Swords of Arabia: Warlord Read online

  Passing it was another, laden with gold, guns, and slaves, the losers in desperate fights with the pirates who, despite British efforts, still lurked in the hidden coves and shallow creeks of the waters further south.

  The lessons learned at her mother-in-law’s feet made it easy for her to calculate the value of each to within a few rupees, even though most of her mind was elsewhere; out in the endless, open sands, where the sun burnt the day, the winds chilled the night and the wild Jinn, wailed and cried, spirits forever lost. She was a child of the roving Bedouin, not for her the tight spaces of a town, cramped, hemmed in, where the air reached her lungs already breathed by others. The walled town offered her a safety unimaginable three short years before, but her wild spirit withdrew a little more each day she remained behind its high walls.

  “The sands talk to me, Lord. They tell me of happenings far beyond my vision, deep in their very heart. The wind tells me of camel treks, and brave deeds done a thousand years ago when they last passed this way. The skies cover me with their radiance and I feel clothed in the finest of silks. The high keening of the desert birds weave silver threads that bind my heart. All this and more, Lord, do the deserts mean to me.” She stirred restlessly; the thoughts she was scarcely aware of, the words she could hardly articulate, yet longed to utter to the fierce, relentless man that fate, and his own imperious whim, had bedded her with, remained, as ever, whispered only to the wind. A wind that, here in the town, was only a faint, sad echo of its roaring, joyous, furious self, trapped as it was in the endless alleyways of a foetid city.

  Or was it all in her mind? Was she transferring her own shackled state to the wind? After all, no one could truly chain such a giant, nor weaken its deep, life-giving breaths. No, even in this, she was letting her mind slip a little more into some no man’s land, where reality was banished, too harsh, too uncaring to be tolerated.

  The cry of an infant, held by an attendant too wise to come too near her mistress, caused the figure to turn. Her eyes, as they rested on the little bundle, became different, softer, infinitely caring; the eyes of the girl she once had been.

  Silently, she gestured for the child to be put down from his nurse’s arms and allowed to run round the walkway to reach her. He scurried happily round, followed by his anxious attendant, fearful of the steep drop he was skirting. Talal, her son, named after her husband’s famous ancestor; the one thing that made her life bearable. She reached down, and scooped the chuckling infant into her arms. The most precious thing to her, despite the brutality surrounding his conception. But paradoxes were part of her life now. None greater than that concerning her lord, the mighty Fouad.

  How well she remembered her wedding night; her reluctance to sleep with this killer of the innocent; the very touch of whose hands felt clammy with the half-dried blood of her people. How well she remembered being taken to the bridal tent after the hours of feasting; the departure of the women after they had anointed her body with sweet smelling balms and lotions; dressed her in yet more silken finery. Then the entry of Fouad and how his eyes had glittered as he gazed at her lying on the silk cushions, awaiting his pleasure. Her own eyes were now blank as she recalled how he dowsed the lamps of olive oil, and had lain beside her without a word. She remembered how she had forced herself to not flinch as he reached for her in the darkness, now faintly lit only by the campfires flickering beyond the thick hangings.

  She remembered how she had smiled to herself. At least it will be over soon. Arabs entered their women quickly, almost furtively. She knew from her first marriage, before even. The furtive whisperings, quickly stifled, a rustle of garments hurriedly pushed aside, momentary grunting and then silence; close proximity under the thin privacy of the goats’ hair tents allowed little else. A few moments of supine indifference would rid her of this night raider; this despoiler of her unwilling body. She braced herself as he moved towards her. Startled, she felt his hands move over her clothes; impatient hands, removing them all. Sullen and suddenly frightened, she resisted. He merely exerted more pressure and she found herself powerless to resist his superior strength as the silks of her robes were ripped from her, victims of their silent battle for supremacy.

