Page 47 - Microsoft Word - FANG EMPIRE - NOVEL.docx

fiddled with GoGo’s saber tooth necklace around his neck. “The hardest part about being a spy is

eating where you shit!”

“The campaign was long but successful, Ramoth. That is all the Sultan concerns himself

with. And you . . . you are the Hero of Rabat. Tomorrow bureaucrats from Fez and Casablanca

will arrive to begin the deconstruction of Timbuktu. You will be a very rich man.”

“But tonight,” Ramoth said, as he looked at the chained naked women, “I wish to be a very

perverted man. Come Judar! Let us rape these bitches until they lie stinking in the dirt!”

“The night is yours. Have your fill,” said Judar.

“What about you? You are a pasha! The conquering general! Let’s cock-whip these

undeserving whores! To the pirates goes the booty!”

“How I would like to partake in the spoils of war. But I cannot,” Judar said.

“Why?” asked Ramoth.

“I am a eunuch.”

Ramoth was silent.

“I was captured by Mandinka slave traders as a child and castrated.”

“Then let us castrate a few hundred Mandinka babies until you are avenged!”

“You should have been a Hun, Ramoth,” Judar said. “Drink and fuck tonight. At the

moment it is all we control.”

“But we control the city! We control the region!” Ramoth said. “The future is ours!”

“The present is ours. But the future belongs to no man . . . and may yet bend us over like

whores in the night.”
#

The full moon conducted a symphony of stars . . . a requiem.

After three days on the hunt, Zuba, Cane and Raki crouched on the hill overlooking the

River Niger. Zuba studied the coordinates on the Kabbalah-Chron, and then pointed ahead. They

kept moving through the night. Two hours later, they came across a dead body, bloodless and pale.

The man’s neck bore the triangular bite mark of the one they hunted.