The Three Kings by Slawomir Rapala	Biography and Bibliography
Table of Contents Chapter IV: Empty Heaven part 5 of 5

The youths, meanwhile, now realized for the first time the significance of what was taking place. Yes, the horror of the previous days was over: they were no longer trapped on the ship, treated like animals, shut away from the world, waiting for death that might have come in the form of hunger, disease, fatigue or one of the frequent beatings they sustained at the hands of their primitive captors. But now everything was about to be resolved; where were they to go, who were they to go with, what sort of life awaited them?

Their faces expressed a mixture of fear and hope. Some could not control their feelings any longer and wept uncontrollably; others raised their eyes to the sky asking the gods for help and strength. Iskald and Xunnax only looked at one another. The young Izmattian nodded towards the Duke. They both knew that it was time to say farewell. Iskald tried to smile, but could do so only through tears.

Shira in the meantime had already commenced the auction. There were enough anxious and impatient people in the square to make him a very rich man, and he wanted to wait no longer. He wanted to be finished as soon as possible, he wanted pay off his guards and crew, and begin the celebration.

He was still to go to the palace and collect his reward for the killing of Vahan of Lyons. The King had promised him a colossal amount of gold in the event he was successful. That sum in itself was more than enough to compensate for the trip, the feeding and maintaining of the slaves, the crew and guards, for the large amount of gold he was forced to pay the traitor in order to obtain the information to locate the Lyonese Duke. It was all well worth it though, Shira thought, and he had many days of drinking and whoring ahead of him.

Without making any needless announcements, Shira pointed at the first boy in the long line of slaves, and shouted out loud:

“Five pieces of gold!”

For the first moment after he named the price, there was silence. The guard looked around expectantly, holding a thick wooden club in his right hand. If there were no offers he would use it to crush the boy’s head.

The boy was perhaps ten years of age, and it was a miracle in itself that he had survived the horrific journey. He stood silently now, not quite sure of what was taking place, looking around unsteadily, blinking his eyes hard and sobbing quietly. The heavy iron shackles weighed his small hands down every time he tried to lift them to wipe the tears away.

He looked around desperately, somehow sensing that if no one would speak, something terrible would happen. His lips curled, his shoulders sank and he started shaking as a violent sob came over his body. Shira was just about to turn and kill him, when someone, perhaps out of sheer mercy, finally called out: “Five!”

“They have a soul,” whispered Iskald with a heavy sigh of relief.

Only now the silence was broken and the noise resumed once again. More and more voices began to call out.

“Six, seven, eight pieces of gold!”

“Ten!” one voice was stronger than others.

Shira looked around one more time to see if no one was willing to challenge the price, but no one spoke anymore.

“Sold for ten pieces of gold!” Shira cried out.

The guards quickly unlocked the shackles connecting the young boy to the rest of the slaves. Shira was not pleased. Ten pieces was not a high price to pay for a human life and a small profit for him, considering the amount of time and gold invested in the entire trip.

In the land of the Tha-kians, however, where for each citizen of the Kingdom one could find ten or more slaves, a slave trader could hardly get a better price. But it was the safest and the quickest way to get rid of the difficult merchandise, and most traders were willing to accept the cut instead of making a longer and much more dangerous journey across the border.

In the meantime the crowd made room so that a little man with a menacing look on a rat-like face was able come through. Shira took the gold from him, then locked the young boy in a single pair of shackles and pushed him towards his new owner. The little man pulled the boy by the chain and they quickly disappeared in the crowd.

One by one the poor wretches were sold to the ever-growing, swarming masses of people, until there was only a handful of them left. Awaiting his turn, Iskald looked on with horror in his eyes. He hated them, he hated these people because it had now occurred to him that everything that had happened to him was their fault.

It was all because of them, their greed and their selfish wish to own others and to hurt others. They were responsible for the fact that his life was taken away from him, that his father was murdered, that he himself was subjected to this humiliating, degrading and miserable way of life. Right now, in this very moment, more than ever before Iskald wanted to die just to be able to escape from this vile crowd of monsters.

