by J J Moriarty
Every morning, a slaver would descend to the second basement and bring some wounded slaves up with him to be reintroduced to the others.
Fifteen days after Hyzou had begun to walk again, the same slaver appeared at the door in the morning. He was here to bring the fit up to start their training. There were two other slaves in the cellar on that day.
The slaver pointed to one, then he pointed to another. Finally, he pointed at Hyzou.
“What? Me?” Hyzou asked. “I can’t.”
The slaver ignored him. He just walked up the stairs. The other slaves he had called out did the same.
Hyzou stood where he was.
I can’t fight. I can barely walk. Hyzou thought.
It took a minute for the slaver to realise that he didn’t have everyone with him, and to come charging back down the stairs. His face was livid.
“Hyzou of Nuyin! With me!” The slaver screamed.
“I can’t. I can’t even run yet, can’t even move. I need more time”, Hyzou said.
The slaver walked up to Hyzou. He unsheathed his long khopesh and placed it against Hyzou’s throat. Hyzou could feel the bronze against his skin.
“Hyzou of Nuyin! With me!” The slaver screamed again.
Hyzou looked the slaver in the eye. Hyzou wasn’t in a shape to carry a pail of water, let alone train in hand-to-hand combat. Still, Hyzou could tell that his opinion on the matter was irrelevant.
“Yes sir”, Hyzou said, bowing his head as much as the khopesh at his throat would allow.
“Come”, The slaver said.
Hyzou followed the slaver, trying not to panic about what he would do once he got upstairs.
Outside, around the yard, there were slaves everywhere. They were all training the same way. They had a wooden weapon or two, and they squared off against one of their fellow slaves. Hyzou winced, as he saw the wood connect with bodies across the yard. No one was holding back.
“Get weapons!” The slaver said.
Hyzou tried to bow, then winced when he felt his back explode. He abandoned the bow and followed the other wounded over to the long shed at the edge of the yard. Between the exhaustion and the pain, Hyzou just wanted to lie down on the sand. Weeks of rain had changed it, it was no longer soft – it had congealed into something more like mud.
In the shed the nearest thing to him was a pile of khopesh. Hyzou bent down to pick one up. The movement hurt his back so much so that he was forced to his knees, tears forming in his eyes. He picked up the wooden imitation of a blade, and with a clench of his jaw and a deep breath he managed to force himself to his feet.
Outside the shed he stood at the edge of the yard, waiting for further orders. The master’s voice rang out among the yard.
“Bitch tits, stop!” The master screamed.
Everyone stopped. There were some jokes among the slaves. Hyzou realised that they had been training together for a while now. A lot of them were friends. Friendships made when Hyzou had been alone in a cellar.
Hyzou himself barely recognised any of them.
“Change up!” The master shouted.
The other slaves moved around to find new partners. Hyzou didn’t know what to do.
A slaver came and grabbed Hyzou by the scruff of the neck. Hyzou bent and followed in what was the easiest way to avoid enflaming his back. The slaver threw him into the path of another slave. This one Hyzou recognised.
He was Afret, a Piquean. Hyzou recognised him from court, the second son of one of the most powerful Noblemen in Piquean. Afret’s hair, usually so neat and well groomed, had grown long, dirty and untamed. A beard, flecked with clay and sand, covered half his face. Hyzou realised that that must be what he looked like too.
“Afret”, Hyzou said.
“Do I know you? I thought I knew your face when I saw you being whipped”, Afret said.
“I’m Hyzou of Nuyin”, Hyzou said in Piquean.
“Nuyin eh? So we met in the old country?” Afret asked.
“Once”, Hyzou said.
“We shouldn’t speak in Piquean here, the slavers don’t appreciate us speaking in a ‘barbarian tongue’. We should switch to Lamyblan”, Afret said.
“If you say so”, Hyzou said in Lamyblan.
“I’m surprised you’re up and fighting, I thought you would be dead within the day”, Afret said.
“I shouldn’t be up here”, Hyzou said. “I can’t fight.”
“I won’t go easy on you”, Afret said.
