Banners of The Sa'yen, page 18
“Now you have company to muse away the long hours, you dog. Ha! What a matched pair, Admiral Hasdrubal, eh? The peasant fool who thinks his god is back in mortal form to rescue his devoted followers from the clutches of evil and the pirate fool, a daring pirate chieftain himself who allowed his own ship to be captured as the spoils of victory by the very charlatan that claims to be a god.”
And turning swiftly to look again at the figure chained to the wall beside me, I for the first time recognized the battered, blood-caked face of the pirate prince, Hakba Baru. Hakba Bam, once the captain of the Black Falcon, the very pirate chieftain the Lord captured on the hulk of the Black Falcon when we first found it. Captured again, but this time, like me, in the clutches of Bahir Kandar and the Hakadians. Stunned and puzzled, I tore my eyes away from the face of the pirate and looked up into the smiling, cruel faces of my captors.
“Fool! Dog! Silly peasant simpleton!” Hasdrubal sneered, striking me for no apparent reason with a gloved hand and laughing. “Do you think we Hakadians would actually lower ourselves by making allies of our ancestral enemies, the Aggarian pirates? We made every attempt to make it appear as if we were in the process of making allies with the Aggarians. We even sent Virgantrix, the Aggarian Chieftain these pirates follow, a treasure ship heavy with gold and silver to show our sincerity. We made arrangements to have a fleet meet theirs at a point below Triisus to cement what appeared to be honest attempts on our part to make them our allies. And it worked, peasant. As you well know. But our real intentions were to bring the Grand Fleet, under my command, up in the middle of the celebrations that followed soon after the pact was agreed upon between the first Hakadian fleet admiral and Virgantrix. Between two Hakadian battle fleets we would at last destroy the power of the Aggarian pirates. And it would have worked without your assistance if the admiral in command of the first Hakadian fleet had been more diligent in keeping his crews sober and manning their ships. Instead he allowed them to celebrate as well and they became as drunk as the pirates. If not for your timely intervention the fleet assigned to begin the attack before I was to come would not have been capable to do its part at all. But you forced the fight upon everybody, you and your lord. And because of that I came up in the thick of the ensuing confusion and wreaked havoc upon the pirates. We succeeded, peasant! And with your efforts on our behalf! What do you say to that?”
“And the Aggarians have been destroyed?”
“Almost to the man. Only a few, Virgantrix among them, escaped, as did your lord as well,” Bahir Kandar replied, his smile gone and a severe frown upon his effeminate hawk-face as he glared at me. “I had hopes that the Black Falcon and Virgantrix both would be destroyed but luck rode with them. However, that shall soon be corrected, eh, admiral?”
“Immediately, my lord,” the admiral nodded, playing with a dark lock of hair as he smiled upon the face of Bahir Kandar confidently. ‘The remnants of the first Hakadian fleet plus all of the Grand Fleet ride above the towers of Triisus now. And my staff is finalizing the plans that will track down and destroy this charlatan and Virgantrix as well. It should be only a few weeks before our victory will be total, my lord.”
“Excellent!” nodded Bahir Kandar, rubbing his thin, delicate hands together in a pleased fashion. “And when the charlatan who calls himself a god and the pirate Virgantrix are both captured or destroyed, we will deal with these rogues. But for now we must keep them alive as bait. Alive but not pampered, eh, admiral?”
“Correct, my lord,” Hasdrubal, the Hakadian admiral replied.
The Prince of the House of Kandar took a final look at me and Hakba Baru and laughed in pleasure at his handiwork. Nodding to Hasdrubal, he whirled in his robes regally and left the tiny cell. The Hakadian watched the prince depart and waited for some moments before turning, torch in hand, to look down upon me. And when he did, there was a look of evil pleasure, which chilled me more than the seeming madness exhibited by the prince Bahir Kandar. The evil pleasure in his face was that of a sane man who reveled in the acts of cruel evilness which Hasdrubal was noted for. The evil in Bahir Kandar was that from an imbalanced mind, and of the two I knew not which I feared the most But I did not show my fear as I looked up into the face of the Hakadian admiral. We said nothing for some time. Then stepping closer, the perfumed flag officer of the Hakadian court spoke to me in a low and soft voice which I found most distressing!
