Marai sensed Sheb, Houra and the boys struggling across the rocky wilderness to the next station. This was the vision of their escape! Houra had gathered her courage, perhaps blessed by the words Marai across time had spoken, and drew her family together.
At first, Sheb had wanted to find any number of men they encountered to come back with him...to scour the wadi station clean of its filth, but Houra begged and sobbed that it was useless and to just take her far from there so she would never see the place again. She didn’t want to lose any more of her family. The losses had already been far too great.
Eventually, Sheb gained strength from her ability to self heal, never knowing how much she still wept and prayed at night. The family of four made their way into Kemet. They wandered from place to place making and trading their baskets just as they had once planned to do as a sojourning clan. Finally, they settled near the royal city of the White Wall, Ineb Hedj, stronghold of Ptah. It was enough. They had lived.
Ineb Hedj. Ineb Hedj... Marai thought. I’ ll go there, but first I need to tend to something else. If these are the same men here...
Vengeance was a thing in his blood. He had never been a warlike man but he had been a protective one. Unable to protect– to see the downfall of Ahu’s clan through his Child Stone had simply been too much. The shepherd needed to see if these were the same people who had hurt them.
If they are, Marai thought, Goddess help them.
The dim melody of mouth and bag pipes bleated sourly from the camp below, reminding the shepherd he had to hide until the men below were asleep. A thought pulse, probably from the stone in his brow, suggested he mask his entrance into the camp, steal some water or beer and slip away to the next station, only taking revenge if he was confronted. It would be almost impossible. Someone in a camp of this size would always be on watch. He would either have to kill that guard a and anyone else still awake, or forget about the water. If he journeyed up into the mountain, the long way around the encampment, he might be lucky enough to find moisture left in some catch basins of other caves along the way.
Marai scanned the camp again, marveling at the clarity of his renewed vision. Many years of working in the sun had resulted in the gradual dimming of his sight. Most things he saw from such a great distance had a soft-edged appearance. Tonight, the sharp edges of distant sights were clearer than he had ever known them, even as a child. What he couldn’t see, he could sense. Twenty to thirty hearts were beating. Men were celebrating something, drinking strong liquor and either passing out by the fire or trundling off to their tents to sleep. Looking closer, he saw a dozen men lolling around the fire in the center of the close formation of tents around the campfire. A woman danced to the drums and pipes amid the hoots and huzzahs of those sober enough to still watch her.
They must have made their trade to the work crews today. Marai thought. Now they celebrated late. They were making a young captive do a dance on this chilly night. For just a moment, the shepherd paused to watch the dance too.
The naked little woman was almost a dwarf; short and just as wide as she was tall. She was round like a melon, but bore the strange, erotic grace of a much more nubile creature. Something about her was just so vibrant, Marai mused. When she moved, the few bangles she wore jiggled and floated like airy fleece. A warm, self-amused smile filled him, as her stubby hands circled up as high as they could, leaving her huge, pendulous breasts and belly bobbling merrily to the undulating sway of her fat, high rump.
Marai thought of the little carved stone or clay “fertile woman” figures the women always used to set up in the household or bury in the lettuce garden for the growth of the family and the birth of healthy children. He understood too well.
A Goddess Dance? How can a poor creature like that bring herself to grace these animals with such a holy dance? He thought, clearly stunned. She seemed happy enough...not too mistreated. He wondered.
Something sharp jabbed his ribs.
“Don’t move. I can kill you, if you do.” The hoarse voice strained, speaking in some mixed Akkad-Shinar dialect Marai could barely understand. A grizzled, badly shaven face as rough as the voice that came from it challenged him.
The shepherd froze, even though he knew he had the strength, without the children’s help, to swat this adversary aside and throw him down the cliff face from his unsteady perch. Three others, two of them nondescript wilderness wastrels and one a tall and reedy Kush man with crazy eyes, were coming up the rock fall; knives drawn and primed for a struggle. Marai crouched instinctively, ready to fight all four men, but felt a quiet voice right behind the place where his new stone lay.
