by Matt Gilbert
Ahmed froze in mid stride, gaping in astonishment and glee. “Truly? We journey to barbarian lands?”
“Aye.”
Ahmed placed a hand upon his sword, his eyes growing hard and grim. “And will we slay them?”
“If they give us cause,” Yazid chuckled. “But they won’t, most likely. Most of them fear us.”
“And well they should!”
Yazid nodded agreement. “But first, we must make ready for the journey. Come, we have much work to do.”
The trip to Aviar was not nearly as exciting as Ahmed had hoped, and less than comfortable in armor. Yazid had promised that the journey would have its share of wonders to a young man who had never left the desert, but Ahmed was beginning to have doubts. There had been no sandstorm, no raider attack, merely mile after monotonous mile over the desert, the clopping of the horses’ hooves on the stonework road growing ever more maddening. Ahmed began to look forward to the brief respites when they traveled over sections buried by sand. How could a warrior bear such drudgery?
“A warrior must be patient,” Yazid counseled. “Impatience leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to death.”
Ahmed tried to accept the lesson, but the impatience was like a devil within him. It was not so easy to exercise as Yazid suggested. At best, he could silence it, so that Yazid would not know. That, he supposed, was a good start.
Gradually, many miles from Bagdreme, the landscape began to change. The sand grew more densely packed, and rose toward distant mountains.
“Talifa’s Teeth,” Yazid declared, pointing.
“Why are they white at the top?”
Snow was a difficult concept to grasp, and a somewhat unnerving one, but it was, as Yazid had promised, a wonder. Ahmed had been looking forward to the opportunities that climbing the mountains would bring, chances to prove himself against the elements, or perhaps even fighting a dread beast like a hippopotamus, a creature he had heard of only through books. But the prospect of traveling in snow was a daunting one. Ice should no more fall from the sky than gold. It was unnatural. He was as relieved as he was disappointed to learn that they would not be climbing the towering mountains at all, but would instead make use of a pass. He would only see snow at a distance. Someday, he promised himself, he would walk upon it. Someday.
On the other side of the pass, the land changed again, and Ahmed gasped in amazement. There was grass and growing things everywhere he looked. There were entire map grids covered with so many trees that Ahmed could not see through to the other side. Creatures stirred within the foliage and flew overhead. It was like the great gardens of Bagdreme, but without walls!
“Who could tend such a garden, Yazid?” he asked in awe. “It would take an army!”
“There is no gardener. Such is nature in the barbarian lands.”
“It is like the work of a god!”
“Aye,” Yazid agreed. “More than like.”
They traveled many miles through the great garden, at last emerging onto a rolling savannah. It, too, was green, but the trees were fewer. Many more miles passed in this flat land, when Yazid pointed to a darkening on the horizon. “Aviar.”
As they approached, Ahmed conceded with chagrin that it did indeed appear to truly be a city, not a pathetic village as he had imagined. It was not as large as Bagdreme, and it had no wall, but it was still very considerable. “Are the Aviarans mad?” Ahmed wondered out loud. “Why is there no wall, no fortifications?”
Yazid nodded, smiling, clearly pleased with the question. “It is a free city. They cannot stand against the might of a nation, so they do not bother to try.”
“But there are other threats. Bandits. Rebels. Pirates.”
Yazid chuckled. “What do you know of pirates?”
“Nothing. But the sea is near. Perhaps we will kill some on the trip to Prima, eh?”
“You speak more truth than you realize,” Yazid said, growing somber again. “But as for why there is no wall, you must understand that Aviar gives certain things to the nations, and she is in turn protected by them.” He paused a moment, then muttered, “Usually.”
“A port city left free? Hard to believe. What does she offer that holds the nations at bay?”
“Entertainment. Neutral ground. A place to hide. And then there is the history of it. Alexander launched his ships from here. If Xanthia tried to seize Aviar, we would be at war with Gruppenwald, Laurea, and Alexandria, all at once. And the same would go for any of the others.”
