I unsheathed my sword and raised it to the heavens. It was curved at its end and engraved with letters of the Persian script on its blade and again on the other end, on its pommel. A sword ransacked from the corpse of a brigand, yet fit for a warrior.

With a wordless roar, I leapt forward and pushed through densely packed bodies of men heaving, grunting, dying. I set foot into a haven of utter turmoil, a world within a world that knew naught but the shrieks of the afflicted, the bellows of the frenzied and the berserk, the sheer, unadulterated chaos of snarling, seasoned warriors penetrating ranks of frantic men, weapons glistening, eyes ablaze with a desire to scorch whatever landscape stood in their place to wreak unmitigated carnage.

Seeking me out.

I adored every moment of it.

I crossed swords with the enemy for the first time during my stint with the imperial army. And so, I bloodied the valley of Yarmouk with my wrath.

More shrieking Muslim warriors found their way to my path, and they met their fates at the end of my blade, only to be replaced by another once they fell. Yet, most were not defeated so easily.

There was a vigor to the rampaging Muslim troops that had been absent three years prior, I noticed.

But the determination and growls adorning their faces were obscured to me beneath a haze of blind rage. In place of their features or the cheek plates of helmets, I saw a dagger driven through Qusayy's neck.

I saw Mother wailing, dragged across the city by an unapologetic captor, shoved to her knees, clinging to a shrieking child all the while. I heard the rumbling of the skies and the bellows of gods resounding through the cracks of thunder as three heads rolled to the bottom of a ditch. Their inevitable splashes gentle and slight, in disparity to the event that saw them plummet in the first place.

My blade rang against that of adversary. I swung, and I lunged, I swept my sword about in broad arcs, I parried and sidestepped, ducked and heaved and pushed, kicked, swung my fist and headbutted. I bled and I killed.

Yet, before long, I found myself exhausted of mind and body before.

My sword was heavier and my grip on its hilt became increasingly tenuous; the resolve of the Muslims only seemed to mount while mine waned with every sliver of resistance they demonstrated. I felt my hip ache and my left arm waver and tremble. My wounds, though shallow, had not been properly treated, I remembered.

But a breakthrough must have been imminent, I thought, determined to rid myself of this valley once and for all. We were pushing the Muslim center back. The Nubian himself was performing an ample job of relieving the rest of us of substantial pressure, carving a gaping hole in the enemy ranks.

My blows grew increasingly lethargic and sluggish all the same. I lunged at a foeman's chest, but the strike was ill-timed and languid besides. It only served to expose me, and my opponent leapt at the opportunity, scathing me across the left arm, near where I had already been injured.

The blow stung and I yelped in agony. He slashed again and he would have sliced my chest had I not raised my sword to block the blow at an opportune moment. He released one hand from the grip of his hilt and struck me across the face.

I heard a crack, even over the din of thousands of men slaughtering one another but felt only numbness at first. Then, a gradual and incessant throbbing in and around the vicinity of my nose.

Then I screamed.

I licked blood that had evidently splattered all around during the initial impact as pain I could only describe as the swarm of a thousand livid bees bursting into my nostrils washed over me. My breathing was beginning to betray me, I noticed, and my vision was hindered with rogue splatters of blood.

I struggled frantically, flailed and kicked, frenzied and half blind.

In that moment, I knew I'd die. Pathetic and alone. As I'd lived.

I whispered a prayer to every god I could think of, and an apology to those I failed to rescue or avenge.

I would have lost my life that day if it hadn't been for the Nubian. He had been following me around for weeks beforehand, a dog lapping at his master's heels. His pursuit was an unwelcome nuisance, a bothersome headache. Yet, for his intervention at Yarmouk, I could not be more grateful.

With an endless flurry of blows, he decapitated and maimed all those who dared tread near him. He buried his axe deep within skulls and found it lodged in the hips of defeated warriors. He removed it in a split second before resuming his great slaughter, a menacing figure that gave pause to potential combatants.

He grabbed me by the shoulder with a massive fist, jolting waves of pain up to my neck and began hauling me away from the field of battle. I regained enough of my wits to offer up half-decent resistance, parrying blows, evading tripping and subsequent trampling, as the Nubian and I vacated the scene of demolition, my face throbbing with excruciating pain all the while.

And the Nubian and I fought side by side for the first time, bellowing and bleeding next to one another as brothers.

_____________

We fought for our lives as well as for the personal glory and the elation of slaughter. When you take a man's life, when you see him tremble beneath your heel, it becomes a matter of possession. You own him as well as his fate. The question of an entire potential future for this individual lies entirely in your choice; he is vulnerable, to do with as you please.

There is a beast in every man, longing for blood as a goat yearns for fodder. If you decide to end your defeated adversary, you take a step in quenching the beast's bloodthirst. You toy with the fascinating concept of finality; the fact that all things have an end, and few thing, if any are eternal. Some things like the souls of men can cease to exist at the snap of a finger, like the snuffing of a campfire.

Yet, my hotheaded pursuit of vengeance and this craving for the elation of taking a man's life had blinded me on the third day at Yarmouk. Such is the mind of the youth. They think themselves invincible, indestructible, the protagonists of an epic poem in which they vanquish wicked enemy and win the hearts of fair maidens.

They relinquish the chain of command, rush headfirst into a battle they are entirely unequipped, untrained and unprepared for, and wounded as well.

Now, I lay sprawled in a tent, bandaged all over, suffering spasms of pain. My nose continued to throb, gushing blood all the while.

"It's broken," Kusaila diagnosed solemnly.

"I can see that," I grunted in irritation, before doubling over in pain.

