Daggers in the Dark (Book 3 of Hanthalah)

Interlude

          The door to the cell creaked open, revealing the figure of their gaoler, face shrouded by a helmet. He held a water skin in both hands, walking into their cell with brisk determination.

Watching intently with parched lips, Umaymah bint Hanthalah yearned but for a sip of the precious nectar. Subconsciously, the remnants of the warrior left in her admired the disciplined gait of the Roman before her.

But her dreams of heroism and her reality on the battlefield seemed so distant to her. A lifetime ago. An eon past. All she could recollect through her clouded thoughts and raging belly were glimpses of her bleak journey from the shore to her cell.

She vaguely knew that it was shared with about a half dozen others. She was not sure of the number nor of their faces. It was too dark in here. She hadn't had a morsel of food in an eternity, not a drop of liquid to soften her sore throat.

I'm going to die in here.

But not if she drank that water. God be blessed. Their captives were finally blessing them with much needed succor.

The other captives roused, crawling on their knees to the gaoler. He raised the now open skin high. Umaymah's stomach growled at the sound of the bouncing liquid within. She licked her parched lips with a dry tongue. She opened her mouth, anticipating the gorgeous flavor to wash over her and restore her strength.

But then the gaoler tipped the skin over. The ever elusive water spilled onto the ground, the precious commodity wasted before her very eyes.

Something primal awoke in some of the captives then. They growled gutturally at their captor, snarling and howling. The Roman darted out of the cell with seemingly super human speed to Umaymah's exhausted, burning eyes, leaving the captives to pound uselessly on the shut door, while others licked at the quickly drying floor.

Umaymah rested her head on the wall behind her, shutting her eyes tight. Tears of hunger and thirst escaped them, rolling down her cheeks.

I bear witness that there is no god but Allah. And I witness that Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah, she recited the shahada in her mind in anticipation of certain death. She did not even have the strength to say it aloud. She prayed that God would forgive her for that. These were her final moments, after all.

But then the protests of her despairing comrades in suffering were drowned out by frantic screams outside. Umaymah opened her eyes, pricking her ears intently. More screams, a bellow. The clanging sound of steel on steel.

Sword on sword.

Those sounds died off. They were replaced by the echoing thunder of footsteps. Heavy feet against stone. A key was put to the door of their cell.

Umaymah sat up in silent resignation to whatever was to come. It was the will of God the Almighty. To shrug her mortal coil, snuffed out like a candle, or continue to serve his grace on the righteous path. It was fate. Out of her hands.

The door creaked open to reveal the one face she never expected to see again.

Father.

God, he was so strong. So powerful. Even after losing everything in Crete, even after no doubt believing his own daughter had drowned, he remained broad of shoulders, the fire yet kindling in his eyes. He stood above them all, towering and intimidating, powerful and large.

Father is saving me, she thought idly to herself. It was like one of her childhood daydreams coming to life. She knew that the army was to go and besiege Constantinople after finishing off the Roman fleet. Yet, here her father was. Killing and fighting, abandoning the siege just to save the life of his daughter.

Father, she was about to greet him before he spoke.

"Where's my son?" Hanthalah ibn Ka'b demanded. His head darted this way and that, scanning the cell for his intended target. "Abd al-Ka'aba?"

Something inside Umaymah broke. Shattered like a clay pot hurled by a careless child. It was not her heart. Father had already crushed that a dozen times over, pounding the remaining fragments with his boots so indifferently over and over, grinding the remnants of her heart beneath heel so brutishly that he ought to have auctioned it off as paste.

She remembered how he had reacted during their first reunion in Damascus. How he had insulted her and 'Abdullah, rejecting them for the adults they had come to be, discarding them as though they were nothing but playthings to live and die at his whim.

She remembered every time she labored among his men, excelling at every hurdle thrown at her to earn only his satisfaction and acceptance, only to be met with scorn and derision. Tossed away again and again, treated as though an inferior being, not fit to exist because she did not abide by his narrow, simplistic expectations of her.

It was then that she came to terms with a fact she'd been in denial of for years and years. She was fool enough to only realize it now, naïve fool that she had always been. But not 'Abdullah. 'Abdullah had always warned her. He was the smarter twin, she supposed.

'Abdullah knew Father cared not for them. That Father was a lost cause, self-absorbed, obsessed with carving out a name for himself, at the expense of even his own children.

Hanthalah ibn Ka'b was no hero. He was not the paladin Umaymah romanticized since she was old enough to dream.

He was a farce.

A failed father and a defeated general, lost in faraway lands. He let hundreds of his men perish, squashed like flies in an instant.

Umaymah struggled to her feet, a peculiar calm washing over her, the hunger and effects of malnourishment retreating into obscurity in the face of this newly found epiphany. She would no longer slave for a man who would never accept her. Not while in 'man's' clothing.

"He's dead," she bit back, causing Father – no, Hanthalah – to jump at the ferocity of her blunt words. "Muhammad is dead. He drowned. There are no other Muslim captives in the lands of the Romans. Only this sorry lot."

She waved her hand to encompass her fellow captives that had shared this miserable cell with her for Allah only knew how long. She noticed a massive black man was cradling one of them in his beefy arms. 'Amr and the Nubian, intertwined in reunion.

Hanthalah shook his head vigorously. "No."

"Yes," Umaymah took a step forward, Hanthalah gulping. "He was wearing plate armor. It was too heavy for him to survive. He drowned under the weight of it. Anyone else missing not in this abominable room is fucking dead. Get it through your thick, self-centered skull, you selfish failure of an old man."

Hanthalah gaped openly, jaw dropped, sword clattering to the ground.

Umaymah did not care anymore. He may as well die from the shock.

She nudged past him and out of the cell.