He noted the Hatwa for the first time as a group, at least larger than the limited sample represented by Arsolis’s village. As a people, the population of Legrasi seemed shorter than the Jema, perhaps a little darker of hair and eyes and a little stockier and swarthier. If this had been Earth, he would have guessed Greece or Bulgaria from looking at the population of the city.
Dark hair was by no means rare among the Jema, but they were taller as a group than what he saw around him. He looked for a moment and saw only a couple of other women who had hair as light as Hyrika’s. At six-one, he was just average in height among the Jema, but he towered over most of these people. He took Arsolis’s words to heart and slumped over.
The road they were on cleared a little as they moved deeper into the city. Most of the market activity seemed to be focused close to the harbor. When the road split, they went left and walked on for a good bit in silence until they came out on the edge of a large cobblestone-paved plaza. There was a solid stone mansion-cum-castle sitting in the middle of the open space, which had several hundred yards of open buffer in all directions. Stretching around the base of the four-story building, replete with turrets and glass windows lined with ornate frames painted gold, was a very solid-looking stone wall. From the Kaerin warriors posted atop the wall, Jake guessed it was close to fifteen feet high.
There was enough of a no-man’s land around the structure within the plaza that he was reminded of Red Square, though there were no onion towers of St. Basil’s here. Everything was solid and functional, with little architectural flair beyond the gold window frames. It looked like a building designed by soldiers. Not that a mortar tube couldn’t have made a mess of the place, he thought.
They made it across the plaza, staying at the extreme edge until they reentered another neighborhood in the midst of its own market day. It wasn’t as frenetic or as packed as the area just inside the walls had been, but he immediately spotted several other groups that didn’t belong here. Besides the Asians in their prison-inspired bathrobes, there were Africans, all wearing thick wool vests, their bare arms showing metal bands around their wrists that rattled when they walked. He came to a stop at the angry hiss from Hyrika. “Strema.”
Arsolis stopped the group with an upraised hand. He tossed a bag of human knucklebones or whatever they used around here as money—to one of his men and said something about finding some cloth. At least that was what he thought the word was. To another of his men, he nodded towards the Strema.
“See if they have a hold’s worth of fish salt.”
He eyed Hyrika and the other Jema with wariness. “They bring salt my people need.”
Jake leaned in close to Hyrika. “You cannot be Jema here and now.”
The Jema woman’s lips were pursed in anger, but she managed to jerk her head once in agreement.
Not so easy, is it? Jake kept the thought to himself. At this point, he could understand the Jema’s hatred of the Strema far better than how the Kaerin had managed to cow an entire planet.
“You will wait here,” Arsolis commanded them. “I will make certain we were credited for our delivery. When I return, we will go there for a meal.” Arsolis pointed up to the large building between them and where the city’s walls came together in a corner on the far side. “You may find the view interesting.”
He could only nod, as his attention was focused on Hyrika, who was staring daggers at the Strema merchant and his coterie.
“Be quick, if you can,” he added to Arsolis’s retreating back.
Jake’s attention, as well as everyone’s in the small square, was refocused a few minutes later when a Kaerin rode in on a horse.
“A High Blood,” Hyrika whispered to him.
Well, he certainly thinks he is, Jake thought. The warrior was dressed in what looked like silk underneath a shining steel cuirass, articulated across the stomach, but solid across the chest. Over it all, he wore a cloak lined in black fur. To him, the warrior looked like some hybrid mashup between a Roman centurion and a feudal samurai lord. The weird style was clearly meant to impress and intimidate. Jake couldn’t help but imagine the polished steel of the breastplate had been buffed with the tears of these people’s children.
On the war horse’s saddle was a rifle in an ornate leather scabbard. The Kaerin carried his long-sword on his back as well. All for show, Jake knew. The guy could have been a master swordsman, but that was no cavalry blade. It was nothing but impractical for horseback.
