Carnifex

7/5/468 AC, Matera, south of the Nicobar Straits

Pour encourager les autres, thought al Naquib. He spoke excellent French, after all.

The spark for the thought were the dozen slaves, now made redundant by the arrival of the first of the relief parties provided by Parameswara. The slaves had spent the previous evening digging their own graves under the watch of al Naquib's troops. Now they knelt by those graves. Their hands were tied behind them. Most of the slaves wept. A couple pleaded weakly. The rest remained in a sort of catatonia induced by their coming obliteration. The slaves had been chosen for their weakness.

"The rest will work that much harder, afterwards," al Naquib had explained to his men. "We've already lost nearly a dozen. These are the ones next mostly likely to die. Best we get some use from them first."

Behind each slave stood one of the Ikhwan, one hand holding a slave by the hair and the other clasping cruel knives poised at the victims' throats.

Al Naquib raised a hand and then lowered it, quickly. The knives were drawn across emaciated flesh. Blood from a dozen living fountains spurted forth to the jungle floor in an audible gush. The weeping stopped immediately.

"For the rest of you," al Naquib announced to the other slaves standing by to witness the executions, "let this be your warning: the weak and the slackers will be put to death with no more mercy than I would show a scorpion or an antania. Pull your lines as if your lives depended upon it. They do."