He glared at them all, disgust clear in his voice. “If we launched our navy to Calay, what would stop
their
ships from slipping into our undefended lands? They could burn every one of our ports to the ground!” Omra turned his gaze
toward Ur-Sikara Erima. “They could sail unhindered all the way to far Lahjar.”
The old veteran Zarouk cleared his throat. “Perhaps you are not seeing the point, Soldan-Shah.”
“The
point?
” Omra pounded his fist on the table. “
I
am the point!
I
am the Soldan-Shah!
I
decide!”
“Yes, you are the point, Soldan-Shah,” said Kel Rovik, speaking in an even voice. “Your people believe in you. But they also
pray you will become the point… of a sword.”
The Missinian work teams quickly assembled the sand coracle according to Sen Sherufa’s detailed plans: A sturdy framework
of hard wooden slats formed a large bowl, wide and deep enough to carry the four passengers along with water, supplies, food,
clothes, and weapons.
As workers wove reeds to form the basket’s walls, Soldan Xivir expressed grave doubts about the mode of transportation. “You
travel to a strange land, Soldan-Shah. There could be many enemies, great armies to kill you. You should take guards and soldiers—a
whole fleet of these sand coracles.”
“Maybe I should,” Imir answered, “but if I did, we would never be finished in time for the winds to carry us. One thing I
learned during my reign is that such projects take on lives of their own. We would not depart for years! Besides, if we brought
along an invading army, what would the Nunghals think?”
“We will rely on our wits,” Saan said. “I always have.”
Asaddan smiled, showing the gap of his missing tooth. “There are things to fear everywhere. Do not be too afraid.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid,” Saan said.
“Neither am I.” The big Nunghal clapped the boy on the shoulder.
The large balloon sack of Yuarej silk had been stitched together and thoroughly sealed with pitch to make it both air-and
water-tight. To test its integrity, workers staked out the sack in an open clearing, where they built a large fire. The hot
air inflated the colorful silk bag like the bladder of some enormous beast, swelling the balloon until it strained against
the ropes that kept it tethered to the ground.
Meanwhile, heavy crates of dense black coal from Missinia were loaded aboard the coracle. The coal would burn long and hot
enough to keep the balloon inflated, provided that the embers did not spill out of the large iron brazier and set the wicker
basket aflame.
As the sun set that evening, Saan walked with Asaddan to the edge of the dunes. The Nunghal tilted his head upward, and his
nostrils flared as he sniffed the air. “The winds are already shifting. Feel the breeze picking up.”
Saan wiped his stinging eyes. “Does that mean it’s time?”
“Yes, it is time… time for me to go home.” He gazed out at the dunes with a longing expression. “You’ll get used to the grit
in your teeth.”
After the first night, having spoken her piece to Imir, Lithio had departed with a group of nobles, preferring her own comfortable
quarters back in Arikara. Saan, though, didn’t mind being away from the luxuries of the city. He was quite content to camp
out in the open, making plans for the adventure to come.
After they bedded down and the last campfires burned low under the bright wilderness of stars, Saan could barely sleep. He
lay on his cushions listening to the rustle of tent fabric, feeling the breezes gaining strength out in the desert, as if
the dunes were calling him. Thoughts of the upcoming great journey prevented him from falling asleep, though he knew he needed
to rest. He couldn’t imagine it would be easy to find a comfortable spot in the coracle’s cramped wicker basket.
Just as he began to doze, Saan heard a stirring outside the small tent, a rustle, then a pounding of hooves. He sat up and
shook the shoulder of Imir, who slept next to him. “Grandfather, I hear—”
Whoops and screams cracked the night. Guards shouted, “Desert bandits!”
Saan scrambled out of the tent on his hands and knees, looking from right to left; Imir struggled off of his cushions, sputtering.
In the dim glow from the campfires, Saan spotted a dozen veiled men on agile mares charging around the camp. Brandishing swords,
they slashed at the tents and ropes. One raider snatched a log from a campfire pit and threw it, still blazing, against a
tent.
Saan ducked as one of the raiders rushed by, howling. The man chopped at him with his sword, but Saan rolled and sprang back
to his feet, on his guard.
