Children of the Dragon

by Frank Robinson

  The old man’s pen scratched many lines.

  “Is that all?”

  “Not quite. Last of all, write that you are resigning as mayor on account of your crimes, and that you regard yourself fit only for an ignominious death.”

  The old man hesitated; then, with his hand shaking, he wrote the final lines.

  “Sign it.”

  The Mayor obeyed, affixing his name in crabbed letters to the foot of the document. Then Jehan seized it out of the man’s hands and pretended to read it carefully.

  “Good. Now, Mayor, you may have the honor of cutting your own throat. I will give you that as a boon.”

  Jehan placed a dagger in the old man’s lap. He reached out a gnarled finger to touch the blade, but recoiled from it almost instantly. “I can’t,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “You poor old relic,” Jehan said to him, “you’re hardly worth killing.”

  The sun was coming up to begin a new day in Zidneppa.

  A large wooden table had been dragged out into the main public square, fronting upon the temple and the military compound. At this table stood Jehan Henghmani and his junto: Yahu, Kawaras, Kirdahi, and Ubuvasakh. All around was their ragtag army of bandits, and lined up against the wall were the scores of bound Tnemghadi prisoners. Quite a few of them bore bloody bandages. Out of sight, in the courtyard, a squad of Jehan’s men was already at work digging a mass grave for the dead.

  And in the streets, in the comers and shadows, the people were gathering to see what was afoot. As the sun rose, wild rumors spread quickly through the city. No one knew exactly what had happened.

  And then, in terror-hushed whispers, the name sizzled through Zidneppa: Jehan Henghmani. The people cringed to think this monstrous, bloodthirsty killer had taken over their town! In the early hours of that morning, they frantically hid away their silver and their money, buried it in clay jugs, and locked their womenfolk in closets. Many even grabbed up a few belongings and fled the city.

  But many too, drawn by curiosity in spite of fear, came to the public square.

  For an hour they watched and waited, all eyes upon the legendary monster, who stood conferring in low tones with his associates, while the bandits came in and out of the army compound. He was waiting for Zidneppa to come fully awake. Soon, the sun was fairly up in the sky, and the streets around the square, the windows facing it, and even the rooftops were dark with clusters of onlookers.

  Then, abruptly, everything quieted down. Yahu, Kawaras, Kirdahi, and Ubuvasakh all took seats flanking Jehan. He remained standing, towering taller than ever. His ghastly ruin of a face confronted the crowd; some felt nausea and turned away, but others stared at him, compelled by the fascination of the grotesque.

  Jehan let them gawk at him for a long time; he turned slowly so that all of them could get a good look. Then, without preliminary, he picked up the parchment written by the Mayor, and called the old man forward. The giant stood with his arms folded on his chest while the ancient man read aloud his self-indictment, exactly as Jehan had dictated it.

  When the public reading was completed, Jehan took a chair. In turn, Ubuvasakh stood. “As the duly appointed magistrate of this city,” he announced, “I pronounce the sentence of death upon the Mayor.”

  Two men marched out from the ranks on cue, took the Mayor by his arms and escorted him into the very center of the square. They pushed him down to his knees, and stepped to the side. The shriveled old man knelt alone in the sand, casting a long shadow in the early morning sunlight He neither moved nor spoke; he looked so fragile that the slightest breeze would blow him away.

  Now came the executioner dragging a heavy sword. The Mayor did not flinch as the man set his footing and aimed. There was a seemingly endless pause. Then the sword came down upon the old man’s bared neck. But the blow was not heavy enough, and instead of severing the head, it opened a huge gash. The Mayor twisted and croaked an agonized cry, his hands seizing his broken neck. The swordsman swung again, splitting the old man’s hand before hitting the neck. This blow killed him, but a third blow was required before the head bounced on the ground. Then the body sagged and toppled over on its side.

  Jehan watched the blood spurting, staining the whitish sand. He would permit himself no pity for the old man. Coldly he stood letting some minutes tick by, so that the onlookers could absorb the gory execution they had witnessed.

