Blood and Iron: The Book of the Black Earth (Part One) (4 page)

Horace sprinted to his right. The commander wheeled his steed around and raced alongside him. Horace zigged around a low bristle bush and tried to put some distance between them. He was watching the commander's approach out of the corner of his eye when something hit him square in the chest. Stars burst before his eyes as he fell backward. The edges of his vision turned black like he was losing consciousness, but he was still awake when he struck the ground with enough force to rattle his teeth. A dark silhouette stood over him holding a club. Horace groaned as more soldiers appeared. They picked him up by the arms and dragged him back.

The peasants were all awake when they returned. They watched as the soldiers dumped him beside the campfire. Horace folded his legs underneath him and wondered what was going to happen next. He expected he would be tied up to keep him from running again. He'd heard rumors of things that were done to runaway slaves, including permanent maiming. He hoped they wouldn't take it that far.

The commander conferred with the officer, and then one soldier—the one who had been on sentry duty—was seized. He was stripped of his armor, and ropes were tied around each of his wrists. As two soldiers held his arms outstretched to their fullest extension, the officer produced a short, thick whip with four leather tails. Horace's stomach coiled into knots as he eyed the fearsome instrument. The punishment was swift and brutal. Horace flinched at the first strike, which tore a long furrow across the sentry's shoulders. He started to turn his head, but a soldier kneeling behind him grabbed him by
the hair and forced him to face forward. Another soldier placed the point of a dagger against his throat. Horace had to watch as the whip cracked again and again, until the victim's back was a mass of oozing stripes. The sentry grunted with each strike, but did not scream.

When it was over, the victim was released. He crawled over to his pile of gear and collapsed. The soldiers holding Horace let him go. He glanced around as he rubbed his neck where the dagger had pricked him. The camp was returning to how it had been before, although this time three soldiers were put on sentry duty, two patrolling in circuits while the third stood nearby, watching over him. Horace ground his teeth together. The peasants were lying down again; some had even fallen asleep already. The commander was back in his blanket while a soldier groomed his horse. It was all orderly and neat.

Horace wanted to shout at them. He wanted to scream in their faces. However, he was too exhausted to make the effort. Weary deep down in his bones, he lay down on his side facing the fire. The flames danced, slowly turning the pile of dung biscuits into black ash. Stray thoughts stole across his mind. Memories of his family, sharp as daggers. He pulled them close as he drifted into a troubled sleep.

Horace awoke with a sense of ominous dreams, convoluted and portentous, but could remember none of them.

The ground was cool beneath him. The officer walked among the group, shouting and kicking the men awake. Water and bread were distributed. Horace accepted both this time, his thirst and hunger driving him to make the best of the situation. The commander sat apart on a small cushion, eating something from a wooden bowl. When everyone had been fed, they started off again.

A soldier remained by Horace's side all day. His feet were still sore from yesterday, but he kept up with only a slight limp as the sun climbed higher
and the temperature rose. He was able to sit up and take his evening meal with the others. He listened to the peasants talk in hushed voices while they ate. Although he couldn't understand them, by watching their gestures and listening to their tones, he imagined they were complaining about having to hike in the dust behind the soldiers.

One of the peasants saw him watching them and called it to the others’ attention. They stared at him until he turned away, feeling even more isolated. He sighed as he laid down. Three paces away, a soldier stood watch.

The stars shone like beads of molten silver. Many nights he'd sat on the
Ray's
deck, staring up at the sky like this. Horace imagined what his life might have been like if he hadn't taken the carpenter's post. Without something to occupy his time and his skills, he probably would have drunk himself to death by now. His mind worked backward to happier times, in Tines before the outbreak of plague, back when he was still working in the royal shipyards. Every evening he'd return home to listen to his wife tell him about her day and play toy soldiers with Josef on the rug in front of the hearth. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

The next day they sighted a river, mud-brown and wider across than a bowshot. It came up from the south and ran due east. Small boats plied its waters, some with sails and others powered by long paddles at the stern. Huge fields of gold and brown stretched from its banks for miles on both sides. Peasants in long skirts walked among the rows of wheat and barley, plucking weeds and ministering to an ingenious system of ditches and wooden dams that conducted water from one field to another. Like the peasants of the village, they seemed not so different from the serfs of his homeland. There were men and women working together, old and young, and even some children, all sharing the labor. Large, hive-like buildings with no windows were scattered among the fields.

