with two young girls. They had been stripped naked in the palace, he assumed. All the way from the dock-side quays, over the city cobblestones, they had been forced to walk on bare feet. Now their feet left bloody stains after them as they were pushed forward to the altar.
They were not screaming now; their throats were raw and painful. All they could do was roll wild eyes at the grinning men hemming them in. Hands clutched at their loins and their breasts. Voices cried out lewd invitations to them.
The woman in his arm stirred expectantly. Her breath was coming fast and her hips quivered where they pressed into him. “Proud Shubadad,” she whispered. “She who was queen in Phoenicia.”
Ahab stared down at a struggling, writhing woman whose face was streaked with tears and grime. Her hair had become disarranged during the nightmarish walk from the harbor but it showed traces of the gold dust that had powdered it and a few chains still gleamed between her thick black hairs. The greedy hands that had snatched her jewels and garments from her had left her little else.
She mewled in terror as rough hands dragged her to the altar, struggling weakly and crying out against her degradation. Her eyes sought the ivory and gold statue of the goddess looming tall and gigantic in the torchflame and incense smoke rising from the tripods.
“Mercy, great Astarte. Mercy!” she screamed.
A row of priestesses stirred at her words. The foremost of them, a tall woman in a high tiara wound about with jeweled ropes, lifted her arms, palms outward. This was the high priestess, she who officiated at all the sacrificial ceremonies.
“Who is this who comes before me?”
“Shubadad, queen of Phoenicia,” the woman panted.
“No longer queen,” a man bellowed. “Phales is dead by twenty spears. Shubadad is here to be sacrificed that the rule of Ithobaal may be a good one.”
The throng pressed closer, roaring. Unseeingly the priestess stared out over their heads. “Shubadad is no longer queen in Tyre. Let her make sacrifice to the goddess.”
Triumphant laughter rose into the vaulted ceiling. Shubadad screamed, mouth open, muscles strutted against the arms that held her, that turned her across the altar. Ahab saw her legs lifted before she was almost buried by the men crowding about the great high altar.
Shubadad screamed and screamed.
The young woman pressed her buttocks back against him, moved them gently. She whispered a command. Ahab put his hand to her robe and parted it.
“Yes,” she whispered, “yes, Ahab, prince of Israel. Take me now, for I am Jezebel, daughter of Ithobaal—and this night I am a princess, heiress to the kingdom of Phoenicia.”
He gasped in surprise and at the insane pleasure of her flesh. Below them, they were bringing forward the sister of Phales and his two young daughters, throwing them to the ground and falling on them. It was a scene of nightmare, Ahab thought, though only briefly, for he was too concerned with his own delight to be philosophical. Vaguely he felt disgust at what he witnessed but it was a disgust that excited the primal instincts that are in every man.
This night a man had won a kingdom. Another man had failed to keep his power. Now he lay dead and his women paid the penalty of his failure.
Ahab’s pleasure went on and on. . . .
Rael stared into the thick wine in his leather cup.
Across the winewet tabletop, Jehu was cuddling a serving woman. Jehu would enjoy himself with her. And that was all that mattered to Jehu.
He wished fiercely that he could be more like his friend, but there was a sensitivity in him that made him yearn for something better than a sweatstained tavern wench. Something better? Ah, why lie to himself?
The woman—priestess, rather, he guessed—who had posed so shamelessly before the image of Baal-Melkart was the one he wanted. Ah, there was a woman to set fire to a man’s blood! He saw her in the air before his eyes as she had been then and his heart beat more swiftly. His long fingers tensed, closing.
To get his hands on her. Just one! It would make his years of study, the sacrifice of time when he had passed up the antics of his friends to become a physician, all worthwhile. He lifted the leather jack and drank.
When he put down the cup he saw that Jehu and the redheaded woman were moving toward a curtained doorway that offered entrance into the little cubicles that held a bed, a table and a basin of water. Sourly he watched them, faintly envious.
Jehu could be satisfied with substitutes.
He could not.
After a while he forgot the woman in the wine.
Jehu sat on the edge of the cot and watched the serving woman lifting off her worn woolen tunic. Instead of the loose breasts and overwide hips, his staring eyes were seeing the woman on the pantechnicon. The breath scratched his throat. His hands itched to stroke and fondle.
“Hurry, hurry,” he rasped.
She smiled down at him, tossing aside her tunic, throwing back her long red hair. Oh, she was fortunate, this night. The Habiru from Israel was young, thewed like a working ox. She did not wonder what made him so eager for her flesh; she accepted his lust for what it was, and knew contentment.
The woman would have posed for him but he was too impatient for niceties. His hand stabbed out, caught her wrist, yanked her down on top of him. Astarte! He was eager. Wild. Kind of crazy, almost. She giggled and let him do what he wanted, knowing he would not be through with her until the dawn.
Jehu groaned out his frustrations.
Always he had stood in the shadow of his prince. As long as he could remember, Ahab had always taken first choice. He was prince in Israel; Jehu was only an officer, the youngest son of a grain merchant. He had seen no future in industry with two older brothers already taking over the management of the grist mills, and because he was naturally strong and quick, had turned instead to the war chariots for his career.
He did not regret his choice, no. But he was cast into close association with Ahab who was a soldier and a good one, and soon the two were fast friends. He might hope to be commander of the armies were it not for Ahab, who took the poled banner of leader as a matter of his rank.
Ahab also took the choicest loot when there was a war, and the loveliest of the women who had been made prisoners. Just once, just once Jehu would have liked to make the first selection. Like tonight. The woman on the god-wagon had chosen Ahab. Not because of his good looks, nor because of his princely bearing. Only because Rael had howled out his rank to her in the stark fright that gripped him.
“Damn her,” he growled.
“Who, honey?” panted the woman.
“The bitch on the dais of Baal-Melkart.”
She trailed laughter into the night. “Oh, her. A wild one, that Jezebel. You’d think she’d be satisfied with being a rich man’s daughter, wouldn’t you? But not her. She has to play at being a priestess, too.”
“Jezebel? You know her?”
“The
