Then he heard the girl whimper behind him and now stood resolute, pulling his shoulders back and pushing his chest out. Would he let someone just take little Tia without a fight? He remembered the dream of his sister crying, chained up and gagged in a stone cell. He shook his head.
“Die then,” the slaver announced with an unconcerned shrug.
He drew a curved blade from a baldric on his belt and slashed it front of him, trying to intimidate the young farmer. Erik backed up, nearly stepping on the girl.
“Go to the wagons!” Erik yelled at her.
“She’s mine.” The slaver’s yellowed teeth showed through a ghoulish smile.
“No,” Erik muttered. “I don’t think so. You’ll not have her today.”
He balled his hands into fists, eyeing the flashing blade swiping back and forth in front of him.
“Oh,” the man chided, “I’ll have her, and I’ll sell her eventually. But first, I think I might have a little fun.”
The slaver cackled, and the visions of Tia from his dream again flashed through Erik’s mind. His jaw firmed, his teeth clenched, and he let out a curdling scream. The yell seemed to take the slaver by surprise. He stopped for a second, and that was Erik’s chance.
The young man rushed in, underneath the curved sword, wrapped his arms around the slaver’s legs, and lifted. Before the slaver could bring his blade down on Erik’s back, the younger man drove him hard into the ground. The slave trader immediately went limp.
Erik looked down at the unconscious man, picking up the curved sword. He rested the tip just at the base of the man’s neck before he shuddered and shook his head. Instead of finishing the man off, he lifted the sword and looked back at the little girl. She was now huddled with several other children and a woman in the protection of the wagon circle. Then he saw his brother.
Bo was dragging an unconscious Befel from the fight, blood streaming from a wound on his left shoulder. His face was pale and his breathing shallow. Erik meant to follow them and care for his brother, but then he heard a loud cry and turned to see Marcus, riddled with wounds, fighting off three slavers by himself, keeping them at bay with his mighty falchion.
“Marcus!” Erik screamed, rushing to the giant man’s side.
Marcus gave a brief nod and muttered something which Erik thought was, “Fight well, my friend,” as the gypsy sidestepped, dodging an enemy’s sword only to catch another one in the chest. He met the attack with his own blade to the assailant’s neck, separating yet another head from its shoulders. Then he lumbered again, his knees buckled, and with a heavy, thundering sigh, Marcus fell forward, face planting into the dirt before him.
Before Mardirru or Max, or any of the other gypsies could move, Erik stood over the body of Marcus, sword extended, and ready to fend off any slavers who might take the opportunity to finish off the gypsy leader. One slaver came in with an arcing swipe of his club. Erik knocked the wood away and swatted the man’s shoulder with the broad side of his curved sword.
Another jabbed with a short spear, but Erik knocked that away too. The clubber came in again, a loud yell preceding his attack. Erik lifted his sword over his head, the steel consuming the brunt of the club’s blow. Pain rippled down Erik’s arm, and he took to holding his sword with both hands, even though the handle seemed too small for such a grip.
Erik saw the spearman from the corner of his eye, turned to swat away the iron tip once again, and retaliated with a hard swipe. The blade scraped along the spearman’s chest, drawing a line of blood, and the slaver spat curses.
“A sheep ready for the slaughter,” the clubber chided, a man as wide as he was tall with haphazard splotches of black hair pulled into tails.
“Aye. Ripe and plump for a skinning. Just the type of revenge our fallen lads would want,” replied the spearman, who had wide shoulders and head shaved bald.
Erik’s stomach churned, and he felt his hands shake. For Marcus. For his brother. For Bryon even. As the clubber swung again, Erik sidestepped, and the fashioned wood thudded to the ground. Now Erik mustered all his strength and, his sword still gripped with both hands, lifted his blade high over his head and brought it down hard. The steel thunked into the man’s skull. Bone and blood sprayed, the clubber letting out a mumbled groan before hitting the ground.
The spearman looked on, wide-eyed momentarily, but then he rushed at Erik, frenzied. The young man instinctively swatted the spear to the side and kicked his foot out, catching the bald man on the shin. He tripped and fell to both knees. Straightening his back and trying to turn, Erik was already on him, bringing his steel down on the man’s neck. The blade sunk until it hit bone. Arterial blood splashed across Erik’s face, and he flinched, letting go of his sword. The spearman’s body slumped to the ground, lying awkwardly with the weapon still stuck in his neck.
Erik heard a piercing note blast through the air and turned to see the slavers’ leader blowing hard into a curved horn. His face red, his dark eyes tiny fires burning in his tanned face, he blew and blew and screamed as his men passed him. They had crept from the forest under cover of dawn, but now they ran back into the forest as fast as their wounds would allow them.
