In the light of the blossoming dawn, the magician’s ziggurat cast long, serrated shadows over the market and, as if by some magic of the shade, awoke the people and bent them to their daily routines. Merchants set out their wares – some carried all their stock and found a dusky spot to set them out on colourful fabric. Others led small chains of slaves who carried their goods to expensive wooden tables or elaborate reed-woven benches. Pottery. Jewellery. Tools of bronze and stone and wood. Bales of wheat. Bright awnings provided respite from the burning heavens in umbras of red-brown, ripe-wheat yellow and verdant greens. Even this early in the day, the market was busy, many stalls beginning to trade. But only one of these stalls was being inspected. Studied. Hunted.
Around the corner of a mud-brick house hid two boys, one on the cusp of manhood and one a few harvests younger. They peeked around the crumbling edge of the house, eyeing the bakery’s wares across the rough trapezium-shaped marketplace. They were not well-off, nor were they well-fed. Instead, they were dressed in rags and smeared in dirt which marked them clearly as urchins – dispossessed, orphaned children which seem to appear wherever mankind build cities. The delicious scent from bread cooked in the building behind the stall made both their stomachs grumble and complain loudly at being so empty. Both watched the baker setting out unleavened,fragrant loaves. His hair and beard were oiled and plaited with colourful material. He wore gold rings on several of his fingers.
“I don’t know. It looks too risky,” said Sarhu. He was the smallest of the pair, with wild brown hair and a face marked with old pox scars. “They say he studied at the Ziggurat.”
“Pft,” snorted the older boy. “What baker knows his way around a tablet?” Pryad was a slender teenager with hair that was so dark and wild that it looked like the mane of a lion. “Anyway, it isn’t like we have much choice.”
Sarhu’s face clouded, he stole a glance at Pryad. “Yeah, I know,” he said tersely. “She is my sister.” He emphasised the ‘my’.
Pryad’s eyes never left the merchant. “Think you can keep up with me?”
“I don’t need to. I just need to be faster than the guards, or the Wardens.”
Pryad flashed him a grin. “That’s right.”
“But-”
“Look,” said the older boy. “I’ve taken from this guy before. And that bread will feed you, me and your sister and her baby for a day or two.”
“But he trained at the Ziggurat -”
“No way he’s spell-wise.” Pryad pulled Sarhu back from the corner of the building. “What’s got into you? Can you do this or not?”
Sarhu thought of Melassa’s fat belly, filled with child and his heart dropped. He knew that she wouldn’t survive if he didn’t bring her something to eat, and the scraps she had been brought recently she couldn’t hold down. She needed good food. Proper food. “Whatever you say, big brother. I’m right behind you.”
“Good. Wait until I go. Follow after and grab whatever you can while the fat baker chases me, understand?” It was a simple plan that they had enacted several times before, but only when things were especially rough. Pryad would only run ‘just’ fast enough to stay ahead of the merchant while Sarhu did the real stealing unobserved and usually unchallenged.
“But, what if he is from the Zig-”
“He isn’t, Sarhu. Ask me again and I’ll drop you into the Indugina river.” Pryad returned to his vigil, rolling his eyes in annoyance. “When have I ever let you down?” he muttered.
A moment later, he was joined by Sarhu.
“Ready,” the younger boy said.
They waited. It didn’t take long. In Ur, women would spend their morning making bread – those that could not afford to have some servant or slave do it, that is. These more affluent wives, mothers and daughters might instead buy what they needed, or in the place of bread get some of the wide, flat, wheat pancakes upon which would be served vegetables and meats. Many profited from the idleness of the rich women of Ur.
Approaching the baker as the boys watched were two women – Pryad supposed they might be mother and daughter. They were clad in colourful cloth and adorned in golden finery in a measure that Pryad would never be able to attain. Though he could not hear them, their waving hands and stances seemed to him like they were in the process of haggling with the baker, distracting him perfectly for what the boys had in mind.
Pryad nodded to Sarhu and made his move.
Like an arrow loosed from a bow, the dark-haired teen flew at the stall and reached out for a loaf of bread, one positioned prominently and so large it could feed Melassa for two or three days, easily. His feet cracked the clay paving as he ran with such force. The scent of success filled him as his fingers dug into the yielding crust. Behind him, he heard Sarhu’s feet flapping on the sun-beaten red clay. Pryad lifted the bread into his hands as he sped away.
