Young Writers Society

Twenty nine children did not survive the march from Fartheil to the slave market at Dyre. Most died of exhaustion and exposure, and twice children tried to run. The first was a plainsgirl, no older than Sarah, who wriggled loose of her chains during the night and fled into the desert. The girls manacled either side of her in the chain line were beaten near-to-death for their inattention in not stopping or reporting her, though Arvad knew that they, like he, must have been asleep when their companion escaped. The escapee was not so lucky in her punishment. Word passed up the chain lines later that day that the trio of slavers who had set off to find her had returned, even though they had been gone for only a few hours and she had had a half-night’s lead on them. Arvad had slept only fitfully in the days that followed, haunted by the girl’s screams for mercy and the animalistic roars of her tormenters. In his nightmares, distended shadows had played across the flame-lit canvas of the slavers’ ornate tent and Danil whispered in warning that the Ulusami only wore the skins of men.

The second escape attempt was from an entire chain line of Shavar boys during the first night they sheltered beneath the northern trees. Their keeper’s staves had found little purchase in tougher forest clay, and the slaves had boldly uprooted their restraints and fled into the night. Arvad, woken from a nightmare, had heard the rustling of their flight, but had not believed anyone could be brave enough, or stupid enough, to run after what had happened to the girl. That night, the slavers hung what was left of the boys by their manacles over the boughs of the great northern trees as a firm and unequivocal warning to the rest. Whatever you fear in Dyre, the torn faces of the boys whispered to Arvad in his dreams, as their bodies swayed from the branches of the trees that had become their final resting place. Whatever you fear in Dyre, they whispered, the Ulusami are worse.

For all of the fear with which the Ulusami were rightly held, for all the resmblance they held to the terrors that stalked the gibbering nightmares of madmen,they did not seem exceptionally proficient slavers. In the free island cities of Marcillia, Tarbruk and Sempunja, the journey a genuinely valuable slave made from capture to the slave block might take years. Training could be both detailed and rigorous, regardless of the complexity of the task in which the slave would eventually find themselves. Every slave, from maid to crone,from wagon-loader to imperial engineer would learn a core skill set of submission, tact, and self-effacing obedience.

On such a market the Ulusami could not compete. Arvad could see that their casual brutality made them good slave-takers. They did not waste their tasteless bread on children who would not survive the march, and the fear of beatings with truncheon or lash kept all but the suicidally unruly in check. The limits of their patience shone through in their servant-making: whereas the slavers of the free island cities made an artistry out of imbuing slaves with a new subservient identity, the Ulusami simply did not invest themselves in it.

Before the choice offered by Millekko, the slaver with the finely trimmed beard who had stopped the procession just shy of Dyre, their tutelage had been the province of the thin plainsman who had argued with Arvad’s father. He reminded Arvad of the posturing youths who often clustered around the headman to make themselves seem important. Like those youths, this slaver sneered at the children whose care he was saddled with, and rather than taking pride in the work given to him, he would often abandon them to the brutal care of The Stout One, preferring to seek the company of Millekko and the other high ranking slavers who often sat amidst the wagons as they travelled. The Stout One gave them no lessons, only the rough end of his truncheon when they met his gaze or slowed their march, and from what Arvad could gather in their infrequent rest breaks, the other lines were little different.

As the procession pulled up to one of the smallest and least remarked of the city’s outer gates, Arvad remembered the stories his parents had taught him about the integrity of honest labour. He recalled the preening Songbird that starved during the long dry, while the dutiful Tanwings rested out the heat in their well-stocked nests. He recalled Aeolfas the hunter, who had run forty miles without rest to bring word to the Davani of encroaching Shavar raiders. Though Aeolfas had died of battle injuries and exhaustion within minutes of his arrival at the village, his ancestral tree was amongst the tallest and most revered of the Davani for the warning he had given them. Young hunters and warriors often left offerings amidst the roots of the tree, so that the spirit of Aeolfas would watch over them during their hunt. Then there were figures older even than the Davani, such as Jujantvir, who pursued Draegmor, the stone serpent, across the stars in vengeance for his slain offspring, swallowed whole by the great snake. So awe-inspiring had been Jujantvir’s rage, that he had shattered the stone serpent against the pillars of the world. The broken remnants had fallen to earth and become the hills and peaks that dotted the Ulusami Plains and become populated by the offspring of Jujantvir’s sons, who burst whole from the stomach of the shattered Draegmor. Jujantvir had no ancestral tree and did not need one; his roots in the world were the coursing lifeblood of myth and history from which the hill clans drew a common identity. But who, then,was Arvad? If Jujantvir became a father of nations through an inextinguishable love for his sons, who was Arvad now that he had been cast off like a soiled cloak?

“You’re doing it again,” his neighbour whispered.

“What?”

“You go inside yourself, and stoke your anger,” Danil quipped, “It’s like you have fire in your eyes.”

Arvad realised that his friend was right, he had become introspective. He flexed his fingers inside their confining restraints and turned away from the questions to which he had no answers.

The procession marched to the small south-west gate of Dyre, because slave traffic was not accepted on the main thoroughfares of the Archduke’s city. Guilliame did not trade with the free island cities for slaves, nor even his southern vassal, the Duke of Sharlced. It was solely at the insistence of Sharlced, who served as Archducal Bursar, that slave traffic was allowed within the walls of the city at all. As the procession cleared the low-hanging portcullis Arvad and the other slaves got their first look at the city of Dyre.

“It stinks!”

“Where are the trees?”

“What’s the big grey building on the cliff?”

“It smells like a whale passed soil on a bonfire!” Exclaimed Owen, wearing hishabitual scowl.

Slavers dutifully laid about their charges with club and lash in response to these irrepressible concerns. The Stout One loomed ominously over Danil’s shoulder, but the boys looked right through him, stone-faced, until the line moved on.

Dyre, or at least this secluded experience of it, was composed of thin muddy streets, and grim-faced, woefully-constructed shanty-towns. It reminded Arvad of the tiny moist crevices between the rocks at the water-springs, where tiny insects would often take shelter from the burgeoning youths. Except this crevice was a dozen times larger than the hill on which Arvad’s village stood, home to twenty five thousand souls, and girdled by stone walls thirty feet tall.

Once more unattended, Arvad whispered to Danil, “where do you think their groves are? The trees outside the city were wild and untended, and I haven’t seen a single plant since we passed the wall.”

Danil shrugged, “In my village we plant ancestor trees at funerals, rather than after births. As Tribute, I will never have one anyway. Owen’s village only honours great warriors and their families with entrance to their grove, and the Shavar do not follow the tradition at all, who can say what the northerners do? Maybe it is for the best,” he nodded to himself sombrely, “I doubt The Stout One would let me plant a tree over you when your first master beats you to death for giving him that stare of yours.”

Danil looked so serious that for a moment Arvad was taken aback,untilDanil flashed a smile.

Arvad shoved him lightly with his manacled hands, “And yours will rip out your tongue when you play him for a fool.”

Their resulting giggles bordered on the maniacal, and Arvad knew they were both skirting the very edge of terror. A girl was sobbing in a chain line that was marching parallel to theirs. He hadn’t seen Sarah in hours.

Ahead of them, the procession slowed and Arvad saw that the road ahead opened up into a dingy square lit by a central fire and torches bracketed to the palisade walls that encircled it.