Shadow of the Conqueror

by Shad M Brooks

  Paradan’s mood darkened. “You don’t need to get personal, Daylen.”

  “Then act like a swordsman and fight me.”

  “A true swordsman would never accept such an unfair fight.”

  Daylen growled and hefted his sword into Plow stance, the sword pointed diagonally toward his opponent. It took a lot of effort, but Daylen pushed himself on to advance.

  Paradan drew his sword and reflexively stood in Wrath, which held the sword near his right ear, the blade pointed back over his shoulder. “Stop this, Daylen!” he said. “You’ll just make a fool of yourself.”

  Daylen pushed his sword forward in a thrust, forcing Paradan to move.

  Paradan tried to counter with a diagonal strike from Wrath, a type of riposte meant to parry and place his sword on point for a counter thrust.

  Daylen stepped to his right; it was more of a stumble, but he expected his body to move like this, which was no matter as the fight was already over. By stepping and raising his sword into a hanging parry, angled down, Daylen deflected the strike to his side and stepped forward, positioning himself inside Paradan’s guard.

  Without pause Daylen continued to stumble past Paradan’s side, his hands moving to twist the sword around and nick Paradan on the cheek with the back edge.

  Daylen staggered a few more steps before regaining his footing. He let his arms drop and hunched over wheezing heavily.

  Paradan spun to face him.

  Daylen glanced back and smiled.

  A small trickle of blood ran down Paradan’s cheek, who touched the blood with stunned eyes. “Impossible!” he said.

  “No: practice. You have a good foundation, but are still bare as a baby’s ass.”

  Paradan’s face grew red. He had just been beaten by a very old man. Not merely old, but ancient, as few people reached Daylen’s years.

  “Luck!” Paradan said.

  “Then try to strike me, if you can,” Daylen said, forcing himself upright.

  He didn’t even bother to raise a guard as Paradan took his sword in a Roof stance and approached. He feinted a downwards strike but pulled back into a sideways reverse cut aimed at Daylen’s head.

  Daylen hunched, resting his chin on his chest, and stepped forward. It was a slight movement and therefore far more manageable than the attack he had done in their first exchange, but precise. Paradan’s high strike would usually be a sound move, as the other swordsman should have raised their sword to respond, but Daylen could read Paradan like an open book. His hunched step had dodged under Paradan’s strike completely, putting their bodies beside each other.

  With Daylen’s sword pointing down, he hefted it up hilt first with both hands.

  The sword passed in between Paradan’s arms, where the pommel struck him under his chin.

  Paradan’s head swung back from the impact and he fell to the ground, letting go of his sword completely.

  He lay there rubbing his chin, and when he opened his eyes, Daylen’s sword was pointed to his throat.

  “Swordplay isn’t just about strength, speed, fitness, or precision, son. All those things help, true, but the most important thing is being able to read your opponent to react with the right move. A precise strike that gets blocked is worse than a sloppy one that connects. If you know how to read your opponents, it doesn’t matter if you’re like me and can barely stand. You’ll still win.”

  Paradan lay stunned for a short time, before saying, “Teach me!”

  “I don’t have the time,” Daylen said, dropping his sword. The energy the Bringer had given him was completely gone. “Now, get up and give me a hand before I collapse.”

  Paradan did, and leaning on him helped Daylen become more lucid. Light, did it feel good to swing a sword again! It was bad for his body but good for his soul, as it turned out his instincts were as keen as ever.

  Once back on the wagon, an ordeal in of itself, Daylen closed his eyes and wheezed heavily. His whole body hurt.

  “Will you be all right?” Paradan asked as he got the wagon moving again.

  “I’ll live,” Daylen said. Long enough to die, that is.

  “I can’t believe you’re so good—Light, you made me feel like a kid swinging a stick around.”

  “Then you finally have a better gauge on your actual ability. I hope you can see how easily you’ll be beaten by a swordsman from the city,” Daylen said.

