Seven Threads Read online

  “A ghost,” Mouse replied, and the group chuckled.

  The slaves were devouring some small animal cooked on a spit. Their sharp knives flickered over the carcass, reducing it to bones in minutes. One scarred woman flicked a morsel of meat directly into Mouse’s open mouth, and the group roared with laughter.

  Like Mouse, these people were hard-edged and confident and drank their master’s melon-wine with gusto. They did not act like any of the house-slaves I’d ever seen.

  “Sit down, Ghost,” one of them said, pushing over a chunk of log with a boot. “You’re not dead today.”

  I shared their meat and their grog, quietly taking in my new home. As the sun set and the lodge filled with shadows, I stared at the racks of elephant weapons on the walls. Oversized javelins, spiked maces, and battle-axes no human could even hope to lift. Two great swords rested in an iron bracket, crafted to fit the exact curve of our master’s tusks.

  Beneath this lay the thick iron shell that Ascaro wore into battle, heaped into a pile of plates and links and buckles. I saw the face plate, battered in dozens of places, the spot in front of his dead eye covered by an extra layer of iron and rivets. The empty eye socket watched me as I ate his food and drank his wine. I shivered.

  I learned the others” names as the wine flowed. A man with a great grey beard and no hair, who they had called Boy. Two women with muscles like hard wood, twin sisters called First and Second. A giant of a man, muscled like an ox, with only a stub of tongue. Punishment from speaking ill of Ascaro. They called him Lucky.

  “When does it begin?” Boy asked.

  “One week,” Mouse said.

  “Time enough to train your Ghost?” Second said.

  “No,” Mouse said. “He’ll die, or not, and it’s nothing on us.”

  Ever since I could toddle, I’d been a slave. I knew my own utter lack of worth. Even as they talked about my death, I stared into the flames and ate every scrap of meat from the bone in my hands. That was another day’s problem, and tonight I was free.

  “Come here, Ghost,” Mouse said, and stood me up in front of the firepit. The others jostled together, all glee and nudging elbows.

  “You’ve the look and stink of a house slave,” Mouse said, his eyes boring into my own. “We don’t mix with pot-scrubs here.”

  “Stinking pot-scrub,” First hissed, and the others hooted.

  “You’re dead meat,” Mouse continued. “I’ll give you five minutes out on the sawdust. You’ll beg for a broom in your hand, Ghost.”

  “Probably wet himself,” Boy grunted, and the twins howled with laughter. Even Lucky joined in, barking out his own tongueless enjoyment.

  “Changed my mind. The slave dies here tonight,” Mouse said. Seizing me in his hands, he tore my tunic from me with one swift motion. It was the last thing I owned, and he threw the filthy fabric into the fire. I stood before these people, naked and defeated.

  “You’re dead,” Mouse said, and held a knife to my throat. It bit into my adam’s apple as I swallowed, but when I looked up from the blade, I met his eyes calmly, without fear. At that moment I was empty of everything, and he raised an eyebrow, seeming to approve of what he saw.

  He stepped back, raising his knife in salute. That was when the water splashed me, soaking me from head to toe. Coughing and wiping my eyes, I saw Boy and Second, holding a dripping half-barrel.

  “Is this slave dead?” Mouse asked.

  “He’s dead. Dead as dead,” Boy said. They surrounded me, clapping me on the shoulders, and bidding me welcome. Lucky attacked me with a rough scrap of towel. First brought out a cloth undershirt and pants, and Second helped me put on the first pair of boots I’d ever worn.

  When I was dressed, Boy filled my hands with a square parcel, a heavy bundle of metal links and leather. A chain-mail shirt, reaching down past my groin but split up the sides for mobility.

  They fitted it to me, Mouse tutting and making measurements. They spoke of a blacksmith, expected any day now.

  “Bring it out, Lucky,” Mouse called, and the one-armed giant put something into my hands. It was a sword in a sheath, curved like the master’s tusk blades. The handle felt old and worn, and the leather scabbard was scratched in dozens of places.

  I drew the sword in one movement. The blade was battered and rough, more of a tool than a weapon. When I tested the edge, it sliced open my thumb with no effort.

  “This belonged to Pup,” Mouse said. “Pup ended up with a tusk in his guts, so now it belongs to you.”

