Sam Barone: Empire Rising

“Tomorrow we will leave this place and begin our journey east. We’ll take a few villagers with us as slaves, to carry food and water. I will allow you and your men to kill the rest, as revenge for capturing you. Besides, it’s best that no one know from whence we came. As we travel, I will tell you how I will capture this Orak.” Korthac changed the subject with a wave of his hand. “But now, tell me more about Eskkar, this wanderer turned mighty ruler. I must learn the ways of my enemy.”

“Lord, I’ve told you everything I can remember.”

“I am sure you can remember much more, Ariamus. Or do you need some encouragement?” Korthac smiled once again and leaned back against the tree. “Take your time and start at the beginning. Tell me of when you came to Orak, what you did, how you became captain of the guard.”

Korthac had heard the story several times already, but each reitera-tion added some new insight, some further detail that helped him better understand this land and its people. He called out for ale, all this miserable village could provide in the way of strong spirits. A woman appeared with a jar and two wooden cups. Kneeling, she filled his cup, then did the same for Ariamus before returning to the shadows.

He watched Ariamus staring into his ale cup. The man wanted to drink, but he’d learned his place and his manners in the last few weeks.

Only after his new master had taken a sip would the man drink from his own cup. Korthac drank a mouthful of the bitter barley brew, then waited until Ariamus drank, gulping loudly until he lowered his empty cup.

“Now, Ariamus, tell me again of this barbarian and the slave girl who bewitched him. They stand in my way… our way now. So tell me everything, every little story you can remember, about Eskkar and his witch-wife.”

3157 B.C.E.-The City of Akkad (Orak), on the eastern bank of the Tigris River…

Lord Eskkar of Akkad pulled down hard on the restive horse, as impatient as its master to begin the long-awaited campaign. He had planned to be on his way soon after sunup. Instead a missing horse, then a broken pack strap, and finally two soldiers still befuddled from too much drinking the night before prevented the early departure. At last his embarrassed subcommanders signaled their readiness.

Eskkar gritted his teeth as he yanked on the halter, turned the horse around, and took the first steps to reclaim the countryside from roving bands of marauders. A few cheers came from the small crowd of Akkadians who bothered to watch his departure, but most just stared in silence.

Less than two months ago every one of them had praised his name to the gods, acclaiming him ruler of Akkad for saving their lives and their homes. But already many chaffed at the very restrictions he established to protect them.

As he led his soldiers through the city’s gates and out onto the plain, Eskkar knew that, at this moment, he cared more about getting out of Akkad than pacifying the surrounding farmlands. With each step away from the city he felt his responsibilities lessen and he longed to put his horse to the gallop. That would have been unfair to the seventy soldiers, only twenty of them mounted, who marched behind him. Eskkar restrained both himself and the eager horse until he reached the first of the low hills about a mile away from Akkad.

He turned his mount aside from the trail and urged the animal up the steepest part of the slope. At the crest, the horse snorted from the climb, then restlessly pawed the earth, as if to say it wanted to race across the soft grassland, not scramble up rocky and slippery inclines. Eskkar first studied the ragged column of soldiers moving beneath him. A small force for what needed to be done, but all that could be spared to drive off the marauders and bandits who had plagued the land for almost a year, thriving in the chaos caused by the barbarian invasion. The dreaded Alur Meriki horsemen had passed on, but turmoil and anarchy marked their passage throughout the land.

Eskkar shifted his gaze to the river, only a few hundred paces away.

The midmorning sun reflected off the slow-moving waters of the Tigris, giving the wide waterway a rare pale blue tint. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the clean air that blew across the water, glad to be rid of the city-smell of too many men and animals living too close together. Eskkar looked back toward Akkad nestling against the great curve of the river. The tall wooden gates remained open, and rising from one of the towers that guarded them, a large banner floated in the breeze. Eskkar could just make out the stalking lion embroidered on it. The lion spirit now protected the new city, the city that had changed him from a mere soldier to captain of the guard to a fighting leader, and nearly killed him in the process.

Another horse scampered up to the hilltop and his bodyguard halted beside him. “Do you miss it already, Captain?” Grond used the old title for his commander.

“Akkad? Do I miss the stink and the noise? Or the whining and scheming? No, the place can fall to the ground for all I care. But I haven’t gone a mile yet and already I’m worrying about Trella.”

“Lady Trella will be well protected by the soldiers,” Grond said patiently.

“I suppose she’ll be safe enough for a month or so.” All this had been discussed many times in the last few days. Gatus, Eskkar’s second in command and the oldest of the soldiers, doted on Trella as if she were his own daughter. Offi cially, Gatus would command during Eskkar’s absence, but everyone knew the real ruler of Akkad would be Lady Trella. Gatus, busy as ever with the training of new recruits, would do nothing without her approval.

Nevertheless, Eskkar stared at the city, with its hastily built walls that had withstood brutal attacks and still showed scars from the recent confl ict. This very hilltop had served as a watching post for the fi ve thousand barbarians who laid siege to Akkad for almost two months. A few hundred paces behind him lay the remains of the besiegers’ camp. He and his men would pass through it as they journeyed northward.

A tug on the halter, and Eskkar’s horse shifted to face northward. He’d seen the remnants of the onslaught, still visible everywhere around him, often enough in the last few weeks. Blackened circles of fire-split stones still contained scattered ashes marking the residue of hundreds of campfires. Animal bones lay everywhere, moved and displaced by dogs, birds, and carrion eaters. The scavengers had gorged themselves for many weeks on the battle-dead.

By now the easy pickings had disappeared, the bones gnawed clean.

Human and animal waste would provide less tasty tidbits for several more weeks or until the rains came. The city’s inhabitants had gathered anything of value weeks ago. They’d searched through whatever the barbarians left behind, looking for whatever they could use or sell. More than a dozen large mounds marked the burial places of the enemy dead The common burial pits contained those who had survived the battles but died from their wounds, or the dead deemed important enough to be carried back to the barbarian camp and interred in a mass grave before being covered over.

Those barbarians who died assaulting the wall suffered the final indignity-abandoned by their clan and dumped in the river by their enemies, to be carried wherever by the whim of the gods, assigned a bitter fate in the afterlife. Everyone knew that without a proper burial, the spirits of the unburied dead would wander beneath the earth for eternity, prey for the shades and demons who would live off their tormented souls.

“How many years before all this disappears,” Grond said, “before the grass covers everything?”

His bodyguard’s question echoed Eskkar’s own thoughts. “Probably two, maybe three years,” he said. “Farmers will be unearthing debris longer than that. You don’t fight battles like that and not leave traces everywhere.”