“I know, I know. Still, you must realize that this is your last chance. Surrender now and maybe at least a handful of my men will have mercy on you before you stand trial.”
“Stay back!”
“You will not escape.”
“My khukuri says otherwise.”
“As you wish.” The commander bowed his head as he stepped away. He was amongst the other guards before he made the most unexpected of moves: he turned his back toward her.
Ashallah’s grip loosened, to the point where she nearly dropped her khukuri. Her shock deepened as the guards around the commander fell in line behind him, albeit with less gravitas. Together, they retreated to the holding area.
The patter of droplets on the dirt drew Ashallah’s attention near. She looked at the ground to find the liquid close to her. Very close. It was then she noticed her captive quivering.
“Dear Jaha! You coward!”
The guard, who on the street above would have been mistaken for a man of power, replied like anything but one. “Please... surrender...”
“Piss yourself all you want. You won’t get any sympathy from me.”
“They’ll kill us both!”
“Then I’ll...”
Ashallah felt the captive tear away from her. With her khukuri firmly in her suddenly blood-soaked hand, she knew that the guard had cut his throat deeply in the process. He stumbled on, away from Ashallah, who just stood and watched. Something was unsettling about his behavior, a new set of fear that transcended whatever affect her khukuri had had on him until then.
“Please...” the man cried through gurgles of his blood. “Don’t release them! Let me into the holding area. Or an empty cell. Please!
Release them? The words reverberated through Ashallah’s mind as echoes reverberating from stonewalls. They repeated over and again as she hurried backward and turned to run down the main corridor, away from the light of the holding area. Soon the darkness was around her, along with the desperate words of the dying man at the other end.
“Wait... don’t...”
His wails followed.
Ashallah, for all her curiosity, fought the urge to look over her shoulder. She suspected his culprits, even though she knew of them only in legends and half-drunk stories. For all her years of fighting, she had never seen her newfound foes. Only those who had worked or visited the catacombs – the lesser type of soldiers and guards relegated to watch duty – had heard or even seen their presence. Turquoise they were called. Sons and daughters of both jinn and the unfortunate women they impregnated. Monsters.
As the wails of her former captive ceased, so Ashallah’s pace quickened. The clap of feet on stone behind sparked her onward still for she knew the speed of the turquoise was not to be taken lightly. Their growls soon came within earshot, each one louder than the one before. Ashallah pressed on, her legs aching as she pumped them furiously. Still, the turquoise gained ground.
The tunnels ahead laid enveloped in pitch, speckled with bursts of sunlight from the grates on the streets above. Had time been more of an ally, Ashallah could have afforded pause to figure out how to ascend the thirty or so feet to the neighborhoods of Yasem. The stones, some dry while others wet from discarded water and waste, reminded her that was not her luxury. For they echoed both her steps and the turquoise.
Closer, she realized. They draw closer.
The sparse light from the grates soon became less frequent. I am leaving the heart of the city, she told herself, as both her legs and her heart raced. Even the stones took on a different sense, feeling brittle beneath her feet, and carrying an odd stench, one of decay. Of suffering.
More cells, Ashallah thought. Another holding area. Where am I?
Even more than before, the paths and tunnels curved in a dizzying array. Each turn led to a weaving cavern of stones that offered no light, only darkness and the faint hope that they would continue rather than end. Some even seemed to circle round and again, so that Ashallah felt she was backtracking, drawing closer to the turquoise rather than further away.
Then she saw it. Finally. A beacon of hope. A lone sconce on the wall ahead. Lit.
One of the turquoise in her wake hollered with a voice so boisterous Ashallah thought her ears would burst. She rushed to the sconce, fighting through the burn in her thighs, the fatigue of her body. Upon reaching the thin flicker of light, she found another beyond. Followed by a second. When she reached the third, the path finally widened, with the tunnel ending before a dry riverbed.