At least he tried to lift the bread. It weighed more than a bronze sword and his fingers seemed locked about it. The momentum of his speed and the sudden tethering of his hand sent him crashing into a heap at the foot of the merchant. He was trapped! What was worse, his hand seemed stuck fast, glued in the soft flesh of the bread.
Sarhu’s warning about this baker being skilled in magics sent cold water in a flashflood through Pryad’s chest, lungs, freezing and stilling his heart. He tried to look around for Sarhu but the boy was frozen, his mouth a large O of shock, eyes wide with fear.
“Help!” he snarled at the younger boy, but Sarhu’s eyes darted from him to a figure casting a shadow over the would-be thief. The baker smiled, Pryad saw the man’s lips curl up like a hungry crocodile that lurked in the Indugina. Sarhu’s courage failed him – he turned away.
“Help me! Sarhu!” screamed Pryad. But whatever control he had had over the younger boy had evaporated like rainwater in the desert. His friend fled.
“Thief,” grinned the crocodile-baker, the magician. Pryad hated those cold eyes – eyes like a goat in their glassy hatred of everything. The two woman gasped – one of them struck out at him with her bag and the boy winced. Whatever was inside was hard and bashed his head back into the wooden table on which the immovable bread lay. Within seconds, other merchants had gathered, flashing knives and clubs and even an axe. Feet kicked out at him, red clay-dust rising into the air, bruising and battering the boy mercilessly.
“Bind him,” cried the baker. “We will hand him to the wardens for justice.” Someone’s blow with a club took away Pryad’s senses, and with a crack on his head, the world turned to shades of purple. And then it went black.
#
“They haven’t had a woman in years, boy. Being killed is the least of your problems,” gaffawed one of the Wardens of Ur. His crooked teeth fitted into a grin which reminded Pryad of a camel. He and another warden dragged Pryad through the dark tunnels under the city of Ur towards the slave pens where he would begin his service to the River King. Torches lit the way in flickering orange, mounted in sconces on the walls. Here and there, other tunnels branched off with no clear destination in sight. Pryad’s unwelcome guides knew all too well where they were heading. To the sneak-thief, it was like he was being dragged through Kur, the realm of the dead, an endless cavern-system where all there was to eat was dust. He was too numb to be terrified, though his brain insisted he should be. His ears rang with the pronouncement from the magistrate that had sentenced him.
“I don’t know. This lad looks the sort who might like a bit of man-spear,” said the other warden who gripped Pryad’s slender arm in one vice-like hand. He gave the boy a wicked, knowing smile. “Don’t worry, I am sure you’ll be fine. How many years were you condemned to the penal army?”
“Ten. Ten years.” It was the first time the young man had managed to speak since he had received his sentence.
“Pretty boy like you – could be a long ten years,” laughed Camel-Teeth. Pryad felt a chill run down his spine and his mind flew into images of dark, muscled men with leering faces and a wicked glint in their inhuman eyes. He tried to tell himself that the warden was gloating, teasing, having some mean sport at his expense. This did not dispel the images from his mind, though. They were far too deeply rooted.
“I won’t survive ten years. And I won’t live as another man’s bed ornament,” Pryad thought to himself. A thought came unbidden to his mind, full-formed. “It would be better to die than to be a man’s consort.” For some reason he thought of Melassa and the fears he had always had for her, homeless on the streets of the clay city. He had done his best to stop anyone taking from her what she had freely given to him. He’d seen the girls that men took in that way – beaten, bedraggled, broken. He had no desire to be the same, and the warrior inside him refused to allow him to do nothing to prevent it.
“Better to die than to be taken like that,” he thought to himself. And somehow, the idea of death calmed him. His sentence had darkened his future, he couldn’t see what life held for him a week from now, let alone in ten years. A plan started to form in his mind; a plan that would see him unviolated in death. He’d find the biggest of the penal soldiers and pick a fight and aim to die before any boy-lovers got their grubby hands on him.
It was a weird feeling of resolve Pryad felt when he made this plan, a weird feeling of freedom. Now he had chosen to die, what could these men do to him? Their insults were meaningless, their teasing insignificant. Suddenly, he felt like he had stolen all their power. The world bore a sharper focus. Pryad drank in his last few minutes – his last few hours – noticing everything, trying to live a lifetime of sensation in whatever time he had left before he entered the underworld.