  The next victim was General Mazrouk Nem, the commander of the Zidneppa garrison, who had been arrested in his bed.

  His name announced, the commander too was ushered to the middle of the square, right beside the Mayor’s headless body, his feet wetted by the blood puddle. General Nem was a squat, snaggle-toothed man with a full black beard. He turned around to face his captors, stuck out his bearded chin and shouted a curseword.

  In response, the Magistrate Ubuvasakh enunciated a single syllable: “Nyert.”

  It meant death.

  The contumacious commander was shoved to his knees. This time, the executioner’s job was neatly done. There was not even a cry—only a brief thunking, crunching sound. No second blow was needed.

  There remained a host of ordinary prisoners. The time had come to deal with them.

  “You,” Jehan called out, pointing to one of the bound men. “Come forward.”

  The gangly young soldier so addressed, uninjured and with his hands trussed behind his back, walked awkwardly with his head bowed. He was looking at the bloody bodies, not at Jehan.

  “What is your name, boy?”

  “It is Nemir Mattaq ... your honor.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Sajnithaddhani City, in the Province of Muraven.”

  “What are you doing here, so far away from home?”

  “This is where the army sent me.”

  “Why did you become a Tnemghadi soldier?”

  “I don’t know. It seemed a good life.”

  “Do you still think it’s good to be a soldier?”

  “No, your honor.”

  “And why not, Nemir Mattaq?”

  “Because you are going to cut my head off.” The youth choked forth a cough that was a whimper.

  “Tell me, why should I cut your head off?”

  Nemir Mattaq shrugged.

  “Is there any good reason why I shouldn’t cut your head off?”

  The young soldier said nothing. He did not know what to say.

  “Nemir Mattaq, you are free to go home. The same for all you soldiers: You don’t belong here. Go home, up north where you came from, and don’t ever come back.”

  5

  THE CITIZENS OF Zidneppa had stood rapt to watch the executions of the Mayor and of their Tnemghadi general. These men had surely been unloved; and yet, Zidneppa was terrified to see their heads roll. It saw the murder of these men as a harbinger of what lay in store for the whole city at the hands of a demon usurper. The people cringed at the bloodstains in the sand, believing them to be the beginnings of a river.

  Then they had turned to look at the captured soldiers. These men too were quite unloved. But where would the river of blood trickle out? Whom would it fail to sweep away?

  And then, beyond comprehension, Jehan released the soldiers. Some of them thought they were being toyed with prior to execution. But Nemir Mattaq’s bonds were actually undone, and all the others were freed too. A few edged warily away from the wall where they had been lined up; and then in the blink of an eye, they all broke loose, making haste to disappear lest this crazy monster change his mind.

  Indeed, consistency did not appear to be his hallmark. He had peremptorily slain the Mayor and the commander, but had let the soldiers go—while making it clear that he might just as well have butchered them, too. His dialog with the soldier Mattaq showed that it didn’t matter whether he killed them or not. And this was something he had deliberately chosen to ma
ke clear.

  Jehan Henghmani looked at the people of Zidneppa with an appraising eye. They were small people, most of them: small of stature from meager diet, and small in circumstance. There were old men and women, many prematurely so, white-haired and wrinkled at forty, dying; there were younger people, ill-clad little waifs, ordinary, anonymous people. There were millions of them in the southlands.

  These people had been lorded over by rich gouging merchants, land barons, thieving rent collectors, Tnemghadi noblemen and even nobles of their own race, by the Mayor, by the constabulary, by the greedy priests, and by the ever-present army. Now, this crisp morning, they found themselves lorded over by someone new, a marauding bandit whose name was Man Eater. On their faces he could see a resigned understanding that in the end, much as things may change, yet they remain the same. Whatever Jehan’s hellions might do to them, it would be nothing new; if it wasn’t these bandits, then it would be the Tnemghadi.

