In our society, women are property. They are good only for sex or cooking food and making babies. Oh, women do have different status levels within their gender, but that is dependant on the status of the person to whom they belong. Regardless of the status, though, a woman would never know about weapons, let alone be allowed to touch one.

I? I was different. I am the youngest of the twenty children of the Shah. I was the child of his old age, and he doted on me. When I was just a small child, not yet eight years old, we were traveling (for whatever reason rulers travel). Our caravan was attacked, and the royal harem sacked. My mother grabbed me and pushed me into one of the folds of the tent.

"No matter what you see happening, stay silent and hidden, my little flower," she whispered as she kissed my forehead.

She then moved away from my hiding space and fought like a tigress with her abusers. I have always believed that she did so in order to keep the rapists distracted from searching the tent, for they truly beat her brutally.

I watched as men stripped, beat and raped all of the women, noble and slave. When the men were finished, they bound the young and pretty women, and killed the others. The fact that I saw my mother brutally raped, and then had her throat slit, scarred me to my very soul!

During the ravishing of the harem, one of the attackers had lost his dagger near my mother's body. Traumatized by all that I had witnessed, I staggered out of my hiding place, and picked up the instrument of my mother's demise. As I stood with my back to the door, I turned the bloody weapon over and over in my hands.

"What have we here? Come here, girl!" the evil man that had killed my mother ordered as he entered our tent.

I suddenly became calm, but filled with a fury well beyond my years. I put both of my tiny hands firmly on the grip of the dagger and waited...

When the man angrily turned me around for not responding to him I thrust the dagger with all of my might and fury and then twisted the blade once it was fully imbedded in his manhood.

At first he looked surprised, and then he began to scream just like woman. Before he could grab my hands, I stepped back taking the dagger with me. He clutched at the growing bloody stain at his crotch as he fell to his knees, then fell to the floor, turned on his side and curled into himself, screaming continually.

I was joyful for all of the pain I saw in his eyes but ... it was not enough! I walked behind him and stuck the blade in his ass, moving the blade back and forth, slicing his bowels. The added pain caused the man to pass out! I was well pleased; but ... it still was not enough! Next I went to his head and began to cut him slowly, over and over until I had carved my name deeply into his forehead. Lastly I took his eyes. I do not know if he was dead by then but there was a huge pool of blood around hips.

Now that my blood lust was quenched I went to my mother's body and fell on top of her weeping and wailing, yet I never let go of the dagger.

Outside things were not going well for the attackers. They had not expected my father's troops to respond so quickly and now many of the raiders were surrounded.

"WE DIE, HERE! BUT WE WILL TAKE WHAT YOU VALUE MOST WITH US, INTO THE NEXT LIFE!"

With that defiant yell, the attackers turned on the women captives and killed them all! Then they took their own lives, before the troops could stop their horrible act of defiance.

My father and the captain of the palace guards found me still hugging my mother's body but when the captain tried to remove the dagger from me, I jumped up and cut him badly, as I backed away.

"I WILL NEVER BE DEFENSLESS AGAIN, LIKE THESE WOMEN WERE! NEVER!" I screamed while standing among all of the naked mutilated dead women that had been the center of my life.

As the captain bent to pick up a scarf with which to stanch the flow of blood from his arm, he saw the dead attacker.

"Majesty?" he called weakly as he pointed at the dead man while backing away from me.

In his mind females did not touch weapon. Females did not kill and most certainly did not do ritual killings, which this obviously was.

My father walked to the body and stood stunned!

"Did you do this?"

"Yes, Father."

"But..."

"They beat and raped my mother and then killed her because she was too old and not pretty enough to bother with. For that I took his manhood and then his ass so that he would be as a baby in the next life, but it was not enough so I blinded him and wrote my name on his face so that all in this life and the next will know that I will not allow such things!"

Just then the captain collapsed from lack of blood. I had cut an artery in his arm and he was not able to get a tourniquet on in time. He was dead. It was obvious by the blank look in his eyes, and the lack of movement of his chest.

My father turned back to me and said sadly, "He was my friend for many years as well as my personal captain. You have now killed a friend and a foe and you are not yet eight years."

He shook his head from side to side, filled with his grief, but stopped suddenly and looked at me,

"They will brand you an evil spirit, and will kill you. I will not lose anyone else!"

Then my father strode to the door and stepped outside. I heard him as he roared, "YOU, COME HERE!"

I heard the sounds of running feet as some of his soldiers answered his call.

"Set a guard at this door! None are to enter! None! Do understand?"

"YES, SIRE!" the men answered.

My father re-entered the tent and closed the flaps.

"Come, little one, help me cover your mother."

I pushed the dagger into my sash and then retrieved a spread from the bed. Together we rolled my mother's body into the covering; that done, he sat on one of the sleeping pallets, and pulled me to him.