Forty, maybe fifty feet, laid between her and the other side, where more sconces laid lit, and a row of tunnels beckoned her. A sandstone arch spanned the riverbed, a remnant of an underground aqueduct gone dry, a product of antiquity Yasem had long forgotten. With the growls and cries of the turquoise upon her ears, she hurried ahead, not caring what obstacles or foes she met on the opposing bank. Ashallah leapt into the bed. To her surprise, she found her first step met not by dry dirt but sludge. She lost her footing, head forward into the muck. She tucked her head to roll through it twice over, stopping in a crouched position on firmer ground. Only then did she look back, to gauge the distance she had come.
Then there they were. In the same tunnel from which she had emerged. One at first. Then two more. Finally, five in all. Turquoise. Two females and three males, from what Ashallah could venture to guess by examining the creatures in their rags and filth. Despite their grim appearance, Ashallah could discern that they were children of jinn. Their eyes burned as sapphires backlit, with a hue of blue that was far from comforting. Rather, to look upon it filled one with a sense of dread. Their skin, although covered in grime, displayed streaks and blots of turquoise, no doubt passed down from their paternal lineage. Then there was their script. Singular words and letters on some parts of their bodies. Two or three pairings on others. Hardly enough for phrases and sentences. Ashallah doubted that if one were to read the script aloud, the chants would hold enough power to subdue them.
The turquoise closest to Ashallah bared her teeth. Jagged razors they were, stained brown and green by years of decay. She leaned forward as if to jump forward.
In response, Ashallah rose slowly, her eyes never leaving the sapphire orbs of the beast.
Run.
The roar of a thousand midnight warriors was no match for that of the turquoise. Ashallah beat her feet on the packed sand of the dry river, ignoring any sense of exhaustion she had. The first roar was followed by a string of others, each more impactful than the one before. Columns of sand and dust fell to the ground. Ashallah snaked through them as best as she could and ignored the granules in her eyes when she could not. Through the stinging tears and grating particles in her eyes, she spotted the other side of the bank. If only I can make it, she thought. Only a little further.
The turquoise gained on Ashallah. One female – who had stood closest to Ashallah only a moment earlier – swiped at her legs. The meaty part of her hand caught Ashallah’s calf, sending her somersaulting forward once again. This time though, Ashallah drew her khukuri blades. The turned on her side, propped on her elbows and jumped to her feet in a defensive stance.
“Come on, you bitch!” Ashallah screamed.
She expected a wave of growls and cries to meet her, along with the teeth and blue-eyed scowls she had met shortly before. The five turquoise were indeed there. At a short distance. Fearsome yet somehow subdued. They stared forward, but not at Ashallah.
Ashallah looked over her shoulder, at the bank of the dry river, which stood feet away.
“Five Doors of Hell...” she murmured as she dropped her khukuris.
Chapter 9
Spit and spoiled fruit slapped Ashallah across her face. She turned. The other cheek soon met the same fate. She shook her head.
“If only I had my blades,” she said to herself, wishing her words would scare the spines from the onlookers above.
Ashallah’s cell, while still in the catacombs, had a barred opening that looked into the street above.
The slit was barely a foot tall, the kind one would pass without so much as a glance. Despite its small size, the window attracted constant attention, from onlookers wanting to see the female prisoners within. Most only glanced and moved on, sometimes shaking their heads with disapproval or disgust. Although fewer in number, the wicked of the public would stop and hurl insults, accompanied with rotting fruits or meats meant to taunt the chained.
“Here’s your feast!” said one particularly heinous woman, an old hag with stained teeth. She tossed a spoiled meat pie at Ashallah’s cell, which struck one of the bars to burst open and splatter on her face. Ashallah’s chains clanked as she reached for her face to wipe the pungent juices away. She raised her head to shout obscenities at the leathery-faced woman but found she had retreated away from the onlookers.
For the past two days, Ashallah had been enduring such shame. Along with ridicule. Scorn. Embarrassment. All of it was a world apart from the suffering she would have experienced had the turquoise captured her. Because they nearly did.
