Authors: Sam Barone
And it was good water. No one got ill from drinking the water in and around Orak, though Esk kar had gotten sick enough times in other lands drinking bad water, and he’d seen men die from drinking tainted water. He knew that in the dry lands away from the river, wells often produced a bitter - tasting water that could make even a strong man sick to his stomach.
Now Esk kar understood that the water in the river by itself didn’t help the farmers. What made the farms successful were the irrigation ditches that delivered the water where it was needed. The river merely provided the force to move the water, while Rebba and his people channeled it. He hadn’t realized how critical the hundreds of ditches that criss - crossed the land were, or how complicated their design and construction.
By the time Esk kar and Trella left Rebba’s house it was quite dark and one of the guards carried a torch to light the way. The cook had saved their dinner, and Esk kar and Trella decided to eat alone in the upper room. Esk kar said little during the meal; he kept thinking about Rebba’s words. When he finished eating, he found himself staring at the crust of bread that remained uneaten on his plate.
“You’re quiet tonight, Esk kar,” Trella commented as she finished her bread and vegetables. “Did Rebba tell you more than you wanted to know about farming?”
Esk kar looked at Trella across the table. “Until today, I had always thought farming was for those too weak to fight, or too unskilled to learn a trade. Now I learn that farming is the most difficult of trades, and the one most important to the village.”
“What is important is that you now understand how the village works.
You know how the farmers grow their crops and deal with the traders, how the artisans make tools, and the builders create homes. You know how the smiths make bronze and how the boatmen ply their trade. From now on, when the nobles speak, you’ll understand not only what they say, but how they think.”
Esk kar didn’t answer. After a moment Trella arose and gathered up the empty plates and carried them out of the room. He scarcely noticed her going. He sat there, thinking not only about Rebba’s words, but Trella’s as well.
Esk kar had lived in and about villages for half his life and had never given them a second thought. A village was only an opportunity to get food or wine, buy or repair weapons, trade horses, or even spend the night in relative safety. They provided places to visit, pass through, or stay for a while. Some were large, others small, but always they were surrounded by farms and herds, so commonplace as to be unremarkable. But now he understood that everything started with the farms. The farms held the real wealth.
For all of his life Esk kar had sought gold. With gold, one could buy food, weapons, horses, even men. Since he’d left the Alur Meriki, gold, or the lack of it, had always been the most important element in his life, driving him from place to place, from fight to fight. Now he learned gold was less than nothing. The farmers on their land created the gold. By producing grain and other food stocks, they started the chain of events that lifted gold from the earth. The farms were the foundation for all of Orak’s activities. Without the farms, there could be no village. Without the village, there could be no artisans or smiths, no nobles or soldiers. Without the farms, there would be no need for a wall to defend the village.
Suddenly he had an insight about the Alur Meriki. Their leaders must understand these same mysteries. Why else were they always burning and destroying the farms as they passed through the land? It wasn’t enough to simply take the crops, but the farmers must be killed, and the land made barren as often as possible. The steppes people, too, understood the need to keep the crop production down, lest there be too many farmers producing too much food. That might lead to too many men opposing them someday. Exactly what had happened here in Orak.
If the farm production in Orak could be increased further, then even more men would be available to fight. That led Esk kar to another insight.
The other villages up and down the river had their own ways, their own petty nobles. But if those villages could be brought under Orak’s control, then their surplus would add to the wealth and strength of Orak.
By explaining how the crops were sown and harvested Rebba had indeed revealed one of the mysteries of life. Now Esk kar had learned another, one that Trella, Nicar, and the nobles already knew. The villagers might all rely on each other’s skills to survive, but they all depended on the farms to create the wealth that allowed Orak to grow and prosper, and that allowed the gold to flow throughout the land.
The thought of gold made him smile. Esk kar remembered his feelings when Nicar had sent his first month’s pay. His delight at the twenty gold coins now seemed childish. The real wealth grew in the fields. The golden coins that passed from hand to hand were only another way of storing grain. In the last few months he’d come to value gold less and less. He now understood that it was just a means to an end, something he needed right now to pay for the wall and the soldiers, but just a tool nevertheless. Trella had understood that from the start.
