Risen (48 page)

He could not know that the journey
they faced would be nearly a week north and into the mainland to
Isparta—Yeorathe’s home. The passage was treacherous, climbing
between the perilous mountain ranges of southern Turkey. He could
not know that it was there that Yeorathe wished to consign him to
the Janissary.

The day became blisteringly hot, and
the children dozed. As they slept, in the town square of the Muslim
section of the village, Yeorathe mounted the remaining stolen boys
on the auction blocks. Before Sylvie scarcely would have time to
remember them kindly, the three boys from the Ravan dynasty were
sold into slavery and gone forever.

* * *

Four vessels down from Demetrios’
ship, no one noticed the unusual boat that eased into her slip as
slick as though it was a second skin. A Spaniard supervised the
mooring of the boat and was fast joined by a fierce mercenary and
his following. A woman, skin so white that she appeared almost a
phantom amongst them, joined the unlikely band of men.

They’d been at sea so long that land
was uncomfortable to Ravan. He felt as though the ground swayed
beneath his feet, as if the ocean chose to swell up under the very
earth he stood upon. “Will this pass? The pitch I feel even as I
stand still?” he wondered aloud to Salvatore.

“Unsettling, isn’t it?” The captain
waved his hand. “It will wear off in a day or two…or get back onto
the boat, and it will be gone straightaway.” He smiled as though
that would be his first choice if he had it to make.

Before long, it was midmorning, and
they were scouring for information about the Virgin Wolf, the ship
that had fled Toulon with Ravan’s son aboard. According to the
harbormaster, it was marked as present in the marina, having moored
earlier late the previous day. Remarkably, they were shortly
directed to a vessel on the very same pier and approached the slave
ship that had taken Sylvie and Risen from Toulon.

They knew it was unlikely the
children were still aboard the ship, but whether they were yet sent
through the auction could not be determined unless records could be
obtained. That could be a greater challenge than simply finding the
ship.

It made Ravan’s heart ache to look
at the awful vessel, with its black pitched keel and sunken oar
windows, like so many awful eyes searching for another young victim
that it might swallow whole and spit out to the unreachable ends of
the earth.

He felt Nicolette’s hand upon his
arm, and almost immediately, the anger that threatened to rise in
him subsided. Glancing over his shoulder, Ravan heard and saw the
chaos of the town in midday. He knew that if Risen and Sylvie were
somewhere here, they would not be for long, for Antalya was a
way-station, and lost souls were scattered from this wretched town
nearly as soon as they arrived.

The deckhand who stood guard of the
Virgin Wolf lounged against a pylon. Salvatore approached him but
was motioned that he should halt. The guard lazily blocked the ramp
to the foredeck with an unusual sword that bowed severely and was
fatter toward the end than it was close to the handle. Ravan
thought the weapon fairly ridiculous and stifled his impulse to
simply gut the man where he stood.

The Spaniard entreated the guard
pleasantly, enquiring simply of the captain’s whereabouts. All had
gone ashore, for they’d been nearly two weeks at sea, was all the
man was inclined to offer. Deciding it would be a waste of might
and resource to engage him further, Ravan and Salvatore asked,
instead, for directions to the auction.

The guard was noncommittal, as
though not sure that he should share this common knowledge with
them. With Salvatore pressing him, he indicated farther into the
village, to the center of the chaos.

“Go to the loudest district. You
will find it there,” the man grumbled.

Nearly a half hour later, they
located the auction, specifically the slave portion of it, and came
upon it in full swing. It was evidently a destination point, for it
would appear many came simply to gawk and watch, obviously
fascinated by the inhumanity of human trade.

The farther in they went, the
thicker the crowds became until their group was physically shoving
their way through. Ravan was stunned by the organized anarchy of it
all. People pushed and pulled, calling out in languages he’d never
before heard. There were vendors bustling with baskets balanced as
though by magic, rows of animals held together with mere twine,
people of all colors and sizes.

