The town was afire, darting tongued sheets of flame and jets of sparks at the placid moon. Soldiers were everywhere, shouting, smashing, pouring through the alleys over the bodies of the defenders. As Ortho descended the stairs a party of Sudanese broke into the courtyard; one of them took a wild shot at him.
“_Makhzeni!_” he shouted and they stood back.
A giant negro petty officer with huge loops of silver wire in his ears held a torch aloft. Blood from a scalp wound smeared his face with a crimson glaze. At his belt dangled four fowls and a severed head.
“Hey—the Kaid Ingliz,” he said and tapped the head. “The rebel Basha; I slew him myself at the breach. The Sari should reward me handsomely. El Hamdoulillah!” He smiled like a child expectant of sweetmeats. “What have you there, Kaid?”
The negro spat. “Bah! they are as ugly as their own goats, but”—he grinned, knowing Ortho’s weakness—“she may fetch the price of a black horse—eh, Kaid?”
Two days later the force struck camp, leaving the town behind them a shell of blackened ruins, bearing on lances before them the heads of thirty prominent citizens as a sign that Cæsar is not lightly denied his tribute.
They streamed northeast through the defiles, a tattered rabble, a swarm of locusts, eating up the land as they went. The wounded were jostled along in rough litters, at the mercy of camp barbers and renegade quacks; the majority died on the way and were thankful to die. The infantry straggled for miles (half rode donkeys) and drove before them cattle, sheep, goats and a few women prisoners. What with stopping to requisition and pillage they progressed at an average of twelve miles a day. Only among the negroes and the cavalry was there any semblance of march discipline, and then only because the general kept them close about him as protection against his other troops.
Beside Ortho rode the Arab girl, her feet strapped under the mule’s belly. Twice she tried to escape—once by a blind bolt into the foothills, once by a surer, sharper road. She had wriggled across the tent and pulled a knife out of its sheath with her teeth. Osman had caught her just as she was on the point of rolling on it. Ortho had to tie her up at night and watch her all day long. Never had he encountered such implacable resolve. She was determined to foil him one way or the other at no matter what cost to herself. He had always had his own way with women and this failure irritated him. He would stick it as long as she, he swore—and longer.