The beast stopped suddenly, a strip of bark hanging from its mouth, two black eyes staring straight at them. It gave a low, sombre hoot and turned, lumbering away into the depths of the jungle on its impossible limbs.
“I doubt I’ll see another,” the woman commented as they returned to the road. “Every year the jungle grows smaller and the roads grow longer. Oh well.” She settled onto her bedroll. “Perhaps we’ll see a tiger tomorrow.”
The next day brought them to the great river forming the border with Alpiran territory where a small town of stilted structures waited on the near shore. The river was nearly a mile wide but unlike the lake crossing to Mirtesk, there was no ferry to be seen here. The stilt-town was a series of interlinked platforms at the end of a long jetty, dwellings clustered on each, uniform only in their ramshackle construction. A slave market was in full swing on the largest platform, the overseer’s voice a constant chorus of barely intelligible jargon as he took bids from the audience, mostly grey-clads, although a few black robes were also present, sweating in the sun as their slaves wafted stale air over them with palm leaves.
“Lot seventy-three!” the overseer called as a naked girl was dragged onto the platform by a brawny Varitai. Frentis judged her to be no more than thirteen years old. “Fresh from the Twelve Sisters. No skills, no Volarian. Too plain for the pleasure house but trainable as a house-slave or breeding stock. Four circles to start.”
Frentis felt his binding flare as he watched the girl stand trembling and weeping on the platform, a stream of urine covering her thigh. “Now, now, dearest,” the woman said, clasping his hand, the loving wife replacing the scolding nag. She leaned close to plant a kiss on his cheek, whispering, “Your heroic days are gone. But, if you want to spare this one all that awaits her, I’ll buy her and you can kill her. Would you like that?”
It was no empty threat, he knew. She meant to do it, possibly even in kindness rather than cruelty. He was beginning to suspect she barely understood the difference between the two. He shook his head, trembling.
“As you wish.”
The girl went for two squares and a circle. She began to scream as they dragged her away, choking into silence as an overseer clamped a gag in her mouth.
“Lot seventy-four,” the overseer on the platform intoned as a stocky, broad-shouldered man was brought forward, his back striped red with fresh whip-strokes. “Onetime pirate, this one. From some islands in the north. Speaks Alpiran but no Volarian. Bit too spirited for the fields but will make a good show in the spectacles or fetch a decent price if you care to take him to the pits. Six circles to start.”
“Come along,” the woman said, leading him away from the auction. “I think this is making you a little too nostalgic.”
They found a merchant on one of the smaller platforms who took the cart and pony in exchange for two squares. Frentis secured the contents of the hidden compartment in his pack and they made their way to a boardinghouse, renting a room at an exorbitant rate. “Slavers in town,” the owner said, spreading his hands. “Should’ve come tomorrow, citizens.”
“I told you, dullard!” the woman snarled at Frentis. “Oh why did I shun my mother’s wisdom?”
“This is on the house though, citizen,” the owner said, handing Frentis a bottle with an understanding wink. “Might help the night go quicker, eh?”
They waited in their small room until nightfall. This unnamed stilt-town falling to silence as the slavers took their purchases to the road and their various fates.
“You don’t have slaves in your realm, do you?” the woman asked.
He stared out of the window at the broad, fast-flowing river and said nothing.
“No, you’re all free,” she went on. “But still slaves to your various superstitions, of course. Something we divested ourselves of centuries ago. Tell me, do you really think you’re going to live forever in some paradise with your dead relatives when you die?”
She flared the binding again when he didn’t answer. Tonight, it seemed, she actually wanted a conversation. “‘What is death?’” he quoted. “‘Death is but a gateway to the Beyond and union with the Departed. It is both ending and beginning. Fear it and welcome it.’”
“What’s that? One of your prayers?”
“The Faithful don’t pray. Prayers are for god worshippers and Deniers. It’s from the Catechism of the Faith.”
“And this faith promises eternal life after death?”
“Not life, life is of the body. The Beyond is the realm of the soul.”
