The Tangos made no stops throughout the night, in spite of being very slow because of their human cargo. At some point in the night, K'rar was offered a horse, and the Arrondo had had to force K'rar to mount it, with his hands still bound. Now by morning they were still traversing the wide grasslands, with nothing else on the landscape but themselves and some pestering flies. But by midmorning K'rar had seen some life, mostly wild herbivores, hyenas, even a couple of crocodiles far from the river. But there was no sign of his knights. He knew the sequence of events that would have happened once they found him missing. First they would ask the Tsheka-guru some questions whilst issuing severe threats, because he had bolted without K'rar at the first sign of danger. Then they would want to immediately start a pursuit for him, but they would be told that this was of no use because the Tangos rode horses, and that on the second day, today, they would rendezvous with another team of Tangos with horse-drawn celled wagons in which to store their human cargo. If by this time his knights hadn't found him, K'rar would be destined to endure the very long and brutal pilgrimage to San Vilgraek, because the Tango caravan, both captor and slave, would be driven by horses. His few knights wouldn't dream to catch up on foot. The Tsheka-guru had no horses to give them, nor did the nearest neighbors, whom K'rar imagined to be as rudimentary as the Tshekala. There would then be two options for the knights. Either to try and secure horses from someone, anyone, or to scurry back across the sea to Xaxanika and issue a red alert, causing the entire regiment to pack and come rushing across the sea.
And by golly, K'rar hadn't been found by the time the caravan arrived at an outpost on the border of a vassal kingdom where their friends were waiting for them. This was the city-state of Krocher, one of the many vassal kingdoms that the emperor of the Zenj Empire had given to a member of his large family. Krocher was the first location that bore a modern outlook. Its city, the City of Krocher, was a stronghold of the empire in this area. K'rar's Tango group was the last one to arrive at the outpost, where at least three other centuries awaited them. Here, in the compound of the little walled outpost, the cart transports for the slaves were parked, and many of them were already full. There were men exiting the gate with the bodies of discarded slaves, or those who tried to be heroes by resisting their fate. Their bodies had been stuffed in sacks, but bloodied, disembodied parts of their bodies were sticking out of the ends of these. Commissioned soldiers kept this outpost, and did not allow their undisciplined decommissioned comrades to live in the quarters of the building, so the Tangos camped in an older, dilapidated structure adjacent to the new one. When K'rar's caravan pulled up, activity resumed almost immediately. The two other Arrondoes came out of their hole, and began to supervise the loading of the new cargo into the empty, caged wagons. K'rar was about to ask if he was to travel in such a cage when Fierlen, his Arrondo, quickly arrested him with his rough hands by the scruff of his robe, as if protecting him from his colleagues. K'rar noticed that these raiders were not only individually unruly, but also organizationally so. Fierlen marked it down to the other Arrondoes quickly that K'rar belonged to him, when both of them came to him.
'Who is he?' Montien, one of the others, said to him. K'rar was shaking his head behind Fierlen, 'he looks alien.'
'He is. This young man put down sixteen of my men all by himself. He's not going to be a builder of farmer boy of those good-for-nothing lords and nobles.'
'Fierlen,' said the third Arrondo, Goralen, 'all cargo must be handed…'
'I said, the Exotic is mine. You two will stay out of my way.'
'You will compromise…'
'Wait, Goralen,' Montien cut in. He and Goralen got along, but they often ganged up against Fierlen, 'did you say this chap put down sixteen men?'
'You can check the horses,' Fierlen said. He meant there would be sixteen horses without riders, as they would never leave them behind, but they would shed any of their men who couldn't stay alive. Fierlen said, 'if you two shut up about it, we can talk business.'
'May I at least know what kind of business, as I'm about to be a pawn in it?' K'rar said. What Fierlen said confirmed his speculation.
'You're going to be my gladiator, Exotic. You will fight for me.'
Shit.
'I will not,' K'rar swore. He knew about such gladiatorial combat games from Xaxanika, but from what Fierlen was saying it seemed that the sport in this strange land was more regular and frequent than in Xaxanika, where it took place only during the annual Union Games. Likely it was also a brutal adventure. Still he didn't know how it was a business.
