by Jack Geurts
He was a short, round man, but carried himself like a much taller one. Like the pufferfish who expanded itself to ward off prey, Crassus was possessed of an undeserved importance in the world, or at the very least, in the town. He wore a long cloak and a turban, its tail dangling down about his waist, and it often seemed to Imharak that he was trying to attain the same gravitas that Gaius had, only Gaius had it without trying.
A low, even growl was coming from Merlin, still laid out flat on the courtyard, head turned to face the intruder. The growl told the man he wasn’t welcome, but the fact that Merlin was still lying down made the threat ring a little hollow. Nevertheless, Gaius hushed him, and Imharak hid a smile.
Crassus, for his part, ignored the dog entirely. “Caelos be damned, you think I’ve got all day to stand around, trying to get your attention?”
Gaius simply smiled. “Good morning to you as well, Crassus.”
The man ignored him, his eyes going to Imharak by the forge. Hard eyes. He wasn’t exactly glaring, but the sentiment was the same as if he had been. The boy stared impassively back as Gaius had instructed him to do. Soft words, soft eyes. That was how he stayed out of trouble.
But he didn’t look away. That wasn’t part of the deal. He could play the meek outcast in every way but that. He never looked away. Not until they did.
It was up to Gaius to intervene on his behalf and intervene he did, asking Crassus what he wanted. Blunt as a knife over rock. Crassus broke eye contact with the boy and turned to the master.
“I’d like that mouldboard back if you’ve got the time. Wouldn’t want to put you out or anything.” He was referring, albeit sarcastically, to the large, curved blade that formed an integral part of his plough. The part that carved through the ground like the bow of a ship through water, turning the earth to make a furrow. Crassus had gone ahead and damaged his, or rather his slaves had, so he’d brought it in for repairs.
“Not at all,” Gaius said. “You might have noticed it when you came in, resting against the wall there.”
Crassus frowned and stuck his head out the door. Evidently satisfied of its being there, but not with its exposure to the public, he said, “You just leave a thing like that outside for any whoreson to run off with?”
“What’s a whoreson want with a mouldboard?”
“He could sell it.”
Gaius gave him a look like they both knew that was a stretch. “Where’s he going to sell it, huh? Take it to port and hock it for a few shekels. Anyone in Daetia sees that thing, they’re going to see my sigil burned into the side of it and it’ll be back here in no time.”
Crassus’ eyes bulged with anger. “You burned your sigil into it?”
“Well, I can’t just leave it out there with no sigil,” Gaius said, casually. “Like you said, it might get stolen.”
“Why didn’t you keep it in here?”
“I don’t have the room. We’re not all farmers, you know.”
Crassus took a step towards the blacksmith, pointing a finger in his direction. “You wouldn’t last a second on a farm.”
“No?”
“No. That’s a real man’s work.”
Gaius shrugged. “I won’t argue with you there. That’s why I send the boy out whenever we need a pasture for the goats. He’s a lot tougher than I am. Young lad. Strong back. Not me, I’m too old for that.”
Crassus eyed the boy. “You think you’re pretty tough, then?”
“I manage.”
Gaius looked at Imharak, but there was nothing he could reprimand him for. He hadn’t raised his voice or spoken out of turn. He had just been honest. A smile tugged at the blacksmith’s mouth.
“Look at me, surrounded by a couple of big, tough men.” He laughed, turned to Crassus. “Hard workers, the both of you.”
Slowly, the smile bled away from his face, and he stared at the farmer with dead eyes. Crassus grew uneasy.
“But then,” Gaius said, “you’re not spending much time in the fields these days, are you, Crassus?”
The turbaned man tilted his head a little, not sure he’d heard him right. “What was that?”
“No, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure it’s terribly difficult sitting in the shade all day, sipping wine and watching your boys do the heavy lifting.”
“I...”