It was the arrogance that struck him. The Kaerin High Blood rode in alone at a lazy walk, observing the trading with a look of satisfaction on his lean face. There was no honor guard, no bodyguards. He feared nothing. Indeed, the moment the horse came to a stop, so did the trading. As one, every figure in the square, from a dozen different clans and races, turned to face the mounted warrior and offered a bow. He had the presence of mind to follow suit. He remained bent over, glancing over at Lupe until he heard the Kaerin command. “Continue.”
As one, they came upright, and the trading began again, starting with a low murmur and growing into the cacophony it had been within moments. He watched as the Kaerin’s gaze took them in and continued to the side. As if to make a point, the High Blood’s horse took that moment to piss itself in the middle of the market square. He saw the grin break out on the Kaerin lord’s face. Not until the horse was finished did the man turn the reins and ride slowly out of the square the way he had come in.
Jake looked out the gate, and saw a small troop of Kaerin horsemen awaiting their commander. Not so brave after all.
Lupe elbowed him and leaned in. “What an asshole.”
He could only nod in agreement. But there was something about the Kaerin he was beginning to realize. Audy had warned him, and Jomra had tried his best to explain it to him; the Kaerin were not an occupying force keeping the lid on a restive population. The proof was in the Hatwa and these other clans, and how they reacted to the Kaerin. The people of this world believed the Kaerin superior to themselves. That wasn’t going to change without a demonstration that he very much wanted to give.
What Arsolis had called an inn, was to Jake not far removed from a rooftop pub done up in a medieval motif. A wide, heavy-beamed staircase wound its way up the exterior of the building. When they reached the roof, Jake was surprised to see a footbridge crossing the short gap over to the city’s walls. The city’s west and south facing walls came to a point here. They were high enough up that he could see signs of cultivation and buildings stretching south out of the city, alongside a graveled road that disappeared into the thick forest of the mainland and a second smaller road running west along the coast.
Arsolis paused their group with a barked command and tossed another small bag of coins to one of his crew members. The half dozen Hatwa wasted no time scrambling to a large open table on the far side of the roof, overlooking the city itself. When Jake looked back at Arsolis, he saw the man was watching him.
“What?”
“I thought you would want to see this.” The krathik indicated the short wooden sky bridge, stretching over to the battlement atop the city’s wall. The bridge itself looked sound, but for Jake, who wasn’t comfortable with heights to begin with, the creaking sounds it made as they crossed over put an extra spring in his step.
The graveled path atop the walls was about six feet wide, and he assumed the gravel-and-rock fill went all the way to the ground, some forty feet below them. Faced with massive logs on the inner and outer walls, it was a simple construction, but given its thickness and the amount of fill between the two walls, it would absorb a good deal of punishment. At least by local standards, he thought. Real artillery would quickly reduce these walls to splinters and a pile of gravel. He guessed that was the point. It gave the Hatwa some security, but the walls were nothing that would stop Kaerin cannon, not even the shitty four-inch pieces the Strema had brought to Eden with them.
Arsolis touched his elbow and guided him to the crenelated outer wall between log me
rlons. “There are the Kaerin ships.”
Jake’s eyes flashed across the built-up area of small houses outside the walls and the adjoining fields. Given the time of year, most of the fields stood empty, having already been harvested. Beyond, to the west along the edge of the bay, was what he could only identify as a naval base. It had no walls around the camp, just what looked like a low brick wall. Even from their distance, he could see that the buildings were all brick or stone, including one dwarfing even the massive building they’d walked past within the city. His eyes were drawn to the two large ships lying at anchor in the small harbor. They looked like elongated versions of riverboat casinos; large paddle wheels amid ships, tall smokestacks standing above.
“Paddle wheels!” he exclaimed.
“They go without wind, like your small boats.” There was what sounded like a hint of pride in Arsolis’s voice.
“Do they burn wood? Or the black rock that burns?”
“Coal,” Lupe said from the other side of him. “Big pile of the stuff just past the fort.”
