Children of the Dragon

by Frank Robinson

  Along the way, millions came out to watch the blackberibboned processional, marching miles with it as a second protective army, or bowing and prostrating themselves on the ground as it passed, kissing the dirt along its route. They were ignorant, poor, illiterate peasants, and while their understanding was dim, they grasped that the man whose body lay in that casket had profoundly changed their lives. They did not even look upon Jehan Henghmani as a man; he was more than that: He was a god, a force of nature. This colossus transcended good or evil and, unable to take his measure, the people fell down in awe before him.

  “Vahiy Jehan,” they would whisper as they bowed before the passing bier. They would whisper again the warcry of old: Victory to Jehan.

  “Vahiy ley Ur-Rasvadhi,” Victory to the Savior.

  It was a journey of months before the processional finally reached Naddeghomra. By this time, more than a thousand peasant pilgrims, from all across Urhemma, were walking with it. Many of them were old veterans of the rebel armies, survivors of the battles of Zidneppa and Arbadakhar and the siege of Naddeghomra. Some of them were white-haired now and crippled from their wounds, but some of them had traveled a thousand lim on this final march with their old leader.

  Naddeghomra was ready to receive Jehan one last time. On the broad white marble plaza of The Maal, a great funeral pyre had been built, and many thousands flocked to personally add to it their own bits of wood. Here Jehan’s remains were burned, a fire that lit up the city. Here at Naddeghomra, the city he had raised from the ashes, Jehan Henghmani’s own remains were rendered into ashes.

  When it was over, the ashes were spread upon the fields, and the fields were tilled and sown with a new rice crop.

  On the same day that the Emperor’s remains were sent forth from Ksiritsa, his grandson took the crown as the Emperor Jehan II. And on the same day, the council of ministers met and decided to designate a regent to act with full imperial powers until the youth should reach the age of twenty-one. The regent named was Gaffar Mussopo.

  Historians have speculated upon rumors that Jehan Henghmani left a written political testament. But if such a document ever existed, it was presumably suppressed by his successors, and its contents can only be guessed at.

  Meanwhile, Gaffar Mussopo had already decided that the country could not be defended against the Akfakh invaders so long as it was torn within by insurgency. With the concurrence of the young Emperor Jehan II, Regent Mussopo thus gave first priority to dealing with the Tnemghadi uprising. The rebellious western province of Muraven was attacked in force. In a series of bloody battles, the rebels were driven back to their stronghold of Sajnithaddhani, and there, the Urhemmedhins laid siege.

  Although Mussopo’s army suffered terrible losses in repeated assaults upon the stubborn city, the victory was eventually gained. Sajnithaddhani, the gem of western Bergharra, was returned to Urhemmedhin rule, and the Tnemghadi rebellion was crushed.

  All of the captured rebel soldiers, along with more than two thousand citizens accused of collaborating with them, were executed in a mass burning. Their leader, Jephos Kirdahi, was hustled away to Ksiritsa, chained in a cart; and in the dungeons where he had started his career as a guard, Kirdahi was tortured for weeks before being put to death.

  However, Mussopo’s success at Sajnithaddhani had been gained at a heavy price.

  While the Urhemmedhin forces were locked in battle with the Tnemghadi, the Akfakh had been taking advantage. In fact, their chieftain Znarf was absorbing territory now almost as fast as he could push his hordes forward. Ahead of him, terrorized by the wild tribesmen, the peasants were fleeing. But by this time there were few safe havens to which they could go. There were only two bastions that might still be held: Sajnithaddhani and Ksiritsa. And each day brought thousands more refugees into these two cities.

  The dislocation and disruption made these cities bubbling cauldrons of humanity, milling homeless and hungry through the streets, living in open alleyways, scrounging desperately for food. Lawlessness was rampant, as people tried to board up their homes and bury their valuables, and others formed into unruly gangs and mobs. Sajnithaddhani and Ksiritsa seethed on the verge of explosion.