“That’s the good thing about slaves, isn’t it? You know, I think about getting one sometimes. Going down to the port, looking at them all lined up there, picking out the best one. Sounds like a lot of fun.” He paused, pretended to consider it. “But, then again...I suppose I got the next best thing. Isn’t that right, Im?”
The boy knew he was only half-joking, but he played along. “That’s right.”
By this point, Crassus was livid. Red-faced, trembling. “I don’t have to stand here and take this from some traitor and his Kemite runaway.”
Gaius said nothing. He didn’t raise his voice or hurl an insult back. He just smiled.
“I know you’re not afraid of me, Crassus. But you are afraid of him.” He gestured to Imharak, who held the farmer’s gaze without blinking. His eyes speaking a truth all three of them knew.
Gaius went on, “Now, for some reason, the boy’s developed a peculiar fondness for me. And while he doesn’t hesitate to let me know what’s what, he reserves that right exclusively for himself. See, he gets a little defensive when other people start telling me what’s what. And in case I missed my guess, I think that’s what you’re doing right now.”
Crassus fell silent. He looked at the boy and the boy looked at him.
“Very well,” he said, through gritted teeth. Then he left.
A few seconds later, Crassus was barking at his slaves who had walked there alongside his cart, telling them to load up the mouldboard and be careful with it this time.
“You had to burn your sigil into the side, didn’t you?” Imharak said.
Gaius smiled. “If only he worked the plough himself, he’d see it every time he looked down. Still, I’ll take what I can get.”
Merlin had resumed growling the second Crassus’ back was turned, and Imharak went over and patted him.
“Good boy,” he said, and Merlin rolled over onto his back with his legs up and his paws dangling limp. He was a large, lean dog as all wolfhounds were, taller than a man when standing upright. It wasn’t that he had a habit of standing upright, of course, just that when he put his paws on Imharak’s shoulders, he could look clear over the boy’s head with ease.
He had a rough grey coat and didn’t so much run as galloped. Graceful. Almost like a horse in that way. Bred for hunting wolves, but now – lying on his back with his eyes closed, having his belly scratched – he didn’t seem like much of a danger to anything, let alone a wolf.
“You’d better head off if you want to get back before dark,” Gaius said, picking up his hammer to resume the day’s work.
Imharak had almost forgotten. He went outside and guided the oxen from their pen, stroking their snouts to calm them as he laid the yoke down over their shoulders and hitched them up to the cart. Cato and Faustus were their names.
There were few creatures held in higher regard among his people than the ox. They were used for ploughing, threshing, hauling loads. They fed the townsfolk with their meat and pleased the gods with their sacrifice. Indeed, it almost seemed a shame to kill them when the time came.
Imharak climbed up into the front of the cart, hearing it creak under his weight, and again when Merlin jumped up alongside him. The cart was old and in need of repair. Every now and then, Gaius would replace one worn-out plank with another, and it seemed to do the trick. It solved the problem, albeit temporarily. In a few weeks or months, he’d have to replace another plank or a wheel. And if he kept switching them out in that fashion, Imharak wondered, would it continue to be the same cart, even when all its original parts had been replaced?
Gaius told the boy to be careful even though Daetia was only a two-hour ride by cart and he had done it a half-t
housand times. The blacksmith watched from the doorway as his apprentice made his way through the town, and didn’t take his eyes off the cart until it had disappeared safely around the bend.
Even then, he wouldn’t breathe easy until the boy got home safe.
CHAPTER 3
A Vast And Empty Sea
Imharak kept his head down or straight ahead, not making eye contact with anyone, but feeling a few pairs of eyes on him. Mostly though, they ignored him. They were used to him by now, and generally, it was only when forced to be in close contact with him that they felt slighted.
He didn’t often wonder why they hated him so much – he just took it as a given that that was the way things were. The people needed something to hate, to rail against, and he was it.
He knew a lot of it had to do with his name. The same kind of name their slave-drivers had before they escaped from bondage and settled here. The name of a Kemite.