“Hey, you listening?” snapped camel-teeth. “We’re here.”
Here was a set of wooden doors which were guarded by a man wearing the robes of one of the King’s own guards. He had in his hand a large, wide-bladed spear. A bronze-headed club hung from a loop on his belt and his arms held fast to the leather straps on his bronze shield. It was not ornamental, Pryad realised, noticing the dents that had been hammered out of it over time. The scars over the man’s bare torso also spoke to a life filled with armed conflict.
The guard opened the door he was standing in front of while another man, dressed in a similar manner but without the spear and shield, came to meet them. He carried in his hand a great coiled whip.
“I’ve got him from here,” the stranger said to Camel-Teeth. His voice was crackly, horse, a voice like snapping bones. Pryad looked at the doorway with the absolute knowledge that if he ever went through that door, his life, such as was left to him, would never be the same again. He would never see Melassa again. He would never see his unborn child. He would never give Sarhu a slap for deserting him. Suddenly, the idea of that horrified him and that inner strength that had calmed him now demanded action.
“No,” he cried. He fought, pulling away from the two wardens who still gripped him with their vice-like hands.
Camel-teeth grunted and cursed, his friend aimed a kick at Pryad’s knee that should have toppled him but instead missed. The blow landed on Camel-Teeth’s leg and elicited a storm of cursing. The grip on Pryad’s arm loosened and he jerked free. And then something hit him in the back of the head so hard, he thought a gong was being rung. He saw blackness, stars, the world spun and he realised he had fallen. His body had turned to jelly and he couldn’t get up.
Camel-Teeth kicked him roughly in the ribs, his friend spat on him.
“Little gutter-trash. Get up.”
Another kick. Pryad was too dazed to move. Too stunned to coordinate his arms with his legs, he rose on all fours and tried to get to his feet. Someone kicked him again and he flopped to the floor.
“Alright, that is enough,” said the whip-carrying guard in his crackling voice.
Another kick took all the wind out of Pryad’s lungs and left him gasping in pain, holding his side. The guard’s whip snapped in the air about an inch from his face.
“Get up, quick, or I’ll let these two wardens really beat some sense into you, boy,” came the unwavering command. There was not a single ounce of compassion in it, Pryad knew trying to plead for time to breathe would be useless. Somehow, he managed to stagger to his feet. He was thrust by the guard at the door, shield still ringing gently where he’d smashed it against Pryad’s head, into the gloom. Battered and dazed, the boy could do little but obey.
The great doors closed behind him with finality.
#
Pryad was led into a large courtyard with squat, clay-brick buildings set in regular rows, each without windows. Small holes in the walls and narrow, doorless openings were the only concession to the stifling Sumerian sun. From these gaps, the boy glimpsed men that he had never seen the like of before. Broad shoulders. Muscled. Scarred and with dark, hollow, soulless eyes. He had spent a life on the streets where the most brutish of men ruled, but the people he spied now would make those charlatans shrink back into the shadows in fear.
“Who are they?” he gasped from his aching ribs.
The whip-carrier turned around and smiled humourlessly. “These,” he said, “Are the slave-soldiers of the penal army of the River King of Ur. You must have really upset someone.” He shook his head and uncoiled his whip. Pryad moved on, storing a multitude of questions for later.
“Questions I’ll never ask,” he muttered as he slowly recovered his wits. He still planned to die before being raped. They were of no consequence now.
Finally, the guard led him to a building with cuneiform script over the door. He pointed to it and smiled.
“Can you read this?” he asked Pryad, who shook his head. “It says the date whereby you are to be released. Get in.. This cell is yours – yours and your fighting chains.”
Pryad didn’t know what a fighting chain was but a glance at the whip-carrier suggested more pain if he dared ask. Instead, as meek as a kitten, he walked inside. He had to duck to enter the building, which was no more than ten paces long and three or four wide. He was aware of it emptiness – there was nothing inside except in its far corner. In the half-light, he made out the shape of a giant of a man, and another man sitting closer, though less large. Painted in shadows from the slim light from the scarce holes in the walls, neither made any effort to greet him.
The dramatic turn of events, and the fact his body ached from the kicking he’d received, coupled with his overwhelming despair suddenly weighed down on Pryad. He sank to the baked clay floor and closed his eyes. Though he never intended to be, he was asleep in moments.
