I impatiently studied the position of the moon in the sky, my hands clasped behind my back.
Night had long since fallen upon the island of Crete. It had been hours since the escort had set forth, making for Gortyn. The signal had not yet been delivered.
I shivered as I felt freezing cold hands resting on my shoulders, caressing my upper back.
"You saw the city in flames in your vision," I groaned. "The only flame I see is the flickering of torchlight."
We didn't have much time to spare in Crete. We needed to regroup with Abu al-A'war back north to board the ships again and make for Rhodes. In the meantime, I had marched my body of men to the city's gates in preparation for a brief siege. Or rather, the illusion of a siege.
And I had a daughter inside.
Sa'ad...
"The gods do not lie," Amina the witch responded in her cool, emotionless voice. I could feel her red eyes on me, curious and unrelenting. "You deny their power?"
"If I'm not within the city by sunrise, they can kiss my cock," I replied.
"Is this worry I see on your face, warrior?" the smoothness of her voice sent a chill down my spine. I clutched my dead son's stick, seeking comfort from this intermediary to the gods. It was an idol of sorts to me now.
"Worry?" I echoed. "A leader must take the best interests of his men to heart. But he must be willing to brave through should a misfortune occur. Such is the nature of our profession."
"It is not a leader's mind that wakes you this night, child of the gods," she responded almost immediately. I remembered the knot she was blowing on the other day, the spell she seemed to be casting. "It is a father's heart. You feign disgust for this daughter of yours, but your heart aches for her presence in harm's way and your mind is eating you from within. You are afraid, son of Ka'b. Afraid to lose another child."
My neck whipped sideways in an instant and my hand did not lag behind. I coiled it around her throat, growling like a wolf enraged.
"I never told you of my son," there was a sour feeling in my gut. A knot formed in my throat at the memory of Sa'ad. I felt his stick gracing my chest.
"You forget who I am," Amina managed to croak beneath my grip. Her milk white complexion was rapidly shifting to a pomegranate red. "Of course I know of Sa'ad. I know of those who came before. I know of those who are yet to come."
"I never want to hear his name on your tongue ever again," my arm fell back to my side, allowing Amina much needed breath.
To my surprise, she chuckled.
"Be sure to do that next time you fuck a vision out of me," she rasped, caressing her neck.
I shifted my focus back to the city. Amina's words lingered in my mind. Was it a father's heart that kept me up rather than a warrior's anxiety? I had never paid heed to this Umaymah of mine. She was an abomination, after all. I would have much rather sent my son, 'Abd al-Ka'aba, instead. But I knew the boy was far too volatile. The mission needed stealth and patience rather than brute force.
And besides, I was sending too many valuable men anyway. Umaymah was expendable.
Or was she?
Foolish little girl, I thought. How did she manage to get on this island?
Whatever reservations I harbored for her lifestyle, did I truly want her gone? She was my daughter, the spawn of my loins.
The gods help me.
I remembered the moment of my son's death once more. Little more than a child, he was. Dangling off the side of a cliff by that half-human deformity. Zayn, the son of my former slavemaster Yazid, claimed he had gone after the boy because a bond of affinity between us had started taking form. Would admitting these budding emotions I had for Umaymah endanger her life? Would the assassins come after her?
The gods sustain me. Hubal protect us all.
The west was greying now, forming a partition of the heavens. The great grey was to push back the dark night sky, ushering in a new day.
And with it, victory or failure.
It was then, at the zenith of dawn, that the expedition turned to catastrophe.
It was then that I heard the screams. It was then my camp erupted in chaos.
***
"No!" I bellowed, darting past throngs of frantically fleeing troops. "Stand your ground!"
I watched as Sufyan, one of my rising and most prominent youth, was gutted like a fish in a valiant last stand.
I grabbed sword and shield, pushing myself into the fray of carnage and confusion. Tents toppled over and were trampled upon, campfires doused and horses littered the ground, their throats slit.
The emerging sunlight glanced over the steel of my sword, the iron boss of my shield. The blood of my dying troops.
But it was not Romans that would prove their doom that day.
For our camp was overrun by men in dark robes. The agents wielded daggers and showed not their faces. One moment they were in one spot, the next in another. It was as though they were gliding over the ground, darting this way and that, slashing and cutting and stabbing.
My boys would prove no match for the deceit of al-Khalidun.
"Order!" I roared, ignoring the rising despair in my gut. "Testudo! Shield wall!"
I chose a spot and crouched, steadying myself by my knees, putting all my weight into the shield strapped to my left arm.
"Shield wall!" the command rippled its way through the chaos from one corner of the camp to the other, calling all men to my side. "Shield wall!"
More and more complied with the order, restoring a semblance of order to our ranks. Piruzan rushed to my left side, and my son appeared to my right. They were my neighbors in the formation, the rims of our shields interlocking.
As our first line was completed, the routing troops decided to return instead, emboldened by the display of order, clambering over bodies to secure our flanks or form the second line of our shield wall.
Daggers pounded against the wood of our shields, straining our arms. One dagger snagged into the wood, opening a window for me to bite back. I took a jab at the assassin that stood before me. I had a longsword with me, which was unsuited to the shield wall as opposed to a shortsword.
But that didn't matter. Since the man simply vanished.
Gods. Gods. Gods.
The man had bolted away in a heartbeat. There was only thin air where he had once been. Was this magic? Fuck. What was that? We couldn't compete with that.