'I wasn't asking, Exotic,' Fierlen snapped, 'in case you haven't already understood, I now own your life, so don't get on my nerves, and comply.'
Montien came closer and scrutinized K'rar well. His weapons had been taken from him, and his bag had been left behind in Tshekaland. But even in his dress, belt and boots, K'rar looked built for the arena. He said,
'Where the hell did you find this boy, Fierlen? I know not of any places in all the empire with people with his skin.' Now K'rar's hair wasn't the first unusual thing, as it had been in Xaxanika, even though it was even weirder among his new friends.
'Yeah, he's pale as a ghost,' Goralen said.
'Don't care where he is from, really,' Fierlen said, 'all I know is he's my ticket out of this shit job. If you two keep my secret, I'll pay you for it from the proceeds, hmm?'
The other two looked at each other, and then Montien said,
'You sound exceedingly confident about him. Is he that good?'
'Oh, trust me, Montien. This chap will turn the tables on the league.'
'But you are branded,' said Goralen, 'you still can't participate in the league.'
'What league?' K'rar asked.
'You'll find out soon enough,' said Fierlen, and then he replied to Goralen's words, 'I have contacts. Relations in the business. They can't pass up the Exotic. This boy, I tell you, can even beat White Lizard.' They yelped like gibbons in response to this, but Fierlen went on, 'laugh all you want. When you're ready, we'll talk.'
K'rar was frisked away and brought to a less congested cart with just six captives, four of whom were females.
'Get in,' Fierlen said austerely. He was still maintaining his kindness to him, because had he been a regular slave the Arrondo would have stuffed him into the caged wagon as if he was a sack of tea.
'How far are we going?' K'rar asked. He genuinely wanted to know, because from his conversation with the Tsheka-guru about this empire, and the map he had shown him, this was no doubt a very long, arduous journey.
'So you have really never been here, Exotic?' Fierlen said, 'get in.' K'rar got in and sat down near the front, leaning against the cage. While everybody in the cage stared at him like he was a phantom, the Arrondo said, 'three months. That's what it takes.'
'My regiment will come for me, you know.'
'No shit,' said the Arrondo sarcastically. He then strongly advised everyone in the cage including K'rar, 'this is the privileged wagon, so if anyone misbehaves, flogging will be the least of your problems.' This was unlikely though, as the sides of the cages had enough spaces for the horsemen who would be riding either side of it to see everyone in the cage. Fierlen smashed the door of the cage closed, and fastened its locks from outside. There would be no breather for Fierlen's team of Tangos, so the overall caravan began to move out of the outpost in thirty one cages and over two hundred and fifty Tangos flanking them on either side. K'rar now took time to stare back at the faces in his cell with him. None of them were Tshekala, so they did not stop staring at him. He also stared back at each of them. Two of the girls were clearly siblings, no more than seventeen years, who were obviously destined to be whores. To his left and across from him, the other two boys, both Konkomba, sat. They had very long legs. To his right was an attractive, buxom girl in bark cloth. She was leaning in the corner, smiling like an idiot at him. She said to him,
'My name is Kinjale, Exotic,' she said. She had heard Fierlen's conversation in which he kept referring to him as such, 'you do look like a ghost.'
'What did he mean by privileged?' K'rar replied.
'They handpicked us for the Imperial Court. Do you not know?'
'Is that why you seem happy?' he couldn't continue to ignore her constant smile any longer, 'what will you be doing?'
'Doesn't matter, because I will be paid. But my friends will be slaving for surly masters on farms and whorehouses and building projects.'
'And, the Imperial Palace has what kind of jobs?'
'What I'm saying is,' said Kinjale, 'even if I become a whore for the royals, it's an improvement to my previous station. It is better to be in a harem of royals than to be shared like a mango by poor Chwezi men.'
K'rar quietly studied her face to check if she meant this.
'Shared how?' he asked.
'You. You really are outlandish. It's in our culture as Shemians. If a husband is away in a farm, another man may come into the home to bed the wife. He only needs to place a spear at the doorway to announce to those passing that he's bedding someone's wife. That's why I prefer to live in the east.'
'And to sleep with brown-skinned Dalians,' the guy to K'rar's left snapped at her, 'so what difference does it make?'