Horace was so intent on his surroundings that he didn't notice the town they were approaching until the officer shouted an order and the column picked up the pace. Jostled along, Horace craned his neck to see. Buildings appeared a couple miles ahead of them. The settlement sat on a table-flat plain. The outer wall formed a perfect square protecting an area not quite as
large as Tines, which was small as northern ports went, but many towers and narrow rooftops were nestled together inside the walls.

The company closed the distance in less than an hour. Horace was soaked in sweat by the time they reached the walls. The gate guarding the road was open, but a squad of men-at-arms in steel breastplates stood before it.

The commander reined up before the sentries and exchanged words. Horace eyed the waterskin hanging from the commander's saddle and was considering making a grab for it when the sentries finally waved the column through. Passing under the gate's shaded archway was a blessing, but a momentary one. The heat met him again on the other side as he was herded through crowded streets lined with rows of cloth awnings and recessed doorways. Because of the closeness of the avenues and the height of the buildings around him—some rising five or six stories above the street—Horace couldn't make out much of the town beyond the jagged skyline. Most of the buildings were constructed of brick and had flat roofs. The streets were dried mud, pitted with potholes and wheel ruts, though they were cleaner than he might have guessed. Horace wondered what they did with the sewage. He had never seen so many people pressed together, not even in the markets of Avice. They streamed past him on both sides like schools of fish.

The commander led the party down several twisting streets until he stopped before a door that didn't look much different than any other. It was painted green, but the town had doors and window shutters of all colors. Horace noted a pictogram drawn above the lintel, of a black horseshoe with the open end down and a horizontal line drawn under the legs.

The commander went inside. The rest of the soldiers fanned out around the doorway, facing outward, while the peasants crouched in the shade of the building and swatted at flies. On the other side of the avenue, a team of young boys with sticks were corraling a herd of goats.

Horace leaned against a wall and wondered when the pleasantries would end. For the most part, his captors had treated him well, but he was an enemy on their soil. He expected imprisonment, quite possibly involving torture, followed by a summary execution. That was how his homeland would have handled a prisoner of war unless they had some hope of ransom. Horace
studied the soldiers. Did these people assume he was a high-ranking officer? They shouldn't have, considering he had been shipwrecked in a simple seaman's uniform. It was a stretch, but possible. He could play the part of a landed aristocrat, if it would get him back to civilization.

The door opened, and three young men with short-cropped hair hurried out. Each wore a long skirt, like the men in the fields, but of bright white cloth embroidered with crimson scrollwork along the hem, and no shirts. Their smooth chests glistened in the bright sunshine like oiled clay. The young men ushered the soldiers inside with many bows and nods, and they brought Horace with them.

The door led into a roofless courtyard paved in mosaic tile. A small fountain burbled against the wall to his right, surrounded by leafy plants and young trees planted in clay pots. Oblong yellow fruit hung from their branches. Horace looked up to several balconies above, their iron handrails framing a square of azure sky.

Voices approached, and the commander entered through a wide archway on the other side of the courtyard accompanied by a heavyset man with a sagging gray mustache. The hem of his simple robe swept across the floor. The commander indicated Horace, and the older man clapped his hands. Two large men wearing cloth kilts and leather harnesses entered. Each had an iron collar around his neck and a short sword hanging from his side. At a word from the old man, they came forward and grasped Horace by his arms. He didn't have time to resist before they hauled him through a side archway and down a flight of dark steps. Not that resistance would have helped. The muscular guards handled him with ease, walking him down a hallway and down another flight of stone steps. The air was cool down here, at least. The light became scarce, but when they tossed him into a small room, he was able to see by way of a narrow window in the ceiling.

The sound of the door shutting was almost enough to break Horace, but he stood in the center of the cell and listened as the guards barred the entry from the outside. The floor and walls were hard stone blocks. The ceiling was just a couple inches over his head, which made him want to duck.

