Gladiators Of Hapanu

Chapter 15

Blade expected that the Forest People's tales exaggerated Gerhaa's size and strength. After all, they weren't used to cities, fortresses, or stone walls. He found that they hadn't exaggerated very much. The city was at least a mile on a side, its gray stone walls studded with towers and each tower mounting a huge catapult. On the land side, the walls rose thirty feet above a twenty-foot ditch. On the river side the walls were only half as high, but below them rocky cliffs dropped almost vertically fifty feet to the river. There were cranes and pulleys on the walls for hauling up heavy cargo from the quays along the river, and in three places winding wooden stairs. Otherwise there was no way up the cliffs.

The slave ship furled her sails at the entrance to the harbor and came in under her sweeps. The harbor lay along the city's southern side, between the bank of the Great River and a long narrow island. The island was not only narrow, it was so low that at high tide or during the spring floods it was hardly more than a chain of sandbanks. Most of the time it protected the harbor from both the current of the Great River and storms coming up from the sea. Three stone forts, perched on the highest points of the island, kept the Forest People's canoes from slipping in through the channels at high water and raiding shipping in the harbor.

Inside the harbor at least two dozen sailing ships lay at anchor or tied up to the quays. Dozens of small boats scooted about like irritated waterbugs, carrying people and freight. At each end of the island a galley packed with archers lay at anchor, checking ships in and out.

Blade's ship anchored in the middle of the harbor and a large flat-bottomed barge came alongside. The slaves were loaded into it and rowed to the nearest quay. From there they were marched up one of the flights of stairs to a gate in the wall.

Inside Gerhaa Blade and Meera were driven at a trot through streets as dark and narrow as alleys, their ankle chains scraping on pavements crusted with garbage and filth. Gerhaa didn't seem nearly so impressive from the inside, and it smelled far worse. No doubt Gerhaa had to be crowded together this way. Without those stone walls the Forest People or even the Treemen could easily become a menace, and those walls would not be cheap or easy to build. Still, it was easy for Blade to see that while the city might easily be defended as long as its walls were intact, after that matters could easily take a very different course.

At the iron-gated entrance to a massive stone building, the slave chain was split up. Meera and the other women were led off one way, Blade and the men another. The gate opened with a squeal, then closed with a clang. Blade was alone, a slave in Gerhaa at the mercy of the Sons of Hapanu.

Actually no man is ever at the mercy of another, even when he's a slave, as long as he keeps his strength and his wits. At the very worst, he can always force those who call themselves his masters to kill him, rather than submit to something intolerable.

The stone-walled chamber where Blade and fifty other male slaves lay was so far underground that it was impossible to tell day from night. It was damp and the stones were slimy to the touch, but otherwise it was clean, almost free of rats and lice, and heated by a charcoal brazier. There were tubs for water and human wastes, and plenty of porridge and salt meat twice a day. Once each day the slaves were unchained from the walls, led into another chamber, and forced to exercise for an hour. Then they were rubbed down with warm oil and led back to their prison.

A third of Blade's fellow slaves were Forest People. The rest were apparently Sons of Hapanu or other races from across the ocean. Most were tall and all looked tough and robust. Some had impressive displays of scars and missing fingers or even missing eyes. This was obviously a roomful of men intended for the Games of Hapanu, and their strength had to be preserved. The keepers were quick enough to deal with anyone who rebelled openly, but otherwise left their charges alone.

The men of the Forest People mostly seemed too stunned to do more than go through the motions of living. Except for one or two who'd apparently been slaves for a while, they sat staring at nothing, seldom speaking. The Sons of Hapanu talked more. Some talked of drinking, women, fights, and what they'd like to do to the guards or soldiers. Others talked of homes, families, what they'd seen in Gerhaa, or what crimes they'd committed. Among them, they said more than enough to give Blade a rough picture of the people called the Sons of Hapanu.

Gerhaa was a colony of the Empire of Kylan. In fact, it was mostly settled and maintained by the nobles and merchants of one city, Mashom-Gad. They were the boldest explorers and adventurers in Kylan, the first to take their ships out across the ocean and reach the lands of the Forest and the Great River. The first settlement was small, but then the firestone was discovered. The priests of Hapanu decided that the god's worship demanded a steady supply of it. From that moment Gerhaa's prosperity was secure, as the leaders of Mashom-Gad bribed the Emperor to give them a monopoly of importing the precious Blood of Hapanu. Every temple in Kylan needed the jewels, and all the nobles and merchants also demanded them.

So Gerhaa grew, and as it grew it acquired its own class of nobles and wealthy merchants, with time and money to indulge their vices. The most popular of these vices was the Games of Hapanu-gladiatorial combats that would have made any ancient Roman feel right at home. Apparently these Games were far more popular in Gerhaa than at home in Kylan. The slave merchants of-Gerhaa always bid high for condemned criminals and others sentenced to the Games, and even then they couldn't get enough men.

So the slave raiders began their work among the Forest People. It was no longer a case of simply bringing back any men or women captured while digging the Blood of Hapanu from the river bottoms. It was systematic raiding to supply the Games and the brothels of Gerhaa.

About five years ago a new ruler came to Gerhaa. His official title was «Protector of the City,» but more and more he protected only those willing to join or at least support his faction. The Protector's Guard were almost openly a private army, obeying only their master's orders, recruited from anyone who would join. They weren't completely useless in battle, but they were certainly no match for the regular soldiers of the imperial garrison. Much of their fighting was against their fellow soldiers or even against their fellow citizens. One of the men in the room with Blade was there because he'd attacked two Guardsmen. They'd been carrying off one of his sons for their officer's amusement.

The Protector himself was a young nobleman from Mashom-Gad, apparently less than thirty years old. But he had vices and viciousness enough for ten men twice his age. His homosexuality was the most respectable of them. At the same time he was shrewd in choosing friends and allies and open-handed in rewarding them. He also had the support of his powerful family and their allies among the nobles of Mashom-Gad and elsewhere in Kylan. So he was in a position where he could do more or less as he pleased.

«The only way we'll get rid of him is if he drops dead going at it with one of his pretty-boys,» said one of Blade's fellow slaves. «And the bastard's young yet. We could have him forty more years.» He spat on the floor at the idea.

One thing the Protector did with his Guard was to increase the slave raids. They went out more often, went farther, and burned villages as well as bringing back Forest People. No one knew for sure why the Protector was doing this, although there were a few guesses, most of them obscene.

Blade didn't bother guessing about the Protector's motives. They weren't important, compared to what he now knew for sure. There was more than narrow streets and foul smells hiding behind the stone walls of Gerhaa. There was a city full of intrigue, perhaps ready to explode into civil war if the right man gave it a well-timed push in the right direction.

Blade also knew that for the time being both he and Meera were in the power of an able, ruthless, thoroughly evil, and deadly dangerous man. It was just as well he knew this, because after about a week in the prison Blade was brought before the Protector of Gerhaa.