They had no soul, of course not, they had no feelings at all. They were incapable of experiencing guilt or shame, pity or compassion. The only thing they were capable of doing was looking upon his misery, his pain, and his torture, and laugh, and point fingers, and ask for more. How much he hated them! How much he wanted to die!

Xunnax tore him away from the dreadful thoughts by gently touching his hand. When Iskald looked at him questioningly, he said calmly as if talking about the most matter-of-fact thing in the world, looking straight into his friend’s eyes: “It’s my turn.”

Iskald glanced around and noticed that indeed, only a few of them were now on the platform. Most of the guards were off the podium tending to the bodies of the two dead boys that did not appeal to anyone in the crowd and had been killed by Shira. They had pleaded and cried but he took no note; with one vicious swing he crushed the head of one boy and then the other. Then he proceeded as if nothing had happened. His pockets were heavy with gold and he was eager to finish the auction.

“Sold for twenty-five pieces of gold!” Shira shouted and came over himself to unlock Xunnax from his shackles and hand him over to his new owner. Iskald looked on with a growing sense of horror, a sense that something was wrong, something was terribly wrong. He could not move a muscle and his legs felt like they were rooted in the ground.

When the buyer, a fat foreigner with a dark complexion and an evil look in his eyes, came over and brutally pulled Xunnax out of the line and away from Iskald, the young Izmattian sent him a final farewell look that was both sad and teary. Iskald realized suddenly that he would never see Xunnax again. He would never again see his one companion, his only friend, without whose help Iskald would have died a hundred times already. He would never see him again, just like he would never again see his father. And it was they again, again taking away the people he loved!

Without warning, Iskald released the rage that had built up inside him and pulling the other boys with him, he sprang at Shira who had just turned to face the crowd again. In his blind hatred Iskald was powerful enough to kill the brute, to kill all of the guards, to kill this entire crowd of hideous monsters, to kill them all!

He pulled Shira’s own whip from behind his belt and turned it against him. Hard and well-placed lashes fell on the utterly surprised guard. He fell down under the force of Iskald’s blows and tumbled off the stage, into the shouting and screaming crowd of people. Iskald wanted to dive after him, but the weight of the wretches still chained to him slowed the young Duke. Screaming inarticulately he pulled and pulled on the chain, but before he could break free or force the youths to follow him, the other guards came running and shouting and they held him down.

Shira, humiliated and enraged, climbed back on the stage and motioned the guards to hoist the boy up. He slapped him hard across the face, once and twice, and each time Iskald’s head jerked to the side under the force of Shira’ heavy hand. The guard picked up the whip which Iskald let go of when the guards grabbed him.

What followed was the worst beating Iskald had ever sustained at the hands of the savage Tha-kian. Shira beat him until his arm ached, at which point Shira placed the whip in his other hand and continued the beating, until the boy stopped moving and the guard himself was covered with Iskald’s blood.

The crowd slowly quieted down during the spectacle. At first they were amused, then they cheered Shira on, but by the end, at the sight of the murderous guard looming over his victim with blood smeared across his face, his clothes soaked in blood, the people fell quiet and they just looked on. No one had ever before seen a display of such brutality, such violence and inhumanity. Perhaps a fraction of their souls resided somewhere in their hearts after all.

As all this was happening, Xunnax was brutally pulled away from the spectacle by his new owner. He tried to break free, to run and to help his friend, he cried and screamed for the first time in his life, but the cruel brute slapped him again and again, until the boy was numb with pain and oblivious to life.

He was dragged towards the port, towards another ship and another horrific journey. And even though nearly unconscious, Xunnax could still hear the painful shrieks and cries that the savage beating tore out of Iskald’s throat. He heard them coming from a distance, from behind a heavy veil of dull blackness, but could still hear them nevertheless, and suffered just the same.

Fate did not spare him; he was to remember Iskald’s pain and torture for the rest of his living days. Well before the beating was over, though, he had disappeared behind a corner and out of the young Duke’s life.

While Iskald lay on the ground in a pool of his own blood, beaten near the point of death, Shira sold him to the suddenly silent crowd. But the young Duke was no longer aware of what was happening; he heard nothing, saw nothing and felt nothing more. He did not even have enough strength to raise his hand and wipe the blood away from his eyes. His head rested against the wooden planks of the rise, his eyes were glassy and painted with death, and his gaze blurred.