'Well, since I'm a whore for the whole village from the moment I get married,' Kinjale seemed to be an expert in this topic, 'I might as well do it for money, even if it's a Dalian eunuch.'
K'rar had to go through another schooling session from Kinjale, as he was a fresh fish out of water. Apparently the Zenj continent's far western tribes were all descended from the old patriarch called Shem who lived with two brothers at the founding of the world. They were the darker skinned race of the giant continent, living in mostly decentralized chiefdoms and communities, dwelling almost entirely on their own subsistence. The other patriarch was Dalia, and he was the forefather of the numerous Dalian peoples. For every one dark-skinned fellow, there were at least eight light-skinned Dalians, and Kinjale explained why, extracting her story from "The Scriptures", the religious holy book of the Dalians which their missionaries had forced down the throats of the weaker race, the Shemians.
'They claim they are a superior race because God favored Dalia over his brother, and promised him that his descendants would be as numerous as the sands of the sea. God told Dalia, "Look up to the heavens and count the stars, if you are able to do so." Then he said to him, "so your offspring will become." And I believe them. We are so old fashioned. The easterners live better than us in every respect.'
'So you condone this? Being taken as a slave?'
'As I said, leaving these villages is an improvement. Many of our males travel east of their own accord for a reason. So whereas I do not like the way the fucking Dalians look down on us and desecrate our homes, if I claimed to be patriotic I would be lying. Us women are treated like shit here. But at least the whorehouses of the east pay up.'
'Wow. You have rather radical views,' said K'rar. He knew she was in for a rude awakening where she was going. He knew that even people of the same color could cut each other up for the most trivial of justifications, such as being located in different places. He had learned this the hard way in Moab and in Xaxanika, and had even taught impartiality as one of the most fundamental canons to his Kaffrarian Knights. Any tribal prejudice, regardless of significance, was severely punished. But the Dalians and Shemians were separated by a much larger gulf in many different ways, ranging from skin color to government to technological advancement. The Tangos, K'rar learned, even raided Shemian settlements only. Still, the larger conflicts and tempests and political upheavals belonged to the east, and in these, the westerners had little or no interest.
'Wait a minute,' K'rar said, 'you said there were three brothers according to the Scriptures.'
'I don't know. I only quoted what I hear from the mouths of the imperialists. But I've never read their book.'
'Perhaps, you are descended from him. The third brother.' said another prisoner who had been quiet all the way.
The Tsheka-guru was still asleep when he was violently shaken from his sleep by his head wife, and he didn't need to ask or yell why. The palace was already being overrun. By whom, the Tsheka-guru couldn't tell. But the screams and slashing of metal and the thuds of falling people and the breaking of things was unmistakable. The maidservants in the private chambers with him were already whimpering like children, cobbled up in corners.
'What is happening?' the Tsheka-guru rushed out of bed to throw onto his body anything nearby. Only the auditory report from without was enough to frighten him senseless. He was more akin to someone who had been running than someone who had just awoken from sleep.
'The palace is under attack,' said Vara-Iste, 'we have to go now. We'll take the back exit.'
'Under attack from whom? Is it Goro and his barbarians?' Goro was the chief of the hostile Mashate tribe, nearest from the east on the other side of the river.
'The white men from yesterday. They've already burned three chukas. What did you do?'
'How did they breach my wall?'
'They are like ghosts. Our guards are no match for them. They kill them like mere cockroaches.'
They were now scuttling to the exit of the chambers, but had hardly opened the door when it was smashed open with a mighty bang, and the body of the immediate guard stationed outside fell in. An arrow had taken him out precisely between his eyes. The Tsheka-guru and his wife recoiled, and the latter almost fell back in shock. A moment later, Billiat and Chio stepped into the chambers, and then Hazael and Ezio another moment after. Hazael was furious,
'You!' she drew her sword and pointed it at the Tsheka-goma, 'I will cut out your deceptive tongue.' She advanced to carry out this threat, but the Tsheka-guru stepped in front of her with tearful eyes, and fell to his knees.
'Spare my wife, please! She had nothing to do with the scheme. Please!'
