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Hero Historia: Aea Watched 4

Aea Watched is the second chapter of the historical superhero web serial Hero Historia, set in ancient Sumer.

Aea followed Puabi from the school bathhouse to the clay-brick road running along the inner city walls. She craned her head back to stare up at the towering ziggurat, so tall that it actually blocked out her view of the sun. She couldn’t count all the steps leading up to its top; there had to be hundreds of them.

“The God lives there?” she asked.

“Enlil, Lord of the Storm,” Puabi said.

Aea cast her gaze across the sky, but couldn’t see any clouds. “Does he ever come out?”

“Sometimes,” Puabi said. “More often the priests go to see him when he wants something.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

“Once.” Puabi walked in silence for several paces. “When I was a girl. There was a great storm, and I went out onto our roof to enjoy the rain.”

“You what?”

Puabi grinned. “I was an odd little girl. It’s one of the reasons they thought I might be a God-in-Hiding.”

“God-in-Hiding?”

“Hiding in mortal flesh.”

“Oh, yes.”

“And I saw him, Enlil, rise from the top of his Ziggurat up into the storm. It was beautiful. It was terrifying.”

“That’s amazing.”

“I told my father about it, and the next day the priests came and took me to the school.”

Aea turned her head to gaze at the wall. “So your family is just there, in the outer city?”

Puabi nodded.

“Have you ever gone to see them?”

Puabi looked towards the gate set into the wall. “No, I… no.”

“Why not?”

The older woman shook her head. “What would we speak of? I would ask my father of the markets, and he would ask me of the priests? No. No, I left that life behind. As you have left your family behind.”

“I’ll never see them again?” Aea asked. “Not my parents, not my brother?”

Puabi stopped under a palm, fanning herself. “Who can say the fates the gods will parcel out? But you need to let go of the life you no longer own, little one. Come. The heat of the day is still oppressive. Let’s return to the school.”

Aea nodded, squinting her eyes shut to hold back her tears. She couldn’t just give up on her family. She wouldn’t. If there was a way out of this place, a way out of the city, she would find it. If she could escape over the wall, so be it. If she had to be the perfect student to be allowed to leave, then she could run away. The gods rained misfortune down upon those who had sinned, who deserved it, but Aea had always been good, had always been respectful.

It could not be divine will that she was kept here. It had to be a mistake, and sooner or later, they would recognize that mistake. And then, if she’d been good, they’d send her home.

***

Aea had regained her composure by the time she and Puabi returned to the school, a carefully blank face replacing her concerned grimace. If she wanted to get home, she’d have to be a good girl, a complacent girl, she’d have to endure this school without complaint. She was no god, just a girl, and there was no way to tell them that without making Kuwari upset, so she’d just do what her mother had suggested whenever soldiers or taxmen passed through.

She’d be a quiet little mouse.

The school’s entrance hall was cool and dark compared to the clay confines of the inner city. Carved icons of the gods lined the walls, as big as people, many times larger than the icon set in her family’s hut. They were made of wood, good wood, not palm, so much more of it than Aea had ever seen in her young life.

Puabi placed a hand on her shoulder. “Fantastic, no?”

“How do we ask them for permission to pass?” Aea barely dared speak. “I don’t want to anger them!”

The taller woman smiled. “They don’t mind. If you are a student or one of the teachers, you are meant to be here. You might be any one of these gods, after all.”

Aea’s eyes passed over them, dressed in their carved finery, doubting she could ever look so grand.

Puabi named them as they passed. “Enlil, Lord Storm. Nammu, the sea. An, god of the heavens. Ki, goddess of the earth. Utu, the sun. Ninhursag, the Mother. Enki, Lord of Wisdom. Inanna, goddess of Love and War. Erershkigal, her sister.”

“There are so many,” Aea said.

“Thousands more than we have statues for,” Puabi said. “Not all gods are known to man.”

Aea could feel them watching her, weighing her, judging her. This was a school, and she was an ignorant farm-girl, not a scribe, and certainly no god. She hoped the gods understood that the mistake was not hers, the sin was not hers, and that they wouldn’t punish her for it.

Was hoping not to be punished a blasphemy? She couldn’t remember. Her parents had taught her more about crops than about the divine.

She felt a great pressure lift as they emerged from the hall of gods into the courtyard beyond. It was cool here, too, owing to the fountain in the center and the fact that the sun was no longer directly overhead. A few ivy plants flourished in pots along the sides of the courtyard, and Aea spotted a young girl near her own age sitting by the fountain with a clay tablet.

Puabi lead the way over. “Aea, this is Sabit.”

Sabit was smaller than Aea, slighter, with wide eyes. She smiled at Puabi, then gave Aea a small wave.

“Can you tell what it says?” Aea pointed at the tablet.

Sabit looked down at the tablet and shook her head, not raising her eyes again.

“Sabit has only been here for a few weeks.”

“Will you be teaching us to read?” Aea asked.

“Your education will cover many subjects.” Kuwari strode in from one of the halls leading from the courtyard. “Mathematics. Measurement. Drawing. Music. The lore of plants, animals, the weather. And yes. Writing.”

Aea’s eyes darted to the school father, then away again, her hand tightening on Puabi’s.

There was a young man with Kuwari, perhaps a few years older than Aea, his head shaven.

“I did not know girls could be taught to read,” the boy said.

“Girls can be taught anything,” Kuwari said. “But it usually isn’t worth the effort.”

The boy narrowed his eyes. “Then why do you bother?”

Kuwari slowly turned to the young man. “There is one lesson above all you must learn, Garre. Any of your classmates may be gods in the flesh. You would do to respect them, for once they have emerged from this mortal chrysalis, you will be at their mercy.”

Garre folded his arms. “You would presume that I will not be one of them, then?”

“Call it playing the odds,” Kuwari said dryly.

“We have three then?” Puabi asked.

“Three today.” Kuwari gestured and the young woman joined him. “Two more tomorrow.”

“Only five?”

“It will suffice to begin, and who can say how many more will trickle in?” The pair walked off back down the hall together, leaving Aea with her two new classmates.

“My name is Garre,” the boy said. “And I am a god.”

“How do you know?” Aea asked.

Garre smirked. “If you were one, you wouldn’t need to ask.”

Aea wondered if he was just too dumb to question himself.

Garre shifted his attention to Sabit. “How about you?”

Sabit stared at her tablet.

“What do you have there?” Garret reached out for it, but the girl turned from him.

“Leave her alone.”

“I want to see what she’s reading.”

“Oh, you can read now?”

“Of course I can,” Garre said. “I’ve been in school since I was six.”

Aea brightened. “A school like this?”

Garre snorted. “There are no schools like this. Don’t you know anything?”

“I know enough.” Aea frowned. “Where are you from?”

“I was attending a scribal school in Eridu. You?”

Eridu. The most majestic of cities. Aea felt very small and insignificant… even if Garre wasn’t a god, he was so much more than she was. “I’m from Lagash.”

“A merchant’s daughter, no doubt.”

Aea didn’t correct him.

“Kish.” Sabit’s voice was so quiet as to almost go unheard.

“What?” Garre asked.

“She said she was from Kish.” Something about Sabit quiet demeanor reminded Aea of her brother Bavi. “Leave her alone.”

Garre’s brows drew together. “I was just asking. What did your father do, Kish-girl?”

“Her name’s Sabit.”

“What did your father do, Sabit?”

Sabit shook her head and held the tablet to her chest.

Garre rolled his eyes. “Fine. But remember, any one of us could be a god. You don’t want to disappoint a god, do you?”

Sabit closed her eyes.

“You know what an angry god can do, don’t you?”

Aea stepped between them. “Leave her alone! Stop being mean.”

Garre held up his hands. “I’m not being mean, I just want to know.”

“My father is dead,” Sabit said, sitting down with her tablet.

Aea turned to her. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Sabit just shook her head.

Garre sat on the edge of the fountain. “What about you, Lagash?”

“Aea.”

“How did they find you?”

Aea sat on the ground next to Sabit. The last thing she wanted to do was tell Garre the truth, but if she didn’t tell him something, he’d keep talking to her. “Kuwari found me half-dead in the desert.”

Garre whistled. “That’s prestigious.”

“It is?”

Garre nodded. “If the gods went through all the trouble of leading Kuwari to you, then you’re probably a god yourself. They wouldn’t bother for just some girl.”

Aea smiled sourly. “So you say, but you also said that you knew that you were a god. I don’t know any such thing.”

“No, I’m pretty sure you are. If you behave, maybe I’ll let you be my queen.”

Aea laughed. “Why would I want to be your queen? I don’t even want to be a god.”

Garre looked confused. “Why not?”

“I just want to go home.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Aea turned away from him. “You don’t know anything.”

“I know more than you.”

She didn’t respond, for fear that he’d try to prove it. He was annoying, but she tried to calm down – Garre was just another obstacle, another grain of sand in her shoe to be endured until the school was over. Aea resolved to ignore him the best she could, for however long it took.

***

The three students sat in silence for another hour before Kuwari and Puabi returned. Garre watched the fountain, Sabit cradled her tablet, and Aea tried to quiet the rising panic inside.

After a quick meal of chickpea soup with honey and a dark bread, Puabi lead the girls to a long dormitory room lined with straw mats, much like the one Aea had slept on at home. Despite the dozen or so mats, Aea and Sabit had the hall to themselves.

Aea was on the brink of sleep when Sabit’s voice reached her.

“Aea?”

She wasn’t entirely sure that the girl had actually spoken. “Yes?”

“What do you think will happen if we’re not gods?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will they let us go?”

Aea considered it. Education was expensive, but anything was possible. “Maybe.”

“What if… what if we did something bad?”

“Like what?”

Sabit was silent, and at first Aea thought that the girl had fallen asleep. Finally, she spoke. “I think I killed my father.”

“What?” Aea sat up.

Sabit didn’t reply, but Aea watched the girl’s dark supine form long into the night.

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New Release: Ghosts of Shaolin

Ghosts of Shaolin, the fifth book in the Galvanic Century series, has been released.

James Wainwright always considered himself a working-class engineer playing at detective, never taking the vocation for more than an idle hobby and opportunity to test some of his steampunk inventions. His investigations have always been more of a means of humoring his business partner, idle toff Alton Bartleby.

That was before his adopted daughter Xin Yan was taken.

Never comfortable in social situations, James finds himself tracking his daughter’s kidnappers from London’s Limehouse to the gritty streets of Hong Kong, down paths where his mechanical know-how won’t serve him. Searching a foreign land, he’ll find that his greatest challenges aren’t those who have taken from him what is most dear, but letting go of his most treasured preconceptions about the world.

Ghosts of Shaolin is currently available through Amazon, iBooks, and Barnes & Noble, and should be available on Kobo and Google Play soon.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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Hero Historia: Aea Watched 3

Aea Watched is the second chapter of the historical superhero web serial Hero Historia, set in ancient Sumer.

“Enlil, to bring forth the seed of the land from the ground,

Hastened to separate heaven from earth,

Hastened to separate earth from heaven.”

The words were familiar. Aea could remember her father speaking them when she was young. She followed them back to consciousness, and found herself in an enclosed space with the priest Kuwari. There were cushions below her, silks above, and heavy curtains all around, with barely enough room to sit. From somewhere came the sensation of movement.

The thin priest noticed her awakening. “Do you know the words?”

“I think so.”

“Then you are not entirely without education. Fortuitous.” He handed her a leather pouch. “Drink.”

Taking it, she realized how parched she was, how dry her throat. She didn’t hesitate, pouring thin beer down her throat, quenching her pain.

“Better?”

Aea nodded. “You found me?”

“The will of the gods,” Kuwari gestured languidly. “Though for a few days I thought they were having a jest, and that you were going to pass on to the next world anyway.”

“Days?” Worry flashed through her. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Long enough to miss the journey to the sea,” Kuwari said. “Behold!”

He swept the curtains aside, revealing that Aea rode alongside him upon his litter. Ahead the broad reddish expanse of clay gave way to the most brilliant blue the young girl had ever seen, a darker blue that met the sky in an unexpectedly orderly line. She’d heard about the great waters, of course, greater even than the rivers from which the life-giving irrigation came, but they were all the way on the other side of the world.

The understanding that she was as far from home as one could be while living broke through her awe, and Aea realized that she would never see her father, her village, her brother or mother again.

“And there,” Kuwari said, “Beyond it. Nippur!”

