Blood and Iron: The Book of the Black Earth (Part One)

by Jon Sprunk

  The sound of the door shutting was almost enough to break Horace, but he stood in the center of the cell and listened as the guards barred the entry from the outside. The floor and walls were hard stone blocks. The ceiling was just a couple inches over his head, which made him want to duck.

  Horace inspected the window, but it was far too small to allow for any chance of escape. So he lowered himself to the floor and sat with his elbows propped on his raised knees, staring at the door. After a few minutes his gaze wandered down to his hands, drooping before him. The patches of scars glowed pale white in the ghostly light. He traced their rippled contours with his gaze as he waited.

  The wagon rumbled down the hard-beaten roadway. Jirom picked at the scabs on his arms as he looked out through the iron bars. The rattle of chains and the clop of hooves drowned out the breeze and the buzzing insects flying past his cage. The sun was only halfway to its zenith, but already the day was sweltering. Not so hot as the desert, yet still enough to drive a man mad.

  His scalp itched, too, where the hair was growing in. He'd kept it shaved for years, but he didn't think anyone was going to give him a razor after what he'd done. Breaking the jaw of a smart-mouthed drover on the first day of the journey had been satisfying, but now they kept him in the cage night and day. He ate in the cage, slept inside it, and shit and pissed through the hole in the floor. He'd long since gone nose-deaf to his own smell.

  Standing up, he met the gaze of Umgaia in the next cage. Their wagons were linked together and pulled by the same train of oxen. Umgaia smoothed her luxurious hair over her shoulder and winked at him with the single eye in the center of her forehead. “It's soon time for another show.”

  Beyond her wagon, the brick walls of a settlement emerged from the dusty savannah. Another village, another show. Chief Proctor Mituban was, among other things, a procurer for his master, Lord Isiratu. The wagon train held tribute from a dozen holdmasters, as well as some curiosities that Mituban had encountered during his trek around the territory. At every stop along the road to Sekhatun, the caravan displayed its oddities to the common people.

  Jirom leaned against the bars of his cage as the wagon train rolled past the fields and pastures surrounding the village. The smell of manure clung to the air. He had seen hundreds of settlements like this in his soldiering days. Akeshia was said to be the world's breadbasket for good reason. Every year shipments of wheat were sent to nations near and far, and Akeshian merchants brought back a wealth of cotton, timber, and gold. It wasn't difficult to believe that someday her armies would march to the far corners of the earth. Long ago, that notion had inspired Jirom to take up a spear and seek his fortune, but a series of misadventures, and some poor choices on the part of his employers, had set him on another path.

  He settled back onto the floor and rested his back against the bars. The gladiator circuit was renowned for its brutality. If he was fortunate, he'd get put against a few young bucks like the Lion with more muscles than sense, but eventually he would be pitted against someone better. It was just a matter of time.

  When the caravan reached the village, a crowd had gathered. Looking out over their brown faces, Jirom remembered his childhood and the bubbling excitement he'd felt whenever someone new came to his tribe's remote corner of the world. That same excitement was reflected in the eyes watching him pass.

  The wagons stopped at the village center and pulled into a semicircle. Caravan guards went around, watering and feeding the animals. The doors of the lead wagon opened, and Chief Proctor Mituban appeared, wearing a long robe of ivory-white with a crimson sash around the middle. The village elders kept their distance until Mituban beckoned them closer.

  “Come and see,” Mituban said for everyone to hear, “the wonders I have collected for our lord and master!”

  Jirom didn't move as Mituban walked past his cage, introducing him as “the cannibal gladiator from the dark heart of Abyssia!” even though he'd never been to that land. Umgaia was billed as “the fabled cyclops of Sidon.” People gawked as they passed by, pointing and laughing. Jirom suppressed the desire to reach out and strangle the first person to stray within arm's reach. Instead, he sat back and closed his eyes, and tried not to dwell on the humiliation. He had been a soldier and a warrior, but now he was an animal in a cage. Something hit him in the shoulder and rolled off. He looked down at the dry turd on the floor beside him and clenched his hands into fists.

