But most disheartening was Traamis the True, hero of the protestant rebellion, whose cleric’s robes had been ripped and ragged, turned to umber brown. We should have sent him off with Falhadn. His fettered walk through Old Coast would prove the Unholy King’s proudest victory.
The drivers prodded the prisoners and whipped them down the wide gangplank. Falhill looked around, smelled the fresh salt air — happy to leave the bed of filth behind him. He observed the ports and buildings along the coast, and he realized where they had docked.
Where Primhadn sacrificed herself to save fifteen hundred men, women, and children — the wooden post had been replaced. Where Unagi’s Grace had buckled and capsized — specks of debris were yet visible. Where Theul and his dozen had turned hundreds into dust — the air tasted of rust and sulfur. Where the Great Flight had begun — Falhill had returned.
Admiral Uandem led the procession. Peasants and merchants, children and sickly — hundreds of men and women lined the streets of Enesma. Falhill searched for the faces of those left behind; perhaps some rebels remained who could liberate them, especially if Traamis the True marched among their number.
But the hundreds of twisted faces became thousands — each more hateful than the last. Peddlers sold old tomatoes and rotten apples and all sorts of foul fruits — so kids could throw the rot at Falhill and Traamis and all the insurgents. A pear exploded against Falhill’s cheek. Traamis’s holy robes turned from brown to red with all the once-sweet decay pelted at him. Gaerhill Graymatter served as the most popular target, though, for he alone was entirely without clothes. His mother and his aunt and his own son watch this man writhe in humiliation. Were I in his place, I would have made sure I didn’t make it off the boat.
Halfway through the main boulevard of Enesma, Gaerhill had a similar idea. He bellowed, “I love you, son.” While his driver went to lash him, Gaerhill charged headfirst into the Old Coaster. The crowds descended on Gaerhill quick as wildfire. Falhill hoped the man’s eleven-year-old son did not see the inhuman carnage, nor the rending of limb from limb. Moments later, the drivers pushed back the crowd to find a heap of gray gore mixed with garnet and mud.
Theral, Fal, and Gaerhall wept and howled the rest of the way through Enesma. Vile men pulled Theral’s cloak from her, and she stood bare as a winter elm. Vulgar women flashed their bosoms to the boy, offering a suck of milk. Black apples adorned Fal’s wrinkled thighs. Shouts from the crowd: “Was that your son? Was that your father? Why don’t you cry some more? Would you like some of this?”
The skeleton of Falhill’s old house remained — now only splintered beams and heaps of ash, barely visible through many alleys. The gazebo remained intact though vines had crept up its hexagonal walls. All else had turned to ruin. Nostalgia chilled his eyelids to his toenails. Where he had once eaten, slept, written, held secret meetings of the renegade congress — there it stood, deteriorated.
A scrawny old man pushed far enough to spit into Falhill’s eyes. Dirt-faced children threw pig excrement into his mouth. A buxom woman sausaged through the crowd, lifted her dress, and made bloody waste on the street. She slapped Falhill’s cheek before a driver threw her back into the crowd. Falhill’s ears filled with muck and rot, and his undertunic dissolved in the onslaught. Only rank breeches covered his groin.
Uandem stopped outside a barracks, but the drivers kept up their march. As Falhill and his companions waddled down into the barracks, Uandem bellowed, “…and Yaangd is the true king. Rebels and protestants, vipers and vermin — these revolutionaries will not go unpunished. Enesma has seen the vengeance of our one true god and king. Hrash lives in Yaangd, flows through his veins. And his humble servant Drea, a loyalist in rebel’s garb, has offered up the rebel congress. He will govern the new colony. Rest assured, your king and deity has never been without plan and policy. Let this be a lesson to…”
Lashes of whips directed them to their quarters — nicer than Falhill could have hoped for. Simple soldiers’ barracks seemed a royal palace next to their accommodations aboard Harbinger. Falhill lay in his own cot — Fal to his left, Traamis to his right. Traamis had never ceased in his prayers, never allowed his fear to show. Falhill almost believed that Traamis, in fact, had no fear.
The drivers retired to the corners of the large room, leaning on the walls and eating their fragrant legs of turkey and their fresh apples. Fal whispered, “We haven’t had anything to drink for a day now.”
“How are you?”
“All things considered,” Fal answered with her signature kindly grin, “I’m terrific.” Black rot still painted her thighs, and her raiment hung from her shoulders by threads. “This was Drea.”