"Did you know the hip wound's festered?"

"I did not," I confessed.

The third day of battle ended with another stalemate, both sides returning to their encampments battered and left worse for wear, with equally dwindling numbers. Neither side with any breakthrough to boast of. Whenever one Roman regiment forced a gap between enemy units, Khalid and his cavalry would sweep in and push us back.

Vahan insisted on implementing the same strategy one day after the other. Overwhelm the enemy with superior numbers, create a gap and proceed to decimate the remaining Muslims.

The plan failed miserably every time.

The level of incompetence was starting to remind me of Tulayhah ibn Khuwaylid. Even then, I had narrowly escaped with my own life and found myself in Damascus besides, bruised, humiliated and battered, losing two friends in the process.

My temper flared at the thought of another defeat at the hands of the Muslims, another friend's life lost as I trudged through the path the gods had carved out for me. My thoughts were further reaffirmed when another brawl between a Circassian and a Greek broke out during the dawn.

I was Hanthalah ibn Ka'b. I'd suffered far worse than a broken nose or a hip wound. Mine wasn't to languish, defeated and wounded in a piss-stained tent while death loomed over. When men told me I could not, I should not, I rose time and again, snarling at the gods with sword in hand, curse upon lips, and dream in heart.

I was Hanthalah ibn Ka'b. I make the Devil tremble.

It was then that I made my decision.

While everyone was too busy spectating, intervening or joining in on the brawl raging within the encampment, I sat lounging at a campfire with Dalmatius, the Nubian, Kusaila and a dozen others who belonged to our tetrarchia.

My sword hung ready at my waist, my bow on my back, my pocket-size idol hidden beneath layers of clothing. My body ached with a dozen or more scabs and wounds, the gashes throbbing prominently beneath linen bandages. I had not noticed these injuries at the height of the melee, the rush of battle pushing away any pain or discomfort below surface.

The discomfort of a broken nose is too insufferable, and constant besides, so, I won't bother you with describing it any further. Do not break your fucking nose.

The march to Antioch and again to Yarmouk seemed to have humbled Dalmatius. Tetrarch was the lowest rank in a tagma's hierarchy, and there existed forty other such officers in our tagma alone. Emperor Heraclius' horde of over forty thousand men had seen Dalmatius' prestige dwindle considerably, seeing as he was outranked by nearly everyone.

We shared rations, even tents, and now, he sat brooding at the campfire as though one of us. And he was Egyptian besides. Looked down upon by Greeks.

"I've given a lifetime of service to this empire," he sulked, a brawl raging beyond. "Yet I've only ever been rewarded with muck and shit."

I remembered Martha's passionate views on the inequality between Greeks and those of Egypt in Alexandria. I felt a lump forming in my throat at the memory.

Dalmatius grabbed a stick and idly prodded the ground at his feet with it. The first sliver of light was emerging in the sky; the fourth day of fighting would be upon us soon. I wondered if it would be the last.

The Nubian snuffed out the campfire before long and the others retired to their tents, leaving only Dalmatius and myself spectating the brawl that was only now culminating to its height at the center of camp.

"You're a good man, Hanthalah."

I gave him a baffled look.

"I have wronged many of you. It was a mere projection of my experience with Greeks. You are no barbarian. Well...perhaps, you are. But a good barbarian. If such a thing exists."

The sun was at its apex now; Dalmatius craned his neck and stared at the enemy rousing from their tents hundreds of yards away.

"You are not going to reprimand us for insubordination?" I asked.

He gave me a bemused look. "The matter is entirely out of my hands, but of course you will be reprimanded in one way or another once all this is said and done. By any number of superior officers."

Good man? What did he know of me? I closed my eyes and saw Martha's eyes gleaming as I drove my dagger through her heart.

"We have lost four tetrarchs, three penarchs and the bikarios of our tagma," Dalmatius interrupted my thoughts. "But this day, the world will see a good Egyptian man perform a deed the Greeks have cowered from too long. They will see an Egyptian bleed for the glory of Empire. A Miaphysite for the glory of Christ."

He crossed himself.

"Thought you were Chalcedonian," I remarked.

"False conversion," he spat, as though ashamed. "To appease unworthy overlords. But the only lord is Christ. This is evident now. No more will I curry for the favor of mortal man. Today, I serve Christ and Christ alone. By smiting heathen."

As if on cue, a sole rider emerged from the Muslim ranks, signaling the start of the day's fighting with a customary

duel. I recognized Khalid's flowing black silks and his demon of a mount that wrought havoc on us the days prior.

Khalid unsheathed his sword and raised his voice so that it washed over the Roman camp, drowning out the raucous of the ensuing brawl.

"I am the son of al-Waleed," he announced. "Will anyone duel?"

He did not need an ostentatious boast to instill fear in his enemies' hearts.

"My time has come," Dalmatius said.

He strapped his scabbard to his waist, his blade yet unsheathed, and strode toward a nearby brown gelding nibbling at the grass.

"It is," I agreed, unsheathing my own sword.

I grabbed Dalmatius by the shoulder and drove it through his back.

Dalmatius gasped, sinking to his knees. I scooped him up in my arms before he met ground, gurgling on his own blood all the while, eyes wide.

I slit his throat in order to hasten his death and cease his twitching and seizing. I raised my blade and struck his neck, but it would not budge. It took three more hacks for me to cleave his head off his shoulders.

Decapitating a man is a skill that ought to be learned; it's not as easy as it sounds.

I hopped onto the gelding's back, and spurred it forward to a canter, my sword in one hand and Dalmatius' severed head in the other.