by Jack Geurts
Imharak would say that he shared Gaius’ passion, without a doubt. He would also say that he never had a choice in the matter.
When he was a boy, Gaius filled his head with stories of cities being burned and new ones being built from their ashes, of kings and empires rising and falling, of epic battles and vast journeys, cruel gods and monsters doing battle on mountaintops or stormy seas.
When Imharak was old enough to question Armentarius’ Liberite name, despite obviously being a Kemite (or at least a proto-Kemite), Gaius had said that was a later addition. Grafted in when their people began speaking Remian (later to become known as Liberic) under a foreign dynasty of Kemet who were kind to the Liberites. His actual name was probably something closer to Amenhotep.
In the same way, the Kem wouldn’t have known Caelos by that name. It was only during the time of Libera that the King of the Gods made his name known to humankind.
Before that, he might have been called all manner of things. Bast could very well have been his name and, in that case, the Kem hadn’t turned from him at all, but were simply worshipping him in a different way than the Liberites were. Offering up different animals and speaking their prayers in different tongues.
All of this had given Imharak a somewhat critical eye of history. He had learned not to take things at face value, to consider the biases at play in everything he read. What the author’s intentions were, what they wanted to convey and why. What they might have fabricated, omitted or exaggerated to suit their narrative.
Mostly, he had learned that history was written by the winners.
So, yes, he blamed Gaius for the way he was, and thanked him for it. Never to his face, of course, but deep down, he knew that Gaius was aware of how much Imharak appreciated him. At least, Imharak hoped he was. Gaius had been a better father to him than most real fathers were to their own children.
He had raised him since before he could remember, taught him everything he knew – from the earliest parts of recorded history to the forging of strong steel.
True, his apprenticeship had only begun in earnest five years ago, but all the years before that, the boy was watching his master work. Drinking it in. Cutting himself on sharp blades and knowing the copper taste of blood.
“There’s metal in our blood,” Gaius told him once, and Imharak wasn’t sure what to make of it. Did he mean their ancestors had been blacksmiths also, or were there literally tiny pieces of iron in their veins? It sure tasted like metal every time he cut his finger and shoved it in his mouth to stem the bleeding, so as a young boy, it was conceivable that both might be true.
But if there was one thing that Gaius would never talk about, it was Imharak’s parents.
Never said a word about them. Never answered the boy’s questions.
He must have known it was cruel of him to do so, but now that Imharak was a little older, he was starting to realise there must be a reason for it.
And so, he stopped asking.
He figured Gaius wouldn’t keep something like that from him just for the sake of it. He was protecting him from something, and the boy was thinking he might never know what that something was.
CHAPTER 5
The Lynching Of A Boy
The sun had set by the time Gaius returned.
There was a fire going in the hearth which the boy had made, and it cast a warm, flickering glow over the inside of the house. Imharak sat there, eating a meal of bread and olive oil, watching the flames dance. Merlin gnawing on a bone beside him.
The place smelled of burning dung and wood-smoke, since Imharak had recently used the oven to cook his bread. He did so after grinding the stored grain and mixing it with water and a little honey, then sticking the dough against the inside wall of the domed clay oven and letting it bake.
He couldn’t remember ever being able to taste the grit inside the bread – the small, stone fragments that broke off into the meal as mortal and pestle were ground together. Gaius had told him that, over time, the grit wore down their teeth – that’s why the older people got, the worse their teeth were.
He had also said they should count themselves lucky that they didn’t live in a desert where they would have to contend with sand also. The people of Kemet, he explained, had the worst teeth of all.
Imharak was almost finished eating when Gaius returned. The dog was lying down on his stomach, his nose at the very threshold of the door. He heard the wheels of the ox-cart bouncing back along the road before the boy did, and immediately sat bolt upright, ears raised. He then ran outside with his tail wagging. The boy followed him out to see their master hunched over the reins, just visible in the gathering dusk.
Even at a distance and in the poor light, Imharak could feel his mood. As he drew closer, the boy saw Gaius’ face darkened by the knowing of something he might have rathered not. Whatever smile Imharak had on his face disappeared. Merlin’s wagging tail slowed and went still.
When he reached them, Gaius pulled back on Cato and Faustus and handed the reins to Imharak as he climbed down. He told the boy to unhitch the oxen and water them, then he went inside without another word.
Imharak hesitated for a moment, then did as he was told. Merlin followed his master in with a stooped head while the boy took Cato and Faustus around the side and unhitched them. He showed them into their pen and made sure they had plenty of water, then he went inside to find Gaius packing.
Imharak frowned.
The blacksmith was going around gathering things, laying them out on the bench. Anything he deemed essential, it looked like. Clothes, food, the scrolls from his library. He gathered what tools he could fit into the bag destined for Imharak’s journeyman years and laid the larger ones alongside it. He then added skins of water and wine, utensils for cooking and eating.
Imharak watched him while he did all this, and when he was finally done, he turned to the boy and said, “Get some sleep. We’re leaving first thing in the morning.”
He walked past Imharak to go fetch something else.