“You won’t?” Hyzou said, disappointed.
Afret laughed.
“They’d punish me if I didn’t hurt you”, Afret said.
“Fight!” The master bellowed.
Afret rushed him. He swung the wooden khopesh with a ferocity that Hyzou wasn’t expecting. The blow landed on his chest; the heavy wood really stung. For the next swing Hyzou raised his own khopesh to block. Afret just went higher.
The wooden khopesh crashed into the side of Hyzou’s head. There was pain, there was dizziness, and Hyzou was left sprawling on the wet congealed sand. He had landed on his back, and he tried his best to overcome the spasms of pain that ran through his whole body.
“Come on Hyzou, you won’t want to lie like that when the Colossus is standing over you”, Afret said.
“The Colossus will destroy us all”, Hyzou murmured.
“What?” Afret asked.
“Nothing”, Hyzou said.
“Get up!” Afret said.
Hyzou obeyed, hoping no one had seen him take his rest. None of the overseers seemed to have noticed.
Hyzou took his stance, khopesh before his face, feet far apart. Afret charged again. Hyzou swung and missed horribly.
Hyzou took a vicious blow to his chin. His tongue was caught between the automatic clench of his teeth, his mouth filled with blood. Hyzou fell for a second time.
It didn’t stop Afret. He charged and attacked Hyzou still. The heavy wood crashed into Hyzou’s body again and again and again. Blood spilled from his mouth. He tried to save his back and allowed the blows to fall upon his chest and arms instead.
Afret stopped.
“Afret, you roach, you’d better not slow down. Keep hitting the little bastard until he breaks!” The master said.
The master’s voice came from somewhere far away, the other side of the yard.
Afret looked towards where the voice had come from, then back down at Hyzou. Between mouthfuls of blood, Hyzou begged.
“Please Afret, it hurts so much, please don’t. Please”, Hyzou said.
Afret’s eyes hardened, and he screamed. He swung the wooden blade down and caught Hyzou cleanly on the face, smashing his nose. Afret didn’t stop. Afret swung and swung.
Hyzou heard them. His fingers, his shoulders, his ears, the wooden khopesh smashed into them all. They landed on Hyzou’s scars too, opening some of them up. The pain returned, as bad as it had been the day he had been whipped. All his recovery reversed in a few short seconds.
Afret was shouting a stream of expletives, but after a while Hyzou couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t hear anything but a loud ringing noise. His sight closed in, and he could see less and less. Soon, there was only pain.
The blows eventually stopped.
Hyzou tried to get up but found that he couldn’t quite move his legs. When he tried to, all he could manage was a spasm.
He waited for the slaver’s whip to come and to force him upright and back to the fight, but he was granted mercy for the moment. Hyzou lay in the heat and rain, unable to feel the outside world.
I look broken. Hyzou thought. So broken no one will even bother to get me up.
Forget the Colossus, Hyzou thought he would be dead long before that. He was no surgeon, but Hyzou knew that the suffering he was undergoing was beyond the kind of thing a human went through and survived. Maybe he’d make it through another day. Maybe even one after that. But not for much longer. He’d be dead long before his fight with the Colossus.
It made sense. Eve
ryone Hyzou loved was dead, burned alive when a city was turned into a furnace. Hyzou should have gone too. That should have been his last moments - happy with his family. Happy with Tabiry. Expecting a bright future that he never knew would not come.
Tabiry’s father had arranged for her to have a job on a plantation, and back then the plan was for Hyzou to join her on the plantation after their wedding. He was going to be the overseer - writing letters and counting numbers all day, every day. They were going to be given a house on the plantation’s grounds. Three rooms. The plantation was just two days ride from Piquea in a chariot.
Perhaps one day his family would come to visit. Mak, and mother and his sister. Perhaps they would have sat outside in the summer heat with Hyzou and Tabiry. Eating rice and cheeses.
Hyzou should have died that night, when the dream of the house and the plantation and the rice and the cheese was still the only future for him. But that was the thing about death. Death meant that his old life was there somewhere in the fog, accessible after he had passed through death’s door. The afterlife would be that final vision of his sister visiting him on the plantation.
