Chapter One: The Market
CHAPTER ONE: THE MARKET
All the wide world, earth and sea and sky, glowed and burned with the light of the south. The winds began at the Fires of the South, and they seemed to glow with their golden fire as they suffused all of the great city of Medejea. The Gulf of Medejea was a sweeping sheet of coppery waves glowing with fire where the light touched their white crests. It boiled open at the mouth of the Medea river, and light poured up the broad muddy current, to wash over the entire city sprawling upon the banks of the Medea. Medejea baked in the sun, ancient, vast and arrogant. The sun flowed through vast gardens and monumental courtyards, reached under huge arches carved of sandstone and marble, illuminated ancient towers and temples and columns inlaid with shining gold and carved with glorious depictions of battles and triumphs long forgotten in this most ancient city.
To approach the city from any way was to pass down through the numerous crooked passes in the Ivory Hills, bask in the sunlight amidst a vast fertile bowl of orchards, gardens, strip fields solid with rich crop, and then approach the towering walls of baked brick and mud which encircled the ancient city. The Bronze Gate, the Blue Gate, and the Gate of Mandroes of the Many Eyes were monumental, built by emperors long past to celebrate their entry, decorated in slabs of glazed blue marble, fluted columns, and the golden heads of dragons, bulls and lions, with glittering gemstone eyes. Beyond these lay the broad central streets, between towering four-storey blocks, homes crammed with hundreds of thousand living piled atop one another like beasts crammed in a barn. The noise was tremendous, a cacophony of curses, jokes, bellows and calls in half a hundred tongues, mixed with the din of pack-animals and the constant noise pouring from the ports. The vast harbour quilted the riverside in cranes and quays, thousands of stalls and blankets sweltering in the sun where buyers and sellers worked day and night in the blazing sun.
Dealers in every eastern commodity huddled in their communes, keeping the old traditions of marble columns and finery, while outside the city rotted like bad meat, and the flood of slaves and slavers, urchins, thieves and peddlers were crows strutting to pick for morsels. Mud-brick walls and woven grass roofs made up the spiderweb of broad straight streets, which were quickly cut by twisting alleys and stinking gutters. The stone domes of the city shrines and temples were rare hills rising amongst the small mean buildings packed cheek by jowl, and they were thickest beside the huge river harbour. A warm wind as thick as syrup curled throughout the port, rustling the broad rough sails of the traders, and whistling between the huge stone warehouses. Behind these was a labyrinth of granaries, storerooms, hovels and seedy cookhouses. Peddlers spread their blankets and covered them in trinkets in street corners, cutpurses stalked through crowds and hired blades, thieves and kidnappers stood around waiting for business. The ships that came into port were largely loaded down with the silks and pottery and metals of the east and the west, but the largest trade was in flesh, for the slave market was forever in session in Medejea. The barges were packed bow to stern with sweaty chained flesh, as they were carried from the gulf and the river, and back around.
Upon raised platforms rising like hills above the stews of the streets, built from colossal blocks of dried mud, the slavers did their trading. They were penned in the long wooden halls built around the platforms, but to sell that day a great crowd of them lounged or huddled at the end of the platform, clad in their heavy bronze chains and kept in order by a score of men carrying long spears and copper-tipped whips.
At the other end, the buyers lounged in wicker seats draped in the luxurious furs of great cats, spotted and striped in vivid desert hues. The slaves they had brough fanned them with snowy ostrich plumes or great peacock fans, handed them sweet juices or poured icedwine, and surveyed the crowd of wares as intently as their masters. Only their looks were of jealousy and fear rather than languid curiosity. The most inquisitive looks fell upon a tall slave sitting apart from the rest. He sat hunched to cover his nakedness, but he could not disguise himself when he seemed to hold himself higher than any other slave, not deigning to sit near any of them. Neither did it hide his impressive stature. He was taller than most men, with long straight limbs thick with muscle. His torso was marked with a few scars, clean cuts from blades or claws. They showed fat and brown as rows of buried walnuts against the charcoal-blackness of his skin. It all marked him as a man of the far, sun-burned south. Among a city of earthy red skin, where most slaves were hued in copper from the east or olive-skinned from the north, he showed like a great black ram amongst ewes.
“Sold to my lord in red,” one auctioneer cried, brandishing his copper baton as he signalled two of the guardsmen to move the reluctant slave along.
“Which to buy now, my lords?” another asked them.
“Stop having us dance for chattel, man. Bring out the main course, that black bear from the side,” roared a burly merchant with a black panther skin tossed over his chair and one shoulder. A chorus of agreement rose from the others. The auctioneers sighed deeply.
“My lords, you would deprive me of my finest wares,” one lamented, before he flashed a broad white grin and motioned for two guards who began striding towards the tall dark slave. Before they could even have reached him the tips of their spears he was springing to his feet. He stood in a ready stance, crouching like a tiger, legs parted, and knees bent. His whole body was tensed like a bowstring pulled taut. He panted so deeply it was almost a snarl.