Staring blankly at the people before him, he felt only numbness. Then he felt someone taking the heavy irons off his hands and neck. Immediately though, he had another pair of shackles put on him and then someone grabbed him by the hair and pulled him off the podium. His head bounced of the wooden steps with a sickening thud as he was brutally pulled down to the ground. More blood came, filled his mouth, flooded his brain, and his head dropped.

* * *

For over a month three Lyonese war vessels sailed in vain over the waters separating the Kingdom of Tha-ka from the Estate, searching for the slave ship. What had started as a rescue mission slowly turned into a hunt for the Tha-kians, and every night Aezubah, Jasper and the three thousand Northern Wolves accompanying them, looked towards the sky and begged the gods to intervene and show them the way. And every morning three thousand pairs of eyes looked towards the horizon, hoping to see a sail.

But no. Aezubah’s first plan was to sail swiftly towards Dilli, to outmanoeuvre the heavy Tha-kian vessel, get ahead of it and ambush it somewhere in the waters between the Estate of Lyons and the Kingdom of the Tha-ka. But the slave-traders must have gone off course or, perhaps fearing someone would follow them, taken a different route through unmapped waters.

Having realized this, Aezubah immediately ordered the ships to sail straight towards the Kingdom of the Tha-ka. There he wanted to wait for the slave ship. They had to sail into Dilli, he reasoned, and he was going to be waiting for them. He was relying on the swiftness of his own ships and the fact that the slave-traders must have been slowed down because of the weight they carried.

Uncommonly, Aezubah miscalculated once more. Perhaps the Tha-kians passed them by in the middle of night or in the fog that descended on them for three straight days? Perhaps they reached the Capital before the Wolves were even near it?

Aezubah did not lose hope, however, and he continued to probe the waters around Dilli, still hoping to meet the Tha-kians and to rescue Iskald from their greedy hands. Jasper warned the old warrior that this was not the safest course of action since the Tha-kian ships often patrolled the coast. Aezubah only smiled maliciously in return, and Jasper said no more.

The seasoned veteran did not fear the Tha-kians. He almost wanted to meet them, he wished to drown them in a pool of their own blood, he was eager to watch them burn. He changed both physically and mentally; he ate little and spoke even less. He spent his entire days on deck, with his eyes glued to the horizon. And his gaze was colder than ice.

Finally however, Aezubah lost patience and one night he sailed into Dilli. At daybreak he entered the beautiful and exotic city leading three thousand bloodthirsty and furious Wolves of Lyons. Many of the Tha-kians fell into his hands and he had them killed, including women, children and the elderly. He had the men impaled and left them dying for days. The Tha-kian King received no warning and failed to escape. After capturing him, Aezubah had him covered with tar and personally set him on fire, turning him into a living torch that burned for days on the roof of the palace.

He tore the city apart, turned it upside down, freed thousands of slaves, killed thousands of people, and tortured and maimed hundreds more. He burned and destroyed the buildings, turned the streets red with blood, looked through every hole in the ground but found no sign of Iskald.

He left after two days and two nights of murder and plunder, a time during which not one of the Wolves was given a moment of rest. Bathed in blood they worked hard, killing and torturing the Tha-kians. At the end of the two days, when they were leaving, even the Lyonese themselves were horrified with what they had done, even they themselves felt a sickening feeling deep in their stomachs when they saw the extent of the damage.

The beautiful city was completely destroyed and thousands of people were massacred. The Wolves fled back to their ships quietly, uncertain of their feelings, not quite sure whether they should feel shame or pride. They fled just in time too, right before the neighbouring towns, cities and garrisons sent reinforcements.

Heartbroken and with no hope left, completely indifferent to the pain and suffering he had brought upon thousands, Aezubah ordered the ships to raise sail and return to Lyons. Just as he had sworn, he had avenged Vahan’s death more than a hundredfold. But he had not been able to fulfil the promise he had made to Dynah. Feeling the heavy burden of failure crushing his chest, Aezubah closed himself to the world.

Proceed to Chapter 5, part 1...

Copyright © 2008 by Slawomir Rapala

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