“I heard the prince promise you a swift death, you dog! And while I am forced by my own Emperor to be subordinate to the Prince of this city, I will yet have my revenge upon you, peasant! It was you and your lord who made me lose my own flagship when you were escaping in that windblown passage up in the Tors Mountains. I lost the best ship in the Hakadian fleet because of you and your lord, and for that I should slowly draw and quarter you over a burning fire! I almost lost my own life in your escape and for that I will kill you slowly. But you deserve to die the Death of a Thousand Stings because of another atrocity, peasant! The burning Hakadian frigate you leaped from the other night carried the entourage of the Princess Saphid. She died in those flames, dog! She, the favorite of the Emperor Hassan. And for that I guarantee the Death of a Thousand Stings will be your timely reward. And nothing, absolutely nothing will stand in my way to see you die the death I have promised you!”
And with those words he turned, threw the burning torch to one of the many Hakadian officers who were part of his immediate staff, and left the cell. The heavy cell door was pushed shut, and I listened to the massive lock-bolt slide into place. Silence, unbelievable silence suddenly hung in the tomb of the tiny cell. The chained, unconscious form of Hakba Baru hung slumped to the wall in his ragged robes beside my bunk, and off in the comer the dripping of water again came to my ears. The sudden silence draped me with a sense of immediate doom, and I lay motionless on the bunk, chained to the wall. I knew the Hakadian admiral had told no lies when he had made his promise to me. The Death of a Thousand Stings was an ancient Hakadian death reserved only for the most dangerous of enemies. It meant to die slowly, covering hours of pain-racked days, from being stung individually by the Hakadian night bees, a bee of large proportions found only on the Hakad Plateau. Each sting injects a poison into the victim’s system that attacks the nerves and creates unbelievable pain. No one could possibly live through such torture. And Hasdrubal had promised me such a death.
I had no doubts that he intended to carry through his promise no matter what consequences he might eventually reap.
XII
Can We Ever Escape?
Through the stygian darkness, illuminated faintly by a single foul-smelling torch burning in the dungeons hall directly in front of our cell, the pirate Hakba Bern and I whispered to each other. The fierce, black-bearded pirate with his famous hook nose and glowing brown eyes sat on his haunches, chained hand and foot to the slime-covered wall behind us. And manacled myself, I sat on *he wooden bunk filled with straw, unable to move far enough to make room even for the pirate to sit beside me. Together, we had spent the better part of a month in the cell, broken only by the two hours a day we were allowed to exercise by walking up and down a twisting dungeon corridor that was sealed by huge wooden doors at either end. The corridor was wide enough for only one man to pass through at a time thus severely limiting any thoughts on our part of escaping. We sat now in the darkness, talking to each other in low voices and halting our conversation whenever boots of a guard would be heard stepping down the stone floors of the dungeon. In that time, waiting for the grand trap of Bahir Kandar to spring which might capture the Lord, I learned much of the treachery of the Hakadian Emperor and the arrogance of Virgantrix, the chieftain of the once powerful Aggarian pirates.
We also heard, through a veiled, roundabout way, of the feats of the Lord. Twice a guard, dressed in the colors of the House of Kandar, stopped just on the other side of our cell door and whispered to us the news that had spread through the city about the Sa’yen’s exploits. And each time this guard stopped to whisper, disguising his voice so that we might not recognize him later, he thrilled us with the news. Twice the Black Falcon had appeared over the towers of Triisus, her guns blazing. Once she had appeared suddenly, like a mirage, above the palace of Bahir Kandar, emerging from a huge dark cloud that smelled most foul, with all guns firing and wreaking much damage on ships of the Hakadian fleet that lay moored and unsuspecting about the landing towers of the Kandar palace. She hovered over the city for nearly an hour, putting to blaze two Hakadian frigates in spectacular explosions that even we faintly heard. All the city was thrown into an uproar of either rage or undisguised admiration for such a daring exploit! Those that called the Sa’yen their Lord were thrilled by the fact He escaped with laughable ease and harbored great hopes of rapid deliverance. To His enemies, His feat was an insult that could never be tolerated or rectified, for the Lord had escaped, leaving the city tucked away in its vast mountain cavern blazing from a hundred fires. Yet as thrilled as even Hakba Baru was at the news of the Lord’s first appearance over the city, His second appearance truly left us speechless for its audacity and daring.
