Slave

The light-skinned man from the coast had already lost. No money had yet changed hands (though plenty would before the night was out) no victor crowned, and no head yet separated from heaving, depleted shoulders. Nevertheless, it was over. As their Lord and ruler closed for the kill, his subjects - thronging in the central square since yesterday afternoon just to be here now - begun to swoon and scream for him:

Sagneet…Sagneet…Sagneet

They sang, thousands of voices blending and rising as one. The word meant “God.” The voices crested as the great man came on his combatant, the chant twisting and morphing into a crazed group war-cry. The pharaoh threw down the heavy staff he’d bested the man with and took the man’s shaved head under the chin. Nobody noticed the slave's free hand: a sudden gleam, something shiny and polished, glinting in the desert sun…

***

There had always been slaves in Egypt, but never quite so many as now. The great Pyramid idea started off as a joke, an impossible-dream scenario for some future ruler, with sway over greater technologies and more warm bodies. It was the magician Lu - the Pharaoh’s miracle warrior - who’d laid the plans for a Pyramid to be built for this age, this King. The old ones had the Atrium and Commons at the Crystal, and the older had the Glass Palace itself. This God-King Pharaoh’s contribution to the legacy of Egypt’s great architects, a great platform, a monument and a path from the heavens for the great Sun God.

We will build you to the heavens Lord Pharaoh. We’ll build you to tread with Gods and men as you choose. An equal or a ruler. Your terms.

It was too tempting an idea for a man such as the God-king, who ruled by a mandate from the sun. The magician said there was a way to put him amongst the Gods, so the Pharaoh had no choice but to do what he could. He took council from Lu and his builders, and laid the plans and personnel requirements. He produced giant machines to move more rock and earth than any before. He blasted and cut stones of all shapes and one size: Immense. The Sun King had seen fifty-one summers in the desert, and Lu claimed the great Pyramid could be finished before he'd seen sixty-five, if he was given power to harvest and command more slaves. Before long there was more chattels in the Sun God’s lands then free men. Nobody noticed though, they were all at the building site, and never anywhere else.

Lu said, the best slaves came from the unexplored country to the south of the Sun Lands. A place as vast as ten Egypt’s. Africa was said to be teaming with giant black man-product that could lift and carry and read plans for days and weeks and years without succumbing to sickness, boredom, or the capacity for violence. Pharaoh sent Lu with ten battle rigs from the Sun Fleet. He put a skeleton crew on each - A captain, two mates, a navigator and twenty oars - and instructed them to fill to capacity and then half again. He wanted his bodies and his great Pyramid, did this Sun King, and he’d bathe in slave-blood to grant his own wish.

Bring them to me as you’d bring salt and spice…

Wailed the God-King, and added:

The ones that perish en route would have perished at my stones anyway. The voyage will cull the weak.

And he was right. By the end of the long sea journey, most of the human cargo left was honed and forged hard and sharp as steel. They left the boats weakened by the sea and the salt, but the Pharaoh feasted them for weeks at the barracks tables. They had lamb, rice, fowl, and game from every corner of the kingdom. Seven days and nights a week for a month they were allowed all the food and water they could eat and drink. They slept late, and went to bed early. They weren’t allowed any wine. Inside a months’ time, the new slaves had gained pounds of muscle and a new constitution hardened by all they’d eaten and drank. The Sun God’s servant Pharaoh would then ride among them, offering blessings and encouragement and praise. The slaves were now ready for the stones.

All of them, that is, save three. From each voyage, the Pharaoh himself would hand-pick three slaves from the teaming hundreds making ready for the stones. They were chosen by very careful criteria of height (never more than two cubits, never less than one point five), weight (never more than sixteen stone and never less than fourteen), and - the Sun King always said - Pick the ones who are almost warriors but not yet warriors. They will be my trainers, not my enemy.

Code, the armory commander Tox understood, for men his king could best without question and without any great effort. It would not do to have the God’s own Sun King struck down in combat by a slave. Tox chose carefully.

But with 300 new slaves coming into his barracks every week, the Sun King’s house was a busy one. As time went by and the great Pyramid grew even greater, Tox had little time to review slaves for the King to “train” with. He had enough on his plate seeing to his real troops and see to their training. In addition, the Sun King had charged Tox with the slaves at the stones. Work orders were to be given to him at the beginning of every week, to be completed and inspected at the end of the week by the Sun King’s only son, Moze-Wrock Ramses. If his lord wanted the work done and done right, he complained, he needed a bit less on his plate. That or more men.

Besides...

Tox told the Sun King, choosing his words as carefully as he chose his king’s “trainers.”

The slaves from the last few shipments had been gigantic and mean as asps. There wasn’t a man below eighteen stone in weight and two cubits in height. The new labor crews will be fast and tireless my gift of the Gods. But there are none among them who will do for training. Let us make do with blunted swords and sparring until we find boys more appropriate for the Sun King’s blades.

Pharaoh wouldn’t hear it. He killed three men every week, he roared at Tox and his men, and the Pyramid, the wedding, the slaves, and the desert itself could not keep him from that appointment.

Find me men to fight, soldier, or it’s your men I’ll turn to next. Your men, and when they run out…You.

Tox was vexed. The God-Kings thirst for blood had put him in a tough position, and with 300 new bodies a week joining the work at the stones, he didn’t have time to worry over the problem and carefully choose his course. Instead he sought an audience with the Pharaoh’s four deaths: The Blade, The Fire, The Touch, and The Blood. The four deadly wraiths were a special command only ever concerned with battle. Even as the slaves built and the castle staff readied the glass palace for the impending wedding, the God-King had the Four Deaths secreted away far under the sand, planning the next hundred years of conquest for the God on Earth. Nobody in the kingdom was supposed to know where they were, but Tox knew where they dwelt. In short order, he’d called a secret meeting on behalf of the great God on Earth, Pharaoh. He met the Deaths a mile below the sand at Death’s Deep - just he and they - and pled his case.

