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

by Jon Sprunk

  Lord Mulcibar was the first noble out of his tent. After a quick look around, he hobbled to his wagon and climbed inside. Lord Ubar was next, scratching his chest while he ate a pastry, berry filling dripping down his chin. Evidently, Lord Isiratu was feeling better because he was able to walk unassisted from the pavilion to his wagon. Neither he nor his son so much as looked at Horace as the caravan prepared to depart.

  Lord Mulcibar's wagon—a behemoth on six wheels—preceded Isiratu's smaller vehicle. Horace also noticed that Mulcibar's soldiers outnumbered Isiratu's entourage by two to one.

  The wagons set a swift pace from the start, much faster than the caravan had traveled before. The guards used their lashes more freely today to keep the slaves moving. Each blow made Horace's jaws clench in sympathy. He remained at the tail of procession, still with his personal guards. The sand kicked up by the vehicles and people in front of him soon had him squinting and coughing, but the heat was worse. By midmorning it felt like his brain was baking. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his head. That helped a little with the flying sand, too. When the caravan halted for the midday rest, his shoulders were red and sore to the touch. He gulped down his ration of water and gestured for more. The water-slave started to turn away, but one of Horace's guards said something in a harsh tone, and the slave stayed in place, allowing Horace a second cup. After he took another swallow, Horace offered the cup to his guards, but they refused with short bows that made him uncomfortable.

  He was starting to pick up their language here and there, but it was slow going because the words didn't sound anything like Arnossi. The soldiers watching over him didn't talk much beyond what he was pretty sure were complaints about the march and the heat, although from time to time they were clearly talking about him. The slave guards were freer with their speech, but it usually boiled down to invectives hurtled at their captives.

  The nobles remained inside their wagons during the rest. Horace imagined it had to be sweltering inside. Perhaps Isiratu still felt weak. Horace didn't understand how the nobleman had received his wounds, though he got that it had to do with sorcery. Jirom had made it sound like it was something that happened to anyone who used such powers, but the big man also insisted that Horace was one of those zoanii, and he didn't have any wounds like that.

  He tried to recall exactly what had happened during the sandstorm. He remembered the fear, the feeling that he might die. There had been an instant of pain, both warm and cool at the same time, centered inside his chest. That's where his memory of the incident ended. Horace concentrated on that fire-and-ice feeling that had enveloped his insides. If he truly had this power, it might be the weapon he needed to escape this situation. He tried to envision the burst of pain and re-create it. Minutes passed and beads of sweat rolled down his face, but nothing else happened.

  Soon the caravan started off again. This time Jirom fell back to walk beside him. The soldiers guarding Horace didn't appear to care, so he risked some conversation. “What do you think about our new destination?”

  Jirom shrugged. He was covered in sweat and sand but otherwise appeared unaffected by the heat. “It makes little difference to me. I have wanted to see Erugash, though I always imagined it would be at the head of a conquering army.”

  Horace laughed. The big man had an easy way of talking that cut through their differences. “Will it be the executioner's block for us then?”

  “I don't think you need worry,” Jirom said. “If they wanted you dead, you would not be here.”

  Horace supposed that was true, but it didn't give him much hope. From what he could infer, Lord Isiratu had been willing to give him over to the priests, for whatever purpose. Now they were going to Erugash, but Horace still had no idea why, or what they expected from him. “What about the rest of you? Has Isiratu changed his plans about giving you away?”

  “What will happen, will happen.”

  Horace nodded as they walked together. Neither of them had much control over their immediate future. The caravan started up a long rise. The road was rockier here, which made for uncertain footing. Horace shaded his eyes to see to the top and then wished he hadn't. A cluster of poles crowned the low hilltop. No, not poles. Stakes, more than a dozen of them. A body hung from each. As the caravan approached the gruesome display, a cold grip of dread tightened inside Horace's chest. Most of the corpses were men, but he saw a couple women, too—all of them stripped nude and impaled through the back so that the pointed end of the stake protruded from their stomachs. Long, bloody tracks covered the bodies where they had been scourged before being impaled. Flies swarmed around the torn flesh. Several of the captives in the coffle muttered to each other and touched their foreheads.

