She sprang up and at the same moment flung her haik back. Ortho started, amazed. The girl before him was no more than eighteen, dark-skinned, slender, exquisitely formed. Her thick raven hair was bound with an orange scarf; across her forehead was a band of gold coins and from her ears hung coral earrings. She wore two necklaces, one of fretted gold with fish-shaped pieces dangling from it, and a string of black beads such as are made of pounded musk and amber. Her wrists and ankles were loaded with heavy silver bangles. Intricate henna designs were traced halfway up her slim hands and feet, and from wrist to shoulder patterns had been scored with a razor and left to heal. Her face was finely chiseled, the nose narrow and curved, the mouth arrogant, the brows straight and stormy, and under them her great black eyes smoldered with dangerous fires.
Ortho sucked in his breath. This burning, lance-straight, scornful beauty came out of no hill village. An Arab this, daughter of whirlwind horsemen, darling of some desert sheik, spoil of the Tamgrout caravans.
Well, she was his spoil now. The night’s work would pay after all. All else aside, there was at least a hundred ducats of jewelry on her. He would strip it now before the others came and demanded a share.
“Come here,” he said, dropping his sword.
The girl slouched slowly towards him, pouting, chin tilted, hands clasped behind her, insolently obedient; stopped within two feet of him and stabbed for his heart with all her might.
Had she struck less quickly and with more stealth she might have got home. Penhale’s major asset was that, with him, thought and action were one. He saw an instantaneous flicker of steel and instantaneously swerved. The knife pierced the sleeve of his kaftan below the left shoulder. He grabbed the girl by the wrist and wrenched it back till she dropped the knife, and as he did this, with her free hand she very nearly had his own knife out of his sash and into him—very nearly. But that the handle caught in a fold he would have been done. He secured both her wrists and held her at arm’s length. She ground her little sharp teeth at him, quivered with rage, blazed murder with her eyes.
“Soldier,” said Ortho to the dead man behind him, “now I know why you look astonished. Neither you nor I expected to meet death in so pretty a guise.”