  Paradan response sounded disheartened: “Yeah.” Then he added, “But it doesn’t seem right.”

  “You can still carry your sword, that’s every person’s right, but those who wear the red ribbon in the city fight at a higher level.”

  “Losing isn’t the end of the world. I mean, I just lost to you.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. You know listed duels are far more intense and that deaths are common.”

  “Unless there’s a Bringer to officiate and heal the loser.”

  “Sure, and what if there’s not? Don’t be so careless with your life. You don’t need to prove anything.”

  Paradan didn’t respond but eventually Daylen heard him untie the ribbon.

  “Good lad,” Daylen said, letting silence follow.

  The road Paradan drove the wagon along eventually joined a much wider one that was pointed toward the city. They were joined by other travelers here: hand-pulled rickshaws meant for short journeys, wagons and carts like Paradan’s bearing goods and cargo, larger darkstone-driven coaches, and those who simply walked on the side of the road. Above them flew skycoaches and the smaller dories. There was even a skyracer or two which flew overhead at incredible speeds. They weren’t practical for personal transportation, but Light they looked beautiful.

  Paradan eventually drove the wagon through the opening of the shield net and they soon passed the occasional brick or stone building. Most of the building were made in the baroque, neoclassical, and aristocratic styles, common through most Hamahra. Even the more plain brick buildings and warehouses had small embellishments here and there that spoke of these influences, such as an archway or framed peak atop a double-door entrance with classical-style pillars recessed halfway into a wall on either side. Stone-carved and stylized window frames and corbelling had been added wherever they could. The structures grew in number and height as they drove farther into the city, and paved sidewalks were now bordering the road. The buildings of Treremain ranged in heights from five stories to twenty.

  “I’ve never seen buildings so big,” Paradan said.

  “Oh, they get much bigger than these,” Daylen croaked back. “I’ve read that engineers are building things called skyscrapers in the larger cities, seventy stories high if you can believe it. Then there’s the Lumatorium in Highdawn, but that was built through a Lightbringer’s last miracle.”

  “Oh I’ve heard of the Lumatorium, but not those skyscrapers. Light, seventy stories high! That’s tall enough to reach some of the sitters and islands.” Paradan nodded to the many floating buildings that either sat in the sky or on top of a tiny floating landmass, called islets, over the city ahead of them. “I’d be worried they’d fall over,” Paradan added.

  “They implant darkstone into the walls of the skyscrapers, much like a skysitter’s foundation, to add structural support. Makes them nearly impossible to collapse.”

  “Smart, and I suppose they can just move a sitter if the buildings under get too high.”

  “No, the darkstone holding up those buildings are cemented solidly within the foundation. Very hard to affix a driver to them.”

  “But most of the islets were floated in.”

  “Islets are more stable and can survive being moved, but it’s still extremely difficult. The core can’t be too big, otherwise you’ll need more drivers than it’s worth to pass the luminous threshold. Then you’ve got to drill into the side and hope the darkstone isn’t encased in granite or some other rock, and affix a large sunstone driver—we’re talking several skyships in strength. And then you can only move it in one direction unless you drill in thr
ough the other sides and affix more. You have to fix the drivers with perfect precision as otherwise you’ll miss your target location.”

  “Light, Daylen, you know a lot about all this.”

  “You don’t reach my age without learning a thing or two.”

  They passed a factory or two and before long they were into the city proper, the smell attesting to that: coal, smoke, refuse, sweat, and the occasional scent of bread, meat, or beer.

  The streets were spotted with people from every walk of life, most wearing a sword at their side but few with a red ribbon.

  Those doing the most menial tasks, such as scrubbing walls and cleaning the street of trash and animal feces, were the collared slaves. Steel collars for criminals, copper for voluntary. The criminals were sold into slavery for the time of their sentence, and the date of their conviction and time of sentence etched along the collars.

