Children of the Dragon

by Frank Robinson

  He lifted it to his heart, just as he had warmed Jenefa’s hand when she’d been chilly, that first night in her father’s grain field, gazing up at the stars. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure her alive and with him. He kissed the hand, held it against his cheek, its fingers entwined with his own.

  “Give me strength,” he whispered. “Give me nourishment, Jenefa, your final act of devotion. And with the strength you give me, let me transcend.”

  For the last time, he kissed her hand.

  They gave him, piece by piece on those rude wooden platters, the rest of her. And praying for strength, he consumed her.

  Then, Tsevni.

  “You came from my flesh, and there you return. May you build my flesh that I shall transcend.”

  His daughter Tsevni too he kissed, and like the dragon Sexrexatra who devoured its children, he ate all of her. When there was nothing more of Tsevni, he was certain what was coming next: his lovely Maiya. He cringed at this, afraid to see from her remains what tortures she endured before dying.

  But Maiya was not delivered to him; instead, it was next another nameless peasant corpse. And when he saw this, he reflected: could this mean Maiya had escaped? After all, Grebzreh had promised her freedom. Could that strange, demented little man have inexplicably held true to his word?

  But Jehan banished such thoughts from his mind; there was no use in them. If Grebzreh withheld Maiya’s body, this was obviously to engender in Jehan a vain hope that she lived. Never would Grebzreh reveal the truth; at most, he might bait Jehan by hinting at it.

  She was dead, Jehan decided. He would not permit himself to imagine otherwise, even if he was never given her remains to eat.

  Perhaps Grebzreh had eaten her himself.

  The warden was a driven man now. On his face he wore a pointed little pyramid of silver, tied on with thongs, to replace the nose Jenefa had bitten off. It made his face an inhuman mask like a harlequin’s, but perpetually cold and hard; he seemed almost a golem assembled by some wizard.

  From underneath that silver nose-piece, his breath would come strained and hissing, a noise that echoed constantly through the dungeon’s passageways, for Grebzreh never left them now. He slept little and never went out to the surface. He prowled the muddy tunnels hour after hour, hissing through his silver nose, racking his fevered mind to think up new tortures for Jehan Henghmani.

  In the warden’s twisted thinking, it galled him that Jehan’s own nose had been cut off at the start of his imprisonment. Grebzreh itched fiercely to bite Jehan’s nose off, just as Jenefa had done to him; but this was not possible, and moreover, Jehan’s loss of his nose seemed so much less than did Grebzreh’s loss. Jehan had even, somehow, escaped the curse of hissing breath. The warden was obsessed by his silver nose. It was a constant reminder of what Jehan had caused him, a constant goad to torture Jehan ever more savagely.

  And the glint of that silver nose was a goad to Jehan as well, reminding him how Grebzreh had murdered his woman and children. It goaded him to withstand the tortures ever more stoically.

  Jehan Henghmani seemed made of a steel even tougher than their torture implements. Grebzreh would watch his prisoner smile under torture, and he would stammer with fury, beating his own guardsmen with a stick to make them work harder on Jehan. But the prisoner would only laugh, and even taunt him, call him “Silver Nose” and mimic his hissing breath. And Jehan would remind him of the Emperor’s decree that he must never die.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Grebzreh would say, “you’ll never be allowed to die, you hellish monster. I’ll make you suffer till the end of time!”

  BERGHARRA—Tnemghadi Empire, cast brass “tvahdik,” or rent token, circa 12th Century. Given to sharecroppers as proof of rent payment, i.e., a receipt. Uniface with a sheaf of rice above a monogram, “A.K.” in Tnemghadi script. Breitenbach 3106, 41 mm., fine—very fine. (Hauchschild Collection Catalog)

  13

  THE TWENTIETH YEAR of the reign of Tnem Sarbat Satanichadh was not a good year in Taroloweh.

  The only encouraging event in this year 1176 was the demise of Jehan Henghmani’s brigand troop. But nature treated Taroloweh more harshly than a score of bandit armies.