She followed his gesture up the coast and saw a great walled city, easily the match of Lagash. Rising from its center, visible above the wall, was an impossibly large structure, tiered, reaching for the sky.

“What is that?” she gasped, her loneliness forgotten as soon as it had grown.

“That? The ziggurat. Where the god Enlil lives.”

She looked at him. “Enlil that created the world?”

“The same.”

“Are you taking me to serve Him in the ziggurat?”

“No,” Kuwari said. “That is not your fate.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you going to sacrifice me?”

The priest actually laughed at that. “No, girl, no. This is not Ur we’re talking about. No. It is as I said before. You are coming to the school for children who may be reborn gods.”

“Am I Enlil?” Aea asked.

“Do you feel like Enlil?”

“I feel like Aea.”

“Then probably not,” Kuwari said.

***

The litter passed into the city through massive gates in the thick mud walls. Aea wanted to see Nippur, but Kuwari pulled the curtains back, concealing them.

“The low-people,” he explained. “Always leering about. It’s unseemly. Besides, you’ve seen one outer-city, you’ve seen them all.”

“I’ve never seen an outer-city.”

“Then let me spare you. Shops and cramped houses and workshops all mashed together among filth and vermin. There, now you’ve no need to waste your tie.”

“Vermin? Like rats?”

“It would not surprise me in the least had they an affinity for rats.”

“What?”

“Dreadful, isn’t it.”

Aea found his tone vaguely insulting, though she wasn’t sure why, or if she was the one being insulted. Her shift was chafing her skin, her heart felt fit to beat its way out of her chest, and her mouth was dry. She waited in silence alongside him, suppressing the urge to leap through the curtain and flee.

If she ran, though, she would be lost in a strange city, and Kuwari would only send his servants to go get her. Worse, she might anger Enlil, and who knew what an angry god might do. What little her parents had spoken of the gods, she knew that displeasing them was the root of all suffering.

Father never really sounded like he believed it. He never cursed his luck, only his own failings.

And where was Father now?

Kuwari seemed to be listening to something, and Aea strained her ears as well. She could hear a babble through the curtains, as of an entire village speaking simultaneously. Some of them sounded joyous, others angry, some yelled, others laughed. There seemed to be so many voices. She imagined a swarm of people around the litter, swimming like fish between the litter bearers.

The priest’s smile broadened as the voices grew less distinct. He reached ahead, throwing the curtains open. “Behold! The city of Enlil!”

The first thing Aea saw, craning her neck over the side of the litter, was the Ziggurat. It rose to the sky ahead of her, as awe-inspiring as the sea had been, built of square platforms stacked on top of one another, each slightly smaller than the last. She had no idea how high it rose, but surely the sun must scrape it as it crossed the sky.

“That is where the God lives,” Kuwari said.

Aea could believe it.

There were other structures in the shadows of the Ziggurat, grand in their own way, but none stood so tall. Past them she could see that the entire complex was surrounded by another stone wall, and the broad clay streets were lined with gardens. Men and women walked alone and in pairs, tending the plants, off on errands, and simply having discussions. Most amazing, Aea saw no farms, no workshops, no laboring.

“There. The school,” Kuwari said.

On a raised platform on the edge of the Ziggurat’s courtyard was a broadly built structure with recessed alcoves and a thin roof supported by pillars. While dwarfed by the Ziggurat, the school on its own was easily larger than her entire village had been.

“Impressed?” Kuwari seemed pleased.

“It’s all so… large!”

“The gods demand it,” the priest said. “The best of everything is delivered to the gods in gratitude. The fattest cattle. The freshest crops. The purest beer. The most well-mannered servants. They will stand for nothing less, and it is why we were created to serve them.”

“We were?”

“Of course,” Kuwari. “Even the highest king of the greatest city is but a slave to the gods. Hmph. So much for hopes you’d been educated.”

Aea felt faint. “I only ever knew my village.”

“Well then. Welcome, Aea, to the rest of the world.”

***

When the litter reached the school the carriers lowered it to the ground, and Aea crawled out after Kuwari. There were a few priests or teachers outside in the shadow of the building, along with a few children her own age. She gawked at their clean goatskin skirts and linen wraps, and felt instantly insecure of her own ragged clothing, stained with clay and mud, torn from the hardships of the events that had brought her to Nippur. She felt filthy next to them, small, poor, uneducated.

A tall woman with a serene expression met Kuwari. “You are the first to return.”

“And I was behind schedule,” the priest screwed his face. “Had to give chase to this one.”

The woman seemed surprised. “But why?”

Kuwari shook his head. “I know less of the ways of little girls than I do little boys. Can you see her cleaned?”

The woman offered a hand to Aea. “I am Puabi. Will you come with me?”

Aea stepped to her side. She, at least, seemed nicer than Kuwari. “I’m Aea.”

“Aea. What a pretty name. It means ‘bounty’, and is the name of a foreign water god.”

“Am I a water god?”

“You might be.” Kuwari snorted.

Puabi shot him a look. “It’s not that simple, young one. But come with me. You must be tired after your journey.”

Aea let Puabi lead her around the back of the school and through a tall fence. Servants not much older than herself joined them, and they stripped the girl’s tattered wrap from her back. She felt a moment’s anxiety as it was taken, the only thing she had left, but as she watched it pass from hand to hand she realized how torn and ruined it was. If that dress was all she had, then she truly had nothing.

She was escorted into a small cistern built into the back of the school, filled with water. It was pleasantly cool inside, and as the servants scrubbed her skin and scraped her hair, she found herself entranced by the waters’ reflection dancing on the fired clay walls. She found her mind drifting back to the sea that the city rested on, all that water, as ancient as the world. It was all too easy to love it, to let her imagine herself a water-god in the form of a young girl.

Maybe what they were suggesting wasn’t so strange after all.

Maybe it could be true.

***

After she’d been cleansed, Puabi brought her a fresh linen wrap and fastened it over her shoulder with a small metal pin.

“How do you feel?” Puabi asked.

“Better.” Aea looked down at her hands, clean even under the nails, then back up at the older woman. “What is to become of me?”

“What did Kuwari tell you?”

“Something about… the gods? Being reborn?”

Puabi gave a small laugh. “Kuwari does not always have the patience to explain everything. That is why he is the school’s father, not a teacher.”

“Father?”

“The school is a family. The master of the school is the father.”

“Are you the mother?”

“Oh, gods no. I’m a teacher. An older sister.”

“Are you a god too?”

She looked uneasy. “It doesn’t work quite that way.”

Aea closed her eyes, upset with herself for looking foolish again. “Oh.”

Puabi took her hand. “All will be explained, little one. But Kuwari wants to wait until the others have returned.”

“What others?”

Puabi put a hand on Aea’s back, guiding her out of the bathhouse and into the warm day’s light. “Other teachers. Other older brothers. They go out into the world, looking for boys and girls like you, children who might serve as incarnations of the gods.”

“I think that’s the part I’m having difficulty understanding.”

“Kuwari will explain more once all of the children have been gathered, but sometimes the gods… they tire of their old bodies, and are reborn. They are gods, they can be reborn into any form, and live their youths not remembering who they are. Sometimes there are signs–”

“Omens?” Aea’s mother had told her about omens.

“Sometimes,” Puabi said. “Sometimes they just manifest the powers of the gods, without remembering who they really are. It’s easier to find them when they do, but it’s easier for them to resume godhood if they’re found and educated first.”

“How do the older brothers’ find them?”

“There are signs,” Puabi said. “They know what to look for. They’re not always right. Not all the children brought back to the school will host the gods’ power. Some will, though.”

Aea felt her stomach drop. “What if… what happens if there’s no god in me?”

Puabi smiled, and there was a hint of sadness to it. “Do not worry, little one. What you learn at the school will take you far in life, even if you’re just a girl. Kuwari will explain it all.”

Aea smiled back, but couldn’t shake the uneasiness that had settled in her belly.

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Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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WXH 10.2: What do I do now?

I’ve been following the Writing Excuses Podcast for years now, and this season they’re going to be following a writing master-class format, including homework. Sounds like it might be fun, so I’m going to be following along and doing the writing exercises that they assign.

Episode 2 is about idea development. Taking your idea-gem and polishing it into something suitable to be the centerpiece of your story. I’ll be working with the five ideas I generated for the last homework assignment.

The Homework

Using last week’s five story ideas (or five new ones):

Take two of them and combine them into one story.
Take one and change the genre underneath it.
Take one and change the ages and genders of everybody you had in mind for it
Take the last one and have a character make the opposite choice.

Take two and combine

Two of the ideas I developed last week – a city’s genus loci in the person of an old homeless woman – and mysterious evangelists not handing out a pamphlet to you seem to go together well, so let’s extrapolate that into a postmodern occult setting where supernatural forces coexist with underground secret societies that exist to exploit them.

Maybe there are a number of competing factions, including urban shamans who respect and revere the city-spriits, and more organized groups that seek to use them as a resource.

Take one and change the genre

The post-apocalyptic train idea stolen shamelessly from Snowpiercer could use a bit of obfuscation, so let’s change the genre to Space Opera. Instead of a train, it’s a generation ship, lost between the stars, left alone for so long that the inhabitants have forgotten that they’re on a ship.

We can even keep the post-apocalyptic flavor simply by setting it not after the fall of Earth civilization, but after the collapse of stellar civilization.

Take one and change the ages and genders

In Shadow Decade my protagonist is a woman nearing 40 suffering from a ten-year memory loss, assisted by a male social worker of about her own age. Switching that around, let’s make Erica an Eric, say he was only ten the last he remembers, so he’s twenty now, a per-adolescent in the body of a young adult.

The book becomes YA and will deal with issues similar to those presented in Tom Hanks’ movie Big, except there’s no going back; the fallout of dealing with social situations you’re unsocialized for will take the forefront and displace the culture-shock.

Just Because, I’m also going to shift the genre from cyberpunk to Urban Fantasy. A decade ago Eric was taken by faeries, and has just now been returned to his mortal life.

Take one and have a character make the opposite choice

In the 19th-century African American barber story, I never really defined what choice the barber made, but assumed it would be either to spill the beans or keep silent.

What if, instead, he decided to blackmail these powerful men? Not out of altruistic desire to make them change, but out of greed? What if he’s an anti-hero, and nobody’s hands are clean?

Maybe that sparks an all out war in the town between the barber and his network of blackmailed clients and the industrialists looking to get him out of the way. And that’s what our actual protagonist – an innocent Native American trader already unused to the white-man’s towns – walks into.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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Hero Historia: Aea Watched 2

Aea Watched is the second chapter of the historical superhero web serial Hero Historia, set in ancient Sumer.

At twelve Aea was the youngest of the girls, though her neighbor Shiptu was less than a year older. Ninlil looked to be perhaps sixteen, though the scar running down her face made it difficult to guess. The other women Aea did not know, and some were older than Ninlil, the scarred woman looked most at ease.

After the guards had taken her younger brother and the other men and boys away, Aea had slunk to the ground near the gate, spending half her time watching the outside and half watching her fellow prisoners. The guards – tough bald men in sheepskin skirts carrying whips and short staves – had disappeared into another hut across the stretch of dry earth. They had not emerged, perhaps waiting out the harsh noonday sun with the male slaves.

Beyond the men’s hut, in the distance, Aea could see the walls of the mighty city Lagash, closer than it had been to their village, but still most of a day’s travel away.

Her childhood friend Shiptu sat against the wall a short length away. A pair of women closer to her mother’s age were sitting in one corner, heads bowed, resting. Ninlil stood in the opposite corner, head against the mud wall, fingernails idly picking at the cracks between the bricks. At first Aea hoped that the scarred girl was trying to escape, but it quickly became clear that she was just bored.

“What is to become of us?” Shiptu asked, breaking the silence.

Aea crawled over to her friend. “I don’t know. Maybe they will take us to sell in Lagash?”

The scarred girl turned to lean back against the wall, watching the newcomers with a level gaze. “This is an outpost slave market. They’ll sell us here, because they can avoid paying Lagash its taxes.”

“Is that allowed?” Aea asked.

“No,” Ninlil said, “but Lagash won’t bother sending soldiers out this far to stop them. Everyone would be gone by the time they arrived.”

“Oh,” Aea said. “I wish our village could avoid taxes that way.”

“Sold by your families into debt-slavery?” Ninlil asked.

“Yes.”

The scarred woman nodded. “It’s happening more often now that Lagash has raised taxes so high.”

