Alexios had been riding through the gloom for only a little when Rakhsh nickered and then slowed to a canter.
“What’s the matter?” Alexios said. “You finally wear yourself out?”
Rakhsh shook his head as if to say that was ridiculous, he never got tired, he could sprint to the edge of the world and back again without breaking a sweat.
This horse is so full of himself, Alexios thought. But not exactly without cause…
Rakhsh jutted his head forward and snorted. Alexios peered into the dark. At first all he saw were thousands of stars glittering in the sky like jewels, and the black land glowing beneath. But as Rakhsh slowed to a trot and then stopped, Alexios narrowed his eyes, and discerned in the distance a tiny orange flicker straight ahead. For a moment he thought it just another star, perhaps even a planet wandering the heavens, but as he watched, it danced and leaped almost like it was alive.
A camp fire.
Slave traders, he thought.
“Good job.” Alexios patted Rakhsh. “Damn, you’ve got good eyes.”
Rakhsh whinnied quietly. Alexios could have sworn that he was saying that he didn’t just have good eyes—he had good everything.
And here I am, out in the middle of nowhere, conversing with a horse, Alexios thought. The only question is—where’s Amina? I hope they didn’t catch her…
“Now what?” Alexios whispered to Rakhsh. “Any ideas? Want to stay here while I check things out, or—”
Rakhsh shook his head.
“Alright, we’ll go together.” Alexios dismounted and walked along the starlit road with the horse. “But you have to be quiet. There’s probably a bunch of bad guys there, and we can’t fight them by ourselves. As for the slaves…we can’t count on them helping us. They might not be able to. Or they might not be willing.”
Suddenly Alexios looked at Rakhsh. Strange to talk of slavery with a beast of burden, he thought. Isn’t Rakhsh also enslaved? Our animal comrades desire freedom, too, only they cannot speak for themselves—even if, as I think about it, everything speaks in its own way. Even things that aren’t alive…
“You know,” Alexios said to Rakhsh, “you don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to. You’re free to go whenever you like.”
Rakhsh snorted as if to say that was absurd.
It took a long time, but Alexios and Rakhsh crept up to the flame without being observed, at least so far as they knew. When they were close enough to see many different figures sleeping around the fire as well as some tents here and there, Alexios stopped. Someone must have been on watch, so he needed to be careful. As he thought about it, he was unsure that these people were even slave traders to begin with. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell.
What am I supposed to do now? he thought. Wake one of them up and ask? How do you tell slave apart from master in the dark? And if some of them are in chains, how can I free them without alerting the whole camp?
Ultimately he turned around and put some distance between himself and these people, whoever they were. Soon he left the road with Rakhsh and got behind a low hill to rest.
If only I had a phone! Alexios thought. Then I could set an alarm for the morning, and get up before the people in the camp…
He told Rakhsh to rest. Then Alexios pulled a cloak from a saddlebag, laid it out on the rocks and dirt, and got as comfortable as possible. For a moment he stared up at the stars and listened to the silent cool desert where there was no wind. Soon Rakhsh was snoring.
He’s such a deep sleeper. Alexios patted him. Good old Rakhsh.
Soon Alexios, too, had fallen asleep.
He dreamed of kissing Herakleia, but when he woke, Rakhsh was nuzzling his face. Alexios opened his eyes.
“Oh,” he said to the giant horse head leaning down from the sky. “Sorry. Thought you were someone else.”
Rakhsh seemed to chuckle.
Groaning, Alexios sat up in the sun, then climbed to his feet. His entire body ached, as usual.
Getting too old for this, he thought, looking down at his “bed”—a cloak spread on rocks and dirt.
Blinking his eyes, he drank some water, splashed his face, shook out the cloak, and put it away. After feeding and watering Rakhsh, they crept over the hill to get another look at the slave traders or whoever they were. As it turned out, the camp had yet to leave. Some people were packing their black tents or feeding their horses and donkeys or loading merchandise onto their groaning camels; other people were lying on the bare rocks and dirt with no covering save their clothes. Yet in the sunlight it was clear that many men, women, and children were chained together. As Alexios peered among them, he even spotted Amina. She had been captured. Alexios swore quietly as he descended back the way he had come with Rakhsh.
