The Sands of Murabad
Silver River, Naghabad
The blazing Murabadian sun burned the land whole. Desert dunes glimmering golden and red, and the sound of a horn breaks all silence amidst the empty desert. From the distance, a glimpse of shining silver could be seen, its riders waving a crescent banner on the white field. Behind them, a score of camel-mounted archers waited patiently; tens of bows ready to take flight. In the very front is armored pikemen, their pikes held up front, standing still in the rocky desert. Ibrahim al-Rashid, Lord-Captain of Naghabad stood on his pikemens’ right. He watched silently as the armoured riders, Saracen Knights they are called, take up position to his flank. Opposite him the enemy could be seen; a mass of riders in a scattered formation, waving their kopesh and swords to the sky. The mounted bandits screamed their war cries and came charging fast, and he barked orders for the pikemen to form a phalanx formation. “Pikes up front!” he screamed. Ibrahim himself mounted his horse and rallied the camel-archers to his back.”Fire!” Dozens of arrows scattered like raining steel to the enemy, their riders falling one by one. In front, the pikemen stood stilll; the Saracen Knights, being more experienced veteran warriors, moved slowly from the flank to the enemy’s side.
Still their numbers are too many. The enemy riders couldn’t be stopped by mere arrows. Ibrahim ordered the pikemen’s commander, his battle polemarch, to stay still and protect the archers as they let loose another volley. Quickly he ride to the Saracen Knights’ side, still in their flanking formation. Their leader a captain of Lady Fatima’s, was a bald,bearded man in his early fifties. “You ever fought one of these before, kid?” he asked. “Many,” Ibrahim answered, and the rats will run scurrying back to their lords once we are finished here. They meant to feign a retreat once my pikemen are done with them.” “Clever. Let us not make their predictions right. Men! Ride ahead!” the Saracen captain shouted. In the distance, he saw the enemy riders quickly charging into his pikemen, while the camel-archers rained down whatever remains of their volley. Half a hour the pikemen stood, as the enemy riders began to retreat. This is a coy, he know it when he sees one. None of the pikemen seemed to take the trap, though. The enemy riders, sensing that the pikemen has not followed their trap, began charging back into the infantry. “Hammer,” the Saracen captain told him. “And anvil,” he answered. They lifted their curved swords, and the whole Saracen cavalry followed them. “What we do to those who disturbed the Sultan’s peace?” the Saracen captain shouted. “Justice! Justice and punishment!” the army responded. “Justice it is, then! Charge!”
Two hundred riders in full armor charged to the bandits’ side. As for Ibrahim, he remained calm and steady, mainly because the captain mentioned his father’s title, the man he swore to take revenge on. As the Saracen frontline charged the bandit’s back, forming a perfect hammer-and-anvil strike, Ibrahim took a standing spear with his left hand and throwed it to a bandit’s back. The riots ensued. He thrushed the curved sword through a man’s back, and cut the head of another. The pikemen is still a long way from his side. Sticking with the Saracen captain, he gracefully traded blows with a man before cutting his legs. The captain finished the job. He slit the throat of another, and drove the curved blade straight through a man’s chainmail. Rich enough, he thought. He stabbed a man in the back, but four of his comrades came to him; he drew a small dagger from his belt and throwed it to one’s throat. The captain drove his blade to one; the other two he cut their legs.
Eventually, the battle’s coming to an end. The bandits, even though they’re numerous, are being cut down by heavier-armored cavalry and pikemen. The camel-archers has no arrow left, so they charged with their khopesh right into the battle’s center. A shame, Ibrahim thought. He really enjoyed cutting heads and stabbing chests, if only to channel his rage to his father into a violent desire. The remaining enemy has surrendered, and the Saracen captain herded them like sheeps to their camp. Still, there’s some. He cut a man’s head, as he was still holding a sword. The fool didn’t even see what is coming. Another set of bandits foolishly refused captivity. He drove the curved sword through one’s back, slit the throat of another, cut a hand, doesn’t know whose, and cut the...
