by Scott McKay
Sarah tried to scream, but couldn’t, not with the rag stuffed in her mouth. She tried to struggle, but bound as she was, she could hardly move. Her ankles had been tied together and bound to her thighs, her arms had been bound in a painful folding position behind her, and a rope passed from bindings between her knees under the horse to…
Was that a collar around her neck? It was. A leather collar. As though she were a dog.
And Sarah wouldn’t budge off that saddle. Not with ropes binding her at the breast, waist and thigh to it. She was firmly secured and she was going wherever the Udar was taking her.
He was going there quickly, something she felt with every painful bounce as the horse galloped its way away from her home.
She worked out that they were traveling south, since it appeared the sun was on the opposite side of the horse and it was, she thought, still morning. She was heading for Uris Udar, the enemy’s territory, and a fate described in books she’d read.
The Udar, she knew, had evil designs on Ardenian women. Tales of sexual slavery, forced impregnation and even human sacrifice to their god Ur’akeen had been told to Ardenian girls as cautions against reckless behavior as long as there had been an Ardenia. And now she would be the subject of one more of those tales.
It was enough to make Sarah go to pieces as she not-so-silently wept. She’d done what she could to keep it together after seeing her parents and sister killed and her home destroyed while fighting for her life, but now, in her helplessness and agony, she was completely dispirited. The will to fight, to live, had left her. All she wanted now was for the end to come as quickly and painlessly as possible.
They continued quickly south, Sarah jostling near the horse’s rear as the Udar took her further and further from Hilltop Farm, for what seemed an eternity. Finally, the horse, rider and unwilling passenger slowed and Sarah heard voices. She turned her head and saw what looked like a camp, staffed, it appeared, almost exclusively of Udar women.
While the men of the enemy nation were typically stocky, frighteningly muscular and carried long jet-black hair in tight braids down their backs covered by headdresses made of various shapes, sizes and species of bone, what Sarah saw as the horse made its way into the camp was a different sight altogether. The women of the camp had their hair cut almost to the scalp, and they went around bare-breasted, their necks festooned with rolls of beaded necklaces. They wore knee-length britches of some kind of fur or leather and sandals tied at the ankle. While the men were bearded, the faces of the women were covered in tattooed markings – lines, dots and shapes beginning on their foreheads and spreading to their cheeks and chins.
Her captor dismounted, grunting as he limped on the leg Sarah’s bullet had wounded. He hobbled into a tent, followed by two of the women. Three more approached the horse babbling in a language Sarah couldn’t understand.
She was then untied from the saddle, her bent legs set free, and hauled off the horse. One of the women yanked the rope attached to her collar, leading her forward and stumbling into the camp.
Sarah saw what had to be 200 women in and around at least as many tents. The Udar had set up the camp on a slight rise giving way to a plain running south to Watkins Gulf, and she knew roughly where she was from having made past excursions here with her father. This was the unclaimed land, but it wouldn’t be for long – at least that was the plan. Somewhere near here, according to the word among her father and his colleagues, was where the new county seat was to be built, and her father was to have had a seat on, if not the presidium of, the new county council.
All of that was gone now, of course. It appeared as though the county seat belonged to the Udar, and for the rest of what life she had left, she expected, so did Sarah.
The tears which had flowed freely during the ride returned. She felt light-headed as she was dragged along a few more yards, and then made to sit.
Sarah turned and saw she was not the only captive Ardenian in the camp. Far from it. Several dozen others were sitting in tight lines mostly of 10 prisoners – all gagged with rags in their mouths, all tied as Sarah was with collars around their necks. All had been stripped down to their cotton shifts. Most showed signs of having been brutalized.
She was forced down in a line of five captives, one of whom she knew. That was Hester Blaine, from Landsdowne Farm thirty miles to the east. Hester was older than Sarah; she was 20, and had moved to Landsdowne just a few years ago with her family. They were from far to the north – Greencastle, near the capital, if she remembered correctly. They’d bought Landsdowne from the Olivers, who’d sold it after building the manor house and moving home to Aldingham with a tidy profit in hand. Hester had been friends with Sarah’s cousin Josey.