'What scheme?' his wife really had nothing to do with the plot the Tsheka-guru had seeded. He had sent men after the four Knights to capture them so as to sell them to the viceroy of the empire at Krocher. But Hazael had been told when she returned to the Iscalan that nobody had returned before her, so they had scoured the forest for answers, with the help of Targa, K'rar's dog. They had found their four comrades trapped in a slippery cistern, guarded by Tshekala soldiers. They'd been waiting for the following day when K'rar was himself expected to be neutralized. That is when it had been discovered that the Tshekala were hostile. And the Kaffrarian Knights had responded in kind.
'Where is the Commandant?' Hazael stamped toward the chief. The chief was reluctant to answer, so Hazael hoisted her sword to slice his head. The chief yelled, 'wait, wait! They took him. The Tangos took him.'
'They took him? Took him?' Chio snapped. Hazael had just pushed Vara-Iste onto the ground for attempting to defend her husband. The Tsheka-guru said,
'Yes. That was the plan. I didn't believe him when he said he had an army, that he was a king. So I set him up because I thought he would be a good trophy slave for the viceroy, in return for protection from the Tango raiders. But the Tangos came first.' Hazael fumed at this, and placed her sword on his neck, but Billiat, who was now their commanding officer, ordered her to halt. So Hazael just broke the chief's nose with the hilt of her sword.
'You will die for this, old man,' she said. Billiat said,
'If we don't retrieve the Commandant, and if he's dead, protection is what you will not have. Where did the Tangos go…where?!'
'East, back to the capital,' the man's speech was hampered by his bleeding nose, and his wife and maids were crying like children in his behalf, 'they have been gone all night. They will have already reached Krocher and boarded the captives in cages. You cannot catch them without horses.'
Billiat now advanced,
'There are no horses in this place. So now give me a reason I shouldn't slit your fucking throat,' he drew his sword too now.
'Please, spare me. I made a terrible mistake. Take anything you want, anything, but spare me, please! My only crime was misjudging my guests.'
'Not reason enough.'
'Your friend is alive. They will not kill him. I can solicit horses for some of your men…'
'You want them to attack San Vilgraek? Is it a small territory with huts and reed fences?' Vara-Iste cut in, having completed her weeping session, 'please forgive my husband. That was unwise of him…'
'We need a plan to rescue our Commandant, not your apologies!' Hazael shouted.
'Okay, okay,' her hands were up, 'but they will be traveling through walled cities defended by armies. They will be traveling through a wilderness no man knows better than them. There is no way you can catch up to them before they reach San Vilgraek. Please, just take anything you want, anything, and forgive our sins. Take all the plunder…'
Billiat's sword was on her neck,
'You continue to misjudge and undermine us, even after we breach your shit palace and invade your master's bedroom. You will tell us how to get to your beloved capital, and leave the rest to us. If we find so much as a dent on his face, we will return, and we will kill you and all your posterity. Do you understand?'
She nodded, and said with a shaky voice,
'There is a map.'
'There is only one way,' Billiat was saying to Hazael, Ezio, Chio and Damaris seven hours later.
'A red alert.'
They were on board the Iscalan again, studying the map they had obtained from the Tsheka-guru. They had also taken the spoils offered, including as many chickens and goats as the ship could carry, as well as valuable booty from the palace, as reparations. The voyagers of the Iscalan were going to eat meat for every day of their voyage.
'By then the Commandant could be dead!' Chio was still undecided.
'No. They spared him,' said Billiat, 'so they need him alive for whatever they plan. The chief said most likely fighting pits, and the Commandant can beat anyone in any land at any time. If just one ship sails to this city, they will be shocked and all, but it is not guaranteed they will give back the Commandant.'
'I agree,' said Ezio, 'the chief said the Tangos are employed by the royalty. Just a hundred of us can't humble an empire we know nothing about. But all of the Commandant's army, well…we have the capabilities to level the city until they give him back.'
'And isn't it a sitting duck, this city.'
It was a sitting duck. The capital of the Scovian Empire sat right on the water on their northern coast according to the map. The Kaffrarian Navy could indeed by itself devastate the city.
'Then let's get back to Iscalan,' Billiat was walking out of the bridge, 'all men, man your stations! We haven't got much time!'