“He will die for this. Independence won’t allow him to rule after sending us to our deaths.”
“All of a sudden you’re the hero in this story?” the forty-four-year-old potter asked. “You were his protégé, his second-in-command.”
Falhill spit at the shrew. “What do you think I’ve been thinking for the past thirty days? I don’t understand it. Uandem told the congress that Yaangd was willing to grant Hrashhill sovereignty in return for tributes in lumber and gemstones, as well as open borders. Then, I was thrown into the belly of a slaver.”
Fal showed her crooked teeth. “I’m sorry, Falhill.”
“I mentioned to him before the meeting with Uandem… I said I wouldn’t let my parents’ deaths go unavenged, not Primhadn’s nor Primhill’s. I said I would pretend to submit for the time being, but… Could he have seen me as a threat to…? What? The arrangement between him and Uandem? Did he plan this before we even left Enesma?”
“Falhill, stop. There’s no point in working out Drea’s intentions. We’re going to die. There’s nothing we can do. Don’t get so upset.”
“And I never said my farewells to Falhadn.”
“And I never said my farewells to Kraek.”
Falhill looked into her eyes. He had swung the sword which decapitated her husband. And now he and Fal slept under the same roof, wept under the same agony, and sniveled under the same whips. “You have lost more than I can imagine.”
Fal breathed in and out. “It’s not a competition. We all face hardship in this bucket of pigswill we call life.” Her grandmotherly demeanor hardened. “Drea fooled us all, played us against one another.”
“And there’s seven of us, enough to convince the people that we were the rebel congress.”
“Drea fashioned Independence into his own personal seat of power.”
“And we let him.” Falhill gritted his teeth. “I feel so stupid. And I regret everything. What was any of it for?”
“Don’t. You were happy with your wife, when you were together.”
Falhill did not wish to explain his arduous marriage, so he nodded.
“Then it was worth it.” She sighed. “But I would do anything to return and retaliate. With Kraek’s spirit under my wings, I would fly headfirst into Drea’s decrepit body.” At this point, she was talking to herself, staring at the ceiling. “Or better yet, take away someone he loves dearly—”
Uandem entered the room, and the drivers stiffened. The grand admiral looked about the room, grabbed a wooden high-back chair, and sat beside Traamis, his back facing Falhill.
“We meet again, cleric.” Uandem sighed. “You were holy counsel — in line to become High Prophet. Now look at you — covered in your own filth.”
Traamis whispered loud enough for Falhill to hear, “I have more honor and dignity than you will ever possess. I stand by my god. You abandon yours to follow another.”
“I am no fool,” Uandem interrupted, quiet enough so the drivers could not listen. “Yaangd is a lunatic and truly believes himself to be Hrash incarnate. But I simply play the game. My daughter married the prince, and I am Yaangd’s most trusted advisor. From a bird’s eye view, it seems my abandonment of Hrashianity has afforded me much in the way of power and influence.”
“It is desecrated. The power you wield is an abomination. I need nothing to
prove my love for Hrash, praise be. I need nothing to show I am loved by the god who made the land and seas. I need nothing to know I am more than you will ever amount to.”
“I’m glad you got your last words in, cleric.” Uandem spoke the word like a curse. “Yaangd was the greatest king in centuries before he went mad. And now all you rebels remember is the madness. The population boomed. There are more children under the age of sixteen than there are people older than sixteen, thanks to Yaangd.”
“Years of—”
“No, cleric. You spoke your rebukes, and they were underwhelming. I only wanted to say, hello.” Uandem turned his chair towards Falhill. “Scribe.” Another curse.
“Grand Admiral,” Falhill stuttered.
“Why didn’t you remain at court, with a comfy position like royal scribe? Yaangd had rewarded those loyal to him.”
“You killed my parents.”
“Did I? Perhaps you need to refresh my recollection.”
“Farmer Fal and Seamstress Maalnud — your men hanged them in Enesma.”
“Your parents were… Well, I remember that report. It may have been us who hanged them, but there was a rat who told us they were rebels and where to find them.”
Falhill had no reply. Helpless, he stared into Uandem’s fog-gray eyes for answers.
“My men were stationed in Enesma in case of any insurgence — a wise decision on my part. When some men from Jevilk told us they had found Traamis’s foremost rebel leaders, my men simply followed up on the lead.”
“Jevilk?”