“Don’t they realize what’s happening?” Shiptu asked.

One of the other women, a thin woman with a hook-shaped nose, snorted. “Do you think they care? They have to pay for their wars somehow, and it is the poor that suffer.”

“Always the poor,” her friend, still thin but with a broad face, added.

“What is going to happen now?” Aea asked.

“Men will come to the market,” Hook-Nose said. “And they will buy us.”

“But Father can buy me back, yes?” Aea held on to her one hope.

Broad-face laughed and unpleasant cackle. “If the taxes go down, sure. If he wants to bother. If he can find the slaver. If the slaver kept all the right records.”

Aea felt her hope flicker. “My father loves me. This is… this is just for now.”

“Oh, sure,” Broad-Face said. “That is what my husband told me. Three years ago.”

“You’ve been a slave for three years?” Aea was dismayed.

“Three, yes Urnina?”

Hook-nose nodded. “Three, give or take a month.”

“Then why are you being sold again?” Shiptu asked.

“Can’t you tell?” Ninlil asked. “Such a spiteful bitch, no wonder her husband couldn’t stand her.”

Broad-face struggled to her feet. “Oh, and I suppose you’re just too ugly to look at, Scarface? Maybe you’d be more attractive if I gave you a matching trench on the other side?”

Urnina stood and grabbed at her friend. “Settle, or the guards–”

“No, let her come.” Ninlil balled her fists. “The guards won’t hear. I’ll have plenty of time to take you apart.”

“She’s not worth it, Mammetum,” Unrina said. “Her face is ruined, so she has nothing to lose, but you…”

Broad-face relaxed and sat down again. “You’re right. She’s not worth it.”

“Im sorry,” Aea said after a few tense moments, her face burning hot. “It was rude of me to ask.”

“There’s no harm.” Mammetum’s face was still flushed, but she did a good job of looking unflustred. “To answer your question, we’re bought and sold, depending on the whim of our owners. That’s what makes it unlikely you’ll ever be bought back.”

“Maybe your husband is looking for you?” Shiptu said. “And just cannot find you?”

Mammetum and Urnina looked at each other for a moment before breaking up into laughter.

“No, child, no,” Mammetum managed. “That drunk has probably forgotten he has a wife and remaried. No.”

“We were bought together last time,” Urina said. “A quick trip into concubinage and then back onto the market.”

“Cheaper than a whore for the same timespan,” Mammetum said.

Aea felt the blood drain from her face. “That happens?”

“Oh, sure!” Mammetum crawled closer, followed by Urnina. “Men by slaves for all sorts of reasons. Labor. Sex. Boredom. Chattal. Maybe you’ll get lucky, and be purchased for an easy domestic service, cleaning house for wealthy nobles who barely know you’re alive.”

Urnina peered at her. “But you’re a pretty girl. Very classic features… there are laws that protect even slaves, little one, but give it a few years… you’ll grow up into a beautiful woman.”

Aea felt faint.

Ninlil walked over towards her, and the two older women edged away. “No, it’s good. Your price will be high. Rich families buy pretty girls like you as servants, because it makes their homes more beautiful.”

Mammetum glared. “And ruined-faced bitches like this are bought for back-breaking field-work.”

“The only back that’s going to be broken is yours if you don’t watch your tongue, you witch.”

“The men are coming,” Shiptu called from the doorway. “The guards, I mean.”

Ninlil stared daggers at the other women as they retreated to their corner.

***

After the guards provided a light meal of chickpea-onion soup the women were led out of their huts into the hot but no longer dangerous sun and made to stand on wooden platforms.

One older man, in a more expensive looking linen skirt, made his way up and down the line of slaves, moving them from one spot to another, adjusting clothing.

“Remember to smile,” he said. “You want to be bought by a nice man, don’t you?”

He stopped at Ninlil, turned her face one way or another, tried to brush her hair over her scar, then sighed and moved her alongside Aea before rushing off down the line.

“Don’t worry,” Ninlil whispered. “It’s not as bad as those hags were saying.”

Aea whimpered.

She felt Ninlil’s fingers brush hers, and grabbed the older girl’s hand tightly. The soup felt like acid in her stomach, and her heart was beating so fast she was sure it would burst out of her chest if she didn’t scream soon.

The older man brought Bavi down alongside her. “This is your brother, yes?”

Aea opened her mouth, but couldn’t find words.

“Quickly. yes?”

Ninlil spoke as the older man started to move along. “They were brought in together.”

“Okay, good.” He put Bavi on her other side, then rushed Urnina off down the platforms.

“They keep family together when they can,” Ninlil said.

“Why?” Aea was unable to imagine why these horrible people would care.

Ninlil seemed to understand what she meant. “It makes us easier to control, if we have someone we care about.”

“Do you have anyone?”

Ninlil stared straight ahead. “I try not to.”

“What if.” Aea looked pleadingly at the other girl. “What if someone cruel or bad or something wants to buy us? What if they just want to murder someone?”

“Murdering a slave isn’t legal,” Ninlil said.

Off in the distance, Aea could see groups of men, scattered and together, heading in their direction. She tried to smile as the old man had instructed them to, but it felt forced and phony on her face.

“Okay.” Ninlil looked up and down the row to make sure no guards were near. “Okay, listen. Trust your instincts. If you think someone is bad, then make them not want to buy you. Make yourself unappealing.”

“How?”

“Just… I don’t know. Scrunch up your face. Be argumentative. Act stupid, like one of those older bitches, nobody wants them. Just don’t make it obvious, or the guards will beat you.”

“Okay.” Aea gave the older girl’s hand a squeeze. “Thank you, Ninlil.”

Ninlil didn’t turn to her, but she did squeeze back.

Aea looked down at Bavi. “Everything is going to be okay. They won’t separate us.”

Her little brother looked up, shoulders shaking. “Promise?”

“Eyes front!” A guard snapped at her. She riveted her attention on the approaching groups of men, and gave her little brother’s hand a squeeze.

For him, she could be brave.

***

The men came, singly, in pairs, in larger groups. Some of them looked kind, some cruel, but most were indifferent, examining her and her brother like farmers looking to buy new sheep. One went so far as to have the guard lift her upper lip so he could examine her teeth. The guard’s fingertips were rough and salty.

Others had her step forward and raise an arm or turn. One man asked if she could sing.

She could not.

All of them gave her a bad feeling, so she tried to follow Ninlil’s advice, making faces at them until a guard came over and yelled at her to stop.

As the day wore on several of the others were sold, some of the men, along with Urnina and Mammetum. From what Aea could see, the two older women had done the opposite of Ninlil’s advice, smiling broadly and even going so far as to bunch their breasts up towards the men coming to look at them. As dusk grew nearer, Aea began to hope that she wouldn’t be sold, that the price was too high, that they’d just take her and Bavi home.

Towards evening the guards started rushing around and the old man did another run down the line, stopping to run a brush through her hair. She risked a questioning glance towards Ninlil, and saw the girl watching the horizon.

She followed her gaze and saw a group of men carrying some kind of covered platform in the distance.

“Priests,” Ninlil said.

“Is that good or bad?”

Ninlil didn’t respond right away. “Priests have enough money to buy what they want no matter how expensive. They buy you for the gods.”

Aea’s eyes widened. “What do the gods want with us?”

“I don’t know. Servants? Sacrifices? Lagash’s god is Ninurta, the god of war. I don’t want to find out what he might want with a slave.”

Aea didn’t either.

***

After the priests arrived, the process changed. They didn’t come up and down the line, looking into eyes, checking gums, asking for songs. No.

A guard walked up to Aea. “Come.”

She glanced at Ninlil, whose gaze was fixed steadily ahead, then descended her platform to follow him.

He brought her to a tent that the priest’s servants had set up. The servants stood outside it passively, and Aea wondered if they were other slaves, if they were treated well, if she was being bought to carry priests through the desert.

One of the servants – tall, muscular, bald, and nearly hairless – held the tent flap open for her. She ducked inside.

She found herself alone with a tall and angular-faced man with a severe demeanor, seated on the floor, dressed in expensive-looking robes.

He gestured towards the cushion opposite him. “Sit.”

She did so.

“What is your name?”

“Aea.”

“Aea. I am Kuwari. Why are you making that face?”

“I… I’m not making a face.”

“Stop it.”

“Yes sir.”

“Better.” His eyes were half-lidded, and she had the impression that he was looking into her, at her soul. “I am going to ask you questions. I will know if you are lying to me, and I will have you beaten. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” None of the others had wanted to speak with her, but this was better than being poked and prodded.

“Good. Now. How is it that you are a slave?”

Her face burned. “My father did not have enough for taxes–”

“Mm hm. What were the circumstances of your birth?”

“The… circumstances?”

“Your birth. Was it auspicious? Were you born under a new star? Carried to your parents by a hawk?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Pity.” He pulled out a clay tablet and made a mark on it. “Are your parents related?”

“They’re married.”

“Brother and sister.”

“What? No.”

“Okay.” He made a check. “Have you ever had prophetic dreams?”

“Like dreams that came true?”

He lowered his tablet. “That is what prophetic means, yes.”

“These are very strange questions.”

“And you will answer them or–”

“Or you will have me beaten, yes, I know.”

He tapped the stylus on the edge of his tablet. “You are a willful and indolent girl.”

“I’m sorry.” A bolt of fear struck through her. “Please don’t have me beaten.”

“Answer the questions and I will not.”

“Okay.”

“Prophetic dreams.”

“No, I don’t… wait, I had a dream that I would have a brother, and then my brother Bavi was born the next year.”

Kuwari twiddled his stylus and scrunched up his mouth. “Was the brother in your dream the same as he turned out to be?”

“In as much as he was a baby?”

Kuwari watched her carefully and made a mark on his tablet.

“May I ask what you’re doing?”

“Recording your answers. Can you read?”

She shook her head.

“Never taught?”

“My father is a simple farmer.”

“Girls are never taught.” He turned the tablet to her. “Does this mean anything to you?”

She looked at the marks he’d been making. “No, I told you, I’d never been taught.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“Then no, it just looks like a bird has been walking in clay.”

“What kind of bird?”

“I don’t know. A small one?”

His frown deepend.

It worried Aea. “Was that the wrong answer?”

“There are no wrong answers,” he said. “Only truth and lies.”

“Does it make it more true if you write it down?”

He opened his mouth and closed it again. “What?”

“Does writing it down make something more true?”

He stared at her.

She found herself babbling. “It seems like words are heavier, more true, if you write them. You can’t write lies, can you?”

His eyes narrowed. “Have you ever heard the priests read the scripts?”

Aea shook her head. Priests never came to their village.

“I have heard enough.”

Her eyes widened. “I am not lying! Don’t have me beaten.”

He laughed. “I am not going to have you beaten.”

“Did I say the wrong thing?”

“No. You said a very right thing.” He closed his eyed, then began to intone in a slight sing-song. “When the words are written, does that make them any more true? When a lie is written, does it gain more weight?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Where did you hear the words?” Kuwari asked.

“I just made them up, right now. Not those words. The ones I said.”

“The words I spoke are from the scripture of Nanshe, goddess of prophecy and water.”

“Oh. I didn’t know.”

“I have no difficulty having faith in your ignorance, farm girl.”

“Are you going to buy me for Nanshe?”

“I am not a priest of Nanshe.”

“Oh.”

He leaned forward. “I am a priest, but also a teacher, from Nippur.”

“Where is Nippur?”

“Far. Very far. All the way to where the twin rivers empty into the great sea.”

“Is that further than Lagash?”

He chuckled. “Much further. Days. Weeks of travel.”

Her jaw dropped. “You have come so far!”

“Yes. For you.”

“What?”

“This school in Nippur is a special one, for special children.”

“You think I’m special?”

“You might be. You will have to be tested.”

“Tested for what?”

“To see if you are worthy of the goddess.”

“Nanshe?”

“Or any of the others. You see… what was your name?”

“Aea.”

“Aea. The gods as you know live in the cities. But sometimes they return to the heavens. And when they come back, we have to find them again.”

“Are they hard to find?”

“Very. They come back as boys and girls like you. Special. But we can’t tell exactly how, so we priests of this school go out to find the special children, and we bring them back with us. We teach them to be gods.”

Something suddenly occurred to Aea. “You think I might be a goddess?”

“You might be. Or you might not. It’s easier to find the new form the gods take when we keep them close. As I’ve said, there are tests we can give you to make sure.”

“And that’s why you want me?”

