“No!”
In an anguished voice, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop; she had to keep my brother safe, and deep in her heart, she knew this was what must be done in order for there to be any chance of saving my brother’s life. Briefly I wondered if I would ever see them again, and then moments later all thought was gone as my horse had slammed full tilt into the mass of riders. Pandemonium had ensued and dimly I had felt myself fly free of the horse to connect hard with the ground.
I had awoken slowly and straightened up only to realize that I was tied to a horse, which was being led by one of the Zoarinian soldiers. Seeing me awake, the rider to my left had back handed me across the face and as my head was flung towards the right, the rider to my right backhanded me across the face as well. All of the soldiers had broken out in laughter at the antics of their companions.
My neck had felt broken, and if I hadn’t been hurting before I was then.
The days of riding and mistreatment by my captors had seemed to flow into each other and I had been surprised when we rode into the city of Capeacal. I had never at that time been so far south before.
The city of Capeacal’s market place was nothing like I had ever seen before. It was far grander than Cassis’s marketplace. Cassis’s marketplace had sold assortments of fruits, vegetables, and house hold wares, but Capeacal’s marketplace dealt primarily in a higher priced commodity, slaves.
I was shoved into an ill smelling dark room beneath the marketplace’s floor. At first I had thought I was alone in the room and then after a moment of silence, I’d heard the sounds of many captive people begin to resume in the packed quarters of the room. I’d made my way to the side of the door and leaned back against the slimy wet wall seeking shelter from both whomever was in the cell and those who had put me here, but there was little security to be found in such places.
A dreary vision of the future had begun to take place within my mind and I had been unable to shut it out, as it had overwhelmed me with its depressed vision of the road ahead of me. Caught up in my own misery as I was, I had been ignoring the hushed conversations taking place all around me.
It was a foreign sounding dialect that wasn’t familiar to me at all. I listened to it for a while and then it dawned on me that I had heard it before. It was a dialect of speech that the Imerickian Traders of the Tranquil Islands used. I had heard them speak a couple of times, when I had been with my father trading in the city of Sharpe, which we had done but rarely. Sharpe was a seaport town on the western side of the Southern Settlements. Sharpe was the farthest south that the Tranquil Islanders liked to venture to trade, because they like the Valley Landers to the northeast were not on good terms with the Zoarinians.
Out of the sea of foreign voices I’d overheard a conversation that I’d understood since it was in my own language.
“Krista listen carefully to me. You will be separated from me tomorrow.”
“No momma!”
“Yes Krista it will happen and you must promise to do as I say! You are young, but it’s apparent even now that you will be beautiful one day. Tomorrow you have to take advantage of how pretty you already are and carry yourself with pride! Keep yourself as clean as you can tomorrow and they will put you in a special class.”
“Special class momma?”
“You will serve your new master as I served Master Nivaron, but that is not important. What is important is that you’ll have good food and at least something of a life of ease, which you won’t get as a field hand.”
“No Momma! You can’t tell me to do this!”
“Krista, I know what I ask is terrible, but in this way you will at least be given good food, shelter, and protection from too much abuse, as long as you please your new master. You will not last long in the firan cane fields as a manual laborer!”
“I would rather die in a firan cane field and keep myself respect than be a soulless whore like you’ve become to ask such a thing of me!”
Slap!
“Krista you will not speak to me like that again! I’ve done what I’ve had to! I’ve survived to care for you and your brother, after your father died!”
“You mean murdered! Besides what good has surviving done you? Look where we are mother! And he’s not my brother!”
“Yes he is, and as for what I’ve done it’s been to keep food in your belly and of all the choices left to us this is the safest route for you to take! You will do as I say tomorrow Krista and that is final!”
Leaning back against the damp wall behind me, I had shaken my head slowly in empathy for the girl. My world had been completely overturned and I was without comfort to turn to in any form. I had never experienced anything in life to prepare me for the harshness of either what I was hearing a mother tell her daughter or the personal loss I had already experienced with the loss of my family.
Who knew what was yet to come, the knowledge of that yet unknown fate ate away at me like a preying animal in the darkness. Silent tears had coursed down my cheeks and I had been grateful for the darkness around me that hid my tears from the others.
I hadn’t wanted to appear weak to anyone. I had sympathized for the girl, as much as I had for myself at the time. My mother would never have asked me to do what her mother was asking of her. How blessed I had been and not even known it! And now that I knew what I had lost, it was gone from me for forever.
A crow cawed loudly breaking my remembrance of the past momentarily. I glanced back the way we had come, but it was still clear of any visible threat to us.
I glanced at the sleeping boy and studied him for a moment. Yes he was an unwanted hassle, but I was glad in some ways to be of help in saving his life. I didn’t want him to experience what I had as a young slave that was for sure.
I would get him to his kin in the Valley Lands along with the information that his father had given me before he had died. It was a long way to safety though and a lot could happen. There was no guarantee that the boy’s fate would turn out any differently than mine had.
