Taghri's Prize

by Peter Grant

  Taghri turned to a petty officer. “Take charge here, Sajad. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  Elhac hurried down the aisles between the stacks of bales, barrels and other goods in the auction warehouse. His nose guided him unerringly to the section where the cargo of spices had been offloaded. He took a deep breath, sniffing, and smiled in satisfaction, then waved to the men following him.

  “This is it! Start lining up handcarts and barrows over here. As soon as the freed slaves arrive, we’ll start loading everything. Rasim, take four men and smash down the door to the offices over there. There should be a chest or something like it, bolted down, to hold the money they take in here. Find it, and any other valuables stashed in there. Zayd, bring four men and come with me.”

  He led the small group to the other side of the warehouse, and pointed. “Those jars are full of camphor. It’s worth two to three times its weight in silver.” The men drew in their breath with a sharp collective hiss. “Those bottles hold oil distilled from the resin of ghara wood. It’s used to make perfumes and incense. It’s even more expensive. We want as much of this as we can load. Get some handcarts and barrows – and make sure it’s handled carefully! Pad the bottles and jars with whatever cloth you can find.”

  “Yes, sir. Here come the first of the freed slaves.” Zayd pointed to several half-naked men who’d come running in from the door leading to the slave compound. They looked around, confused, obviously not knowing what to do.

  “OVER HERE!” Elhac yelled. The former slaves ran towards him. As they gathered around, he began dividing them into groups and putting them to work.

  On the outward side of the baghlahs, the crews assigned to each bedan carefully accepted the boxes of clay jars of naphtha handed down to them from the larger ship. Picked men aboard each small craft checked each jar, ensuring that its cloth wick was firmly inserted and wet with naphtha. Another made sure that the coals in the two fire pots sent aboard each bedan were glowing hot, ready to ignite the torches lying next to them.

  As soon as each vessel was loaded, her crew sat down at the oars and backwatered away from their parent ships into the center of the harbor. Slowly, silently, one turned and headed towards the far quayside, where five large ships slumbered, waiting for cargo loading or unloading to resume the following morning. The other set off for the basin holding smaller craft, shu’ais and bedans. They would wait until the alarm was raised on shore before beginning their work.

  In the two baghlahs and the boum, working parties prepared to load their loot. Some climbed down into the holds, ready to stack cargo as it was lowered. Others tallied onto lines attached to a sail boom, which was swung out over the quayside to serve as a makeshift crane. It would lift larger, bulkier loads, while former slaves would carry smaller, handier goods up the gangplank and deliver them to the holds.

  Two parties of armed soldiers ran silently across the merchants’ square, headed for two carefully chosen buildings. At the first, the leader led his party around to the door of the residence at the rear of the emporium. He battered on it with the hilt of his dagger. His voice shattered the silence. “Open up! It’s the watch! Open this door!”

  After a few moments, the sound of bolts being withdrawn was heard, and the door swung slightly ajar. “What on earth…?”

  The speaker was given no time to recover from his surprise. The group thrust their way inside, knocking him down, bringing a yell of outrage. He staggered to his feet. “What’s the meaning of this? I’ll –”

  He was silenced by a blade thrust beneath his chin, its point pricking his favorite throat. “The meaning of this is that you’re being invaded. Are you the merchant Hosni?”

  “I – no, I’m his servant.”

  “Take us to him, quick!”

  “Y-yessir! Up those stairs!”

  The team leader pushed the prisoner up the stairs ahead of him, to find a fat, blubbery man emerging from a bedroom, pulling on a robe. “Who are you? Wha-?”

  The team pounced on him, slammed him against the wall, and placed the edge of a sharp dagger against his groin. The leader tossed the servant aside. “SHUT UP! You’re going to take us to your money, right now. Give it to us, plus any other valuables we take a fancy to, and you and your family will live. If you don’t, we’ll unman you – and that’s just for a start! Want that?”

