It had been around a week since we were enslaved to carve ammunition for the catapults. I had never seen one before, but I heard that it can throw stones farther than a stone thrown with the strength of five people.

Every brick and sculpture of our life’s work became roughly spherical shapes that were loaded onto boxes pulled by Centaurs. We spent most of the time confined to our workshop, watched by the Centaurs. Some of us were often summoned to be substitute servants for the Centaurs.

In the rare instances that I was summoned to serve the Centaurs to assist the other townsfolk, who were now enslaved, I saw atrocities beyond what my mind could imagine before we were invaded. The first victim of their cruelty was our mayor, which was tied behind the Centaur who called himself “Tzamurbeg”, the chieftain of all of these Centaurs, who dragged his body across the circumference of the town in a bloody ring, and what remained of his corpse was stripped of his flesh and his limbs now decorate the many bones draped over his barding.

To defy the Centaurs usually meant all of your limbs would be chopped off from the joints, and many of our people and some Centaurs would be forced to crawl outside of the town to the steppe until they bleed out, and what remains of them would be picked off by the vultures. It is said by our elders and the shamans that the God of Skies itself sends these vultures to escort the souls of the dead to the floating lands among the heavens. I had seen many of our people dismembered by their limbs being tied to four other Centaurs which pulled their bodies apart in a spectacle of gore, for merely striking one of their number. I saw many familiar faces as corpses piled outside the town, or simply disappeared as they were escorted by Centaurs. To speak against them means the loss of your tongue.

I assisted the other townsfolk in forging and putting the horseshoes on the many Centaur warriors that occupied the town. I served food for the same conquerors who slaughtered and destroyed much of the town, with many of them carrying hulking stone and metal mauls simply to expand the roads or to erect new hide-bound yurts, or wide, earthen compounds that are raised with the magic of their shamans until the town became unrecognizable. We had been forced to lift the debris of their homes and separate them into wood and stone; wood for use for fires and stone for the piles that will serve as ammunition for the catapults. Seldom, I help my neighbors wash the Centaurs’ coats, while they themselves wash their human-halves.

One night, I heard a commotion. I did not dare rise up from my bed to check what it is about, for I knew there were Centaur warriors outside guarding our longhouse. Even from here, I hear the crackling of fires and the screaming of men and women. It was only when I woke up that we were ushered to a spot overlooking what was once the main street of our town. Dozens of people were bound on their arms and legs and lay prone across the street, in a neat row before the Centaur who called himself “Tzamurbeg”, with his bound, mounted herald on his back and the rest of his entourage.

Tzamurbeg himself spoke in his guttural tongue, addressing the town with his booming voice. The captive on his back translated his declaration into our language:

“In the dead of night, these people had dared to start an uprising by burning our yurts, almost killing several of our valued warriors and my heir, Tzhanlaan. I ask of you, townsfolk of Mann Zyhan, is our message not clear? We had given you many examples of what will happen if you defy us. If this is not clear to you, Humans, this message will make it clear!”

A second after the Centaur’s translator spoke, the chieftain of the Centaurs trampled on the first person on the path of people. Under his hooves, skulls popped and bones broke, as the other Centaurs of his entourage followed suit in a trotting march that trampled our dissidents. Among all of the atrocities I had seen, this finally made me vomit.

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After that, we were forced to clean the streets of the corpses of our neighbors. With some members of our clan, we helped lift the flattened corpses to the wagons to be burnt. I lost count of how many times I had seen the glassy-eyed, blank expressions of the corpses of my neighbors, and some of the bodies were now unrecognizable from the Centaurs’ trampling. The streets were simply doused with water to wash the blood, hair, and grisly bits of flesh and bone off the cobblestone tiles, and left to dry in the sun until they disappear.

In the afternoon, me and my cousins and uncles who were tasked to clean the streets along with the other townsfolk went back to our work carving ammunition from the stones from the quarry.

The next day, a couple of Centaurs had escorted five foreign men while we were carving out ammunition. Three of them have lamellar armor, gourd-shaped shields and coned helmets with red plumes similar to what the soldiers of other neighboring cities wore. One of them wore blue robes and a wooden staff holding a spherical red crystal. One of them was dressed in the finest silk, of red and gold, and carried himself like a leader. A noble, if my guess is right, for they are the only ones who can wear the vibrant red and embroidered gold of the aristocracy. If one of the nobility is here, then I wonder if are we finally going to be freed.

The noble walked closer to me and inspected the stone balls that I sculpted. He asked his entourage to carry it before dropping it on the soil.

“The weight is adequate.”

The noble turned to the Centaur who called himself Tzamurbeg, who trotted into view. The Centaur spoke, and his captive translated:

“Can the catapults be assembled today? How many?”

“Five. We have brought our laborers too.” The noble said.

Then I realized that he was cooperating with the Centaurs. The hope that yearns for freedom that had started to fill my heart had fizzled out. Later, we were tasked to load a portion of the ammunition we made on a wagon, to one of the first catapults being assembled. It was the first time I had seen one. It was a great wooden thing with four wheels, and its single arm was as vast as an elephant’s trunk, pulled by many ropes on a pulley. One of our stones was placed on the bucket and was released. The stone had hit the side of one of the mountains adjacent to our town, with rubble tumbling down.

What I did not know back then was that it was a prelude to what is to come.

The next day, I was dragged by one of the Centaurs as I worked. My mother tried to resist the Centaur who had dragged me away, but one of them simply kicked her with one of his hooves, sending her tumbling down to the ground. The clan gathered around her, worried about her injury.

“Your son—Slave. Hostage.” One of the Centaurs spoke only a few words in our language.

The last thing I heard from my mother and the rest of my family was their cries. Slowly, I realized what these words meant.

I was prodded with the ropes around my wrists to the clearing of what used to be the town square, where a statue of the founder was once sculpted by our honored ancestor as a monument to the settlement’s founding. Now, the statue and the altar that once held the rows of incense pots had disappeared, replaced by rubble that reminded me that there a new order had replaced this town.

There were a dozen other people, with many around my age or older. We lacked the will to escape at the sight of these fearsome, four-legged warriors and their halberds and spears, as three of them tied us together.

I saw wagons of stone ammunition being pulled towards the eastern city gates that were facing the mountain pass, which leads to the lands of the kingdom and where trading caravans often emerge from. Before I knew it, we were prodded outside of the town, marching through the mountain pass as slaves within a caravan of Centaurs.