Horace inspected the window, but it was far too small to allow for any
chance of escape. So he lowered himself to the floor and sat with his elbows propped on his raised knees, staring at the door. After a few minutes his gaze wandered down to his hands, drooping before him. The patches of scars glowed pale white in the ghostly light. He traced their rippled contours with his gaze as he waited.

The wagon rumbled down the hard-beaten roadway. Jirom picked at the scabs on his arms as he looked out through the iron bars. The rattle of chains and the clop of hooves drowned out the breeze and the buzzing insects flying past his cage. The sun was only halfway to its zenith, but already the day was sweltering. Not so hot as the desert, yet still enough to drive a man mad.

His scalp itched, too, where the hair was growing in. He'd kept it shaved for years, but he didn't think anyone was going to give him a razor after what he'd done. Breaking the jaw of a smart-mouthed drover on the first day of the journey had been satisfying, but now they kept him in the cage night and day. He ate in the cage, slept inside it, and shit and pissed through the hole in the floor. He'd long since gone nose-deaf to his own smell.

Standing up, he met the gaze of Umgaia in the next cage. Their wagons were linked together and pulled by the same train of oxen. Umgaia smoothed her luxurious hair over her shoulder and winked at him with the single eye in the center of her forehead. “It's soon time for another show.”

Beyond her wagon, the brick walls of a settlement emerged from the dusty savannah. Another village, another show. Chief Proctor Mituban was, among other things, a procurer for his master, Lord Isiratu. The wagon train held tribute from a dozen holdmasters, as well as some curiosities that Mituban had encountered during his trek around the territory. At every stop along the road to Sekhatun, the caravan displayed its oddities to the common people.

Jirom leaned against the bars of his cage as the wagon train rolled past the fields and pastures surrounding the village. The smell of manure clung to the air. He had seen hundreds of settlements like this in his soldiering days. Akeshia was said to be the world's breadbasket for good reason. Every year shipments of wheat were sent to nations near and far, and Akeshian merchants brought back a wealth of cotton, timber, and gold. It wasn't difficult to believe that someday her armies would march to the far corners of the earth. Long ago,
that notion had inspired Jirom to take up a spear and seek his fortune, but a series of misadventures, and some poor choices on the part of his employers, had set him on another path.

He settled back onto the floor and rested his back against the bars. The gladiator circuit was renowned for its brutality. If he was fortunate, he'd get put against a few young bucks like the Lion with more muscles than sense, but eventually he would be pitted against someone better. It was just a matter of time.

When the caravan reached the village, a crowd had gathered. Looking out over their brown faces, Jirom remembered his childhood and the bubbling excitement he'd felt whenever someone new came to his tribe's remote corner of the world. That same excitement was reflected in the eyes watching him pass.

The wagons stopped at the village center and pulled into a semicircle. Caravan guards went around, watering and feeding the animals. The doors of the lead wagon opened, and Chief Proctor Mituban appeared, wearing a long robe of ivory-white with a crimson sash around the middle. The village elders kept their distance until Mituban beckoned them closer.

“Come and see,” Mituban said for everyone to hear, “the wonders I have collected for our lord and master!”

Jirom didn't move as Mituban walked past his cage, introducing him as “the cannibal gladiator from the dark heart of Abyssia!” even though he'd never been to that land. Umgaia was billed as “the fabled cyclops of Sidon.” People gawked as they passed by, pointing and laughing. Jirom suppressed the desire to reach out and strangle the first person to stray within arm's reach. Instead, he sat back and closed his eyes, and tried not to dwell on the humiliation. He had been a soldier and a warrior, but now he was an animal in a cage. Something hit him in the shoulder and rolled off. He looked down at the dry turd on the floor beside him and clenched his hands into fists.

Don't give them what they want. Just sit back and think of something else.

After a meal of hard bread and a cup of water, the menagerie packed up. The oxen were re-hitched, and the wagons rolled out past the crowd of watching villagers. Jirom chewed on his crust and simmered.

The sounds of pipes and laughter floated through the camp. The oxen murmured in their roped enclosure. Wagon drivers and guards sat around the fires, passing skins of beer back and forth.

