William Nicholson - [Wind on Fire 02]

by Slaves of the Mastery (epub)

  ‘That is the High Domain,’ he said. ‘The most beautiful city built by man.’

  As the slaves marched on, Hanno looked for the prisons or fenced compounds where they were to be kept, but all he could see were farms and villages, and the glowing city on the lake. And everywhere he looked, he saw people wending their way along paths, in cheerful bands, converging on a great gathering now visible below them. Here a large arena had been cut out of the hillside: a great earthwork that could only have been dug by thousands of slaves. But where were the slaves now? Not these people streaming onto the grass-topped terraces, so excited, so happy, and so free.

  Mumpo plodded on with the rest, the weight of Mrs Chirish on his back forcing him to lean forward and keep his head down. Mrs Chirish, knowing he couldn’t see far ahead, supplied him with a running commentary on the scene as it unfolded before her.

  ‘Oh, my! I never did see anything so – You’d never believe such a – Oh, the colours! It puts me in mind of a jar of boiled sweets, only you don’t get the pretty ones any more – Oh, you’ll be glad of this, my Mumpy, they’re setting down – Sweets like jewels, they were, you could see right through them – Yes, I do believe we’re to be let to rest, and about time – There’s some sort of a what do you call it, where people watch people – Not much further now, and the grass is soft, I should say – Baskets coming out, that’ll be bread – So many people, they’ve all come to watch, though what they’re going to watch I couldn’t begin to say – Yes, they’re setting us down, and not before time.’

  Mumpo came at last to a stop, and lowered Mrs Chirish carefully to the ground. The slaves were being allowed to rest on the open land just above the arena. Mrs Chirish patted Mumpo gratefully on the arm.

  ‘You’re good to your old auntie, Mumpy.’

  Mumpo was staring at the crowded grass terraces. Tired though he was, he felt a shiver go through him as he sensed the crowd’s excitement. All round him he heard voices speaking of the manaxa, and although he had never heard of it before, he soon understood that this arena was to be the setting for some form of combat.

  The terraces descended to a sandy floor, where there stood a flat-topped mound, also covered with sand. This mound was some twenty yards across, its steep sides rising to the height of a man. Evidently it was on this simple stage that the manaxa was to take place. Beyond the flat-topped mound could be seen the shadowy entrance to a tunnel, cut into the banked terraces. This tunnel emerged a little further down the hill, nearer the lake. On the terrace directly above the tunnel’s mouth stood a crimson and gold pavilion, inside which a servant could be seen arranging chairs.

  A cheer now went up from the crowds packed onto the terraces. Mumpo looked up, and following their pointing arms, he saw that the gates in the walls of the palace-city had opened, and a procession of men on horseback was crossing the causeway.

  Ta-tara! Ta-tara! Hunting horns sounded across the water, heralding the leaders of the column, the lords of the Mastery, riding two by two. Their richly-coloured cloaks streamed behind them as they came jogging all in time with each other, hammering over the timber causeway. After them came another double line of horsemen, who seemed from this distance to be naked. Finally came a cluster of officials, guards, and servants surrounding a figure in a crimson cloak.

  Bowman stood watching, the piece of bread he held in his hand frozen in midair. The riders were coming closer all the time; and as they came, Bowman felt a mounting fear. This was something more than soldiers, with their stabbing spears and slashing swords. This was a power that reached into hearts and minds. The power radiated from the man in the crimson cloak.

  He was big, taller and broader than those around him, and beneath his billowing cloak glinted a breastplate of golden armour. On his head he wore a golden helmet, from the sides and back of which a curtain of gold chain fell over his neck and shoulders. Framed in this flying golden mane, glowing in the rays of the sun, he came riding high and hard on his great black horse, heralded by horns.

  ‘The Master!’ cried voices on all sides. ‘The Master!’

  Marius Semeon Ortiz, watching as intently as any of his captives, felt the familiar rush of heat that always came when the Master was close. Instinctively he found himself speaking the oath of service, the beautiful words that always brought him strength and tranquillity.

  ‘Master, all that I do, I do for you.’