  Then down into Muraven the Akfakh swept from two directions, and soon even Sajnithaddhani was threatened, with the invaders bearing down from both the north and west. But Sajnithaddhani was defended by a huge Urhemmedhin force, still occupying it in the wake of the Kirdahi revolt; and, vowing to hold the city at all costs, Mussopo hurried more troops there.

  A titanic battle loomed, and as it grew more imminent, panic took hold of Sajnithaddhani. The atmosphere was charged with terror, as the refugees swelling the city renewed their lurid tales of Akfakh atrocities. Few had any real confidence that the Urhemmedhins could save the city from Znarf. Those who had fled into Sajnithaddhani began to flee away from it. In desperate haste to save themselves, the people struck out eastward toward Ksiritsa, grabbing up their belongings and launching boats and rafts down the River Gnanad, in wagons along the road, or even on foot. The exodus out of the beleaguered city quickly became a rushing flood.

  The Regent Mussopo swore that he would stop the Akfakh at Sajnithaddhani, but not even his own soldiers believed it any more. Along with everyone else, the army panicked too. Indeed, it was the officers who bolted first, taking what they could and getting out, leaving their troops to fend for themselves. Almost overnight, the garrison collapsed, the soldiers broke ranks and madly scrabbled for escape.

  It was too late now to go on foot, and most of them lacked horses. Few boats and wagons were left. So the troops attacked the fleeing peasants, seizing their horses, gaars, carts, and boats, shoving the hapless peasants aside, stabbing them, cutting them down, running them over, trampling them, enraged with their desperation to get out of the doomed city. Fences, buildings, and tables were torn up to make crude rafts. Boats were attacked as they left the docks, the peasants thrown out of them and into the river. The boats filled up with soldiers, more than they could carry. Men would hang onto the gunwales, trailing in the water; others swimming behind would grab their legs and try to pull them off; while those in the boats would beat and slash at their hands and heads to get them off, as the overloaded boats listed deeply in the water, and many of them capsized, drowning their human cargoes.

  Thousands got out, but thousands did not. Sajnithaddhani fell to the Akfakh.

  And then the barbarian horde converged upon Ksiritsa.

  The brutal, tragic scramble for escape was repeated at Ksiritsa. But there was no escape any longer. Most of Tnemurabad was gone, as was Kholandra to the south. All roads from Ksiritsa were cut off, the city was surrounded and its gates were locked up tightly, holding the people in as well as holding the Akfakh out. The horror of the situation was aggravated by the city’s having swollen with refugees to almost double its normal population —and there was no food.

  It was pointless, but Mussopo insisted on holding out to the last. The city was burning down all around him, bombarded savagely with fireballs. The Akfakh even turned against Gaffar Mussopo his own invention, the exploding projectiles. The city was plunged into such a state of disorganization that the attackers met no resistance when they started tearing down the gates.

  As the Akfakh finally broke through and surged into Ksiritsa, the Regent Gaffar Mussopo threw himself from one of the high parapets of the Heaven Palace and was dashed to pieces on the stone floor below. The Emperor Jehan II tried to escape in disguise, but was apprehended, and he died tom apart between galloping horses.

  In the South, the Nation of Urhemma had already fallen apart. Just as once Tnem Khatto Trevendhani had found the South broken up into tiny kingdoms, and hence easy prey, now too the Akfakh came down upon a land fought over by a hundred petty warlords. By the end of the year 1198, the entire South was conquered.

  Only Naddeghomra put up resistance worthy of the name. Many thousands died to defend it. B
ut eventually, Naddeghomra too was taken by the Akfakh.

  When the conquering warriors searched through The Maal, they came upon a chamber in one of the high towers in which a disheveled woman had been locked. Her hair was an unruly bramble patch, her fingernails grown long. She was filthy and her flesh was wasted away, but her eyes were wild and burning.

  “I am Maiya Henghmani,” she proudly shrieked, “I am the Mother of Urhemma!’’