He noted that Lupe wasn’t pointing, and his opinion of the guy went up another notch.
He turned to the old man. “How many Kaerin warriors in that fort?”
“It is not a fort. That is the estate of the Kaerin lord Madral. You saw one of his High Blood officers in the courtyard. The Hatwa lands are part of his estate.”
“So how many warriors does he have?”
Arsolis gave him a strange look. “He has the Hatwa.”
Jake couldn’t tell if Arsolis was expressing some loyalty to the Kaerin or just offering a statement of fact.
“I know he controls the Hatwa, but how many Kaerin does he command?”
Arsolis shrugged as if the question had never occurred to him before. “Some thousands, I do not know. His lands stretch far to the west and south. There are other Hatwa cities there, though none as large as Legrasi.”
Jake glanced down the wall’s walkway, where a pair of Hatwa warriors was slowly making the rounds towards them. Arsolis saw them as well.
“Come, we eat and drink. Our ship will be loaded by nightfall, and I want to be gone from this place.”
Me too, Jake thought.
The beer, pata in Chandrian, wasn’t bad and the bread was delicious. The rest of the meal just raised a lot of questions. He could have sworn there was some sort of horseradish mixed in with what he thought, hoped, was mashed squash or yams. It looked like baby shit as far as he was concerned.
“I’d kill for a taco,” Lupe commented as he regarded the orange mashed vegetable hanging from his carved wooden spork.
“What is taco?” Arsolis asked.
Lupe, realizing that he’d spoken in Chandrian, tried to explain. Hyrika took over the explanation and delivered a description that had Jake pining for the same.
“And this is?” He held up a spork full of the orangish goo.
“It is portisha,” Hyrika explained. “Squashed potatoes, yams, or squash, whatever’s in season, with dried fish meal ground in, and spices.”
“’Bout what I figured.” Jake did his best to chew the concoction, but found it easier to just take very small bites, swallow, and follow it up with a pull off his mug of beer. He didn’t worry overmuch; the nanobots in his bloodstream would kill anything that tried to kill him, but they couldn’t do shit for the taste.
Jake was staring at another spork load of the gruel when Hyrika, seated across the table from him, went stiff, her eyes narrowing. Next to her, Arsolis watched something behind him with hooded eyes. “Strema,” he whispered.
Shit . . . The boisterous group of Strema sounded as if they’d started drinking long before they’d found the inn. Jake watched as they took a table between theirs and the one that held Arsolis’s crew. He tapped the table in front of him until Hyrika pulled her gaze away and her hard eyes met his own.
“Not here,” he said.
She gave a jerk of her head that may have been acknowledgement but just as easily could have been a facsimile of “screw that.” He heard a chair scrape back from the Strema table.
“Oh, shit . . .” he heard Lupe whisper a second later.
The Strema trader was a big lout of a man, wearing what looked like silk pants and a billowing shirt underneath a heavy coat. He planted two fists on the end of their heavy wood table, inches away from Arsolis’s plate of food.
“What goods are you trading in, Hatwa?”
“I’m done.” Arsolis looked up at the man. “Charcoal for salt.”
“Charcoal.” The Strema shook his head once in derision. “You Hatwa still rubbing sticks together for fire? We bring silk and spices from the east.”
Arsolis held up his cup in salute. “May you find a good price, and a fair wind for home.”
The Strema waved off the toast in annoyance.
“Why does your woman stare at me so? We Strema have fought many, but I don’t believe the Hatwa have ever fell under our blades.”
Jake was somewhat relieved to see Hyrika look away and down at her plate, her face a scarlet rage.
“I apologize.” Arsolis shook his head in disdain at Hyrika. “I have just told her the man she was to be handfasted to is plowing another field.”
The Strema’s head went back as he roared with laughter, and all Jake could think about was the way Hyrika’s head had come up as well, and how focused she seemed to be on the trader’s throat. The Strema’s fist pounded into the table a couple of times as he laughed before dropping his head back down towards Hyrika.
