“You cannot give him that the news.”
Four Hataduri soldiers stood outside the closed door. Three were on guard. They blocked the fourth from entering.
One of the guards, and the man trying to enter, both wore undyed cotton kilts and lace-up leather sandals. Both had bronze blades at their sides. The leather rank patches on their shoulders showed the double-slit markings of a Maha Yavas: a lieutenant’s rank.
The lieutenant trying to enter the room was panting. His forehead was furrowed and dripping with sweat. His sandals had tracked red clayey mud over the wooden floor of the corridor. No slave girl came scurrying to clean them. Tied around the man’s left arm was a bandage. It was red where his wound had re-opened.
The other lieutenant frowned. On either side of him stood two Yavas; Hataduri soldiers. They were dressed like the other two but held long, bronze-tipped spears and large tower shields. Their shields had been painted red with a white spider at the center.
“There is no way you can tell them that,” said the lieutenant blocking the door. “The Lekhap will tear him apart!”
“Be that as it may, Brother,” the other lieutenant wiped the sweat from his brow, “I must.”
“You would shame our Janak in front of a farmer and an accountant?”
“Would you rather then that he be the last to know and not the first?”
The lieutenant at the door stood aside.
The other entered.
Inside was a large, wood-paneled room. It was midday: through the room’s windows came the gloom of the sky overcast with rain and ash clouds, from horizon to horizon. Beneath the clouds were rice fields. Most were lined with furrows. Some, however, showed black stalks pushing out of the ground. Those closest to the building were already as tall as a man’s waist.
Surrounding the fields were large, open areas of flat, fire-blackened earth. Here and there were stands of stubborn, half-killed trees. One blazed red-yellow and pumped thick, wet smoke into the sky. The burn team around it looked like black dots.
Beyond the line of scorched earth rose the endless, continent-spanning jungle.
In the room was a long, wooden meeting table. Rows of chairs ran along its sides. At either end of the table stood a naked, Hataduri slave girl. Their skin was the color of milky tea. Their black, shining hair was done up in buns. Each wore a bronze collar. They carried in their hands clay water jars. A chain ran from each girl’s collar to the jug she carried.
Seated at the table were just four men.
One was a large, short man with a thick mustache - unusual for a man of Hatadur. He was an Adhikar, an officer of his state, this one a farmer. The lower portion of his cotton kilt was stained red-brown from times too long in the fields for a tired slave girl to scrub out. There were bags under his eyes. Fat hung from his arms, neck, and belly - the mark of those enjoying rich, easy lives or of farmers who drill their slave girls well. The heavy bags under his eyes, however, told of a different pace of life of late.
Across from the tired man was a tall, thin one. His head was bald. He was old: early cataracts dulled his eyes, and there were white hairs on his arms. While the other men wore kilts, he wore a grey robe - the mark of a priest (Purodan) or high priest (Maha Purodan). Grey ash had been smeared on his forehead. Propped beside him was a tall, black staff. Topping it was a bronze spider as large as a clenched fist. All eight of its eyes were oily, black gems.
Next to the priest was a thin, younger man. An accountant or Lekhap. His face had the hard lines of one not accustomed to smiling, except perhaps, at the misfortune of others. Beside him were several scrolls unfurled and weighted with stones. At his side with stacks of colored counting stones. 12 blue, 12 red, and 12 white. Base 10 was but one human numbering system. It was not the first and would not be the last.
Opposite the unsmiling accountant was a man dressed similar to the entering officer. A bronze medallion had been fitted over his shoulder patch, however: the mark of the captain. A Janak.
Captain Vamad of the Kazdan farming outpost smiled at the sight of the lieutenant. It was the smile of a man who had learned to smile often, especially when he least wanted to. It was a smile of a man who had learned, not soon, but not too late either, the importance of politics.
“Lieutenant,” Vamad nodded. “Your galley’s return is most timely! What is here your report?”
All heads turned to face the lieutenant.
“Forgive me, Janak, and august men of Kazdan,” he began. “I bring poor news. I have failed you.”
The civilians exchanged glances.
“Well, let’s hear it,” Vamad’s smile became a bit weaker.
“I failed to catch the Duran ship. It reached the shallow cataracts on the third day of the chase. That is when I turned back.”
“Black blood of Xath!” spat the accountant. “Why did you let them go?”