Ahmed nodded. It made sense. “Now explain the ‘usually’.”
Yazid turned and cast a cool glance at his student, one eyebrow raised in appreciation. “I thought perhaps you had missed that. I will answer your question, but you must see some things within the city first to understand.”
Ahmed felt ever more foolish as they pressed onward. He had imagined the barbarian lands filled with pale skinned men in poorly cured animal hides, armed with spears or stone axes. And yet it was not so. They were pale enough, it was true, but they wore clothes just as any Xanthian. And as for weapons, he was shocked to see that no more than one in ten even went armed, but those that did carried steel, not wood or stone. They were, Ahmed thought, curiously normal looking, save for their deathly pallor.
He stared shamelessly at each member of a passing caravan, trying to absorb the essence of the barbarians, to understand them and reconcile the reality with his own childish notions. A pale barbarian child in one of the wagons stuck out his tongue at Ahmed. Ahmed twisted his own face into a fierce mask, and the child ducked beneath a tarp, squealing in fear.
They came upon a guard station of sorts, several obviously bored sentries surveying the crowd, stopping this or that group, waving some through. A group of armed and armored men on horseback, bearing a black banner with a red dagger piercing a crown, passed without raising any notice at all. A group of women and children, following closely behind the men, were stopped and questioned. To Ahmed’s eye, there seemed no rhyme or reason to their choices. He wondered what questions the barbarian guards would ask, but they chose not to ask anything at all, waving Ahmed and Yazid past with barely a second glance.
As they rode their horses deeper into the city, Yazid leading him like a blind man, Ahmed tried to make sense of everything about him, to understand these barbarians who did not seem so barbaric. Their buildings, mostly two stories and built close together, were hardly primitive. The roads might have been better maintained, cleared of horse droppings more regularly, perhaps, but the fact that there were roads at all was problematic. How could barbarians have built roads? How could they build houses of wood and stone? Should not barbarians live in hovels of straw and wattle, dirt floors and glassless windows, and walk poorly marked trails?
Even the air was unnatural, it seemed. It carried a strange scent, salty and decaying, yet fresh. Ahmed found it simultaneously exhilarating and foul. “What is it?” he asked, sniffing
“The sea,” Yazid answered
Ahmed felt his heart in his mouth at this. “I would see it!”
“Soon. It is close. And we will answer your question, too.”
Ahmed waited in silence, knowing from experience that it was useless to pressure Yazid for details. At best, he would achieve nothing. More likely, if he made a nuisance of himself, he’d wind up carrying an imprint of Yazid’s palm burning on his cheek for hours. He passed the time by watching the people, marveling at how similar they were, and yet how different. Here, too, most of the men went without arms or armor. “Why are they unarmed? Are they cowards?”
“They are a superstitious lot,” Yazid declared. “They look to talismans and rituals to keep themselves safe. They write how they wish for men to behave upon special paper, mark it with a seal of power, and wave their hands about, as if this would compel all men to obey. They call it law.”
Ahmed laughed out loud. “But that is madness!”
“And yet it works for them, much of the time. Even the Laureans practice such rituals, and they are c
ivilized men, cowards though they be.”
“But it is not true sorcery?”
“No,” Yazid chuckled. “It is mass delusion. But they believe in it, so it has power over them. It is much the same way with many primitive beliefs. True sorcery is a rare thing.”
“Rare, but it exists? You have seen such things?”
Yazid's face hardened briefly, then quickly returned to normal. “Aye, once, in Rellith. I went fists against a Gruppenwalder while we were both riding in a rented carriage. Can’t even remember the reason, now, but we both fell from the thing and were trampled by horses. He was killed, and I was near death. They brought me to a healer, but I did not know at the time that the man was a sorcerer.” He shuddered at the memory. “I should almost have preferred to die. One look in that man’s eyes was all it took to see he was half mad, and getting worse. There was little I could recognize as human in that gaze. I heard later that he did go mad, that he killed a lot of people before being put down.”