In every direction Ravan was
bombarded with the smells of incense, fruit, rot and flesh, all
intermingling in a mad circus of methodical confusion. Amongst all
of it there was an underlying order as trades happened, words were
promised and broken, and currency changed hands. All the while,
Ravan kept a firm hold on Nicolette’s wrist.

Finally, they were at the very
center of the square and stopped to look up at a platform with
stairs up and down either side of it. In the middle was a pole, and
on the pole was attached a large, metal ring. The late afternoon
auction was yet to start, but people—mostly men, and of substantial
means—pushed to claim their spot around the stage. They pointed and
spoke in tongues harshly unfamiliar to Ravan. He and Salvatore left
Nicolette, Velecent, and his men on the periphery of the bulk of
the masses, and the two of them shoved their way closer to the
stage.

The slaves were being previewed,
walked in long rows up one flight of stairs, across the small
stage, and down the other side. There were dozens of them, and
Ravan was stunned to see the extent of this business of human
trade. He’d never known such a thing existed.

Looking over the heads of the crowd,
for he was nearly taller than any other there, he could see
Nicolette standing next to Velecent in the shadows of a vendor’s
canopy. She seemed oddly unattached as she peered mildly at the odd
train of human flesh that paraded past them.

Bodies of all sizes and colors
walked on and off the auction block—white, black, yellow, brown,
all of them broken, all of them manacled or with nooses about their
necks. Some had rings inserted in their nose or cheek and were
tethered by them. The handlers had long staffs with which they used
to direct the slaves, sometimes randomly beating on
them.

Most of the captives went silently
and obediently, almost as though they’d walked this path before.
Some of them, however, fought against their bonds, largely the
younger males, but all eventually succumbed to their fate. In all
of their eyes shown vacancy and despair. Ravan seethed, that man
could be so cruel to another, that Risen would be one of
these.

The next phase of the auction began,
the latest wave of human flesh for sale, and Ravan heard Salvatore
speaking to someone next to him. He listened intently but didn’t
understand the conversation.

Salvatore broke from the dialogue
and turned to Ravan. “The sale goes on all day, whenever a shipment
comes through. We are either too early or too late, but we can’t
know without records.” He shrugged.

“Who keeps the sales records? I
must speak with them straightaway.”

On the far opposite side of the
auction stage was a large, elevated stand. Salvatore indicated one
end of the canopied booth where the archivist penned the record of
each sale. Beside him sat a portly man, beard white as snow,
eyebrows nearly as white and immensely bushy and braced, lending
little support to the poorly wrapped turban that perched on the
fellow’s head.

To his flank stood soldiers, at
least ten, sabers at the ready. In front of him rested scales, and
next to the scales were heaps of coinage of several sorts, metered
and divided in tall stacks to satisfy whatever the current
transaction might be. This man seemed in charge as he waved a
short, fat hand, and from somewhere a loud trumpet announced the
auction was to begin.

Now on the sale blocks were two men,
dark, also with turbans, and nearly naked. They wore, wrapped
around their loins, filthy cloths, and were barefoot, shackled
together at the ankle. One of them was wounded and held his injured
arm as though it were broken. They were tethered to the ring on the
pole and left so all could peruse them.

The auctioneer selling the slaves
stood on the edge of the raised deck, indicating the shackled men
with a sweep of his arm and calling to the crowd, pointing at
bartering individuals at any given moment. The auction went very
fast and continued until the auctioneer seemed all at once
satisfied. Then the slaves were hurried off the block and
disappeared into the crowd. Without delay, the next ones were
brought up.

Pointing to the fat man beneath the
auction booth canopy, Ravan asked, “Him? He will know if the child
slaves from the Virgin Wolf have been sold and to whom?”

“He will,” Salvatore began,
“but—”

He didn’t have a chance to finish
his thought for Ravan was gone, already weaving his way through the
last few rows of the packed crowd before Salvatore could catch him
by the arm and call, “Ravan! We must wait! We cannot disturb the
auction. It is a capital offense!”

