Daggers in the Dark (Book 3 of Hanthalah)

Chapter 28

Near modern-day Osmaniye, Turkey

I blinked my eyes open, waking from a dreamless sleep, apparently short. I could have sworn I'd only just laid my head to rest in this damned shithole.

Light washed into the room from open shutters, drenching us all in the blinding aura of the gods' disc in the sky.

I felt others stir by my side. I swatted away a fly buzzing on my nose before smashing it with a fist.

It was then that realization dawned on me.

I was awake. I was alive.

Fuck, I thought. More's the pity.

First, I patted myself, feeling for the hilt of my concealed dagger. To my side was an unsheathed sword, my double-curved bow – storied as the gods themselves – and a quiver of arrows.

I sat up, surveying my surroundings. There were about a half-dozen others in this commodity, some strangers. The Nazarenes of this land had an odd word for it that I could not pronounce. It was a building that offered shelter for travelers in exchange for payment. Service was provided by the hands of slaves. I'd heard of such a system existing in Egypt and the Levant, but I'd never paid it much heed.

We had arrived in the lands of the Armenians the night prior. Just north of Syria. A weight was carried off my shoulders knowing that now we need not stalk in the wilderness, hunted. We were no longer in hostile territory, for the Armenians were brought to their knees by none other than Mu'awiyah himself a decade or so ago. Though they were Nazarenes, and we met not a single other Arab, the lands of the Armenians no longer answered to the Roman Emperor in Constantinople.

The name of the settlement Amina led us to was unpronounceable. She seemed to know these parts. It was a rather quiet town in an arable strip of flatland nestled at the foot of dark peaks. A far cry from some of the arid Roman areas we circumvented.

The town was on the Silk Road, so naturally it was bustling with visitors of all backgrounds. It was why some of us needed to fend for themselves outside of this inn – it was packed.

I gathered my belongings, finding my feet. I eyed the strangers around me warily, studying their foreign features. Not one was Arab, nor were they Armenian. I recognized some with the look attributed to those of China, like the gladiator I had freed, Lan Mei. Others were pale as the snow that plagued these parts in the winter, others dark as night like the Abyssinian people.

Though this was not hostile territory, I did not feel entirely at ease. The Nazarenes – the Christians – would have no love for their Muslim overlords, even if they granted them considerable autonomy to bear the brunt of Roman raids.

I put a hand on my sword hilt, now firmly buckled at my hip. I slept in the Roman chainmail I'd stolen off the corpses that belonged to the soldiers from the fort we stormed. I wore a cloak in the Roman style. I no longer had my turban for it had been lost in the shipwreck. I felt naked without it. Vulnerable to the sun as I was laid bare and weak to the rest of the world. Open for defeat from men and beasts alike.

Amina followed from the inn not too long after, staying at my heels until I stopped by Arslan's side.

"Relax," she finally spoke, commanding me. "We are no longer harried by Romans."

"I'm used to giving the orders," I grunted, fretting at Arslan's saddle knots. "Not receiving them."

"Get used to it, then," the false witch answered. The traitor. The assassin. Why had I not killed her already? Perhaps she was actually a witch.

I abandoned my mount's saddle, turning to face her. The rage within me kindled if only for a moment.

"Or else what?" I growled, baring my teeth like the wolf I once thought myself as. "You'll kill another of my children?"

I spat at her feet, nodding at the pitch-black mountains, dark as though in defiance of the fledgling sun.

"Go get her, then," I dared her. "Find her wherever she is and give her more reason to hate me by plunging your pretty dagger into her heart."

Umaymah had spirited herself away from us last night. The moment we set foot in Armenian lands; she abandoned our small, exhausted group. Some part of me wished it would not be the last I would see of her.

"Calm your emotions, son of Ka'b," her voice was sharp as a whip, cracking only inches from my face. "Steel yourself as befits the man you are."

"Man," I spat again. "Your people have stripped me even of that mantle. I stand a broken husk before you and you have the gall to make demands."

Just let me throw myself off a cliff in peace, woman, is what I left unsaid.

"I told you I would prove where my true loyalties lie, did I not?" Amina the Immortal agent teased. "Come. Have faith in me."

"Faith in you?" I chuckled dryly. "Faith in you? The fucking nerve on you, woman."

I shook my head in disbelief, turning again to cinch the saddle's girth.

"Come," she tugged at a sleeve, the rings of mail jingling at the soft breeze. "I will give you what you want."

I took a deep breath in, raising my head to the heavens as if preparing to let out one long agonized roar of despair. Instead, I let my head drop again, exhaling heavily in the pale woman's face. She did not so much as flinch at the warmth of my breath.

I unsheathed my dagger and placed it in the palm of her hand.

"Give me what I want, then," I spoke in a monotonous tone. "Here is the means to do so."

She shook her head, a ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She returned the dagger and conjured one of her own.

It was the one tinged with the paralysis concoction. The one Lan Mei the Chinese woman gifted me with at my request.

"Just don't touch the tip," she smirked.

That's what she said.

***

The field shown golden under the sun's brilliant dew. The vast green expanse stretched away, interrupted only by the rolling landscape and the towering hills in the distance, finally giving way to the monstrous peaks.

Decent farmland if there ever was, I remember thinking to myself.

On my knees. Gagged. Bound. Captive.

My captor was a pale-skinned woman, light as they come. Even more so than those that heralded from Constantinople and even those distant Franks. This condition of hers, this blight, was a mark from the gods. Or so she said.

One could be skeptic of her story. But there was no debate over how unsettling those red eyes were. How they could make even the fiercest of warriors falter but for a second.

And she held a dagger in her hand. Careful of its tip.

When in Hubal's name will we be done with this farce? I wondered idly, my gaze wandering to the rich farmland that surrounded us. The sort of lush green meadows I would describe to Arslan in a soothing voice in order to calm him down.

We had land similar to this back in the Levant and still more in 'Iraq. Land just as rich, if not more so, existed even in Egypt far to the north in what they called the Delta. One could never have imagined this would all belong to the Arabs. My life in Madinah, my home city, seemed a lifetime past. One of harsher landscapes and daunting foes.

But as I returned my gaze directly in front of me, stood the most formidable of them all.

Old man Qasim ibn al-Aswad stood resplendent in his dark assassin's clothing before me.

Qasim.

The Raven.

My first master's brother.