James West - Crown of the Setting Sun

Adham stood his ground. The wounded slavemaster’s snarling roar sprayed blood in a crimson mist. That shout, joined with the other Alon’mahk’lar , rose to an unbroken note of such wrath that all who had stood in boldness now flung themselves facedown. All cowered, all pleaded for mercy … all save Adham.

Fierce sunlight bathed his wrinkled skin, casting harsh shadows over corded muscles, highlighting past scars and fresh hurts. Fire seemed to ignite within his icy gray gaze. He heaved against his bonds, bloodied pick raised. He lashed out, his movements those of a man steeped in battle rather than in long submission. Adham’s pick bored into the creature’s skull with a sickening thud. The tip sank deep, screeching through a plate of thick bone. Adham wrenched the tool free and made ready for a fresh attack, but the creature’s roar had become a gurgling whimper, and it toppled backward to sprawl in the dust.

The remaining slavemasters glanced at their fallen leader, then surged forward as one. Slaves bolted in all directions from the ravening creatures loping into their midst. In their mindless flight, forgetting again the shortness of their linked iron tethers, they dragged down Adham and each other. They clawed madly at the ground, ripping off fingernails. They screamed as the butchery began. Crude swords as long as the tallest slave flashed and whirled, severing limbs; iron-banded cudgels fell like tree trunks upon unprotected skulls; cracking whips tore meat from bone.

Adham’s words resonated in Leitos’s mind. The time of your escape has come.Do not hesitate! Confusion froze Leitos. If he bowed, he would die. If he ran, he would die. Death would come, and nothing he could do would keep it at bay. He did not know what to do, other than what he had been trained to do, and that was to submit .

Urged by an inborn desire to survive, Leitos’s body moved of its own accord. As the screams of the dying soared, Leitos wheeled and scampered up the litter of broken stone lining the walls of the shallow pit. At the top, he looked for his grandfather.

Adham was sprawled on his back, focused not on his attackers, but on Leitos. “GO!” he commanded, even as he wielded his pick against a flurry of blows. Then he was lost from sight amid a swarm of scrambling slaves and savaging Alon’mahk’lar .

Leitos spun and ran. He was not alone in his flight. Others his age and younger, the unchained, ran with him, their faces etched with horror. None spoke or cried out. There was no breath for that, not with death at their heels. They ran blindly in every direction, and the desert’s scorching emptiness swallowed them.

Not long after the sounds of the massacre fell behind, the boys running with Leitos began to drop. His endurance had always been greater than the other slaves, but never until now had that been a benefit. A slave who could work harder than the rest, was forced to do so. Once down, few of the unchained bothered to stand again, choosing instead to wait for whatever might come.

He paused to help one who fell nearby. His darting eyes searched for Alon’mahk’lar , but did not find any. “Get up, Altha,” he urged. “We can run together.”

The boy fought when Leitos tried to pull him to his feet. “Get away! Your grandfather brought this on us! We will all die because of him!” Altha clawed at Leitos’s hand.

Leitos released the boy and backed away. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, not sure if he was. While the same condemnation had flitted through his own mind, hearing it from someone else angered him. Who was this wretched, whining child to denounce his grandfather?

With a rabid snarl, Altha hurled a stone. Leitos ducked, just avoiding having his head cracked. Altha began scraping his hands over the dusty ground, searching for another rock. Leitos left him there, and Altha’s curses hounded him long after he moved out of earshot.

The land rose almost imperceptibly, going from mostly pale sand and rounded gravel to a more rugged landscape of reddish rock and brush. As he ran, Leitos relived the scenes of death back at the mine. Above all others, he saw Adham driving his pick into the Alon’mahk’lar’s skull, heard again the terrible sound of that killing blow. That assault had changed everything for the worse, just as Altha had said. Still, Adham had given his life to gain freedom for others.

Or had he acted in madness?

Leitos had no answer for that, and thinking about it seemed to make matters worse, so he kept on toward his mysterious destination. Miles slowly became leagues, and his grandfather’s voice recited things Leitos had always dismissed out of hand, at least until now. “A day will come when you must run, Leitos. Go into the west, always west. Run and hide, survive any way you can, until you spy the Crown of the Setting Sun beyond the dark spires of the Mountains of Fire. Seek out the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. Learn from them. Grow strong and cruel, and avenge the blood of our forefathers….”

Leitos paused atop a low rise with Adham’s demand for vengeance repeating in his head. Back the way he had come simmered a broad, shallow basin. He expected to see a band of trailing Alon’mahk’lar , but nothing moved. Of vengeance, he knew only that the Alon’mahk’lar had often warned against it. “ As surely as rain falls from the clouds of storm, blood flows in the wake of vengeance taken.” The conflicting ideas of vengeance and submission, or whether Adham had destroyed his life or set him free, struggled for supremacy until he pushed it all aside to focus on getting farther away.

The sun climbed higher, and Leitos’s bare feet pounded against the broiling, uneven ground. Each gasping breath seared his aching lungs. He bore the pain with grim resolve, and chased his spindly shadow over a shimmering wasteland resting below mirages of quicksilver. By now, he was utterly alone in his flight. He glanced over his shoulder again, neck creaking on stiff tendons, but found no pursuers.

I escaped , he thought dazedly. The very notion that he was free was as strange to him as the idea of seeking vengeance, even after the countless times Adham had related how men had known freedom in the world of his youth. Leitos willingly fell into the memories of his grandfather, anything to take his mind away from the day’s ever increasing heat and his awful thirst. He formed an image of the cool darkness of their cell, then revived his grandfather’s voice, kind and soothing. He did not notice the tears running slowly down his cheeks, drying to a salty crust before they could fall.…

Every evening after a grueling day of breaking and hauling rock, Adham had talked with Leitos rather than falling into an exhausted slumber, teaching him things that seemingly had no use in the mines. “In the days after the Upheaval,” Adham often told, “just before the Faceless One came to power, men clawed their way out of the rubble of fallen cities, began to remake their lives, followed their hearts desire and used the talents lent them by Pa’amadin , the God of All. Peace had reigned, for men had seen too much suffering to want war and strife. During those days, men rebuilt some little of what had been lost. They lived with hope in their hearts.”

Adham usually paused then, letting the imagery of the telling sink in. Leitos knew the story well, but he could not envision the things of which Adham spoke. For him, they were only words. In the world he knew, sweat and grime combined to rub skin raw, and then the sun burned it a deep, leathery brown. Thirst and hunger were constant companions, and the only hope was for night’s darkness and a chance to ease aching joints, if only for a few hours, when he bedded down.