  This year’s crop was small. Afflicted by too much sun and too little water, much of it was withered and puny. Poverty and hunger were the result. Few sharecroppers had much left after paying their rents, taxes, and temple tribute. Many of them defaulted, and so were forced off their land, sometimes sold into slavery to make up the rent due. Even where a family was only a little bit short, the rent collectors—the Tvahoud—would take everything, expropriating the land and seizing the people as slaves. Some peasants sold their own children in order to at least keep their land.

  And many abandoned their farms to save at least their freedom. They took little else but freedom with them, for they had nothing left. Dispossessed, they had no place to go. On the open roads they traveled in despair, searching without knowing for what.

  Sometimes they would form gypsy-like encampments, living in make-shift tents, hovels, or the open air, scrounging for the dregs of food they could cadge or steal from farms and other travelers. There wasn’t much of it; the marks were just as poor as the thieves.

  These victims of the hard times found the Tnemghadi authorities callous toward their plight. But the Tnemghadi did not ignore the problem; their aim was to restore order. The army moved in to disperse the gypsy camps. It would not suffice to break up a camp, only to have its members resume wandering the countryside; and so the army would sweep down and wipe them out, trampling through the camps on horseback, setting fires and slashing at everything that moved. There was no compassion; if allowed to escape, these wretches would only starve to death, or cause more trouble. So all—old men, women, babies— were cut down. They fought back with bare hands and teeth, and those who would survive the massacres would flee into the hills, to scratch out an almost animal existence, or starve.

  The Viceroy of Taroloweh, Assaf Drzhub, viewed the situation with mounting alarm. The Viceroy loathed what he considered wanton bloodshed. From the Vraddagoon, the government palace at Arbadakhar, he sent letters to the army commanders, begging them to stop the massacres lest they provoke a general uprising. But the generals answered bluntly that there were too many people and not enough food.

  Yet the public granaries were stuffed with produce collected as taxes. Drzhub wanted to open up the granaries to feed the peasants, but he knew this would drive down prices and the powerful barons wouldn’t stand for it. The Viceroy wrote directly to Ksiritsa painting a bleak picture of conditions in the province, begging for a decree opening the granaries.

  But the Emperor replied that he would not deplete tax collections to feed Urhemmedhins; instead, he promised to send more troops.

  Soon, the streets and roads were clogged with homeless, hopeless people, the victims of disease and hunger, with wandering children, bellies bloated and their arms and legs like sticks. Many were the fallen corpses in the streets and roads, left for days before they could be burned. Many of those who survived did so eating cats and dogs and cowhide and the bark off trees.

  Outbreaks of violence were on the rise, even in the towns. Tnemghadi citizens would be set upon by hungry mobs; some, in fear, would shave off their telltale eyebrows. Sometimes the mobs would even attack Tnemghadi homes; news of gypsy massacres would often spark such retaliation.

  One day in the town of Dorlexa, an old Urhemmedhin had the folly to shout a curse at some Tnemghadi horsemen as they paraded by. They ran him down and trampled him to death. This murder committed in full public view instigated a barrage of stones thrown from all sides, and the frightened soldiers reacted by running other people down, slashing at them with their swords. But the townspeople weren’t scared off by the bloody ruckus. They came running toward the scene like lemmings, almost throwing themselves beneath the horses’ hooves. Soon the me
n were dragged down from their mounts and hacked to pieces with their own swords. Even the horses were slaughtered, and the hungry people cut steaming chunks of meat out of their carcasses.

  Then the mob, gathered now to several hundred strong, ran amuck. They stormed the temple, smashing through its gates with the press of their bodies. None of the priests within escaped; some were trampled, kicked and beaten to death, some thrown from the temple’s tower, and at least one was hung upside down from the ceiling and burned. Meanwhile, the stores of offerings hoarded up by the priests were ransacked, along with all the gold and bejeweled temple ornamentation. Furniture was piled up for bonfires, and the smoke suffused the temple. But the great marble structure itself resisted the flames, and so the mob tore the temple apart block by block, with ropes and levers, sending the huge blocks smashing down and crushing some of their own number in their frenzy.