This new life in Lamybla, if life was even a word for it, would end soon. One day soon, somebody would hit him, and he wouldn’t get back up. Hyzou was ok with that.
Maybe they’re all in the underworld now. Waiting for me, sitting at a table in the summer with cheese and rice. Hyzou thought. Maybe they’re just waiting for me, wondering what my delay is.
The thought made Hyzou smile, and then it came.
The vision was stronger than before, much stronger.
Everything was dyed orange. His surroundings were defined by the shade of orange they held. The brighter the orange, the more solid the object; the darker, the emptier the space. Above him, where the air and the rain went on for miles and miles, the orange was so faded that it was almost black, but around people the light shone so brightly in their shape, he could make out what he was looking at just by shade alone.
Pain didn’t exist, only understanding. Hyzou arose and stood. The sand was soft and spongy.
Maybe I’m dying. Hyzou thought. Maybe this is the path to the underworld.
He took one step, and then another. Hyzou drew the attention of those around him. But none of them could see orange. They looked with their eyes only.
Hyzou liked this dream. Pain and suffering and sorrow didn’t exist. There only was and wasn’t.
Hyzou walked. He had hurt something in his hip – Hyzou could feel it, and he couldn’t make his leg walk normally. One of his ribs were broken too, and so his breathing didn’t work as well as it should, but still, Hyzou could get just enough air to survive. He would be ok. His back was lined by scabs, and Hyzou was careful not to undertake quick movements. They could tear otherwise. Those that hadn’t torn already, that was.
All around him, individuals stepped away from his shuffling gait. All but the flame, the figure that burned so bright. The flame walked towards him.
The flame spat some words at Hyzou, but Hyzou couldn’t hear. He knew that there was sound surrounding him, he could see the waves, but he couldn’t hear.
Hyzou tried to reply.
The flame had understood. The moment Hyzou had begun to dream, the flame had come alive like a dog smelling meat, sensing a scent in the air. The flame had understood it all. The flame reached out and touched Hyzou…
Hyzou awoke. Pain rushed in afresh, as he lay on the wet sandy ground and tried to get as much air as possible into his sore lungs. The sun hadn’t dipped, actually very little time had passed since he had fallen asleep.
A hand touched Hyzou’s cheek, and slowly turned his head. Hyzou looked up into a set of bloodshot eyes.
It was Abe. His hair grew long and tattered and waxy both from his chin and from his head. Usually Abe was drunk. Now, however, his eyes, though bloodshot, were sharp and perceiving. They peered through Hyzou’s bruised slits, down to the depths of his soul.
Hyzou looked left and Hyzou looked right. To his surprise a crowd had gathered around him. He knew from Piquea that slaves regularly dropped from overexertion, so he found it strange that so many had gathered and just stared. Hyzou in the sand wasn’t much of a show, unless they thought it particularly weak that he had been broken by only two weeks of training.
“It was just the heat hurting his brain”, Abe said. “Get back to training.”
The crowd around Hyzou cleared.
Abe looked down at Hyzou and frowned, before reaching down and grabbing him up into his arms. Abe carried him towards the passageway to the slave’s quarters, and no one objected.
For a drunk man Abe was remarkably stable, and for an old man he was remarkably strong.
He didn’t waver an inch as he carried Hyzou inside to the dark, warm passageway, and down to the cellar.
“I told them”, Hyzou said. “I told them I couldn’t do it. I still haven’t recovered.”
“I know boy”, Abe said.
Abe brought him into the first story of the cellar.
“Sir, aren’t you bringing me to the second floor?” Hyzou asked.
“No, Hyzou of Nuyin, I won’t be. You’ll be fine here. You had best start sleeping in your own bed”, Abe said.
Hyzou was lowered onto the straw.
“This is yours”, Abe said.
Abe’s Piquean was flawless.
“What just happened?” Abe asked.
“He just kept beating me”, Hyzou said in his home tongue.
“No. Not that. After you passed out”, Abe said.