Wait... learn from these...
What it is they intend
It is not your moment to destroy.
“Get up!” the rusty voice urged “Don’t make me do it...Now turn–”
Marai felt the slight bite of metal between his ribs. Against every impulse, he obediently held out his empty hands and pivoted slowly.
Four hairy and rough men, heavily cloaked against the early morning chill, faced him on the incline just below his porch. The gruff-voiced leader of the group walked the point of his long sappara, or sickle blade, to the center of Marai’s chest so skillfully that the shepherd rethought his chances of winning in an outright struggle.
The thief’s sideways glance sent one of the three remaining companions in harassment into the cave to check for pilferage, while another patted the shepherd down for weapons.
Marai let them take his dagger and staff without protest, then let them take the two bracelets and the pectoral, but made an exasperated sigh when the Kush man found the satchel of stones.
The tall black man spilled two or three of the glimmering stones from the satchel into his hand. The stones seemed as unremarkable as sand rock, but when the man started to fling them away in disgust, Marai sought his glance and whispered a thought like a bolt of light.
No You keep those...They have magical powers, very valuable. Make the man show you what they can do.
The Kush man closed his fingers around the stones, replaced them in the bag and handed the bag to the rusty-voiced man who tied the satchel to his own belt. Then the black skinned Kush thrust his torch into Marai’s face to get a better look at him. In an instant, and much to his own shock, the shepherd knew what kind of man this adversary was.
He was the gang’s butcher; the executioner. It was his duty to perform any necessary disposal of particularly incorrigible captives. In his own land, he had been a priest and a healer, but something happened that caused him to be exiled.
A woman? Marai asked himself. Did he steal another man’s wife? Did he murder?
He had been a healer and a surgeon. Filled with a quiet rage over something in his past, he had become an artist in love with his ability to make a victim suffer. The nasty tug of something else in his soul riveted Marai’s thoughts as much as the sour and acrid smell of death. It lurked just beneath the surface of the man and seemed to be watching him through different unholy eyes.
Is he one of the ones who violated Houra? the shepherd wondered. No...innocent. He wasn’t with them yet.
The questions started.
“What manner of man are you?” The black’s voice floated liquidly, denoting his lineage as a highborn Kush, perhaps one who had even been educated in Kemet. The Kush took one step back, as if he half expected something mystical to begin. He had sensed the movement of energy, when Marai looked at him in the torchlight.
“You cannot be the man of means your clothing says you are, if these pebbles are your only wealth.” he spoke in perfect Kina.
“I am a shepherd–” Marai replied, feeling incredibly foolish.
“And I am the high priest of Azatoth!” the sandy voice of the leader cut in again as he nudged his weapon deeper into Marai’s chest. “I should kill you now for such a lie!” He hissed.
A death struggle might have started right then, but a braying noise rose from the encampment below.
; The men paused and snickered, but quickly turned their attentions back to their captive.
“I was a shepherd.” Marai restated “But I’ve been on a journey. This was my home once. This was the station of my father...”
The braying sounded almost human. A begging babbling mixed into the racket. Marai focused on it, feeling its now rhythmic chatter begin to calm him. An incredulous look mixed with mirth, surprise, and disbelief spread over the face of the rusty-voiced man. He beckoned the torch-bearer to shine his light on the former shepherds’ jewelry, so he could examine it.
The noise from the camp was human and female, but the din of shrieks that settled somewhere between torment and delight had no form or meaning.
The little round woman is being savaged for someone’s sport... Marai thought. He sadly understood it was merely her life as usual. The sounds faded to whimpers and then stopped.
“Make it easy on yourself. Try the truth this time.” The leader of the four sighed and began to mockingly walk his captive through a desired explanation while eyeing him for possible weaknesses. “You say to me that you have come in from a journey from...out there, wearing the jewels of a king?” He pointed incredulously in the direction of the flatter wastes. “Only a madman would go into the wilderness alone at night, even under the moonlight.” a chortle filled his unbelieving face as he kicked at Marai’s toe. “Your sandals aren’t even worn.”