His second appearance was in the teeth of a blowing, fierce winter’s storm. And in the dead of night. The Black Falcon appeared through the blowing snow above the flagship of the Hakadian Grand Admiral. And the Lord, draped in a huge billowing cloak and dressed in the armor of old Fadah, leaped with a few devout followers to the deck of the admiral’s flagship and captured it even before any knew that the Lord was upon them. And captured in the raid was the Grand Admiral himself! Hasdrubal, the Admiral of the Hakadian Grand Fleet and Personal Confidant to the Emperor Hassan himself, captured by the sword tip of the Lord! To myself and Hakba Baru, the news seemed too incredible to be true. Yet, the masked voice of the Kandar guard insisted that what he related was the truth. But more incredible, the Lord, in His Golden Bearded Magnificence, allowed the Grand Admiral to go free. To go free only after the admiral’s flagship, a fifty-gun behemoth, was burnt from stem to stern, the second flagship this admiral had lost from the hands of the Sa’yen. And for the allowance of the admiral’s freedom, the Lord issued to the admiral and to Bahir Kandar a challenge. And the challenge stunned both of us in the cramped, wet cell into speechlessness. The challenge was simple, as the guard related to us earlier in the evening. Allow the captives known as Magdar the Bull, called the Left Hand of the Lord, and Hakba Barn, prince of the Aggarian pirates, to go free in exchange for the release and deliverance of the Princess Saphid, daughter and most favored of the Emperor Hassan! And for proof that the Lord indeed held such an exalted captive in His presence, He left in the hands of Hasdrubal, the Hakadian Grand Admiral, an exquisite gold chain that was last seen worn by the princess herself. For the second time in less than a month, the Black Falcon and the Lord escaped from above the city without absorbing so much as a glancing blow from a stray cannonball. To say that Hakba Bara and myself were ecstatic with joy at the Lord’s daring boldness, as well as His incredible luck in the art of escaping, would be not fully quoting our exact feelings. We were beside ourselves with joy. And even the heavy chains that kept us tightly gripped to the cold, wet, dime-covered stone walls of our cell could not restrain us from cheering and clapping our hands. The Sa’yen! God of War! Sa’yen the Vengeful! All Praise to the Lord! For some moments we shouted and praised the Lord with all our might and in the loudest of voices. But eventually the hidden voice of the secretive Kandar guard made us restrain ourselves, for the guard had not come to relate to us the daring plans of the Sa’yen but to whisper to us secretly from his hidden spot the plans that Hasdrubal, the Hakadian Grand Admiral, and Bahir Kandar were now making to capture the Sa’yen.
Both Bahir Kandar, Prince of the House of Kandar and now tyrant of Triisus, and Hasdrubal, Grand Admiral of the Hakadian Empire, believed the Princess Saphid was dead. Died in the flames of the Hakadian frigate I had leaped from only a month before. The woman the Sa’yen claimed to be the princess was in truth merely a lady-in-waiting to the princess and not the princess herself. It was, as told to us by the mysterious Kandarian guard, rumored that one of the five ladies that waited upon the Princess Saphid was one of the many illegitimate children of the Emperor Hassan, a minor noble from a small royal house yet nevertheless rumored to be one of the emperor’s own daughters. And this woman was almost an exact twin to the Princess Saphid in appearance. In escaping from the flames of the burning frigate the Sa’yen had rescued this woman, still a daughter to the emperor but not the Princess Saphid. The Grand Admiral Hasdruba did not need, then, special efforts to effect the rescue of the woman back into the safety of Hakadian hands. Thus, the Grand Admiral and the Prince of the House of Kandar conspired to trap the Lord and His entourage when they again appeared in the skies above Triisus bearing with them the woman they believed to be the Princess Saphid. This news dampened our resolve and our desire to celebrate over the Lord’s twice executed appearance above the walls of Triisus and threw us into a pit of deep, scowling gloom. We were chained and helpless. And yet we knew, thanks to the treachery of one guard in the pay of the House of Kandar, the full plans of Bahir Kandar himself and his cohort, the Hakadian Admiral Hasdrubal. And we lay chained to the walls of our cell, with no apparent hope of escaping or warning the Lord of His impending doom. Or was there? A sudden thought came to me as I sat on the edge of the rough wooden bunk in the cell, my wrists and ankles chained by massive locks of cold steel. Why was this Kandarian guard so interested in telling us the fortunes and misfortunes of his master? Was it, as I truly suspected, some form of trap being carried out by the diabolical mind of Bahir Kandar? Or was it perhaps that somewhere deep within this hidden guard’s heart beat a secret longing to serve the Lord? Frowning, I cleared my throat and decided to probe the man’s true feelings.