  There were many children running about the streets, but they worked the factories too. Daylen hated child labor. It was different to the work children did in older times, where they would help their family bring in the crops or learn their father’s trade. Now they were worked to death in conditions no self-respecting person should accept. Progress, they called it; supply to meet demand, the industrialization of the world. Well, this progress struck Daylen as abhorrent. It was very hypocritical coming from him, perhaps, as Daylen wasn’t exactly the perfect model of consistency or morality.

  Still, was a time where children had to toil endlessly for basic bread much better than when he had ruled?

  History considered the time of Dayless the Conqueror and his Dawn Empire to have been dark and oppressive. The history books seemed to forget his people were always fed, the children free from slave labor. He built strong roads that were still used infall, introduced a much better measurement system, he had Hamahran taught the world over, unifying the languages, though most had regressed to their native tongues once his empire was defeated. He organized and liberated the slave laws so that no one could be stolen into slavery by banditry, which the aristocracy had been happy to allow. Daylen had made child and sex slaves illegal, and no one could execute slaves without a crime fitting the penalty. He built schools and hospitals, created safety and security…but all at the cost of freedom, he knew now. He had ruled with an unwavering iron fist, killing millions of his people, not realizing that he was no better than the aristocracy he had overthrown.

  Paradan jerked the wagon to the left, narrowly missing a man with curly red hair who’d walked out in front of them.

  “Do you want to be run over, man?” Paradan growled over his shoulder as they drove past.

  “How about you watch where you’re going, you inbred country idiot!” the man yelled back.

  Paradan’s hand swung to grasp his sword and he started to rise, but Daylen put his hand over Paradan’s, causing the man to pause.

  “Sit down, lad, before you get yourself killed.”

  Paradan calmed himself and sat. “He was a practiced city duelist, wasn’t he.”

  “Yes, and that would have been a duel to settle a personal dispute against a Jentrian, judging by his curly red hair.”

  “He was Jentrian? So what?”

  Daylen sighed. “The people of Jentry fight to the death in duels to settle personal disputes. They intend to kill or be killed and are reluctant to make such challenges as a result, but rarely ever turn them down, either.”

  “What? Why?”

  “They see it as the only proper way to determine a victor. Duels to first blood don’t determine who would have won if the fight was real. There’s many cases where you can take a cut and still win, as with grabbing your opponent’s blade.”

  “I suppose that makes sense, but light, fighting to the death over a small altercation?”

  “He wouldn’t have challenged you over what just happened, but you were about to challenge him.”

  “Oh…” Paradan said embarrassedly.

  “Exactly.”

  “You would think foreigners would adopt the practices of the land they’re in.”

  “Deaths happen often enough in Hamahran duels.”

  “But not intentionally. Shading foreigners.”

  Daylen huffed, looking at Paradan from the corner of his eye. Because the farmer had grown up in the country, he had so little contact with people from other lands. The world was a very big place, filled with different peoples and cultures, many of which could be seen here in the city.

  The blood-red hair of Frey and Jentry could be spotted regularly; the brown skin and bright yellow hair of the intellectual Tuerasian peoples walked into view as well, many showing off far more skin than the local Hamahrans thought modest. The dark-blue hair and olive skin of Mayn was common, and the purple hues of Dayshah’s two nations could also be seen. Daymony and Delavie went about in their high-collared form-fitting suits and dresses, helping identify them from the other nation to have citizens with purple hair, the Lee’on’tese, who were rare in these lands. But it was hard to miss a person from Lee’on’ta when they did appear, due to their exceptionally long hair tied in elaborate braids, and their native robes, tanned skin, and brown eyes.

  Though Daylen didn’t see anyone from the countries of Ma’queh, Zantium, Toulsen, Orden, Endra, or Lourane, chances were that there was at least one person from those lands somewhere in the city. The people of Azbanadar were another story; his strongest ally during his rule, their isolation since his downfall made the Lee’on’tese look sociable by contrast.