“Ah...Urzeb...quit toying with him and let’s just take him to N’ahab-atall.” A man with the brown and white turban leered. “Sounds like he’s done with that brown-eyed monkey girl...time for us to have some fun.” His grizzled mouth moved around his foul and rotting teeth.
“Good, good.” Rusty-throated “Urzeb” nodded and laughed, shoving his big captive to the turbanned man and the remaining figure standing near him in the dark. It didn’t seem to trouble them that Marai looked capable of fighting his way out of their grasp. That meekness was quickly becoming Marai’s plan for either escape or vengeance.
The shepherd wanted them to think he was perhaps a spoiled and pampered wayfarer, mysteriously lost from his company, and that he had wandered up seeking aid from a once familiar place. He climbed down with them into the heart of the thieves camp without a struggle.
On one level. Marai felt truly curious about this nasty band of men. He began to think a bloodless escape might be easier than he originally thought. As for revenge...If he was compliant, he could learn, as the children suggested, and make his move later. His greatest concern then became getting the satchel with the “Children” back. The man named Urzeb was now guarding them as if they were rubies.
A dozen more men had begun to rouse each other from their drunken slumber around the fire, while the four who had been patrolling the camp approached with their prisoner. Soon even more men emerged from the tents, weapons drawn and ready. The shambling ring of men had barely formed about the newcomer when the apparent leader parted the crowd, stepping defiantly close to the captive.
This leader was a slightly shorter than average man but, Marai noticed, he was built like a hairy and wild cur. His blackest eyes revealed a kind of soulless savagery that added something to his overall magnificence. His gnarled hands, adorned with several finger and thumb rings, were splayed out and perching gently over numerous leather straps slung with weapons. These straps lay over, but never tangled with the dozen or so golden necklaces and amulets which draped about his swarthy neck and chest.
What a proud little cock... An almost laugh rose from Marai’s chest as he studied his captor. The leader was lighter skinned than his followers. He was either Kina-Ahna or possibly from as far north and east as the Shinar. The man strutted back and forth with a kind of self-satisfied birdlike swagger, sizing Marai up, eying him from head to toe and back again.
When Marai had looked into the man of Kush’s eyes he had seen the tall man’s story. In that first attempt his vision had been limited. Now the former shepherd felt the life of this leader of rats stream into his thoughts as if he had lived the man’s memories himself.
He saw the little slave boy with hollow, mean eyes escaping from a brutal master. He saw him wandering, nearly starving and living off of scraps like a dog, in a city by a vast and endless sea..
The Green Sea! I was right! Marai congratulated himself for an instant, careful not to let down his guard. The blameless theft of food had turned into accidental murder when an old vendor cried out against him. Standing for only a moment with dripping hands poised over the corpse as other men sped toward him, he rose and ran into shadows.
Already too hardened to show remorse, the youth lived by his own resources, collecting other homeless youths to join him in his petty crimes. Emboldened by their numbers, the boys moved on to increasingly daring acts as they grew older. This life on the run eventually led them to the wilderness, because they had a bounty on them in most kingdoms.
For the past several years this leader and his men had worked the Copper Road as hired protectors or mercenaries for minor chieftains or Kemet collectioners. After a lifetime of fraud and other misdeeds, these travels had brought them to Wadi Ahu.
N’ahab-atall shuddered convulsively in disgust, as if he felt the shepherd glancing into his memories. His black jet eyes finished deciding the newcomer’s fate while his man Urzeb and the others boasted of how they had seized him rooting around in their store-room.
Marai’s head snapped around. He glowered at one of the faceless men who had impulsively tugged on the kaunaka fringe of his cloak.
You daring me? The shepherd stared clearly into the idiot, gelatinous eyes behind him. Just as suddenly, the man shrank, withered where he stood. The fringe on the shepherd’s cloak had transformed as the thief fondled it, suddenly feeling prickly enough to raise a welt.