***
The turquoise had stopped short of their conquest, while standing feet from Ashallah on the underground riverbed. Ashallah, having nearly missed their clutches, found herself between them and the keepers on the other side of the bank, where the female prisoners of Yasem and its surrounding lands remain housed.
“Leave this place!” demanded one of the keepers who stood guard behind Ashallah. Ashallah noted that he, like all the other soldiers on the bank, had a shaved head. A strong, booming voice that one has, she remembered thinking. Especially for a eunuch.
In response, the turquoise which had almost torn Ashallah to shreds arched her back and hissed. The feral bitch ventured forward before a crossbow bolt shot past her. The other turquoise took notice and bared their teeth. Nevertheless, all remained in their places.
Ashallah, at once relieved but still cautious, turned slowly to look over her shoulder. As she expected, the mass behind her had grown to encompass forty strong. The rear line, situated on the rise of the bank, bore crossbows fitted with bolts of silver palmwood, polished so smooth and bright they nearly glowed in the lowlight of the catacombs. In front of the crossbowmen, a row of soldiers bearing steel-tipped pikes stood, their blades pointed at the turquoise. The pikemen, outfitted head to toe in boiled leather and scaled armor, were far more equipped to sustain the claw and tooth attacks than Ashallah.
In front of the two lines, and nearest to Ashallah, three captains of the eunuch guards scanned the underground riverbed and the tunnel entrances beyond. Once convinced that no further threats were coming, the one who had spoken approached Ashallah.
“You wear the clothes of midnight,” he stated.
“And you wear the armor of a guard with no stones,” she replied.
The guard, perhaps having had his humor removed along with his testicles, remained stone-faced. “Our messenger brought word from those above. There has been an alarm sounded for a traitor, a woman of the midnight warriors who killed her commander and two soldiers accompanying him.”
“You believe that traitor to be me?”
The eunuch captain leaned in slightly. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Ashallah eyed the crossbowmen, the soldiers with pikes, the other officers and the captain before her. She considered her options, knowing she would find no fairer treatment in all of Yasem than with these men. Any other captors -whether the turquoise she just escaped, the guards at the other end of the catacombs, or any soldiers above – would violate and wound her repeatedly, possibly to no end.
“I am no traitor,” Ashallah started, knowing her response would not appease her potential new warden. “I have served Yasem with honor, even under the cloak of darkness, when the Grand Sultans many missions required the cover of night rather than the exposure of day. I have done everything required to fulfill my duties, save the one that only serves the vilest of men. I refused my commander’s many advances, to his dismay, so as not to have his filthy cock inside of me. For that blemish to his manly pride, he tried to rape me, along with his guards. I responded with steal and blood, resulting in the crimes you now charge me. I will admit to killing Shaheen and his fellow rapists in self-defense. But any accusations of treason or other crimes I will deny, to the point of death.”
The eunuch captain stared back at Ashallah. She thought she saw the flicker of emotion. Whether pity or empathy, she could not say. Perhaps it was even a poignant feeling, stemming from his own helplessness of losing the ability to make love or father children. Whatever it was, for Ashallah the flicker served as only a point of curiosity. For within a moment, it passed.
“Take her into custody,” the eunuch captain ordered. “You will remain under our charge until those above are ready to judge you.”
As they bound Ashallah in chains, an undeniable truth rang through the recesses of her mind: I have already been judged.
***
The clanking of scaled armor above drew Ashallah’s attention. She raised her head to find two eunuch guards stand before her barred window. As though on cue, the cast iron hinges of her cell door creaked, as seven eunuch guards entered along with the dungeon’s keymaster. The keymaster, a twig of a man seemingly made whole by the thick robe draping his shoulders, coughed as he fingered through the keys on his ring.
“Do you always have such an escort?” Ashallah asked. “I bet they wipe your ass after each shit you let loose.”
“Insolence,” the keymaster noted as he fingers came to rest on the key to her chain. “A common side effect of staying here, even if only for a few days.”