  Don't give them what they want. Just sit back and think of something else.

  After a meal of hard bread and a cup of water, the menagerie packed up. The oxen were re-hitched, and the wagons rolled out past the crowd of watching villagers. Jirom chewed on his crust and simmered.

  The sounds of pipes and laughter floated through the camp. The oxen murmured in their roped enclosure. Wagon drivers and guards sat around the fires, passing skins of beer back and forth.

  Jirom wrapped his shirt around the lock of his cage door. Earlier in the day, while the guards grew lax under the afternoon sun, he'd grasped a fist-sized rock from the ground and hidden it under his shirt. All afternoon he had contemplated what to do. Fight his captors and likely be killed? Perhaps. Dying on his feet had long been his professed ideal, but these past few years he'd come to understand that even a life of degradation was better than death. He'd thought about escaping every day since his capture, but never with much optimism. Anyplace beyond the reach of Akeshian justice seemed too far away. And there was the matter of his brand, which wouldn't be easy to hide. He couldn't walk around with his face covered for long without raising suspicions.

  He watched the sentries. When they wandered to the far side of the camp, past the chief proctor's pavilion, its white silk walls glowing in the moonlight, he slammed the rock against the lock. The muffled clang sounded loud to his ears. He hunkered down and waited, but no one came to investigate.

  A desert owl hooted somewhere in the darkness.

  He struck again. This time his blow glanced off, and he hit his knuckles on a bar. Hissing, he swung again and froze as a metallic snap echoed through his cage. He waited for a dozen pounding heartbeats and then pushed. The cage door swung open.

  Still clutching the rock, he hopped down. The feel of solid ground under his feet was a relief. He took a step but halted as he saw Umgaia watching him. She sat near the edge of her cage, wrapped in a blanket. They looked at each other for a moment, and then she flicked her hand toward the darkness beyond the camp. Get away.

  He went to her door instead. She watched as he tested the bars. The lock on her cage was older than his, probably because Mituban didn't think her likely to escape. Jirom hit it before he could talk himself out of it. The lock's metal face bent on the first blow and cracked open on the second. He opened the door and held out a hand, but she backed away. Jirom heard the footfalls behind him an instant before the whip slashed across his shoulders.

  He turned and swung at the sentry standing behind him, not realizing he still held the stone until it collided with the guard's temple. Bone crunched, and the guardsman crumpled to the ground like an empty sack. Jirom stood over the body, weighing the stone in his hand. It suddenly felt much heavier. He tensed at a touch on his flayed shoulder.

  “You must go, gladiator,” Umgaia whispered.

  “Come with me.”

  “No.” She smiled and was transformed into a true beauty despite her deformity. “Out in the world I would just be a beggar, not even fit for a whore. Mituban feeds me well and his men leave me alone.”

  Before he could stop her, she scurried back into her wagon and closed the door.

  Fool of a woman.

  With a last look at her, he turned toward freedom and stiffened as several shapes emerged from the darkness. The sentries hemmed him in, their spears leveled. Jirom looked over his shoulder. Three guards brandishing stout clubs came around the corner of his wagon.

  Jirom hefted the stone. A fierce heat rose in his chest. This was his moment. Fight to the death. Feel his enemies
’ blood on his hands. Scream out his rage and loathing as he fell beneath their spears.

  Jirom opened his hand and let the rock fall to the ground. He braced himself, but the club striking the middle of his back still drove the wind from his lungs. A spear butt barely missed shattering his kneecap as it knocked him off his feet, and then he was under a pile of pummeling fists and bludgeons. When they hauled him to his feet, blood poured from his face and dripped down onto his bare chest. The guards dragged him back toward this cage, but a voice stopped them.

  “Here. Let me see him.”

