Shadow of Death (Book 2 of Hanthalah)

Interlude

Late September 632 AD, Rajab 11 AH

8 years ago

Sumayya eyed the dagger hanging at her captor's waist.

The procession had lulled to a stop at dusk so that the troops could refurbish their energy as well as their water skins from a nearby well.

Sumayya was at the very back, in the baggage train where supplies, mules, women, children and slaves followed the trail of the army.

It had been some days since everything she had ever loved and cherished had been so cruelly torn from her by this general. Khalid ibn al-Waleed. He had raided Malik ibn Nuwayrah's clan, forced him to retreat to a nearby small town and...murder him in cold blood. And that wasn't the least of his crimes.

Sumayya remembered that night in Khalid's tent. The roasted piece of flesh laid out before him on a cloak. It resembled a head. A human head.

Sumayya shivered, sparing a moment's sympathy for poor Layla, forced to consort with this monster. Layla, who had been nothing but kind, nothing but the exemplar of a good and decent person to her and all those around her for years. Now, she would be sharing a tent with a beast in human skin while what remained of her beloved husband rotted somewhere. His memory tainted as one of an evil villain. An apostate.

Once again, Sumayya eyed the dagger her captor wore, as he cleansed himself for impending prayer. He was barefoot, rubbing the water three times vigorously down his foot, on its soles, between the toes. It was the last of the body parts he was cleansing as part of this pre-prayer ritual – starting from the hair down.

If she managed to snatch that dagger...

She wouldn't kill him, of course. It would be foolhardy. They were in the middle of nowhere, in a barren desert. They would pursue her, hunt her down. And her fate would be far worse than slavery. That is, if she did not die a slow and excruciating death beneath a baking sun or at the tip of a viper's fangs or find herself in the belly of a hyena before they got to her.

She needed that dagger to kill herself.

It would only take one quick slice of her wrists to end it all. To spare her the foul life of a concubine again. She remembered her days after Kunkuz and his mercenaries killed her servant, Ayman. They eventually sold her at the fair of 'Ukaz, but not before...

She shook her head vigorously. She would not let that happen to her. Not again. It would be more honorable to die. What was there worth living for anyway?

Layla had even taught her how to do it.

"The life of the desert is often tumultuous," she had once told Sumayya. "One day, you're the wife of a chieftain, the other you're reduced to the property of a gluttonous murderer. Which is why you need to be prepared."

She had never given Layla's words any thought. She had never imagined this to happen. Be it as it may, it did happen. She was in the midst of a surreal nightmare. And she needed to be prepared.

Back in the dwelling, they had poisons for that sort of thing. Should a rival clan or tribe prevail, they would down the liquid. But Layla, clever woman that she was, had instructed her on alternative methods to avoid heinous fate.

Slicing one's wrists was one of them.

Sumayya did not whether she had it in her. She winced as she played the image in her mind's eye, imagining the blade digging through her flesh. Would it hurt?