Another part of it was what he could do. The magic he possessed was something no man had ever seen. It scared them, being what they were and living where they did. Flesh and blood and bone in the hot, dry bush. Fire had always been a constant threat, but to have it living in their own town was like rolling out the red carpet for death itself.
They wanted him gone. They wanted him out. And soon, he would be. In a way, he couldn’t even blame them. Put himself in their shoes and he’d probably think the same thing.
He drove.
The one thing Imharak could not reconcile was why Gaius wouldn’t put his magic to use in the forge. There was hardly a better blacksmith than one with full command of fire and steel – he could heat metal faster and hotter than any furnace. Indeed, with the right set-up, he could smelt iron ore right there in the workshop, save Gaius having to ship it in from Erephos.
Granted, there was no iron to be found down south where they were, so he would have to pay for shipping regardless. But it would be a lot cheaper to import the ore than the sponge iron that had already been smelted up north. Just ship the ore as it was and Imharak would handle it from there.
He’d pitched the idea to Gaius a dozen times and each time Gaius had refused. He said if Imharak used his magic it would scare the townsfolk. The boy countered with the fact that it would make their town prosperous – Gaius would employ more people to keep up with Imharak’s production, and once the word got out, folks would come from far and wide to have their smithing needs met.
Gaius said that, more likely, folks would come from far and wide to kill the demon who melted iron with his hands.
Imharak didn’t have anything to say to that.
He looked down and saw Merlin fast asleep beside him. The boy shook his head and smiled. A fine guard dog if ever there was one.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw women in their houses, working the loom or sweeping the beaten earth. Grinding the fresh grain with stones. They generally wore the long dress and neckcloth that fell to their hips at the back and was pulled up over their head like a hood.
He saw slaves in loose-fitting tunics belted at the waist – carrying water, guiding oxen, lifting loads so heavy it would cripple them in later life. A few were branded on the forehead or cheek with an ‘F’ for fugitive, indicating that at some point in the past, they had tried to run away.
He saw the older men in their long robes and head coverings – men who were past working age and could stand to wear a little more clothing, whether against the cold or the burning sun. They wore the cloth draped over their forehead like the women and occasionally held it in place with a cord circlet. Others had it wrapped up in a turban, while the workers tended to wear a simple band to hold the hair from their eyes, as did most of the slaves.
Indeed, it was sometimes hard to tell a slave and a worker apart. They wore the same light, basic garb. They did more or less the same work. But it was important to remember that the workers were free men. Men who, not that long ago, had been slaves themselves. He wondered how it was they came to own slaves, and how they felt about it. Or more importantly, how the slaves felt about it.
Imharak supposed it was just the way of the world.
Unlike other parts of the country, it wasn’t as if the freemen didn’t sully their hands with dirt or hard labour – a small, agricultural community like theirs didn’t allow for much of an aristocracy, and many of them weren’t wealthy enough to afford slaves. The younger men would often work right alongside them in the fields or the workshops, and when they got too old, their sons would take over.
They all – freeman and slave, man and woman alike – had the brownish skin of a people not far removed from the desert, most of them with dark hair and beards, except the older folk, who tended to grey in their winter years. All of them with some form of leather sandal on their feet to protect against the hot, red soil and the rocks.
Imharak left the town behind and the women gathering water from the well. He passed along a narrow road through the bush where a thousand carts had passed a thousand times. On either side, the trees rose tall and straight and pale, watching him as he went. The trunks were spaced evenly, the forest clear and bright, with only sparse undergrowth to allow clear passage for any man or beast who sought to make their way off-road.
It was one of only two ways out of Alba that didn’t necessitate walking on foot through the bush. A single dirt road that cut the town in half and led one way north, the other south. The southern route to Daetia was the one that most people took, but there was a northern path that hooked back up to the Merchants’ Road, the main thoroughfare in eastern Nemeros which connected the sea-port of Daetia to the river-port of Numa up north.