Imir finally burst from the tent, arms spread out to his sides and ready to grapple any opponent. On the other side of the
camp, Soldan Xivir bellowed for his guards, who were already grabbing swords and pikes to drive off the attack. The desert
mares easily swirled by as the bandits stole provisions, ruined piled supplies, and set another tent on fire.
Asaddan, who slept out under the stars with no need for a tent, stood like a contained thunderstorm. He let out a shrill banshee
whistle through his missing tooth, ripped out a tent pole, and used the makeshift staff to knock a bandit from his mount.
Spinning around, the Nunghal thrust the blunt pole into a second bandit’s stomach, making him drop his sword, and a follow-up
punch knocked the invader from his horse.
Riding past, another bandit slashed the ropes of Sherufa’s tent and tossed a flaming brand onto the fabric. Still inside,
the Saedran woman cried out and struggled beneath the weight of the collapsing canvas. As the tent caught fire, the bandit
thundered past and thrust his long sword into the cloth, but Sherufa squirmed away from the point.
Two bandits, grinning as they heard the female voice, converged on her tent and began cutting their way inside. One man reached
in, grabbed Sherufa by the arm, and tried to drag her out. The tent was fully on fire now. The second bandit seized the woman’s
hair and pulled. She thrashed and fought, but she was no match for them. They tried to throw her onto the back of a horse.
With a roar, Imir snatched up a fallen sword from the ground and—without hesitation, barely looking where he was going—charged
forward and thrust the curved blade right through the first bandit’s back. “Leave her alone!” He shoved hard until the point
emerged from beneath the desert man’s sternum.
As Imir fought to pull the sword free, the second attacker knocked Sherufa back down onto the burning tent. Turning to face
the former soldan-shah, he laughed at the plump old man standing there, sword drawn.
With a vicious stroke of the razor-edged blade, Imir lopped his head off.
He watched the man collapse, his neck spouting blood. Imir sniffed. “I ruled all the soldanates of Uraba. You think I don’t
remember how to fight?”
Imir pulled Sherufa off of the flaming tent ruins. The Saedran woman flailed at her singed hair, while he swatted out the
smoldering spots on her nightclothes. When Sherufa wavered, he steadied her. “You’re all right now.”
But the bandit attack continued around them.
Saan grabbed a curved sword from the first man Asaddan had unhorsed and brandished the heavy scimitar, two-handed, to defend
himself. Soldan-Shah Omra had trained him to be a fighter, and now that he was in a real fight, the young man felt his blood
pounding, adrenaline racing through his veins. He realized he was not frightened at all. If only his father could see him
now!
One bandit chuckled at the boy’s audacity and swung his scimitar, but Saan met the blade with his own, surprising the man.
With a parry, he slashed the bandit’s inner arm, and the man yelped as blood spurted. He wheeled his horse about, pressing
his other hand against the pulsing wound.
At the edge of the camp, the bandit leader shouted through the scarf that covered his face, “Take what you can, and go!” The
invaders snatched food and weapons as the Missinian guards rallied to defend themselves. Xivir’s men struck down two more
bandits before the rest of the raiding party thundered back into the starlit dunes, leaving their fallen behind.
Three camp archers launched a flight of arrows after the retreating men. One shaft plunged into the bandit leader’s meaty
shoulder, and he slumped over his horse but did not fall. He kept riding.
Soldan Xivir rallied the men. “Prepare for pursuit!”
Standing protectively close to Sen Sherufa, Imir stared at the burning tents, at the damage that had been done. “Leave them!
We have few enough men, and they could ambush us out there. Our priority is to protect the sand coracle.”
Xivir reddened, but he obeyed without voicing a complaint.
Flushed and breathless, Asaddan waited near the wicker basket and silk balloon sack, tentpole still gripped in his hands.
He had been ready to die to defend their vessel, so great was his desire to go home. Saan grinned at the Nunghal, who responded
with a gap-toothed smile of his own. They understood each other.
The night wind had picked up, and Saan could feel the increasing breezes. The camp lay in disarray, many of the tents ruined,
their supplies gone or scattered. But, all in all, disaster had been averted.
Imir announced, “We’d better depart as soon as the sun rises.”
Prester Hannes sat on deck in the blistering sun amid a group of huddled prisoners. The slaver dromond worked its way up the
rugged northern coast of the Middlesea; even from a distance, a smear of smoke marked their destination, the Gremurr mines.
