Chapter 15: Lives in Ashes

The citizens of Blue Harbor stood in the public square surrounded by soldiers. The townspeople were unarmed; even those carrying an eating knife had been forced to discard it.

They had watched in fascination as two large groups had come off the hill toward town. At first, they had hoped for salvation from the church but those hopes ended quickly. The armed men who had come off the hill had joined the army occupying the town. The other group wore the rags and collar of a slave – but they carried whatever weapon they could find.

A few had sticks or clubs; others had farm implements; some had knives given to them by soldiers. The collars were still attached. It had been impossible to remove them with the equipment at the church.

The fascination had turned to horror when the church and all the buildings surrounding it went up in flames. The townspeople had paid exorbitant taxes to acquire the slaves that had built the structures. Most of their food came from the farms that existed on the grounds.

Three men could be seen walking in front of the flames – striding purposefully down the hill toward Blue Harbor. The last remaining members of the city’s guard were bound hand and foot in the city square. Only a dozen of the 80 that awoke that morning would go to sleep that night.

Joseph’s losses were less but still substantial. Twenty-two men had died and another 45 had wounds ranging from incapacitating to superficial. Julia’s wound had been cleaned and bandaged once she had arrived in the city. It still burned but the woman who had cleaned it said it would heal – although she would carry a scar for the remainder of her days.

The dead men were split between experienced soldiers and those who had joined Joseph almost a year earlier when he started his trip to Westmont. The irony was that the majority of the trained troops had died at the hands of the citizens and not at the hands of the experienced guards. The troops that had made first contact with the city guard had been largely unpracticed. The men had stuck to the training they’d undertaken and not a single one of them had run.

They had held on despite their losses until a large group of veterans had arrived to turn the tide of the battle. The first death came at the hands of a child. A young boy, perhaps six or seven years old, had stabbed a soldier in the kidney as the man had herded the boy’s mother and sisters to the city square. It had been a warning to all the soldiers that there were no innocents in Blue Harbor – and it had meant that the rest of the citizens were not treated kindly as the warriors followed their orders to push the residents to the park.

Joseph, Jonathan and Genrico walked down the hill as the church and the buildings nearby burned behind them. The slaves had been told to take anything they wanted from the church and none of the men was surprised when the item most often grabbed was something to be used as a weapon. It had taken Morane and the soldiers a while to get the hands to understand that they were free but once word had reached the right ears, the slaves had believed and reacted.

The groups that headed up the back and the side of the hill reunited and raced toward the city to join the battle but arrived too late to see any real resistance. The soldiers had appropriated several wheeled wagons to transport the ill, elderly and pregnant down the hill and two were sent to the base camp to retrieve those left behind.

Victoria saw Genrico stride into the park and saw the dried blood on his face and clothing first. She started toward him but her mother took her arm to keep her still.

“There will be time later,” Amelia remarked. “Take heart that he is alive and whole. The king will not permit anything to befall his closest friend.”

Victoria nodded her agreement.

Rucar had been given a small group and tasked with taking and holding the docks. It was the former partisan ranger who claimed the biggest prizes on the day when he intercepted the influential families as they tried to slip away aboard a boat. There was no mistaking them: their clothing and their attitudes gave them away. Rucar and his men bound everyone, having heard the story of Calderweld, the soldier cut down by a child.

All eyes turned to King Joseph when he stepped up on the back of one of the wagons. A spontaneous cheer came from his soldiers but he squelched it by raising his hand.

“I am Joseph, son of Welton and Melina,” he yelled. “I am your rightful king and I reclaim this region for the nation of Azkoval. Any arrangements made with the usurper king are null and void.”

“The Western Enclave of the Serratian Church is dissolved,” he declared. “The lead priest has been convicted of treason, promoting slavery, pedophilia and dozens of other crimes against the state and nature. His sentence was death.”

Joseph tossed the vicar’s head into the crowd of the better-dressed residents – many of whom screamed and tried to move away. The ropes prevented that but it didn’t stop the effort.

