Beloved by Bertrice Small Read Free Book Online Page B

planned.”
    Odenathus nodded, and bade Zabaai ben Selim a safe trip. Then he walked across the desert floor to where Zenobia sat. Seating himself beside her, he took her little hand in his own. It was cold, and instinctively he sought to warm it, holding it tightly in his own.
    “The Roman dies well,” she said, acknowledging his presence, “but it is early yet, and he will in the end cry to his gods for mercy.”
    “It is important to you, that he beg for mercy?”
    “Yes!” She spat the word out vehemently, and he could see that she was once more going to withdraw into her private thoughts. She hated well for one so young and, until today, so sheltered. More and more this child fascinated him.
    “I would bid you good-bye, Zenobia,” he said, piercing again into her self-absorption.
    Zenobia looked up. How handsome he is, she thought. If onlyhe hadn’t given in to the Romans so easily. If only he weren’t such a weakling.
    “Farewell, my lord Prince,” she said coldly, and then she turned back to contemplate the dying man.
    “Good-bye, Zenobia,” he said softly, lightly touching her soft dark hair with his hand; but she didn’t notice. He stood up and walked away.
    The sun was close to setting now, and had turned the white marble towers and porticos of Palmyra scarlet and gold with its clear light; but Zenobia saw none of it. Campfires sprang up on the desert floor as she sat silently watching her mother’s despoiler. About her the Bedawi went about their own business of the evening. They understood, and waited patiently for the child’s thirst for vengeance to be satisfied.
    Vinctus Sextus had been unconscious for some time, but then he began to revive slightly, roused by the waves of pain that ate into his body and his soul as the painkillers given him earlier wore off. That he wasn’t already in Hades surprised him. Slowly he forced his eyes open to find a slender girl child sitting by his head, contemplating his misery.
    “W-who … are … you?” he managed to ask through parched and cracked lips.
    “I am Zenobia bat Zabaai,” the child answered him in a Latin far purer than any he had been able to learn. “It was my mother that you slaughtered, pig!”
    “Give … me … a drink,” he said weakly.
    “We do not waste water here in the desert, Roman. You are a dying man. To give you water would be to waste it.” Her eyes were gray stones and totally without feeling as they stared at him.
    “You … have … no … mercy?” He was curious.
    “Did you show my sweet mother mercy?” The child’s eyes blazed intense hatred at him. “You showed her none, and I will show you no mercy, pig! None!”
    He managed a wolfish parody of a grin at her, and they understood each other. He had shown her blond beauty of a mother no kindness or mercy. He wondered if, having been given a glimpse of his fate, he would do it all over again, and decided that he would. Death was death, and the blonde had been more than worth it. Men had died for less. He blinked rapidly several times to clear the fog over his blue eyes so he might see the child better. She was a little beauty facially, but she yet had the flat, unformed body of a child.
    “All women … beg … when beneath a man. Didn’t … your mother … ever … tell you … that?”
    Zenobia looked away from him and across the desert, not quite understanding his words. The sun had now set, and the night had come swiftly. About her, the golden campfires blazed merrily, while the stars stared down in their silvery silence. “You will die slowly, Roman,” she said quietly, “and I will stay to see it all.”
    Vinctus Sextus nodded his head slightly. He could certainly understand vengeance. The child was one to be proud of even if she was only a girl. “I will do … my best … to oblige you,” he said with a scornful and defiant sneer. Then he drifted into unconsciousness.
    When he opened his eyes again it was pitch black