hatch cover, yearning to gaze on them once more.
"Lord!" A voice burst out behind him. "O Lord, do not open the hatch! Think what thou doest!"