  All this Jehan appreciated, and so did Zidneppa. It might have been the only true thing understood this morning. There is a difference between liberalism and generosity, and when Jehan released the soldiers, it was an act of generosity, not liberalism. He had shown that the soldiers deserved neither freedom nor death, except as Jehan saw fit. A liberal ruler might have freed them for justice’s sake. A generous ruler would free them regardless. That was what Jehan did, and no one in Zidneppa missed the point.

  The city was being offered a choice by Jehan. It was not a choice between absolutism and liberalism, not a choice between tyranny and democracy, but an even more elemental choice than that: it was the choice between beneficence and malevolence. It was good versus evil.

  That was what this gruesome monster offered.

  That was why he freed his prisoners.

  Once the soldiers were dispersed, all eyes converged upon the massive marble temple, which dwarfed all the rest of Zidneppa and brooded over the square. There was not a man in the crowd who hadn’t been forced into that temple, forced to kneel before the image of Tnem Sarbat Satanichadh, forced to hand over some of his abject possessions.

  Originally Jehan had planned to seize the temple together with the adjacent garrison, but that plan had been thwarted: the temple’s great oaken doors were shut up tightly for the night. The temple was in fact more a fortress than the army compound.

  Inside were the priests, hiding with all their gold, all their hoarded tribute payments, stolen from the people as ritual offerings. It wouldn’t do to try to starve them out, since their store of foodstuffs was presumably colossal. Besides, now that the Tnemghadi had been overthrown, the lust to get the priests was universal in Zidneppa. If stares could have pierced the temple’s oaken doors, they would have shattered into splinters.

  Jehan Henghmani announced for all to hear that he would now proceed to bring down this priestly bastion. And its occupants, he gave assurance, would not get off as easily as did the soldiers.

  A score of men had already been dispatched to fetch one of a group of huge fallen logs that lay just outside the city; and just as Jehan was speaking, the squad returned. On their shoulders they hefted an enormous wooden pillar, thicker than a barrel and long as a ship. A loud buzz of excitement swept the crowd.

  A few bold young men and even women from the crowd joined those carrying the log. They positioned it as far back as they could, in a straight path to the door; and after a brief pause to renew their grip on it, they started the forward run, rapidly gaining speed.

  It hit with a peal of thunder, with the screech of wood straining and breaking. The ground heaved, and the recoil flung the log off the men’s shoulders. But the temple door had withstood the blow.

  “Again!” shouted Jehan, undaunted, and the crowd took up the cry. More people joined the effort, and Jehan himself took up the rear of the battering ram. They shot it against the door a second time.

  For a brief instant of jarring sound, the log hesitated in midair as it smacked into the barrier; then the bolt gave way and the doors swung open. Unbalanced by the blow, the men tumbled against each other like toys, and the log came crashing down to the ground.

  The men regained their footing; a few were limping, bloodied, leaning on their fellows’ shoulders. Now they could peer through the open doors into the temple’s black innards; it was an oddly chilling maw.

  “It’s the mouth of Sexrexatra,” someone muttered.

  Quiet settled over the crowd, staring into the dark sanctum. Such was the mystique of the temple that no one rushed to cross its theshold. Many were the times they had entered that temple when they hated to do so. Yet it was unsettling now to find the obnoxious temple opened to them like a cracked walnut in their palms.

  “We will drag out the jackal priests!” Jehan declaimed to the crowd, and with a sword in his hand, he led a troop through the dark jaws of the temple. The cyclopean building seemed to swallow them up.

  The onlookers fidgeted while Jehan was inside. No sound issued from between the broken doors.

  The minutes mounted up. Nervous whispers were exchanged, but no one made a move to follow Jehan into the temple; it seemed as though that dark maw was ready to devour all who dared trespass. With every passing minute, the black entrance and indeed the whole huge structure loomed more and more sinister, a silent, giant gremlin, grinning through its jagged wooden teeth.

  Had the priests been armed and ready; had they ambushed Jehan in the temple’s black interior?

  At last, Jehan Henghmani and his troop reemerged, unscathed but with slumped shoulders. The bandit leader seemed dwarfed by the splintered portals.