As I stood in front of him he looked me in the eye and said, "My little flower, with these killings you have changed your destiny. Your heart is now darkened, but I would not give you over to those religious bigots who would destroy you for avenging your mother. You must never tell anyone of these deaths..."

"But..."

"NO! They will burn you at the stake for being possessed of an evil spirit! LISTEN TO ME, my daughter."

His grief was getting to him and with that his frustration with me rose. He shook me roughly as he repeated, "YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME! I will not lose the flower of my old age. You are the only child left to me. All of your siblings are grown and married off."

"Yes, Father."

"Good. Now give me that dagger. We will say that your mother did this to protect you."

I shook my head and backed away.

Exasperated he pulled a matched pair of throwing knives from inside his tunic and held them out to me as he said, "Take these. They are smaller and easier to hide. Now give me the dagger."

I moved to him, and took the two small knives and handed off the long dagger.

"Now, my little flower, hide them in your sash. We will see about training you, later."

His majesty then took the dagger and skinned the attacker's forehead. Finally, he stabbed the dead man in the chest, leaving the dagger.

"I must do a very distasteful thing in order protect you my child. While I complete this task I want you to get wraps for all of the women, royal to servant. No woman should be so disrespected!"

I nodded and set about my task but watched my father go to his friend and kneel by the man's side. I could not hear what my father said but he murmured something to the dead man. Then the great Shah clasped hands with his friend and then took the captain's sword. Next my father gently closed the captain's eyes. After a moment more with his friend my father returned to the attacker and with a look of utter disgust dismembered the body. I had stopped my work and stood open mouthed at the butchery. Our ruler, my father was one of the kindest people on the earth, and a learned man. He had never been a warrior. To see him do this was, well ... a total shock!

My father was covered in blood and brains for he had totally smashed the skull of the dead man. He took a short rest leaning on his sword as he took deep breaths.

Then he looked at me and yelled, "FINISH YOUR TASKS, GIRL! THINGS NEED DOING!"

Startled, I scurried around covering the nakedness of the dead women.

"GUARD! GUARD!"

One of the door guards entered quickly but paused shocked at the macabre scene. However, he just as quickly resumed his rush to kneel at the feet of his Shah.

"Majesty?"

"Call my Generals to me!"

"Yes, Sire!" the guard said.

He rose and ran from the tent. The two Generals arrived in a remarkably short time and were equally shocked at the appearance of their Shah and what they saw at his feet! Still they quickly moved to kneel before their leader.

"General Asueris, what is the status?"

"Sire, we..."

"STAND UP! BOTH OF YOU! I NEED TO SEE INTO YOUR SOULS! STAND AND LOOK ME IN THE EYE!"

The men did as they were ordered, but were dumbfounded by the change in their leader's behavior.

"Now continue, General!"

"Yes, Majesty. We have captured all of the remaining raiders and have gathered all of the bodies of our slain..."

My father hissed through his teeth trying to control his rising anger as he interrupted the General again.

"Did you wrap the bodies of my women?"

Acting a little surprised the General responded, "But they are dead and they are just women. Why would we do such a thing?"

My father swung his sword so quickly that it sang as moved through the air; but he stopped it, right against the man's throat just breaking the skin.

"Because they are MY women! That is why! Now you will personally go, and you will personally wrap every one of my wives, and my servants, in my royal colors as you see we have done here. Once that is done you will have MY women brought to this tent to be with their sisters in death as they were in life."

It took the General three tries to get his voice to work. When he spoke, however, he could only manage to whisper his answer.

"Yes, your Majesty."

With a quick bow, the man dashed from the tent.

"Do you know where these raiders are from?" my father asked of the second general.

"Yes, Sire. They are from the Northwest Territory, and they call themselves the Ungalii."

"Did you find out why they attacked innocents?"

"Yes, Sire, I did. It is their practice to attack an area by first killing the rulers and their families then taking over. Once that is done they use the area up and move on."

"What do you mean use an area up?"

"They are like the locusts, Sire, consuming what they will and destroying the rest. They enslave all of the males and sell them off in other lands. At the same time they take anything of value and send it to the Ungalii homeland where many caravans converge to trade for the stolen goods. All the while the enslaved women are continually raped until they become pregnant with Ungalii children. Once born, the children are sorted. The strongest males are kept and raised in the Ungalii homeland in ... for lack of a better word ... orphanages. There they are trained to be brutal warriors. The lesser children are killed, and then the new mothers are either sold off as slaves or killed. Since no one is working the land, every farm goes to ruin; while all of the animals, wild and domestic, are butchered for food. By the end of the second year the land is a total waste and the Ungalii move on to repeat the process."