  I learnt that we were called Rothai, and in the longhouses all around me, other teams of Rothai were gathering. In one week, they would all do their best to kill me.

  #

  Other slaves came, to fill the bunks. House slaves from the city, shuffling in by the dozen. Already I looked down on them as animals. Pot-scrubs. Next came the blacksmith, making the long-house unpleasantly hot as he banked white-hot coals in the forge.

  My hours were filled with swordplay, as the Rothai played at killing. Mouse carried the twin of my sword - our two curved blades represented the twin tusks of our master. The twins First and Second wielded the kontoi, double-handed lances with iron points two feet long. Boy had a battle-axe, while Lucky swung a flail with enough force to crack skulls.

  All about us, the Rothai of the other elephant houses made their own practice in the sawdust. Each was armed in an identical fashion to us. This was because of something called the Concord, Mouse said, and that was all the explanation he offered.

  It wasn’t enough to learn the death skills; we sparred on log frames ten feet above the ground, leaping across tightropes and netting, all while our fellows jerked at the workings to test our balance. We Rothai would ride out on the backs of our masters and fight on the move.

  I felt a stone twisting in my guts whenever I looked at the other warriors. We had no quarrel, but any of these people would end my life and think nothing of it.

  Mouse studied my form with the sword. He declared me fit enough to not embarrass him but still unlikely to live out the first day. I spent the last night hunched over the latrine pit, purging from both ends. The twins and Boy laughed and called out encouragement.

  When dawn came, we heard the poets bawling out on the sawdust, paid to recite elephant lineage and exaggerate their patron’s deadliness. Then came the hammer of drums, the call of a hundred conch shells. Elephants roared with anger and blood lust.

  Ascaro finally arrived, stinking of grog and covered in his own filth. He berated and abused the house slaves as they got underfoot, killing two before Mouse could quiet him.

  We hauled on ropes, lifting the chain-mail skirt up and over Ascaro’s back. Two dozen big men sweated and heaved on a pulley, hauling the inch-thick chest plates up and into place.

  Next came the iron greaves around his legs, laced up with leather trusses. A team of children climbed up and down a rig, deftly connecting the dozens of segmented pieces that made up the trunk armor. Ascaro tested his trunk for flexibility, and the pieces rattled as he gripped an enormous axe.

  “My swords!” he roared, stamping impatiently.

  As another crew winched the enormous face-plate into position, we ran up with the swords. It took three of us to lift each blade up to our master’s tusks, nine feet of solid iron. The blacksmith threw the hasps over each tusk, and swiftly hammered in metal pins to hold the blades fast.

  We swarmed over our elephant like birds looking for ticks. Everywhere was a pair of hands tightening a buckle or a rope or setting the iron plates. Planks were passed across and lashed into a rough platform for us Rothai to walk upon. Finally Ascaro had enough of this fussing and started to move, shedding slaves with every lurching step. They wriggled down ropes and fell to the dirt floor until the only humans who remained on Ascaro’s back were those of us clad in leather and chain.

  We Rothai took up our positions, each of us lashed to a rail that ran up the centre of Ascaro’s back. Long knives at our belts had the sole p
urpose of severing this rope - or someone else’s.

  As Ascaro burst through the doors of his longhouse, I saw the Blood Meadow in all its awful glory. I vomited over my master’s side, and the twins laughed all the way into battle.

  #

  Everywhere, elephants encased in metal, hundreds of iron mountains at full gallop, and they raged and clashed. Iron struck iron, and already the sea of sawdust was spattered with blood.

  “Be ready,” Mouse shouted from his perch just behind Ascaro’s head. Second stood above Ascaro’s shoulders, her long kontoi at the ready, calmly watching the thunderous murder that we were racing towards. Her twin sister paced around above Ascaro’s rump, watching behind for sneak attacks.

  Our master veered around a whirling knot of combat where three elephants fought each other, enormous maces and axes rising and falling.

  Ascaro made a sudden left, and my feet nearly slipped out from beneath me. Two elephants lay tangled in death, their tusk swords buried in throat and breast. The downed Rothai crews fought to the last on that grey hill, swords and flails flashing. Someone hoisted a lone kontoi with a red pennant tied to the shaft.