  The mounted procession now passed into the far end of the tunnel, and shortly all were lost to view. Then the lords were streaming into the red and gold pavilion on foot, and the naked men came stalking out of the tunnel mouth onto the floor of the arena. One by one they circled the mound, arms raised, and received the applause of the crowd. They were powerful-looking men, with scarred bodies and wary eyes. Not entirely naked: now that they were close, they could be seen to be wearing tightly-bound loincloths. Their hair was long, but coiled and held in a net on the back of the neck. These were the manacs, the men who would dance and fight: the most deadly fighting men in the world.

  Mumpo watched the manacs with rapt concentration. The shiver he had felt at the first sight of the arena had grown into a trembling that shook his diaphragm and chest. He watched the way the manacs held themselves, and the way they moved, and the way they acknowledged the cheers of the crowd, and without realising he was doing it he too spread his arms, and bowed his head very slightly to this side and that.

  When the manacs had each completed their circuit of the mound, they lined up facing the pavilion. The lords moved back, to either side. The cheering from the terraces stopped, and a strange silence fell. Then, as if at some unheard command, the manacs went down on their knees. The lords in the pavilion went down on their knees. So did Marius Semeon Ortiz, and all the spectators in the arena, and all the soldiers guarding the slaves. In a long rippling motion, the great crowd buckled and knelt in silence.

  The Master then appeared alone from the back of the pavilion, and walked slowly to the rail at the front. He could now be seen to be an immensely large man, with a great belly and a barrel of a chest and a huge head. He had removed his helmet, to reveal a shaggy mane of long white hair, and a short thick white beard, that framed a nut-brown face. He stood still and looked on his people and smiled, his eyes twinkling as they roamed over the terraces. Every one over whom that benign look passed felt sure the Master had seen him and known him and sent him a special wordless sign of approval.

  He raised one gold-gloved hand, and with a long sigh of movement, the lords on either side of him, and the manacs in the arena, and the great crowd, all rose to their feet once more. The manacs filed away down the tunnel. A seat was drawn forward for the Master. And he sat.

  Bowman had never taken his eyes off the Master. While those around him saw his comfortably fat stomach and his amiable smile, Bowman felt the power within him. It was not the power of the Morah he had felt all those years ago. It had none of the intoxicating thrill that had filled him then, or the sense of invincibility. But it was a very great power nonetheless, and in its quieter way it now gripped the many thousands gathered to watch the manaxa.

  The horns sounded again.

  Ta-tara! Ta-tara! Out from the tunnel at a run came two of the manacs. To wild cheers from the crowd, they sprang up the slope to the flat surface of the mound.

  They were now armed. Each man had steel casings strapped to his lower legs, from ankle to knee. At the top of the steel guards, over each knee, there projected a short blade. Similarly their lower arms were covered, from elbow to hand, the steel casings ending in short blades over the fists. On their heads they wore close-fitting helmets, from the brow of which protruded a fifth short blade. Apart from these armoured sections, their bodies were naked and exposed.

  They presented themselves to the cheering crowd, moving from side to side, raising their arms to receive the applause of their supporters. One was bigger than the other, and from the pattern of scars all over his torso and thighs, had survived many bouts already. The other s
eemed to be slighter and younger, and the cheers for him were less enthusiastic.

  Mumpo, who had moved forward to join the Hath family group, felt Pinto come up and put her arms round his waist.

  ‘What will they do to each other, Mumpo?’

  ‘They’ll fight,’ he replied.

  ‘Will they kill each other?’

  ‘One lives, one dies,’ said Mumpo, hardly aware what he was saying. He was entranced by the manacs.

  As he watched, the opponents retreated to opposite sides of the mound, and stood there with their heads bowed, suddenly still. The crowd fell silent. Mumpo had an odd feeling all over his body: he felt as if he knew how the fighters would move. It would begin slowly, like cats stretching and prowling.

  And so it was. The Master gave the sign. Limb by limb, the manacs reached towards each other, separated by a wide space, and they danced. There was no other word for it. Rising, swooping down, curving their hands through the air, arching their legs, curling and twisting, they advanced towards each other as if connected by invisible threads. Both men were very strong, and it was beautiful to see the way they could move so slowly and with such control. But what gave the keen edge of anticipation to the beauty of the dance was the knowledge that soon now those flashing limbs would draw blood.