  The merchant was trembling. “N-no! NO! Anything but that! Please!”

  “Then WHERE IS IT?”

  The second squad of soldiers followed the example of the first. As soon as the terrified trader had revealed the location of his money chest, securely bolted to the floor, the sergeant in command ordered some of his men to empty its contents into a second chest. He set the rest searching hurriedly through the house and the merchant’s shop for anything small and valuable that could be added to the loot.

  Taghri paused at the first merchant’s house, found everything in order, and hurried to the second. He hadn’t reached the door when he heard a muffled scream from upstairs. Muttering a curse, he hurried inside.

  “What’s going on upstairs?” he demanded of the sergeant in charge.

  “Ah… I dunno, sir.” The man was clearly taken aback at seeing his commanding officer. He flushed beetroot red. He knows damn well what’s going on, Taghri thought to himself with rising fury.

  He turned and ran up the stairs, drawing his scimitar. He burst into the master bedroom, to find one of his men about to bend the merchant’s wife over the bed. She had already been stripped naked, and gagged with a strip of her own nightshirt. She was struggling wildly.

  Taghri didn’t bother to shout. He simply stabbed the soldier in the heart from behind. The man screamed, releasing the woman, who scrambled over the bed to its far side as he tottered, then crashed down on the floor. He struggled weakly as Taghri withdrew the blade, flicking it sideways through the air. Drops of blood flew from the weapon onto the walls and bedding.

  The sergeant had followed him upstairs. He stood in the doorway, eyes bulging and mouth hanging open in consternation. Taghri didn’t give him time to make an excuse. He turned and lunged, plunging his scimitar through the sergeant’s chest until it protruded out his back. The man stiffened up on tiptoe, grasping with both hands at the blade impaling his heart. Taghri jerked it out, and the sergeant toppled slowly forward. He landed next to the soldier, writhing and twitching.

  Taghri wiped his blade clean on the sergeant’s clothes, then sheathed it. He looked across the bed at the woman, who was staring at him in horror, trying to cover her nudity with a snatched-up pillow. “I’m sorry this happened. It was against my orders. They have been punished.”

  “I – I… th-thank you, sir,” she managed to whisper, face bone-white with shock.

  “Stay in here. You will not be harmed any further. Get dressed. In a minute or two, your family will be ordered out, and your building set on fire. Be ready for that.”

  “B – but my house! My furniture! My –”

  “It will all be burned. Be ready.” Taghri hesitated. “I have a question. If you can answer it, I will spare your house. A ship came in here some weeks ago, under the command of Sidi Reis. He sold his loot, including the belongings of a Princess Gulbahar of Kalba, and auctioned four of her female attendants at the slave market. Do you know who bought them? Are they still here?”

  “N – no, sir. I saw them being sold. They were young, and still pretty, even though they had been…” She could not bring herself to use the word, but nodded to the bodies on the floor to show what she meant. “Th – they were bought by a dealer from Bahil. He took them back to the capital with him. He said they would fetch a good price there.”

  “Thank you for telling me. Say this to your husband and the leaders of this city. Trading in stolen goods, and selling into slavery the attendants of a Princess, and allowing the territory of Talima to be used to launch raids into Samha, are very bad ideas. They led directly to this night. If they continue as before, they can e
xpect more raids like this. They should consider carefully whether the profits they’ve made in the past will make up for the losses they’ll surely suffer in future, if they don’t change their ways. I suggest they’ll find it a lot cheaper and easier to do honest business instead. Tell them that.”

  “I – I will, sir.”

  “Thank you.” He removed the weapons from the by now still, silent bodies on the floor, and tucked them under his arm. “Get dressed, then get your family together and out of the way. We’ll be gone very soon.”

  He hurried downstairs, and called to the corporal who was second in command of the party. “The other two won’t be coming. I just executed them for rape.” The corporal’s face froze in shocked surprise. “They knew my orders, as do you. They disobeyed. They have been punished.”