Hester looked in bad shape. Her shift was torn at the front, which exposed an angry welt over her right breast; the bloody wound on the top of her head was dressed with a shred of cloth; and she was covered in scratches. She looked as if she’d been in a fight. She had no shoes, unlike most of the captives, and one of her stockings was gone.
But as Sarah took stock of her own situation, she wasn’t any better off. She knew she had at least a deep bruise on the back of her head, and she could feel and smell the blood drying on her face from where that wound had bled while she was upside down over the horse. Her clothing – her shawl, bodice, skirt and cap – had been removed, with only her shift remaining, and other than her stockings, which drooped to her ankles, she was also barefoot.
Not much of a presentation. This was a nightmare.
A female captor approached and tied a rope to a ring in her collar. Sarah stiffened.
“You come,” the captor said. “Tent there.”
Sarah refused to move, paralyzed by fear.
“Come now,” said the woman, as she yanked on the rope, jerking her by the collar. “Tent. You need.”
She shook her head.
The blade of the woman’s Izwei appeared at Sarah’s throat. “Avoy!” said the woman. “Come now. You die else.”
Sobbing, with the vision in her head of Tabitha’s murder by an identical instrument just hours ago right in front of her, she struggled to her feet and allowed herself to be led into the nearby tent.
The worst of her fears did not prove true when the flap parted. Inside the tent were two women equipped with a large bowl of water and cloth for what appeared to be bandages. Sarah was forced down to her knees, and one of the women began addressing the bump on the back of her head while the other began wiping blood off her face.
“You not hurt,” said the one behind her. “You healthy. Make good javeen.”
Sarah wanted to speak, but she was still gagged. She began shaking her head violently. The other woman recognized what she was trying to signal and pulled the rag out of her mouth.
“Water,” she begged. “Please.”
The woman brought a leather flask to her lips and she drank.
“Why am I here?” she asked when the flask was taken away. “Why are all these others here?”
“War,” came the response from the one who had spoken to her before. Sarah turned to look at her and realized she was only a girl, perhaps no more than Sarah’s age.
“We take. You javeen, or you azmeri.”
“What is javeen? What is azmeri?”
“You javeen,” said the girl. “You make babies. Much healthy babies. Rapan’na like you. Very.”
“Azmeri? What is that?”
“Azmeri, you die. Burn for Ur’akeen.”
“How do you speak the Civil Tongue?”
“I learn,” she responded. “Mazha.”
“Mazha?”
The girl thought for a moment. “Mother,” she said. “I learn from mother. She javeen.”
With that, the rag was stuffed back into her mouth and the women took off her stockings and drawers, leading her back to the captive line.
…
FOUR
Barley Point – Noon (first day)
Latham and his two charges reached t
he ferry at noon, dismounting and leading the horse onto the rickety old sidewheeler just in time for its journey across the Tweade. Traffic on the ferry was almost nonexistent. No one shared Latham’s knowledge of the apocalypse to the south, which cast, in his mind, a surreal quality to the situation. He told the ferryman of the need for haste, given the threat of a further attack, and they were underway immediately.
The ride across the large river took only a few minutes, and Latham rushed to tell the Marine attendant at the Barley Point landing of what he saw. That created an immediate fury of alarm at the small river port, and Latham and his charges were hustled to the customs house next to the ferry landing.
At the customs house he was met by a Marine officer, a middle-aged portly major named Boyd Irving, per the name plate on the man’s blue uniform coat. The Marines handled customs and security on all of Ardenia’s rivers, lakes and coasts, and here at Barley Point that meant Irving was in charge of this part of the Tweade.
“What was this you say you saw?” Irving asked, in a characteristically bureaucratic tone.