  “Who are they?” Horace asked.

  “Slaves,” Jirom answered. “Likely they tried to escape or stole from their masters.”

  Horace forced himself to look away from the bodies. No matter what their crimes, no one deserved this. Jirom ignored the impalements the way he disregarded the heat and the lashes of the guards. Horace wished he could be as implacable.

  “Why haven't you tried to escape?”

  Jirom kept walking as if he hadn't heard. After a couple minutes, he said, “Where would I go? I have been running a long time, but everywhere is much like what I left behind, or worse. I've begun to wonder if the gods are testing me. Perhaps if I stay this time and let my path unfold, they will reward me.”

  “With what? Freedom?”

  “One way or the other, we will all be free in the end.”

  They passed beyond the impaled bodies. On the other side of the hill, the bleached sands gave way to a lush countryside. The earth was dark and rich, tilled into neat squares of gold, russet, and green. The road extended for miles through these fields, as straight as a carpenter's rule, until it reached a great city on the horizon. Its walls gleamed like beaten copper in the sun. Even from this distance, Horace could tell the city was much larger than Avice back home. His elevated vantage allowed him to see a maze of white, flat rooftops and golden spires, but none of the buildings compared to the mammoth construction that rose from the center, grander than anything he had ever seen before. It was shaped like a pyramid with several tiers, rising high above the metropolis. A shimmering ribbon of green water cut through the city in a channel that fed a large lake north of the pyramid. The waterway joined to a mighty river running along the southern wall.

  The leagues between the tor and the city passed quickly. There was so much to see that Horace lost track of time, and the sun was heading toward its nocturnal home when the caravan neared the walls. Unlike in the west, this city had no burg, no surrounding buffer of structures outside its walls. The fields ran up to within a bowshot of the ramparts and stopped, leaving a barren track of ground in between where nothing grew.

  The lead wagon halted before a massive pair of bronze gates like the valves of a cathedral. Up close, Horace could see that the city's gleaming walls were made of brick coated with some sort of glaze. Two huge statues of lions flanked the entrance, their mouths opened in eternal roars. Battlements loomed above the gatehouse, topped with triangular merlons. Archers stood watch on the ramparts, their pointed helmets shining in the fading light.

  While Horace watched from the rear of the procession, gate wardens approached Lord Mulcibar's wagon. The troopers wore bright-yellow tabards over their armor. One soldier, with a scarlet corona stitched over his breast, knocked on the door. Lord Mulcibar emerged and spoke with the soldier for several minutes, passing various scrolls back and forth. The soldier read these documents, sometimes going back over the same scroll twice or even three times, before finally giving them back and waving the wagon through. Lord Mulcibar paused a moment, as if waiting for something, but then he climbed back into his vehicle and closed the door.

  Lord Isiratu's wagon went through the same procedure, except that Lord Ubar and Nasir stood outside and handed documents to the soldier while their liege remained inside. Horace's personal
guards closed in on either side of him, hands on the hilts of their swords. He looked around, feeling the tension rise. The gate wardens appeared touchy about their duty, but he didn't see any reason for Isiratu's guards to take it personally. After a quarter of an hour, the warden in charge finally rolled up the papyrus scrolls and handed them back. Ubar and the priest returned to the wagon as the signal was given for the caravan to enter.

  Horace studied the wardens as he walked past. Their steel mail shone bright against their bronze skin. The soldier with the corona stitching stood in the doorway of a small shack beside the gates, speaking to someone inside. Horace turned his head as he passed and caught a glimpse of deep-red fabric, but nothing else.

  The caravan entered a long tunnel that passed under the walls and into a huge walled square where they were stopped for another checkpoint. After a lengthy inspection of both wagons—which forced even Lord Isiratu to make an appearance—and the persons of the caravan, they were allowed to pass through. When the soldier in charge moved to give the documents back to Lord Ubar, Isiratu snatched them from the man's hand and stomped back to his wagon, slamming the door behind him, leaving his son and the counselor to walk alongside the wagon as it passed through another pair of gates. By this time, Lord Mulcibar's wagon was gone from view.