“If you knew my accused crimes, you’d expect this much and more from me, given the sentence I face.”
One of Ashallah’s chains clanked to the stone floor. The keymaster reached for the other that held her at bay. “I needn’t worry about your worsening insolence. You face no further time here.”
The other chain fell. Ashallah eyed her opportunity to escape. With her hands free, she could snap the keymaster’s neck like driftwood and have his keyring before he hit the floor. In the same instant, she would endure the blades of the guards, who encircled her. She could dodge one or two in these quarters. But seven?
The keymaster’s beady eyes, unperturbed by the prospect of death at the hands of a prisoner, met her searching gaze. “Kill me. Try to hold me hostage. Or don’t. These men will not hesitate to skewer my thin frame to strike you. Be certain of that.”
Momentarily defeated, Ashallah followed the keymaster out of her cell and down the corridor toward the central quarters. Her escort of seven accompanied her, with their pike blades pointed at her neck and torso. Not doubting their expertise or precision, she walked on through the quarters, past the stares of the other eunuch guards. Although none would hesitate to strike her down if need be, Ashallah felt strangely at ease amongst the castrated. Like the midnight warriors, they were soldiers yet outcasts. Some five hundred years earlier, a slave trader had presented his entourage of eunuch soldiers to the Grand Sultan, boasting of their skills and loyalty. The Grand Sultan was so impressed that he bought the company of eunuch soldiers from the trader, so that since then scores of castrated had served in several capacities. Initially, their primary responsibility was to guard the harems of the Grand Sultan, which held the most beautiful women in all of Greater Dyli. It was a task suited only to those who would not act on the desire to fornicate; even the midnight warriors could not be trusted to deny such temptation. Decades of obedience further impressed the Grand Sultan, so that he expanded the roles they served. Yasem was even fortunate enough to receive a few companies of eunuch soldiers to keep the peace over the women of the city. Their assignment was wasted, though, as the old command of the city saw them not as an ally but a threat to their power. A collective gathering of officers and commanders, which had included Shaheen, relegated their service to the catacombs, where they were to guard those female offenders who were lucky enough to find sanctuary in their captivity rather than that of viri
le male guards.
Ashallah and her entourage passed the mess hall, barracks and the armory. At each, she felt the stares of the guards. She endured similar gazes above when she ascended the stairs to the street. Surrounded by guards, Ashallah did not have to concern herself with others throwing rotten and spoiled foods at her. Instead, they hurled insults and wishes for her demise, words that would have bothered a lesser woman. Undisturbed, Ashallah continued with her head held high. It was not until she neared the amphitheater that her demeanor showed any effect from the crowd.
As the guards led Ashallah to the entrance of Yasem’s amphitheater, she spotted the indigo and black clothes of the Shadya. The fact that they were there, outside the arena walls to protest the trial of a woman by men, was not so surprising to her. What was unusual was the extent of their presence. With every step Ashallah took toward the mouth of the stadium, their numbers seemed to grow, far beyond the total she thought them to be. By the time she and her guard entourage came within fifty feet of the entrance, hundreds lined both sides of the thoroughfare. Eunuchs and virile soldiers alike stood with pikes and javelins crossed before themselves, pushing back on the crowd that would push and shove as Ashallah passed.
Ashallah would have marched on, the audience a blur to her, had she not heard a familiar cry.
“Yala Hasem!”
Ashallah stopped.
“Move,” commanded one of the guards.
She did not. She listened to the crowd, who began to pick up the wartime chant. Something particular about that first cry captured her attention. She thought she heard a familiar voice. Perhaps from one of her midnight comrades?
“Move,” urged the same guard, who pushed her along.
Ashallah obliged, albeit at a slow clip. More from the crowd took up the chant.
“Yala Hasem! Yala Hasem! Yala Hasem!”
The whole audience that lined the street became a sea of dark hues. Women beat their fists in the air and waved clothes of black and blue. The soldiers dug their feet into the sand as more Shadya pressed upon them.
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