“What was she thinking?” He clutched his fists. “She followed these assholes without any money or weapons or help…”
Rakhsh stared at him.
“Sorry.” Alexios sighed. “Good job. Thanks for waking me up in time. You’re better than a phone.”
Rakhsh snorted.
“I don’t know what to do,” Alexios said. “If I try to convince them to let everyone go, they’ll laugh in my face. If I attack, they’ll kill me. If I wait for backup, they’ll get away.”
Rakhsh blinked his enormous brown eyes.
“Maybe I can just pretend to be a desert wanderer or something and surrender to them,” Alexios said. “That way I can stay with them. And you, meanwhile, go back to our friends and tell them to come rescue me.”
Rakhsh whinnied as if to say he disliked this idea.
“I’ll be fine,” Alexios said. “I can break free and escape with the farr if I have to. But things’ll be a lot easier if you and everyone else come back to help me out.”
Alexios removed Gedara and tucked it into Rakhsh’s saddle. Rakhsh almost seemed to frown at him.
“Don’t give me that look,” Alexios said. “I can’t bring the sword with me. It’ll give me away.”
The horse nickered. Alexios wrapped his cloak around his head and covered himself in dirt.
“How do I look?” he said.
Rakhsh was silent.
“You don’t approve?” Alexios said. “Look, sometimes we have to make hard choices.” He paused. “For instance, I have chosen, at this moment, to lecture a horse.”
Alexios could have sworn that Rakhsh looked offended.
“Sorry,” Alexios said. “I’m not letting Amina go. And I want to free the rest of these slaves, too. That’s what the uprising’s all about. Now will you help me? Please head back to our friends. Don’t gallop until you’re far enough away that the slave traders won’t hear you. And don’t leave me hanging!”
Rakhsh lowered his head in sadness. Then he turned and walked back in the direction they had come from. As Alexios watched, Rakhsh returned to the road, and was soon galloping into the distance at a remarkable speed, blurring through the dust so quickly it almost seemed like he would bend the light into rainbows.
Magical horse rainbow power, Alexios thought.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
But he needed to hurry. The camp would leave soon. And his Intermediate Empathy Skill (5/10) was too high for him to let them go.
Alexios limped over the hill so that he would look weak and harmless to the slave traders. Soon enough they spotted him, but he had made himself appear so wretched—as he staggered toward them like an elderly desert vagrant—that they turned away. Those slaves who were awake sat and watched him. So much dust was on his face that Amina seemed not to recognize him. No one spoke to him or got up to help.
Don’t worry about me, everyone, he thought, I’ll just hobble around out here by myself until I die, how’s that sound?
He babbled the Arabic and Turkish words for water as he approached—ma and soo. Then, when no one reacted, he switched to Roman, telling them his name was Ioannes Zorba, and he needed some hydros. But to the entire camp he was a silent invisible ghost, and not just because of his Novice Stealth Skill (3/10). Even the slaves seemed to think him worthless.
There’s a serious lack of solidarity here, he thought. And too much ageism. When shit hits the fan, people tend to just look after their own.
Finally, when he was surrounded by slaves and masters and making so much noise that they couldn’t ignore him, a trader wearing a broad-brimmed yellow hat—marking him as Jewish—rode up on a camel and gave him a goatskin of water, instructing him to keep from polluting the brim with his lips, for he had the look of a swine-eater. Alexios thanked him, blessed him in the name of God, and drank.
“Now get out of here,” the man said, when Alexios had finished.
“May I come with you, young man?” Alexios had made his voice as old and grumbly as possible. “I have nowhere to go. I promise to keep out of your way. I—”
“We’re already moving slow enough.” The man looked at the chained slaves, whom other traders were ordering to stand.
“I can work,” Alexios said. “I can cook, clean dishes, tend wounds, care for animals, help with—”
“We don’t need any help,” the man said.
