would be in her element. She darted through the ruins, dodging fallen columns and leaping a low wall, clutching her knife close to her body.
The sounds of fighting — the screams of rage and agony, the crash and slither of iron on bronze, the moist impact of iron on flesh — echoed beyond the wall of the ruin. She tried not to think of the Egyptian soldiers out there as young men, tried not to recall their laughter, their voices. Soon, they would come broken and bleeding into her care. Some would die; others would pray for death.
Jauharah rounded the corner and skidded to a halt. Flames erupted from the hospital tents. Men clashed together, heaving this way and that in an obscene dance that would end with a life extinguished. As she watched, Bay, kindly, meticulous Bay, hurled himself on a Bedouin's back, a surgeon's knife flashing in the firelight. The raider fell, his throat slit. Another stepped in and rammed his spear into Bay's chest. Jauharah screamed as the quartermaster was lifted off his feet and slammed to the ground, gurgling through the blood filling his lungs as the Bedouin cruelly twisted the spear.
At the sound of her voice, a woman's voice, the Bedouin turned. Malice glittered in their dark eyes. Malice and lust. Dread clutched Jauharah's heart with talons of ice.
Suddenly, she doubted the wisdom of leaving Barca's shadow. Jauharah backed away, then turned and disappeared into the ruins. Like hounds, the Bedouin bayed and gave chase. They had taken only a handful of steps when a squad of Egyptians fell on their flank. The woman was forgotten as spear, knife and sword licked out, driving them back into the crackling flames.
Jauharah slowed, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She pulled herself over the low wall and stopped. No one followed her. Tears blurred her vision. She turned …
… and screamed as a raider blind-sided her, lunging from the darkness like a desert spirit. He caught her like a man does a child, his arms wrapping around her, pinning her to his chest. 'Come, my sweet lotus flower! ' he whispered in her ear, his breath foul.
Jauharah's shrieks had an altogether different quality as she struggled against the Bedouin, her lithe strength brought to nothing by bands of iron muscle. He chuckled darkly and hurled her to the ground. Jauharah hit hard, her breath whistling from her lungs. Somehow, she kept hold of her knife.
Light from the distant fires seeped in through chinks in the crumbling walls, striping the darkness with slashes of orange. 'Qainu said kill you all,' the raider said, grinning. 'But he said nothing against taking our sport first!' He drove his sword point-first into the ground and hiked up his robe, tucking the hem into his sword belt. Leering, the Bedouin stalked her, his ugly, goatish body naked from the waist down. Jauharah smelled the reek of smoke and sweat, the stench of horses permeating the Bedouin's frame. She pulled herself to her knees and staggered to her feet.
'Q-Qainu?' she said.
But the Bedouin offered her nothing more, save a cruel bark of laughter as he threw himself at her. Grimy hands pawed at her breasts, tearing her shift from her shoulders. In that instant, Jauharah remembered the knife in her fist. Snarling, she drove it forward with all the strength in her arm.
Flesh parted under the keen blade. The Bedouin's howls changed pitch and timbre as her knife slashed up through his groin, emasculating him before continuing deep into the juncture of his inner thigh. He sank to the ground, clutching himself, gobbling at the blood spurting from his lacerated femoral artery. He pushed himself away from her and crawled to where his sword lay.
Jauharah's world shrank to a pinpoint, a speck dominated by the writhing body at her feet. Her mind's eye no longer saw a Bedouin, but a Greek, an assassin, covered in the blood of children. He tried to rise. 'No!' she snarled, throwing herself on his back. Her knife flashed again and again. She had to save them! She …
When Jauharah looked down the Greek was gone. Instead, she straddled the Bedouin's twisted corpse. The blood-slick hilt of her knife protruded from the shredded flesh of his shoulders. She held her trembling hands up. They were covered in blood, as well. Jauharah spun away, vomiting.
'Egyptian women are soft!' A figure sat atop the low wall. He dropped to the ground. His silhouette gave Jauharah the impression of a bird of prey; his ripped robes and bloodblasted turban left no doubt that he was Bedouin. He walked closer and leveled a gory scimitar at her breast.
'Salim was a fool,' he said, 'but I'll not make the same mistake. Touch that knife and I'll split you in two, girl!'
Fear hammered through her brain as she sought a way out, some kind of edge over the lean desert fighter. The other Bedouin, Salim, had been blinded by lust; this one was different. This one had lusts no woman could slake. She pushed herself away from him, passing through a shaft of light.
'You are an Arab!' he said, grunting in surprise. 'Are you Barca's whore?'
Jauharah spat. 'I'm no whore, you cursed Asiatic swineherd!'
The Bedouin chuckled. 'You have learned impertinence in the cities of Egypt. That is good. Taming you will provide me with a challenge. Remember my name, woman, for you will be Zayid's whore after I have killed the Phoenician dog.'
'You're not man enough to kill Barca! ' Jauharah said, with far more bravado than she felt. 'If you were a man, you'd be out there dying with your kin instead of cowering in the darkness with a woman! '
Zayid's jaw clenched and there was a dangerous glitter to his dark eyes. 'Do I have to show you how much of a man I am?'
'Don't show her. Show me.' Barca stepped from the shadows and leaned against a shattered column, his sword held loosely at his side. Zayid spun and backed away as Barca stood erect and walked toward him.
'Gods! How I have waited for this moment!' Zayid said. 'The great al-Saffah! Did you think you could spill the blood of my brothers and escape unscathed?'
'You've overestimated your ability. It seems to be a common failing among you Bedouin. Make your peace with the gods, sand-fucker! '
'I may die, but I'll send you to Hell before me!' Zayid surged forward, his blade whistling in a tight arc about his head. A blood lust gripped him that made him ignore any thought of defense. He loosed an eerie undulating howl.
Jauharah saw them crash together. She caught the flash of blades, heard the slaughterhouse sound of iron cleaving flesh. She blinked, and in that brief span, Barca's sword slammed into Zayid's chest, left of the sternum, shattering bone and splitting the muscles of his heart. The Phoenician held Zayid on the end of his sword as the Bedouin clawed feebly at the blade.
'Not a man, after all!' Barca growled, and kicked him away. Zayid was dead and forgotten before he hit the ground.
Barca rushed to Jauharah's side. 'Are you hurt?' He tried helping her stand, but she threw her arms around his neck, instead. Her body trembled; he did not trust her legs to hold her. 'Are you hurt?'
She shook her head. For a long time Jauharah held him tight, her head buried in his shoulder as sobs wracked her already weakened form. He stroked her hair. 'H-He was ggoing to rape m-me. I …'
'You did what you had to.'
She looked up, the anguish in her eyes like a knife to his soul. 'I'm going mad! B-Before I killed him I thought he wwas one of the Greeks w-who. . '
Barca held her close and said nothing. He could have told her a similar tale, about the face he saw when in the grips of katalepsis; he could have told her that every man he had slain bore an uncanny resemblance to himself. But, she needed to believe it would pass, that Time would lessen the pain. Only then would her heart start down the slow path of healing.
A path she shouldn't travel alone.
Outside the ruin, the sounds of fighting died away. Jauharah stirred. 'I heard him say Qainu ordered them to kill us.'
'I know.'
'What do we do?' Jauharah asked. She did not know what was more disconcerting: Barca's silence or the look in his eye as he stared at Zayid's corpse.
Callisthenes crept to the door of the throne room, listening.
'Why are you badgering me about this Greek?' Qainu was saying. 'What matter is it of yours what I plan to do with him?'