  “The priests,” he announced, “are gone. There must have been some secret passageway, leading underground out of the city. Perhaps they closed it up behind them. And they took with them all the gold and jewels. But one piece of gold they did leave behind: the idol of Sarbat Satanichadh.

  “We can be thankful to the Emperor Sarbat. He was too big and fat for the priests to carry off.”

  6

  JEHAN HENGHMANI AWAITED his distinguished visitor on a plush couch that had once served the High Priest of Zidneppa.

  Shunning the more modest structures that had accommodated the Tnemghadi officials, he had made his headquarters in the temple. Not only was it the most magnificent building in Zidneppa, but it epitomized the overthrow of the old order here. The broken temple doors were not repaired; they were instead tom down completely. And no longer would this temple serve the worship of a golden idol; the statue of the Emperor, left behind by the fleeing priests, was being dismantled for its gold and jewels.

  Jhay Parmar Harkout was coming to the Zidneppa temple, borne on a litter by eight slaves. The Jhay was one of the great barons, overlord of Kalanhi, a vast estate not far south of Zidneppa. Jehan had been expecting his visit

  For five years now, Taroloweh had suffered thin times. Rice, the chief staple, was particularly scarce, and hence its price was high. That meant big profits for those landholders who were able to keep all their lands intensively cultivated.

  Throughout the five years, the Tnemghadi had continued to exact their taxes, paid mostly in grain and rice. Huge amounts of these foodstuffs had been hoarded up in the governmental granaries, but despite the widespread hunger, these supplies were withheld from the market. Ironically, it was only in times of plenty, when prices were low, that public grain and rice would be sold off. Obviously the Tnemghadi officials were in collusion with the big land barons, and sharing the profits from the tight market.

  This corruption was a fairly open secret, but there was nothing to be done about it. Not even Tnem Sarbat Satanichadh, whose treasury was victimized by the scandal, would take action. He had plenty of funds; it didn’t matter to him if his satraps fattened themselves on graft. Nor did it matter if Urhemmedhins starved.

  So starve they did, while the municipal granaries bulged.

  Jehan Henghmani rubbed his h
ands in satisfaction. The visit of Jhay Parmar Harkout fell in precisely with his plans.

  Harkout arrived on a litter that was wrought of silver, inlaid with agates, turquoises, and lapis lazuli. The Jhay was a pinkish-skinned old man with a misshapen body, narrow at the chest and spindly-legged, but bulging broadly at the hips, more so on the left than on the right. His hair was thin, white, close-cropped; on his upper lip a tiny, dirty-looking moustache bristled. His chin receded in a mass of wrinkles, and his earlobes dangled as bulbous fleshy growths. Amid this ugliness, his eyes seemed out of place: they were bright, blue, cool.

  “Greetings, Jehan Henghmani,” said the baron, not leaving his silver litter. “May I congratulate you upon your bold and courageous stroke?”

  Jehan smirked and folded his arms. “No; please let’s skip this nonsense.”

  The Jhay was taken aback by the deliberate rudeness, but he did not let it ruffle him. “Very well,” he said, “may I then speak to you of, ah, business?”

  “Some may not speak to me at all; others may speak to me of anything but business. And you, Jhay, may speak to me of nothing but business.

  Harkout nodded genially. “Just so. Perhaps we can get along after all. I do believe our interests coincide.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You are no doubt aware, sir, of the large amounts of grain and rice being held in the Zidneppa granaries.”

  Jehan told the baron precisely how many shokh of rice and of grain were in storage. And he pointedly mentioned the prevailing prices those commodities were enjoying in Taroloweh.

  The Jhay nodded. “Perfectly correct. I compliment your knowledge.”

  “Those are very high prices,” Jehan emphasized, showing his teeth.

  “Yes, that is quite true. Prices have never been higher. It would seem to be an auspicious time for someone with control of a large store of these commodities. But I’m sure a shrewd man like you must know that your grain could not realize such a fancy price on the market.”