In effect, the dirt road was a detour that allowed the people of Alba to travel north or south with relative ease. It had been carved out of the bush to accommodate them, though if one day the road were to disappear, and Alba was cut off from the rest of civilisation, Imharak wasn’t sure how much people in the outside world would even notice. Sure, a few shipments of wheat and barley would be missed, but there were other sources of grain. Trade between Numa and Daetia would continue, and in no time at all, Alba would be forgotten.
An hour or so passed before he reached the Seat of Artorius, though he had been able to see it clearly from home. It was a great, forested ridge towering over the landscape, separating him from the sea. Alba from Daetia.
Luckily, the ridgeline fell away into a low pass that amounted to little more than a bump in the road. A gentle slope to be sure, and easy enough for Cato and Faustus to manage, even old and ornery as they were.
Imharak remembered Gaius taking him up to the roof of the loft as a young boy and pointing out the ridge, telling him about Artorius, after whom it was named. Also known as the Ploughman, Artorius was said to travel the land after it had been settled by Libera and her runaway slaves, teaching them how to cultivate the soil.
The boy was never sure how much of that to believe. Surely, one man couldn’t do all that by himself. Maybe it was a group of people.
It also struck Imharak that it was never explained to him whether Artorius was a Liberite or whether he had been here before they arrived. Surely, it must have been the latter for him to have had any knowledge of local agriculture.
In that case, he was one of the Shadefolk who were driven from the land before the swords and trumpets of the Liberites in a glorious conquest.
In that case, his name would not have been Artorius at all.
That was a Liberite name.
As Imharak neared the top of the pass, he found himself sitting up straight, craning his neck to see over the crest as he always did. Stretching to get his first glimpse of the ocean. He never tired of seeing it, and each time he did was much like the first time.
Living inland, the view could get a little monotonous. Trees, earth, mud, stone, steel, flame. All of it very dry and hot and earthy.
There was something divine about the sea. Something otherworldly. He had seen the sea before, and he had swum in it. He had even been out on
a fishing boat once with a friend of Gaius’, but he did not understand the sea, and so he feared it.
He supposed it was natural to fear what he did not understand. What he could not see with his own two eyes. He could not look beneath the surface of the waves or see what lurked there in the fathomless dark. He did not know where the ships went after they sailed over the edge of the world.
He supposed that once he’d earned his iron, he could board a ship and find out. See those distant lands for himself.
He could do that. He wasn’t sure that he would.
Some men were born for the sea, but most were made for land. That was what Gaius had told him once. Imharak could imagine those seaborn folk now, down on the docks, loading or unloading the ships, coming ashore or setting sail. There was something almost mythical about them, even though to them, their time at sea was probably about as stimulating as Imharak’s was in the forge.
Only today, there didn’t seem to be any ships. That was strange.
He was coming down the other side of the pass now and saw the town of Daetia nestled at the foot of the ridge, where the mountain met the sea. It sprawled out around a large cove that protected the harbour from the worst of the southern squalls. Bigger than Alba, but not quite big enough to be called a city.
In Alba, people worked out of their homes. There was a single tavern where the townsfolk met to drink and laugh, and even that was affixed to the owner’s dwelling.
In Daetia, there was a tavern on every street corner and a brothel on every other. There were alleyways and wharves and temples where animals were butchered, bled and burned. The buildings rose to three tiers in certain parts of town so the cobblestones underfoot only warmed in the middle of the day.
As Imharak neared the base of the hill, he saw the Merchants’ Road winding in from the east, cutting a direct path through the town to the harbour. His own road entered Daetia from the north and ended up in the same location, though it took a more circuitous route. A more scenic route, as Gaius had euphemistically put it once. The streets were a little narrower, and the route itself was a little less intuitive. People were apt to get lost if they didn’t know the way, unlike the folks travelling down from Numa, who couldn’t get lost if they tried.