“If it’s a plowing she needs . . .”
Hyrika moved faster than Jake had expected, certainly far faster than the Strema had been prepared for.
The dull, cheap metal knife that had come with the meal flashed out from under the table. Hyrika’s arm arced downward and nailed the Strema’s hand to the table.
The trader looked down at his hand in shock for a moment before he sucked in a deep breath. His scream never made it. Hyrika came out of her seat, lunged past Arsolis, and drove an elbow into the side of the Strema’s head. In what seemed like slow motion, Jake watched as the trader’s eyes rolled up in his head before he collapsed to his knees, held in place by the hand still nailed to the tabletop. The reaction of the rest of the Strema was delayed for just a moment, until their chairs slammed backwards as they surged to their feet.
Jake spun around to face the attack and was halfway to his feet when the nearest Strema launched himself at him. He stayed low, reached up with his left hand, and hooked the man’s head, pulling down hard. He punched upward with his right arm and flipped the man in the air before slamming him down onto the table.
Arsolis, old man or not, managed to step on the Strema on his way across the table before launching his body into three Strema who were about to be jumped from behind by a couple of Arsolis’s crewmen. Jake pulled his hand away from the borrowed bouma blade at his waist; this looked like a fistfight so far. He sidestepped a pile of wrestling bodies on the floor as he blocked a punch about to be loosed at Arsolis’s head.
Spinning the man around, he punched the man in the throat, kicked him in the balls, and brought a knee up into his target’s rapidly descending head. Krav maga worked well here, too. It was over quickly; the Strema were down and out of the fight. Two, maybe three were unconscious; the remaining two were moaning but not trying to move. In one case, Hyrika straddled the man’s chest, having just pummeled the shit out of his face. Another Strema was on the floor, slowly trying to come to his hands and knees between Arsolis and Lupe. The old man planted his boot on the man’s ass and shoved him back to the floor. Shouts from the city’s wall drew his attention as two sets of guards were running along the rampart in opposite directions, closing in on the small sky bridge that joined the rooftop pub to the wall.
“What do we do?” he asked Hyrika.
She shook her head, glancing at the entrance to the stairway leading back to the street.
“Do not resist.” Hyrika spat on the uncon
scious figure between her legs and slowly came to her feet.
He glanced at Arsolis, who was glaring at him in anger. Jake figured he knew what was going through the old man’s mind; probably wondering if Audy’s threat of holding his village hostage was real or not. The village chieftain was no doubt weighing that threat against the option of turning them all in. The four Hatwa guards crossed the bridge in a group and spread out in a rough line amid the jumble of broken chairs and scattered Strema.
“What happened here?” the last guard to approach yelled.
Arsolis stepped over the Strema bleeding at his feet. “These Strema had too much drink before they got here. They insulted the honor of this woman, and of the Hatwa.”
Arsolis opened his coat and pulled the collar of his shirt down, exposing the tattooed crow. “I am Arsolis, krathik of Varsana. We came to trade, and to have a meal. No blade was drawn.”
Jake saw one of the Hatwa warriors offer a grin as he took in the Strema on the floor. Arsolis’s crew in addition to the Jema may have had twice the numbers, but the home team had won this fight. There was a grudging approval showing on the faces of the guards. The lead guard who had spoken walked over to the table and looked down at the Strema trader, hanging from the tabletop by the knife through his hand.
“And this?” He nodded down at the table. If he had any concern for the injured man’s status, it didn’t show. He was focused solely on the simple kitchen knife buried to the hilt in the back of the man’s hand, the pool of blood on the table and running down the man’s arm.
“That was me,” Arsolis offered. “And the blade was already in my hand when the man insulted us.” Arsolis indicated all of them, the guards included, when he said “us.” Arsolis gestured towards Hyrika, “he insulted my niece. Made a threat to her virtue, and I acted.”
New Shores: The Eden Chronicles - Book Three Page 16
