Shadow of Death (Book 2 of Hanthalah)

Chapter 13

September 636 AD, Sha'aban 15 AH

It was well into the month of Sha'aban that I returned once more to my home city; Yathrib, where I was bred and raised. By then, fifteen years after the Muslims fled their city for my own, it was known as Madinat al-Nabi; Madinah for short.

And, it was the beating heart of a thriving new political power.

When Muhammad died, his lifelong friend, Abu Bakr, was selected by the chieftains of Madinah – no, Yathrib – to succeed him, donning the title of Khalifa, which literally meant 'successor'.

Nearly four years later, this Islamic state had spilled out of Arabia and poured into the Roman lands of greater Syria, as well as the Persian territories in 'Iraq.

It was a month after the Battle of Yarmouk that I found myself panting with anxiety at the doorstep of this leader of the Muslims. Among the Romans, he had only ever been called 'king', 'Arab King', or simply king of the barbarians.

The Roman army had broken at Yarmouk, leaving vast swaths of Syria and Palestine ripe for the plucking. Khalid and the other Muslim generals had ventured north to reconquer what they had lost in their evacuation to reach Yarmouk, while I decided I would not risk my wounds festering any further. Besides, everything I sought rested in Arabia. Not in the lands of the Romans.

Khalid was inclined to agree. I was sent with a party of dispatched messengers returning to Yathrib to inform this king of the Arabs details of their great triumph in Syria. So, I grabbed bow, sword and quiver and bid my brothers farewell.

So, there I was, standing in the city where it had all started, standing before a simple house of thatch, palm wood and clay. The setting sun painted the sky a gorgeous pink. My stomach rumbled, calling out for succor. A stray cat hissed nearby. I noticed a bird flapping overhead, traveling north.

An omen from the gods; perhaps a message that what I sought lay north. Should I travel back to Syria? Were the captors of Mother there, participating in these conquests, vying for women and gold and riches like the vagabonds they were?

Or instead, were the deities in the sky suggesting that the children of Mas'oud ibn al-Aswad, my wretched master, dwelled there. Two sons and a daughter, I remembered. They were too young to have remembered anything. But I'd made a promise all the same. A promise to Mas'oud's dying son, Yazid. That I would hunt his siblings down and put them all to the sword. And if they had children and spouses of their own...who was I to separate families?

Or were the gods tricking me? Sending me a false message only to send me on a wild chase, fruitless and meaningless only to amuse their fickle selves. The gods are not to be trusted. They are capricious and treacherous.

Yes, I thought. The latter seems the most likely outcome.

Before that shed, my mind raced with endless possibilities. The Nubian interrupted my train of thought, shuffling from one foot to the other behind me. So I studied this home of this king, Abu Bakr.

In Alexandria, the lowliest tribunos, or any politician of little note would have boasted of a sprawling villa complex with cultivated fields, sculptures adorning aforementioned gardens, stout pillars, colonnades, porticos, plastered walls, elaborate mosaics and heavy golden crosses.

The king's abode did not incorporate any of these ostentatious luxuries. I stood before a simple shed, made of clay and thatch and wood. There were unsophisticated patterns painted on the walls on a fading sky-blue color in the background. But otherwise, it was unornamented.

This was the house of a man that held dominion over massive swaths of territory, multiple peoples and tribes, yet expanding into more lands. A man that was challenging the world's two mightiest superpowers.