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cage. Their wagons were linked together and pulled by the same train of oxen. Umgaia smoothed her luxurious hair over her shoulder and winked at him with the single eye in the center of her forehead. “It's soon time for another show.”
    Beyond her wagon, the brick walls of a settlement emerged from the dusty savannah. Another village, another show. Chief Proctor Mituban was, among other things, a procurer for his master, Lord Isiratu. The wagon train held tribute from a dozen holdmasters, as well as some curiosities that Mituban had encountered during his trek around the territory. At every stop along the road to Sekhatun, the caravan displayed its oddities to the common people.
    Jirom leaned against the bars of his cage as the wagon train rolled past the fields and pastures surrounding the village. The smell of manure clung to the air. He had seen hundreds of settlements like this in his soldiering days. Akeshia was said to be the world's breadbasket for good reason. Every year shipments of wheat were sent to nations near and far, and Akeshian merchants brought back a wealth of cotton, timber, and gold. It wasn't difficult to believe that someday her armies would march to the far corners of the earth. Long ago,that notion had inspired Jirom to take up a spear and seek his fortune, but a series of misadventures, and some poor choices on the part of his employers, had set him on another path.
    He settled back onto the floor and rested his back against the bars. The gladiator circuit was renowned for its brutality. If he was fortunate, he'd get put against a few young bucks like the Lion with more muscles than sense, but eventually he would be pitted against someone better. It was just a matter of time.
    When the caravan reached the village, a crowd had gathered. Looking out over their brown faces, Jirom remembered his childhood and the bubbling excitement he'd felt whenever someone new came to his tribe's remote corner of the world. That same excitement was reflected in the eyes watching him pass.
    The wagons stopped at the village center and pulled into a semicircle. Caravan guards went around, watering and feeding the animals. The doors of the lead wagon opened, and Chief Proctor Mituban appeared, wearing a long robe of ivory-white with a crimson sash around the middle. The village elders kept their distance until Mituban beckoned them closer.
    “Come and see,” Mituban said for everyone to hear, “the wonders I have collected for our lord and master!”
    Jirom didn't move as Mituban walked past his cage, introducing him as “the cannibal gladiator from the dark heart of Abyssia!” even though he'd never been to that land. Umgaia was billed as “the fabled cyclops of Sidon.” People gawked as they passed by, pointing and laughing. Jirom suppressed the desire to reach out and strangle the first person to stray within arm's reach. Instead, he sat back and closed his eyes, and tried not to dwell on the humiliation. He had been a soldier and a warrior, but now he was an animal in a cage. Something hit him in the shoulder and rolled off. He looked down at the dry turd on the floor beside him and clenched his hands into fists.
    Don't give them what they want. Just sit back and think of something else.
    After a meal of hard bread and a cup of water, the menagerie packed up. The oxen were re-hitched, and the wagons rolled out past the crowd of watching villagers. Jirom chewed on his crust and simmered.

    The sounds of pipes and laughter floated through the camp. The oxen murmured in their roped enclosure. Wagon drivers and guards sat around the fires, passing skins of beer back and forth.
    Jirom wrapped his shirt around the lock of his cage door. Earlier in the day, while the guards grew lax under the afternoon sun, he'd grasped a fist-sized rock from the ground and hidden it under his shirt. All afternoon he had contemplated what to do. Fight his captors and likely be killed? Perhaps. Dying on his feet had long been his