  They quietly closed the door on her, and locked it again.

  Znarf, the Emperor of Bergharra, looked out upon his world with glittering eyes.

  Everything was nothing.

  BERGHARRA—Akfakh Empire, copper drehm of Emperor Znarf I, circa 1200. Obverse: Crowned portrait of ruler, facing, holding sword. Reverse: crude image of a bull or some other animal. Breitenbach 2140. Very poor style, typical of Akfakh coinage. Fine to very fine or so, but struck as usual on an irregular planchet with a large defect. (Hauchschild Collection Catalog)

  10

  TIFSIM JARBA LOOKED back over his shoulder, across the tall grasses, at the City of Ksiritsa.

  Its walls seemed to fill up half the sky. Beyond them, Tifsim could glimpse the majestic towers and spires stretching up to grasp at the clouds. These were the towers of the Palace of the Heavens, where Znarf reigned. The sun was setting, making the copper tower roofs glow like beacons.

  In all his nineteen years, Tifsim Jarba had never actually seen the city like this. He had always lived inside it, but he had never ventured beyond its walls. His people were poor and had no occasion to go far from their home. So never before had he stood at this vantage point, looking at Ksiritsa from the outside, seeing the whole city at once. Seeing the city’s glory, he felt a curious exhilaration.

  Tifsim Jarba stopped and stood at the top of a little hill. He looked long and hard at Ksiritsa this fading afternoon, as though to store up its image. He knew it would be a long time before he’d ever set eyes on it again, or upon the people he was leaving behind, inside it. Quite likely he’d never see them again at all.

  The city held tenaciously on Tifsim’s gaze; it wouldn’t let him turn to go. Feeling this pull, he smiled sardonically. Even now, Ksiritsa was holding him as though he were its slave.

  But Tifsim Jarba knew it was not Ksiritsa that enslaved him and countless million others. It had been people who enslaved other people, for as long as history had been recorded, and even before.

  Tifsim was old enough to remember the reign of Tnem Sarbat Satanichadh, the last ruler who had been of the boy’s own Tnemghadi race. It was finally the Urhemmedhins who had rebelled against Sarbat; but in truth, all of Bergharra had been enslaved and oppressed by the Tnemghadi dynasties. And nothing changed under their successors: Jehan Henghmani the monster, and the tyrant Mussopo. Now, the latest slave-master sat upon the golden throne at Ksiritsa: Znarf the Akfakh.

  It was with a righteous fire and a deep sadness that Tifsim thought about this history. He was saddened that the ambition of despots seemed so powerful, and that a people could not long enjoy freedom before someone would come along to make them his slaves. What burned in Tifsim was the fire of another universal:

  The will to resist tyranny, the passion to be free.

  That was what impelled him forth from Ksiritsa now. He would leave that capital of oppression and make himself a free man. He would dedicate his life to making others free too. And perhaps some day he might return to Ksiritsa, to free the millions.

  It seemed a wild dream, yet not a hopeless one. The human will to freedom, Tifsim told himself, persisted as ever. It cannot be destroyed, no matter how the despots might try. While tyranny might now prevail, it would not reign forever. The world moves in great cycles. Just as the night must yield to the morning sun, just as the Tnemghadi had given way to the Urhemmedhins, and then to the Akfakh, so too would the era of tyranny give way to the era of liberty.

  Ksiritsa tried to hold his eyes, but Tifsim pulled himself free. He turned his head and started on his journey.

  Behind him, the glow of the towers faded with the dying of the light.

  Tifsim Jarba would walk until the morning sun.

  REPUBLIC OF URHEMMA, silver five pastars, commemorating the tenth anniversary of independence, 1976. Obverse: conjoined busts of medieval Emperor Jehan Henghmani and President Ragadan K. Devrahal. Reverse: modernistic depiction of the ancient temple of Naddeghomra superimposed on the flag of the Republic. Yeoman 17. Uncirculated. (Hauchschild Collection Catalog)