“Your father and mother didn’t have any enemies from Jevilk, did they?”
Falhill’s speechless fury prevented words from forming, so Uandem pushed Falhill’s head into the bundle of straw meant to serve as a pillow. Falhill paid no attention to Uandem’s other conversations. He lay on the rigid cot, fists knotted and teeth clenched.
He did not wake during his nightmare, wherein Falhadn cheated on him with Uandem and Drea and even her own father. In the dream, Falhill could only survey his Hillite bedchamber as man after man shared sheets with his eager wife.
A whip to the right cheek did awake Falhill, though, and the drivers corralled the prisoners into a slapdash line facing the egress. It was Baljiridhall who noticed Potter Fal to be absent. “Where is the woman, Fal?”
“Where do you think?” responded a younger driver.
But a grizzled driver pushed his comrade and whipped Baljiridhall for the question. “Did you want us to let your little cleric pray over her body? She’s in the fifth level of the Eternal Desert, reserved for traitors and adulterers.”
“But, Alden—”
“Shut your mouth, boy.” The grizzled man slapped the boy across the face with his mailed glove. “Respect your elders, or you’ll find yourself in the second level.”
Wordless, the five remaining prisoners marched above ground, where the sun had yet to rise. The streets had emptied. Thank Hrash for minor blessings. Armed with whips and sheathed swords, the twenty soldiers escorted the five protestants south.
Sour rum and stale bread, twice a day. Marching instead of rowing. Two hours of sleep, but altogether and no longer in shifts. Day and night. Thirty nights in Harbinger’s belly, one night in Enesma, now ten laborious days along the Eel Road. Falhill knew they were headed for the capital.
On their second morning, they passed the juncture with the Fairwife Road. “Fairwidow, the commoners call it now,” Uandem told Traamis. “When you slew the young prince with your dark magic, you left a two-year-old and a newborn fatherless.”
Traamis’s eyes would not look down the Fairwidow, but Falhill did. A monument to Jeulyaangdhill’s death eight months past towered above the sparse quiver trees. Nearly noiseless, Traamis replied, “I did not kill your prince. He fell. He tripped down a small hill in his haste to slaughter an unarmed cleric.”
Uandem plastered on a ridiculous smile. “And tell me, oh Holy One, did you make sure the prince was alright? Did you try to stop him from ‘tripping’? What was the first thing you did when he fell at your feet? Did you pray for his soul?”
“I prayed to Hrash and thanked him for protecting my life and others. And I thanked him for victory.”
“And you left him where he fell, didn’t you? No ceremony for the death of a royal prince. A fellow human being. We found him contorted at the bottom of that hill.”
“Your men pursued us. We did not even bury our own dead.”
“Don’t worry. We did. We buried them in the sewers, to feed the rats. A better burial than you should expect.”
“I still pray for you, Uandem.”
“What? For my death? For my salvation?”
“That you would see the insanity of the king. I know he has been your best friend since boyhood. But Yaangd is beyond salvation. And you are not.”
Admiral Uandem grabbed what was left of Traamis’s tattered robes. “I am more responsible than you know, cleric.” Traamis the True did not blink, and Uandem released his grip.
Plenty of wayward journeyers walked the Eel Road. None gave the cluster of prisoners and drivers any trouble. They passed the long, thin city of Hraemlaak. Then sunken, jagged-walled Glaahir. Then flat, sprawling Uanna at the intersection of the Minash Road. Half a day from the capital city Eangd, the Yrlwater came into view.
The roaring Duimwater’s foremost tributary cut across the Eel Road, and Uandem’s men could march down paved road no further. The Yrlwater ran swiftly, near to overflow. And the Yrlbridge cast a very long shadow. The tall black bridge stood high enough that vast galleons and cargo vessels could safely pass beneath while pedestrians ambled above.
Half a dozen ferrymen shouted how their ferries were cheaper and safer than others. Where horses or carts would have necessitated a ferry, Uandem’s small host of thirty soldiers and five prisoners could climb the countless steps up the Yrlbridge and save a gold coin or two.
Uandem entered the enclosed spiral staircase first. Two drivers accompanied each prisoner. The rest of the drivers took up the rear. The spiral staircase exhausted even the most virile of men in their prime, but the prisoners found themselves malnourished and sleep-deprived. Theral vomited thin brown liquid, which dripped down through the stairs and into Falhill’s matted black hair. Young Gaerhall’s drivers took a modicum of pity on the boy and carried him up the latter half of the steps.