Jirom wrapped his shirt around the lock of his cage door. Earlier in the day, while the guards grew lax under the afternoon sun, he'd grasped a fist-sized rock from the ground and hidden it under his shirt. All afternoon he had contemplated what to do. Fight his captors and likely be killed? Perhaps. Dying on his feet had long been his professed ideal, but these past few years he'd come to understand that even a life of degradation was better than death. He'd thought about escaping every day since his capture, but never with much optimism. Anyplace beyond the reach of Akeshian justice seemed too far away. And there was the matter of his brand, which wouldn't be easy to hide. He couldn't walk around with his face covered for long without raising suspicions.

He watched the sentries. When they wandered to the far side of the camp, past the chief proctor's pavilion, its white silk walls glowing in the moonlight, he slammed the rock against the lock. The muffled clang sounded loud to his ears. He hunkered down and waited, but no one came to investigate.

A desert owl hooted somewhere in the darkness.

He struck again. This time his blow glanced off, and he hit his knuckles on a bar. Hissing, he swung again and froze as a metallic snap echoed through his cage. He waited for a dozen pounding heartbeats and then pushed. The cage door swung open.

Still clutching the rock, he hopped down. The feel of solid ground under his feet was a relief. He took a step but halted as he saw Umgaia watching him. She sat near the edge of her cage, wrapped in a blanket. They looked at each other for a moment, and then she flicked her hand toward the darkness beyond the camp.
Get away.

He went to her door instead. She watched as he tested the bars. The lock on her cage was older than his, probably because Mituban didn't think her
likely to escape. Jirom hit it before he could talk himself out of it. The lock's metal face bent on the first blow and cracked open on the second. He opened the door and held out a hand, but she backed away. Jirom heard the footfalls behind him an instant before the whip slashed across his shoulders.

He turned and swung at the sentry standing behind him, not realizing he still held the stone until it collided with the guard's temple. Bone crunched, and the guardsman crumpled to the ground like an empty sack. Jirom stood over the body, weighing the stone in his hand. It suddenly felt much heavier. He tensed at a touch on his flayed shoulder.

“You must go, gladiator,” Umgaia whispered.

“Come with me.”

“No.” She smiled and was transformed into a true beauty despite her deformity. “Out in the world I would just be a beggar, not even fit for a whore. Mituban feeds me well and his men leave me alone.”

Before he could stop her, she scurried back into her wagon and closed the door.

Fool of a woman.

With a last look at her, he turned toward freedom and stiffened as several shapes emerged from the darkness. The sentries hemmed him in, their spears leveled. Jirom looked over his shoulder. Three guards brandishing stout clubs came around the corner of his wagon.

Jirom hefted the stone. A fierce heat rose in his chest. This was his moment. Fight to the death. Feel his enemies’ blood on his hands. Scream out his rage and loathing as he fell beneath their spears.

Jirom opened his hand and let the rock fall to the ground. He braced himself, but the club striking the middle of his back still drove the wind from his lungs. A spear butt barely missed shattering his kneecap as it knocked him off his feet, and then he was under a pile of pummeling fists and bludgeons. When they hauled him to his feet, blood poured from his face and dripped down onto his bare chest. The guards dragged him back toward this cage, but a voice stopped them.

“Here. Let me see him.”

They held Jirom up by his arms as the chief proctor came out from his
pavilion. The top buttons of his robe were undone, revealing a patch of black hair. He sipped from a slender glass as he strode over to them. “What's all this?”

Two sentries hauled the body of the man Jirom had killed into the light. Mituban's gaze went from the corpse to Jirom. “How dare you raise your hand to one of my servants, slave? You are the property of Lord Isiratu!”

Jirom said nothing. Mituban stepped closer, peering into his eyes. “I can see you are nothing more than a beast, unfit for the company of men. I would have you executed, but that pleasure belongs to His Lordship. Believe me, before the end you will beg for d—”

The rage exploded inside Jirom. With a violent shudder, he threw off the men holding his arms. A red haze blurred his vision, but through the fog he could see Mituban on the ground, grasping at the large hands clutched around his neck. Jirom wrenched, and the lord's struggles ceased. His wine glass lay broken in the dirt.

A sharp crack echoed in Jirom's ears, followed by a red-hot pain at the back of his head. As he slumped forward, the last thing he saw was the chief proctor's expression of complete surprise.