Emen had not been born in the little town called Rhatal. It hadn’t yet been established when he was born, some nineteen years ago. Emen’s little sister, Ato, had been born in Rhatal, not very long after it had been established.

Emen had been born in the little town called Hulark, which had been off to the west of Wasolan. It had remained to the west of Wasolan until right around Emen’s sixth birthday.

Wasn’t much of a birthday present, being enslaved.

It was a known fact in Wasolan that children aged eight and above, which is to say working-age children, are prone to lying about their age. Some will even claim to be as young as five. Children, being notoriously work-shy, can’t be trusted on these matters. And neither can their parents.

Emen’s mother was about ten weeks pregnant when Wasolan took over Hulark. Thankfully for her and her forthcoming daughter, it was a known fact in Wasolan that even pregnant slaves ought to be given increased rations and much lighter duties.

It wasn’t particularly unusual for slaves to be moved from where they were captured to wherever slaves were needed. In cases where a large city was conquered, slaves were usually needed in that city to rebuild and continue work in already established industry.

In a little town like Hulark, slaves weren’t in high demand. Nearly three quarters of the town’s population of a hundred and thirty were moved to the logging camp called Rhatal. Over the coming months, a similar proportion of two more little towns joined them.

Being small for an eight year old, Emen was put to work as a runner, carrying messages around Rhatal and sometimes as far as Ivterran. He didn’t like the work, since he barely ever saw his mother, but he supposed it was better than being a logger or carpenter.

Ato was born two weeks earlier than expected, but she turned out healthy enough after a bit of worry. Emen liked being a runner even less, after that, since it meant he barely got to see his little sister, either.

It would be three years before Emen changed his mind about being a runner.

For the first year, Ato stayed with her mother most of the time, to be nurtured and nursed. Then for two years, Ato got to stay with the child minders during the workday, so that her mother could finally get to doing a full day’s work at the logging town.

Ato’s third birthday present was being sent to Ivterran for schooling and training. At which point Emen changed his mind about his work. Being about average size for a nine-year-old, or still small for an eleven-year-old, and a very reliable runner, Emen got to go to Ivterran fairly often and, while there, was sometimes allowed to visit his little sister Ato.

Loggers didn’t die frequently, in Rhatal, but they died consistently. Safety was very much considered tertiary to speed and cost. It wasn’t a surprise, when someone died from an improperly secured large tree hitting them. It was simply the cost of industry.

Which didn’t at all make it less deeply upsetting when Emen’s mother died as a result of her injuries. Didn’t make it any easier for Emen to explain to Ato, who at six-years-old barely remembered her mother, what had happened.

There had been as much hugging and crying as time allowed, and then Emen had had to run back to Rhatal and keep working as if nothing had happened. He was not given any time off, unlike the supervisor whose job had been to stop it from happening at all.

Emen was on the small side of sixteen, average for his actual age, when Ato was sent back to Rhatal with a few of her classmates. There was much hugging, some rejoicing, and a bit of scheming.

After she jammed the blade on the sawmill a third time, Ato and Emen switched roles. Emen wasn’t the only runner in Rhatal, but he had demonstrated such alacrity and skill trying to keep his sister out of trouble that multiple overseers thought it would be funny to have them swap.

While there’s no such thing as completely safe work, being a runner was among the closest a slave could get in the logging town of Rhatal. And thanks to some strategic advice from Emen over the years, Ato took to the work quite easily.

Emen had only a slightly harder time adjusting to working at the sawmills. It was very different work, of course. And what alacrity and skill he’d demonstrated unjamming the saws his sister had jammed was entirely down to his fellows already working there.

Still, Emen considered it an unequivocally good decision. Not only had it gotten Ato out of harm’s way, it meant that his fellow runners could keep an eye on her for him, when she was out of Rhatal.

Technically, there was no rule in Wasolan against women joining the military. They didn’t, and any woman with the desire to join was, unfortunately, unable to meet the requirements.

In the same way, there was technically no rule in Wasolan against someone missing approximately two fingers joining the military. It was much less unfortunate that they didn’t meet the requirements.

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Emen had not lost two fingers, if you count by joints and not injured fingers, in a deliberate bid to avoid joining the military. He had lost parts of three fingers on his left hand because the work needed to get done and safe sawmills were considered a fiction up there with fairies and unicorns in Wasolan.

Ato would have been too young, even if she wasn’t a girl.

News of somewhere between one and eighteen battalions lost in the wastes chasing raiders made its way slowly across to Rhatal. Emen, just nineteen when the first battalion was lost, didn’t see how this affected him. Ato, still a few months off from thirteen, found it both interesting and hilarious.

Upon returning from runs to Ivterran, she regaled Emen and other sawmill workers with whatever the newest rumour about the wastes was. Her favourite, by a wide margin, was the rumour that three entire battalions had been swallowed whole by a worm the size of a city.