“Enough, kid! They are captives, and not for you to slaughter!”
“Insolent” is the first word to cross his mind hearing the captain shouted atop his horse. No one shouted to the Prince like he was a rabid dog. The captain would pay, and it’s unlike Lady Fatima would neet such a brute leading her army.
“Apologies, Captain,” he said, rage supressed. “We need only to find who paid these bandits and where they’re.” “Aye. You, bring them to question.” The captain said to his aide. He soon found himself walking with the captain to their tent. “You’re better a swordsman than many I’ve seen, kid.” The captain started. “But I’ve seen you slaughtering those fools from the back, slitting their thoats even though they’re raised ‘em hands. No honor in that, I say.”
Keep babbling, old man, and the next throat slit will be yours.
Truth is, Ibrahim doesn’t even know how he got to be like this in the first place. It has something to do with his father abandoning him in Sultanabad, torturing him constantly with the brutish trainings and mockery. He got very little sleep everynight. Even reading books, one of his favourites, couldn’t help with it. He assured himself he wouldn’t be a complete madman until he slit the damned old man’s throat and took the Sultan title for himself. Someday. Now for allies. He can’t have Lady Fatima’s army captain killed in friendly hands. No, what would be important is for him to just play along with the plots, and kill them all someday, those knaves. The captain’s tent is just up ahead, and there sits the chief bandit, hands and feet tied. Beside him is the captain’s guards; faces covered in veil-like chainmail, with a steelcap turban in their heads, wearing a sort of expensive armour. Fancy, he thought. He imagined that those so-called knights from the north are fancier than the guards. The captain entered after him, and began the questioning as he picked a stool from the tent’s side. The captain at first asked more generaal questions. The interrogation was a hour long, until finally they got the answers they wanted; the bandits are paid from someone in the south, more or not connected with the capital. Being one of Lady Fatima’s commanders, and as the lady herself resented his father, Ibrahim considered it free to talk against the Sultan here. After all, do they serve the same cause now.
“Who do you think hired that one, kid?” asked the captain. “One of the Sultan’s. Who else it might be but my father?” he answered with a chuckle.
“That’s a treasonous talk you got there, boy. Mind your tongue. Sultan Jafar is still my liege, and your father, whatever he might be to you.”
“You know nothing of him.” He left the captain afterwards.
Ibrahim went off to the stables, where his mount has been waiting for him. A good young stallion, he is, the colour of sand, fast and swift like the wind. Ghabar was his name. Dust.
“Prepare the forces. We are done here, and march all the captives. Dungeons, not selling block, we are not some lowly slaver. No harm will come to them as long as I am Lord-Captain.” He told his lieutenant. “At once, my lord,” the lieutenant answered.
“And one again.”
“That prisoner in the Saracen captain’s tent. My father must not know about his presence. News of a guest from Aratas has reached here, so we ride swift to the capital. The captain will take the rest.”
Ibrahim’s lieutenant stood silent for a while. “Are you listening me?” he barked.
“... At once, my lord."
Royal Keep, Sultanabad
“Any whereabouts of my brother?”
“Last we heard, Prince Ibrahim rallied the defenses of Naghabad against the northern raider tribes, your Magnificence.”
“Best he don’t keep us waiting.”
She don’t like this feeling, not a bit. Her circle of spies – her desert rats did not cover any informations about her brother at all. And if there is one thing Sofia al-Rashid hated more than else, that would be lack of information. She set off from Naghabad to the capital just a week ago, as her brother insisted that the bandit problem in the north is a great deal of nuisance, and he set off to deal with it at once, galloping out of the city with his fancy knights and men-at-arms following behind. “Promise me, “ she had said. “Promise me you’d be safe. The land is full of Father’s rats, scurrying away and spying, and one might try to slit your throat away. Promise me.”
“You worry too much,” that much her brother could answer.
