CHAPTER 2Godwin stood up. “Where’s El Iskandariya?” he asked.
El Sareuk rubbed his beard with one slim brown hand. “You call it Alexandria. About twenty-five leagues west it lies, my great-thewed friend, on the banks of the Mediterranean.”
The Lord Mohammed El Sareuk was a man of sixty, slightly built, fanatic-faced, whose body always seemed on the point of disintegrating from sheer concentration of energy. His boots were of red Cordovan leather worked with gold thread; his clothing was blue silk and rose samite, topped by the green turban of a Hadji; under the soft robes he wore gold-washed Turkish light armor, and over the whole outfit a black Bedouin burnous. He was weaponed well: from his girdle hung a Damascus steel scimitar, and a beautiful gold-etched steel knife with a silver hil
