Daggers in the Dark (Book 3 of Hanthalah)

Chapter 27

What have I done to deserve this?

It had been a long day spent wandering about the Anatolian hinterlands. It wasn't the trek that exhausted us as much as the drain of remaining constantly alert, always sliding through the shadows. Avoiding capture.

Our small band had its ranks bolstered after picking up our six new acquisitions from the Roman fort. All Arabs that were shipwrecked from the storm.

A collection absent my own son. The only familiar faces among them were those of my daughter and 'Amr, a lifelong friend. Where the Nubian was jubilant at his survival, my mood only darkened with my daughter's outburst in the cell.

It had been a possibility lingering in the back of my head from the moment I saw 'Abd al-Ka'aba plummet beneath waves. I buried it under layers and layers of false hope and cursed sentiment. One can easily forget the gods' cruelty. Perhaps that is our reality. And our curse.

I lay in the darkness in our campsite, outside our only two makeshift tents. I did not allow the lighting of any campfires lest the smoke betray our presence. And the darkness suited my state of mind. The stars were obscured by the thick canopy of trees overhead.

I did not know how to feel. Some small part of me was yet in denial over my son's death. Sweet, feisty 'Abd al-Ka'aba. My warrior boy. Rotting at the bottom of the sea. My men who were massacred in Crete, never putting up a fight. Tariq and Haitham who died within the city walls because of my army that never came. My army that perished and withered.

I was a man defeated. On my knees. A fugitive in Roman lands. My daughter called me a failure. A failure of a father, a failure of a general. I knew it to be true.

I toyed with the stick at my throat and then the dagger at my belt. I pricked a finger at the tip of the blade, musing over how sharp it was. How something so simple could end such colossal misery, spell an anticlimactic demise for a disappointing life.

But this dagger was special. Its tip was dotted with an exotic poison, courtesy of Lan Mei – a Chinese gladiator slave I had freed from the pits after I defeated her. A touch of the poison would paralyze the victim.

If I licked the tip, I could just lay there, immobile and lifeless as a rock, yet still aware. My life force would drain out of me within days without food or water. A long, painful end. The sort of I deserved.

My dagger was half out of its sheath when I felt the presence of another lounging by my side.

"What is it that you want?" I asked Amina in a weak voice. Drained in body, mind and soul. It felt as though nothing remained of me. As though the life were sucked out of me.

"You do not have a monopoly over the night," she retorted.

I grunted, unable to respond. I did not have the energy nor the willpower. My mind ran a thousand different scenarios of the end. A dagger to my wrists. A hop into the sea, the abode of thousands of fallen soldiers.

"I am aware of how you feel," she broke the silence.

I scoffed. "No."

"Yes," she prodded, overpowering me into silence.

"I've lost two sons."

And a daughter, I thought. I would have never imagined Umaymah's rejection would sting so.

"I've lost one," she explained.

I twisted my neck to her faint figure in the darkness.