  This orgy of destruction at Dorlexa was quickly ended by a Tnemghadi army battalion. The rioters—and many innocent citizens—were butchered. Afterward, additional taxes were imposed on Dorlexa to finance restoration of the wrecked temple.

  Samud Mussopo and his family survived this grim year 1176. They had lost their gaar, but there had been a little rain upon their lands, saving much of their crop, and their lives. They’d scraped together enough to pay their rents and taxes, but there wasn’t much left over for food, and through the winter, they had no choice but to eat their goats and chickens. This got them past the bad year, but left them completely dependent on the rice crop. Unless it was good, they were finished.

  The next year’s crop was indeed a little better. Yet, because they had no more livestock—and no milk or eggs—the year was harder than the one before. The story was the same for many in Taroloweh, and even with its improved crop, 1177 produced more misery, swelled the ranks of the dispossessed and continued the attrition of starvation.

  That fall, too, Samud Mussopo’s eleven-year-old daughter, Zina, fell sick. They did not know why, for there was no doctor, and there was nothing they could do for her but pray. But prayers proved unavailing, and the girl was buried by Samud himself in the rice field.

  Samud grieved deeply for his daughter. Still, had it not been for the loss of that one mouth to feed, the Mussopos might not have endured through that winter at all. It was a close thing. Spring greeted them with their skins tight on their bones, their cheeks hollow.

  These years were bad for their landlord, too. Lord Adnan Khnotthros’ sharecroppers had done poorly; many couldn’t pay their rent and some had even left the land. A year later, acres of it were still lying fallow; there was no one to buy it. Lord Khnotthros was not starving, but it was impossible to keep up with the expense of running the Syad-Rekked, his manor.

  Consequently, in the year 1178, Lord Khnotthros raised his rents. It seemed to him a logical step. No one would tell the Lord that a higher rent would mean more defaults, and more land fallow next year. And even if he realized that, he had little alternative. He was already in debt for 1178; he would have to worry about the next year when it arrived.

  Gaffar Mussopo sprinted across the field toward his father. “They’re coming,” he called out, “The Tvahoud!”

  The rent collectors came in an enormous wooden wagon, with wheels wider than a man is tall, pulled by a team of gaars, two men driving them, two more riding their backs, and a third pair in the wagon itself. One of these was the Ram-Tvahoud, the Chief Collector; each estate had one. The Khnotthros Ram-Tvahoud was Uthsharamon Yarif, a short, ferret-faced Tnemghadi, finely dressed and greatly loathed.

  This Yarif was the final arbiter of the rents. If he was peeved at a farmer for withholding a daughter who’d caught the Chief Collector’s eye, that man could be marked down as delinquent in the rent. It wouldn’t matter whether it was true or not. The man, and his family, would be ruined.

  Lord Khnotthros was feared and hated, but remotely—the peasants never saw him. When they thought of Khnotthros, they would picture his delegate, Yarif. Uthsharamon Yarif they saw and knew, and it was Yarif who was the focus of their fear and hatred.

  “The Tvahoud are coming, Paban!”

  Samud Mussopo squinted into the distance. He could see the great wagon approaching, raising a plume of yellow dust high into the sky.

  “So let them come. We’re ready; we have the rent. They increased it, but we made it somehow. We may starve, but we have their damned rent for them.” He didn’t try to conceal his bitterness from Gaffar. There could be no pretense after their gaar was stolen, and certainly none now, with food taken from their hungry mouths.

  “If only there were some way we could cheat them,” the boy said.

  “It would be death for sure if they caught us in a game like that.”

  “It may be death, if we don’t save some of that rice. And there’s nothing we can do when they cheat. Those damned Tvahoud jackals, they always have to skim off a little extra before they’ll give you that precious little tvahdik piece.”

  “Well, everybody knows they do it. Khnotthros knows it; it’s really part of the rent.”

  “Like an extra little tax,” Gaffar said with tight-lipped irony.

  “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “We can pay them the proper rent and not one ounce more!”

  “And what if Yarif marks us down short and holds back the tvahdik? Will you contradict him?”

  “No. I’ll cut his throat.”

