“The Burgher Council of Dura welcomes your expedition from the great, Hataduri city of Kazdan, to our lands.”
The man who was speaking stood in the center of a large, wooden hall. Pillars of fresh-cut, unseasoned wood held up walls of mud mixed with dried reeds. They had not been plastered or painted. Crossing beams held up a thatched roof. Through open, slit windows, the light of campfires could be seen. They lit a two-story earth wall in flickering, orange-yellow light. Heavily armed guards walked it, their armor gleaming. Above them were the stars. Beyond the walls was the endless black of the Carboniferous jungle.
Studying Speaker, and his four colleagues, were several guards. Their features and skin tones were South Asian. Their faces were unsmiling. Each guard was over 6 feet tall. They wore bronze helmets with thin vision slits. Heavy bronze and leather armor left little skin exposed. Each was equipped with a spear so long it was almost a pike and a tower shield of bronze and bone. Painted on each shield was a black spider with a single red eye.
Speaker faced a large, seated man. Sitter was dressed just as the guards. A scimitar was at his side. Draped over his wooden chair was a cloak that shined oily green. If Speaker speaker had stepped closer, he would’ve noted the hand-sized insect scales Sitter’s cloak had been made from. Sitter studied Speaker like a spider does a moth.
“As such,” said Speaker, a pale, young man with a longsword at his side, “please accept these gifts. A token of the friendship between our people and yours in far-off Hatadur.”
Three naked girls stepped forward from behind the Duran emissaries. The girls wore armlets and anklets of polished bronze. Smooth river stones had been set in their collars. Each girl wore a sash of white silk: they were virgins. They wore their hair in ponytails pulled through bronze gripping-tubes. Their eyes had been darkened with kohl, their cheeks rouged.
The three knelt before the seated man. One slave girl was a dark-skinned Darfuri. She carried a clay bowl laden with dried, black mushrooms - a Duran delicacy. The second was a brunette. She carried a bowl filled with powdered incense. The third was a blonde. In her bowl was a single Dunkleosteus tooth - the size of a man’s skull.
“Please accept these gifts,” said Speaker. “As our welcome to you.”
Sitter’s eyes went from slave girl to slave girl. They rested on the blonde. She looked up for a moment, saw his gaze upon her, and then looked back down at once. Her face turned red, and she crossed one foot over the other, then back again, as if all of the sudden uncomfortable.
There was silence in the hall. The only sound was a large creature braying out beyond the protective wall. Then, from much further away, and answering braying.
“Perhaps he did not understand us?” whispered a man next to Speaker.
“We should have brought a Hataduri to translate,” said another. “Yog, take these ignorant, foreign fools!”
“Your land?” Said Sitter in perfect Low Hyperborean.
All five Duran’s regarded him.
“We saw none of your people when we arrived,” Sitter cracked his knuckles. His hands were as large and solid as fired bricks. “Your city left no marker stones. No cairns. Nothing at all to show by which you’ve won these lands. Not even crucified tribals,” Sitter pointed to one of the slit windows. “Tell me, what do you see through there?”
Through it could be seen three wooden crucifixes. They were tall, designed to be seen from over the stockade’s walls. From two hung the bodies of pale, dark-haired men wearing bloodied furs. The third body was a woman’s. She had been stripped naked. A slit had been made across her belly, and her entrails pulled out. The Duran elites, who had played such games, could tell it had been done while she’d still lived.
“And yet,” Sitter grinned, “you claim this is your land, Borderlander?”
“And yet,” said Sitter, his tone hardening, “it is ours.”
“Your Duran ships do not patrol these waters.”
“Ours is such a ship,” replied the Duran. “That patrols these waters. It has come upon your settlement here; settled without our grant of right. I did not speak false words, Warrior. We do welcome you here. The shores of the Black are dangerous. It is good to see these jungle lands set to rice by hands other than our own. But, you must pay a tribute.”
“No,” Sitter folded his giant arms and sat back. “We will pay you nothing, Borderlander!”