“Leaving?” asked the boy, in disbelief. “Where are we going?”
“North,” said the blacksmith, rummaging through a collection of things he had no use for anymore, but never managed to part with. “And east. By way of Castellum.”
“Castellum?” Imharak went a little wide-eyed just thinking about the place. He’d never been there before, but Gaius had told him stories about the large port city near the border of Imber and Nemeros. The high walls. The citadel. Buildings that grew to six storeys in some places and a harbour the likes of which did not exist in all the land.
“My brother lives out that way. Have I told you about him?”
“Once or twice.” The boy vaguely recalled him mentioning he had kin in that part of the country. He’d previously had a sister in Numa who was married to a local stevedore, but she had died in childbirth, and the husband took a younger wife.
“Are we going to see him?”
Gaius nodded. “Yes. I have something urgent I need to speak with him about.”
“Something you heard in Daetia?”
Gaius stopped rummaging and looked over at Imharak, who was thinking he’d asked one question too many. But Gaius simply nodded again, slower this time. More serious.
He quit searching through the things he should have thrown away long ago. Either he couldn’t find what he was looking for or decided whatever it was would only weigh them down on the coming journey. He headed for the back room again.
Before he could stop himself, Imharak blurted out, “What did you hear?”
Gaius stopped, turned. In truth, he did seem a little annoyed with the boy’s constant badgering, but that wasn’t the whole of his mood. Not even half of it.
Lurking behind Gaius’ eyes was something Imharak had only seen in times when his life was put in danger, when the townsfolk came at him, calling him a demon and threatening to do him violence in the street.
It was the helpless, desperate fear of a man who was about to lose
everything.
But before he could say a word, his eyes shifted to something behind Imharak. To the door. Imharak turned and saw Crassus storming in. As he passed through the dimmer part of the courtyard and into the light of the fire, they could see that he was red-faced and glassy-eyed. Swaying a little on his feet.
“Gaius, you bastard...” he said.
The blacksmith sighed. Not now...
He strode past Imharak without even a sideways glance, making a beeline for his master. As he drew close, Merlin leapt up and took his place beside Gaius, head low and growling.
“What do you want, Crassus?”
“That mouldboard you sold me...?”
“Yes?”
“It’s broken again.”
“Broken?”
“Bent. Just like last time. You used poor-quality steel. You cheated me.”
“Cheated you?”
“Yes. I want my money back.”
Gaius fixed him with a hard look. “Well, you can’t have it.”
He brushed past Crassus, going to the pile of goods he’d gathered on the bench and taking an inventory, or at least pretending to.
The farmer fumed. “You mean to tell me I’ve just paid twice for a mouldboard that won’t even turn the soil? Three times including the purchase price.”
“I mean to tell you that my craftsmanship is not the problem here. I’d have a word to your slaves before coming into my shop, accusing me of shoddy work. See to it they’re using the thing properly and not driving it into buried rocks.” He paused, considering something. “You’re not by any chance turning a new field this year?”
Crassus paused, his drunken mind still catching up with the fact that he was no longer asking the questions. “As a matter of fact, I am. What of it?”
“And did you check the ground for buried rocks before you started ploughing? I’m not talking loose pebbles here, I’m talking big rocks. The kind you can’t move.”
Crassus wavered. “Of course I did. You think I don’t know how to turn a new field?”
“Either that or you’re doing it on purpose.”
“What on purpose? Driving the plough into buried rocks?” He almost laughed. “Why on earth would I do that?”
“Why indeed,” Gaius said. “Yet here you stand, accusing me of something very serious.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is, I know how long you’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this.”
“I don’t need an excuse to accuse you of being a cheat, Gaius. You are a cheat. And a lousy one at that.”
“I am many things, and few of them good. The one thing I can say for myself is that I am fair. When a man asks me to fix something that is broken, I will do so to the best of my ability. I will use the best materials I have at my disposal, and if I do not feel that the finished product is satisfactory to his needs and my standards, I will melt it down and start again. But what I cannot account for is a man so driven by the hate of me that he would twice put himself out of pocket to make me look like a swindler.”
“Are you saying that I intentionally bent the mouldboard? Twice?”
“No,” said Gaius. “You’re saying that.”
He didn’t blink or look away. Crassus’ face had gone even redder than before, his eyes full to bursting with anger.
Then, he stormed out.
Gaius hadn’t even had a chance to breathe a sigh of relief when Crassus came staggering back in, a sword held loosely in his hand.
He headed for the blacksmith, but by the time he raised the sword to point it at the man’s chest, he was pointing at a boy instead. A boy who looked like a man, who was built like a man and who had the fierce intensity of a man.
“Get out of the way, boy,” Crassus said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
But his words rung hollow and all three of them knew it.
This had nothing to do with a mouldboard, and everything to do with Imharak. What he was, what he could do. What danger Gaius had put the town in by bringing a demon into their midst.
The boy wasn’t about to let Gaius get stuck by some drunk, angry farmer because of him. Not after all he had done already.