“You can enslave me,” Alexios said. “I’ll—”
“Bother us again and you’ll regret it.”
Your Intermediate Charisma (5/10) is insufficient to convince this man, the game voice said.
I can tell!
Before Alexios could respond to the slave trader, the man rode off on his camel and yelled for everyone to get moving—they had a long march ahead. The camels and donkeys groaned as they stood, kicking up dust clouds, and the slaves’ chains rattled as they tramped forward. Young children were with them, and although their wrists were too small for iron manacles, they still followed their parents, begging to be carried. One father smacked a young boy who was whining too much, and the boy cried out and clutched his face. Otherwise the slaves refrained from speaking as they shuffled forward in their misery. Alexios had seen their owners giving them a little water and a few crusts of bread for their daylong walk. There would probably be no stopping until sundown. Most looked even more wretched than Alexios in his guise as old Ioannes Zorba. Though none were old, they clothed their gaunt, dirty, and tired bodies in Serindian tatters, and wore mournful gazes on their faces. Amina seemed to have reunited with her family—a man, plus one heavy, pudgy baby whom she carried on her back.
Terrible to be apart, he thought. Better to be together, even if it’s in hell.
Alexios waited for the train to get a little ahead of him, then followed, taking care to limp, stoop, and mumble. He counted two dozen slaves chained together and six merchants riding various animals. After a few minutes a slave trader on a camel chased him off, waving a scimitar, but once the man returned to the train, Alexios continued to follow. Eventually he was able to walk alongside Amina.
“Hey,” he whispered. “It’s me, Alexios.”
She turned to him, and her eyes widened. “Get away from me!” she rasped, looking back at the mounted slave traders.
“I’ve come to free you,” Alexios whispered back.
“Well, you’re doing a great job of it so far!” She raised her manacled wrists into the air.
“Which merchant has the key?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Amina said. “Even if you steal a key, they’ll kill you before you can free anyone.”
“I’ll move fast. There’s six of them and over two dozen of us!”
“They’ll kill us,” she said. “Brand us, mutilate us, separate us from our children, or worse.”
Your Intermediate Charisma (5/10) is insufficient to convince Amina, the game voice said.
Alexios gritted his teeth beneath his lips and tensed his body, infuriated because what Amina had said was true. The slave traders controlled the situation despite the disparity in numbers. Yet he also found himself thinking—as he walked alongside Amina and struggled to find a way to convince her to free herself—that it was demoralizing to hear a slave defending her family’s enslavement. It made him question his purpose here. Was it right to free someone who preferred chains? Everything suddenly seemed impossible…
“Hey!” the merchant on camel shouted, pointing a scimitar at Alexios. “I told you to keep away!”
“Be ready,” Alexios whispered to Amina. “You’re the first one I’m freeing.”
“Alexios!” she rasped. “Don’t do it! I have a baby here!”
“I am thinking about your baby,” he growled. “I can’t do this alone. If you don’t help me, we’re all dead.”
The slave trader urged his camel to a gallop and rode toward him. Alexios pled for understanding, raised his hands into the air, and hobbled and babbled. Just as the camel was about to ride Alexios down, he threw off his robe, summoned the farr (leaving him with 2/100), and leaped high enough into the air to kick the slave trader’s face. The man groaned, fell from his mount, and slammed into the dirt.
All the slaves stopped and stared. The five other slave traders drew their weapons and galloped on their mounts around the train toward Alexios—who punched the man on the ground hard enough to crack his skull, adding 50 XP to his Apprentice Brawling Skill (4/10).
“Ouch!” Alexios shook the pain from his right hand. “This guy could break rocks with a skull like that!”
Alexios searched the man’s pockets. Where was the key? He withdrew a ring with twenty keys on it, then ducked out of the way as another trader rode past, his sword swooping so close to Alexios’s head it skinned his scalp, subtracting one health, leaving him with 59/100.
Needed a haircut anyway, Alexios thought.
He raised the keychain and shouted at the slaves: “This is just like a game show—‘Who Wants To Be A Freedman?’”