  They held Jirom up by his arms as the chief proctor came out from his pavilion. The top buttons of his robe were undone, revealing a patch of black hair. He sipped from a slender glass as he strode over to them. “What's all this?”

  Two sentries hauled the body of the man Jirom had killed into the light. Mituban's gaze went from the corpse to Jirom. “How dare you raise your hand to one of my servants, slave? You are the property of Lord Isiratu!”

  Jirom said nothing. Mituban stepped closer, peering into his eyes. “I can see you are nothing more than a beast, unfit for the company of men. I would have you executed, but that pleasure belongs to His Lordship. Believe me, before the end you will beg for d—”

  The rage exploded inside Jirom. With a violent shudder, he threw off the men holding his arms. A red haze blurred his vision, but through the fog he could see Mituban on the ground, grasping at the large hands clutched around his neck. Jirom wrenched, and the lord's struggles ceased. His wine glass lay broken in the dirt.

  A sharp crack echoed in Jirom's ears, followed by a red-hot pain at the back of his head. As he slumped forward, the last thing he saw was the chief proctor's expression of complete surprise.

  Horace was dreaming the familiar dream again.

  “Hold on!” he shouted over his shoulder as he pushed through the crowd.

  Everywhere people were jostling, shoving, and yelling as they pressed toward the gates. Men, women, and children—the entire population of the Trade Quarter—were all trying to get out at once. He squeezed Sari's hand as he looked back.

  “We're going to make it out,” he told her.

  The terror was plain in her wide blue eyes. That same fear was reflected in every face around them as word of the plague's arrival spread throughout the port town of Tines. The crowd was edging toward a riot, and his family was stuck in the center of it.

  Josef squealed in his mother's other arm. “Fes-ti-val, daddy! Go to fes-ti-val!”

  Horace tried to smile, but it was difficult with the anxiety governing his thoughts. “It's not a festival, Josef. We're going on a trip.”

  “Trip, trip!” the boy shouted as he started to squirm. “Want to get down! I can walk!”

  Sari hugged the boy tighter. “Not yet, darling. We have to get out of the city.”

  She looked into Horace's eyes, and he redoubled his efforts to get them through the throng. Yet after ten minutes he was forced to concede that they weren't getting anywhere. He couldn't even see the walls yet, and he was beginning to fear that the nearest gates had been closed.

  They wouldn't do that. It would sentence thousands of people to die.

  Horace stood up on his toes. The air was humid from the press of bodies. Some people were shoving each other. Curses and threats rose above the din of the crowd. He had to get his family out. Then his gaze strayed to the cliffs overlooking the town—the pale cliffs of Tines—and he knew where they had to go.

  “Come on!” he shouted as he ducked past a bearded man struggling under a heavy sack.

  “Horace!” Sari yelled, but he didn't stop to explain.

  He pulled her and Josef out of the street, into the shelter of a dim alleyway. The buildings on either side crowded out the sky. Horace knew the general direction they needed to go, but they'd have to hurry. They passed an old couple helping each other down the refuse-cluttered alley. When the old man coughed into his hand, Horace held his breath and hauled Sari along faster.

  He almost fell to his knees and kissed the ground when they reached the waterfront, and at the same time he wanted to slap himself. As a shipwright, escaping Tines on an outgoing vessel should have been his first thought. He scanned the many berths, and a sinking sensation pooled in his gut at the sight of so many ships that had already put out to sea, their billowing sails waving good-bye. Flames danced at several spots on the piers where other vessels had been put to the torch. He could guess why. Signs of plague onboard. While soldiers in city livery set another ship alight, clusters of sailors crowded the boardwalk, shouting and waving their fists, no doubt as terrified as he was at the idea of being stranded here.

  “Horace, do you think we'll find anyone to take us on?” Sari asked.

  “I think I know someone who will.”

  “Boats!” Josef screamed with joy. “Boats, daddy!”

  “That's right, my boy. We're going to ride on a ship.”