Kuwari nodded.

Aea’s head swam. She didn’t know if she could even call this luck, it was so far beyond anything she had expected.

“Wait, what about my brother?”

“I will speak to him, but it is unlikely that he houses a god. They seldom come back to the world together.”

“I don’t want to be apart from him.”

Kuwari’s face grew cold. “I don’t care what you want.”

“But if I’m a goddess–”

“Then you wouldn’t care about one mortal boy out of all the little boys in the world. Even if you were raised with him.”

Aea folded her arms. “Then that proves I am not Nanshe, because I do care.”

Kuwari chuckled. “A good attempt, but it does not work that way. Your true goddess self would not manifest until after the tests, and after the current incarnation of Nanshe had departed.”

“How can there be more than one of me? Her? Nanshe?”

Kuwari shrugged and rose to his feet. “How can the gods perform any of their miracles? They are gods.”

Aea stood and stepped away from him. “I don’t care. I don’t want to go. I won’t leave my brother.”

Kuwari laughed. “You are a slave. If I purchase you, you’ll go where I say.”

“Then don’t!” Aea stepped away towards the tent entrance. “I’m not a goddess. Just a girl. Just leave me and Bavi alone.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” the priest said.

Aea turned and fled from the tent, past the surprised guards and servants, running away from the slave camp, out towards the desert.

***

Aea had succumbed to the desert heat when Kuwari and his entorage found her two days later.

“Is she dead?” the priest asked the litter bearer who had spotted her.

“Not yet,” he responded. “Should we collect her?”

Kuwari weighed his options. “If she survived until we found her, it is probably the gods will that we take her. Put her with me, and bring some water.”

“Bavi,” she muttered. “Bavi.”

“What’s Bavi?” the bearer asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Kuwari said. “Her old life is over.”

After she’d been placed into the litter with Kuwari, the bearers turned, and the litter began the long trek through the mud-flats back towards Nippur.

 

Previous Episode

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

The post Hero Historia: Aea Watched 2 appeared first on Michael Coorlim.

Sleep Study Season One Kickstarter Launch

Hey, loyal readers.

As some of you may be aware, in addition to being an author, I’m also a filmmaker. The project I’m currently working on is an atmospheric horror web-series called Sleep Study.

What is Sleep Study about?

Sleep Study tells the story of a lab assistant in a sleep study program who comes to believe that his employers’ aims and methods are not only unethical, they may be literally monstrous. Not overly brave but not content to pretend nothing is wrong, he decides to try and blow the whistle by leaking footage online, in the hopes that someone in authority will take steps to correct the problem.

Through these leaked security tapes, experiment data, and interviews, the audience gets a picture of a study that grows increasingly dangerous, shady, and downright bizarre as time goes by.

Sleep Study has interactive trans-media elements.

In addition to the YouTube videos, professionally produced by local Chicago acting and technical talent, the story is told through an in-character twitter feed that viewers can interact with, and thus become part of the story. The extent of this interactivity will be determined by the size of our budget.

The higher our funding, the more like an alternate reality game the production becomes.

Spread the word about our kickstarter campaign.

If you like the idea of what I’m trying to do with the web-series format, think the story is cool, or just want to support Burning Brigid Media or its mission, consider donating a few dollars or spreading word of the project within your own social networks.

We’ve got a whole slew of reward tiers and stretch-goals for the series, and the more we raise, the more awesome it becomes.

Working with the actors and crew has been an absolute blast, and I’d love to be able to continue production, and I’d love to continue making professional caliber films. The more we raise, the better quality our first season will be, and the bigger fan-base we’ll have to rely on for the second season.

Thanks for your support.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

The post Sleep Study Season One Kickstarter Launch appeared first on Michael Coorlim.

Hero Historia: Aea Watched 1

Aea Watched is the second chapter of the historical superhero web serial Hero Historia, set in ancient Sumer.

Aea watched as the soldiers swept through the village like locusts, leaving trampled fields and empty storehouses in their wake. They passed in front of her family’s farm, helmets shining in the sun, sandaled feet tromping down healthy crops in lockstep unison, carrying their home-made weapons of sharp blades lashed to wooden poles.

They abused anyone too slow to move out of their way, apparently for the sport of it, took what they wanted from huts and fields, and left a river of trash in their wake.

“We’re lucky they’re from Lagesh,” Father said, “and not an enemy army.”

Aea did not feel lucky.

After the thunder of their marching had faded, she accompanied her father and younger brother Bazi to survey the damage to the fields. Aea was old enough, now, to help her parents in their daily labors. Bazi wasn’t, but he cried if he felt he was being left out and it was easier to let him tag along than to calm him down.

It was bad.

The barley stalks had been bent and broken, the onions and leeks had been dug up, and the mulberry bushes both picked clean and uprooted.

Father sighed and ran a hand across his freshly shorn scalp. “The grain can still be winnowed. Collect as much as you can.”

Aea nodded and got to work, collecting stalks in a basket improvised from the hem of her simple woolen dress.

“Where do you think those men were heading, Father?” she asked.

Father gazed off towards the great city, its walls a dark spot on the horizon. “They were coming from Lagesh, so… probably sent to Uruk.”

“What’s Uruk?” Bazi was doing what he could to help pick up the barley, but he was trampling more than he was picking up.

“Another city, like Lagesh,” Father answered.

“Is there going to be a war?” Aea gazed off into the flats surrounding the village.

“Going to be?” Father groaned as he stooped to pick up half of a broken tool. “It never truly ends. Uruk and Lagesh have been at war for a long time.”

“Why do they have to stomp through our village to get there?”

“This is the way it has always been, daughter. Take those stalks in to your mother and help her winnow the grain.”

Aea nodded and ran back towards home. It was scary, all of these soldiers, the damage to the farm, when they barely had enough to eat… but Father would think of something. That was his job. Taking care of the family. She trusted him to fix everything.

***

That night Aea pretended to sleep on her woven reed mat while listening to her father and the other village men out in front of their home, talking about Lagesh and its king.

“Not in the stories of my grandfather or his grandfather have I heard of a king as corrupt as Lugalanda,” one of the men said.

“War is expensive,” Father said. “And Lagesh’s victories do not come cheap.”

“He is an evil man. Pass me the ale bucket.” He sounded drunk already.

“He is king. The gods have made it so.”

“Have you heard Urukagina speak?”

“The priest?”

“He has a lot to say about the gods and their will.”

“What does he say?”

“That the gods make men kings, but they can also unmake kings. That the gods’ will are manifest in everything from the weather to sickness to the will of the people.”

Father did not reply, but Aea could picture him rubbing the back of his neck the way he did when deep in thought. She herself was confused… if the gods appointed a bad king, did that mean that they made mistakes? Or did they appoint bad kings because the people needed to be punished?

And when the punishment was over, how did they get rid of the bad king?

It was all very confusing. Maybe she could ask Father in the morning.

***

Aea woke late to find that Bazi was already up, playing with a stick in the dirt floor.

“Mother and Father left together and went to the field,” he said, meaning that her parents were fighting.

Unlike many of the village parents, when Aea’s parents were having a disagreement, they would leave the family’s mud-brick hut to talk about it in the fields. Aea thought that they did so to spare their children and leave them happy family memories, but both she and her younger brother knew what it meant when they awoke to an empty home.

“Did you hear the men talking last night?” Aea asked.

“I was sleeping. What did they say?”

“Grown-up stuff,” Aea pulled on her dress. It was a little short on her… she’d need to ask Mother for a new one, soon.

She opened the hut’s door, the day’s heat hitting her like a furnace. She closed it again, quickly, and set about piling her hair atop her head, out of the way. She glanced at her brother. “You’re lucky they shave your head.”

Bazi grinned. “We can just shave yours, too.”

“I was kidding!” Her face paled. “Don’t even joke about that!”

Bazi stalked towards her, slapping his palm like a knife, making chopping sounds.

“Stop!” She half-shrieked, half-laughed.

The door opened, revealing her mother, red faced and puffy. She spared both her children a brief glance, then quickly stepped past them to the back of the hut, near the hearth.

“Mother?” Aea, moved to see if she was alright.

“Aea.” Her father’s sharpness from the doorway stopped her. “Come. Bazi, you too.”

“Where are we going?” Bazi asked, fastening the cloth belt that kept his goatskin skirt up.

“Now.”

Aea and her brother exchanged an uneasy glance.

Did father know she’d been eavesdropping on his conversation the night before? He seemed upset with her brother, too. What had they done wrong?

The children followed their father out into the heat of the day. She tried to read his expression, but he was stern, stone-faced, the way he only was when one of them had really misbehaved.

“Did we do something wrong?” she asked, mostly to herself.

He didn’t stop until they reached the dirt path running through the village. Aea could see market stalls set up on the edge of town.

“Is it a festival?” Bazi asked hopefully.

Her father closed his eyes, and Aea could swear… swear… that she saw tears in his eyes. But that was impossible. Fathers didn’t cry.

“My children,” he said, his voice wavering. “I have failed you. Failed you as a father. I’m sorry, I…”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” She ran to her father’s side, but he deflected her embrace, holding her at arm’s length.

“I could offer excuses.” His voice was almost a whisper. “The taxes. The damage to our crops. I could tell you a hundred reasons why I must do what I must do, but it all comes down to my own sins. My weakness.”

Bazi had started to cry, and Aea felt tears forming in her own eyes.

“What is it?” she asked. “Father, you’re scaring me.”

Her father dried his eye on the back of his hand and started walking again. She took one of his hands, Bazi the other.

“I cannot afford to feed you both,” he said, his voice calm and quiet. “I can barely afford to feed your mother and myself. I do not want… I wish it did not have to be this way, my children, but Lagash’s tax men ask for so much, and give so little time.”

Aea’s eyes went from her father to the market ahead. She could make out some very unfriendly looking men watching her and her brother.

Fear gripped her heart, and she tried to stop walking, tried to pull her hand away, but Father kept a firm hold.

“I hope… I hope some day you understand,” he said. “But I would never expect you to forgive me.”

“Father,” she said. “Father, no!”

Her father never met her pleading gaze.

***

It was a long march to the slave markets of Lagesh, and Aea held Bazi’s hand the whole way. She held his hand while he cried, and she held his hand after he’d run out of tears. She didn’t let go of her little brother even when his legs had grown too tired and she’d been forced to carry him.

Aea and Bazi were not the only children sold into debt-slavery by the parents that day. They weren’t even the only ones from their village. She walked alongside Shiptu and Urur, friends since childhood, though none of them felt like speaking.

The slave-traders were traveling with tax collectors from Lagesh, working together. When they reached a new village, the tax collectors would assess what the city-state was owed and talk to the villagers. Those that had the crops for it paid. Those that could not afford it… well, they talked to the slave-traders. Some whose debt was light made tearful promises to buy their freedom after the next harvest.

Those who were more honest, like Father had been, simply handed over their children and walked away.

Most of those sold were children, and most of the children were girls. But not all.

Was this real? It was hard to believe. Just sixteen hours ago Aea had been having a nice meal with her family. Mother was laughing at Father’s horrible puns. Bazi was blowing bubbles in his soup. And now everything was different. It felt like a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from, no matter how hard she tried. Everything felt numb, and it was all she could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Was this death? Was her soul dying? It hurt so much. Like a tear in her heart. She barely realized it when the group of slavers stopped for a meal, letting the bread she was given fall from her hand. She wasn’t even hungry.

She barely responded when the slave-trader kicked her for being clumsy. It didn’t even hurt, not compared to the anguish she felt in her very soul.

***

Suddenly, someone was pulling Bazi out of her arms.

That was real.

That was not something she would just let happen.

“No!” she screamed, scrabbling for her brother. “No, don’t take him, you can’t have him!”

Someone kicked her in the head and she sprawled into the dirt. It dimly registered upon her that they’d stopped walking some time ago, that they’d been led into some large but windowless earthen hut, along with a good dozen other new slaves. And now they were separating the boys and the girls.

“Careful, she’s worth more than he is,” a voice said.

They were wrong. Her brother was all she had left. Bazi was the most valuable thing in the world, couldn’t they see that?

She tried to get up, tried to go after him, only to have strong arms hold her down.

“Be still!” a feminine voice hissed into her ear. “If you anger them, they will whip you!”

“I don’t care!” Aea said. “They have my brother!”

The woman pinning her down was several years older than Aea, and pretty save for a ragged scar running down one side of her face. They hadn’t been marching together, the older girl must have been in the room when they’d arrived.