  Inside, the city awaited. Within a few steps, Horace was lost in an eruption of sights, sounds, and smells. The caravan trundled along a broad avenue paved in hard clay, wide enough to allow three, or even four, wagons to drive side by side if not for all the people that streamed along in both directions. The city dwellers wore garments of dyed linen like schools of multicolored fish. Many of the men went bare-chested, wearing only long wraps around their waists and sandals. The women wore sleeveless shirts and tunics, but their skirts were often shorter than those of the men, rising above their knees. Horace was more shocked by the number of iron collars in the crowd. It seemed to him as if half the passersby were slaves. Many had the same bronze complexion as their Akeshian masters, but he spotted slaves of lighter and darker browns, too. Both men and women wore collars, and even a few children, which shouldn't have surprised him, but it did.

  Most of the buildings were made of the same brick as the outer walls, though without the coppery glaze. Horace was struck by how ancient many of the structures appeared. By their design and crumbling masonry, they had to be centuries old. Some of them might have been built before the Nimeans founded their empire in the west. It was a sobering thought.

  Many doors were sunken into the street, some fully hidden so that they could only be accessed by sheer flights of steps. The building facades gave off waves of heat even as the sun sank out of sight, and the clay underfoot was warm through the soles of his sandals. How did people survive in this blistering country?

  The procession passed a stone obelisk rising at least eighty feet from the street. Craftsmen on wooden scaffolds were carving pictures into the square column, but Horace couldn't make out if they depicted a language or were just decorations.

  A woman in a sack-like garment stood in the mouth of an alley behind the obelisk with her hands extended to the people passing by. She couldn't have been older than twenty. Someone threw a coin into the dust at her feet. When she dropped down to snatch it, Horace saw another person huddled behind her, a young child. A girl perhaps, though she was so dirty it was difficult to tell. The child's round stomach protruded from her scrawny frame. Once the mother had the coin in hand, she hurried away, leaving her child behind to watch the crowds. The little girl's deep brown eyes remained in Horace's thoughts long after he passed the alley.

  The caravan halted in the middle of the avenue. Horace wiped at the sweat dripping down his face as he peered ahead, trying to see why they had stopped. He caught a glimpse of white garments passing in front of Lord Isiratu's wagon. It appeared to be a parade of some sort. With a glance at his handlers, Horace took a chance on his supposed “freedom” to move up for a closer look. No one tried to stop him as he passed Jirom and the rest of the slaves. From beside the wagon's rear wheel, he watched as a parade of men marched past to the slow beat of a drum. They varied in age from fresh-faced youths to old men with long beards. Every one of them was bald and wore a crisp white robe. They chanted in Akeshian, something that sounded like a hymn. In fact, the entire demonstration had the tone of a religious rite.

  After the last man in white had passed through the intersection, Isiratu's driver cracked the reins, and the wagon lumbered off. Two blocks farther, the caravan entered into a vast square. Tall windows stared down from the surrounding buildings. Horace's gaze followed the arching lines and intricate scrollwork of the architecture. It was so different than the staid style of his homeland, and on such a grand scale.

  The procession stopped before a broad building with a beautiful facing of marble columns, each carved to resemble a woman with her arms lifted above her head to hold up the portico roof. The guards moved the slaves against the wall as the wagon door opened and Lord Isiratu emerged. Ubar and Nasir awaited him, but the nobleman brushed past and entered the building before them. The soldiers fell in behind. Horace anticipated they would be taken inside, too, perhaps by a different entrance—the homes of the highborn in Avice often had separate doors for their servants. Yet the slaves were made to stand against the side of the building for more than an hour. Horace's guards complained until a slave woman emerged with a tray of cups. The slaves had to watch while their captors drank in front of them. Horace's tongue pressed against his lips, wanting to seize a cup from their hands and gulp it down, but the sudden crack of a whip snatched his attention way. A party of men had approached. Five wore bronze breastplates, polished to a brilliant shine, and had swords at their sides. Two were older men in robes.