  Pinto turned her eyes away, not wanting to see the hurting. Her father felt how his heart pounded with excitement, and was ashamed to be so affected. Bowman looked from the Master to the fighters, and understood at once that the spirit of the manaxa was the spirit of the Master: it was he who had willed this terrible elegance. Beauty and blood, dancing and death, were joining hands before their eyes in a few moments of perfect concentration.

  The younger manac struck first, sending a fist-blade slicing towards his opponent’s throat. The big man swayed backwards, and almost in the same movement, turning his weight onto his right foot, lifted his left knee and struck. The knee-blade gouged into the young man’s flank, and bright blood streamed out.

  The crowd called out their hero’s name. ‘Dimon! Dimon!’

  Suddenly the dancers were spinning at speed. The young manac was fast, very fast. Wounded though he was, he had curled away and round and back, so rapidly that his fist-blade flashed under Dimon’s guard, and skimmed his thigh. Second blood to the newcomer. Now Dimon seemed to explode. With a flurry of flying limbs he drove his young opponent back and back, to the very edge of the mound, knees slamming out, fists striking, parrying with his arm-guards, bounding into the air, forcing the newcomer to defend and defend, until with one last driving blow he sent him tumbling off the mound.

  A great cheer broke out. Dimon raised his arm high in victory. The defeated manac climbed back onto his feet, and stood still, panting. Dimon lowered his arm. The loser then looked up, and the crowd rained down jeers and boos. Followed by mocking insults, he walked slowly out and into the tunnel.

  Pinto was horrified.

  ‘He did his best. Why do they jeer at him?’

  ‘He lost,’ said a guard standing nearby.

  Mumpo’s entire body was vibrating. He felt as if he was burning inside.

  ‘I could do that,’ he said.

  ‘What, lose?’ said the guard, laughing. ‘Oh, yes, we could all do that.’

  Mumpo said no more, but that wasn’t what he meant. He meant he could dance that deadly dance, and win. His body told him so. His body had understood.

  Another bout now proceeded, between two new manacs, and this too ended with one of them driven off the mound. Mumpo realised as he watched that there were a limited number of moves, and that the skill lay in the way they were combined and countered. Because both fighters knew once a move was begun how it would unfold, much of the art of the combat lay in creating patterns of expectation and then breaking them. The best fighters could change course even in the middle of a high-speed sequence. The most glorious moves, the ones most admired by the crowd, involved the highest risk.

  The third bout brought on the manac who was clearly the favourite of the crowd.

  ‘Here he comes,’ said the guard to Pinto. ‘That’s Arno. Now you’ll see what the manaxa’s all about.’

  The one he called Arno was very big and very heavy. It seemed unlikely that such a mass of flesh could escape the blades of his lither opponent. But once the fight began, it was clear that Arno was a master. Turning on the tips of the toes of one foot, bowing low and curling high, he became weightless, his moves so fast and graceful that they seemed to require no effort. Almost with unconcern, he flicked at his opponent’s body, striping his skin with thin bloody lines. He himself had many scars on his great barrel chest, but this time his opponent was given no chance to add to them. Disdainfully, as it seemed to the spectators, he drove his opponent to the edge of the mound, and there flicked him, almost gently, with one fist-blade: his signal to the loser that he should now jump. Assuming that he would do so, Arno permitted his concentration to slip for one brief moment. The loser, seizing his chance, dropped and jabbed, driving his knee-blade deep into Arno’s thigh.

  Pinto cried out loud. Arno bellowed with wounded pride. His left fist flew. His right armoured forearm parried. His left forearm swept aside a return strike. His head went down and in. With a crunching sound, his head-blade drove deep into his opponent’s chest. For a moment, the two fighters were still, locked in a strange embrace. Then Arno pulled back. Dark blood came bubbling out of the wound. The stricken manac sank to his knees. Then he fell forward onto the ground, and his heart-blood spread in a deep red stain over the sand.