  “Gaffar! Don’t talk that way. Sometimes I think you mean it, and I worry for you.”

  “You should worry. For all of us. For everyone.”

  The colossal wagon, creaking loudly under the heavy load of produce already collected, lumbered gradually to a stop in front of the Mussopo hut. Yarif climbed down a ladder, carrying his leather-bound record book, and he dusted off his cloak. The family was standing outside, waiting for him.

  “Let me see,” Yarif grumbled, thumbing through his book. “Samud Mussopo, is that you?”

  Samud bowed his head. “Yes, Ram-Tvahoud.”

  “And wife Yaveta, son Gaffar, daughter Zina. Where’s the girl?”

  “She died last fall, Ram-Tvahoud.”

  The Chief Collector wrote a notation on the page. “All right, Mussopo, your rent is twelve and a half shokh.”

  “Yes, it’s all measured out. Everything’s in order, in fact, the baskets are brimming over.” Samud waved his hand with a toothy smile at the shokh-baskets, lined up in a row. He hoped the Tvahoud would be satisfied with the extra amounts he had added to make them more than the minimum necessary to appease their greed.

  Yarif picked up a handful of rice from one of the baskets and gave it a cursory look. “Good, Mussopo. But let’s just make sure your shokh-baskets are accurate measures.”

  “Oh, they’re accurate all right, Ram-Tvahoud. They’re the same baskets as we’ve always used; they’ve been checked before. I wouldn’t cheat!”

  “Then what are you worrying about?” Yarif smiled amiably. “It can’t hurt to make absolutely sure.”

  Samud shrugged his shoulders quizzically. He knew his baskets were accurate, Yarif himself had tested them before. But now the other man atop the wagon handed down to Yarif an empty basket to make a new test, and Samud was suddenly struck with a drowning feeling. All at once, he understood.

  It was the same as when he first grasped that the priest Relleth meant to have his gaar. His head swam, boiling with rage; but he held his tongue.

  Gaffar did not. “That basket’s too big!” he blurted out.

  Yarif’s eyes flashed. “Just what are you suggesting, boy?”

  “He meant nothing,” Samud rushed to say.

  “Let him speak for himself. What did you say, boy?”

  “My name’s not ‘boy,’ it’s Gaffar Mussopo.”

  Yarif struck Gaffar across the mouth, sending him stumbling, almost knocked off his feet. H
is lip was split and his mouth filled with blood.

  “Watch your insolence, you puny Urhem swine. You’re lucky I don’t have you flogged, or worse.”

  Gaffar, tottering and red with fury and hurt, said nothing.

  “Empty one of your baskets into ours,” the Chief Collector snapped at Samud, and the man quickly obeyed, with his hands shaking, spilling a little rice. The rice that had been overflowing in Samud’s shokh-basket did not even fill Yarif’s.

  The Ram-Tvahoud’s face was stern. “This is quite serious, Mussopo. It looks like you’re at least two shokh short in all. But that’s not the half of it: you obviously tried to cheat us. It will go pretty hard on you if Lord Khnotthros finds out. What have you got to say, Mussopo?”

  Samud swallowed in discomfort. “I will make up the difference,” he murmured.

  “Well, of course. But I would still have to report your cheating to the Lord. On the other hand, since you tried to cheat by two shokh, if you make amends now by paying two shokh extra, possibly we could let you off with that.”

  “Four shokh more then? I’m . . . I think . . . yes, Ram- Tvahoud, I guess I can manage that. Barely.”

  Samud said the last word inaudibly. He ducked inside the hut and dragged out the extra baskets, feeling as though in a trance. He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t gauge how much he’d have left after paying these extra four shokh—more than four, by Yarif’s dishonest basket! But clearly there wouldn’t be much left—not enough to see the family through the winter. In handing over this rice, he was giving up survival itself. Would it be better to refuse? But Samud couldn’t think straight.

  Numbly, he filled Yarif’s basket four times.

  “Very well,” the Ram-Tvahoud said, handing over the brass tvahdik piece that meant the rent was paid. “You’ll watch your step in the future. And you’d better teach that loutish son of yours some manners.”