Valerio Amastan

The night was clear, without a single cloud, and even though it was a new moon the sky was lit up by a myriad of stars. The cold wind swept across the grassy plain dotted with bushes, forcing me to tighten the pallium I was wearing over my tunic.

"Does this breeze bother you?" the barbarian who was missing a nose asked sarcastically, taking a breath of cold air. I had long since given up trying to understand their unpronounceable names, it was easier for me to remember them by their characteristics.

"He's a Zamorano," said the boy we were escorting, indifferently.

"Isn't he from the empire?" asked another, glancing at me with those strange, narrow eyes of his. One of them had a cut that ran from his eyebrow to his cheekbone, but luckily for him the cut that had caused it had not affected his eye.

"They used to have their own kingdom, then the empire conquered them," he explained. “Where he lives, the wind blows hot sand, not frost.”

“Now I see why his skin is so dark. All that heat has burned him,” the man behind us said, leaning forward in his saddle with a smile that showed off his protruding, widely spaced teeth.

“Want some to warm your guts, burned man?” the man with the scar over his eye asked with a grin.

“No thanks, I have my own,” I said.

I took the waterskin dangling from my saddle and took a few sips of the spiced wine from my estate near Aureliopolis, feeling a little less far from home. I had already emptied one and had another full, which I hoped would last the entire journey. No matter how far from the empire I went, I would never stoop to drinking that barbaric brew of fermented horse milk.

“Didn’t you say his father’s camp was nearby?” I asked the brute with the missing nose, who was in front of us.

“Aye, so stop complaining,” he said, turning to face me and swinging the thin braid that peeked out from under his leather hat.

I snorted. Their people lived practically on the move, without a fixed abode, moving aimlessly across that sea of ​​inhospitable grass. They were born in a wagon, spent their lives on horseback, and died in the wagon where they were born, being buried wherever they happened to be. Their sense of distance was completely distorted, and I wondered how many hours of travel there really were. It was crazy of me to trust them and continue instead of insisting on camping like we had done the other nights.

I looked at the son of the chieftain, the cause of that journey to the edge of the world.

Despite having lived for years in the empire, he did not seem at all uncomfortable in the rawhide clothes of his people. He had the livid skin, narrow eyes and flat face of his people, but unlike them he was tall, to the point that despite being the youngest he surpassed us all. It was said that his mother belonged to the giant people who lived beyond the home of the north wind.

The most surprising thing about him, however, was his character. He was intelligent and it was enough to talk even for a short time to realize how much, in his time at the imperial court, he had learned. Yet there was something dark about him, a sort of impenetrability that made me deeply uncomfortable every time we spoke.

Suddenly, in the midst of the darkness, a light appeared, which gradually divided into several smaller lights as it approached. Soon the silhouettes of several men on horseback emerged, and above them fluttered flags carried on long poles.

"It looks like your father's flag," said the noseless man.

The sight reassured me and I immediately began to recall the letter the imperial messenger had given me when he had left the boy in my custody. We were bringing him his son and some gold, in exchange for a contingent of two thousand horse archers to send to the eastern border.

"There's something strange," said the boy, stopping his horse.

"What are you talking about?" asked the snaggle-toothed barbarian, confused.

Suddenly the group that was coming towards us, once compact, split into two parts, going in opposite directions from each other. That maneuver, which I had seen performed far too often by the mercenaries I had under my command, made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and I tightened my grip on the reins of my horse.

"What the hell is-"

The noseless man never finished his sentence, all at once an arrow sprouted from his neck, and he crumpled to the floor.

"Run!" ordered the boy, who had already turned his horse without hesitation.

I and the other two barbarians hesitated just a fraction of a second longer than the boy, but at that moment another volley of arrows rained down, killing the man with the scar over his eye and wounding the other. Only by the grace of my tutelary deity did I miss, although two arrows flew so close to my head that my ears were ringing.

As we galloped full speed back in the direction from which we had come, the boy and the barbarian with the crooked teeth took their bows and began to shoot their arrows. The numerical disparity was too great, however, and one arrow hit the horse of our last companion, making him fall forward and crushing his rider. I didn't even have time to turn around to see the man's state because more arrows rained down on us and the only way to avoid them was to gallop as fast as we could.

"Follow me, I've got an idea!" the boy ordered, turning slightly to the right.

I resented his tone a little – he could have been my son after all – but I had little choice and did as he said.

