Emrez made Arn and Gamden man the oars this time, as he captained their little rowboat across the last few waves to the shore. They were landing slightly east of the smouldering city, just outside the wooden wall that Ponark had called the “siege wall.” Yet another term with which Arn was unfamiliar. It was harsh labour under the scalding sun; Arn’s muscles—regrown on fish and a salted meat called “boar”—were glistening with sweat by the time he put down the oars. Ponark grabbed a wooden platform that extended into the water and pulled them alongside it. Others quickly tied ropes around wooden pegs on the deck of the platform while Arn wondered how such a thing could have been built, into the ocean, like that. Then Arn and Gamden were brought ashore under the protection of a dozen of Emrez’s armed fighters.
The siege wall served as a guide for the sprawling camp through which they walked. While he had first glimpsed wooden structures clumped into the occasional village along this barrier, Arn now realized that the space between each was composed of canvas triangles. He spotted men or women sleeping in some as they walked along, and for the hundredth time he marvelled at the sheer number of people that existed beyond Razaad.
“Where are we going?” Arn wondered out loud. Only Gamden could understand him.
Gamden watched a man marching along with a long pole topped by a metal crescent. The man moved aside to allow Emrez’s escort past him. “Nowhere good,” Gamden murmured.
Ahead, two men spilled into the street from a tent, smashing one another with their fists and throwing up dirt from the foot-trodden path. A man near the wooden wall advanced on them, shouting furiously, but not intervening. Emrez’s group didn’t stop for the fight—they didn’t have the honour of Razaad to witness the spectacle. Arn turned and walked backwards as they passed, so he could see the victor rise, pommelling his opponent’s face with both red-knuckles hands. The shouting man dragged him away.
When they neared the first village with roofs, Arn saw the first building was only inhabited by women. Many wore clothing designs like those of Razaad which emphasized ventilation over coverage, but the scant garb was not made of tough leather, but soft, shimmering material. Arn saw one woman walking away from the street’s edge, going indoors, and he realized her bare back was branded like Gamden’s and presumably his own. Between her bony shoulder-blades was a circular scar filled with symbols that resembled what Arn had seen Morlo write at his healer’s table. Beneath the letters were four empty squares—a pattern of sorts. What was the purpose of the elaborate burn?
He began to see more brands. Many labourers they passed—carrying timber or furs—had holes sewn in their tunics to display their heat scars. Others were shirtless, like the first woman Arn had seen with it.
For the first time, Arn began to see men and women with skin as pale as his own. There were neither more nor less of them with brands than of any other complexion. Then, they passed a field strewn with blood—Arn’s pace slowed as he looked at it. There was a thick wooden post in the middle of the field, not unlike a branchless tree. A tanned man was tied to the stake, his hands bound ahead of him so that his belly was pressed against the smooth, bloodstained wood. Another man stood nearby, and, as Arn and Gamden stopped in horror, he lifted a long leather strand and cracked it across the man’s back. A line of blood opened up and the prisoner cried out.
“What reason?” Arn asked Emrez, pacing toward the captain after one of the crewmen had shoved him forward. “Why they… hurt him?”
“Itupuek,” Emrez said. He paused. “He did not listen.”
Arn walked on blindly. Gamden grunted emphatically to get his attention without speaking. Arn glanced at him and whispered, “What?”
“Now or never,” Gamden drawled. “That will soon be us.”
“You don’t know that,” Arn said. “We tried to fight them before, in Tiyess. We shouldn’t have survived but we did. We’ll keep doing that.”
“Survival?” Gamden asked. “I know we were on the island a while, friend, but there’s more to life than surviving.”
Arn scoffed and kept on walking. Emrez led his group out of the wooden settlement and along a stretch of nearly abandoned path. He heard the men use another word for it—“road.” They saw warriors along the wall armed with swords and spears. Many were tattooed with bright tree-like art or depictions of womanly curves. Many had skulls or skeletons on them—they were embracing the sinister spirits of the Deep, no doubt. Many of the warriors stared up at the smoky city and Arn noted a few men on the stone walls up there, staring down at the siege wall. What sort of fight was this?
Some of the fighters Arn passed carried strange lengths of wood that were bent by a strand of sinew; was that another type of weapon?
Once, they passed a strange four-legged animal; it was covered in hair much like a person’s, unlike the wild cats of Scoa or the leathery water scales of Razaad. It stood beside a man and looked up into Arn’s face as they neared it; Arn was chilled to the bone by its eerie awareness of his presence. This was no ordinary beast.
After a few hours of walking and several other wooden villages, they reached their apparent destination. Emrez said something to Ponark that Arn didn’t catch, and Ponark went ahead with one other sailor of his choice. Emrez led Arn, Gamden, and the rest of their escort, through a wooden archway and into a strange settlement. Here, most of the structures were simply made of slats of wood. Planks blocked doorways and all manner of unhappy people sat or lay inside. All of them were branded like Arn, as well as most of the men and women in the roads. It seemed that anyone who was not branded here was a fighter or guard.