The next day the four deaths rode, each to a different direction in the realm. Promises had been made, first by Tox then by each of the four. The Sun King would have his trainers, and Tox would have to worry no more over their selection. The deaths had taken the problem out of his hands. In return, well, nobody knew what they’d been promised. Where the four deaths were concerned, it was always best to stay well clear of their business. Of course, there was no stopping the rumors of a black bargain between them and the old commander, but the particulars were unknown and thus subject to speculation and guesswork of increasingly wild sort:

Tox promised the Four Deaths each a child.

The Four Deaths would be given Tox’s body to feast upon after his natural death.

Tox had already been killed and the four deaths were guiding his undead body to serve their own black needs.

Each rumor more ridiculous than the last. Becoming more and more until the Deaths returned months later, each with prizes of flesh for the rangy old Armorer Tox. It was thus that Am’Ram came to the kingdom of the sun.

***

Sagneet…Sagneet…Sagneet

Just as the God King’s blade began its inexorable slash across the slaves’ throat, something happened. Many who were there claim they saw some magical flash of light, others say the Lord Pharaoh was distracted by some noise or shouting from the gathered soldiers. The exact events aren’t known but the outcome is: The slave eluded the king’s grasp and escaped the hold just before his throat was cut. There was grappling, and the king lost his blade. The slave - who’d chosen only a rusty axe for his weapon - was expert in his fighting; all who witnessed the scrap swear they’d never seen his equal. Before anybody knew what had happened, the outsider had the Sun King pinned by the throat beneath a massive, sun-weathered hand. He raised his axe, and a hundred spears were raised around the training floor. There were moments then, old the old stories say so, where not a single one of the hundred souls gathered so much as breathed or moved even an inch. Time stopped - it seemed - waiting on the rusty blade of a wretched slave’s rusty axe.

***

Am’Ram

Tox let the name drop off his tongue like he’d spit it into the sand. It was not a desert name, and so he didn’t trust it.

What have you brought us here? Treason masked as a mountain tribesman? The Sun God’s gift doesn’t train with savages. This man has seen battle.

And so it was true. The man, Am’Ram, was covered almost head to toe in ragged brown scars. His skin was light and almost red, shades lighter than the rich ebony of his captors. His face and neck were hardened and honed by sun and sand, and his eyes were old and lively and feral. He didn’t speak. Tox noticed his hands. The size of flour baskets and hard and brown like the earth itself. No, this man wouldn’t be taking the training floor with the Pharaoh. He instructed his men to hide the man away in the ranks and try to find which of the Pharaoh’s wraiths had brought him in. Tox would have some words with that Death later in the evening. He was away to the stones then, to crack the whip and execute the builder’s commands. The very next day, the King’s Son, Prince Wrock married his betrothed Isabella Atous under the sands in the great glass palace, and the feasting went from dawn to dawn.

They’d started when the sun first touched the sky of the new day. Cheers went up from every corner of the castle and the God King gathered thousands in his great hall, a glass amphitheater hundreds of feet deep in the shifting sands. He toasted the bride and groom, lead prayers to the great Sun and a host of lesser gods and goddesses’. Then he brought the mead and the party began. Great vats of berry flavored surfactant, strong and sweet, were wheeled into the glass hall. Music from an orchestra of hundreds echoed amongst the guests and food of every amount and description was wheeled out and served amongst the celebrants.

There were a thousand fatted calves and lambs soaked in honey and lemon. There were near-transparent slices of raw beef and fish. There were special preparations of fowl from beyond the desert where the land is green and watered. Each guest was given a golden goblet and served glass after glass of exotic, heady brews from places they’d never heard of. Hashish and Shisha smoke curled and vented through the glass byways of the underground palace as the court offered its finest and most potent intoxicants fresh and new after months of careful preparation. Everywhere for miles and miles under the sand the guests ate, drank, and smoked the health of the happy prince and princess. They went on like that for seven days and nights until finally, the God King led them all out into the air and down into another, even larger amphitheater among his stones and slaves. His son and his new bride were married then, under the noon-day sun of the desert, sealed and committed in front of the Gods and everyone for all time. There were toasts and joking and feats of strength. Slaves fought and died for the pleasure of the court. The Sun God looked on impassive and oozed across the sky, blessing the happy bride with a warm, cloudless night. Finally, after the day and the week had wound out to its final hours, the new couple wished thanks to their courtiers and moved to the bed. They’d stay there for three whole days, and return to a world forever changed. For it was just as they moved off that the God King Pharaoh, who’d himself been up for most of the previous seven days, decided to take his special “training.” He told Tox to ready a combatant and retired to his offices to prepare.

***

The God King looked up then, his eyes red, desperate, and lost. A word escaped his lips and the old axe fell. The word was “No,” and the axe was true. The God King died before hundreds, a rusty axe deposited smartly between his eyes. Even as his life’s blood escaped from the God King’s head, mouth, nose, and eyes, the slave Am’Ram was taken away to a hot cell near the God King’s quarry. A quick council was formed from the four deaths, Tox the Armorer, and the magician named Lu. The new King would emerge any minute from his wedding bed and seek to treat with his father. They needed a plan…

The Death called Touch, who - Tox realized - had been involved at practically every turn of the recent and terrible events, listened intently while the council argued back and forth in frustration. Finally, as the arguers finished up, he began to speak…