Erik looked around him. Bodies littered the ground. Slavers, gypsies, miners, women, and children. Death did not discriminate. Just as his cousin reached him, he bent over and retched. Bryon took a step back, Erik vomiting and then dry heaving.
“Do you want some water?” Bryon asked, handing Erik a water skin.
Erik just shook his head, standing straight, closing his eyes, and breathing deeply.
“Do you need anything?” Bryon asked.
Erik opened his eyes and gave Bryon an odd look. It wasn’t often that his cousin paid him any concern.
“No,” was all Erik could muster.
“I saw Befel,” Bryon said.
Erik nodded.
“He is hurt,” Bryon added.
“I know,” Erik said.
“The gypsies are tending to him,” Bryon said. “I think he will be all right.”
“He looked pale,” Erik said looking around. The smell of blood and urine and feces hit his nose, and he felt his stomach churn again.
“We did it,” Bryon said.
“Did what?” Erik asked.
“Won our first battle,” Bryon replied.
“Won our first . . .” Erik began to reply, but then stopped. He looked at his cousin with furled brows. Despite his stomach turning and twisting, he could feel his face grow hot. “You call this a victory?”
Bryon shrugged. “What else would I call it?”
“Tragedy,” Erik replied. “What else could it be? Look at the dead. Look at Befel.”
Erik saw Dika tending to Befel, soaking his face with a wet rag. He felt his chin quiver, felt tears coming to his eyes.
“Poor Befel,” he muttered.
“We’re alive, cousin,” Bryon said through gritted teeth. “That, in itself, is a victory.”
“At what cost?” Erik asked.
“Don’t be such a fool,” Bryon hissed. “You want to go back home and stick your head in a hole, but this is the
mire of shit that real men have to wade through every day. Don’t kid yourself, Erik. Every day a man can wake up and breathe breath and say he is alive is a victory.”
“And knowing this makes you somehow manlier?” Erik asked. “Knowing this makes you some sort of hero?”
“No,” Bryon replied, turning his back to Erik and then looking at him over his shoulder. “No. But I don’t want to hide away on a farm trying to escape that truth. I don’t want to go work in some rat turd’s mine to forget it. I want to embrace it. Use it. Turn survival into my way of making something of myself.”
Bryon walked away, and Erik watched as Dika and a few other women tended to Befel. He wanted to go to his brother, but his feet felt like they were pure iron. He listened as the cries of the dying and those who loved them filled the air. That smell. It made him retch again, and as he lifted his head, he saw Marcus, lying still, motionless where he had fallen.
Erik felt every emotion in his body, from pure hatred to petrifying fear to the deepest sadness, overwhelm him all at once, and he fell to his knees and wept.
Chapter 21
ERIK STOOD OVER MARDIRRU AS he cradled his father’s head in his lap. Marcus breathed slowly. He could hear son talking to father in whispers but couldn’t make out what he was saying. No matter. They were private words for a dying man.
Erik knelt next to Mardirru. Marcus’ seemingly disengaged eyes caught Erik’s, and the gypsy smiled despite the blood matting his beard and caking his teeth.
“Erik, you live, and uncaptured,” he mumbled.
Erik smiled and nodded. He couldn’t speak. He could barely breathe. He felt tears well up in his eyes.
Marcus closed his eyes for a moment and rolled his head to one side, one hand clutching at the sleeve of Mardirru’s shirt.
“A king,” he mumbled. “They once called me a king—and now look at me. It is what I deserve. My sins have finally caught up with me.”
“Don’t say that,” Erik said.
“My wife?” Marcus asked. He looked to Erik, then to his son, and then back to Erik.
“I don’t know, Father,” Mardirru replied.
“Nor I,” Erik agreed. “But I can find her for you.”
Erik meant to stand, but Marcus’ large hand reached out and caught his wrist. Even dying, there was strength in that grip, and it pulled Erik back to his knees.
“No, don’t leave me,” Marcus whispered through labored breaths. “Stay with me until the end.”
“I will stay with you,” Erik said, nodding, “but this isn’t the end. You just need some rest.”
“Rest.” Marcus spoke the word with an inebriated quality. “Yes, rest. Rest is what I need. Hopefully, the Creator will look kindly on my last years and forgive all the wrong I’ve done.”
Erik wanted to say something but felt more tears coming and thought that if he opened his mouth, he would just sound like a blithering fool through his weeping. So he just stayed there, a comforting hand on Mardirru’s shoulder as the young gypsy cried over his dying father.
Erik saw a large shadow spread over them and looked up to see Max carrying the limp body of Nadya. Tears streamed down the young man’s face. His expression—pursed lips, crinkled brows, frowning eyes—was one of torture.
“No!” Mardirru screamed when he saw his younger brother holding his mother. He reached for his mother’s hand as her arm hung loosely and pressed his face to her skin, weeping uncontrollably.