Yazid said nothing for a long while, and Ahmed asked no more questions. It was only as they approached the end of the road they were on that Yazid broken the silence. “There,” he said, pointing. “Do you see it?”
At first, Ahmed saw nothing. A line of buildings stood at the end of the road, nothing remarkable. Then he saw it, sun glinting between two buildings, and he could not suppress a gasp of awe. “The sea!”
“Aye. Come, we are going to a market there. There is something I would show you.”
They continued past the end of the road, cutting between the two buildings to reach the shore. A frail, white-haired old barbarian leaned from a window in one of the buildings and shook his fist, showering them with curses, but Yazid ignored him.
Ahmed dismounted and walked slowly and deliberately across the stretch of sandy beach, trying to take in the magnitude of the great body of water. He removed his boots and walked into the surf, letting it lap at his feet. It was inconceivable that so much water could exist, and yet it did, stretching to the horizon. Like sand, Ahmed thought. Like the desert, but in motion. They were opposites, and yet the same. “It tastes of salt!” he declared in surprise. “Why?”
Yazid shrugged. “All seas are so.” He gestured for Ahmed to come out of the water. “There is one more thing I would show you. You will have long to look at the sea, boy, longer than you will want, I promise.”
Ahmed knew it was true, but it pained him to leave, just the same. He marveled at the spinning, crying gulls over head as he made his way back to his horse, wondering what it must be like to live in such an amazing place. “How far?” he asked as he pulled on his boots.
“Not far. You can see it, the building at the end of that pier.”
Ahmed threw a leg over his horse and snapped the reigns. “And what is there that is so important?”
Yazid answered him with silence. Ahmed scowled at the older man’s back, feeling the impulse to curse him for his cryptic showmanship, but he was well aware of the price he would pay for such foolishness. He waited for Yazid to lead, but Yazid simply turned back and looked at him. “Go.”
“I am following you.”
“I said go, boy. Alone. See.”
“How can I go on when I don’t know what I am supposed to see?”
“You will know. Now go.” Yazid raised a fist, no real threat since Ahmed was out of arm’s reach, but a clear indication that further debate was not going to be productive.
Ahmed’s horse surged forward at his urging, eager to run. Sand flew from hooves as Ahmed pushed the beast to a full gallop. He laughed out loud as groups of beachgoers scattered, many screaming curses as he thundered by.
In the distance, he could see that the ‘building’ was in fact some sort of bazaar, with many people wandering about. Another hundred yards, and it became more clear: it was a prison on the beach side of a pier, open to the air, with many captives inside, shuffling back and forth. Ahmed drew to a stop, fairly certain that this was the lesson Yazid intended for him. He watched quietly, trying to understand what was going on.
There was a ship moored along the pier. A long line of small, brown people, men, women, even a few children, were being escorted by armed, pale skinned barbarians into the prison. The brown men were a bit like some of the lighter Xanthians in skin tone and hair, but they were shorter, with flatter features, and their eyes seemed dull. But that was likely due to their defeat, Ahmed thought. Some of them were even weeping.
At the head of the pier, many barbarians were gathering about a long platform of dark, well worn wood. There was a podium at the front. Along the back of the platform, running along its length, was a waist high rail. Ten sets of chains hung from it at evenly spaced intervals, each a spot where a prisoner might be held fast. Clearly, Ahmed thought, this was a courtroom, where prisoners of war were judged. That would explain the outdoor prison. It was but a temporary thing, and the prisoners would soon be freed or put to death.
This should be a most interesting lesson. He had not even known the barbarians were at war. It would be good to see how they judged their enemies, to see if they had the stomach to do what was necessary. He looked about for a gallows or a headsman, but none was in evidence. Perhaps they had some taboo against public executions?
