Daggers in the Dark (Book 3 of Hanthalah)

Chapter 22

"The marid of the sea," I scoffed, lounging on the summit of a hill in Beirutus.

The sun shone gold on the abode of the marid. The sea came alive in a thousand ripples as still more ships made themselves visible in the horizon, making for the docks.

I watched them creep forward from atop my peak with resentment. A shattered being clutching wounds both physical and deep within his soul watching better men return from distant shores with the fruits of their success.

With spoils of war.

It had only been a few weeks since we had abandoned accursed Crete to its own devices, returning to friendly coasts with a fraction of the spoils we had originally earned. With only a fraction of those that came with us to the expedition that ended in disaster.

Yet, the bitter idleness felt like years. Years I was left to rot and wither in a Syrian port city that housed naught but silent locals and barred warehouses. The foreboding greenery, the snow-capped peaks, the lush landscape of this area of the Levant only served to sour my mood.

How dare the lands prosper and the meadows mock me with their lavishness when I wallowed, broken and defeated, at the foot of their mountains?

How dare the sun wink off distant steel and bits of glass, blinding me with its brilliance, while more than half my boys were left to be eaten by the crows in foreign lands?

How dare the gods reside in their heavens so clear and serene over the skies of Mount Lebanon when a lesser man prances about and smirks in my face?

"I ransomed them from the Romans after you set sail," Abu al-A'war had said when he returned here to deposit his war spoils. He was referring to those I left behind. Umaymah, Mundhir, 'Amr. Tariq and Haitham had not survived. "It was a heavy ransom. Spoils far dwarfing what you have collected. You can pay me back."

And a few days later, he was off again, easy as you please. Off to burden the bellies of his ships with yet more plunder. From Rhodes. Storied, fabled Rhodes with its massive statue that reached out to the sky, touching the clouds themselves.

Leaving me with my useless lout of a daughter.

"B-but ... we did what was asked of us – " she stuttered upon touching soil.

"Shh," I halted her, holding up a hand. "You failed me. You failed me."

I turned my back on her, making for the uninhabited hills overlooking the city, paying no heed to her desperate protests behind me.

And it had been weeks since then. Laying sprawled on this damned hill in near isolation like a woman heavy with child. Every day, I watched the skies searching for an omen. A bird flying this way or that. The size of the fish the villagers caught. The number of ships that passed by that day.

All while the scenes of my destruction rewound in my head. Hundreds of bodies laying face first in oceans of blood. Blood-stained beaches. Piruzan being skewered on a spear, straining to pull himself closer still, smearing the wood a horrible red.

Every day, I would catch sight of a woman so pale-skinned that she churned my belly with something that resembled disgust. Her eyes, red and piercing, radiated lust and ... something else. Was that guilt?

She watched my stunned silence from afar. I could not yet register what had happened on Crete. On that hill under the shade of Mount Lebanon, I did not break down weeping for the loss of so many men I saw as younger brothers or sons.