“Father,” Max choked.
“Son.” Marcus tried to lift his head to see his boy but couldn’t muster the strength.
“Father,” Max repeated, “it’s Mother. She’s dead.”
“By the heavens!” Marcus cried. He closed his eyes hard, and his ruined body wracked with heaving sobs. He cried for a long time, and his sons cried and Erik with him.
“Put her next to me, son,” said Marcus eventually, and Max obeyed, gently laying his dead mother next to her husband.
“Mardirru, you are the leader of these people now,” Marcus said. “Lead these people as the Creator would have you lead.”
“I will lead your people to the best of my ability.”
“No,” Marcus replied between heavy breaths, “they are not my people. They are the Creator’s people.”
“Yes, Father,” Mardirru said.
“Max,” Marcus said, turning his head to see his younger son, “support your brother. He will need you in these coming years.”
“Yes, Father,” Max said with tears in his eyes and a slight bow of the head.
Marcus looked over at Erik.
“Follow your heart, young Erik. If the Creator truly resides there, he will not lead you astray. He has great things in store for you my friend. I know it.”
He reached down and gripped his wife’s hand. The smile on his face said he took comfort in the touch of her skin to his. Then he looked up again, but it wasn’t at Erik. The young man could tell that much, but it wasn’t at the gypsy’s sons either. It was at the morning sky. One of his big smiles crossed his face. “Look at it—the sky. Beautiful. A beautiful miracle. I am ready.”
Marcus continued to mouth the word “beautiful” until he drew his final breath and died, there in Mardirru’s arms. Now both sons collapsed on top of their parents’ bodies, wailing and clutching at their father’s blood-soaked vest. Erik cried with them, for their loss, and for the world’s loss of a great man like Marcus. He put his hand on Mardirru’s shoulder, gave it a gentle squeeze.
“I’m sorry,” Erik whispered. “He was truly a great man.”
“None better.” Mardirru sat up and wiped tears away from his cheeks. He stood and offered his hand to Erik, helping the young man stand. Mardirru didn’t cry anymore. He just stood there, at the feet of his dead parents, his brother by his side, and Erik stood with them.
Eventually, the new leader of the Ion Gypsies bowed—just a slight bow—and blew a kiss to his mother. He looked up at the sky for a moment and then turned to Erik again.
“Come, let us bury them, say our prayers over them, and honor the life the Creator had given them.”
Chapter 22
THOSE WHO HAD SURVIVED THE attack and had not fled set about seeking to bring back some sense of order to the embattled encampment, caring for the wounded and laying out the dead so they might bury them.
“The young men your age took the worst of it,” Bo said to Bryon as his wife pressed a rag against the wound in her husband’s chest.
“What do you mean?” Bryon asked, waiting for Dika to tend to the cut along his ribs, but it had stopped bleeding.
“The slavers targeted them, I think,” Bo explained. “If I counted right, they captured all but two of the younger men. That’s probably who they came for. Them and the children.”
“Why would they want the men my age?” Bryon asked.
“They can sell them for a high price as laborers and such,” Bo explained.
“I didn’t think slavery really existed,” Bryon said. “I mean, I was little better than a slave working in Wittick’s pigsties in Venton, but I was still free to come and go. I earned a pi
ttance, but it was still a weekly wage.”
“Much of the world still engages in slavery,” Dika added, “unfortunately. Even in the places where it isn’t legal, you’ll find slaves.”
“And the children?” Bryon asked.
He noticed the sour look on Dika’s face, as a tear collected at the corner of her eye.
“The young ones,” Bo replied, “they will sell as house servants . . . and prostitutes.”
“The children?” Bryon questioned. “Brothels?”
“Aye,” Bo replied. “Disgusting, I know. The men who steal them away and the men who buy them. It is a terrible tragedy.”
“Better they die,” Dika said, tears now escaping her.
“Better the men who buy them die,” Bryon muttered.
“I have known a few children to escape,” Bo said. “We have several in our caravan. Their lives are a true testimony to willpower and the grace of the Creator.”
Bryon scoffed. “How could any god let a child be sold into slavery, let alone to a brothel?”
“That’s a hard question you ask,” Bo said, wincing a little as Dika began stitching his wound. “One many others have asked as well.”
Bryon felt his stomach twist. He never had any love for children. He cared for his sisters, cared about what happened to them, but couldn’t really stand being around them for too long. He didn’t want to be a father, but he recognized the innocence of children.
He had spent a fair bit of time in brothels, and no child deserved that life. The women whose services he had purchased were adults, capable of making their own decisions. He thought of Kukka. A child in such circumstances against her will? He shook his head, trying to push the thought to the back of his mind.
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