“The Great Eel is a heavy war galley, Lekhap,” said the lieutenant. “He is built for the sea. If we had attempted to follow, he would’ve run aground. Or worse.”
“Then, Lieutenant, you and your men should’ve put to shore out and pursued on foot.” Said the accountant.
“Really, Sudit?” Said Vamad. “Is that your opinion as our Lekhap? Do you approve of the loss of a heavy war galley - our only war galley - in a futile pursuit?”
“But they will learn what we did to their emissaries!” Said the mustached farmer. “What you did to them!”
“This man has failed our city in the greatest way,” said the accountant. “You idiot; they are going to come back with troops now! The entire expedition is at risk. Kazdan needs this damn rice! You should fall upon your sword for this.”
The lieutenant looked down and said nothing.
The only sound for the next few moments was that of water as a slave girl refilled a cup.
“You did very well, Dirit,” said Vamad, still smiling. “There was never any chance of the Great Eel catching that flapping bird of a boat! I am impressed you managed to hound it for whole days. You showed our strength by chasing them. That is what I wanted. They know now that all the water beyond the cataracts is ours. It is also good for the marsh tribes to see the Great Eel showing Kazdan’s flag. By the next summer, we will have them paying us tribute!”
The accountant rolled his eyes and looked away.
“Thank you, Janak,” said the lieutenant.
“The quartermaster is sitting on the last barrel of wine. Why don’t you go and get it and share it among your crew and the marines?”
“Yes, Janak!” The lieutenant’s eyes lit up.
“They deserve it for not deserting when you told them they have to come back to this place. You may go!”
The Lieutenant saluted and left the room. His back seemed that much straighter, his stride longer than before.
“Was it not enough,” said Lekhap Sudit once the door had shut, “to just excuse their failure? Why did you have to reward it - with the last of the wine - as well?”
“The men are tired, Lekhap. They are hungry. I have sentries sick at their posts when they should be in the infirmary. The Duran ship escaping is a great blow to us. However, I would see the men worry less about something they cannot control and more about their duties. Surely, an honorable priest in good standing with the great god Xath, such as you, Candrak, can find something good in the strands?”
The old robed man - a priest of the spider god Xath - laughed and nodded.
“The webs tell me only the plans of Xath that He intends me to learn, Janak. What his plan is here, though, I cannot say. “
“I have no fears, Candrak. Xath will share his plans with us; he always has. Are we not the descendants of ten thousand years of the greatest people in the world?”
“If you would recall our ancestors,” said the accountant, his voice like a razor cutting across a throat, “then perhaps the weight of their sacrifices should be remembered when weighed against those not asked of the men under your command.”
Again there was silence. The Adhikar farmer and the priest of Xath regarded Vamad.
“Let’s get back to our meeting, shall we?” Said Vamad. He was no longer smiling. “Adhikar Durg, how goes your progress in the fields?”
The large man with a mustache cleared his throat.
“The first seven fields will be ready for flooding by the next moon.”
“No,” Vamad frowned. “We need all 12 fields, Durg. We discussed 12 fields. Kazdan is counting on it.”
“With what am I to get you those?” The farmer’s eyes flashed. “You have not given me enough men! Enough slaves!”
“You know I don’t have what you want for that.” Said Vamad.
“Then how am I to do this?!” Durg slammed his hand on the table. “What, Janak? Do you want me to beg this damned red soil to give me more rice?”
“I know you don’t have what you need,” said Vamad. “But I need you to try. Kazdan needs you to try.”
“Kazdan needs you to try,” said Sudit, the accountant.
“And what is that supposed to mean?” Vamad was fast forgetting politics.
“I mean, Janak, that there is plenty of rice to be had. And slave girls, also. Why don’t you attack the marsh tribals first for a change and burn one of their villages?”
“I would like nothing better. But instead of sending me another 144 legionaries, Kazdan sent me you.”
“Ha! Do you seek to pin your failure on me?”
“No, Lekhap. I seek to feed and protect our people. The legionaries you would have me risk, striking in unknown enemy territory, where we do not know their numbers, with poor strength of our own, and no scouts, cavalry, or war engines - those legionaries you would have me risk are also our people. What happens to this camp with its 8 fields but not 12 if those men were lost? What would happen to you, Lekhap? Can you check your stones and calculate the loss to the last measure?”
“Fine words, Janak! Yes, my concern is not for the safety of my own skin in this time of greatest crisis!”