“Care!” she hissed, pointing at the scar. “Sometimes the whips miss the hidden parts. Then you’re damaged. Who wants to buy an ugly slave?”

Aea struggled free from the scarred woman’s grip. Who cared about scars or beauty or being bought? They were taking her brother!

She ran to the entrance, reaching through the bars towards her brother. “Bazi! Bazi!”

A tough looking man rapped the hilt of his whip against her knuckles. She withdrew her hand quickly, and he laughed at her.

She looked back in anger at the woman who had stopped her, then around at the walls she found herself trapped between, made of woven reed set into mud-brick. She had no idea how she and Bazi had gotten there, as if she was only now waking from a half-remembered dream.

“Where are we?”

“Lagash,” the woman said. “Or close enough to it.”

There were others in the large room as well, all women, all with the same tired and frightened expressions.

“How did I get here?”

Shiptu looked up from where she was seated on the ground. “We walked here. Remember?”

“But Father says Lagash is at least two days from home!”

“We’ve been walking for three.”

“I had a bet going that you’d lost your mind,” the scarred woman said.

Aea turned back to the cage door. “Where are they taking Bazi?”

“Your brother?” the scarred woman asked. “The don’t keep the boy and girl slaves together.”

“Will he be okay?”

“Will any of us?”

She looked back towards the scarred woman. “I’m sorry, I just don’t–”

“It’s okay.” For a moment, for just a moment, there was compassion in the older girl’s voice. “What is your name?”

“Aea.”

“Okay, Aea, my name is Ninlil. I have been a slave for a very long time. You are going to be okay.”

She turned back to the door. “My brother–”

“He will be okay. They like to keep families together. You will see him again.”

Aea sank to the floor. “Why is this happening to us?”

“Why does anything happen? The gods will it so.”

She turned her head. “Why do they want us to suffer?”

Ninlil shrugged. “Ask a priest. Some say that all suffering is caused by our sins, and the gods punish fairly. Others that the gods put suffering in our way to test us.”

“Which do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, but you’d think the gods have the answer they want by now.”

Aea turned to the cage door, unwilling to believe in gods that could be so cruel, so heartless.

Then she remembered her father, and how he had just… given her away. The one man she had trusted above all others.

And wept.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

The post Hero Historia: Aea Watched 1 appeared first on Michael Coorlim.

Hero Historia: Jericho Rising 12

Jericho Rising is the first 12-part story arc of the Hero Historia historical superhero weekly web serial.

 

Broad found his brother at the very top of the Tower of Jericho, gazing off into the distance, looking pensive in a way that only the Champion could. He was the very image of a hunter waiting patiently for his prey to come to the watering hole. Patient. Resolute. Indomitable.

The sight did not ease Broad’s concerns.

“See anything yet?”

Clay pointed. “There.”

“The Sea of Grass?” Broad shaded his eyes against the late afternoon sun, looking to the west as directed. “I don’t see anything.”

“No. Smoke Mountain.”

Broad looked again. “I see it.”

“There’s mist, but no smoke. No fires. The tribal land has gone cold.”

Broad looked harder, a sudden hitch in his chest. “I don’t… I can’t tell.”

“I can.”

Broad felt light-headed, falling to one knee. “The clans, all of them… gone? How is it possible.”

“You know how it’s possible.” Clay’s voice was steady, grim. “The foreign tribe. Killed them all.”

Broad shook his head, staring at his shadow on top of the tower. It seemed impossible – Smoke Mountain had been their life before coming to Jericho, their world. The other clans were cousins and neighbors, all members of the same extended tribe. To imagine them wiped out, murdered by the foreign tribe… it was too much to contemplate.

And there was Clay, watching calmly. Waiting for the enemy he knew was coming.

Such was the way of Champions.

“They have exhausted their prey,” Clay said. “They will come here, next.”

“What do these monsters want?” Broad managed.

Clay shook his head. “That I do not know. But I can say that they will find death.”

Broad stood, unsteadily, and made his way back to the stairs. It was too much. The height, the sun, his brother, the tribe. It was too much.

 

***

Clay followed him into the dim cool interior of the tower. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”

Broad sat heavily on a wooden bench. “The people are talking about the way you exiled the council. Many are uneasy with it.”

“They’ll get used to it.”

“They were old men, Clay. Sending them to the desert was sending them to death.”

Clay held Broad’s gaze steadily. “They will get over it.”

Broad could not believe how callous his brother sounded. “How can you be so cold?”

“Cold?” Clay sounded amused. “They were poison for the city. Venomous. And they were sending me to die as emissary to the men who killed our brothers and sisters.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I knew enough. What would you have me do? Sharpen the stone and plunge it into my own heart for them?”

Broad hung his head. “You have changed, brother.”

“I am Champion now.”

“It’s more than that.”

“I have more responsibility now. The city. Her people. My wife. A son or daughter.”

“Saying that the people will get over it – you have not deposed the council, you act to replace them.”

“I serve Jericho as its protector.”

“You are making choices for them now.”

Clay shrugged. “The decisions they need to stay safe and secure. You know what force comes for them. Of all people you know.”

Broad looked up. “I know. But being Champion here, Clay… it is not like it was at home.”

“I know that.”

Broad stood. “Do you? You act like Father, patriarch, hidden away in your tall hut.”

Clay did not answer.

“Have you lived among them?” Broad asked. “Had a drink with them? Worked alongside them?”

“I was a field hand, with you.”

“With me alone. And for the last few seasons, you have been hidden away with Mad Words and Dawn Spring.”

“My wife. My friend.”

“Other Champions.”

“They are the ones who understand this life.”

Broad smiled sadly. “And that is what worries me, Clay. I worry you forget why you are here. What it is to be a Champion of these people. You are here to serve, not rule.”

Clay rolled his neck. “Rulership is the greatest of service, brother. The council-members were not worthy of the task.”

“And you will rule Jericho? The way you tell Squint and Forkbeard to get the people ready for war?”

Clay frowned and turned away. “I do not appreciate your tone. The people should be grateful for the opportunity to participate in their own defense. It will make them stronger.”

“Those that survive.”

Clay chuckled and, to Broad’s surprise, turned and placed hands upon his brother’s shoulders. “You truly have become a son of Jericho, brother. I understand your concern. You may tell the people that their safety is my utmost concern.”

He leaned in. “I cannot promise that no one will die. But I can guarantee that the foreign tribe, those that slew father, Flatnose, the Bear Clan, all of the Smoke Mountain tribe – I can guarantee they will face a Hunter’s wrath.”

Broad’s mouth was dry. “Clay…”

Clay stepped away. “Call me the Hunter.”

 

***

Clay could see the invader’s campfires in the Sea of Grass the next morning. He had runners summon the farm overseer Forkbeard and shepherd Squint, and the men came to the Tower’s audience chamber immediately. Dawn sat in her own throne, watching impassively as they spoke, sparing her father a slight smile.

“The herd keepers have been training with their slings for the past few days,” Dawn Spring’s father said.

“Have they improved?” Clay asked.

Squint shrugged. “Not noticeably. But they are more comfortable with the idea.”

Clay nodded and turned to Forkbeard. “And the farmers?”

“They can hold their spears by the right end,” Forkbeard said. “I cannot offer more.”

“It’s all I need,” Clay said.

“What is it you need them to do?” Forkbeard said.

“Stand atop the wall. Brandish their spears. Scream.”

Forkbeard looked nonplussed. “I don’t like exposing them to the invaders.”

Clay grinned. “With the height of the wall and the ditch around its base, they will be hard pressed to throw a spear that far, let alone hit anyone.”

Squint chuffed. “At that distance, I doubt the herdsmen will be any more effective.”

“They just have to keep them busy. Distracted.”

“Distracted from what?” Forkbeard asked.

“Another plan,” Clay waved a hand.

The overseer crossed his arms. “If we knew what you were planning, we could better assist you.”

“You know what you need to. And all I need to know is that you have prepared them as I have asked.”

Forkbeard opened his mouth, then shut it.

“We’re ready,” Squint scowled.

“Good,” Clay said. “Have your men on the wall by dawn’s light.”

Neither seemed happy as they departed.

“You did not tell them your plan?” Dawn asked.

“It won’t help them to know. And I’d rather not deal with your father’s concerns for his daughter.”

“And yet you’d risk your wife?” Dawn grinned.

Clay snorted. “You’re a Champion.”

Mad Words’s voice rang clear across the audience chamber. “Don’t these invaders tactics center on killing Champions?”

“In open war.” Clay’s keen eyes searched the chamber for his friend. “This will be a hunt.”

“And you’d risk your unborn child.”

“How did you know?” Dawn asked.

“I heard Clay talking to his brother.”

“Where are you?” Clay stepped to the center of the chamber.

“Near.” Mad Words’s voice seemed to come from everywhere. “I also heard your brother’s concerns. Worries you do not share.”

“My brother is a good man. He loves his city.”

“He’s worried you have forgotten what Champions are for. What they do. I told him that the problem is that you remember all too well.”

Dawn sighed. “Have you been drinking?”

“Yes. But only recently. When I spoke to Broad, I was as sober as a shaman.”

“That isn’t very sober,” Clay said.

Mad chuckled. “What I am, what Dawn is, what Jericho needs are Champions who will protect the city and her people.”

Clay put an arm around Dawn. “Do you say I am not?”

“I say you are still the Bear Champion, Clay. You protect Jericho to justify being Champion. You need to be the Champion to protect Jericho.”

Clay shouted, frustrated. “You are making less sense than usual, Mad Words.”

“Well, I have been drinking.”

“What is it you mean?”

There was no answer.

“Mad?” Clay shouted. “Mad Words?”

Dawn pulled her husband to her side. “Let him go, Clay. He does not always make sense.”

“It feels like he should,” Clay said.

“Some things are beyond what even Champions can know.”

Clay sighed and held his wife close. “Everyone is so concerned about me and my intentions. I have no desire to replace the council, to be chief. After the danger passes, everything will be back to normal.”

“When has anything been normal?” Dawn asked.

Clay laughed. “A new normal. With a new family. My wife. My child.”

A slight smile crossed Dawn’s face.

“What’s wrong?” Clay asked.

“I’m worried about tomorrow. So much can go wrong. I know what you told father and Forkbeard, but… I know that not everyone will survive.”

“There’s always the danger of–”

“I know, Clay. As a Champion.”

Clay stared at her. “Who–”

Dawn placed a finger on her husband’s lips. “What good would names do? Let the living dread the loss of their loved ones? It’s hard enough that I can see the faces. Let tomorrow’s mourners spend one last night of peace and comfort.”

Clay kissed her softly. “I can handle that small uncertainty.”

She pressed herself into him. “Thank you, husband.”

 

***

The Hunter crept through the Sea of Grass, spear in hand, pelt of the winged lion across his back. On the hunt his mind was often empty, clear, clean, but this was too similar to that day a lifetime ago when he had been unwittingly tracking a lion through the grasses. He had been wounded but had prevailed, and returned back to the clan lands to discover that the foreign tribe had slaughtered his kin, killed the Bear Champion, took his head. His mind swam with the memories.

Dawn Spring and Mad Words followed behind him, lighter on their feet than any other of Jericho, but loud in the ears of the Hunter. He’d spotted the smoke from the invaders’ camp in the dawn’s first light. They would be moving, soon, advancing on Jericho.

When they reached the gate they would wait, throwing spears, missing and shouting at the farmers and shepherds on the wall. The laborers of Jericho had taken up arms, but it was not their job to defend their city. It was their task to keep the warriors occupied while the Hunter, the Shepherd, and the Madman crept up from behind to capture or kill their leadership. Caught between the fury of three Champions and the stones of the shepherds on the wall, the invading tribe would have nowhere to go. It would be a slaughter.

It would be revenge.

“Tracks,” Clay said, stopping.

Mad Words and Dawn Spring came forward to see what he had found.

“There are so many,” Dawn Spring said.

“Men. Beasts.” Mad Words knelt. “They bring livestock.”

“To feed the camp,” Clay said. “We’re behind them now.”

“How far?” Mad Words asked.

“Not far. One hour.”

Dawn rose, standing above the grasses, shielding her eyes against the rising sun. “They’ll have the light at their backs. In our faces.”

“Good for the men on the wall,” Clay said.

“Not so good for us,” Mad Words said.

Clay stood, slinging the shaft of his spear along his shoulders. “We cannot have the perfect war.”