The men chained beside him were sweaty, dirty, and miserable. They complained incessantly. “We are innocent! We have committed
no crime!” “We do not deserve this. Free us!” “I know many nobles. The soldan-shah will punish you if you don’t release me.”
But they were lying. The Urecari always lied. Hannes knew that not a single person here was innocent, and they all had unforgivable
heresy in their hearts. He remained quiet, watching, learning… and hating.
He had nearly made it home, within sight of Tierra… and then this setback. It could not be an accident: Ondun was showing
Hannes that he had further work to do, so he did not complain. He was merely a vessel of flesh created to serve the needs
of God.
Nevertheless, he did not like the idea of laboring in the mines.
As the dromond carried its prisoners toward a forbidding, rocky shore, Hannes liked the place even less. The mountains formed
impenetrable bastions with sheer cliffs pockmarked by mine tunnels. Mounds of shattered rock debris and tailings lay strewn
about at the base of each mine opening. Shirtless, filthy men worked with sledgehammers and pickaxes, breaking the rubble,
digging out veins of ore. Heavy barges rested against the reinforced wharves, weighed down with processed ingots or finished
metal sheets and swords. Additional barges lay at anchor farther out, waiting to be loaded with cargo.
Flatboats mounded with coal pulled up to smelters, where more sweaty men shoveled the black rock into bins. Hannes heard the
incessant clink of tools and crack of whips. Too thick for the sea breezes to scour away, a pall of smoke clogged the air,
caught in the valleys, and clung tenaciously to cliff faces. Upwind from the smoke, a small palace and several permanent-looking
homes belonged to the highest-ranking officials.
On the flat rocky shore were tents and wooden shacks, squalid shelters for the prisoners and slightly better barracks for
the soldier-guards. Hannes had lived in worse places, and he knew he could endure hard labor in the name of Ondun.
The slaver dromond tied up at a separate set of docks, where two men waited to meet the new arrivals. The first was a husky
man of about thirty years, well dressed and with somewhat effeminate features—obviously not a man accustomed to physical work.
Beside him stood a man of nearly the same height, but older and meaner looking, exuding implacability. His body was hard muscle,
his face rigid.
The pampered-looking man spoke up as crewmen unlocked the prisoners’ chains. “My name is Tukar, brother of Soldan-Shah Omra.”
He sounded proud of the fact. “I hold your lives in my hand. I am your master here. You will help us to create weapons and
armor for the glory of Urec.” He paused, as though expecting applause or cheers. The slave ship’s captain snarled, and the
prisoners mumbled their obligatory support as they shuffled toward the disembarkation ramp. Hannes made no sound at all.
The hard-looking man took one step forward. “And I am Zadar, the slave master. Tukar may hold your lives in his hands, but
I
control your level of misery. Your life in Gremurr will never be pleasant, but there are varying degrees of pain. I am the
man who makes that decision. I am the one you must impress.”
Hannes studied the two men and decided that Tukar was harmless; Zadar was the man to watch out for.
“Many hours of daylight remain,” Tukar said. “Zadar will issue your assignments. It’s time for you to get to work.”
After a week, most slaves surrendered any thought of resistance. Hannes did not. He settled into a routine of exhausting labor,
but a routine gave him the ability to plan. A routine allowed him to find weaknesses. He took his time. In his years in Uraba,
moving from village to village, he had learned patience.
He ignored the ache in his arms as he shoveled crushed ore into the open hatch of a reinforced cargo barge. Gremurr’s five
smelters processed some of the metal, but they did not have the capacity to produce all the copper, tin, and iron Uraba required.
Since the rugged rocky coastline offered little wood for making charcoal to fire the furnaces, heavily laden barges sailed
across the Middlesea with coal mined from rich veins in Missinia.
When the day’s shift ended, all the prisoners filed back to the encampment. There were no sikara priestesses here, no sunset
services, no prayers to Urec—no religion whatsoever. The mines were a harsh and godless place. These people were all followers
of Urec, but they had no faith—not the prisoners, not the guards, perhaps not even the administrators. Prester Hannes wondered,
quite seriously, whether Aiden preferred men to be entirely godless or to follow the
wrong
religion.