With horror I realized that our pursuers were closing in more and more. Our horses had carried us for days and were too tired to keep up with those fresh steeds. Soon they would be very close and those phenomenal archers would surely catch us.

My mind went back to my home, far away from there. Sure, I was used to moving and had always considered the possibility of dying far away, yet I had always had the hope of dying old and peaceful in my land, surrounded by my children and grandchildren, to then be buried in my family mausoleum. Unlike all those barbarians, I had a place of origin, a place I could call my homeland.

"We're almost there!" exclaimed the boy, before disappearing behind the crest of a hill.

I passed it too, and found myself in front of a sight that I would never have expected to see.

In the middle of nowhere, the remains of an immense city emerged from the grass like old bones bleached by the sun, extending on both banks of a great river that crossed it like the largest and most magnificent cities of the Levant.

An arrow hit my ear, tearing a cry of pain from my chest, brought me back to reality and I urged my horse even more to keep up with the boy.

The arrows were now raining all around us, our horses were foaming at the mouth and I could hear the sound of their hooves getting closer and closer. Suddenly, however, when we passed the first collapsed section of what was perhaps the city gate, the barbarians stopped.

"What the f-"

"Don't stop, even if they don't come in they will shoot arrows as long as we are within range" he scolded me, in a breathless voice. An arrow immediately struck a low wall, breaking off a chunk of loose stone, as if to emphasize the point.

We rode on for a long time, even after the arrows had stopped falling on us. Only when we were almost at a river did we finally stop to catch our breath, and I had a chance to look around.

The city was old, older than I could imagine. There was barely a structure standing, just worn walls overgrown with weeds. A few buildings jutted out of the river, as if it had changed its course over the length of who knows how many centuries, swallowing up part of the city.

“What is this place, why didn’t they follow us in?” I asked as I looked over a fallen column, its top decoration completely obliterated by exposure to the elements.

"I don't know. It was here when we conquered the Darakhshan people... and they found it when they drove out the Virajana and so on. They say there's something evil here... " The boy’s breathing was hard and, turning to him, I realized he was all bent to his left. An arrow had pierced him from side to side, the feathers sticking out from behind while the tip that emerged from the other side was covered by the boy's hand.

“When did they hit you?” I asked.

“I honestly don’t know.”

The young man grabbed the arrow and began to pull.

“Wait, it’s dangerous-” I tried to warn him, but before I could intervene he tore the arrow from his side. Blood began to pour from the wound, soaking his leather coat. Through it all he didn’t scream, not even for a moment. Again I was amazed by the boy. I had seen many men with similar wounds scream like desperate souls thrown into the rivers of hell.

“You’re insane! We need to find a safe place to treat you,” I told him.

I looked around for a place to camp for the night. For a moment I wondered if these might not be other ruins of the Ancients, like those seen all over the empire, but then I discarded the idea. There was something that deeply unsettled me about the scale of those buildings, even for what little was left of them. It almost seemed as if none of this had been designed for humans.

“Over there,” the boy said, pointing to something in the distance.

At first, because of the darkness, I couldn’t make out what it was. But as we got closer, I began to see more detail. It looked like some kind of temple, yet it didn’t follow any canon I’d ever seen before. The closest thing in my mind were the quadrangular temples where the Amites were said to have performed their abominable rituals, only the scale on which this temple was built couldn’t even begin to compare. The enormous monumental gate had partially collapsed and part of the structure had been destroyed by the river, yet it was still so large that it could probably have held the imperial mausoleum twice over.

Suddenly the horses swerved to the side. I tried to steer my horse in the direction I wanted, but it completely refused, and so did the boy’s.

“What’s wrong with them?” I wondered.

"They don't seem to want to come any closer," he said, putting both legs on one side of the saddle. "Let's leave the horses here."

He stumbled when he put his feet on the ground, and only by holding on to the saddle did he manage to keep from falling.

"What's wrong?" I asked in alarm, jumping off the horse.

It wasn't until I got closer that I realized how pale he was. I bit my lip, realizing I had to treat him right away.

I looked back at the temple, silhouetted against the starry sky. For a moment I shivered and wondered if the horses weren't wiser than we were at that moment, but I couldn't leave him out in the cold wind that was whipping around like a scourge.

Swallowing my fear, I grabbed my sarcina from the horse's saddle and carried him inside.