Daggers in the Dark (Book 3 of Hanthalah)

Chapter 22

I felt numb. Drained. Spent, as though I had gone through a lifetime of hurt and agony, soaking me down to my very bones.

And I had. Sorrow and loneliness. One can achieve great things in life. One can obtain glory, victory, wealth unimaginable. One can feel powerful, as though a god.

But the former two were one's constant companions. When the smiles faded and the clouds parted, when your friends die and the flower of their youth withers, sorrow and loneliness would stand there, waiting to engulf you in their inevitable embrace.

But now the ships were coming. Greeted by the hoots of those ashore and the dwindling winds, they found their way to a welcoming port and friendly faces.

They would haul the great wealth they amassed from Rhodes ashore, jubilant and thankful to their god.

And they would waste no time in preparing for their next journey.

***

"You can quit your lurking, woman," I yelled into the night as I felt the weight of two red eyes burning like coals on my skin.

Or she-devil or whatever she is.

"I do not lurk," came the response, closer than I'd anticipated. "I observe."

"Then cease your observing before I gouge out the tools of your observation."

I sighed, pounding the back of my head against the soil beneath me, shifting my eyes from dark sea to pitch black sky. The stars littering the night's canvas reminded me of the layout of corpses back in Crete.

I heard the shuffling of sandals next to me.

"It..." Amina began before trailing off. She was right next to me.

"Speak your damn mind," I smacked my face with both hands in exasperation.

"It is not weakness to mourn," Amina said uneasily. It was the first time she spoke of a personal matter, albeit reserved.

"What would you know of strength?" I murmured.

What would I know?

"My father..." she began again before trailing off.

"Should have discharged his seed in a fucking goat," I filled the silence dismissively. I was too taken with making out the positions of the planets that night. "Would have saved me a lot of annoyance."

"He died in battle," she continued as if I had not spoken. "Much like the men in Crete."

I did not reply. The silence engulfed us once more, uncomfortable and awkward this time.

"My mother would not marry, no matter what others said," it sounded as though Amina were speaking to herself. "She had to care for six children all by herself and keep their bullies full all the while."

"Sounds like quite the woman," I commented, remembering my own. Mother had been a woman of warmth and sad smiles before her enslavement. She was never quite the same after that ordeal.

"But then she fell sick," Amina recounted. Was that genuine emotion I heard in her voice? "I was the eldest of the brood. Nine, newly flowered, with all the energy and ambition in the world."

"But that energy soon dimmed," I guessed.

Amina grunted. "The things I had to do to keep my family fed...they were less than honorable."

I spat. "Who gives a shit? Our gods are not like theirs. They wouldn't care."

I sat up straight at the sound of sniffling. To my surprise, Amina was looking down on me with tears in her once fearsome red eyes. My breath caught in my throat as I watched her cheeks soak. I would have bet on the heavens ripping apart and raining gods before seeing the witch act human.

"You still don't understand, do you?" she sobbed, a sympathetic expression on her face.

"Understand what?"

"You clutch onto any fragment of hope for a happy future and cling so hard on it that you forget the nature of your fate," Amina continued in a half whisper. She fell to her knees before my reclining figure. "You forget the tragedies of your past and imagine a fairer future. That's why the tragedies that come next hit so hard. That's why you're so blind to reality."

"Reality?" I repeated, incredulous. I cleared a stray hair dangling on her face and wiped her tears with my comparatively gigantic fingers.

If you ignore her skin, she might actually be pretty. I cupped her cheek.

"My reality," she whispered.

"You're a witch that needs a fucking to be shown a future," I smiled. "What else is there to know?"

She put her arms around my shoulders and blew air out of her nose in the closest thing I had ever seen her get to laughter.

And then our eyes locked, brown on red.

And again, I saw the guilt in them. Or perhaps that is my view on the memory in retrospect.

"Then let's find out my future," I spoke. "Without having it feel as though a duty this time."

She scrambled atop me, her hair falling loose and wild, shrouding her face in eerie shadow.

"Your future," she pinned me down by the shoulders, beginning to motion back and forth. "It will not do for Hanthalah to keep rotting on this hill. Hanthalah's future is to board a ship. Hanthalah's future is to hold sword and shield again."