The man shook his head as best he could in the man’s grip and whimpered his response, but he couldn’t be heard over the shouting of the two guards. Shahim needed silence. Killing the first cleric had left Shahim’s left hand free, and without warning he whipped it around behind him and grabbed the muzzle of one of the rifles poking into his back. The guard felt the gun be powerfully wrenched from his grip and then watched in amazement as Shahim tossed it smoothly into the air, catching it again a second later by its grip. A part of the guard’s mind registered the precision with which Shahim’s finger slipped into the trigger mount of the rifle but his awe turned to shock in a flash as the gun swung back to point directly between his eyes.

Shahim shot him at point-blank range without qualm and then swung the gun under the outstretched arm still holding the struggling cleric and fired another single bullet through the other guard’s chest. All the while never taking his eyes of the doomed cleric in his grasp.

The gun’s loud reports echoed around the enclosed space, the crowd now utterly silent as they looked in disbelief at the center of the room. Shahim stood grasping the rifle in his left hand, the whimpering cleric still gripped in his right. Three bodies lay sprawled around him and his once tight bonds lay behind him in a pile where only moments beforehand the warrior had seemed so … contained.

The room’s stunned silence allowed Shahim to say his next words calmly and quietly, “Wa-Alahd, do you wish to recant your statement? Do you wish to beg for mercy?” Shahim lightened his grip ever so slightly, allowing the man to speak.

The openly crying cleric gasped to the silenced room, “Yes! Please, I beg of you! Let me live! Hear this man! Please, hear him! He is innocent! I tell you this man is a true servant of God!”

His eyes were pleading and pathetic, and a stench spread around the room as the cleric soiled himself. Shahim spoke once more, lacing his words with cold, bitter disdain, “You are pathetic, begging like this. Would you choose ignominy over death, Cleric? If I grant you forgiveness for your statements against me, will you renounce your position and leave this place forever?”

The cleric was spastic with fear, sobs wrenching his body as he writhed in Shahim’s iron grip. He screamed, “Yes, please, forgive me. I will leave here, I promise. I will never return. Do not kill me, I beg of you.”