  Arno stood still, his own blood flowing unnoticed down his thigh. Then, slowly, he raised his right arm, to claim his victory and do homage to the Master. The cheer that greeted him shook the arena, as thousands of voices bayed for the joy of a kill.

  ‘He should have taken the jump,’ said the guard, shaking his head, as arena servants carried the dead man away.

  ‘It’s horrible,’ said Pinto trembling, looking round at the shouting stamping crowd.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mumpo. ‘But it’s beautiful.’

  There were no more kills that afternoon. As the manaxa came to an end, the shocked and excited captives were congratulated by their guards.

  ‘First day in the Mastery, and you see a manaxa and a kill! Someone’s watching over you.’

  Ira Hath spoke low to her husband.

  ‘What sort of people are they? To make a show out of killing?’

  ‘People like us,’ said Hanno sadly. ‘People like us.’

  Marius Semeon Ortiz now gave the command, and the soldiers moved down the lines ordering the slaves onto their feet. After their hour’s rest on the soft grass, it was a weary business returning to the march.

  ‘How much longer, pa?’ asked Pinto.

  ‘I don’t know, my darling. Shall I carry you?’

  ‘No, I’m all right.’

  Pinto had never once asked to be carried. In the early days of the march she had come very close. When her legs were so tired that the muscles shook even when she stood still, she had said to herself, soon now I’ll ask to be carried. But just knowing she could ask had been enough, and she had struggled on by herself. Now she knew she would never ask.

  The lines of slaves were marched down the sloping road, and into a cutting between high banks, and through a tunnel. They heard the sound of the great crowd, and saw evening light on sand ahead: and so discovered they were to be marched into the arena itself.

  The spectators had remained on the terraces, because the Master had not yet left the pavilion. Marius Semeon Ortiz rode into the sandy arena floor at the head of his column, and spurred his horse up onto the mound. Here he faced the Master, still as a statue, as the Manth people marched through the arena, flowing round him on the mound in two streams.

  As they passed, the great crowd of spectators applauded. The lines went on and on, and the crowd applauded more and more. The Master looked on, his broad benign face beaming as if all these weary strangers had come to do him homa
ge of their own accord. Bowman, following behind his father, looked up at the red pavilion just before passing into the tunnel, and for the briefest of moments he met the Master’s eyes. The bearded fatherly face was smiling, but the eyes were not. In this half-second, Bowman caught the flash of an implacable will, and a chilling indifference to the human traffic on whom he smiled. The impression made on him formed rapidly into a single realisation: this man has no need of love. Then the arched tunnel exit cut him off, and he was following his father into the underground service chambers of the arena.

  As they passed through this shadowy stone-vaulted space, they saw the manacs who had fought earlier, now lying on benches to have their wounds dressed and their muscles massaged. Mumpo trailed more slowly than the rest, his eyes lingering on those scarred gleaming bodies with longing. They also passed the corpse of the dead manac, lying covered on a bench. Then they came out into the open once more, and followed the long column down the slope to a series of marshalling yards.

  Ortiz stayed motionless on his horse until the last of the slaves had left the arena. Then he bowed low to the Master, and raising his head, looking up into the face he knew and loved, called out in a loud clear voice:

  ‘Master! All that I have done, I have done for you!’

  The Master slowly inclined his head.

  ‘You have done well,’ he said, in his deep soft voice. ‘You have pleased me.’

  Ortiz flushed with pleasure. It was more, far more, than he had dared hope for. A nod, a smile perhaps, would have been enough. But the Master had actually said, in public, that he was pleased! Surely soon now he would send for him and speak the word he so longed to hear: the word that would make him his son.

  His heart glad, his tiredness long forgotten, Ortiz spurred his horse off the mound and out of the arena.

  The new slaves were already being quartered in the series of inter-connecting courtyards built for the purpose. Here beneath the open-fronted barns that walled each courtyard they were drinking mugs of hot thick soup, and washing themselves in the long troughs, and lining up for the latrines. Tonight they would sleep on the ground for the last time. Tomorrow they would be allocated their rooms, and put to work.