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The wind blew hot and potent, filling the galley's sails and driving it across the surface

of the choppy Mediterranean.

There was no need for ores to move the ship, not with the wind blowing this hard.

The Christian slaves changed to the galley's benches where they pulled, ate, and slept, where

they lived, were grateful for the respite.

The galley's captain knew this wind well.

He had known it all his life.

The skirokko they had called it in his fishing village south of Naples, and when the rain

came with it, the droplets were tinged with red.

Sand from the Sahara Desert he knew now, but in his childhood it seemed like magic.

Not good magic, mind you, but the kind of dark magic that drove the Corsairs north from

their haunts in North Africa to steal captives from Italy.

Captives like he had been, like his ores men were now.

The captain's name was Hassan, and he was now nearly 50 years old, weathered and tanned

by these winds and rain.

Hassan had begun his life as a Christian, a native of the Amalfi coast of Italy, but that

was a long time ago.

Still, this wind would always be a skirokko, at least in his head.

He could never shed the language of his youth entirely.

March was a bit early for a raid, heading north from Tripoli for the sea lanes off the

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