He felt Gaius touch his shoulder, as if telling him to stand aside, he didn’t need to do this. But Imharak stayed where he was. He held the farmer’s gaze and saw him falter. Saw him becoming less and less sure of himself.
“You think I’m afraid of you?” Crassus said, his voice cracking almost imperceptibly.
“I know you are.”
Imharak found himself wondering how many of the townsfolk Crassus had asked to accompany him tonight, each of them turning him down when he told them where he was going. All of them afraid of the demon, like Crassus was. Only they had more sense than Crassus. He wondered how much liquid courage it had taken before the farmer decided it was a good idea to pack his sword.
And while Crassus was likely re-evaluating that very decision, Imharak reached out and took hold of the blade with frightening speed. Before Crassus could react, the boy had his steel hand around the middle of the sword and he wasn’t letting go. Crassus yanked on the hilt, and there was a hideous scraping sound of steel against steel, but Imharak tightened his grip and the blade moved no more.
Slowly, the fury Crassus had come billowing in with subsided and gave way to fear. He had seen Imharak’s particular talents years before, when a few men had tried their luck one evening out near his farm.
The boy was coming back from one of his adventures in the bush. This was in the days before Gaius had his wolfhound and before he’d realised just how dangerous Alba was for the boy. Three local fieldhands lay in wait at the edge of the Tall Timber. They’d been drinking all day, and at some point, they got confident or foolish enough to decide they were actually going to do this.
As the boy wandered into their midst, one of them knocked him on the head with a thick branch, and while he was dazed, the other two looped a rope around his neck and strung him up from a tree.
Crassus remembered standing there as the sun went down, watching the boy jerk around like a fish at the end of a line. His hands clawing at the noose, his mouth open wide. He was panicked, he was young – he didn’t know how to harness the magic yet.
Up until that point, he had been responsible for the burning of a storehouse and the harming of another boy who had been his friend. Things that were by no means intentional, but he was ostracised all the same.
Crassus watched him choke and prayed that this was it, that it was finally over. The men beneath the hanged boy laughed and cheered. They’d done it.
Then the boy burst into flames.
The men stopped cheering.
It only took seconds for the rope to burn through and Imharak dropped to the ground with a thud. The flames went out instantly, and the boy lay there naked in the dirt. He drew in deep, rasping breaths, writhing while the life returned to him.
Two of the men had pitchforks, but when they went to use them, Crassus heard a loud clanging sound and the men brought their implements up, the prongs bent at hideous angles.
Initially, he couldn’t see what had happened, but as the men dropped their weapons and ran away, Crassus saw a boy with skin of steel rising to his hands and knees, and then to his feet. He stood there, watching his attackers flee. His body glinting like a diamond in the setting sun.
Now, that boy was a man.
And that man had his hand on Crassus’ sword, and he was bending the blade back at him.
Crassus couldn’t move, frozen in fear or awe or some combination of the two. He watched as Imharak curled the iron like it was wet clay, reshaping it to his will. He watched the point of the blade go from facing Imharak to facing himself.
Then the boy let go.
Crassus stood there, holding a sword that was aimed at his own face.
The boy said, “Leave.”
And Crassus left.
He dropped the sword as he had seen those men drop their pitchforks and he
ran out.
Even after he was gone and his footsteps faded down the road, Imharak kept staring at the door, waiting for him to come back a second time. Wanting him to.
Gaius walked around his apprentice and picked up the folded blade, studied it. He looked back at Imharak with a raised eyebrow.
“Excessive,” he said.
“I should’ve killed him.”
“No – you could’ve killed him.”
Gaius went to the door and peered outside. The moon was full and the sky was clear tonight, so the street was awash in milky light. He could see Crassus shuffling down the road, nursing his wounded pride.
He was lucky that was all he had to nurse, Gaius thought.
He didn’t know how much longer he and the boy could weather these threats, hollow or otherwise, before someone really got hurt. Perhaps it was for the best they were leaving.
Then Crassus stopped.
At first, Gaius thought he might turn around and come back, but he didn’t. And it wasn’t as if he slowed to a stop, either, like he was reconsidering the way he left things. He froze. Suddenly. Like he’d been struck by a silent, invisible bolt of lightning.
The next moment, he fell to his knees.
Then he fell flat, and Gaius saw the feathered shaft of an arrow protruding from his head.
He backed away from the door.
No, he thought. Impossible. They couldn’t be here already...
But the dead farmer not a hundred feet from his house said otherwise. Gaius turned to Imharak, all the life draining out of his face.
“We need to leave,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Now.”
There was an urgency in his voice that made Imharak frown. “What? Why?”
Gaius moved across the courtyard at speed and guided the boy towards the cover of the workshop, his eyes scanning the rooftops overhead.
“What the hell’s going on?” Imharak asked.
“Grab only what we can carry. Food, water, clothes.”
“What about the tools?”
“Leave them.”
Imharak almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Ever since he could remember, those tools had been like appendages to him. To both of them. He watched Gaius frantically shoving things into a sack and repeated himself. “What the hell is going on?”