I glanced at the setting sun. I still had an hour or so to kill so I let my thoughts drift back to the past again as I rested.
I had helped the girl change her fate. At least I’d made it possible for her to die in a more preferable way anyway.
I looked out at the horizon that the sun was fading over the edge of, but the sunset wasn’t what I saw. In my mind’s eye I was seeing back to the day, when I had been sold as a slave to the arena fighting school of Carsea.
I’d had to repeatedly blink my eyes to adjust to the harsh daylight of the marketplace, after we had been pulled from our underground holding cell at the slave market. I had stumbled several times over the uneven cobblestones of the market floor, and several times heavily armored guards had lashed out at me with their sharp stinging whips that drew blood.
The market place was filled with tradesmen hawking their goods. Prospective buyers filled out the rest of the market’s space.
The noise of the mob of jabbering faces which poked and prodded at me as I walked by, caused a renewed sense of anxiety to rise up inside of me as to what my fate would soon be. The guards had begun to divide us into groups; old, young, male, and female.
My attention throughout the walk from the cell had been drawn to a woman ahead of me. She would have been quite attractive, if it hadn’t been for the hard lines etched deeply into the skin around her mouth and eyes. She had a mean look about her too. She held a baby in her left arm almost carelessly, while her right hand gripped the forearm of a young girl that walked beside her.
The girl’s bright cinnamon red hair hung all the way to her waist. She was sure to be noticed, even though she had yet to show the maturity of a grown woman. Something told me that these two must have been the two I had overheard the night before.
A sudden disturbance off to our left caused them and the guards to all turn and glance over in that direction. I kept walking forward though. I’m not sure what poss
essed me to do what I did, but it felt like the right thing to do and I didn’t question my actions any further than that. My manacled hands separated apart and I raised a fist and swung at the girl’s head hard, as her face was turned to the side.
I intentionally side swiped her left cheek, with the chunky metal protrusion of the manacles binding my hands instead of with my whole fist. Blood spurted from where the edge of my rough manacles caught her high on the cheekbone and lower down on the cheek ripping the flesh badly. The force of the blow, even though I had pulled the majority of the strength behind the punch off to the side, knocked her forwards breaking her mother’s hold on her arm. She fell heavily into a muddy puddle of water, which splashed all over her dowsing her in the dirty water of the marketplace gutters. Complete shock at the unjustified hit had widened her eyes into a questioning gaze, as she looked up at me from where she lay in the muddy water. Blood trickled down her face in abandon and I mouthed two words.
“I’m sorry!”
I had barely gotten the words out when I was slammed to the ground, from behind by the guards. I was only pulled back up to my feet after I had been kicked and whipped several times savagely.
My aggressive actions got me placed in a group of other surly individuals, who were unified in their dislike of me. Hitting a woman was bad, a girl worse and a fellow slave even worse than that. No matter I didn’t regret what I had done. They just didn’t understand what I had done.
I watched as the girl and her mother were led up to the examiners. They pulled the mother to the side and shoved her towards a group of older women, who also had small children. The chief examiner grabbed the girl’s chin and held it up examining her. He paused for a moment and then muttered something and shoved the girl towards an attendant who led her away. The attendant dragged her towards a pen that was filled with other attractive girls and young boys.
As they drew near the pen the girl’s head had fallen forward her dirty hair shielding her face from view. The attendant dragged her past that pen though and on down the line of slave pens towards the pen at the very end of the line.
Looking around with a dazed expression she found me in the sea of faces. She lifted a hand and slightly waved it at me, before she was jerked onwards by the attendant towards what was the field slave pen. Everyone deserves the chance to meet their end in the best way possible and I was sure she would prefer the fate of an overworked field hand, than a longer life of being used as a cheap vessel in the gratification of other people’s desires in a brothel.
The moment of connection with the girl helped to assure me that I had done the right thing after all. I glanced around and was surprised by what I saw. The hostile stares of the men around me were gone, and in its place was respect. All of them seemed to comprehend what I had done for the girl. The hostility had been easier to bear than the respectful deference they were now showing me. It made me feel like I had to do something or be something special now to be worthy of their respect.
I may have only been fourteen at the time, but I’d already had the large bone structure and the beginning great strength of my father budding within me. It was apparent to the buyers, what I would be most useful for. The arena wars.
Gladiatorial entertainment was the favorite pastime of many Zoarinians throughout the empire. The mortal combat of men against animals and other men was big business and it was closely monitored as such by the ruling elite of the day, who got fabulously wealthy off betting on the games fought out by slave warriors.
I was bought by one of Carsea’s prominent fighting school owners. He was a big bellied man that looked at me as if I were but a piece of meat or a chew bone fit only to be thrown to the dogs. After the sale was over I was hustled to a wagon by armed guards and tied to a shackle bolt on the floor of the wagon along with several other men.
