"I swear before all Five, we'll turn as black as coal if this heat keeps up much longer!"
Under the blistering sun two soldiers lounged at a small wooden table, their skin slick and shining with sweat as they nursed cups of wine gone warm as bathwater. Strands of damp hair clung to their foreheads and glistened in the harsh white light above the hard-struck land.
The one who had spoken wore a mane of wild bushy hair that framed his face like some untamed beast's, and a grin that never quite left it, least of all in the company of friends.
"Well, we'll certainly look the part," his companion replied dryly, turning his cup in his fingers. "Perhaps that's the great secret of the savages' skin after all. Endless roasting under this damned sun, and a few hundred years to get properly done through."
The two broke into deep rolling laughter, their minds briefly entertained by the image of themselves as sun baked natives of this foreign land.
"I only hope we score six silverii out of this one," the younger said, wiping his brow with the back of his wrist. "Six would make the heat worth bearing. Five would not."
"Six silverii?You'd be lucky to find three under the sand" The older snorted into his wine. "And besieds, knowing you, they'll be gone inside a week, and you'll come to me on the eighth day with that face you make."
An officer passed by and cast a brief glance in their direction before hurrying on about his business. Ordinarily such laxness would have earned a sharp reprimand and a sharper detail afterward, but these were no ordinary foot soldiers. They were clibanarii, the pride of the empire, thunderous heavy cavalry whose charges had shattered whole infantry lines and left the survivors telling their grandchildren about it.
The emperor paid good money in exchange of good results.So as long as they delivered, most would turn a blind eye to such behaviour.
The rank afforded them a certain immunity, after all. Some among them even carried noble blood, second and third sons of highborn houses , on the smaller spectrum, chasing the glory that might raise their family's standing a rung or two before they died. Officers, mindful of the trouble such men could make for a career, generally preferred to look elsewhere.
Not all of them carried noble blood, but the officers could seldom tell which was which at a glance, and that served the rest well enough.
The younger leaned in closer. "Oh? And why's that, then? Six silverii is no small sum, last I checked the price of anything."
"We both know why," said the older, with a teasing smirk. "Walk into any brothel in Romelia and you'd find a portrait of yourself hung on the wall above the stair. You're practically their patron saint. If ever you took a wife, I swear on my mother the whores would march from Romelia to Salikka in protest. That, or they'd go begging in the streets with their bowls out, the priests would write songs about the famine you caused and your name would then be cursed by generations of whoresons that went to bed without supper."
"Good thing for them I'm not, then!" the younger laughed, draining his cup to the dregs. "But what of you, eh? I've never once seen you swinging your cock about in a whorehouse. Not once in three years."
"I'd sooner bring back one of the local girls," the older replied with a wolfish grin. "Far better than throwing a sack of coin at a woman for the privilege of her slit. Don't you think?" He gave his comrade a nudge with his elbow.
"Ha! Maybe you'd rather bed a lump of coal and be done with it. I'd sooner spill my seed on the ground than waste it on those. Can they even be called people, properly speaking?"
"That's rather the point of them," the older said, still grinning. "The men have their brute strength, the women their beds.So one to the mine with pickaxe, the other in bed to be bent. What else are they good for?"
Among their kind, the belief in their own civilisation's superiority over every other race and culture was not held as an opinion at all, but as a fact as settled as the sunrise, and no more worth arguing over. The people of Arlania, who shared the same deep hue as those of the Sultanate of Azania, the empire's old and bitter rival, suffered all the worse for the resemblance.
The soldier drained the last swallow from his cup, smacked his lips, and reached for the clay vessel on the table. Finding it empty, his brow furrowed with the particular annoyance of a man denied something small. Then his eyes flickered to something moving past him, and he turned and barked at a nearby slave to come closer.
-----------
''Oi boy! I ain't got all day to be roasted.''
Alpheo kept his gaze low as he approached and readied himself for the stunt he was about to pull. It would earn him a beating, no question of that. The only question was the size of it, which might range anywhere from a few slaps to a proper working over in the dirt.
Hopefully it would end at one or two. He had budgeted for two.
The soldier extended his hand expectantly, ready to take the vessel. Alpheo moved to set it in his palm, and his fingers faltered for the smallest fraction of a heartbeat.
The pottery slipped, tumbled, and shattered against the packed earth with a sharp dry crack.
The man rose from his seat with the easy unhurried grace of someone long familiar with violence, and delivered a backhand that sent Alpheo sprawling into the dust. His cheek lit up like a struck match and his vision swam and doubled.
Seems that pottery was worth rather more than I am, he thought bitterly, spitting. Or else their thirst is simply that great.How many wines there are worth three silverii for urn?
He scrambled to his knees and began gathering the broken shards with hurried, clumsy, apologetic motions. A kick caught him hard in the side and knocked the breath clean out of his lungs.
"I apologise, sir. I will clean it up at once," Alpheo said, once he had spat the drool from his lips, forcing a tremor into his voice and making himself small, insignificant, forgettable. His hands meanwhile moved with quiet purpose well away from where their eyes were resting, toward the real prize.
"Fetch another then. We're thirsty here," the older barked, already waving his comrade back down into his seat, irked at the interruption to a perfectly good afternoon. The younger obeyed without sparing Alpheo so much as a glance, his laughter resuming as though the whole business had been nothing but a gnat passing his ear.
In their eyes he was not a man. He was a tool, and no tool deserves more attention than the using of it requires.
Alpheo kept his head bowed, working with the meek precision of one who knows that hesitation invites further correction. As he gathered up the last of the shards, he slipped one small sharp piece into his mouth and pressed it flat against the inside of his cheek with his tongue.
Neither man noticed. Their wine clouded eyes were already scanning the camp for the next amusement.
Luckily for him, they were both dumb shits.Why the fuck would a slave pick up the pieces of pottery in a desert?What was he going to do , fix it back together with the pieces?
Drunk bastards, he thought, and rose.
With the ground cleared he made for the supply carriage. It was his work to run goods from one corner of the camp to another, sacks of grain and potatoes slung across his shoulders until his knees shook. The work was ten times better than the alternative, and he never once let himself forget it.
Had he been stronger, they would have chained him as a carrier, one of the beasts of burden set to haul wagons and siege engines and cut stone until their bodies gave out beneath them. He had seen the carriers often enough. They moved like shadows across the camp, frames withered and gaunt, eyes gone dull and glassy as a fish on a slab. Whatever spark of life they had once carried had been crushed out of them long ago beneath the weight of endless labour and hunger.
Alpheo was not like them.
His eyes still burned, and he had no intention whatever of letting the yoke sink into his flesh. He would feign weakness. He would play the beaten slave as well as any mummer ever played a king, for as long as the playing served him. But underneath it he clung to the same unyielding truth he had clung to since he was six years old: he would sooner shatter than bend.
The thought of dying a slave was intolerable to him. He had known freedom once, had lived it and breathed it without ever knowing what it was worth, and the memory of it was the only thing that had kept his heart from rotting through. Even in hunger, even in pain, he carried that dream about with him like a coin sewn into a hem.
And now, at last, the dream no longer seemed so impossibly far off.
He was close. So very close.
Fate, which had mocked him so often and so thoroughly, appeared at last to be extending its hand.
That small shard of pottery pressed against the inside of his cheek was more than a piece of broken clay. It was a key.
A key to something greater. To the life he had always believed he ought to have been toiling toward all along.
And finally, finally by all that was true and holy, he was making progress at it.