  Yet even with the mix of nationalities, green was by far the most prominent hair color in Treremain, Hamahran blue coming second, and eye colors ranged from amber to coal brown.

  The rich stood out amidst the crowd. Their dress said it all; the men with their clean, prim-and-proper tailed suits with fine cravats and top hats, the women with their laced and frilly dresses and parasols. Both sexes wore finely made swords. Those women who wore hoop skirts or other wide dresses had an opening at their hips for a one-handed sword scabbard to slip through, so it wouldn’t swing and tangle with their dress, and the swept hilts of their swords sat like ornamental baubles at their sides. Some women instead carried longswords with parasol scabbards that rested on their shoulders, a combination of function and fashion.

  “They wear the ribbon,” Paradan said, disgruntled, while looking at a couple of wealthy dandies. “But they’re probably duelists, like you say.”

  “Not those two. Their tassels aren’t long enough.”

  “Then why aren’t they afraid of being targeted for a few easy beads? Light, I could challenge one of them right now if I wanted to.”

  “They both would have been trained in the best schools this city has to offer, so don’t go thinking they’re pushovers. Apart from that they have very little to fear of being challenged by a serious duelist if they’re from a wealthy enough family.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The family will just hire a number of duelists more skilled to challenge the winner in reprisal, making sure to knock him down the lists.”

  “That’s rot!” Paradan said. “How is a man to learn the sword if he can’t join the serious duels?”

  “I suppose we should teach children to swim before they can walk while we’re at it.”

  Paradan sniffed and said no more, directing the wagon through the streets and constantly braking for the people crossing in front of them.

  It was a slow process of continuous stopping and starting, which was why it was so much better to fly across the city in a sky coach or dory. As they neared the skyport, the road widened to thirty meters abreast with hundreds of other vehicles packed side by side, many being darkstone-powered platforms floating a meter from the ground bearing great loads. A rare smile crossed Daylen’s face as he gazed up. There were as many skyships above as there were vehicles below, queuing to enter the port or flying out of the city. Beautiful machines.

  There were many differing designs amongst the ships, each a specific mo
del produced by a different manufacturer, but they all had distinct similarities. Skyships mostly had flat bottoms for their landing supports and to accommodate the flat slab of darkstone that made up their core. The entire ship was fixed to that core by strong iron bracing. Those bracings would be bolted to large beams of timber which made up the rest of the ship’s frame. The sides of most ships sloped inward so that their weight would rest more securely over the cores. They were sleek and aerodynamic, and looked somewhat like upside-down boats with larger rears—akin to a sea galleon.

  It took a nearly an hour to move the hundred remaining meters into the port.

  The skyport was a massive expanse within the city, comprising hundreds of rectangles that sat a good two meters lower than the paved ground surrounding them. Piers would extend into the rectangles along their broad sides, making separate docking bays for the ships where they could load or unload passengers or cargo. The larger rectangles accommodated larger ships.

  Most of the skyships in port were carriers and cargo ships, but there were even a couple of runners. There were one or two trawlers and some whalers, too. It was odd for them, being so far inland, but bringing goods inland meant skyfish would sell for a better price, and all it cost them was a little more travel. Daylen didn’t see any military ships.

  “Never seen so many ships in my life,” Paradan said. “They’re amazing.”

  “They are indeed,” Daylen said. “Man has yet to surpass their magnificence.” He pulled his eyes from the large cargo ship they were passing, ten stories high and fifty meters long, to look at Paradan. “Lad, would you do me one last favor?”

  “Light, Daylen, of course.”

  Clearly Paradan was still in a good mood from Daylen’s gift.

  “I need you to find me a carrier headed to one of the cities along the Dawn Gulf. Dirinhom, Talatale, or Lightsem should do.”

  “Don’t worry,” Paradan said, pulling the wagon to a stop and hopping off. “I’ll find you a ship.”

  It didn’t take long. Paradan returned and drove them to a particular carrier on the other side of the port headed to Talatale.