The old chief claps his hands and starts laughing. “Achib,” he tells the motionless Berber.“You are getting old. I would not have been overpowered so easily when I was your age.”
“He did a very wrong thing, Your Highness,” Teuns states calmly. “A Dulac does not want to be called a Legion dog. That words cut through a man’s marrow in his bones.”
“That is the truth,” the old man agrees, and Teuns feels that tonight the man has overindulged himself in the syrupy Arabic wine. “Go and find the Legion dog that got away!” he suddenly screams.
Teuns now acts on an impulse. He takes a big wicker bottle of water, standing off to the side, and bends down by the unconscious Achib. Slowly, he pours the water on his face. “I ask for forgiveness for the necessity to have attacked a Berber, Your Highne