“What do you mean?” Hyzou said.
Abe stared at him, making Hyzou wither beneath his gaze.
“Very well. You lie there, and I’ll bring you food. I’d also like you to have your hair cut”, Abe said.
Hyzou began to sob.
Abe left the cellar, but just for five minutes. He returned with a bowl and a cup. And at his side was one of the slavers.
“Cut all his hair off, I want to see his head shaved, remove all his facial hair too.”
The slaver grabbed Hyzou and bent his head back. He began hacking at his head, cutting his hair off in chunks. Hyzou hadn’t seen his own face since the sack of Piquea, but as his hair came off, he realised he must look very different. His hair was long, knotted and filthy. Hairs the length of his forearm fell when the bronze blade rang through them.
Abe bent down and stared at Hyzou in the dark.
“Boy, do you know many Servants of Qi?” Abe asked.
“You”, Hyzou said.
“And?” Abe asked.
“There was that ambassador to the court in Piquea”, Hyzou said. “Aliya was her name.”
“Is that it?” Abe asked.
“Yes sir”, Hyzou said.
Abe leaned closer and looked at Hyzou in the weak light.
“Now that I see you without your hair. I know that I recognise your face. I know who you are, Hyzou of Nuyin”, Abe said.
“You do?” Hyzou said.
“Come. Take the food”, Abe said.
Abe handed over the bowl and the cup. Water, and a gruel made from bitter vetch. Hyzou was still sobbing all the while.
“Why do you cry?” Abe asked.
“It’s the first time anyone’s been kind to me since the sack of Piquea”, Hyzou said.
Abe hunkered down beside Hyzou.
“I once lived like you, knowing only darkness, pain and slavery. Kindness was the air I breathed while drowning, but it seemed never to come often enough. It was then I realised that being kind to yourself counted too. Don’t doubt your ability to survive to the cold, bitter end. Sometimes that’s all you can do”, Abe said.
Hyzou’s breathing slowed.
“I can’t do this”, Hyzou said.
Abe took Hyzou’s hands in his own.
“You can, because you will. They may break your body, but your soul can remain intact, I know it will”, Abe said.
Abe left him then.
Hyzou made
sure he was gone, and then took up the gruel and ate it in several mouthfuls. He washed it down with his water.
Hyzou lay on the straw and dozed off to sleep. It was the perfect time for it. In the dark of the night he wouldn’t be allowed to rest. For now, he need only doze and fall into dreams where pain didn’t exist, and he was all powerful and bright.
CHAPTER 8
Having accepted his impending death, Hyzou found the next few days easier. The combat training was brutal, but it didn’t take the same toll upon him. With every fight, Hyzou scrambled to avoid the physical pain, but he no longer worried too much about the damage. Why worry about the long-term effects of his injuries when he knew there was no future to suffer in? Instead he just imagined that summer’s day in the underworld that awaited him.
Eight days of vicious beatings, yet that evening he went to sleep at peace. He knew the end was soon.
The following morning, Hyzou awoke. His eyes still closed; he rubbed his tongue along his dry mouth to try to whet some of his painful thirst. He tasted blood. As his tongue passed along his teeth, he couldn’t help but explore the gaps left by the training. Hyzou felt the twinge from his broken fingers when he pushed himself up into a sitting position.
He opened his eyes, then nearly screamed with panic. Yash was crouching just at the edge of Hyzou’s straw bed. Yash wasn’t wearing a loincloth.
“I’m glad you’re awake”, Yash said.
“Not in the morning”, Hyzou said.
“Come, you know you don’t get to decide that”, Yash said.
Yash leaned in and kissed Hyzou on the lips.
“Get off”, Hyzou said.
Hyzou tried to push the slave away, but Yash grabbed Hyzou’s forearms and held him in place. Yash had been a soldier in his past life. He could outmanoeuvre and outfight Hyzou anywhere, especially in such a close contact situation.
“I want to see the scars on your back”, Yash said.
Hyzou squirmed and tried to get loose.
“Show me your back!” Yash hissed.