  “A – aye, sir!”

  “Leave their bodies here. Don’t burn this house. Tell the fire-raisers that, too.” He handed him the weapons he’d taken. “Get your loot loaded and head for the ship – and keep better control of your men than your sergeant did. That way, you may live long enough to make sergeant yourself!”

  “A – aye, sir!”

  Taghri turned on his heel and headed back to the slave pens.

  Four squads of fire-raisers crouched on the quayside, listening to the growing noise in the night. Their leaders conferred. “Now?” one asked.

  “No, not yet,” another replied. “Remember, we’ve got to wait for the raiding parties to get back from those merchant’s houses. Once they’re back, we won’t have to worry about trapping any of our own people on the wrong side of the flames.”

  “You’re right. I just wish they’d hurry up, damn them!”

  A third man licked his finger and held it up. “Wind’s coming down the coast, and it’s getting stronger. It’ll fan the flames. We need to concentrate on the far side, over there, so the wind will blow the fires clear across the town. Given a broad front, they’ll spread uphill on their own.”

  “You’re right. Hear that, all of you?” Nods and murmurs of assent.

  “Here comes the first raiding party!” one man called, pointing to a group of men who rounded the corner of a warehouse. They were pushing a very heavily loaded handcart, its wheels wobbling under the strain of the two big chests and three bulging sacks it carried.

  “Get it all?” the speaker asked as they came up.

  “Got it all, and then some. Would you believe the rich bastard had a set of solid gold plate?” The raider patted one of the chests possessively. “The other chest’s his money.”

  “Let’s get it aboard Taghri’s baghlah,” his team leader ordered, glancing over his shoulder. “Here comes the second team. You people can start having fun now.”

  “We will.” The supervisor of the four fire teams looked around. “You heard the man. Now it’s our turn. Burn these bastards out of house and home, and drive them up the hill! Block every road and lane with refugees and burning buildings, so the people on the walls can’t get through to stop us!”

  With a raucous cheer, the fire-raisers set to work. As the second team of looters ran past, the corporal in command shouted Taghri’s order to spare the house they’d just looted. The fire teams acknowledged cheerfully. There were plenty of other buildings to burn.

  In the harbor, the crews of the two bedans heard the cheer, and knew it was time for them to get to work, too.

  The first boat rowed alongside a ghanjah moored nearest to the harbor entrance. In her bow, a torch was plunged into the fire pot, instantly bursting into flame. It was used to light the fuses on half a dozen jars of naphtha, which were thrown hard against the hull and onto the deck of the larger ship. They shattered, splashing burning liquid up and down the sun-dried planks and masts and tar-soaked rigging. Flames began to lick up. Within seconds they were burning out of control.

  The second bedan backwatered to a stop at the entrance to the small craft basin. Her crew began to light naphtha jars and toss them into the mass of shipping, first as hard and as high as they could to reach the most distant craft, then less powerfully as they aimed at closer ships. Within minutes, flames were spreading from vessel to close-packed vessel. Their crews, wakened from their sleep by the hubbub on shore and the smell of smoke, poured onto their decks, stared incredulously, then fled across the serried ranks of small ships towards the quayside. They clambered onto the docks, then ran for their lives as insults and threats pursued them.

  Within minutes, the whole harbor was brightly lit by the flames of the ships it was supposed to shelter. The light helped the former slaves to load the most valuable cargo in the auction warehouse, and others nearby, onto the three new arrivals.

  There were no guards on duty at the patrol craft basin. They’d all been pulled up the hill to man the walls, in the absence of the regular garrison; so there was no-one to stop the freed slaves who ran into the basin and boarded two galleys. They kicked the hated chains and fetters aside, and sat down on the benches.

  “Never thought I’d be glad to lay hands on this damned oar!” one called, to loud laughter from his comrades.

  “Nor me,” another yelled back, “but we never knew we could row our way to freedom, and the price of a passage home!”