A sound made him look up from the table. He saw Trella leaning against the door. “Have you been there long?” He shifted in the chair and held out his hand to her.
“You seemed lost in thought and I didn’t want to disturb you. Are you still thinking about Rebba and his farm?” She crossed the room and took his hand.
He put his arms around her waist and held her for a moment, his face against the softness of her breasts, then pulled her down onto his lap. “No, I was thinking about you. Do you know that you are very wise for someone so young?”
She put her arms around his neck and let herself lean against him.
“I’m not so young anymore, Esk kar. Some girls my age have birthed two children. Now I’m just a woman … your woman.”
“Yes, woman,” he answered, looking into her eyes. “How much gold do you think you are worth to me?”
The odd question surprised her, and for a moment doubt appeared in her eyes. “Do you wish to sell me, then?”
He ran his fingers through her hair, enjoying the feel of it. “Today Rebba explained many things to me. But today, Trella, I learned what the true value of gold is.” He kissed her gently. “Now I know why you’re worth more than all the gold in the land.” Again he kissed her, harder this time, and let his hand trace the outline of her body. “I think it is time to go to bed.”
“Yes, master,” she answered, as she put her arms around him. But her smile and her eyes promised much, much more.
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–-
Thutmose - sin led the way along the winding trail, his horse avoiding the loose stones and debris. The hooves of many horses marked their passage in the rocky soil. His men trailed behind him. None of them spoke. No one laughed; not since they reached the place where the first clash occurred.
A mile behind them, a dozen Alur Meriki bodies, fl esh already picked from their scattered bones, showed where they had engaged the Ur Nammu. The absence of Ur Nammu bodies confirmed what Thutmose - sin already knew: a force of warriors had defeated his men so completely that their conquerors had time to gather and bury their dead.
The trail led deeper into the foothills, winding its way between cliff walls and alluvial flows. Thutmose - sin knew immediately when he reached the canyon where the slaughter had taken place. Even eight days had not settled the signs of earth churned to clods by a hundred horses.
Urgo waited for him there, just outside the canyon’s entrance, with a handful of men.
Thutmose - sin stopped beside him, trying to visualize what had happened. The Alur Meriki had pursued the Ur Nammu to this place. Either that, or they had been lured there. Whatever the reason, his men had ridden in, and none had survived.
“Issogu … Markad …” Thutmose - sin called out to his subcommanders riding just behind. “Send trackers along the canyon walls. Look for tracks, anything left behind.” He turned to his remaining subcommander.
“Behzad, bring ten men on foot, and follow me. Search the ground as you go. The rest of you stay here.”
He touched his heels to the horse. The animal lifted its head and stepped forward. Urgo guided his horse alongside. The trail twisted along the rock wall almost immediately, and as soon as Thutmose - sin entered the curve, the smells and sight of the dead reached him.
At the far end of the canyon carrion eaters, birds, animals, and insects, thronged about the Alur Meriki carcasses. Even animals that normally fought each other for food feasted together, so plentiful was the human flesh. As Thutmose - sin drew closer, they moved grudgingly away, annoyed at the interruption of their repast, scurrying up the slopes or flapping wings until they lurched noisily into the sky.
A single lance protruded from the pile of broken bones and rotting fl esh, a dirty yellow streamer spotted with bird droppings hanging limply in the still air.
Twisting about, he studied the death scene, examining the steep ramparts surrounding him. The nearly sheer walls held no easy place to position men, let alone hide them. Thutmose - sin saw only a few places where a man might cling to his footing long enough to work a bow.
Beneath him, battle debris littered the ground. Shattered swords, broken lances, and bloodstained rags lay amidst the animal and human bones.
Arrows, most of them snapped off, still protruded from some of the bodies.
Thutmose - sin’s eyes searched the ground, but he stayed on his horse; the animal had to be firmly urged to guide it close to the pile of the dead.