“The village of Blue Harbor is dissolved,” Joseph continued unabated. “Those who live on this section of town have until sunset to retrieve any belongings they wish to carry with them. I do not care where you go or how you survive. I can tell by your clothing that you have exploited those poor souls held in bondage at the church and you should count yourself fortunate that I do not have you have executed down to the youngest child.”

Joseph smiled at the look of distress that crossed the faces of the poorer residents.

“You may take no wagons, only what you can carry with your hands or on your backs,” Joseph added. “You may take no coin or weapons. Each person will submit to a thorough search by my men before being permitted to depart. At sunset, I will put a torch to every dwelling whether it is occupied or not.”

The crowd started to mill but Joseph’s voice cut over them.

“I have not instructed you to move,” he yelled. “I want each and every one of you to hear my words and take them to heart.”

He turned to the group of men and women that had made a fortune off the backs of the slaves on the hill.

“I claim all the personal belongings from the residents on this side of the city as is my right as king,” he said, “and as the spoils of my victory over your troops. I will permit those on this side of the city to depart with only the clothes on their backs. Do not worry. I will arrange proper transport for you.”

“That is outrageous!” The Mayor yelled, only to be silenced by a soldier’s fist to his stomach.

“I will send the men to Creight where they will be sold into slavery for the Caliph,” Joseph declared. “The women and children will be sent to other villages within Azkoval to live however they can.”

He turned a feral smile toward the startled merchants.

“You did not take issue with forced servitude when you stole men from their wives and women from their children,” he said. “I don’t think you can really disagree with it now. Do not worry. Your young daughters can probably earn enough with their bodies to support your wives and other children. If they can’t, I am sure there are men like the priest up on the hill who will pay to pillage the asses of your sons.”

The fires that ravaged a large portion of what was once Blue Harbor raged well into the night. Joseph’s army had taken over the city square while the former slaves spent the night in the houses that once held the city’s elite.

The king wished he had not almost emptied his money bag because he wanted to the former slaves back into life with enough coin to see them through the remainder of their years. He had seen from the scars they carried that the overseers had been free with their whips. Many carried brands from their life of servitude before reaching Azkoval. He could only shake his head at the cruelty of the world.

He wondered if he had done the correct thing in sentencing the wealthy families of Blue Harbor to the sort of life they had sentenced others too. He abhorred slavery in all of its forms but he also thought those who lived off the work of others deserved more than a simple death.

Besides, he thought there had been enough death that day. The corpses of his men had been buried but those of the city guard and the civilians were tossed into the fire. The men had walked down to water to clean the blood from their bodies and their clothing but coppery smell of blood and the sickly smell of burned flesh and hair still hung in air.

For the first time in many months, he longed for the relative tranquility of his life in Denaya. His life there hadn’t been easy by any stretch. The priest who raised him had ignored him for most of his adolescence and then died when Joseph was barely in his teens. He had not wanted to work on the ships but he needed coin so he spent a year cleaning up for the smithy in the town. The priest had always planned for Joseph to return to claim his throne and had found a man to continue his lessons in the art of warfare. It was these lessons that led Joseph into the life of a mercenary.

He had joined a small band when he turned 14 and travelled to a land north of Denaya. It was covered in snow and the weather was frigid. Almost half of the group – including its leader – had died before they even reached their destination. But Joseph and Genrico were among those who survived. They fought alongside the son of a deposed king and managed to bring home a fair amount of treasure for their troubles.

But the lifestyle of the men he travelled with troubled Joseph. The men plundered villages on the way northward and were set to commit atrocities on the civilians at the capital before Joseph intervened. He had been forced to kill two of the men who came north with him but he had done it without hesitation. The rest of the group got the message quickly and confined their amorous pursuits to the willing wenches in the taverns and bawdy houses.

Joseph and Genrico stayed behind after the group headed back to Denaya. The men of the northlands had been strong warriors with an ethical code that mirrored his own. It wasn’t long before he had his own small army and his life as Johan the Merciless began in earnest.

He regretted some of the things he’d done in his youth – just as he was certain he would come to regret some of his actions from the current campaign. He had begun to wonder if reuniting Azkoval was a fool’s errand. He dreaded the thought of leading a country that was constantly on a war footing but he had no doubt that he would face just that.