“An attack. Definitely Udar,” Latham said. “These two children are from Hilltop Farm, Hannah and Ethan Stuart. They’re survivors. It must have come early this morning. I was on the way there to deliver architectural plans to George Stuart, but I suspect he’s gone.”
Irving considered Latham’s statement, then called in an underling.
“Corporal Renford,” he said, a bit of adrenaline percolating in his voice, “would you run down Mistress Irving and have her come to take care of these children? We have a situation here.”
“Yes sir,” said Renford, taking off in a scamper out of the customs house. Latham could hear the bell ringing at the Barley Point Supernal Temple a half-mile away just then, as the town was igniting with the news of what had happened to the south.
“Now,” said Irving. “This was a war party? Of what size?”
“I don’t know,” said Latham. “No one was on the scene at Hilltop Farm but these two, and they were hiding in the cellar when I found them. I saw blood everywhere, though, and found a Gazol on the grounds. They had burned the manor house and all the outbuildings. It looked as though they’d taken the livestock as well.”
“And they did the same thing to Thistleton Farm,” offered Hannah.
“And Grayvern,” said Ethan. “We saw the smoke.”
“It appeared they’d moved off to the west from Hilltop Farm, from what we could tell,” Latham said.
Irving scribbled all this on a tablet, then called another underling to his office.
“Corporal Jones, you will forward this note to Colonel Terhune at the base immediately,” Irving barked. “Bring me whatever reply he supplies.”
“Terhune was my former cavalry commander several years ago,” Latham offered. “He’s an old friend. If you like I can deliver the report myself.”
“No,” said Irving. “Jones will handle that. I need more information from you. Now… you say you didn’t see any Udar. Did you see anyone else?”
“No one. There was no apparent damage at Stonehaven Farm on the way in, and as best we could tell the occupants weren’t around. It appears the enemy came only as far north as the Stuart manor.”
“No evidence of captives?”
“I don’t know.”
Irving winced. “Casualties?”
“My sister Sarah said she’d come for me in the cellar,” Hannah said, sobbing quietly now. “She didn’t come. I think she’s dead. They’re all dead!” Ethan wrapped his arms around her, tears escaping his eyes.
Latham dropped to one knee, embracing both children. “I know, I know,” he said, doing his best to comfort them. “But we’re not sure what happened yet. These men are going to go find your sister and your parents. They’re going to try to make it all right.”
At that point Renford shepherded a figure clad in a bonnet and cape, who appeared to be Mistress Irving, into the outer office. Irving left the newcomers to converse with her in the other room for a few seconds and then returned. He told the children, “This nice lady is going to take you to her house, and you can stay there as long as you want. She’ll feed you and give you whatever you need, all right?”
Hannah and Ethan looked at Latham, seeking direction. “Go,” he said. “I’ll bring your things as soon as I can.”
Renford and the woman led the children away. Irving then circled back behind his desk and pointed at Latham. “You,” he said. “You shoot? You were in the cavalry? Consider yourself deputized as a captain in the Ardenian Marine Force.”
“Wait,” Latham said. “I should talk with Colonel Terhune first.”
“No time,” snapped Irving. “Go get your horse. You’re going back south. You’ll be a scout taking my men to the first counteraction. Those bastards won’t get across this river alive. We’ll take the fight to them now.”
He’s going to get us all killed, thought Latham. The bloody fool.
…
FIVE
Dunnansport – Afternoon (First day)
Patrick Baker was born with almost nothing. No name, no fortune, not even any parents. He never knew his father, and his mother died in childbirth. She’d been a prostitute in a brothel in South Principia’s red-light district until her pregnancy ruined the economic value she could contribute to the brothelkeeper, and he turned her out onto the streets and into the prospect of starvation as soon as she started to show.
She was eighteen.
The nuns of the Sunrise Temple took her in and nursed her through her pregnancy, but Molly Baker’s luck had simply run out, and after delivering and naming a healthy baby boy, she died of a postpartum hemorrhage.