#
“Vake up, leetul gorl,” said a voice with a heavy, guttural Akkadian accent. Pryad wondered who was talking to Melassa and why she had to get up when the events of the market flooded back to him in a tumult of pain, loss and grief. His stomach lurched like he was falling off a mountain. Grief was bright and fresh in his mind.
“Do you zink she is sun-touched?” Asked the same thick accent.
“No my Akkadian friend, I think our new companion has already figured you out and is waiting for a conversation with someone whose intelligence more resembles that of a human, not one of the legendarily hairy mountain folk from the East.”
Pryad wiped away a tear and sat up, looking curiously into the gloom.
“Look, she’s avake.”
“Pay no mind to Shadanar, he isn’t as stupid as he sounds,” said the slender figure, the shadow in the darkness nearest to Pryad. “He can even be funny sometimes, though usually by accident. You know what they say about the Northern sense of humour.”
“You saw zem throw this leetul gorl in here vis us,expecting us to train her. I’ll take the Akkadian sense of humour over you superior Sumerians any day of the moon.” Both men laughed, the man-mountain gaffawed like some sort of gorilla while the slender fellow chuckled so contentedly Pryad was quite sure he had forgotten where he was.
Pryad knew very few men or women from Akkadia, most of them in Ur were slaves of conquest and not welcome visitors. They had little love for the Sumerians, but to find them as friends in the penal army of the River King was surprising. How was it that they didn’t kill one another? How could the Sumerians trust the Akkadians – men who had no problem employing both trickery and brutality to whatever they did.
“Do you have a name, friend?”
“Of course she does.”
Pryad’s eyes flickered from one gloom-draped figure to the other and then finally he realised he needed to answer. The words of the guards rang in his ears, though. Over and over. ‘They haven’t had a woman in years’. Here was one of them as good as suggesting that the boy was going to be nothing but his bed-mate. Pryad clenched his fists – he would not go down without a fight.
“I am Pryad, and I’m nobody’s girl,” he said in a careful, measured tone.
There was utter silence in the dark of the hut. And then it was shattered by both men laughing – not just laughing, but howling with laughter like hyenas being tickled by a feather.
“What? What’s so funny?” he snapped but this only incited both other men to laugh all the more. Eventually, the slender man tried to rein in his hilarity to answer but couldn’t even do that. Pryad’s anger flared – he had been beaten, dragged from his home, imprisoned and betrayed and he was not about to allow people to mock him for it. He surged to his feet and hurled himself at the one called Shadanar, the mountain of a man. His balled fist set itself on a collision course for the man’s chin.
Mid-air, a hand caught his wrist and yanked, and he crashed to the hard, baked earth.
“We’ll have none of that, boy.” The slender man’s tone was sharp. “You haven’t earned the right or our respect and we’re damn well not going to let you get our rations cut. So, cool your temper or we’ll beat it out of you.”
“You will not rape me,” snarled the boy.
Shadanar’s laughter stopped mid hoot, and he sat up. “No, you’re right. Vee vouldn’t even try,” he said. “Vo made you zink ve’d do zat?”
“The Wardens, they – “
“The wardens know shit, leetul gorl. Zey never come here. Zey do not know about ze penal army of ze Reever King – zey assume ve are as bad as zey are.”
Pryad felt no relief at this news – it was a mess, his entire life was in ruins and he hadn’t yet had a chance to live it. The slender man slapped him hard about the face with blinding speed, snapping his head around and sending him to the dirt again.
“Listen, Pryad, boy. You do as we tell you, Shadanar and I, and you do it quick. You do not make the guard look at us in a bad light, or we end up on some suicidal duty or other – and then you will be sorry. Just do as we say and you’ll be fine. Never raise your hand to us again and we’ll get along just fine. Trust your Uncle Zababu.”
#
As night fell, still nursing his bruised cheek and his battered ego, Pryad found that despite everything, he rather liked Shadanar and Zababu – they were not paragons of virtue but they were good people. He had no idea how an Akkadian and a Sumerian could be so close, but he understood that they were brothers by necessity – that they had become allied because of the situation they were in. Pryad had been in many situations that required him to make unsavoury friends – everyone he knew had. Perhaps he didn’t need to die. Perhaps, Pryad mused, he could learn to live.
Imagine Erratically 