[h1]Ghassanid Syria[/h1]
[h2]Jabiya[/h2]

The blood had soaked into the sand until it become much like red clay that lay out to bake atop the potter's table. Dashed across the golden sands of Syria the blood-stained desert warped and whirled in a stormy dance among the ocean waves of sand. Clear into every direction marched the desert, disappearing into the horizon before the very eyes of man. A wispy sooty cloud of silvery smoke plumed up into the clear blue sky from the tent city of the Ahl al-Kitab. And in the rising heat of the desert, the smell of corpses was smoldering among the ash into the early putrid stench of decay.

Among the heat and the sands the bodies that lay here in the desert would ferment and dry, turning into withered husks of man and camel and horse. In time, the dunes would cover the battlefield and hide it from view. But until then the vultures taunted from over head as they came to the stench of war. And below the jackals had come to pick apart the bodies. To loot the purses of the dead and unburden their shoulders of their armor and their swords. They would collect the living with the horses and the implements of war.

Unshaken at the aftermath of battle the Sword of God sat in unshaken poise from atop his horse as he surveyed the battle at its end. Sour and sullen, the face of Khalid ibn al-walid scanned the battlefield in a undaunted poise. Firm and confident in his victory here today. His brow narrowed at the glare of the sun as its arms reached out to scorch the sands and the glints of a hundred weapons shone with the ferocity of the stars.

Khalid was a man of war. Having once fought the glorious prophet. With the dry leathering of the sun came scars. Pronounced of which were the sunken dimples on his left-cheek. A artifact of being stricken with smallpox. He had survived this, as he had survived many things. His duty was to the Caliph and to Islam. He pretended to not be a moral or an immoral man, held no convictions of chivalry. His moral poise was carried on his shoulders and his confident stride as he dropped from his horse to walk the field. His only affirming ethics were to his duty as commander. It was to practice war in the most efficient way possible. He was called the Sword of God for his prowess and his strength. And not one iota of this would be held back from those who challenged it. And the Romans were the greatest challenger.

Taken his side the armies champions – Mubarizun – followed in his step. Cloaks of chain mail dragged against the sand. The buckles that closed the chest were allowed to hang open to reveal the boiled leather lamellar behind the heavy chain. Hanging from their rounded helmets a heavy veil of chain obscured their faces as they scanned the corpses they walked over.

There was a tense silence over the battlefield as if all men – living and dead – waited to be commanded to speak. Khalid walked to the side of such a man as he knelt over a gravely injured Roman. He spat and sputtered under the weight of his armor. Blood caked his face from where a sword had cleaved clear through his face and took out his eye. The tangled remains of his cheek hung off his cheek bones. The Muslim, young and naive sat crouched by his side, shakily holding a canteen made of a camel's stomach as he tried to foster some sort of care to the incapacitated soldier.

Seeing the shadows of his commander stretch over the two, the Arab hesitated. He turned to look up at Khalid with wide shaken eyes. He did not look to want to admit it, but deep behind his dusty eyes Khalid could see the youth bore a great deal of guilt. The youth stuttered behind the cloth of the turban that guarded his mouth from the dust of the restless desert. The Roman choked between painful breaths to try and curse Khalid, but his contempt merely choked out between chapped lips in a dry, inaudible bubble.

Khalid saw the Roman, and measured him. The extent of his battle-won injuries were extensive, but not fatal. He would live, but as a cripple. This was promised if the generous Bedouin boy at his side continued to try and clean the Roman's injury. Khalid's face remained narrow and flat. The fringes of his beard waved in the dry desert wind.

“In- Insha...” the young Bedouin began weakly.

“Inshallah he will survive his wounds.” Khalid interjected before the young man could finish. “Inshallah he is a survivor. And with all he will stand in chains to be delivered unto Medina.” the commander demanded. It was not a death sentence, and the young man seemed to loose his tension. Better to live a slave, then to be tortured in this heat.

“Y-yes, Inshallah!” the young man cheered, if hollowly as he stood up, dragging the Roman to his feet. With his arm slung over his shoulders he carried the limping man from where he had laid bleeding in the sand. Too weak to do so, he did not fight. And if he could, he was too looted to put up a contest.

Khalid and his retinue made way to the flimsy wooden palisade that had made the defenses for the Ghassanid Arab camp where the Romans they had been playing host to the Roman force. It was here that Khalid looked on at the stream of bodies laid out in defense of the gate that he could pry from the scene the same battle he had directed from the very light of the moon and the fire of the tent-city. To the side beyond the camp upon a dune the newly made widows and orphans of the camp's defenders stood under watch and keep of the Rashidun army.

It was not much their fate he was worried about. Some dictation from Medina would no doubt determine the fate of these remnants. The women may find themselves new husbands, the children guardians or foster parents. If any were too old, perhaps they would enter into bondage in someone's house or camp. They would continue to live, and they'll find acceptance.

But of the commander's immediate concern were the corpses of the Romans and of the martyrs who died here. The Roman force had gathered here on Khalid's first test. The night and nature of the fight had denied them any ability to challenge their best in a duel, and so it was. Moving through the field men gathered up the arrows they had fired upon them in the early stages. The same fire that had drawn the army out from the camp so it may burn with a blinding light to obscure Khalid's men as they made through on their rear flanks.

With the Roman and German cavalry that had come as allies drawn deep into the desert to be lost, the infantry that had assembled so tightly became trapped between the clenched prongs of Khalid's will. Many of the Romans had come to be stabbed in the back before they knew what had happened. And when they did there was no escape.

“Sayf Allah al-Maslul!” cried a pair of soldiers as they noticed their commander inspecting the battlefield. Khalid looked over as the two men hoisted from the ground the heavily armored corpse of what looked to be a affluent and well-equipped man. His bloodied face held host to an arrow that had pierced the man's eye so deep it was no doubt it was that which ended his life. His crimson cape was soaked with the blood of defeat, and soiled with the sands of desert. “The khafir's commander!”

Khalid watched as they threw down the man's body to Khalid's feet like an offering. They stepped back and bowed respectfully to him as he inspected the battered, twisted, and bloodied body of the Roman officer. His face stared blankly up at him, with only one good blue eye to behold the desert sky in a blank expression of awe and wonder. His pale face sunken as his mouth hung agape, frozen in a perpetual state of pain.

“He is not their commander.” Khalid exclaimed flatly, “He is merely another pet, hardly in the claws of the Roman Emperor.

“Truly, he is just a pawn in the ownership of one of Augustus' pets.” he snarled grimly.

“But then, if it is not the man who would have commanded them, who does?” asked one of the soldiers.

“Don't be daft, he commanded him here but he is not their commander.” Khalid barked, waving a gloved hand to the sky above, “He is the weak regent to the true commander of this band of brigands. The one who really held command is in our custody now.”

The two men starred agape. Confused by their commander's statement. “Prepare this body to send as a statement to the Roman governor in Syria.” he demanded, “Cut off his head and find a rider who was a friend to him and dispatch him to Damascus. May it serve as a warning to him, that the era of Rum in Arab land is at an end.”

“Go! Yallah!”