“More men than we thought,” Mad Words said.

A heat rose within Clay’s skin. “More complaints. Why not run off into the wilderness and hide, Mad? These people are not yours?”

Dawn Spring placed a cool hand on his arm. “He is only concerned for our chances. Our safety.”

He pulled his arm away. “There is no room for doubt on the hunt.”

“This is no hunt,” Dawn said. “This is war.”

“All hunt is war,” Clay said. “Conflict. Struggle between man and beast. And this army… dogs. Animals without honor. I respect the danger they represent, but they are not men.”

“Is this about protecting Jericho, or about feeding your revenge?” Mad Words asked.

“It is both,” Clay said. “You do not like it, you can go. Hide. Both of you.”

The Shepherd’s voice was firm. “I will not abandon my husband and my people.”

Clay nodded, slightly mollified. He turned his gaze to Mad Words, a challenge.

Mad spat on the floor, then pointed his club towards Clay. “You do not fight for Jericho. You fight for your own pride. Your honor.”

“It all ends up the same. Since when do you fear death?”

The madman pounded his fist against his chest. “If I am going to die for any man’s weakness, let it be my own.”

“Go then!” Clay swept an arm towards the horizon. “Get out of my sight, coward. If you return to Jericho, I’ll kill you myself.”

“Clay–” Dawn began.

“No, he has said it.” Mad shook his head. “I will not let him take it back. Goodbye, Dawn… and good luck.”

Clay watched, a dark storm brewing in his gut, as his friend disappeared between the grasses. He knew that Mad Words was right, that he was more interested in revenge than protecting the city. But Mad did not understand. He was a man without a clan, without a family, without people. Clay knew that his ancestors, that the spirits of his fallen clan were watching him always, and he could not let them down. They cried for the blood of the foreign tribe.

Clay would slake that thirst, and in doing so, protect the city.

He nodded curtly to Dawn Spring. “Come.”

She followed.

 

***

The foreign invaders had massed by the city’s West gate, and there were more than Clay had anticipated. There were hundreds, spread out, armed with spears, carrying stretched hide shields. Most of them were clustered at the edge of the ditch surrounding Jericho’s walls, shouting and throwing the occasional spear towards the city.

Jericho’s defenders lined the walls, shouting back, throwing rocks and chunks of stone. Aside from the occasional cry of pain, there was little effect, one way or the other.

Every member of the invading army wore some sort of bone jewelry. Finger-bone necklaces. Splinters of bone through the ears. Bracelets or anklets of teeth.

“Those are human.” Dawn watched from atop a low ridge, lying concealed next to her husband.

“Trophies,” Clay said absently. “Taken from the fallen.”

His attention was focused on a stretched-hide palisade tent erected behind the wall of warriors. There, on sharpened stakes, were skulls of a different sort. Larger than normal, some with slight changes to their shape, like antler-stumps, or a more feline sweep to the cheekbones. The skulls of champions.

Thrust far down along one stake was a clearly massive skull, one that Clay was convinced once belonged to his father, the Bear Champion.

Among the men clustered around the tent, two clearly stood out to Clay’s hunter’s eyes. The first was tall and well muscled, bald, with red-striped paint or tattoos along his skull. He wore a belt of broken tibia into which a massive stone axe had been thrust. He was the tribe’s own Champion, or perhaps their chief.

The other wore more paint or sported more tattoos, including a skull over his face. He was more animated, pointing towards the city and gesturing. Shaman, perhaps.

Clay crawled back from the bluff’s edge. “Come. We sneak around and take the tent.”

Dawn followed. “If they spot us?”

“Those men – chief and shaman – the tribe’s heart and soul. If we take them, the rest should scatter.”

The pair circled around, keeping low, approaching the tent from its blindside.

 

***

Dawn Spring, the Shepherd of Jericho, followed her husband as they crept towards the foreign tribe’s leaders. The first thing she’d noticed about them was the lack of women and children. Had they been left behind at some more permanent settlement while the men went off to war? Or were they alone and family-less, a tribe of orphans, taking what they could and barely scraping by? What kind of life was that?

She watched Clay as he stalked along. He’d changed from that proud but awkward hunter she’d fallen in love with. He was a man, now, grim in his pursuits. She couldn’t remember when the last time she’d heard him laugh was – perhaps when she’d told him that she was with child.

That was probably a mistake. He was better off not knowing. But he’d been so sad…

That was her own weakness, her intolerance for his suffering. She had no one to blame but herself.

She hoped that one day he’d forgive her.

She hoped that one day he’d smile again.

***

Clay made it almost all the way to the tent before someone spotted him. He was a good hunter.

His first spear was in the air before the cry could be raised, taking the unfortunate sentry through the throat, knocking him back into the dirt. The sudden corpse was as much an alarm as the scream of ‘intruder’ would have been.

He had his second spear ready and in-hand before the body hit the ground. It too was launched, this time at the man he assumed was chief.

The big foreigner had started to turn as the spear left Clay’s hand, and by the time the spear reached him had turned the movement into a backwards pivot. The spear continued on its way, burying itself in the dirt.

“Kill them!” the chief shouted, pulling the massive ax from his bone-belt.

The shaman skittered away towards the spear, echoing his leader’s cry.

Clay was in motion, his long legs carrying him towards the tent. He was dimly aware of the stones flying past him, fired by Dawn Spring at the other sentries, each one finding its mark, each one breaking a warrior’s skull.

The Hunter dove as he passed the foreign chief, clearing the arc of his swung axe, rolling to come up alongside the shaman as the smaller man reached for the spear. Both of Clay’s fists drove up into the shaman’s gut, lifting him into the air, tossing him back.

Clay reached out and grabbed the spear as it fell from the shaman’s hands, turning in time to see the chief bringing the massive wedge of the stone ax down towards his spine.

There was a massive clang as something hard hit it half-way there. Clay looked up in time to see Mad Words’ club ricochet off of the ax, deflecting it away.

The chief barely managed to bring the big weapon up in time to protect himself from Mad Words’s follow-up strike, an overhand blow that cracked the ax to the haft. The bald man quick-stepped away as the stone fell to his feet.

“Mad–” Clay started.

“See to your wife!” Mad Words barked, advancing on the chief.

Clay turned his head and saw the shaman leading a charge of warriors towards Dawn Spring. Her hands were a blur as she fired and loaded her sling, but as many stones as she could fire, there were twice as many skulls to crack.

The Hunter ran back towards her with a roar. He had been so set on ending this battle with a single strike – if anything happened to her…

With a sudden clarity Clay realized that he had been thinking, planning, like a Champion. Cutting off the army’s head by killing its leader – that had been the Smoke Tribe way of war as far back as anyone could remember. Everyone had told him, everyone had warned him that the old ways had ended. He thought he’d accepted that, but his grand strategy had been just another way of pitting champion against champion.

He threw his spear as he drew near, the sharp tip ripping through the warrior nearest his wife. After that, thought dissolved and Clay was Bear, roaring and swinging his fists. His foes flew before him, smashed by blows stronger than any club’s, hurled by a strength bordering on monstrous. He felt their spear tips bite his flesh, felt the blunt impact of clubs against his muscle, but it seemed distant.

Clay found his hands wrapped around the shaman’s head, thumbs digging into the man’s eye-sockets, and heard his screams as a distant echo.

He gave the head a sharp twist, then tossed the lifeless body aside and turned to his wife.

She was beautiful, smiling at him, eyes half-lidded. The foreign warriors had been cleared away, and for a moment it felt like they were the only two on the battle-field.

Mad Words was shouting his name, but in those precious seconds his cries seemed distant, unimportant.

Dawn seemed to reach for him, briefly. She opened her mouth, but instead of words issued forth a thin stream of blood to her chin.

“Beloved?” Clay asked, not understanding. He followed her gaze down to the spear tip protruding from her clavicle.

Her hand fell away.

She fell away.

Clay caught her. “No. No. No.”

Her eyes closed.

Pain and anguish welled up from Clay’s chest, and escaped his lips in a brutal scream that felt powerful enough to split his skull. He laid his love down, fingers tracing her cheeks, and looked up to see that all eyes had turned to him. The warriors by the wall, the defenders atop it, even the foreign chief, with the bone-haft of his axe locked against Mad Words’s club.

His gaze locked onto the chief, and he felt his sorrow heat up to a furious rage.

Jericho didn’t matter. His life didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but sharing the pain he felt.

A red haze descended upon the world.

 

***

Later, much later, Mad Words sat wordlessly alongside Clay as he cradled Dawn Spring in his arms.

“You were right,” Clay said.

“What?”

“You were right.”

“About what?” Mad Words wrapped a length of cloth along a long wound in his forearm.

Clay turned his head. “About everything. You tried to warn me. I was fighting like a Champion, going after the other tribe’s champion, as if their warriors would stand by and watch.”

“It’s the way you know.”

“A way that has passed. Every step of the way I have resisted the new way of the world, and it has cost me my wife. My son. My pride, my refusal to work with the council, it has ruined everything.”

Mad Words didn’t respond.

“Why did you come back?” Clay asked.

“I wasted too much of my life running, Clay. That was my ‘old way’. And I’m tired. So tired.”

Clay looked into his friend’s eyes, and he was almost overcome with the sense of age he saw in them, a gaze ancient almost beyond imagining, and so very weary. “How many seasons have you seen?”

“Almost all of them.” Mad smiled weakly. “But in a way I haven’t even been born yet.”

“What?”

Mad shook his head. “Just more mad words. What now?”

“I don’t know. Off to the wilderness.”

“Don’t walk my path, Clay,” Mad Words said. “It only leads to the same pain, the same mistakes.”

“I have nothing left.”

“You have Broad. You have Jericho.”

Clay turned towards the city’s walls. “They’re terrified of me.”

“Can you blame them?” Mad Words said. “What you did to the men at their walls… you killed so many. You were savage.”

“A beast,” Clay said.

“Their beast. You serve Jericho. They may fear you, but they trust you. You have killed for them.”

“Is that all it takes?”

Mad Words shrugged. “The world is still a very simple place.”

“It gets more complicated?”

“Oh yes.”

Clay nodded, then stood, holding Dawn Spring in his arms. “Do you think she knew of her coming death?”

“She knew many things.” Mad stood. “Including that the city will need you.”

“Maybe,” Clay said. “Maybe I don’t care anymore.”

“You will. Or you won’t. But if you choose to serve the city, if you find that New Way, it will be there for you. With all of its problems.”

Clay kept his eyes on the city. “Are you going to stay?”

“For a time.”

“Then so will I.” He glanced at Mad Words out of the corner of his eye. “For a time.”

 

Thus ends Jericho Rising. Next time, we begin Aea Watched.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

The post Hero Historia: Jericho Rising 12 appeared first on Michael Coorlim.

Hero Historia: Jericho Rising 11

Jericho Rising is the first 12-part story arc of the Hero Historia historical superhero weekly web serial.

 

Clay the Hunter sat in his throne of stone listening dispassionately to the messenger’s report, his features still, his eyes narrowed. Mad Words stood behind his own throne, arms folded on its back, head to the side, seeming to both watch the messenger and Clay’s reaction. The Shepherd’s throne was empty; as was her habit, Dawn Spring was off seeing to the city’s sick and wounded.

“How many men did you say you saw?” Mad Words asked.

“Many,” the young man said, nervously twisting his fingers. “Many many.”

Mad Words turned to Clay. “That’s quite a few manys.”

Clay did not respond.

“Thank you,” Mad Words said to the boy. “You may go.”

The messenger took a last look towards Clay, then nodded, turning and walking swiftly from the tower’s audience chamber.

Broad stepped out of the alcove he’d been waiting in. “Clay, that’s–”

“I know.” Clay’s voice, while curt, was barely audible.

“We should tell the council,” Mad Words said.

“The council has all but ignored us this past season,” Clay said.

“They sulk like jealous children, but an army headed towards their walls is the sort of thing they’d care to know.”

“Tell them what you will,” Clay said. “I need to find my wife.”

Neither his brother nor his fellow champion sought to stop him.

“This is a mood I’ve not seen him in,” Mad Words said once the Hunter had left. “Not in some time.”

“The army that draws near is the tribe that killed our clan,” Broad said quietly.

Mad Words straightened and drew his brows together. “Oh.”

Broad nodded, then looked after his brother.

“Are you alright?”

“I worry for my brother.” Broad walked to the door. “His heart burns for revenge. I fear that fire may consume him.”

