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known in the city,” the centurion said insinuatingly, and the men with him laughed, their eyes hot. His gaze bold and cruel, he reached out and pushed Tamar aside. “I want a better look at
you
,” he said to Iris, pulling her forward.
    At first she looked at him unflinchingly, her blue-gray eyes scornful, but her heart was thumping violently against her ribs. She felt as if she were staring death in the face. The centurion let his hand caress her ash-blond hair almost lingeringly. Slowly the hand wandered downward over her body, fondling her breasts.
    “Centurion,” she said in a quiet, strained voice, “not only am I wife to Zabaai ben Selim, but I am the only daughter of the great banker, Simon Titus of Alexandria. Do not allow a simple rudeness to escalate into a serious crime.”
    “You lie,” he said pleasantly. “You are a whore of Palmyra.”
    “Centurion, do not do this thing,” Iris said, her voice now trembling. “Do you not have a wife, or a sister? Would you like it if someone did this thing to them?”
    He looked at her dispassionately, and she saw no pity or mercy in his ice-blue eyes. “It has been a long time since I have had a fair woman,” he said, and then he pushed her back onto the bed.
    Her instinct for survival made her attempt to rise, but he shoved her back brutally, and Iris’s control left her. She screamed, totally terrified. The centurion slapped her viciously with one hand, whileripping her gown and pushing it up to her belly with the other. His knee jammed between her resisting thighs while she fought him, clawing at his face with her nails, maddened with fear, already ashamed of what was happening to her. She had known no man but her loving, gentle husband. She had known nothing but tenderness and kindness at his hands. Iris had never imagined that a man could do
this
to a woman. Even knowing it was useless, she continued to fight him because something deep within her refused to accept this horror; and the centurion in his fury at being thwarted, continued to strike her into submission. Both her eyes were almost swollen shut when she felt him gain the advantage, and thrust with a cruel, burning pain into her resisting body. Her reason finally left her as he pounded against her again and again, conscious only of his own pleasure in subduing the woman.
    “By the gods,” he grunted, “this is the best piece of cunt I’ve fucked in months!”
    Beneath the bed, hidden by the coverings, the child Zenobia squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She was terrified by the strange sounds above, trembling and confused at hearing her mother begging in such a frightened voice. Then her mother screamed, and she could no longer hear women’s voices, only men’s rough laughter, and words she didn’t comprehend.
    Iris never heard them. She never knew that she was mounted by not only the centurion, but half a dozen other men who patiently waited their turn to violate her now still body. In the end the centurion raped her a second time, cursing when he came too quickly. In his pique he cut her throat as one would butcher a helpless lamb, swiftly, bloodlessly.
    Tamar, pulled down onto her back on the cool tile floor, her garments yanked over her head, fared little better than Iris; but Tamar knew enough not to fight back. They left her still body for dead when the last man had finished sodomizing her, not even bothering to use the knife on her. She lay barely breathing while the soldiers stripped the room of the few things left in it for most of its furnishings had gone with Zabaai ben Selim as they always did. Terrified, she held her breath when they ripped the hangings from the bed, along with its coverlets. She prayed to every god she could think of that in their greedy and lustful haste they would not see the child Zenobia. Those fervent prayers were answered. Her eyes met the terrified ones of the girl, and they warned Iris’s daughter not to move, to be as silent as the tomb.
    It seemed like