Marai felt fresh rage starting to replace his wonder at being able to see into men’s pasts. At first the new sensation felt alien. It began as something darker dwelling in the pit of his gut then spread upward through his backbone, arching through his shoulders like a hooded cobra about to strike. His brow pulsed and his breathing slowed all of the images he saw moving around him as if he had begun to bend the passage of time itself.
Can they see this happening to see me? He asked his thoughts. I can’t be here. I can’t take all of them on like this...this is wrong...I just need to find what they did to my family and get out of here! I’m wasting time!
An image of two giant wheels high in the night sky, turning inside each other, one upright and the other turning in concert with it from a horizontal position, formed in his thoughts. A sunrise pink glow glimmered behind it and the sky opened in the same way something opened long ago when Marai saw the Children of Stone coming to earth. Darkness like a waterfall of starless night descended from that opening, filling him briefly.
The men continued to brag to their leader about finding Marai stealing from their storehouse.
Their store-house Marai stared at the ground feeling an eerie calm replacing the burst of rage inside his thoughts. Not their storehouse... it was my home... It was the place where I lay my wife and my child to eternal sleep...He wanted to weep again at the thought of the desecration of their graves but instead, felt a keen relaxation flooding him. All of the tension had begun to seep out of his body. Everything he thought about came into even sharper focus. He felt tall like a giant...a god towering over this band of men until they had become as ants. Just as suddenly, and at the same time, he felt like a tiny fly zooming between each of the men; observing each droplet of malodorous sweat on their skin.
“I am N’ahab-Atall” the leader turned, still strutting after his second-in-command had spun a veritable hour’s worth of lies. The shepherd, still feeling as if he housed a giant god spirit descending from on high within himself, felt that energy soar, circling up and outward. “The energy moved about the men like a hawk, then withdrew, without ever leaving their midst.
“Is what my man tells me, true?” The leader of the thieves, raised
one side of his thickened single brow. “You were suddenly here, from out of nowhere, in the middle of the night?” his voice slithered like oil. His right hand perched over an obscene dagger hilt, fingering it as if it was a peculiar amulet.
The blade was tucked in this N’ahab-Atall’s belt. The gesture was supposed to show Marai that he was ready to use that blade in an instant, but the message the shepherd received was far different. The hilt and quillions were polished antler carved in the image of a wolf with its jaws holding the blade forward. Some cursed soul had fashioned a wooden scabbard in the shape of the goddess so her spread legs received the blade to the hilt. As a weapon, the dagger was weak. As a symbol of disrespect toward the goddess and to all women, its strength was beyond compare.
Sweat beaded on the shepherd’s brow.
N’ahab-Atall, the leader of the rogues, sensed the insult his blade brought and shoved the knife out to display it, anxious for a fight.
Marai felt a dullness in his heart. The dizziness of divided thought became clearer. He didn’t want to give the leader the satisfaction of a fight, even a fight he knew the man and his cohorts would lose. He just wanted to walk away. The children whispered once more, soothing him.
Be wary of traps
These will set.
The odor of Marai’s emotion excited the men in N’ahab-Atall’s band like the blood of a dying animal beckons hyenas.
A murmur moved through the assembly as they pressed closer. The men were talking, asking things, poking him, spitting.
Marai, calmed by the Children’s whispers, heard only the roaring of his heartbeat in his ears as it punctuated time’s slowing pace. He saw, in his thoughts, a scene of Houra hushing her sons and urging Sheb that she could still walk enough to escape. She was weeping softly and stumbling in anguish as the same shadowy figure who had dragged her to his tent after she was raped led the last of Ahu’s family to safety in the nighttime wilderness, then returned to distract the guards. He saw the sheep slaughtered for a few good meals and Ilara’s mat-bound body was hauled out of its burial place to be stripped of valuables before it was burnt with the refuse. The rage inside him struggled to get the upper hand, but the whispers of his new internal guardian fought it back for him as they continued to hush and soothe him.
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