The slaves continued to stare. Just as Alexios pried the scimitar from the fingers of the dead trader on the ground, another trader swung his mace at him. Alexios deflected the blow with a loud clang, the steel glinting in the morning sunlight, a little XP going to his Intermediate swordfighting skill (5/10).
Jesus, what the hell is wrong with these people? he thought, rushing over to Amina.
“Get away from me!” she shouted.
Alexios dropped his scimitar, fumbled with the keys, and grabbed her manacles even as she struggled against him.
“That isn’t exactly helpful,” he said.
“I’m not trying to be helpful!” she yelled.
Another trader, this one mounted on a horse, attacked with a whip. As the lash hurtled through the air, Alexios tossed the keys to Amina, then burned another point of farr—leaving him with 1/100—to catch the whip and pull hard enough to drag the slave owner onto the ground. Before the man could get up, Alexios rushed forward and stomped his face so hard that brains gushed from his nose, and broken, bloody teeth fell from his gaping mouth.
“Oh!” some of the slaves shouted, wincing and turning away.
“Guess this one had some brains,” Alexios said, as his Apprentice Brawling Skill leveled up to Intermediate (5/10), and he felt himself grow stronger.
“Death to slave masters!” Alexios shouted. “Death to slavery!”
Now the two dozen slaves were looking at each other and talking to one another. Four traders remained on their mounts. As Alexios was looking at the slaves and searching for the magic words that would radicalize them, the slave trader in the yellow hat galloping on a camel knocked him to the ground. He was only just able to roll away from the heavy pounding hooves in time. The slave trader wheeled his camel around, and lifted a sharp, gleaming steel spear into the air, aiming it straight at Alexios—who raised his hands, unable to get away in time.
Amina, freed from her shackles, and with her baby still slung over her back, picked up Alexios’s scimitar and threw it at the charging slave trader. The scimitar struck his face with its hilt and knocked him to the ground. As he gasped for mercy—even mentioning that he’d allowed her to stay with her family—she lifted the scimitar and slashed his face so that both his eyeballs burst from their sockets and spattered the dust.
“Oh!” the slaves shouted again.
Sprayed with blood, clutching her baby with her left hand and the scimitar with her right, Amina returned to her husband. Alexios, meanwhile, climbed to his feet, thinking: knew she’d come around.
Amina’s husband had freed himself by now. He was unlocking the other slaves. One picked up the whip dropped by the slave trader who had been riding a horse—and then the slave mounted that horse. The man that Amina had slashed with her scimitar was still alive, meanwhile, clutching his bleeding face with both hands, and screaming in agony. This was the one who had given Alexios water. Amina’s husband approached him and, without hesitation, skewered him with his own spear. All the slave trader’s limbs tensed and then went limp. Amina’s husband, finding that the spear was stuck, withdrew it by pulling hard with both hands while kicking off the man’s chest.
“Disgusting.” Amina’s husband wiped the bloody spear in the dirt.
Most of the slaves had thrown their shackles into the dust. They dispatched one more slave trader on their own. The last surviving merchant fled for his life on a galloping camel, but the slave mounted on the horse chased him down and whipped him to death. By the time this slave returned, everyone was cheering. They pulled food from the baggage mules and gave entire loaves of bread to the children, who stuffed the bread into their mouths so quickly their parents yelled at them to slow down or they would choke—“kainehora!” they added, this common Hebrew phrase literally meaning “no evil eye,” though metaphorically it was like saying “knock on wood.”
Water flowed freely from the goatskins, in the mean time. Everyone washed the dirt and blood from their faces and hands.
Amina’s husband shook Alexios’s hand, then introduced himself.
“My name’s El-Hadi,” he said. “Jafer El-Hadi. Thank you for freeing us. May you live a long time.”
Other former slaves were gathering around Alexios and also thanking him, patting his back, shaking his hand, offering him food and water, and wishing him long life.
“Sorry we didn’t come to your assistance sooner,” El-Hadi added.
Alexios shrugged. “Better late than never.”