  The two galley crews shook themselves into some semblance of order. The officers and petty officers among them took control, poling the craft out of the small basin into the main harbor. The three galleys left behind would not survive long, being targets on the fire-starters’ lists.

  Both galleys pulled into the center of the harbor, then backwatered to a standstill. Their crews hurriedly shook out their towing hawsers. They would help the big sailing vessels turn around and make their way out of the harbor and into the bay, as soon as they were loaded.

  High above the harbor, at the top of the hillside, the deputy garrison commander and the Harbormaster arrived on the walls, panting and puffing after rushing up the stairs. They clutched at the battlements as they stared down at the harbor.

  The small craft basin was almost blotted out by smoke, through which flickered an ominous red glow. The larger merchant vessels along the seaward wall of the harbor, and a couple on the landward side, were already wreathed in flames, writhing up their masts and rigging like so many fiery snakes. Some of the smaller warehouses were starting to burn, as were many of the merchants’ emporiums and homes in the business district. A few of the houses along the streets leading off the square and up the hill were emitting the first signs of arson, flames licking up wooden shakes and shingles and along bone-dry balconies. Splashes of fire here and there showed that some sort of liquid fuel was being used to speed things up.

  “Who the hell is it?” the Harbormaster screamed. “You said the threat was to landward!”

  “It is – or it was! They must have come in from seaward!”

  “But no ships have come in since mid-afternoon, and those carried only chandler’s and shipyard stores! We know the merchant who brought them! He’s sold to us before! It can’t be him!”

  “Who else could it be? Were those ships inspected?”

  “How could they be? You pulled all my people up here to man the walls!”

  “If your galley let them in, and it turns out they’re responsible, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes. The Governor will be looking for someone to blame.”

  “And what about you? What are your troops doing to stop them?”

  “What troops? I have only one platoon left! Your galley sailors won’t be any use – they aren’t trained to fight on land. If we send them down there, they’ll be slaughtered!”

  They fell silent, staring at each other. At last the deputy commander said, “There’s only one thing for it. Clearly, this is the garrison commander’s fault. He took all our troops with him, which left us defenseless against an attack like this.”

  “I agree! As for the ships that came in, the galley that admitted them ignored my orders to keep ships out, and obviously didn’t inspect them, either.”

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nbsp; “Yes. It was obviously it’s captain’s negligence that allowed this to happen. If he’d obeyed your orders, the attackers would never have been able to enter the harbor. Let’s support each other before the Governor. If we do, we may both survive.”

  Left unspoken was their mutual understanding that the garrison commander, and the captain of the patrol galley, probably would not.

  Taghri searched through the auction warehouse until he spotted Elhac, who was directing teams of freed slaves to carry boxes, bales, bundles and barrels to the waiting ships. He hurried over to him. “How’s it going in here?”

  “Very well, sir. We’re almost done with the loading, what with everyone helping. We’ll have room and to spare for the freed slaves.”

  “Good, but don’t forget, we need food and water for them as well. It’ll take us a few days to reach a port where we can sell this stuff, perhaps longer if the weather turns bad. Load at least ten days’ rations for everyone. As soon as you’ve done that, fire all these warehouses, then get aboard.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Taghri ran onto the quayside. Kamil was marshaling a crew of over thirty sailors aboard the ‘liberated’ baghlah moored ahead of the boum. He jogged over to the ship and up the gangplank.

  “Is she in good order?” he asked as he stepped onto the deck.

  “Very good order, sir. My crew will be able to handle her easily enough.”

  “What’s her cargo?”

  “She has a shipment of Feringhi swords, helmets and mail coats, sir, and other weapons, not yet unloaded.”

  “Feringhi-made? Those will bring good prices. I’ll buy some myself, for my own guards. How many more slaves can you carry, to give them passage to a free port?”

  “Probably another fifty to sixty, sir, provided we can get food and water for them.”