Unlike the Lord’s House, the slave barracks were not separated by sex, and despite Emen living in the barracks intended for sawmill workers, Ato slept on the bunk above him when she wasn’t busy running out of town.

The closest Emen got to being interested in the situation was a few months after Ato’s birthday, when she brought news that Altok, only a few days north up the river, had declared war on Wasolan. Stories of slaves freed by Kzara to the west had made their way through Rhatal. Some people saw a glimmer of hope in Altok joining the war.

Emen wasn’t convinced it would make any difference. But he wasn’t going to rain on Ato’s excited speculations either. At the very least, it was more interesting that sawing logs into planks all day.

The question of whether Altok joining the war actually made any difference was answered very resolutely about a month before Emen’s twentieth birthday. Ato was too energetic to sleep and so was sitting on the end of Emen’s bed, speculating about what she could steal next time she went to Ivterran to give him as a gift.

Emen was most of the way asleep, used to his sister’s restlessness, when he was jolted all the way awake somewhere around midnight. Someone was ringing a bell. People were shouting. People were fighting.

Everyone in the barracks was awake, dressed, and standing by their beds when a young woman wearing a bird-faced mask and long dress opened the door. Over one shoulder was a big, cloth-wrapped bundle, in her other hand was a blood-stained sabre.

‘Now this is a slave barracks,’ the woman announced happily. ‘Just as shoddy as I expected. Though I see you all get mattresses. Lucky.’

She sheathed her sabre, still bloody, and hefted the bundle onto the floor.

‘I have an important question for you all,’ she announced. ‘Oh, wait. Hello, my name is Ora, I am here to assist in freeing you from slavery if you want. The important question is: who wants a spear?’ She kicked open the bundle to reveal something like thirty short spears.

Ato made it to the pile first and had a spear in her hands before Emen could catch her.

‘Why are we lucky to have mattresses?’ Ato wanted very badly to know. ‘They’re not good mattresses.’

‘Back in the Lord’s House, we slept on hard boards,’ Ora said.

Ato pointed the spear at her. ‘Are you from the Lord’s House? I don’t want to get married, you know?’

Ora was definitely smiling under the mask. ‘I am not from the Lord’s House. I just grew up there. I’m from Haven.’

In the same way everyone had heard of giant worms eating entire battalions of soldiers out in the wastes, everyone had heard of Haven. It had much more of mixed reputation in Wasolan than it had had in the Lord’s House. Somewhere between a bastion of freedom and a hive of violence and cannibalism.

Ato, being fine with either option, stopped pointing the spear at Ora.

Almost everyone in the room had picked up a spear by the time the interrogation had concluded. There were twelve spears left. No one was intending to stay, not everyone was confident that they would actually make it out of here, if their rescuers were asking them to fight.

‘If you’ve never used a spear before, this girl has the spirit of it,’ Ora announced to the room. ‘You wave it at your enemies and, if the opportunity arises, you stab.’

Ato did a stabbing motion, to help with the demonstration. ‘I’m Ato,’ she informed Ora. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘Nice to meet you Ato,’ Ora said.

‘And I’m her older brother,’ Emen said, making a futile grab for Ato’s spear.

‘Nice to meet you, older brother,’ Ora said. She leaned close. ‘Don’t worry about her, the town’s almost cleared already. We’ll keep an eye on her.’

Emen did not relax, but he didn’t make another grab for Ato’s spear.

Ora was true to her word. None of the sawmill workers had any opportunity to fight. The fighting wasn’t done, by the time they were out of the barracks, but instead of joining in, they followed Ora and the remaining spears over to the loggers’ barracks, which Ato very helpfully pointed out.

By the time the loggers had gotten the same offer, albeit with fewer spears, the fighting seemed to be finished. Bodies did not litter the ground, the cries of the wounded did not sound like the baleful tones of the damned. Most people in Rhatal weren’t soldiers, and fewer of them knew how to fight.

Just shy of five hundred people left Rhatal not long after midnight. Most of them were freed slaves, accompanied by an equal number of fighters from Haven and surrendered free workers who didn’t want to live somewhere they might be executed or enslaved for being raided.

Much to Ato’s disappointment, the group didn’t run into anyone who needed to be stabbed with spears in the four days it took to trek to Altok. Her disappointment about going to Altok and not Haven was allayed by Ora and a few of the other fighters explaining that she could come to Haven if she wanted, but Altok was closer so that was the first destination.

Emen was quite impressed with the fighters from Haven. They were happy to explain that not only were they at war with Wasolan, but the Lord’s House constituted a significant, looming threat. While the actually city of Haven was still very safe, it would likely be safer and easier for the people who accompanied them from Rhatal to stay in Altok or move into Kzara.

As much as Emen appreciated being rescued, and his rescuers being so honest with him, he would not have chosen to go with them back to Haven. Ato threatened to go by herself if he didn’t come. The decision was made.