Forlorn Hope - Chapter 3

Silicia and the Village of a Thousand Villages

Sorry for the lack of illustration, I have been travelling and visiting family this week (and next) and have had no time to draw. An illustration will be added post-haste.

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Chuli clung to Tebin son of Tegar like moss on a stone. Her fingers entwined together around his waist as they walked the plains south-west, towards the setting moon, a flower crown of white and purple petals sitting on her ears. Under the sun they’d scavenged for food, hid in tall grasses and behind hills, all the while avoiding the Gör Khāni raiding parties. Fortunately the route south-west was open steppe followed by grazing lands and the Gör Khāni traversed them at full pelt to wet their moon blades or return loot to camp. Wolves were the greatest threat, and their solitary cousins direwolves, but like the carrion birds those beasts had found plentiful scavenging opportunities. Tebin refused to imagine where.

The walls of Silicia appeared on the horizon long before the sounds of the city reached the pair. Tebin’s legs were stiff and sore but he forged ahead. The grey stone walls rose indomitable from the land with each brick larger than his families yurt and a pair of statues, taller than the walls, holding up the gatehouse to welcome travellers.

On the left was a woman, an open palm outstretched, and on the right a man with his arms crossed. He wore a beard of thick curls and a helix crown. Against the walls of the city were lean-tos made of damaged felt rooves, blankets, and spears. Yurts populated the land lacking any pattern or thought. Horses wandered off to graze for a mile around had been picked clean and instead of tall grass there was nothing but pale soil cracking under the heat of the sun. More people than Tebin knew existed milled around outside under a constant cloud of noise and dust that drowned out the raging sea sieging the cliffs at the rear of Silicia.

Soon he and Chuli found themselves picking their way through the village where those with wolf head symbols lived next to eagles and monkeys shared cooking holes with serpents. It was not a single village but dozens, crammed together as if the world had shrunk over night. Chuli clung to her brother harder.

Hunters and warriors shared skins with settled folk and merchants. Men played dice and spoke in grunts and gestures for their words were too different but they all understood drinking and gambling. The thrum of noise barraged Tebin, his heart racing, and everywhere he looked he thought a fight would break out, but it didn’t. The women weaved and brewed, skinned and cured, keeping more to themselves and those of their family. Yet at the centre of the village of a thousand villages was a market. Carts were propped up on stones and barrels, filled with wares from bolts of silk to barrels of dried herring. Women and children dominated the bazaar trading and bartering as fiercely as the merchants. A man could laugh off a bad dice roll but a woman would fight for the fairest price.

Tebin wondered if anyone of his village had escaped but he had not seen any goats woven into yurts or on the backs of deels. Though none of his village owned any goats, not anymore. Old Galvin said he remembered owning goats but his wife said that had been his dada and they’d slaughtered the herd when he was young, though she couldn’t remember why. But the embroidered goats stuck and it was better than a cod or herring.

They rounded a corner and a cluster of children ran past, laughing and shouting, some near Tebin’s age, most nearer to Chuli’s. She stopped and for a moment loosened her grip on his waist. The children ran by, ignoring them, and disappeared into the bazaar. The eldest ran behind a stall and received a slap on the knuckles for abandoning his post. Tebin overheard, ‘You’ll take my place one day, can’t run off then,’ from the boy’s father. Tebin wanted to go up but hesitated. A quick glance down at his travel soiled clothes made the decision for him, he ran a hand through his hair but all he did was get tangled in the knots. Him and Chuli carried on to the gatehouse and its gargantuan statues. Tebin could now make out the knife behind the woman’s back, a vicious curved blade with a deadly point, a weapon for slitting throats. Then it dawned on him, the woman was Sel personified and that meant her counterpart was Sar, the sun, personified.  Vultures rested on his helix crown but from the ground the birds looked no bigger than beetles.

The iron gates stood open yet no one passed through. People clamoured beneath Sar’s boots screaming and shouting all at once so that nothing could be heard. Soldiers formed a wall either side of the gate to maintain a path into, and out of, the city. Tebin stayed at the edge watching the people swell and contract like a jellyfish. The guards bending and bowing but never breaking.

Horns blared from the mouths of Sar and Sel, red flames burned in Sar’s eyes and white ones in Sel’s. The crowd became inert and stared in Tebin’s direction, their tone becoming jubilant. Tebin felt a thousand eyes on him and he shirked away only to hear the beating of hooves behind him. Fear took him. Chuli tightened her grip and squealed. He turned, fists clenched, not that knuckles would do much good against a moon blade. Joy piqued in his heart and he  cheered with the crowds that now gathered in a pair of mile long snakes to create a path.