“Down slave,” the auctioneer snarled, as his guardsmen retreated and other began uncoiling their whips. After a stretched moment however, the slave shrugged and slumped back into a more suitably submissive stance and allowed the guards to trail him to the selling block. The slaves stood atop a rough-hewn piece of red granite. Nothing could resemble a blood-stained pyre more. standing on the sun-baked stone the slave was a black tower above them all, raised for the buyers to crane and study and examine like a horse to buy.
“A thousand silvers,” the burly merchant casually tossed out his offer.
“Turn for them, slave,” the auctioneer demanded, casting an unimpressed look back over his shoulder at the buyer. The other auctioneer moulded his features into something good humoured. “My lord, look at this lion of the south. Buy him and make a guardsman, no one would dare challenge you.” The slave conceded a sideways nod, as if to agree that man had points. “Three thousand silvers,” the burly man begrudged.
“Five thousand,” an old spice merchant offered, snorting at the burly merchant, lean and leathery as a vulture.
A fat old harridan licked her lips as she admired the dark slave’s arms. “Six thousand,” she shrilled. The bids continued climbing, the merchants crying higher and higher. They reached twelve thousand swiftly. The other slaves stared incredulously, their eyes fat with envy, while the slaver's eyes were shining with profit, scarcely believing their luck.
A few new buyers were even carried up to the ramp and threw out new bids; a freesword captain in cracked leather and dusty bronze offered fourteen thousand, after the slavers allowed the dark slave to swing a sword clumsily.
“He could learn,” the freesword remarked, and then bid even higher. The bids reached a crescendo, of fifteen thousand and only ever edging higher, when a voice like an icy wind sliced through the babble.
“Ten thousand silvers,” it hissed. The whisper of death. Walking from the back of the crowd, a lone figure stalked forwards on legs long and thin like a vulture padding towards carrion.
Slowly and shakily, a fat man with a dyed purple beard rose up, a Phylasian shaking with fear. Still, he countered, “twelve thousand silvers.” The figure in the cloak snarled, and behind him a dozen bronze-skinned men hefted spiked axes and short brutal swords. Then he called out piercingly, “a hundred thousand silvers.” Shocked gasps filled the site, and a hush seemed to fall for a mile as the whisper of silver travelled. They had the heavy chains clanking off his hands in half a second. As leather bags of silver came forth to be poured out for the sellers, whose eyes glistened with greed, the cloaked man came forwards to the slave.
He suddenly stuck out a skeletal hand, and ran a finger with a sharp, bony tip across the slave’s jaw, cheekbones, nose, prodded at his arms and chest and stomach. Beneath the hood’s peak, a pair of withered lips curled into a grin around its blackened teeth.
“A fine vessel,” the figure whispered, “worthy of Blais’Ankhor.” His eyes glowed crimson as he spoke the name. He spun sharply on his heel and strode away, calling to his men, “bring it along.” They came to seize him by the arms, but he strode to his feet suddenly, bounding like a wildcat, and walked alongside them easily. For a second though, he lagged behind as they passed one of his captors. The man had been lifting silver with both hands and allowing it to pour back through his fingers into a great copper bowl, but he turned to see the slave, his lip curling with a smile of contempt. It froze when he saw the ebony man’s broad white grin. His eyes were liquid gold, the jut of his jaw proud, regal and natural.
The man leaned over to the shocked slaver and whispered in his ear. “I am Prince Ossaker of the Afkrafeena. I may be sold today but I shall be free tomorrow, and a sword will be back in my hand.” He said it all in fluent Medejean, his accent broad but his voice was cultured and easy. His smile never changed from pleasant, but his eyes were as cold as a lion watching a gazelle cower.
“Watch yourself, man who sells other men as if we were beasts. For as soon as I have dealt with whatever this creature is, I shall return for you.” He strode off suddenly behind the guardsmen, who seemed the farthest thing from captors. He stood a head taller than any of them, his hands looked strong enough to tear their heads from their shoulders alone, and the old man, despite any of the magic he reeked of, would take as much cutting as a husk of sand and dust. The slaver found his knees shaking, and he dashed from the slaver’s platform, hands spilling with silver coins like teardrops. Ignoring the outraged cries of his business partner behind him, he dashed towards the harbour to barter for a ship.
Meanwhile Ossaker walked easily behind the sorcerer, working through the crowded streets as people parted before them, making for a district of sandstone towers which shone red as blood in the city’s corner. And all were ignorant to the cunning thoughts behind the golden eyes, as the wolf walked behind sheep thinking they were hounds, his mind burning with thoughts of sword and vengeance. Simply waiting, like a predator ranging. Whatever came he would watch it fearlessly. Ossaker strode on with his easy smile.