“And yours does not?”

Broad shook his head. “Revenge is for children. I have let go of my pain, and the dead rest within my heart. Clay has not made his peace with what has happened. I worry he may act foolishly.”

“You worry he may seek out this army on his own.”

Broad turned towards Mad Words. “This foreign tribe preys upon Champions. Clay has grown stronger, more skilled… but they will expect him. They will be ready for one powerful man.”

“Then we will make sure they face an army.”

***

The councilmen were not happy to see Mad Words. People usually weren’t. He usually pretended not to notice, which only served to make them more uncomfortable.

“Why did this herdsman bring this news to you?” One-Eye asked.

“I don’t know.” Mad Words considered it impolite to remind others of their obsolescence. “But The Hunter believes this to be the tribe that destroyed his clan. We need to rally the people to arms, prepare them for invasion.”

“There’s no need for haste,” Snakespit made a pacifying gesture. “No need to rush to war when diplomacy is an option.”

Darkbeard stroked his chin. “Calling the people to arms would disrupt brewer productivity. It’s a last resort.”

“You’re worried about your beer?” Mad Words couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Angry men with spears are coming to take your city.”

“Our city,” One-Eye said. “Our decision. We must discuss our options.”

“Haste is wasteful,” Snakespit said.

“Besides,” Darkbeard said, “We have you Champions to fall back on if words fail.”

Mad Words waved his arms. “No, see, that’s where you’re wrong. Clay and Broad say that these people, this tribe, their warfare focuses on the killing of Champions. They must be met with force of arms.”

“Champion-killers, you say?” One-Eye seemed suddenly interested.

Darkbeard and Snakespit exchanged a glance.

“Surely,” One-Eye continued, “It’s nothing you cannot handle.”

Darkbeard spoke quickly. “This is a matter we must discuss. In private.”

“Oh yes,” One-Eye said. “We have much to discuss. This army is days away. Surely you can give us time to deliberate?”

Mad Words bit his lip, then turned away from the council. “It is your prerogative. But do not say I did not warn you. Do not come crying to me when these foreign tribes are raping your women and slaughtering your children. Because I will already be dead.”

“Don’t be so morbid,” One-Eye chided. “We shall send a messenger with word of our decision.”

“Of that I have no doubt.” Mad Words’s shoulders slumped as he left their presence.

 

***

It wasn’t quite an hour before Mad Words returned, following an impatient and angry Hunter. Further up the road Broad ran along, struggling to keep up with the Champions.

One-Eye, for once, seemed pleased to see them. “Clay! Good. We were just about to send for you. The council has come to a decision.”

Clay nodded, curtly, but did not speak.

Darkbeard folded his arms. “You are to go with Mad Words and Dawn Spring to meet with these strangers and bring to them tidings from the council.”

“Tell them of our might,” One-Eye said. “Tell them that you are our protector. Tell them that if they come in peace we will trade with them.”

“And if they bring war,” Snakespit said, “that you will destroy them.”

Clay did not speak for several moments, and when he did his tongue felt thick. “And if they attack?”

A sympathetic note crept into One-Eye’s voice. “We know the story of how these men murdered your clan and kin. We understand whatever path you must take.”

“Whatever path,” Clay echoed.

One-Eye nodded.

Clay looked at Mad-Words, then the council. “If you know my story, then you must know that these men are trained in killing champions.”

Darkbeard spoke in a measured voice. “We have faith in you. You, who cast Mad-Words from the city, then persuaded him to return and help you defeat the monster Long Fang. You, who turned Dawn Spring into the Shepherd, the greatest healer Jericho has ever known. You, who slew the great man-eating beast whose very pelt you now wear.”

“Go forth, Clay the Hunter,” Snakespit said. “Go and teach these men that Jericho is protected by Champions.”

Clay made a brief eye-contact with each council-member, finally resting on Snakespit. “No.”

“What?” One-Eye asked.

Clay looked at him. “No.”

“Champion, your city needs you!”

“My city comes to me when it needs my help.” Clay walked towards the councilmen. “When a child is lost. When a stranger makes trouble. When a beast is devouring the sheep. I hear it from the frightened, the wounded, the orphaned. I do not hear it from you. Why is that?”

The council-members exchanged glances.

Darkbeard spoke. “What need have you orders from us when the people address you with their concerns?”

“You don’t give me orders because you do not know,” Clay said. “You are deaf to the concerns of the people.”

“I don’t like your tone,” One-Eye said.

“What you like doesn’t matter,” Clay said.

“Clay–” Mad Words began.

Clay silenced him with a glance.

“The people do not come to you because you do not matter. They do not need you.”

Snakespit stood. “We are the elders of this city and you will speak to us with respect!”

Clay stepped forward, staring down at the old man. “They do not need you. I do not need you. The only respect I give you is the chance to leave Jericho before sundown with your limbs still attached to your body.”

“Our guards will–”

Clay placed a large hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Some might still be more loyal to you, even though it is I who have kept them safe, saved their brothers, protected their children. You would reward that loyalty with death?”

“The spirits will punish you for this!” One-Eye spoke in a harsh whisper.

“Jericho has no need for spirits,” Clay said. “Now go, before you humiliate yourself further.”

The three old men scrambled away. One-Eye spared a last hateful glance towards The Hunter that the younger man did not acknowledge.

Clay took a long look at the empty council chamber, then turned to Mad Words. “You don’t agree with my actions.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. These aren’t my people. They’re yours.”

“You’ve been here longer than I have.”

“A man without a clan, Clay. You’re the hunter. Dawn is the shepherd. Me? Mad Words is just a wanderer, and I’ve been wandering a very long time.”

“I need your support, Mad.”

Mad Words laughed. “Then you’re truly doomed. No, you have my help, even though I think you’re a fool. Maybe this is where my wandering ends.”

“You’re welcome to settle down in my city,” Clay said, even though he knew that wasn’t what Mad Words had meant.

“Your city.” Mad Words grunted. “I suppose it is, now.”

“I meant what I said,” Clay said. “Jericho does not need elders. The people can take care of themselves.”

Mad Words sighed. “We’ll see, Clay. We’ll see.”

 

***

A few hours later Forkbeard and Squint had been summoned to meet in the tower of Jericho, and Dawn Spring had returned. They seemed surprised at the news that the Elders had fled the city, but did not pry into why.

“We need to get the farmers and herdsmen ready to defend the city,” Clay said.

“When invaders come we shut the gates and wait for them to leave,” Forkbeard said.

Squint nodded. “Sometimes boys throw rocks from the top of the walls.”

“What if they burn our fields?” Clay asked.

“Then we plant new ones,” Forkbeard said.

“What if they wait for us to grow hungry?”

“Then they picked a piss-poor time for it,” Squint laughed. “We’ll have the harvest in before they arrive. Let them sit and starve while we feast.”

Clay drummed his fingers on the arm of his throne. “This foreign tribe… they do not wage war in normal ways. We should be ready to fight.”

“That’s why we have you,” Squint said.

“They are trained to fight Champions. Like ants swarming a caterpillar. They will be ready for our might.”

Squint’s eyes flickered towards his daughter. “The shepherds all train to chase off wolves. Our crooks and slings will be ready.”

Clay nodded. “And the farmers?”

Forkbeard shrugged. “Our sticks are used to till the ground, not for fighting.”

“Can you train them to use spears?”

“I can train them to hold them, maybe, but nothing more if we want the harvest in.”

“That is all I need.”

The farm overseer tilted his head. “What are you planning?”

“I don’t know. Not entirely, not yet. But they train to fight Champions, not men. We can use that.”

“Then I’ll have some spears made.”

Squint clapped his hands. “I’ll tell the other shepherds to practice their aim.”

“Good,” Clay said. “Let the men of Jericho know that her safety is in their hands.

 

***

Once the others had gone, Dawn Spring turned to her husband. “Tell me this isn’t about revenge.”

Clay shook his head. “This is about keeping Jericho safe.”

“Mad Words told me about the council.”

Clay glanced towards the wanderer’s empty throne. “He did.”

Dawn clasped his hand. “He is your friend. He is worried about you.”

“The council were jealous old men. We are better off without them.”

“Jealous?”

Clay’s eyes locked with those of his wife. “Did you not notice that they made their requests less and less often? They feared us. Feared our power. Feared how the people relied on us.”

“So you exiled them?”

“They were plotting our demise.”

Dawn’s eyes widened. “How can you say that? Darkbeard was almost an uncle to me.”

“I knew as soon as they plotted to send us as emissary. They underestimate me. Think me a simple beast, driven by a thirst for revenge. They knew the foreigners would not accept our terms for peace, and thought I would try and take my revenge.”

“I can’t believe it!”

Clay clenched a fist. “Then they dared speak to me of respect. They showed me none. I showed them no mercy.”

Dawn stayed silent for several moments. “I understand why you sent them away, but I wish there had been another way.”

Clay smiled towards his wife. “I am just a simple tribesman. I come up with simple plans.”

“Your plan with the shepherds and farmers does not seem so simple.”

“It’s not complicated.” Clay stood. “Variation on basic hunting patterns.”

“Simple to you, husband.”

He chuckled. “I asked Mad Words for help, and he came up with a scheme that I could barely comprehend. I told him as much, and he stormed off cursing.”

“He is as impatient as you are.”

Clay sobered. “He doesn’t agree with my choices.”

“They are extreme.”

“He doesn’t think he belongs here.”

“He doesn’t.”

Clay looked at her quickly. “He is no more the outsider than I.”

She gripped his arm. “Oh, husband, that is not what I meant. Your ways are those of a tribesman, but as a man you are as any of Jericho.”

“I would hope you think I more than most.”

She pinched him lightly. “You know what I mean. Mad Words is… different.”

“Mad.”

“Not half as mad as you would think. It’s just easier to see him that way. He is just… different. He does not fit.”

“He gets along well enough sober.”

“He is so lonesome,” Dawn said. “I wish I could help him, but…”

“He has us. I am his friend. You are his friend.”

Dawn shook her head. “He is fond of us, but I do not think he can be our friend. Not truly. He is… he is not like us.”

Clay was getting frustrated. “So you have said. But I still don’t know what you mean.”

“I wish I could explain it,” Dawn said. “But ever since you saved my life, since I have become a Champion, I have known many things that I cannot explain.”

Clay blinked. “Like what?”

“Things,” Dawn said. “Things about people. What they think. What they feel. How they will die.”

“That sounds like powerful magic,” Clay said.

“I just know things.” She rubbed a hand over her belly. “Like that I am with your child.”

The Hunter almost staggered. “You are what?”

“I didn’t know if I should tell you–”

Clay roared with joy and grabbed his wife by the waist, picking her up and spinning her around.

“Clay!”

“Is it a boy or a girl? What will we name him? Or her? Will he be a mighty champion? What else do you know?”

He held her close, and she smiled over his shoulder, though the grin did not quite banish the sorrow from her eyes.

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Hero Historia: Jericho Rising 10

Jericho Rising is the first 12-part story arc of the Hero Historia historical superhero weekly web serial.

 

It wasn’t the blood and viscera that disturbed Clay. He was a hunter. He’d seen that terrible battle where his clansmen had been slaughtered to the last. He’d killed a man himself, the Snake Champion Long Fang. Accidents happen, and death was always waiting to take the careless.

This scene was more gruesome than any he’d ever seen. Little was left of the farmer that had been taken, most of the chest and the head, his lower body torn free and dragged away somewhere. Rich vital fluids, strong in his nose, had been splashed in a wide arc, and a few of the dead man’s internal organs had been strewn about.

It was the crowd that unnerved the hunter. Farmers and craftsfolk from Jericho, gathering to watch, silently observing him while he looked for signs of whatever had done this.

Mad Words crouched next to him. “What do you think, hunter?”

“All I can think of are the eyes watching me.”

Mad glanced over his shoulder, then turned back with a grin. “They are curious. Maybe he was a friend of theirs.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Of course not,” Mad said. “You are a hunter, not a Champion. But you know that’s what they call you?”

“What?”

“Hunter. They call you the Hunter.”

Clay stood and stared at the gathered crowd. “Why?”

“They don’t know your name, so they have to make one up to talk about you.”

Clay crouched again, his face burning, feeling their stares more acutely. “They don’t have to talk about me.”

Mad laughed. “Of course they do. You are more interesting than the weather or the harvest.”

“I am just a man.”

