Read Blood and Iron: The Book of the Black Earth (Part One) for Free Online

building and swatted at flies. On the other side of the avenue, a team of young boys with sticks were corraling a herd of goats.
    Horace leaned against a wall and wondered when the pleasantries would end. For the most part, his captors had treated him well, but he was an enemy on their soil. He expected imprisonment, quite possibly involving torture, followed by a summary execution. That was how his homeland would have handled a prisoner of war unless they had some hope of ransom. Horacestudied the soldiers. Did these people assume he was a high-ranking officer? They shouldn't have, considering he had been shipwrecked in a simple seaman's uniform. It was a stretch, but possible. He could play the part of a landed aristocrat, if it would get him back to civilization.
    The door opened, and three young men with short-cropped hair hurried out. Each wore a long skirt, like the men in the fields, but of bright white cloth embroidered with crimson scrollwork along the hem, and no shirts. Their smooth chests glistened in the bright sunshine like oiled clay. The young men ushered the soldiers inside with many bows and nods, and they brought Horace with them.
    The door led into a roofless courtyard paved in mosaic tile. A small fountain burbled against the wall to his right, surrounded by leafy plants and young trees planted in clay pots. Oblong yellow fruit hung from their branches. Horace looked up to several balconies above, their iron handrails framing a square of azure sky.
    Voices approached, and the commander entered through a wide archway on the other side of the courtyard accompanied by a heavyset man with a sagging gray mustache. The hem of his simple robe swept across the floor. The commander indicated Horace, and the older man clapped his hands. Two large men wearing cloth kilts and leather harnesses entered. Each had an iron collar around his neck and a short sword hanging from his side. At a word from the old man, they came forward and grasped Horace by his arms. He didn't have time to resist before they hauled him through a side archway and down a flight of dark steps. Not that resistance would have helped. The muscular guards handled him with ease, walking him down a hallway and down another flight of stone steps. The air was cool down here, at least. The light became scarce, but when they tossed him into a small room, he was able to see by way of a narrow window in the ceiling.
    The sound of the door shutting was almost enough to break Horace, but he stood in the center of the cell and listened as the guards barred the entry from the outside. The floor and walls were hard stone blocks. The ceiling was just a couple inches over his head, which made him want to duck.
    Horace inspected the window, but it was far too small to allow for anychance of escape. So he lowered himself to the floor and sat with his elbows propped on his raised knees, staring at the door. After a few minutes his gaze wandered down to his hands, drooping before him. The patches of scars glowed pale white in the ghostly light. He traced their rippled contours with his gaze as he waited.
     

The wagon rumbled down the hard-beaten roadway. Jirom picked at the scabs on his arms as he looked out through the iron bars. The rattle of chains and the clop of hooves drowned out the breeze and the buzzing insects flying past his cage. The sun was only halfway to its zenith, but already the day was sweltering. Not so hot as the desert, yet still enough to drive a man mad.
    His scalp itched, too, where the hair was growing in. He'd kept it shaved for years, but he didn't think anyone was going to give him a razor after what he'd done. Breaking the jaw of a smart-mouthed drover on the first day of the journey had been satisfying, but now they kept him in the cage night and day. He ate in the cage, slept inside it, and shit and pissed through the hole in the floor. He'd long since gone nose-deaf to his own smell.
    Standing up, he met the gaze of Umgaia in the next