The Religion Read Free Page B

as he stabbed the dagger through teeth and tongue and bones, and through and through the fluttering hands that the man flung up for protection.
    Mattias paused and heaved for he'd forgotten to breathe. He looked at the other three devils, and found them watching him agape. A wordless cry escaped Mattias's throat, for he was now more beast than they, and he cast the yowling blind man to the mud. The three backed away on the far side of the horse and one came to his senses and unslung a bow from his back. He fumbled an arrow from his sash and it dropped to the ground. Mattias turned away and looked at his mother and his madness was expunged. He knelt and took her hand and pressed her work-worn fingers to his cheek. The fingers were yet warm with life and Hope knifed his heart. He looked up: but her wild blue eyes stared sightless, and the knife twisted, and he choked into the hand held to his face. The thud of hooves pounded in his ears but he was beyond all the things of this world. From this world, the touch of his mother's hand was all he needed.
    His head jerked up to a crash as loud as thunder. The brute nocking the arrow to his bow spun into the ground, his skull dashed apart and gray slop spilling down his shoulders as he fell. The two remaining rapists dropped to their knees amid a drift of blue smoke and they babbled like the crazed as they crammed their foreheads to the dirt.
    Mattias turned and saw a sight such as never he'd seen.
    A man, though he seemed a god, sat astride a gray Arabian stallion, the twin-plumed breath from the bores of its nose giving both the look of phantoms in a tale. The rider was young and proud and dark of complexion, with high, fine cheekbones and a beard like the blade of a spear. He wore a scarlet caftan lined and trimmed in sable and baggy scarlet breeches and yellow boots, and his snow-white turban was garnished with a spray of diamonds that flashed when he moved. At his waist was a curved sword whose hilt and scabbard were alive with precious stones. In his hand smoked a long-barreled pistol, its fittings chased with silver. His eyes were brown and fixed on Mattias's own, and in them was something that looked like admiration, and something more-though it could not be so-that felt to Mattias like Love.
    The brown gaze did not waver and Mattias did not blink. And in thismoment the soul of the man and the soul of the boy reached out and were entwined, for no good reason that either might explain and with a power that neither dared question, for it came from God.
    In time Mattias would learn that this warrior was a captain of the Sari Bayrak, most ancient and valorous guardians of the Sultan's arms, and that his name was Abbas bin Murad. For now he was simply a man. A man whose heart contained no trace of malice.
    Behind the captain sat two more scarlet riders. In the street beyond, villagers fought fires and rushed back and forth in dismay, dragging furniture from hovels and ferrying children and old folk from the flames. Riding through this tumult like paladins among sheep, a dozen more scarlet horsemen wielded lances and whips as they harried the chastened foot soldiers from their pillage. Abbas sheathed his pistol in a saddle-mounted sleeve. He looked at the woman draped violate and nude across the horse. He looked again at Mattias and he spoke. His tongue was not the same as that of the devils and though Mattias didn't know the words, he knew what he asked.
    "
This is your mother?
"
    Mattias swallowed and nodded.
    Abbas saw the dagger in his hand, and his shirt plastered to his body with spilled blood. Abbas pursed his lips and shook his head. He glanced beyond Mattias and Mattias turned: the first man he'd stabbed lay unmoving. The second crawled half naked in the dirt, blind and faceless and mewling in self-pity through rended lips. Abbas made a motion with his hand. One of his lieutenants rode forward and drew his sword and Mattias stared in wonder at the flawless damascene blade.