“You must pay,” a tremble entered Speaker’s voice. He was no longer smiling. “If you do not, you cannot use our lands. You cannot grow your rice here. Maybe you will find Starka cares not for foreigners encroaching upon its lands. Dura will permit no such thing upon hers!”
“Borderlander, I am no scribe or vizier to draw circles with words with you. So, then, bold Durans, what will you do about it? What will you do about us?”
There was some murmuring, and the five Durans exchanged glances again.
“If you do not pay,” Speaker growled, “we will expel you.”
Sitter’s eyes became wide.
“You would press war between Kazdan and Dura?” He leaned forward. There was tension in his back. His knees bent as if ready to spring him forward.
“You leave us no choice!” Speaker scowled. “You have until the morning to choose a different path. Otherwise, come dawn, our two great cities will be at war.”
“You’ll have my answer now, then!” Sitter sprang to his feet. The dark-skinned Darfuri slave girl jumped back, startled, dropping her bowl. Dried mushrooms fell and scattered over the dirt floor.
The scimitar flashed as the Hataduri warrior drew it. Around the Durans, the guards leveled their spears. The slave girls cried out and scrambled out of the way, crawling fast as they could on their hands and knees.
The Durans cried out in surprise. Their leader drew his sword, and the others followed. They looked about, uncertain, eyes wide. One thought to turn and stood back to back with another.
“By Set, what is this treachery!” Speaker brandished his sword at the Hataduri warrior. “We are messengers; you cannot strike us! Are you not a warrior? Are you not a man of honor?”
There was a sudden heaviness in the Hataduri man’s eyes.
“In another age, Borderlander, yes. But honor will not feed my people. None of you will return to Dura to tell of what happened here today.”
The man spoke words in a language none of the Durans had heard before.
In a single movement, the guards raised their shields and pressed around the Durans, spears aimed. The Durans began to scream as they were stabbed, again and again.
The Speaker, blood flowing from his arm, knocked a spear to the side. He parried another, then stepped within his attacker’s guard and stabbed over his shield, right through the man’s visor. Blood spurted out the slit, and the Hataduri went down.
Another long spear swung towards Speaker. He brought his sword down on the bronze blade so hard, it broke at the shaft. He pushed it aside with his arm and stabbed his attacker through the neck.
Before him was Sitter. Speaker gave him a look of pure hatred and charged.
His boot found the uncertain shape of a dried mushroom, a gift of the city of Dura to the city of Kazdan. Speaker slipped and fell forward.
He tried to jump back to his feet, but the Sitter brought his scimitar down through the man’s spine. Pinned to the ground, Speaker stared at the blonde slave girl cowering beside a wall and died.
Sitter took the longsword from the dead man’s hand and lifted it up, turning it this way and that, feeling its weight.
“Hari, take 50 men and seize that ship,” he said. “If you take any, we will sacrifice them to Atlach-Nacha come the dawn.”
“Yes, Captain,” one man turned and ran, leaving the hall.
Sitter walked over to the blonde.
She put her hands up to shield her face and drew her knees against her. She whimpered and closed her eyes.
Sitter grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands aside. The slave girl cried out and tried to jerk her hands free. She could not waver his grip and inch: she was as pinned as a frog under a boot.
“Take the other slaves,” he said, leaning forward to peer at the blonde’s face, eyes darting back and forth, assessing. “If they can survive the jungle, add them to the pens.”
“And if they are weak?” Asked one of the guards.
“We do not need more mouths to feed. Cull them and use them for fish bait.”
The blonde screamed as he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. She screamed again and he cuffed her, throwing her head to the side. Then, she became quiet.
As he carried her out of the hall, she watched as the other two slaves were made to lie on their bellies, a man standing over them with a knife drawn.
Beyond the protective wall, at the river shore, she heard the clash of metal on metal and the cries of men. At that moment, the slave girl realized she had become the first trophy in the war between the city-states of far-off Kazdan of Hatadur, and Dura of the Borderlands.