Already, dents were beginning to appear in our front lines. Despite their high level of discipline, my boys were being pushed back. I didn't know how many of the assassins there were.
More blows pounded against my shield, and I struggled to balance my footing with maintaining the lumbering piece of wood. The strikes were relentless and unceasing, dexterous and effective. The bastards were demonic and determined. It had only been seconds since I stood my ground, but I was already drenched in sweat, barely restraining myself from giving any ground.
I heard screams to the side. It seems we had failed to secure our flanks. If our side has been penetrated, the assassins were about to tear us apart from within.
With a sense of horror, I realized we needed to retreat. Back to the ships to the northern shore. We needed to abandon our troops inside the city. I needed to abandon my brothers, 'Amr and Mundhir.
I needed to abandon my daughter.
With one last lingering look at the glimmering white-plastered city walls before us, I looked up from my shield.
"Orderly retreat!" I bellowed; my breathing was ragged. "Back to the ships. Orderly retreat!"
But we were past that now. Our front line was in disarray, jagged and out of formation. Many of us had been pushed back, forming gaps in the line between the shields.
"Back to the fucking ships!" I roared again, my head spinning to my sides, deafened by the shrieks of the dying and the clamor of steel against steel.
But my son was nowhere in sight.
"No," I gasped, searching frantically about the battlefield – rather, the site of a massacre. "No. 'Abd al-Ka'aba!"
The air was blown out of me as a single blow swept me off my feet and sent me tumbling to my back. I grunted, rolling sideways almost immediately, evading the bite of a dagger. I rolled to my feet again, swiping my sword at the dark figure hovering over me.
I felt my steel scraping blessed flesh, and the man yelped, a melody to my ears. He clutched his wounded side where I had struck him. I swung my sword again, but...he was gone.
Fuck.
One of my boys crawled next to my feet, groaning pathetically, his throat agape with a deep wound that slowly sapped the life out of him.
Fuck.
I saw another being cut down as though an infant. Not a trained warrior hardened by hours of practice and still more in combat. Simply cut down like a fly.
Fuck. Fuck.
"Abd al-Ka'aba!" I roared again, searching frantically for a red turban that was absent from this haven of horror. "Abd al-Ka'aba!"
"Father!" came the reply. And I wish it hadn't.
Fuck!
Sprawled on one side, clutching his other shoulder, my son was on the ground a few feet away from me, bleeding and defeated.
"Father!" he cried out again, desperate and meek. In a state I had never seen him in before.
At the mercy of a dark-robed assassin.
I am Sa'ad ibn Hanthalah....
"My son!" I lurched into motion, blade in hand, making for the hapless figure of my son, vulnerable as an infant, bleeding like a pig for the slaughter.
I saw 'Abd al-Ka'aba shrieking for me, his arm a mess, his turban torn.
I saw Sa'ad, my youngest son, dangling from the side of a cliff, his melodious laughter echoing in my ears to this day.
I saw a dark-robed figure hovering over one, his dagger raised overhead.
I saw Zayn ibn Yazid fling my son to his demise.
"Abd al-Ka'aba!" I roared, preparing to throw myself in the dagger's way, taking the blow in my son's stead.
But then, the Persian came through.
Piruzan, the governor's slave soldier, lunged at the cloaked figure with a long-shafted spear. The spear drove through thin air, but it forced the man away from my son.
Piruzan was drenched in red, bathed in blood. His long curls were damp, sticking to the sides of his head. His mail coat was ripped and tattered, littered with droplets of more blood. There was a chunk of chainmail sticking out of one of his cheeks, a gruesome image.
And he stood there, with the sun at its zenith, spear in both hands, standing defiant and majestic before the embodiment of faceless death.
But then he was knocked to his knees with a grunt, all semblance of majesty robbed from him. His spear was snatched from him in one quick stroke after he tried heaving it, leaving him as defenseless and vulnerable as my son.
The assassin, spear in both hands now, shook his shawl off.
Revealing a face from a lifetime past. It was Theodoros, a Roman slave I had framed for a murder I'd committed to avoid the consequences. I'd brokered a deal with him. I would free his family from their bonds in exchange for the favor.
I had not done well on my promise. And the ghosts of my past were here to haunt me.
Theodoros smacked Piruzan across the face with a fist, sending blood and teeth sprawling across the landscape. Piruzan the Persian, compliant in peace, brave in war, struggled to his feet.
And had a spear driven through him.
His eyes widened and his hands clutched the wooden shaft. Theodoros grunted as he nudged the spear forward still, the tip of it peaking out of Piruzan's back, glistening red beneath the radiant sun.
I froze in horror and shock, unsure and horrified. It was a nightmare unraveling before my eyes. They were dismantling my army. They were tearing apart my entire life right under my nose, and I was powerless to intervene.
But Piruzan wasn't.
With sheer passion and grit, the Persian roared fury in the face of his murderer, gripping the spear's shaft and pulling it toward himself. He slid inch by inch into the spear, more of it driving through him and out the other side, leaving a grizzly trail of smeared blood.
Theodoros' jaw dropped as Piruzan slid his way right to his face. They were close enough to kiss now.
And the Persian unsheathed a dagger.
Theodoros was helpless to block or flee as the dagger descended upon him, finding its way straight through the heart. The placement of a master. Theodoros jerked in pain, eyes lolling upward. And Piruzan twisted with the last of his strength.
And both men toppled to the ground. Dead at last.