  Fouad won. It was inevitable he would, and she lay back, waiting for his entry. Again he surprised her. Having mastered her, he seemed in no hurry to finish his violation. Instead, he caressed her body with slow, languid strokes, each a little longer, a little more sensuous, than the last. She froze into stunned immobility, confused both by his gentleness and his delay in coupling with her.

  He ceased suddenly and she braced herself. Instead of mounting her, however, he resumed his slow caressing of every inch of her body. Slowly, as though time didn’t exist. Her stomach, her thighs, her breasts, her cheeks. Every part of her body was subjected to the same slow, insistent touch. Involuntarily, she started to quiver. Frightened, angry at herself, she was unable to stop. Strange, unimaginable things were happening to her; to her body. The only way she could explain things to herself afterwards was that the very Jinns of pleasure had possessed her; inhabited her body and made it contort, writhe, undulate. Made her mouth utter screams of involuntary pleasure; her hands reach in unwilling supplication and desire to enclose him, only to release him and caress his stomach, buttocks, thighs. They were responsible, not she, for the raking of his back, the guttural groans of unimaginable pleasure as he finally mounted her and thrust himself deeper, ever deeper, into her.

  So had gone the night. Three more times he took her; each time the Jinns of desire entered her before he himself and made his progress across and into her body a shrieking, scratching, tumultuous passage of mutual joy.

  The next morning she awoke, sore, satiated, ashamed – and swearing renewed revenge. The very least she would do was punish him with indifference, disdainfully reject every advance he made during the daylight hours. The spirits of the desert may have let her down in the night hours, but when the moon disappeared, and the strong sun was in command of the heavens, he would see she was still her own woman.

  Her plan failed because his indifference matched – surpassed – hers. It was as if the other didn’t exist. Words were exchanged, requests uttered, all the little daily acts of communal living carried out. But nothing more. It was as if the skin-burning, mind-numbing night had never been.

  Let him touch me tonight and he’ll find me as cold as the southern stones, she thought grimly, calling to mind those strange white stones and rocks of legend. The ones so cold to the touch that they took the skin from the fingers of those foolhardy enough to touch them.

  “So, my quiet little bird is a she-falcon!” Fouad had laughed that second night as she had tried fighting him off after her studied indifference had, far from failing to rebuff him, only added fuel to his lust. “Let us see how she is after her feathers have been stroked like this. And this.” He continued until she was again helpless. After what seemed like hours of the sweetest torture she had ever experienced, he entered her. She was scarcely conscious through her screams of pleasure, of his laugh of victory, or his murmured words, “Keep flying my little falcon, we have a long journey ahead of us this night.”

  Shamed, Zahirah recalled only the next morning the other half of the legend of the southern stones. That anyone brave enough to hold them, fight their cold strength, would defeat them; they would dissolve into nothing in their hands.

  So the next year had gone by. Days of indifference followed by nights of pleasure. Only when he was away, fighting to retain his lands against the expansionist Saud and other, nearer enemies, was she left in the peace she thought she craved. His total dominance of her on their marriage bed added to her feelings of hatred. Even the conception of their first child – conceived despite her best attempts – did little to reduce this bottomless well of venom. Not even the birth of the healthy boy, now the infant tugging at the heavy clusters of silver jewellery round her neck, reduced her hatred.

  Once, twice, each had caught from the other a glance,
which seemed to say something more could, did, exist between them than thrusting sex. The recipient of the glance soon corrected the others misapprehension by a stony look and more studied indifference; and so, what might have been, became stillborn.

  The first year produced a child. The unimaginable joy the birth of her second child, their first together, brought Zahirah, wasn’t marred by thought of the father or the circumstances of that fathering. Fouad too, openly adored his son. Instead of bringing them together though, Talal's birth drove them still further apart, as each vied for his affection. Despite this, and her still strong desire for revenge, all other emotions were now secondary to motherhood and Zahirah bore the second year with more equanimity than the first.