  Squeezing Sari's hand, Horace led them along the quay. Fishermen were hauling their belongings aboard their shallow craft in preparation to depart. Horace kept moving with long strides, trusting his instincts. Calbert would take them, if he was still at port.

  A weight lifted off Horace's chest as he sighted a familiar yellow mast at the end of the waterfront. The Sea Spray was still nestled in her berth. Horace had spent two weeks refitting the merchant frigate, and during that time he had gotten to know her crew. He hoped they remembered him fondly. He pulled harder on Sari's hand to urge her along while Josef continued to yell “Boats!” at the top of his lungs.

  They passed a gang of sailors loading barrels onto the Spray. Captain Calbert stood on the ship's waist, exhorting them to work faster.

  Horace raised his free hand. “Captain! Captain Calbert!”

  The middle-aged sea captain squinted in their direction. He held up a finger to the marine standing beside him with a loaded crossbow. Horace stopped in his tracks and gathered Sari behind him. “Captain, it's me. Horace Delrosa.”

  A smile creased the captain's lips. “Shipwright! I'd ask what you're doing down here at a time like this, and with that pretty lass who must be the wife you've been telling us about, but I think mayhap I can guess.”

  “We need passage out of Tines.”

  Calbert climbed down from the ship. “Aye. I can fathom that much, but there's orders come down from his lordship saying that any ship that takes on townsfolk as passengers will be set alight.”

  Horace looked to the burning hulks along the waterfront, proof that it was no idle threat. Shouts arose as the two-masted schooner in the next berth was set on fire. Horace tightened his grip on Sari's hand as a melee erupted between the sailors and soldiers not more than thirty paces from where they stood. “Please, captain. They've shut the gates. I can't keep my family here. It's not safe.”

  The captain shook his head. “I understand what you're going through, but that don't change the weather, if you take my meaning.”

  “Captain,” he said. “I don't have much money, but if you'll take my family to your next port, I'll serve as your ship's carpenter for a year without wages.”

  “I'd like to help, son, but—”

  “I'm begging you, sir. If I'm serving on your ship, that makes me crew, so no laws are broken. My wife can wash and cook, too.”

  Calbert sighed as the flames climbed up the neighboring schooner's sleek sides. “All right. I can't leave you behind to face this unholy mess. Get on board.”

  Horace clapped a hand on the captain's arm before leading Sari and Josef up the gangplank. Sailors hustled across the deck carrying tackle and provisions, hauling on lines, and scrambling through the rigging. Horace pulled his wife into a spot of relative calm beside the forecastle ladder and hugged her close. Josef pulled on his hair, eager to see the goings on. All the anxiety Horace had held pent up came out in a long breath.

  “We made it,” Sari whispered.

  “Aye. Soon we'll be underway.”

  “Where
will we go?”

  Horace turned to the railing. Distant noise echoed from the city. Above the fortified walls, the white cliffs sparkled in the afternoon light. He could see the shipyards past the breakwater. In the huge dry dock beside the warehouses and port offices sat his latest creation, a four-masted ship-of-the-line. “It doesn't matter. We're safe.”

  Josef wriggled free of Sari's grasp and ran across the middeck. Horace laughed as his wife chased after the little hellion and shaded his eyes for a better view of Tines. The town was in shambles. Come nightfall, those still trapped inside the walls would realize their fate, and then things would get truly ugly. He tried not to think of all the friends he was leaving behind—the men of his work crew and their families. The only saving grace was that both his and Sari's parents were already gone, so they would be spared this nightmare. His family was safe, and all he could do was pray for those left behind.

  The opening door woke him.

  Horace jerked upright as two soldiers entered his cell. By the light coming down the narrow window chute, he guessed it must be morning. He didn't resist when the soldiers indicated he should come with them.

  They escorted him back to the open court inside the house. After spending the night underground, the sun felt wonderful on his face. They went outside to the street where the commander sat astride his steed talking to the older man. The rest of the soldiers were assembled behind their leader, but there was no sign of the villagers.