  The two elders walked down the line of slaves, speaking back and forth as they examined each man and woman. They paused a moment when they got to Jirom, pointing to the mark on his face, but when they got to Horace at the end they hardly glanced at him before retreating a few paces to confer. After a brief conversation, the caravan guards unhooked the majority of the slaves, including Gaz. The small man walked behind the soldiers with his head bent low, the perfect model of obedience. For some reason, the attitude bothered Horace.

  Hold up your head! Don't just follow at their heels like a dog.

  The soldiers herded the chosen slaves toward the northern end of the square where several large wooden platforms stood. Auction blocks, Horace guessed. Jirom and five other male slaves were left behind. Horace tried to understand what was happening. Why were they being separated? He swallowed his mounting anxiety as the old men talked back and forth, pointing to each of the remaining slaves in turn. They didn't look in his direction as if he was invisible, but somehow he didn't think they had forgotten about him.

  “What are they doing?” he asked.

  Jirom was looking east across the plaza where two covered wagons stood along the far side. A crowd of people stood around the wagons, listening to a man in a red uniform reading from a scroll. Jirom scratched his neck under his collar. “Culling.”

  “What's that?”

  “When an animal gets sick, it must be separated from the rest. Or if it is unfit to breed, it is taken away.”

  “So which are we? The sick or the unfit?”

  “I think we'll soon find out.”

  As if summoned by his words, the guards came for Jirom and the last slaves. Horace started to go with them, but the guards held out their hands. He stayed.

  Jirom grasped his shoulder and bent down to meet his eyes. “Be strong.”

  Horace nodded. “You, too. Maybe we'll meet again someday.”

  “Perhaps.”

  As Jirom and the last slaves were taken to the tall wagons, Horace expected to learn his fate. However, the old men turned and departed, leaving him alone with his guards. Horace glanced around. The soldiers weren't paying much attention to him. He could have slipped away and vanished into the crowd. But where would he go? H
e was a foreigner and an enemy, and he didn't even know enough of their tongue to ask for directions.

  Stay calm. Use your eyes. What are you missing?

  Murmurs drew his attention as the crowd made way for a white palanquin carried by a team of eight burly men. Opaque curtains hid the occupants from view, but Horace's guards drew themselves up straight, arms by their sides, eyes forward. A trickle of sweat ran down his back as the sedan chair drew up in front of him. The bearers stopped in unison, their muscular limbs gleaming with an oily sheen.

  A guard opened the door and stood aside. Horace looked at him, and the guard nodded. The interior was vacant, just two empty bench seats. Horace glanced back at the building with all its windows and the carved columns. Then, without any idea where he was being taken, he climbed inside the chair.

  Alyra hugged the satchel to her chest as she closed the door to the armory. She had just enough time before the second bell to get to her secret cache and back before she was expected in the queen's chambers. She dared not be late again for Hetta's sake.

  She stole down the empty corridor in the direction of the slaves’ quarters, where there was an exit near her hiding spot. The main level of the palace was empty this time of day except for slaves assigned to cleaning duties, which was why she'd picked now to visit the armory. By midmorning, these halls would be overflowing with diplomats and petitioners, with nobles and their prodigious entourages. The audiences and meetings would continue well into evening when formal matters of state gave way to frolics and feasting and other entertainments. After three years as a chamber-slave, Alyra had ceased to think of the palace as just the home of the queen; it was more like a carnival for the lascivious and the disturbed that never ended.

  Marble squares of black and vermillion covered the hallway's floor. Artful decorations in bronze and iron hung on the stone walls. While the outer chambers were rich in natural light from many windows and skylights, Alyra was glad that these interior corridors were dim. Officially, she wasn't supposed to be in this part of the palace, but as one of the queen's handmaidens, she had more access than most of the other slaves. But she didn't wish to rely upon that flimsy protection if she got caught, especially because she was more than just a household servant. She had been sent by the neighboring nation of Nemedia to root out signs of Akeshian aggression against that country. Three years was a long time to live among one's enemies, serving them, suffering under their heel, but she believed in her mission with all her heart. Her father had been the governor of an Arnossi colony on the island of Thym when the Akeshians attacked. He'd died giving Alyra and her mother a chance to escape. After the Nemedian secret police took them in, she gladly joined their network to fight the empire that had destroyed her family.