“It is a pity that such a man as the Sa’yen, as many call Him, will step into the trap of your master without being warned, eh, warrior?”
There was a long pause, a pause that seemed to me so drawn out that I heard my heart pounding in my chest
But then I heard the hidden warrior breathe out a loud sigh of regret and agree it was indeed a pity. Beaming with the success so far, I glanced at a puzzled, bearded Hakba Baru and then looked at the cell door again.
“Aye, it is such a pity, warrior. Especially if one considers what the Lord might reward one who came and warned Him of your master’s trap.”
“Reward?” the guard repeated, his voice trembling a bit with excitement that I could easily hear. “Did you say reward?”
“Aye! And a handsome reward that would be too, warrior! And knowing the Lord personally, I daresay He would reward that person handsomely beforehand. Would you not say the same, friend pirate?”
“Huh? Oh! Aye! Aye, that he would indeed! This strange man who calls himself the Sa’yen is quite generous with the gold of another person’s treasure!” Hakba Baru stammered at first, collecting his wits about him rapidly and finishing the sentence with a firmness and conviction in his voice that pleased me.
“You, pirate, you do not believe this man to be the Sa’yen returned to us again?” the guard muttered, a note of caution in his voice as he spoke to us, still hidden from view.
“Me? Believe this man to be a god? Hah! Warrior, I am an Aggarian pirate. And we believe in no gods, don’t you know. But I will say this for the rogue, friend. He stole my ship from under me, the Black Falcon. And she only a few weeks out of the shipyards of Triisus and in my command. And to add injury to insult, along with this rogue that sits chained to die wall beside me, that being who claims to be the Sa’yen stole all the gold and silver that I called my own. A fortune, man! A fortune that no man could spend in a lifetime! Nay, not even ten men could spend in their lifetimes!”
“Aye, but He has never claimed Himself to be the Sa’yen!” I put in hastily, knowing full well that the legends of the Sa’yen had repeatedly stated that while among us mortals, the Sa’yen would never claim to be what He really was.
“He claims to be no god?” the hidden warrior repeated, with, now, a note of curiosity. “And yet he does miraculous things?”
“Bah! What miraculous things, warrior?” Hakba Baru coughed, winking at me to indicate he was goading the hidden guard to continue on.
“What things?” the warrior repeated, incredulous that such a question could ever be asked at all. “Why, the miracle of single-handedly fighting off a squadron of Aggarian pirates in a raging storm and capturing your ship in die process. That to me is one miracle. Or the humiliation He gave Thordak, Captain of the Guards of the House of Kandar. I knew Thordak, pirate, and I knew how ruthless and skilled he was with the sword. To disarm that man so easily and without even seeming to work at it is a miracle to me. And I have heard stories of His gift of healing the sick and feeble. Are these not miracles enough?”
It was true that the Lord had at times healed a few of the many that had gathered daily at the base of the landing tower we had been moored at only a few months back. He had pointed out to me that those who were healed under His guidance would have healed in any case but would have taken longer to do so. The devoted who flocked to His banner in increasing numbers daily would see Him walk among them and actually heal them of their sicknesses and that was enough to make His simple acts of kindness seem divine miracles. From the way the hidden guard was addressing the Lord as an actual deity, I knew our chances for escaping this prison cell and perhaps making our way to freedom had taken a leap forward. Smiling to myself in the dark cell, I again brought the conversation back to the original point.
“Ah, but what sadness fills me! As you know well, warrior, the Lord can give all His devotees a few miracles, but He still walks about in a mortal’s body. He yet can be killed by the hands of others. A pity that He should die before His mission to lead us, who call Him Lord, on the Wha’ta, the March to the South!”
