The Caravan pt 1

The Caravan set out from Cassini at dawn, a long train of wagons draped in brightly colored sheets of canvas and flanked by guards and mercenary auxiliaries brought by the traders or poorer noblemen. Riding on camels and protected from the blazing sun only by helmets wrapped into a turban, they scanned the distant ridges for a chance to claim reward for spotting the first signs of attack. Behind them, The Marchioness’’ personal guard rode along on two-wheeled engines, flanked by pressured canisters of steam and holding saber and pistol akimbo. Under helmet and plates of armor, they looked forward calm and at the ready, which only served to send tremors of panic through their mercenary shield.

Grinding into the hard-packed earth, oxen and slaves brought from earth’s leaden landscape hurled their bulk against their yolks, pulling the carts and wagons under the watching buzzards. Given every comfort, Gladiators watch through the bars of their cage hoping for a chance to pound their freedom from a wave of marauders invariably peering between the scrub bushes. Fanatics of the Imperial cult walk behind them, their feet unprotected from the stones and eyes bare to the burning dust. Their parched throats sing discordant hymns for the apotheosis of the recently slain hero-king of their suzerainty in Copernicus. Above them, swinging choking incense and resplendent in purple and gold stands a lama. He will stand over his charge, completely unarmed and protected from harm only by the fanaticism of his followers.
Below him, the incense filters into the eyes of wretches behind iron masks, bound by iron chains to the iron scaffolds of the imperial cult’s altar. Men and women write naked, willing and unwilling alike, in penance to his will. Some few of them will walk home in a hair shirt, returning to Cassini with a clean soul. Many of them will never leave the temple at the trade city of Archimedes. They will be sacrificed to the hero-king or enslaved in her service to build wonders in her name.

They are watched by the piercing stares of heretic children, brought from the far northern craters as slaves to the empire in lieu of taxes. They sit in wide-eyed silence under the auspices of a dead-eyed crone who watches every blink and fidget to divine who will join the clergy, who will take up the rifle, who will fill the bureaucracy. She speaks of the Hero-Emperor and her great deeds, and the deeds they will do in her name. An endless supply of children raised to worship the sun or the moon will comprise the fingers of the 3 arms of empire. They nod, eager to please, leaving behind a dirt-floor hut ravaged daily by barbarians in the perpetual twilight of the far far north of Anaxagoras or Baillaud or Scoresby.

A child, large for his age and with a hunter’s sharp eye, hazards a glance away from his teacher to his future. A wall of Janissaries, warrior-slaves loyal to the empire and the corpse of its Hero King glides silently, armed with rifles and spears. Behind this impregnable wall 2 dozen adepts pull the noblewoman’s caravan. They are dressed in fine cloth and protected by a hard turban and the knowledge that if one should fall the rest will not stop pulling. The wheels behind him bear the seal of the hero, assuring that they will die knowing that even the weak know glory as a sacrifice to her return.

Above the menacing wheels the guard captain discusses philosophy with a wandering monk. The captain, under gilded plate and helm, behind tower shield and deadly blade, rubs his pale chin in deep thought while the monk, protected only by a hunting spear and the leather of his skin, lectures on the 8 types of murder which can be done in the heroes name. He can cite great epics from memory, and his Geas will be complete only when he has avenged the murder of a thousand priests. He will travel south to where it is rumored a rectory has been sacked and burned down near the fort of a barbarian king.