  Though increasingly stifled by her life in the town, she found some outlet for her frustrations in her increasingly demanding role as wife of the Sheikh. Less constrained than other women because of this status, she was also the butt of their silent envy, and was conscious always of being covertly watched. Not least by the covey of resentful relatives of Fouad’s previous wives. He’d had two, both married when he was in his teens and both were dead in childbirth within two years of each other. He had not re-married until he took her, and was childless until the birth of Talal. Given his known dislike of, or at best supreme indifference to, women, she had been vaguely surprised that he had been married previously. Her astonishment had been nothing though to her stunned amazement at his mastery in the bedroom.

  After more than two years she had got used to both, but Fouad was still capable of surprising her as she had found out only six months before when Ahmad, her three-year-old first son, had fallen seriously ill. Distraught with worry, she had had the best physicians sought out around the Gulf and sleek, fast dhows had left the harbour and swept across the waters.

  Narashi physicians, though initially affronted at this aspersion on their skills, quickly came to reflect that the more who were involved the better. They knew their fiery Sheikha and what she was capable of doing to those she held responsible, should anything happen to her firstborn. Though adoring both her sons, she was particularly close to Ahmad, the child she had succoured on their long desert journey as prisoners of the man now her husband.

  The figure staring down from the ramparts moved suddenly, startling the child, and causing him to cry. Frightened, the attendant scurried toward her to relieve her of him. Zahirah waved her away and soothed the infant.

  Now her only one. For, despite the best efforts of those brought in from Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Kuwait, Ahmad had died. Worn out from the fever consuming his body, he’d died in the early hours of the morning, when the guardians of the dead seem readiest to let in yet more to their cold, shadowy realm; or perhaps it was just that the spirit of those lying ill was at its weakest and the guardians had less trouble in harvesting their quota of souls. Zahirah neither knew nor cared. In fact, in those dark days following his death, she cared very little for anything. Only the child she was now holding closely had saved her sanity when his older brother died. Three years old and dead; still she couldn’t accept the contradiction in those two statements. She never would.

  In her grief she had even forgotten that it was only protecting the now dead child, which had stayed her hand against Fouad. No consolation now, that the cold little body no longer needed protection from any earthly being. Even if the existence of little Talal hadn’t been almost as strong a hostage to fortune, her mind was too racked with grief to be arranged into the cold folds of hatred necessary to enact her long planned vengeance. Or, at least, that was what she told herself. Then and now.

  Her rock-solid belief in the certainty of her hate, however, hadn’t cracked even when Fouad had shown he was as shocked as she as Ahmad’s illness developed. His genuine grief left her unmoved, as did his giving her the complete freedom to order whatever she deemed necessary in the fight to save her son’s life. Even his nights with her were sacrificed, leaving her to sit, watchful and sleepless, by the side of the restless, fever-ridden body of her first-born. Nor was her vigil spent alone. Every night, as soon as his duties were done, he came and sat with her; silently, undemandingly, making no comment on her continuing to act as though he weren’t present.

  Thus, she wasn’t alone as the young boy died. Fouad was the first to see her start and lean toward the bed, the rest of her body moving towards the hand that had lain in the boy’s for hours. The first to hear her scream of loss. The first to touch her and, for the few moments it took her to recall her hate, to hold her. Blinded by grief, she had seen his concern as only for the boy. From the first, the towering warrior and the small boy he had made fatherless had become close. The boy, bewildered at first by his mother’s hate, had been torn and she had desisted in twisting his love for Fouad, and let them grow close.

  Fouad delayed by many weeks his departure on a planned major campaign against the ever-present menace on his threatened borders. Indeed, he left it almost too long. His chiefs were getting restless, and Saud, again, too close. He knew he must act or lose a large part of his forces and, perhaps, even the initiative he still held against his sworn enemy. Leaving Firyal to comfort his wife, he left, riding into a desert no more arid than that sealed within Zahirah.

