The old man

Fresh fruit! Fresh fruit, just picked! Only half a dinar! Step right up! Tigris dates! Finest dates from the southern oases!"**

**"Where are you, housewives? Where are the young maidens? Perfumes! Oud perfumes! You won't regret it, my fiery one! A magic scent that turns beasts into tame kittens!"**

Hwash spat out the remains of his tobacco roll, irritated by the vendors' cries. He smirked bitterly at the latest ridiculous pitch.

*"Hah! Turns beasts into... kittens? Did he actually say 'kittens'?!"*

He stood to retrieve the waterskin from his horse's saddle, washing away both the bitter tobacco taste and his walking thirst.

They had dismounted at the market entrance - there was no other way through the city. It was the shortest route; going around the walls would waste half a day, and the commander was in a terrible hurry... racing against time itself. But he'd walked straight into a trap.

Hwash saw it clearly on his leader's face, though the man tried to hide his frustration. His gamble to save time by cutting through the city had backfired.

Two hours had passed with agonizingly slow progress. The market was unbearable today - with spring's arrival, goods overflowed. The New Market (or New City) served as a vital commercial hub. Most locals lived off this marketplace - merchants, porters, innkeepers, cooks, tobacco sellers, food vendors... even dealers of greasy fare.

Hwash counted numerous dialects: foreigners, southerners with their smooth, sly speech, polite and quick-talking capital merchants, and northerners with their deliberate, weighty words that carried rhythm like westerners - though the western dialect was more exaggerated, its consonants fuller. Westerners... their lilt was lighter, almost poetic.

The vendors' cries grated on him, fueling his irritation. The heat didn't help - while the weather was mild, his armor baked under the sun and his own simmering anger. The crowd jostled; he nearly knocked over a woman while distracted by a dagger stall and almost trampled a vendor's boy. The lad proved surprisingly agile, dodging Hwash with nimble grace. Then another clash: an eastern merchant stomped on his foot and pretended not to notice. Hwash exploded:

**"Are you blind, you fool?!"**

Ending the argument with:

**"Language fit only for whores!"**

When they finally exited the city, Hwash breathed deeply in relief. He mounted swiftly - his hybrid mare, Sarab, inheriting her Arab mother's elegance and her Barbary father's endurance.

He'd raised her for twenty years, since his service with a southeastern lord obsessed with purebreds. That lord, "Peacock," was elitist even about horses. Sarab resulted from a mountain Barbary stallion breaking into the purebred paddock during the mare's heat.

Hwash remembered the torrent of curses when "Peacock" discovered this.

How could he forget? They'd been directed at him! Night watch over the stables was his duty, but he'd been drunk that night... and the night before, and the one before that.

**"Damn you to eternal hellfire, Hwash! Look what your negligence has done! This mongrel has defiled my prized mare! Were you deaf? Or distracted by some mountain siren's call? You'll pay for this!"**

Hwash had endured the abuse stone-faced. Though sharp-tongued, he'd never retorted. Despite his arrogance, the old lord had been fair and brutally honest - whether addressing a servant, his son, or even a king.

As he often told Hwash:

**"Truth remains truth, even with the executioner's blade at my neck!"**

But the lord's other concerns made him temporarily forget the mare... until foaling time.

Hwash remembered restraining the thrashing mare during birth. "Peacock" had watched from a feed crate, wrapped in his fine yellow camel-hair cloak, the winged horse emblem of House Buraq glinting in the lantern light.

Hwash ventured:

**"The mare will recover, my lord. But... the foal? Will it join the purebreds or workhorses?"**

**"You dare ask?! You start the fire then wonder about the smoke? By God's mercy, I'd slaughter you both if not for my respect for life!"**

Firstborn foals were prized.

**"But this is God's will. I'll decide later."**

**"My lord, I want that foal. My warhorse is old - maybe a year left. Take two years of my back pay plus six months' unpaid work. A hybrid isn't fit for a lord or plowman. Only fools buy them... and fools don't ride warhorses."**

**"You cunning rat! The stars are closer than this deal! Did you think mercenary tricks would work on me? Damn you! You don't know me, Hwash. What the wolf knows, the hound has long mastered!"**

Hwash fell silent. He respected the man - why, he couldn't say. The lord reminded him of someone... half-remembered.

*"I could destroy him with words,"* Hwash often thought.

Yet he stayed quiet. Something inside him was changing.

He'd watched Sarab struggle to stand after birth, defiant from her first breath. She mirrored something within him - that restless energy. It amused yet unsettled him.

*"What's happening to me?"*

He was leading the horses back when the Nubian maid came running, wailing:

**"The beloved master is gone!"**

Hwash understood her grief. The lord had treated everyone equally - servants like family. "Peacock" was dead. Now his holdings would pass to his heir.

Hwash didn't dwell on the funeral. Such memories only reminded him of mortality - that one day he too would lie still while prayers were recited. That was all he hoped for - a good ending.

He knew death intimately. He'd watched strong men meet it - some calmly reciting final words, others taken too suddenly for even a gasp.

Removing his armor under the mulberry tree, Hwash washed in the stream. His fingers traced the old scar running from ear to collarbone.

He bore many scars, both visible and hidden.

That wound should have been minor... yet it had festered strangely. For a time, he suspected poison or curses.

The battle - more accurately, the massacre - had ended. The village reeked of burnt straw. Riderless horses bolted while dogs licked blood from their former masters' corpses. Though new to the mercenary band "Wadghul," Hwash had proven himself.

Now they buried their own dead. Mercenaries didn't just kill - they buried their comrades too.

He'd been barely twenty. It marked his transition from farmhand to sellsword - the only life that gave purpose to his rootless existence.

At first, the killing unsettled him. But he grew accustomed to walking over corpses - enemies or allies, it mattered little. He'd learned early: the heart beating in his chest would someday grace a tombstone.

The girl attacked while he searched a peasant's hut. Her parents lay dead outside - the father crushed by a mace, the mother's hand severed mid-swing.

**She came at him like a leech!**

Her small knife pierced his neck, a failed attempt to slit his throat. Pretty despite the dirt and rags, her wrist trembled in his grip. Her eyes burned with hate... and unshed tears.

Just a child - no more than seven - yet fiercer than most warriors.

He threw her off, the knife slicing down to his chest. As she fled, he shouted:

**"We're here to help!"**

But he tripped. When he looked up, a spear had already found her small body.

She joined her parents in death.

That day, Hwash learned carelessness kills. And that fear drives even children to impossible acts.

He also learned to always wear his armor.

Henceforth, his comrades called him **"Hwash the Tortoise

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