“Well, it is my concern. That’s why I haven’t taken away your counting stones and given you a spear instead. Unless you are volunteering. Are you?”
The accountant said nothing and looked away, fuming.
“Adhikar Durg, do what you can. I will send another team out to the Eastern line to burn away more trees. Best let the land be ready for the next season, yes? If we get the slaves, it is there for us to work. If not, it is another field-length for our arrows to find marsh raiders. Set your slave girls to a night shift, as well.”
“They don’t have the strength,” Durg shook his head. “Diseases of air, mud, and ankle-biting beasts, take them. They are not used to this wetland. It grows colder: a wind blows from the west. A second shift would weaken them further; I would not squander the slave girls we have.”
“You want them warm at night?” Vamad raised an eyebrow. “That is simple! Pull them from the sheds; quarter them with the men at night.”
“What? They will be too tired to crawl in the mud after a night on their knees.”
“And what of discipline?” Asked Lekhap Sudit. “This is not how Kazdan legions campaign.”
“Indeed,” said Vamad. “This is not a campaign. We are protecting a farming station. Along the stockade walls, up and down the waterway, and now in the men’s tents. We have lost more girls to the cold already than to the marsh tribes. Let us not lose more of those before halting purpose for fear of imagined loss. Do not doubt the discipline of these men, Lekhap. Doubt everything, and doubt me, if you like. But do not doubt the men.”
The Lekhap turned away again and looked out the window at nothing.
“Are there any other matters to discuss? No? Then let us return to our duties, august officers. Remember, we are the greatest people in the world.”
The accountant and the farmer left. Before they were out of earshot, Vamad heard the farmer insisting he not be held responsible for a poor yield, and now this damn fool of an idea to…
The Xathite priest remained seated. He beckoned to one of the slaves - a slender, small made girl with light, hazel eyes. She had been fitted with a bronze nose ring. Bright, red beads had been woven into her hair. Tattooed in curling, Hataduri script under her left breast was her genealogy and her horoscope. On her left thigh was a brand shaped like an asterisk.
The priest held out his cup she refilled it.
Vamad snapped his fingers.
The slave girl looked up at him.
He beckoned to her.
Carrying the water jug in both hands, she went over to him. She raised the jug to pour for him, but he took it from her hands. He took her by the arm and forced her down on her knees.
The slave girl got between his legs and lifted up his kilt. Gripping him by his thighs, she took his erect penis in her mouth. Her head began to pump, the girl rocking back and forth on her knees.
When he was ready, Vamad gripped her by her hair and held her head against him. When he was done, she pulled her head away, licking her lips. She wiped him clean with her fingers and sucked them clean.
“Thank you, Param,” she said. It was the Hataduri word for ‘master.’
She rose, picked up the jug, and went back to stand at her post.
“Have you remained for your amusement?” Vamad said to the priest.
“I thought it best to let you have yours, friend,” said the priest. “Before telling you of something that I could not mention in front of them.”
“Candrak, we cannot keep secrets from each other!”
“You can share it yourself after you see what it is,” the priesthood stood up to leave. “Come. And bring your sword.”
***
“Xath, drain my blood! What could have done such a thing?”
The captain and the priest were standing in a field. Bordering it on one side was a wide stream. Ahead of the field was the burn-line where the expedition’s efforts stopped at the ancient, Carboniferous jungle. Mud squelched under their sandals; red clay mixed with dark river sediment.
48 slave girls; four full-strength teams worked the field. One team stood knee-deep in the stream, hacking water plants with scythes. Around them, wooden logs bobbed in the water, held together by chains. Sharpened stakes jutted from the logs. They were not to contain the slaves but to protect them. Armored fish predators drawn to their scent. The adhikar did not care to lose more capacity to fish… Spearmen stood along the muddy banks, shields at their sides, heads scanning this way and that.
Other slave girls worked the field itself. They were chained together in groups of six, each girl chained at the belly to the next. They knelt along the furrows, dropping black rice seeds into holes and covering them back up with mud. Others took uprooted weeds and tossed them into bonfires. Thick smoke rose up from the green, burning plant matter.
The air was filled with the sounds of whip cracks and slave drivers shouting orders. Some had already been disappointed; three crucifixes made from large branches had been set up in a row. From each, the slave girl hung with her wrists, feet, and throats bound with rope. A slaver walked up and down, glaring at them. He struck his whip across one girl’s thighs. She cried out and jerked, trying to pull her knees up, her ankles straining against the ropes. He struck her again.