Prince Lothan galloped into the city at the head of his retinue, famed for exploits all across the Silician peninsula. The Prince failed to acknowledge the crowds, his expression stern and his brow dripping with sweat. Three men followed him closely, all dour in their expressions. Yet the man at the rear, a great bear of a man, waved and cheered, taking gifts from those who had nothing and tossed coins out into the crowds either side of him. He grasped as many hands as he could manage all the while balancing bronze mirrors, copper bowls, skins of kumis, and more on his saddle.

‘Who’s that?’ Tebin wondered with a voice as hoarse as the Drifting Sea was dry.

‘Chatogan, the Bear. He can tear a man in half, pull the legs off a goat, and lug a full cart by himself,’ an older man whistled through his teeth, a tear in his eye. ‘We’ll need more Chatogans for what’s coming.’

‘Huh?’ Tebin gazed up, puzzled.

‘War, child. War. You think the Gör Khāni will be satisfied with our measly trinkets. No they’ll put this place to the sword, and the Temple of Sel, if we let them. That’s why we need more Chatogans,’ the man cuffed Tebin round the ear. ‘Now get. I have enough grandchildren to remember names for.’ The old man wandered back into the village of a thousand villages.

Tebin sighed, ‘But we have no where to go.’ He kicked the dust and added to the cloud that hung in the air. The guards had broken ranks and now the great flood of humanity lurched forward into the city, and from it. The soldiers paired up, some went into the warren of yurts and bazaars while others patrolled away from the city.

‘No where to go?’ A grittier man said. ‘Turn out your pockets then.’

‘We haven’t got anything,’ Tebin put an arm around Chuli.

‘You gotta have something, a copper?’

Tebin shook his head, dust and grime dislodged to scatter about his shoulders.

‘Liar.’

Tebin kissed dirt before he saw the fist. The taste of iron spilled across his tongue, his jaw throbbed. Chuli screamed. His vision was blurred.

‘Give us your coin,’ the mugger cast a long shadow over Tebin.

‘I don’t have anything,’ Tebin felt the wind leave him as the man’s boot cracked against his ribs. He doubled over unwillingly. Blood streaked across the dusty earth. Is that mine?

More footsteps sounded, heavy ones with the rattle of steel. ‘Check him for weapons, Poyad.’

Tebin curled up on the ground, Chuli rocking him side-to-side. Her life was his to protect yet how was he meant to do that without a weapon, or against a grown man? He waited for the next kick but it never came.

‘Now, I’m a refugee. I haven’t anything on me,’ the mugger said.

Steel clattered to the ground beside Tebin. He opened his eyes to see a knife with a chipped blade and a hemp hilt but a knife all the same. Beyond was a set of greaves and wearing them a soldier of Silicia. A second knife rang out against the cracked earth.

The other soldier sighed, ‘That’s a night in a cell for you. Take him up the tower, Poyad.’

‘Yup,’ was all Poyad said.

‘Like hell!’ The mugger wrestled against the metal clad Poyad. More blood watered the ground, a lot more. Tebin swallowed hard and found his feet, the pain in his gut lessening. The mugger lay on the ground, his guts in his hand as he mouthed like a fish for his final moments.

‘Fool,’ the other soldier advanced and in a silent motion pressed his own sword through the dying man’s neck. ‘Save you the fifteen minutes,’ he turned. One eye peered down on Tebin and Chuli. The other eye was a mangled scar. ‘Name.’

Tebin err’d. ‘Tebin son of Tegar.’

‘Where is Tegar?’

‘Dead.’

‘Mother?’

‘Dead.’

He tsk’d and scratched the scar over his missing eye. ‘Poyad, deal with that. You two come with me.’ One Eye marched towards the gatehouse in such a haste Tebin and Chuli ran to keep up. ‘Keep close. I’ll get you to the citadel and someone else will take you to the palace orphanage. I don’t what that Princess is thinking but no way she has enough beds for you all, nor food or clothes, but who am I to ask questions.’

‘Princess?’

‘You’ll find out. Keep up!’ One Eye barged his way between Sel and Sar. Tebin and Chuli darted through in his wake.

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Merry Christmas and many thanks for reading!