They came out onto a wooden platform overlooking a wide, shallow pit. Though it had been dug into the dirt, wooden slats made the roads clear, and logs or wooden contraptions filled the in-between spaces with seating. Many men and women sat in these spaces with gleaming robes or clean pastel-coloured tunics. Dozens of them also had armour, though it was decorated with metal and their weapons looked too shiny to have been used anytime recently.
In the center of the pit was a large wooden platform. Five men faced the seating area for the stage—three of them wore helmets and said not a word. Another man was nude aside from a simple cloth around their waist, while the last was a woman with braided hair layered over a sheen grass-green shawl. She spoke loudly to the crowd. “He can carry irlin his weight on his shoulders, lora lerdith to danrani he atoh, pelko of his limp.”
Then she held out her hand toward the other end of the platform and snapped her fingers. The man in loincloth walked in the direction she had indicated, demonstrating his limp.
The onlookers were quiet aside from the hubbub of conversation. After a few moments, one man shouted something that echoed too much for Arn to make out. Another barked, “Ad’exa!” Arn thought it sounded similar to the disjointed way these people spoke of numbers, but he was not certain.
“What is ‘danrani’?” Arn asked one of the sailors.
The man shoved Arn to the left of the pit. Arn had not noticed, but some of the sailors had headed that way with Emrez. Gamden trailed sullenly between Arn and that group. Arn hoped he would not try fighting the sailors; there were too many guards in this strange village. Arn reluctantly followed Emrez down a short slope beside the pit. Ponark and his companion had returned with a roll of parchment—something Morlo had tried to teach Arn about. Arn was sad they had left the friendly healer on the ship today.
“Good,” Emrez said loudly. He looked over the document and then passed it to a stranger—a man in a linen coat that stood at a table. Past the table was a line of about twelve people. Six of them wore only simple clothing around their privates, while the others were as colourfully dressed as Captain Emrez himself.
Ponark advanced toward Arn at a nod from the Captain. He grabbed the neck of Arn’s tunic and Arn swatted his arms away. To retaliate, Ponark smashed his knuckles into Arn’s nose. Arn cried out and stepped back, raising his fists in front of him. Two of Emrez’s sailors grabbed him from behind and forced his arms behind his back. Arn felt them bind his arms with scraping rope and then shove him back toward Ponark. With a scowl, Ponark yanked out his dagger. Gamden cried out to try stopping the obvious attack from coming, but the sailors kept him back. Then, Ponark grabbed Arn’s tunic again and sliced it open in the front. He pulled the garb off, leaving Arn with nothing more than a nick near his collarbone.
They’re putting me on the stage, Arn realized. When he looked to Gamden, he realized the sailors had done the same to him. Behind Gamden, Arn noticed that several of the seated men and women had been watching the commotion Arn had caused. As their attention was called back to the stage, Arn glanced at Emrez—and scowled in response to his malicious grin.
Ponark took Arn and Gamden’s trousers as well and then Emrez lifted his hand to wave them toward him. Looking around, Arn decided he had no choice. He approached Emrez, and, as directed, stepped past him into the line. Gamden followed behind him, and Emrez soon stood behind them both. None of the Captain’s subordinates followed—this line was for leaders and branded people only.
It took nearly an hour for the line to advance across the stage. Each time, the branded individual was made to stand before the crowd. Sometimes, before calling out numbers, the onlookers would demand something of the leader. Once, it was to remove more clothes from a branded woman; the heavyset man had complied while his branded charge began to weep and cover herself. In another instance, a man from the crowd asked that a branded man spar with a wooden post for a moment, then offered a number which made the branded man’s superior chuckle and speak affirmation.
The strange sport gradually began to make sense to Arn. These people were giving their branded subordinates over to the members of the audience that they liked the most. For what purpose? Were these people as vengeful as the worst of Razaad—bargaining to have a chance to draw blood at that post from the subordinates they gained? That hardly made sense, even after all Arn had seen or done.
“Now it atoh our time,” Emrez told Arn, after the stage was vacated. He held out his hand so Arn would walk in front of him. With bound hands and a bleeding nose, Arn had little choice. He walked up the slanted board and onto the wooden platform. The hubbub of conversation began to ebb, and he watched as some of the strange people leaned forward to focus on him.
Gamden stood uncomfortably beside Arn—his trembling hands and knees were easily visible.
Captain Emrez walked to the front of the stage and flourished a hand at the same time as bowing his head. “An Orrene taderal I bring to you—a man out of dega. Ettil on an island, my crew found him,” he declared. “He atha tadra more than skin and pillaran, but he talzalo. See all his scars—his tirala nose, repirn wounds, tekisan, grepis marks.” Emrez indicated the gash across Arn’s face, the various lines crossing his torso, the bites left by water scales or screechers.
Arn bowed his head as the crowd watched the display—his past suffering captivated them.