“Sarrum, look at this.” A warrior, holding an arrow in his hand, ran up to Thutmose - sin.
A glance told Thutmose - sin why the man had noticed it. The arrow’s barb was missing and the shaft broken off just behind the binding. Even so, the shaft stretched longer than any arrows his men used, and when he took the arrow in his hand, he felt the extra thickness.
He handed the unusual shaft to Urgo, who studied it for a moment.
“Ah, I’ve seen these before, a few years ago, when we raided to the far north. There was a clan that used such long shafts. Good bowmen.” He scratched his beard for a moment. “But they were not horse people. They lived high on the steppes, in thick forests.”
“Look for more of these,” Thutmose - sin ordered, taking the shaft from Urgo and handing it back to the warrior. “Show it to the others as well.”
His men found three more such shafts, all broken or damaged. Their presence convinced him that others beside Ur Nammu had fought his men. Thutmose - sin turned to the old clan leader. “Bring twenty men in.
Have them clear the bodies from the burial place. Then have them dig up the grave.”
Urgo’s mouth hung open for a moment. “But Thutmose
-
sin, the
dead …” His voice trailed off at the look on his leader’s face. “Yes, Sarrum. I’ll get the men.” He wheeled his horse about and rode back, shouting orders.
Issogu returned, jogging to his leader’s side. “No tracks or any stones disturbed on the canyon walls, Sarrum,” he said, pointing to the eastern side. “Nothing.”
Thutmose - sin turned to the western side, where Markad had paused to kneel on a rock outcropping, studying the earth. “Help him,” he ordered.
Urgo returned, leading twenty gloomy men behind him. One look at their leader convinced them not to complain. They began clearing away the bones, using their lances and knives as much as possible, to avoid touching the decaying flesh. They muttered incantations to ward off the spirits. Soon the rotting bodies were being dragged and pushed away, the flesh sometimes falling from the skeletons of Thutmose - sin’s former warriors. Clouds of flies rose up in the air as the men sweated at their tasks.
Markad walked over, his face wrinkling in disgust at the stench. “Sarrum, there was little to see. But a few men might have followed the rocks on that side. I found one of our arrows up there, the tip broken against the wall where a man might stand. Archers might have been there, firing arrows down into our men.”
“How many?”
“At most a handful, Sarrum, even less,” Markad said, shaking his head.
“More would have left tracks, scratches on the rocks. There was nothing, just the one arrow.”
Then it wasn’t an ambush, despite the strange arrows. “Good, Markad.
Keep searching for any other sign.”
He sat there, enduring the grave stink and the flies in silence, until his men finally cleared the dead and began digging into the rocky soil.
He knew they cursed and swore at him beneath their breath, but no one dared refuse. The earth had been tamped down, to keep the carrion - eaters at bay, and at first the ground resisted his men’s efforts. At last one of the diggers gave a shout. A few moments later, his warriors dragged the first Ur Nammu body from the grave.
Thutmose - sin ordered another twenty men to join the work, using them to clear the ground and lift the bodies from the grave. The heat added to the miasma of death that now flowed around them like a mist.
Body after body came forth, more than forty of them, and still they kept lifting Ur Nammu from the earth.
One of his men cried out in surprise, and Thutmose - sin moved toward the man. They’d dragged out another body, but this man looked different.
The body’s clothing remnants showed the tunic of a dirt - eater. The man’s face had the broad, flat look often found in those who worked the earth.
Two more bodies came up, with the same look about them. One looked to be a boy, barely old enough to ride. After that, nothing. They’d exposed the entire grave.
The sweating men stood about, covered in filth and dirt, waiting, while Thutmose - sin considered what he’d seen.
The Ur Nammu had buried dirt-eaters with their own warriors. He’d never heard of such a thing before, to dishonor fighting men by burying them alongside farmers. The Ur Nammu, like the Alur Meriki, had no use for dirt-eaters. They were to be hunted and killed. But not these men. These men … their bodies buried properly … he thought about the strange arrows, looking down at the one still in his hand.