Long minutes passed as the prisoners continued to file off the ship in chains. The crowd continued to grow, and Ahmed’s discomfort grew along with it. It was not rational, he knew, but to be surrounded by so many pale barbarians troubled him. How could he tell if such men were friendly or hostile? Perhaps a toothy grin meant intent to kill, among them. He could barely tell one from another. They all looked alike, a sea of similar, alien faces differing only in the bizarre variance in hair color. How could a man have yellow or brown hair? It was beastly, and having them near him made him feel unclean. He would not say such a thing to Yazid when he told him of the lesson, though. That would surely earn him a cuff to the head and a pronouncement that men should be judged by their deeds. Still, he could not help but think it.
His gut rumbled more warnings, the sort a warrior learned to heed if he wanted to survive. Something was not right, something other than the company of barbarians. Ahmed went over things in his head, trying to isolate the problem, as the man on the platform began to take prisoners from the cage. One, a woman, wept pitifully, trying to cover her breasts and crotch in shame, but the man would have none of it. He forced her arms and legs apart and clamped the chains upon her to keep her that way. A man chained beside her turned his head away and wept.
Why would an army surrender, if it would not spare the women and children such treatment? It made no sense. A man would fight to the death to stop such a thing. And what sort of people would treat a conquered foe as such? The pale barbarians were cruel, indeed. But perhaps the brown men were cruel, too, and this was revenge? Ahmed had heard of barbarian tribes that practiced cannibalism. Could that explain this?
His stomach twisted in knots as he tried to fit the pieces together. He scanned the crowd again, searching for something in their eyes, but it was of no use. It was like trying to read the faces of dogs. The pale barbarians remained inscrutable as they waited for the man on the platform, each wearing the same ubiquitous, cryptic face.
No, Ahmed corrected himself. There was one that did not confuse him, one near the back of the crowd, hiding his eyes beneath a hood and his face beneath a mask of brown hair, a large man, broad of shoulder and gut, though older, perhaps forty or fifty. That one’s intentions were as clear as any Xanthian’s might have been: he was here to do battle. His eyes, a bizarre shade of green, blazed with purpose, and there was, Ahmed could tell, a sword beneath his cloak.
Now that Ahmed had seen him, he saw the other, too, a small, wiry barbarian with dirty yellow hair standing beside the larger man. Like his companion, he was older, but healthy enough. He, too, was here to do battle it seemed, though perhaps of a different sort. His eyes spoke less of rage than of pain and sorrow.
Ahmed nudged his horse forward,
moving toward them. The crowd parted before him, most barely acknowledging his presence, though a few looked up at him with fear, loathing, or perhaps both. It would be safer to stand at the periphery if things turned violent, he thought. With any luck, he could eavesdrop on the barbarians, and perhaps make sense of things.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” the man on the podium cried. He indicated one of the chained prisoners. “For our first sale today, I have a man of approximately twenty years. He is healthy and strong. What am I bid?”
The large barbarian shook his head and spat on the ground. He glanced up at Ahmed as the horse settled in behind them, but either didn’t realize or didn’t care that Ahmed was listening. “That rat bastard. No mercy in him. We should stick a sword in his gut and treat his people to the same.”
The skinny barbarian shook his head and sighed. “It wouldn’t make a difference, Marcus. It’s so much bigger than the traders. It’s a political problem. It will take a political solution.”
“Interdiction, that will change things. Kill the traders. Hit the ships before they pull in. They’ll blame pirates.”
“It’s not that simple. It would take years of working with the powers that be.”
“My way would take weeks.”
Ahmed could resist no longer. He had to understand. “You,” he called to the yellow haired barbarian. “I do not understand this. Tell me of the war where you captured these brown men.”
The barbarian looked up at Ahmed, shaking his head in amusement. “It is always war with you Xanthians,” he chuckled. “And my name is Tyler. Not ‘you’.”
“Forgive me, I forget my manners in my curiosity. I am Ahmed Justinius. I have come to Aviar with my teacher to learn, but I am confused by much.”
“Xanthians would have solved this slavery problem a lot sooner,” Marcus grumbled. “And better.”
Ahmed’s eyebrow rose in surprise. “You make slaves of your conquests, then? I am surprised. I know little of barbarian ways. I thought it would be a trial, until he began calling for bids.”
