Where Angels Fear

Moonlight across the dunes.

Gentle, ululating expanses of sand. 

This is the scrub desert surrounding El Thebsi and there is a soft breeze in the air and the muffled sound of hooves in this sand.

A lone horseman accompanied by a lithe desert Saluki gallops towards the vast red fortress on the horizon. He is smiling in the moonlight beneath his shawl, and the dog is frisking with joy since this is their home and they have been away for months and they long to be back home.

The horse is most eager too, because of its exhaustion - it has travelled uncounted miles

The horseman shouts.

The fortress does not reply.

The dog begins to curve around and whimper, dashing erratically back and forth in anxiety. The horseman, Carlos Romero DeLa Nostra y Carreras - he wheels his horse around the dog and urges it on, suddenly uneasy at the atmosphere that exudes from his home. 

"What has happened? Where is everyone?" Carreras choked into his face covering, his joy changed in the flicker of an eyelid, into blind panic.

The ancient and heavy gates of the Ochre fortress lie open and from beyond comes the ugly ominous silence of abandonment, tragedy and loss. 

Carreras leaves Saklawi outside tethered loosely to a crumbling post and races after his whimpering dog, his horror giving him wings. The guard posts are empty, no single soul has come fourth to meet him and the heart within him begins to thud in unspeakable horror. 

"Ibn Jibbal, where are you? Sebira! Who hears me reply, it is your master returned '' his voice cracked in panic and then he remembered it was best to be silent in case some unspeakable danger waited within to ambush him too. Although he knew that without his family he may as well be dead. His death would matter nought if his worst fears were to be true- that the Ochre fortress had been invaded and plundered and all were ruined and killed including Sebira and the very animals of the place, their bones whitened during the threescore days of his absence… 

His boots crunched loudly as he stumbled across the courtyards, diving in and out of kitchens and stables and stores. His breath came in ragged, disbelieving gasps and his mouth was parched with dread.

But Carreras did not trip over the desiccated bodies of his loved ones nor did the stink of death meet him so he decided that no matter what miseries they had suffered they had to be alive: possibly kidnapped, and spirited away, perhaps already sold to slavery. 

And if there was no one to tell him who it was, how it happened then he must find the grisly clues himself if that was the last thing he did.

Careras stopped at a well and peered down it.

He threw down a bucket and hoisted this up and was about to drink deep of the cool water, when something, a foul and nightmarish animal, loathsome and hairy jumped on him from behind and knocked the bucket from his grasp. Kesab the sand hound instead of jumping to his masters defense merely wagged his tail rather limply and the hideous animal proceeded to scream shrilly and hysterically into the Spaniard's ears, 

Carreras with considerable difficulty peeled the hairy nightmare off the back of his head and examined it in the moonlight.

"It is as I thought. You little monster. It is Mushkila, Ibn Jibbal's pet monkey! Where is your master, you mangy creature from the pits of purgatory...? Take me to him at once! You hear?" 

It seemed Muskila was agreeable. He crashed off into the shadows screaming and gibbering and Carreras rushed after him, the hound Kesab bringing up the rear, tripping and skidding. They stumbled across disarrayed furnishings and disordered draperies and as Careras ran he was worrying more and more if that was possible. The monkey was leading him down into Ibn Jibbals dungeons. 

He hoped his friend was alive.

Someone had to tell him who had been responsible for this pillage and kidnapping or massacre if it was one.