Patrick entered the scene as Molly left it, though. When he did, he was remanded to the charge of the Sunrise Temple, which tended to the poor in the grimy, ramshackle tenements of Principia’s Ackerton District near to the bustling port where the mighty Morgan River emptied into the Gulf of Prosperity. The Temple happened to run an orphanage along with a shelter, a hospital, a nunnery and a well-appointed and famous, though perhaps declining, house of worship to the Lord of All.
It was to the orphanage that newborn Patrick was deposited, with the idea that he would soon be adopted by some family of better means and fortune than the nonexistent one which had spawned him.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Not when Patrick was a newborn, and not when he was a toddler, and not when he was a small child. Patrick stayed at that orphanage for 10 years, under the care of the nuns and the priests who did their best to educate him.
However, while the young boy had no luck in attracting a family, though, in the acquisition of knowledge he was a natural. Patrick was, in the estimation of all in charge of rearing and educating the orphans, the brightest and most inquisitive student they’d ever seen.
At ten, he’d completed the lesson program the orphanage’s tutors had designed for a boy five years his senior.
It was at that time Reverend Mother Elizabeth had called young Patrick into her rectory and offered him the first real opportunity of his life. She complimented him on his academic prowess, and told him he had shown real talent and dedication. She further told him that the world would soon be opening its doors to him, and that the Directorate of the Sunrise Temple found his talents suitable to offer him a scholarship to the prestigious Divinate Academy in Bluemont, 250 miles to the south.
With a degree from Divinate, she explained, Patrick would have his ticket punched as a respected cleric within the Faith Supernal and would bring the masses to the Word of the Lord of All. He could choose a parsonage virtually anywhere in Ardenia, with the Divinate pedigree giving him a chance to move quickly into the role of Vicar, or even Bishop. Or he might even return to Principia and join the Faith Directorate, where the clergy interacted with the business and political power in Ardenian society. It was a quiet life of prayer and study, but, Reverend Mother Elizabeth assured him, it was a life which suited young Patrick perfectly.
/> He remembered her words: “We have directed and shaped you to this point in your life under the inspiration of the Lord of All, and it is He, through us, who has brought you to this moment.”
But Patrick’s response shocked the Reverend Mother. “Nope,” he said.
“I’m going to sea.”
Patrick’s dormitory room at the Sunrise Temple orphanage was on the fifth floor of that dusty, cramped building, and his window looked out over Principia’s South Wharf. There, oceangoing steamers intermingled with Morgan River barges in a fascinating, intricate dance befitting the world’s busiest and richest port. In his free time Patrick would wander the port district, hearing bits and snippets of the sailors’ stories of Ardenia’s other ports of call – Port Excelsior, Gold Harbor, Newmarket, Port William, Maidenstead, even Port Adler and Azuria of the Far West Province – and the foreign ports just opened to trade only a few decades ago.
He spent as much time in the Ackerton public library – and that of the Sunrise Temple rectory – as he was allowed, reading of those faraway places. And Patrick was hooked. He’d lived his entire life in essentially one neighborhood in Principia, and that was enough cloistered time for him. As soon as he could get out and see the world, that’s what he’d do.
So when offered a chance to be a pastor or a monk, he couldn’t spit on that opportunity fast enough.
This was not well received. The Reverend Mother couldn’t force Patrick to attend the Divinate, and she had no reason to punish him for his demurral, but she didn’t know quite what to do with him. He was given chores; he did them and then off he went to explore the wharf.
And then one day a few weeks later, Patrick vanished with only a letter addressed to the Reverend Mother in his wake.
In it, he thanked her for everything she’d done for him and pledged his eternal gratitude to the Sunrise Temple for giving him a home and an education – and someday, when he’d earned his fortune and made his mark on the world, he’d return with some measure of effort to repay their kindness. But for now, he wrote, he’d found a ship’s captain who’d agreed to take him on as a cabin boy and teach him the ways of the sea.