  That had been over a month ago. Scouts had galloped in this morning and reported victory for Fouad against allies of the al Saud, though one dearly bought. The Sheikh was returning to Narash with all speed, they added, with a sideways glance at the veiled figure of Zahirah. He would be back within a day or so.

  Zahirah’s attention was caught by clouds of dust way off on the horizon. She looked out across the town and watched it as it approached at speed. Her interest quickened, only the very best horses or camels could travel at such a pace. Only a man rich enough to own many would travel so fast and risk harm to the priceless animals. Whoever it was, therefore, must be a traveller of note. But who in these troubled times would be riding in from the west, across the war-torn deserts? Why not sail in by boat, rather than run the risk of death from one faction or another fighting over the vast spaces of the hinterland?

  Even as she asked the questions, she knew the answer; Fouad. Only he fitted all the pieces of the puzzle. Such was the speed of the approaching riders, that she soon saw she was right. Fouad’s banner whipped and snapped at the head of the column with the speed of their dash. Zahirah remained unmoving as they approached. They didn’t slacken speed until they were almost at the gates of the town, and, still fast, raced through the streets to the citadel.

  Had anything gone wrong? Had the victory turned into defeat? A strange tightness gripped her chest as she contemplated that the earlier news had been wrong. She relaxed against the parapet, weak with relief, as the riders slowed their headlong dash almost at her feet. She could tell by their demeanour, boisterous and cheerful, despite their obvious fatigue, that the reports were more accurate than her own sudden fears.

  Suddenly she started, aware that looking down, her eyes had locked with Fouad’s. Expressionlessly, each gazed into the black eyes of the other. Impenetrably they stared for what to Zahirah seemed many minutes, but could only have been the seconds needed to take Fouad out of sight under the massive archway.

  Reluctant to leave her sanctuary, she turned slowly towards the steps. The hurried assent of sandalled feet stopped her and she waited, breath again strangely tight in her chest. Fouad emerged from the doorway, his guards following at a distance, his face etched with tiredness, an arm bandaged and bloodstained. He came and stood close. Their eyes locked for a second time. So intense was their gaze that Zahirah at first didn’t realise he was speaking. When she did, it took a few moments for the import of what he was saying to sink in. Then the tower seemed to tilt, shift, on its very foundations.

  “Zahirah of the Mujara, be informed as decreed by holy law, that I have decided to separate myself from you. We are to be divorced.”

  Chapter 8

  1907-1908

  The desert falcon flew high abo
ve the city. Wheeling high in the air currents above the teeming township that he hated for its endless movement and noise, he paused in his soaring flight as the unusual caught his eye. Stillness. A small spot of unutterable stillness, right in the heart of the restlessness that made up human living. Above all the turmoil of the town two people stood, separated by a few feet and surrounded by a silence so absolute that the air around them seemed to almost vibrate.

  The swirling noise and dust of the busy gateway under their feet faded as time stopped for them both. Many years later, when much had happened, the utter silence of those moments were always instantly recalled by not only the two directly in the sudden force-field, but also their attendants who, unaware of the drama suddenly exploding around the heads of the two principals, could sense the deadly unleashing of powerful emotions.

  Divorce!

  He was freeing her! After almost three years as his chattel, to be abused both in the marriage bed and out of it, she was to be free! Divorce with honour was her way out of a marriage grown ever more hateful with every day that had passed since its inception in hell. Day! No, it was the nights that had made it a living purgatory. The long nights of twisted limbs and the groaning, the panting, the animal coupling he forced on her unwilling body. She felt it desecrating her very soul each time he reached for her with the same touch that had killed so many of her people; did unimaginable things to unimagined, secret places. Now she would be free of the eyes which raked her body, naked against all the customs of her people, with undisguised passion. The same eyes as those which gazed, hooded, indifferent, implacable, as his armies swept into yet another enemy encampment and burned and destroyed at his ruthless bidding.