Captain Vamad and Candrak, the Xathite priest, stood in a corner of the field where there were no slave girls. Instead, twelve spearmen stood keeping watch.
A slave girl came walking up with a basket at her side. One of the guards held up his hand and shook his head. The girl stopped, staring for a moment, then bowed and left.
Screens of woven reeds had been raised around what the men were examining. The screens blocked line of sight from the rest of the field.
Hidden by the screens was a mass of half-pulverized human bones.
Vamad got down on one knee before the remains. He wrinkled his nose at the sharp smell and choked. He reached to touch the bones-
“Do not!” said Candrak. “The slime will eas the skin from your fingers.”
“Is this one person?” Said Vamad, covering his nose and mouth with one hand. Using his dagger, he poked the eye socket of a half-dissolved skull.
“I think so,” said the priest.
“They are like broken stones.”
“Every single bone has come loose and been pressed together. The small bones are dissolved. The large ones, crushed.”
“Was this a slave girl?” Asked Vamad.
“No, all are accounted for. Or Adhikar Durg would say so.”
“By all the gods, do not let him know! He will abandon this field and all the ones around it! What did this?”
The priest pointed along the ground and towards the stream.
“The guards noticed the ground here was flattened.”
“So? It is all flattened.”
“Step away,” the priest beckoned, “let us walk some distance and then turn and look. Then, you will see.”
The two men walked back from the semi-digested bone pile, stopping at a large wicker cage covered in turf and raised on stilts. Crouched inside the cage were naked slave girls. Most were huddled, fast asleep even over the yelling of the slave drivers. Only one was awake, clutching the cage bars. She stood out from the beige-skinned, Kazdan slave breeds. This one’s skin was pale, almost white as polished bone. Her hair was blonde. Vamad recognized her: one of the slaves the doomed Duran emissaries had sent. She stared at him, her eyes anxious, intelligent.
“Now look,” said the priest. “Do you see it now?”
Vamad’s jaw slowly dropped. He did not say anything at first.
“What did that? A ship?”
“A god,” said the priest. “The people from the land of Shem worship it. They say it is an avatar of Set. Vamad? Your face - did you know about this?”
“Our lekhaps told me there were none of these creatures in these waters, Xath take them! It is a snake, Candrak. A beast that hunts in the deep water but also in the shallows and marshes. Places like this. Great serpents. If the great serpent didn’t kill a slave, then those bones were those?”
“Perhaps a marsh tribal spy? They would have to hide in the bushes, unseen.”
“It would have come for the slaves,” said Vamad, turning to look at the wicker cage. The blonde was still staring at him. “We are fortunate it found the tribal and did not attack the coop.”
“Are we safe here? What will you do?”
“I do not think we are safe anywhere, Friend. The stockade walls will keep any number of those damn tribals out. But this thing - let’s hope there’s only one of them.”
“Will you abandon this site?”
“No. It is too late. We don’t have the time to start over; we won’t have any grain when the ships come. We may as well feed ourselves to the serpent if that happens. How do the Settites deal with these things?”
“With sacrifices,” the priest stepped up to the cage and peered in at the sleeping girls. His eyes settled on the blonde. “In Sonos, he writes of how the great serpents can be trained to come to the same place, again and again, to receive a sacrifice. Even at the same time of day. Sometimes, more than one serpent will come.”
“Alright then. Let’s make a sacrifice to it. And then - when it comes to a place of our choosing - we’ll kill the monster!”
The priest turned and looked back at the captain.
“By the will of Xath, how will you do that?”
“That is for me to figure out. You read the strands and see what you can learn of Xath’s plan in all this.”
“And if he wishes, his plans remain hidden?”
“Then Xath be damned, we’ll make our own plans! Are we not descended from the greatest people in the world? Come. Let’s get the slaves out; I don’t want them trapped in here if the monster returns.”
The priest nodded and waved to the guards at the bone pile. They came jogging over.
Vamad took his master key from around his neck and unlocked the iron padlock on the cage door.
Attuned to the sound, the sleeping slave girls started.
“Out,” he swung the cage door open. “All of you.”
The slaves began to crawl out, one by one.
“You,” he pointed to the blonde.
Her eyes became wide.
“You come with me.”