Even in her childhood home, Sofia has never felt more unsafe. Since her meeting with Ibrahim nearly five years ago – before, she doesn’t get to know her brother very often – she had grown to pity and then love him, being tortured and treated like a common peasant by their father. Witnessing what her father has done - poisoning and murdering in the dark, betraying everyone for a living, and the very fact that he stole that throne – it made her sick, and understand how her brother resented Sultan Jafar so much. Not that she openly objected that way of life, though. She’d live the way her father did, lying at ease and all, but she vowed never to plot or murder anyone that is not for ther greater good. The greater good.
Sending her maids away to her bedchamber, gardens, well, she needed just a time alone, she descendes the Crown Gardens’ marble steps out to the courtyard. In her memories the Crown Garden’s courtyard was a piece of paradise on earth. Her father kept all kinds of exotic beasts, a legacy of the Sultan’s young times – where he travelled the world. Ostriches, birds-of-paradise, monkeys and lions, well, even beasts such as steppe lions and giant goats. On top of it, the gardens are her favourite place from all. The lines of lilac, circles of roses, patterns of lavender, and there’s even two beautiful fountains, a refreshment in Murabad’s desert wind. Reminiscent of her memories, Sofia gracefully walked through the terrace, past the statues of ancient Sultans which she doesn’t like at all, and a particular Sultan. This time he is alive.
“Greetings, Sofia.” Her father starts.
“Apologies, father. I am just enjoying the pleasantries.”
“And did you bring your retainers with you as well?” he asked.
“I am afraid not, father.”
“Dear. Have you any particular news regarding the whereabouts of your brother now, child?” So his rats haven’t told him yet. “Unfortunately, I do not, father.” That was not a lie. She got to be honest with him, at least. Her father did not seem pleased at all.
“You’re close.” And now he turned to a personal approach. He should at least have the grace of keeping your children’s matters to themselves, that old man. It is never not rude to ask about things like that. “We are,” she answered. No time for graces and pleasantries now.
“I always considered of you to be my heir,” he ranted again.
“And now you have the insolence of galloping across Murabad with the boy! What next? Travelling the whole of Aea, spending my wealth on worthlessness? I thought I raised you better than that!” This is crossing the line now.
“He’s still your son, father!” Sofia screamed.
“He killed my wife! Your mother!” he screamed back.
“Lady Elena must be ashamed of what her lord husband turned to be now. Blaming an innocent child. You heard it, Lord.”
And then the hand flies. Her father’s touch are always stinging. She felt a tear ran through her cheeks. This insolent man, and yet he has the grace to be her father. And her liege. She felt rage and sorrow mixed into one jumbled emotion. At the end, she screamed again.
“You would expect my obedi-“
“You are my daughter!” Jafar screamed high, the whole court must be ringing on their ears now. “You and your brother, your servants and your little game. You all will obey my commands. There will be no dissent in my own House. Learn from it, now.”
There is no point of screaming again now. All she can do at least is contain the anger. “Y-yes.. my liege. Your Magnificence.” And he left, finally. A guise of cold wind swept her.
She went running back to her apartments at the Gardens’ main tower. She barred the doors and closed the windows. And she started crying, soundly ‘till a river poured down on the bed. She punched a pillow and thrown it into the fireplace. She took a peacock-feather pen then, and started writing in scrambles.
“Come at once. Help me. Save me. I need you now. Bring everyone with you, your army, your fancy knights, Lady Fatima, everything, everyone, every sword and arrow. I had never needed you more than now. Every second is hell. Every hour is torment. I cannot stand being with him much longer, come at once..” the letters are distorted, the ink met her tears as she folded the parchment. She pulls the door bar and fetched her handmaids. “Have Prince Ibrahim receive this at once, and swiftly. I know he is somewhere between Naghabad and this cursed place. Find him.” She wiped off her tears afterwards.
“The people of Aratas will come. Have us prepared fully. And my brother will arrive before evveryone does.” Calm and collected, like you always have done. Now we wait.
