James West: Crown of the Setting Sun

“Ours is the blood of the north!” Adham cried, his voice rising above the clamor of pick and sledge battering stone to dust.

Silence swept over the toiling slaves, and their knotted fingers clutched fearfully around rocks and wooden hafts. Shocked eyes locked on the old man who had dared raise his voice. Agonized screams or death rattles from dust-clogged lungs were acceptable sounds to the ears of the slavemasters, but what echoed from the open mine and out across the barren expanse of desert carried the unmistakable note of defiance. All had heard it, and all knew what it meant for Adham and for themselves.

A furnace breeze swirled dust around unmoving feet. Shaking with fury, Adham hurled his short-handled pick to the ground. One tip clanged against a rock, throwing off a spark. With a tired sigh, the breeze gave up its fitful dance.

Leitos cowered nearby, his cracked lips trembling, the bucket he had been filling with crushed stone forgotten at his feet. He saw not his grandfather before him, but a stranger, a madman . Like all slaves, Leitos knew better than to tempt the ire of their inhuman masters. Despite this unvoiced law, the wizened old man glared at the demon-born slavemasters, the Alon’mahk’lar , openly challenging them to stand against him.

Leitos’s heart thumped inside the reedy cage of his ribs, forcing erratic breaths past his teeth. He hunkered down, trying to disappear into the ground under his bare feet. What had driven his grandfather to such folly? Slaves strove to avoid notice, hoping only to earn a daily bowl of thin porridge. Resistance invited hunger, thirst, and the flesh-reaving bite of the lash-not for the troublemakers alone, but for all the slaves.

“You will know the moment to flee,” Adham said, his hoarse voice pitched for Leitos’s ears alone. Grim determination creased the old man’s brow, turned down the corners of his mouth.

Leitos jerked as if slapped. He is mad!

“Watch and be ready,” Adham continued. “The time of your escape is near. Do not hesitate!”

What are you talking about? Leitos thought in a near panic. There is no escape! Deep below his denial, he knew what Adham meant. He had heard it all before.

“I’ve told you where to go,” Adham said, his desperation rising in the face of Leitos’s hesitancy. “You must go west, boy, no matter what happens. Remember all I have taught you. Do not look back. Do not stop. Trust no one, save those I’ve spoken of.” This last Adham uttered as if he were unsure that those mythical saviors would help, or even existed.

“Make ready, boy!” Adham commanded.

Leitos gawked like a fool. Always before when Adham whispered of escape, or told of life as it had once been, Leitos mollified his grandfather with nods of agreement. Secretly he had often worried that those stories were born of a perilous mind-sickness. He had never taken those tales to heart. His life was the mines, the same as all slaves. Even the term slave , had no definite meaning for him. All his grandfather’s tales of hope and freedom were but dangerous musings better left in the darkness of their shared cell. Leitos was horrified to realize that Adham had meant every word, and had planned for this very moment.

“You have come of age, and they will soon chain you,” Adham pressed. “Flee, boy, or die in bondage. You must go! Remember our people, remember that I love you as an only son- but you must go! ”

With that last admonition, Adham faced the approaching slavemasters, who had shaken off their surprise. The Alon’mahk’lar rushed to the challenge, creatures no more human than the Faceless One they served. No one else moved. Leitos felt trapped in another man’s nightmare.

Adham thrust his gnarled hands, thick with calluses and blisters, toward the sky. Pitted black iron manacles clinked and jangled, as they slithered down his skeletal forearms. “Our freedom is a birthright stolen, an inheritance I reclaim for myself and my brothers!” he called out, voice reverberating across the steep walls of the open pit before sinking into the mineshaft’s lightless throat. “Freedom is at hand, brothers, if you will but take it!”

No, Grandfather! Leitos tried to shout, but the warning perished on his tongue.

The slavemasters clambered toward Adham, their coarse reddish hides streaked with patterns of black. They came, not scowling in anger, but grinning at the opportunity to uncoil the leather scourges at their hips, to swing the iron-banded cudgels held in their huge, six-fingered fists. A dark and bestial light shone in their eyes. They leaped forward like mastiffs, sharp teeth bared for the kill.

Adham stood fast, a near-naked husk of a man clad only in a tattered loincloth, his white hair hanging about boney shoulders. Leitos flinched from the intensity of his grandfather’s gray eyes. Ferocity had replaced the tired warmth and kindness he was accustomed to seeing. A few tears flowed freely from that pallid stare, melting tracks through the dirt coating Adham’s sunken cheeks. It was not fear or shame that wetted Adham’s eyes, but a timeworn fury that demanded justice.

Justice for what? Leitos wondered, fresh panic rising to precipitous heights. We earned our punishment for resisting the divine rule of the Faceless One. Or so the Alon’mahk’lar taught, a reality Adham always acknowledged but vehemently denounced as a half-truth.

As the slavemasters drew nearer, Adham spread his arms wide in invitation, tightening the skin clinging to his jutting ribs. “Come for me, Alon’mahk’lar!” he roared, sounding like a man a third his age, a man of righteousness and strength, like the kindred of the fabled king he claimed to be. Leitos shuddered upon hearing the word, Alon’mahk’lar , Sons of the Fallen, spoken within hearing of the slavemasters. It was a name forbidden to humankind.

Galvanized by the authority in Adham’s cry, a pitiful few of the eldest slaves reflexively moved into defensive postures. Armed with spades, picks, sledges, and rocks, they prepared for a battle they could not hope to win. Apprehension shone in their hollow eyes but, too, burned a forgotten desire for retribution.

Where a few responded to Adham’s words, most scrambled clear, none willing to give their lives for the crazed old man in their midst. No matter which way anyone darted, they could not go far. A common chain running through a series of iron rings set in heavy stone blocks bound all together, save the youngest slaves. Like frightened hounds, they flung themselves against their short leashes. The frantic movements of the chained tugged against Adham, grinding rough iron against his wrists and ankles. Drawing on hidden strengths, he held firm, resisting the unrelenting pull of the fearful.

A slavemaster, half again as tall as Adham and layered with slabs of muscle, slid to a halt before the old slave. It glared down with protuberant eyes as black as the deepest mineshaft and slashed by golden pupils. A double set of horns grew from the beast’s skull; one set curled upwards, while the other pair swept protectively down around its neck.

“Your blood,” the Alon’mahk’lar said, raising the cudgel in its hand, “will be a sweet wine upon my tongue.” Those words rasped harsh and guttural through a mouthful of sharp, slanting teeth. The servant of the Faceless One offered neither truce nor pardon.

Quick as a serpent’s strike, Adham caught up his discarded pick. The movement forced the slavemaster to take a single, faltering step backward. Shifting rocks upset its balance, leaving an opening. Adham lurched against his chains, screaming fury, swinging the pick. With a desperate flinch, the slavemaster avoided the full impact, but the heavy tool slashed across its brow, ripped through its nose, and gouged one cheek. The Alon’mahk’lar shrieked. With quivering fingers tipped in deadly claws, it tore away the shredded mass of its nose. Blood gushed over its lips and chin, then poured over its chest as the slavemaster tottered back.