The wagon started to move out of the marketplace at a slow pace as my life as a slave had begun. Other slave wagons had passed by ours headed towards their perspective destinations within the empire. In the last wagon that passed us I saw the girl from the marketplace that I had hit at almost the same time as she saw me. We stared after each other, until we lost sight of each other. My wagon going towards the southern cities and hers headed out toward the open plain
Chapter Two
Branded
The fighting school of Ramnotan was located on the outskirts of Carsea. We were yanked out of the wagon roughly by the guards.
I’d hit the ground face first, after having been shoved by a guard off the wagon. I’d tried to get up spitting the dust from my mouth as I did so, but I was knocked flat down again by another guard. I’d tried to get up again, but several hard kicks had slammed into my side and I’d curled up into a ball in the dust. It had been hard to breath and I’d had to repeatedly gasp to get my breath back. I’d looked up into the face of my tormenter then before trying to get up again. He’d stood with his feet shoulder width apart and appeared to have no weapon upon him. He smiled down at me. His face had looked like worn cracked leather and the smile that was splayed across it did not reach his eyes.
“I’ll show you the meaning of what it is to be a slave boy! I think I’ll start your education with your pretty face!”
He had reached down with one hand and grabbed my hair jerking my head up. He extended his right leg behind him and I knew that he intended to smash his knee into my nose. As he drew his knee back I had stopped resisting the grip on my hair and instead I flung myself forward at his support leg. Unbalanced he gave a surprised grunt and fell over backwards away from me.
He had released my hair in an effort to catch himself as he fell. He hit the ground hard and I had gotten shakily to my feet knowing I had probably just made things a lot worse for myself. Surprisingly he had lain there in the dust for a moment and then he’d started laughing as he got up to his feet. I’d regarded him warily waiting for him to strike out at me like a viper.
“This one has spirit left in him! Cato take him to the keep and see that he gets branded as a fighter, but not cut. He’ll fight better that way.”
I was seized by strong hands from behind and shoved inside the fighting school. It was cooler inside than the outside was, but that was as far as the comfort went.
I was shoved against a wall of a room that received some light from a skylight in the ceiling above us. I and the others that had arrived with me were handcuffed to iron rings that projected out from the wall above our heads. I had watched as two powerfully muscled guards held the farthest slave from me away from the wall, as a third guard rose up from a fire kindled in the middle of the room. In one hand he held a hot poker and in the other a hot knife.
I could still see the way the slave’s eyes had rolled back into his head as he screamed, when the branding rod was pressed into the back of his left shoulder. The sizzle and smell of burning flesh had made me want to throw up. It wasn’t over though.
The two guards shoved the whimpering slave back against the wall and spread his legs, as the man with the knife set the brand poker back down into the fire. He then turned toward the slave knife in hand and ripped the slave’s pants down and proceeded to slice off his seed sac, throwing it to the side, as he then held the hot knife to the wound cauterizing the flesh.
The slave almost jerked out of the grasp of the two big men as the realization of what had just been done to him hit him along with the pain. I had thrown up all over myself then and I had tried to somehow block out the man’s hysterical cries of pain and loss, but failed to miserably.
One by one the process was repeated down the line until they had reached me. I had been crying my eyes out and sobs of fear and expected pain racked through my body, as the other slave’s anguished screams still lingered around me in the room.
Nothing could have prepared me for the feeling of the hot poker being ground into the back of my shoulder. I had screamed and sobbed hoping against hope for freedom from this hellish place, but none came. I had felt my pants rip
ped down and I had bitten my lip, as I felt the grip on my sac as the edge of the hot knife pressed against it. A moment had passed in which I had sobbed hard from the expected burning pain and the loss of my identity as a man.
The knife had stayed where it was as the grip on my sack was released. I had opened my eyes that were blurry from the tears pouring out of them and looked around as I heard a strange sound. The guards and even the men holding me were laughing! As if this was all a big joke!
The man with the knife withdrew it and joined in on the laughter. I had heard the guards leave the room still laughing as I had pressed my eyes closed because of how I had been shamed by them.
That had been the worst night of my life, being forced to stand there naked and listen to the cries and whimpers of the others in such a dark dungeon of a place.
The other slave’s pathetic cries, the burning pain in my shoulder and my own abject humiliation over what had happened to me threatened to drive me mad. And in someways I suppose it had.
My one burning life’s desire from that moment onward had been to exact revenge and have control over my own fate once more.
Time had passed into months and months became years and I wondered why the Great Creator that my mother had prayed to kept me alive, for there could be no other reason, other than a Divine one that could explain how I had been delivered from death so many times. There were just too many coincidences that just seemed to happen at the right time, which always led to my survival and another day in the arena before my adoring crowds. They called me Zeventhal, which in the Zoarinian language interprets simply as ‘Storm Maker’.
The average life expectancy in the arena world was marked by being violently brief. I was an exception to that, as I had already lived and fought for almost nine years in the arena. That’s how long it took for the opportunity of escape to occur.
A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind) Page 2