“Not anymore. Now you are the Hunter.”

Clay didn’t respond. This wasn’t like it was within the Bear Clan. Father had been the clan champion, but the Bear Clan had accepted him, loved him, pulled him close. Somehow the attention from the people of Jericho made him feel more alone, more isolated. He debated turning towards them and roaring, scaring them away.

He heard someone approaching, knowing by the tread that it was Dawn.

“Do you know what killed Trip?” she asked.

“Was that his name?” Clay asked.

“Yes. He was a farmer. The others came back from their noon break to find him like this.”

“You have spoken to them?”

Mad stood. “Of course she has. You are the Hunter, she is the Shepherd. They are her flock, and she has been attending them.”

“It’s not like that,” Dawn said.

“Of course not. I am just Mad Words. Pay me no heed.”

“Sometimes I do not like you.”

“Sometimes I do not like myself.”

Clay stood. “Nobody likes you.”

“At least the rest of you can walk away.”

Dawn stepped closer to Clay. “Trip’s wife and child are here, too.”

Clay stared at the crowd. “Here? Why?”

“To grieve,” Mad said. “To say goodbye.”

“They want to speak to you,” Dawn said. “May I bring them?”

Clay looked down at the slaughtered remains of the farmer. “Not here. I will join them.”

Mad remained behind while Dawn led Clay over to a distraught woman and her young son. They looked up at the Hunter with more pain in their eyes than Clay could easily bear, and he shifted his gaze past them.

“This is Redpalm,” Dawn said.

The woman bowed her head. “Hunter. I wanted to thank you for rescuing my son from the monster Long Fang.”

Clay stared at the boy. “You were one of the captive children?”

Redpalm continued. “It was only for a short time, but our family was whole again.”

The Hunter looked back over his shoulder towards where the dead farmer was hidden beyond a row of young stalks. “I am… I am sorry for your loss.”

The boy spoke. “Will you catch him? The one who killed father?”

“I will do what I can.”

The boy nodded. “Will you kill him?”

Clay looked from the dead man’s wife to the haunted hollows of his son’s eyes, seeing in them the months of enslavement and false-love of the Snake Champion, seeing the love of his father, the pain of a family once more sundered. His mind flashed back to the sight of his father slain, to his fellow hunters killed, to the blank expression on his murdered brother Flatnose’s face.

There was so much pain in the world. That was its way, but maybe, just maybe, he could keep Jericho safe. Maybe that was what his Champion strength was for.

“Hear me,” Clay said, his voice rising to ring clear and loud as his eyes swept the crowd, looking at those frightened faces, harrowed by the brutality of this slaying. “Hear me, Jericho. A beast lurks outside your walls, taking from you fathers and husbands and brothers. I will find it. I will kill it. I am the Hunter, and your city is under my protection. Let those who would sunder families with their evil quake, for nothing will save them from my wrath.”

It felt good to say it. It felt powerful to declare it.

“You will be safe!” Dawn was next to him, head tilted, voice as clear as his own. “We will protect you, our flock, and keep you from the dangers of the world! So says the Shepherd!”

Clay took her hand in his own and raised it, high into the air. A cheer went up from the gathered farmers, plow-sticks raised, and in their eyes Clay saw that fear and dread, but also the beginnings of hope. Their world had gotten just a little safer, just from the words. Maybe the spirits were listening.

His gaze found Mad Words’s face last, unreadable still, gaze boring into his with a curious intensity before he looked away, crouching once more near the body.

***

Clay lead the group south, eyes scouring the short grasses for signs of the killer or its prey, stopping to examine bent stalks and broken twigs.

“If it is a beast, it is like none I have ever hunted,” Clay said. “I could not find any tracks that were not left by men.”

“Might it have been a Champion?” Dawn asked.

“Maybe,” Clay said. “I have seen them capable of much savagery. A strong champion could tear a man in half easily. But to take half away… it is more likely some great beast.”

“Why not both?” Mad Words said.

“A beast and a Champion?” Clay asked.

“I have traveled far and seen many things,” Mad Words said. “There is more to the world than just Champions and men, Hunter. The world is haunted by monsters and bad spirits.”

“I have never heard of them,” Clay said.

“Most never will. The live in the spaces where men do not, hunting each other, devouring the unfortunate. They wander the world, like–”

“Like you, Mad?” Dawn asked with a smile.

“Perhaps. But the world is a big place. Bigger than you can imagine. Many places to hide, and there are not many people brave enough to go looking.”

“Why would such a beast come to Jericho?” Clay asked.

“You are the Hunter,” Mad said. “Why do animals come to human lands?”

Clay thought about it. “Food. Rats and wild dogs will eat trash.”

“It isn’t eating trash,” Dawn said.

“Eaters of men do not usually hunt so close,” Clay said.

“Maybe it does not fear men,” Mad Words said.

Clay crouched, spotting a wet patch of blood matting the grass. “Then we will have to teach it.”

***

The trail of blood led the Hunter and his followers to the edge of the valley Jericho lay within.

“Do you think it scaled the cliffs?” Mad asked. “To the desert beyond?”

“Can we follow it into the desert?” Dawn asked.

“For a short distance,” Clay said. “But look.”

Dawn shaded her eyes, following his pointing finger. “The cliff? A cave.”

It wasn’t large, it wasn’t wide, but there was a dark shadow under an overhang near the valley’s edge.

“A den,” Mad said.

Dawn frowned. “I don’t like the idea of going in after it.”

“We won’t,” Clay said. “We wait for it. Until it goes hunting. Then we stop it.”

Mad Words looked up at the cave, then spat on the ground. “I have a better idea.”

“What?” Clay asked.

“You know bees?”

“What?”

“Bees. They make honey. Bees.”

“I know what bees are. What about them?”

“Do you know how they are harvested?”

“The bees?” Clay wasn’t following him.

“The honey.”

“There are hives north of Jericho,” Dawn said. “I have seen the men go with fire and smoke to wreck the hives and take the honey.”

“Fire?” Clay asked.

“Smoke,” Mad said. “We start a fire below the cave. Wait and watch for the beast, then attack when it flees the cave. Didn’t you hunt like that in the mountains?”

“It was not our way,” Clay said. “But I think it could work. Come, gather wood.”

“Green wood,” Mad said. “More smoke that way.”

Working together, the three collected what they could find, keeping half of their attention towards the cave mouth. Clay wondered what sort of beast might lair there. Despite the signs of its passage, the blood and matted grass, he had found no particular tracks that might hint at the creature they faced.

Once a large pile had been gathered, Mad and Dawn stepped back while Clay lit the fire.

“Now what?” Dawn asked.

“Now we wait,” Mad said.

***

Most of a hunter’s day was waiting. Waiting until small game had had the chance to blunder into the snares left for it. Waiting for a wounded animal to bleed itself out. Waiting until a boar came within spear-throwing range. Waiting for a cornered beast to emerge from its smoke-filled lair.

Patience had been the hardest part for Clay to learn, but he had learned it well. He no longer felt the apprehension he saw on Dawn’s face, or the boredom and irritation on Mad Words’s. Clay had come to experience the still moments between a hunter’s heartbeat as the purest form of living, when he could silence the chattering part of his brain and simply exist within the rhythms of nature.

This was his first hunt – his first real hunt – since becoming a Champion, and every aspect of his hunter’s being seemed enhanced. His senses were sharper. His aim felt truer, the grip on his spear more confident. It was easier to slip into the mindless state of absolute awareness. The wind’s turning of every leaf, the march of every insect, the beating of every bird’s wing… he was aware of the natural world in all of its forms, without any of it demanding his attention. In that stillness, Clay simply was a part of everything he observed.

When the beast exploded forth from its den, a great black shape that obscured the sun in a cloud of dust and leathery skin, Clay did not stare in terror. He did not have to stop and try to understand it. He simply acted and reacted, a hunter’s arm drawn back, a spear released, an impact and an outraged trumpeting scream.

It was only after that Clay’s mind grappled with what he was seeing, a beast that every instinct insisted could not be. It leapt like a lion from its hiding space, feline body gliding through the air, but roared like a man through a human face. The spear Clay loosed flew true in an arc that would have impaled any pouncing cat, but this creature veered in the air, born aloft by flapping leathery wings sprouting from its back. A massive paw slapped the spear from the air as it drew near.

“What is it?” Dawn recoiled, hands held to protect herself not from claws, but from the sight of the thing.

Mad Words grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her. “A monster. An eater of men. It will kill you, too, if you cannot fight it.”

“How can such a beast be fought?”

Mad pulled her wrist up, shaking it and the sling clutched in her hand. “You fight it like any beast that preys upon your flock. You are the Shepherd. Do what you must.”

Dawn stared into Mad’s face for a long moment.

Clay was aware of this happening, but he wasn’t watching. He was reaching for his second spear. He hadn’t stopped moving since seeing the creature bat away his first. The sight of the creature’s wings would have been shocking, if he had been present enough to shock. Somewhere, inside The Hunter’s mind, Clay the Thinker was objecting that such a creature could exist. He could see an abyssal darkness past its rows of sharp serrated teeth.

The Hunter did not care.

The Hunter hunted.

He felt his fingers close around the spear, felt his grip tighten, felt his arm start to move.

The corner of his eye caught a blur moving through the air, too fast for even the hunter-mind to grasp until it struck the beast on the side of the head. A stone, loosed by Dawn’s sling. The tiny missile didn’t hurt the creature, but it did distract it, divert it. The Hunter saw it swing towards the Shepherd and altered, ever so slightly, the path his arm took before loosening the spear.

Mad pushed roughly past Dawn, glaring up at the monster, fists clenched, a sneer on his face. He had no weapons, and made no move to protect himself as the massive lion-thing bore down upon him.

It was struck at the last moment by The Hunter’s spear, the sharp fire-hardened tip piercing through its wing and into its hide. Shocked by pain and impact, the creature tried to turn, its massive spine colliding with Mad as it smashed into him.

Mad Words fell back, holding the creature, rolling and kicking it away from himself and Dawn.

Clay ran towards the beast, watching it writhe and try to right itself on the ground, kicking up dust in a way that reminded him of Long Fang’s final moments. But this was a beast, not a Champion, and it wasn’t poisoned.

“Knife!” He held a hand out towards Dawn and Mad as he passed them.

Dawn tossed him her blade without a word. He caught it without looking.

The man-eater had almost regained its footing. Clay leapt upon its back and drew the blade’s sharp edge under its chin, across the neck. A butcher’s slice. There was a moment of resistance, followed by a red torrent of steaming gore.

He clung to the creature, pinning it the best he could until its wild thrashing had subsided, then dismounted, wiping the blood from his eyes. The creature’s death throes had coated him in its vital fluids.

He felt exhausted. He felt exhilarated.

Mad was eying him. “Let’s clean you off and haul this carcass back to the city.”

“Are you okay?” Dawn asked.

Excitement pumped through Clay’s veins. “I feel alive.”

“Probably a good thing,” Mad said.

Dawn turned to him. “You saved me.”

Mad laughed. “Clay killed it before it could reach you.”

“But you had no way of knowing he would.”

Irritation filled the madman’s voice. “I wanted to fight the beast myself. You were in the way.”

Clay bent and picked Mad’s weapon from the ground. “But you were unarmed. It would have killed you.”

Mad Words snarled and snatched the club from Clay’s hand. “It would have choked to death on my bitterness. What does it matter? It is dead and we are not.”

“Mad–” Dawn began.

The madman turned on her, face twisted. “You imagine I care?”

Clay put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Easy–”

Mad Words slapped his hand away. “And you! I am not your tribe. You are not my people. I help you because I want to live in Jericho and drink their beer until my time ends. But past that, we are nothing. To me, you are nothing.”

The madman’s words stung Clay. He had thought them friends – that he had, in Mad, someone who understood the Champion’s burden. It wasn’t something he could talk to his brother Broad about, or even his beloved Dawn Spring. Without Mad Words as his confidant, Clay had no one.

Mad turned away. “Just… let me be nothing.”

Clay stepped after them, only to be stopped by Dawn’s gentle touch. “Let him go.”

“Dawn…”

“I know.” Dawn held him close, heedless of the viscera. “I am sorry.”

They watched Mad disappear towards the city.

“Let us find a stream to clean ourselves in,” Dawn said, “And bring the carcass back to Jericho. Our first trophy.”

Clay eyed the dead beast. “The first.”

“Of many,” Dawn said.

Clay liked the sound of that.

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