  “No point waving the blood flag,” Boy laughed, and sure enough the flag-waver was butchered by his enemies. Moments later, another elephant ran past in a rage, blinded from a head wound, and slammed into the dead elephants at a full charge. When the wounded elephant rose, I saw that he’d crushed the surviving humans into paste.

  “Stay off the ground, Ghost,” First shouted. “If your rope gives, you’re dead.”

  Ascaro weaved through the melee, smashing his axe to left and right, forcing his way through like an unstoppable force. Then, he shrieked with glee, and his nimble manoeuvring became a charge.

  “Ghanghil!” he shouted. “Face me!”

  He bore down upon an elephant in black iron. This new enemy had been in combat for some hours now. His plates were heavily dented and his chain skirts torn and dangling in several places. Ghanghil looked upon my master with undisguised hatred. He raced towards him with fresh energy, raising a bloody mace high into the air.

  “Rail!” Mouse shouted, and we knew to drop low, holding onto the middle rail for all we were worth. Ascaro and Ghanghil met with a deafening crash, and we were flopped around on his back like landed fish.

  The two bulls strained at each other, tusk-swords scraping and rasping. Between this, their armored trunks twisted like great serpents, the big axe and mace rising and falling.

  Over Ghanghil’s head, we saw his Rothai rise, and Mouse screamed, ordered us to our feet. Second was up and lunging, batting aside the enemy kontoi that sought out her heart. Ghanghil’s second kontoi came out of that press of faces, but Lucky wrapped his flail around it, pinning it down for Boy to snap with his axe.

  I waited at the back with First, sword at the ready. Two other warring elephants passed us by in a deadly race, and a man with a kontoi took a quick stab at us, trying for a sneak kill.

  First simply ducked, but I was not quick enough. The iron lance-head caught me in the shoulder, snapping through the chain-links and pushing me straight over the side.

  “Ghost!” First screamed, and then I was falling towards the sawdust. Then the rope caught, and I was a dangling dead weight, swinging just short of the ground. I swayed and lurched as Ascaro shifted. It was all I could do to hold onto my sword.

  Around me, elephants thundered, and a passing axe-man took a swing at my rope. If I didn’t get up soon, someone would sever my rope and I’d die on the sawdust.

  “Hold on,” First shouted. She held her kontoi over the side of the elephant for me to grab. When I snatched it with my free hand, she drew me up slowly, grunting with my weight.

  First helped me to my feet, grinning with relief, when a blur over her shoulder made me cry out. We turned just in time to see a second elephant, in the same black iron as Ghanghil, crashing into our master at a full charge.

  His tusk-swords buckled Ascaro’s rear plates, one of them reaching through leather and chain to cut deeply into our master’s rump. We barely had time to regain our footing when Ghanghil’s axe came smashing down.

  It was only the skills learnt in the bath game that saved my life then. The axe blow split the plate where I’d stood a moment earlier. A flood of enemy Rothai leapt over the elephant’s head, hooting and hollering as they slid down his trunk. Six warriors, each of them trailing a flapping length of rope.

  “They’ve cut cords! Mouse, help!” First shouted, trying to keep them at bay with her lone kontoi. I hovered at her side, swatting away the second one with my sword, even as the enemy rushed us.

  Then Ascaro turned, withdrawing and fighting his way free of Ghanghil. The three elephants circled, the two in black iron fighting as one.

  “Grengkil and Ghanghil,” Ascaro snorted. “You bastard brothers in black. I’ll bleed you today!”

  Grengkil’s entire crew were on Ascaro’s rump now, forcing us back towards Ascaro’s head. First lost the head of her kontoi to an enemy axe-man, and she retreated with a curse, left with only her rope-knife to fight with.

  I took a spear to the thigh and was fighting a losing battle against two swordsmen when Mouse and Lucky came to my side. In moments one foe was dead, another dying, and then Second was there with her kontoi to prod the survivors backwards. The last man fell bleeding from the gut, to the sawdust and certain death.

  Ascaro was holding his own. He’d crushed Ghanghil’s trunk armor with one lucky blow, and Ghanghil bled deeply. His Rothai raised the blood flag, and he retreated from the melee in defeat.