Emrez went on, “Sannulalo it all, Arn has. I must melath you: he atoh a tikio man.” The burly man put his fingers on his temples and wobbled his head. Was he trying to explain why they had shaved off all Arn’s hair? “He is quetath by dreams and seldoran.” Arn wondered what use his dreams were to these people. The Captain said, “He atoh a skilled ozaral, dakan this. He nearly zaralo my first mate, and he pevisalo the guards, before athala pladalo.”
There was a pause as Emrez waited to see if anyone in the crowd spoke up. A few of the seated men leaned their heads together to discuss the Captain’s words. Arn needed to understand more. He looked at Gamden, but his friend had slumped his shoulders and hung his head in shame.
“Thanks to his ghelluna, he can ath pazlo. You can make a goeva out of Arn,” Emrez assured them.
“Irma lonu,” called one woman, without much effort.
Emrez smiled. That was a good number to him. He looked at the others—the small group of men were still speaking in a huddle.
“How strong is he?” a white-haired man questioned.
“He pulled the oars for my rowboat,” Emrez said. “He—”
The old timer waved one hand dismissively. “Have him lift one of the rocks.”
Emrez grabbed Arn around the back of the neck and steered him across the stage to a selection of several large boulders. With a shove, he sent Arn down to the wooden platform to grab one. Gamden, striding along behind, looked at Emrez inquisitively. The Captain barked, “Lift one!”
Gamden reluctantly joined Arn. They struggled against the sizeable weights, sharp edges scraping their hands or drawing points of blood from their shins. Eventually, they managed to heft them up to their waists. In the corner of his eye, Arn saw the white-haired man lean back unimpressed.
Emrez quickly defended Arn and his friend. He held up two fingers. “We found the isle only irma months ifen. There were ursa vilelu trees.”
Two months? Has it even been two months? Arn wondered. He dropped the rock with a loud smash, though Gamden still held his. Emrez turned to glare at Arn with fury, and Arn simmered back. If Emrez needed more display of strength, Arn would pull his ribs out one-by-one. This was humiliating and pointless.
“Two months?” one of the men asked from the discussion huddle. “Ahn’rula?”
Emrez nodded.
The white-haired man was staring at Arn, then glanced at Gamden. “Dexa lonu,” he said, with a small smile. “I like his kadurad.”
Emrez’s eyes lit up.
“No, no,” sighed the woman who had first spoken. She stood up anxiously. “Kala lonu dexas.”
“Bah,” sighed the speaker from the group of men. He leaned back and crossed his arms with frustration.
The old man glared at the woman who had rebutted his number. “Oda lonu. Today.”
“Done,” chirped Captain Emrez, eliciting a frustrated sigh from the woman who sat back down. The old man remained lounging in his chair and waved to one of the armed guards behind the seating area. He snapped his fingers toward the far side of the stage and the guard walked that way. Emrez shoved Arn in that direction, waiting for Gamden to fall in line before following them to the edge of the platform.
They marched down another plank there to a short wooden table. Benches were prepared and Emrez produced the scroll that Ponark had brought to him. He held a candle to one point of the parchment and a lump that looked like shiny tree sap began to melt from a contoured design into a liquid puddle. He passed the document across to the old man’s guard, and a metal ring was pressed into the hot liquid until it dried there. The guard said, “Master Quenden,” to one of the nearby servants. The man produced a bird feather, dipped it in a black oil, and scrawled some strange letters beside the sappy lump. Then, the scroll was tied up again, and slipped into the guard’s pack. When Arn followed the guard with his eyes, he spotted Captain Emrez already stepping to the edge of the seating area. The broad man shook hands with the old timer—then another servant handed Emrez a small wooden box. The contents were clearly heavy as Emrez held it firmly with both hands.
Gamden started to follow Emrez up the slope at the edge of the pit, but the Captain turned back and stared at him. Then, he said to Arn, “You stay. You go with Master Quenden now. Thank you for this.” He patted the wooden box, smiled his cruel humour, and marched out of the pit.
“Arn, is it?” asked the old man, striding across the wooden floorboards. “Do you understand me?”
Arn nodded reluctantly.
“My guard will bring you to my… home. We will speak soon.” Master Quenden’s long white hair was bound in three places with shiny black clasps, forming something similar to a braid. He wore metallic rings, and strings made of shiny metal hung around his neck.
Arn doubted those soft hands had ever held a weapon. He could break this man’s neck with ease, unlike Emrez’s sailors. Arn glanced at Gamden and smiled. “See? We will survive Quenden easily enough.”
Gamden frowned and glanced at Quenden’s armed guard. Well, we’ll see his home, Arn thought. Master Quenden seemed delighted by what Arn had said to Gamden, though Arn did not expect he could understand the language of Razaad. Arn looked back at Quenden and spread his arms. “What?” he asked, in the man’s own tongue.
Master Quenden chuckled. “You atoh tikio,” he said.
Arn shook his head. He was tired of trying to understand their strange language. He followed the old man’s guard up and out of the pit.