When they reached the zenith, the morning sunlight only peered in through periodic slits in the black stone walls and ceiling. But the dim did not prevent merchants from hawking their wares. “Fresh caught haddock! Ready to fry!” and “Remember your trip to the Yrlbridge with these wooden figurines!”
One woman sauntered up to the grand admiral. “If your quiver is empty, I’ve got a crateful of arrows and a soft spot for generals.”
“I am an admiral — grand admiral of the royal fleet. And I would ask you to step aside.”
“Let me show you.” And the young woman fetched her longbow. Uandem and his men tried to ignore her, as well as the two dozen other peddlers. The woman nocked an arrow and aimed for Uandem.
Traamis shouted, “Fenhadn! No!” Then everything happened at once.
The woman’s arrow punctured Uandem’s shoulder. Twenty merchants uncovered swords and spears from sacks and crates. The kingsmen fell into disarray as they unsheathed their steel. The young woman threw her bow around her shoulder and sunk a dagger into the neck of the driver nearest Traamis. Others gathered about Traamis and slew the kingsmen who tried to stop the rescue. Blood spattered across his cheeks, Traamis disappeared in a hedge of ten armed merchants. As they sped down the northern staircase, Uandem’s men clashed with the remaining insurgents.
Uandem had collapsed, grasping at his shoulder blade. Baljiridhall tackled his driver. Theral dashed for the northern staircase, but her drivers proved too swift. Little Gaerhall fell against a wall and wailed.
Falhill’s veins pulsed with a vigor he hadn’t felt since Enesma. He shook free of his captor’s clut
ches and charged at Grand Admiral Uandem. Falhill threw his weight at the brawny quinquagenarian. The admiral writhed on the black stone floor when Falhill landed on his back, driving the oxygen from his lungs. Wrists fettered, Falhill managed to grab the admiral’s unwieldy sword — a thick two-hander. As he pulled himself up, Falhill thrust his elbow into the bleeding wound in Uandem’s back. He cried out.
As he rose, Falhill swung the weight of the greatsword and turned around. The sword opened one kingsman’s belly and knocked another to the ground. Intestines spilled into the dim morning light. Falhill turned back to find Uandem remove the arrow and spin onto his back. The admiral tried to find his feet, but Falhill lifted the heavy steel above his head. The greatsword plunged towards the grand admiral’s breast.
A kingsman tackled Falhill, and another seized the greatsword. Men enveloped Uandem, shouting orders. A dozen rebels lay bloody next to a dozen loyalists. Baljiridhall and Theral knelt before their drivers, and young Gaerhall hugged his grandmother.
“Follow them!” a voice boomed and gurgled. “Kill them all and bring me Traamis!”
Several kingsmen wanted to obey, but only thirteen remained. A full twenty seconds of chaos and shouting elapsed before five men ran to pursue Traamis. Uandem rose, fully bandaged, and led his remaining eight swiftly down the southern staircase.
Paramount to his survival, Uandem elected haste above order. A two-hour walk became a forty-minute run. Four drivers saw to the four remaining prisoners while the other four and Uandem jogged with bows taut and arrows nocked. Pedestrians and peasants gasped and fled at the sight of men bearing the king’s sigil threatening their lives. Beggars and bards wept and recoiled when Uandem ordered them to lie on the ground or face death. Uandem shot a girl no older than Gaerhall through the forehead when she would not fall to the ground at his command.
Theral tripped, and the kingsmen halted to avoid scattering. As one man tended to Theral’s crooked ankle, Uandem took the opportunity to cut Baljiridhall’s shaggy hair with a dagger. “Robes? Anybody happen to have cleric’s robes?” But no one did. “I’ll manage.” Uandem pulled Baljiridhall’s brown breeches down and over his feet, leaving Baljiridhall naked as a newborn. “I suppose you’ll try and tell people you’re not Traamis though. Men!” Two drivers held Baljiridhall by the shoulder. Uandem pried his mouth open and grabbed his tongue. The dagger tore through the dull red sinew of the naked man’s tongue until Uandem plucked the severed muscle from his mouth. He discarded it by the side of the road. Baljiridhall stood bare to the autumn wind, blood gushing from his mouth. But he never cried out. He would not give his captors the satisfaction.
The Heirs of History: A Nation From Nothing Page 36