Once the internal problems were quelled, he would face external threats. Azkoval’s location was too vital to too many countries for others not to covet it. He had decided to keep a few hundred men on retainer as a standing army – not knowing that Elena had already taken that decision out of his hands.

He had heard nothing from the capital in several months. He was too far away to keep up to date on things. It had been Genrico who had pointed out that for all Joseph knew, he could return to a capital that had been seized by a foreign army in his absence. Joseph had left a small force behind to protect Elena but he knew they would be overwhelmed if any of the northern countries had made a concerted effort to take Azkoval.

He was pulled from his musings by Julia’s approach. The past few days had been frightening to her. He knew that because they had been frightening to him. He had seen Rucar and Victoria speaking to the young woman in hushed tones but she had avoided him almost the entire day.

“How is your arm?” he asked without looking up.

“It will be fine,” she answered. “The healer said the whip didn’t cut into the muscle or break the bone. Right now it just burns.”

“I’m sorry I put you in a position to be hurt,” Joseph told her. “We lost many good people today.”

“It was necessary,” Julia said as she took a seat beside him. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Of course,” Joseph replied.

“The boy from this morning,” Julia continued. “I’ve looked for him and I can’t find him. I wanted to see how he is doing. What became of him?”

Joseph looked at the ground and let out a long breath.

“He’s dead,” he answered almost in a whisper.

“You killed him?” Julia gasped.

“No, of course not,” Joseph replied, looking up. “He ... he suicided. Genrico and I left him alone to dress while we questioned the other priest. When we went back to check on him, we found he had taken a ceremonial knife and cut his throat. He never made a sound. He just lay down on the floor and sliced a gash out of his neck.”

Julia felt tears on her cheeks and she didn’t know why. She hadn’t known the boy. She had only seen him briefly. She decided it was the deadness in his eyes that had struck a chord in her. She could imagine what her life would have been like in Creight. She looked up to see tears on Joseph’s cheeks, as well.

“It was probably better for him,” she said gently. “I could see that he had lost his will to live.”

“It’s just this whole place,” Joseph said, his sadness giving way to anger. “Why do people do this to each other? How can a man make another man his slave?”

“The strong always prey on the weak,” Julia answered. “If it is any consolation, I can see that you are doing everything you can to level the scales. There are fewer people now who aren’t able to fight back than there was before you arrived. But if you think you can make cruel men into saints then you are in for a difficult life.”

“I don’t think that,” Joseph said. “I just didn’t think there were so many bastards running loose. I don’t want to spend my whole life going from place to place killing people by the hundreds because they are too brutal to live and let live. That’s all I want for this country. I want people to be able to have choices about their future. I saw something while I was in the north. We passed through a country that has no nobility. They overthrew their last king and ran out all the lords and ladies. The people have a say in how their country is run.”

“Is that what you plan for Azkoval?” Julia asked. She was surprised when Joseph shook his head.

“It would never work in a country this large,” he said. “That place was so small you could walk across it in half a day. I doubt it had more than 5,000 people. We have a hundred times that amount spread out across a land you can’t traverse in half a year. By the time the people made their choice and the man got to the capital, it would be time to choose again.”

Julia smiled for the first time since they started their walk up the hill.

“That might be the best form of government,” she said. “Just think, it would be constant chaos. There would be no one to start a war or to collect taxes. The entire purpose of the government would be to bring in the next government.”

Against his better judgment, Joseph put his arm around Julia’s shoulder, being careful not to touch her wounded arm. Against her better judgment, she nestled her head against his shoulder.

“I know you were appalled by some of what you saw today,” he said softly.

“Scared,” Julia corrected. “I was scared and it bothers me.”

“It shouldn’t bother you,” Joseph told her. “Courage isn’t an absence of fright. It’s accepting the fear and doing what is necessary. You did that today.”

“I wasn’t scared of the people we opposed,” Julia stated. “I was scared of you.”

“I know,” Joseph confided. “I was scared of me today too.”

The night sky was completely dark when the sentry sounded the alarm in the camp. The army hastily dressed using only the dwindling light of the burned out houses to see. Still, they were ready and waiting when a group of about a dozen men made its way toward them.

A young man at the front came forward.