This had no effect on the mercenary
as he charged past the auction platform and right up the ramp
toward the elevated stand. Velecent and his other men jumped from
Nicolette’s side and quickly followed. There was an immediate stir
as oglers leapt from the ramp like water from a hot pan, allowing
the fiercely determined mercenary and his group their
berth.

Ravan was met at the top by a horde
of the sabered guards. The gold that passed through this auction
was significant, and the army that ensured its proper payoff was
more than the small band of men who followed their dark leader up
the incline.

“I must speak to someone about the
ledgers. I must know about a sale!” Ravan commanded but was met
with a saber to his chest.

He stared briefly at the blade, eyes
narrowed, and followed the sword’s curved edge to meet the man’s
gaze. The soldier said nothing but sneered, pushing the steel
harder against the mercenary’s armor as though to push him back
down the ramp.

Ravan didn’t budge. “You’re not
going to want to do that,” he commented.

Velecent was just drawing his sword
when Salvatore appeared at their sides, blathering on in that
foreign language. It was fast, and the vowels seemed to roll on and
on. The crowd quieted, though trying to hear what all the commotion
was about as the man with the saber motioned with his free fist at
Ravan, his voice rising over the surrounding din. He then motioned
to the ongoing auction.

Minimally, it was evident the
soldier believed the foreign intruder should not be allowed to
interrupt the sales. More likely, Ravan and his men were kicking a
hornet’s nest.

Salvatore continued to argue in the
man’s tongue, gesturing toward the group of Ravan’s men who looked
conspicuously out of place, but the man would have none of it and
was yelling at Salvatore while his eyes remained fixed mostly on
Ravan.

The argument was clearly to the
point of pushing Salvatore from reasonable composure, and when the
guard stabbed at Ravan—the blade clinking against his armor—the
French mercenary stepped away, pushed the blade aside, and swiftly
captured the guard’s arm in a lock. He turned, pivoted his
shoulders, and bent over, easily dislocating the man’s shoulder
before pushing him neatly from the ramp. The soldier fell some
fifteen feet onto a throng of people below.

All swords were immediately drawn
and mayhem ensued. A horde of guards funneled out of the
grandstand, down the ramp, and toward Ravan, Velecent, Salvatore,
and their men. The Turkish soldiers were not nearly as experienced
as Ravan’s troop, and so a handful fell straightaway. But the Turks
had the advantage of numbers, so Ravan and his men were pushed
backward, even as valiantly as they fought. It appeared they would
be run over, for Ravan battled two men at once, stepping backward
into a fleeing crowd as he did.

The fat man at the ledgers sounded
the horn repeatedly and yelled, but no one seemed to care what he
had to say. Instead, the crowd dispersed to a large semicircle,
allowing the fight between Ravan’s men and the Turks to ensue front
and center, right next to the massive stage.

Struggling with his two foes, Ravan
called to Salvatore, while the fat ringmaster in the booth repeated
what he was yelling and sounded the ridiculous horn again. “What
does he say?”

“He says you are an ass—more
foolish than a camel humping a horse.” Salvatore struggled with his
own overwhelming odds.

“He said all that in only two
words?” Ravan was back to back with Velecent and fairly
surrounded.

The fat man yelled something
further, and a new wave of soldiers swept in from seemingly
nowhere, overpowering the small troop in no time and holding all of
them at bay as Ravan, Velecent, and Salvatore—the obvious
ringleaders of this fiasco—were forced to step up and onto the
auction stage. With three soldiers on each of them, they were
forced to their knees, facing the fat man sitting behind the stacks
of gold.

Ravan began to speak, but a sword at
this throat silenced him straightaway. The fat man jabbered on,
sweeping his hand over the crowd before pointing dramatically to
the strange invaders each in turn. He went on and on at
length.