  Grengkil had done his best to smash Ascaro’s blind side, but now it was one on one. My master shrugged off half a dozen deep wounds, driving the black-armored elephant back with his superior size.

  Their axes came down with fury, sparks flying from each crash of metal. Finally Ascaro twined his trunk around Grengkil’s own, holding the smaller bull’s axe in place.

  “Now, cut cords!” Mouse shouted, and it was our turn to slice at our ropes. We leapt from one elephant to another, and no one was there to oppose us as we sliced away buckles and straps, stripping away layers of chain and plate.

  “Mercy!” Grengkil cried. “I show blood flag. Please!”

  But there were no Rothai on his back to raise the red blood flag of surrender.

  “Master?” Mouse asked. The glare in Ascaro’s eye was instruction enough. We struck at the base of Grengkil’s skull, knives and blades seeking out his veins and spinal cord, and we robbed this giant of his life.

  #

  It was a great victory for my master. Ghanghil and Grengkil were two of the Bull-King’s favorites, and to slay one and humiliate the other had raised Ascaro in that complex hierarchy.

  But Ascaro was furious. Even as the dead elephants were carved apart and put on wagons for interment in the Memory Hall, he lined us up in front of his longhouse. Six Rothai, most of us still bleeding, but we stood as straight as a row of nails.

  House slaves swarmed over Ascaro, pasting on unguent with trowels and mops. Two were trained surgeons, stitching up his wounds with foot-long needles and cord.

  “That wretch Grengkil got the jump on me,” Ascaro rumbled. “If I wasn’t faster and stronger, those brothers would be pissing on my corpse right now.”

  We stood silent. Next to me, First flushed, and I saw her tremble slightly. If she hadn’t been saving me, she’d have spotted Grengkil attacking from the rear and would have been able to give the warning.

  “I am the greatest on Blood Meadow. The greatest!” he said. His trunk snaked sinuously; his great ears flapped. From hours of scrubbing this monster, I knew every sign, every little twitch. Our master was at his most dangerous.

  “So why have I got a gaping hole in my backside?” he roared. “Who was meant to be watching back there?”

  It was always up to those with kontoi to watch, front and back. The elephant loomed above the twin sisters, all grey wrath and vengeance.

  “
It was me,” Second said, and First cried out in disbelief. The sisters both tried to accept blame, and Ascaro stamped at the ground, losing patience. Elephants, as you know, have trouble telling humans apart, so it would have been impossible for him to pick out which twin was which.

  Mouse stepped forward, and with no expression he pointed at First. The sisters gave up on all self-sacrifice, and First waited for her master’s judgement.

  “You will die,” Ascaro said, and First bowed her head. “You have served well until today, so I offer you a choice. Put your head beneath my foot, or fall on your sister’s blade.”

  “No!” Second said. “You cannot!”

  “Hold your tongue,” Ascaro said, “or Mouse will find two new Rothai tomorrow.”

  The twins turned from the elephant, and I saw Second draw her rope-knife with a shaking hand. The sisters kissed and touched brow to brow, tears mingling across those mirror-image faces.

  “Enough! Do it!” Ascaro roared, and First pushed herself forward, the knife biting deep into her chest. Sobbing, Second thrust up with her blade, again and again, until her sister finally stopped twitching and screaming.

  Mouse brought a replacement to the longhouse the next day, a Rothai with a dead master. Mouse named her Nails, and as always the joke of this new name was something he kept private. We threw water on her, and drank, and pretended that First had never walked amongst us.

  #

  We had many victories that season on the Blood Meadow. Ascaro began taking more risks on the field than ever.

  I gained confidence with the sword, and soon I was at Mouse’s elbow whenever the call came to cut the cord, to take the fight across to another elephant. Each fight brought another scar, and more memories of carnage. I tried to wash them away with melon-wine.

  I drank, I slew, and I survived.

  Men faced me over bare blades, and I struck them down first, drove the life out of them with urgency. Each one was a poor slave like me, but one thought drove my sword-arm: Better you than me!

  One day, the madness stopped. Like my master I woke up with a hangover, but instead of combat, we were kneeling in the sawdust, paying obeisance to the Bull-King, the most perfect of all elephants.