“The soul?” She shook her head and gave a small laugh. “Well, in that at least, your Faithful seem to know something. A childish conceit, but founded on a grain of truth.”
She reached into the pack and extracted a pair of narrow-bladed daggers. “We need a boat.” She handed him a dagger which he concealed in the leather sheath strapped to his forearm.
The jetty where the boats were moored was guarded by two Varitai, both armed with the standard-issue broad-bladed spears common to this lowest tier of Volarian soldiery. They were a poorly maintained pair, with badly repaired armour showing numerous gaps and too much dullness in their eyes, bespeaking an overseer with a meagre knowledge of the correct mix of drugs.
“No boats available,” the largest of them said, blocking their path, the butt of his spear thumping onto the planks. “Come back in the morning.”
Frentis stabbed him in the eye, the narrow blade piercing the orb and the brain beyond in a single thrust. The woman leapt past the falling corpse and ducked under the orthodox but too slow slash of the second soldier to thrust her dagger into a gap between his breastplate and armpit, stepping behind him as he collapsed to his knees, pushing his helmeted head forward and finishing him with a thrust to the base of the skull.
They slipped the bodies into the river feetfirst, slowly so as to avoid any telltale splash. The woman chose a medium-sized boat, a flat-hulled river craft propelled by a single oar in the stern. She undid the mooring rope and let the river take them downstream for a mile or more before instructing Frentis to begin rowing. The current was swift, too swift to allow a straight crossing and he could only keep the prow pointed at the opposite bank with strenuous hauling on the oar.
“Atethia,” the woman said as the far bank grew in size, a stretch of marshland peppered with small islets each covered in tall rushes. “Southernmost province of the great Alpiran Empire, where we have much to do, dearest.”
The dawn saw him guiding the boat through the marshes amidst an unceasing cloud of midges. The water was dulled brown with silt, the channels through the countless islets narrow and difficult to navigate.
“Awful place isn’t it?” the woman commented. “The graveyard of my father’s final invasion in fact. He spent three years building a fleet on the opposite bank. That wretched town was first constructed from wood salvaged from the wrecks. Four hundred warships and a thousand boats carried his great host across the river where they spent a full month slogging through this marsh, hundreds died of disease or drowning but on they went, only for them to die by the thousands in a great and mysterious fire that ravaged the marshes. Most Alpirans believe the gods intervened to destroy the invaders with their divine fury, but Volarian historians insist they simply soaked the fringes of the marsh with naphtha and set it alight with fire arrows. Fifty thousand Free Swords and slaves burned to cinders in the space of a single night. Not my father though. Mad as he was by then, he was still wise enough to remain on the other side of the river.” She glanced around at the rushes which grew so high as to obscure any view of the surrounding country. “Even today the Alpirans don’t bother to fortify this stretch of bank, for what general would be insane enough to try the same tactic?”
It took another two days before the marsh finally gave way to solid ground, the boat grounding on a silt bank where the rushes were less tall and they could see a stretch of open country beyond. After the monotony of the marsh and the fetid threat of the jungle the green fields ahead were a welcome and inviting reminder of the Realm.
“We’ll need new clothes,” the woman said, starting forward. “I am the daughter of a wealthy Alpiran merchant from the northern ports, sent to the Twelve Sisters to meet with a prospective husband. You are a runaway slave turned mercenary hired as my bodyguard.”
A half-day’s walk brought them to a midsize town hugging the banks of one of the tributaries to the great river. There were no defensive walls but from a distance they could see numerous Alpiran soldiers walking the streets. “A little too busy for us, dearest,” the woman decided. “There should be a plantation house or two further north.”
They stayed off the roads, avoiding occasional Alpiran cavalry patrols by trekking through the fields of cotton that seemed to be the main crop in the region. Before long a plantation house came into view, a wide two-storey complex of interlinked houses and farm buildings, busy with workers. They hid in an irrigation ditch until nightfall when the woman sent him to the house to seek out the laundry. “The finest you can find for me, dearest,” she told him. “I have appearances to maintain. Kill anyone who sees you. If it’s more than one, kill everyone in the house and burn it down.”