Those Who Walk the Flame Road
Although it was the beginning of summer, the early mornings
were still cool. There were few people stirring yet. Hugo enjoyed the stillness
and quiet of the sleepy city and looked around for the mysterious man. He knew
that what he was doing was dangerous, but he didn’t care. His curiosity wouldn’t
leave him alone.
As Hugo walked along the street, he noticed a man sitting on
a wooden box outside of a store. The man stood up when he noticed Hugo. He was
wearing Talsh armor. Hugo ducked down a side street, but the man called out, “Wait.”
Hugo recognized his voice and approached. Disguising himself
as a Talsh soldier was clever. Now that he was closer, Hugo noticed that his
disguise wasn’t quite perfect. The soldiers he’d seen had their sword belts embroidered
in silver. The mysterious man’s sword belt had the same design as theirs, but
it was embroidered in gold. There were red-and-gold gauntlets on his wrists to
match.
“I picked these up from the eastern guardhouse last night,”
the man said. “The lot you saw at the restaurant were from the western gate.
You see a lot of ‘em in the city. Now that I’m dressed like this, it’ll be
harder for ‘em to just haul me off.” He grinned. “I want to thank you again for
last night. That was quite a sticky situation. I was supposed to meet someone,
but it seems I was betrayed. If I hadn’t been so careless, I wouldn’t have needed
your help.”
“Are you Talsh?” Hugo asked in a hushed tone. His eyes
sharpened on the man, full of unspoken judgement.
The man shrugged. “From your perspective, I guess I am. But
I’m not ethnically Talsh, obviously. I wasn’t born there.” He pointed to one of
his gauntlets. “Do you understand the meaning of these symbols?” he asked.
Hugo shook his head.
“They represent the conquered state of Toram, to the
southwest,” the man said.
Hugo knew of Toram, vaguely; he’d learned a bit about it
during his early education. The Talsh Empire had been steadily subjugating
territories since he was a very young child. Toram was one of those, along with
Orm and Horam.
“Do you know how many nation states Talsh has conquered on this
continent?” the man asked.
“Seven,” Hugo answered. “No… eight. Including Yogo.”
The man smiled. “You’re from a warrior family, like I
thought. How the mighty have fallen.” His tone was more pitying than cruel.
Hugo glared angrily at the man. “Whatever I came from, it
doesn’t matter now.”
The man’s eyes sparkled with something like interest. “You
don’t seem to have been in the lower city for very long. While I was hiding in
the restaurant, I heard what your waiter friends said about you. You’re a local
legend in the lower city. Apparently you get caught up in brawls pretty often.
But you don’t do it for money, or for notoriety. I find myself wondering why
you bother with all that.”
Hugo snorted. “It’s none of your damn business.”
The man’s smile turned bitter. “Is this really what you expected
what would happen to you, kid? Expanding your turf in the lower city… why?
Because you’re bored? What have Yogo’s warriors come to? I know your country’s
destroyed; so is mine. Don’t tell me you’ve given up; I won’t believe it.”
Hugo flushed with anger.
“If you’ve given up, do the honorable thing and slit your
stomach open. If you’re not willing to fight for your nation, what’s the point
of your life? Why were you even born?”
“Did you ask me to come here just so you could tell me to
kill myself?” Hugo snapped.
The man wasn’t smiling anymore. “You… your father was one of
the Mikado’s Shields, wasn’t he?”
The question felt like a knife to the ribs.
“I’ve guessed right, haven’t I?” the man asked. “I hear you
use a short sword to kill. Got a description of it, too, including the maker’s
mark. No one in this city has weapons like that except for soldiers and
criminals. I wondered which one you were. That’s why I was interested in you,
at first.”
The man no longer appeared bitter or angry. The full force
of his concentrated attention was on Hugo. “You survived,” he said. “You alone,
and none of the others. Remarkable.”
“What are you trying to say?” There was expectation in the
man’s eyes. Hugo didn’t know why. The man didn’t have the right to expect anything
of it.
“When I was just about your age, the Talsh conquered Toram,”
the man said. “Toram is smaller than Yogo, but we have a long history of warfare.
Many more men were lost in war. Our people believed that we couldn’t lose in
open conflict, but we were proud, foolish—and wrong. My father and uncles were
in the vanguard of the first major battle. I was raised as a warrior, and was
in the vanguard with them. I was sixteen years old.
“My family was killed, but I was captured. I didn’t know
what they wanted with me. I assumed they’d execute me or let me starve to
death.”
Hugo frowned a little, but he didn’t interrupt.
“While I was there, I learned that our king was dead. But
Talsh didn’t do it. The king’s nephew killed him. I was shocked; all the war
prisoners were. In hindsight, I can understand some of his reasons. He wouldn’t
have been able to inherit easily; the king’s sons had more of a right to the
throne. Deposing a king in a war isn’t unheard-of in Toram’s history, and he
was of the royal family already. So he joined hands with Talsh. In exchange for
killing the king, he was permitted to become the next king and enjoy some of
the king’s previous power in Toram.”
The man’s lips twitched upward in a faint smile. “I
understood that we’d been used. Talsh used our warlike nature against us. We
were all pawns in their game—including me. They could keep me or discard me, I
knew that—but I had no intrinsic meaning to them. All Talsh cares about is
utility. If they can’t use you for something, they’ll abandon you or toss you
aside.
“I had no use to Talsh,” the man said. “That’s what I
thought, anyway. I was certain they’d let me starve. But if, for whatever
reason, they decided to let a young, low-ranking warrior live… well. I decided that
I would try to make myself seem useful.”
The man looked Hugo in the eyes. “Tell me: do you hate
Talsh? Of course you do; it’s only natural. What do you plan to do with your
hatred, then? Or your warrior’s training? There’s no other place for you to use
that except for the Talsh army.”
Hugo’s heart beat faster. “The Mikado isn’t dead. Not yet.
Yogo’s not conquered. Why did Talsh take him instead of executing him if they
really want Yogo to be destroyed? The princes might still be alive; no one knows
where they are. Even the Star Readers might manage to do something.
“I can do nothing,” Hugo hissed. “I’m a warrior that
serves the imperial family and the Holy Sage, and they’re doing nothing. I can’t,
either, without orders—without support.” His blood pounded in his ears. He felt
cold all over. The muscles lining his spine tightened.
The Mikado and the Holy Sage can’t do anything. Ten no
Kami might not be real. But Hugo didn’t say that aloud.
It seemed that Hugo hadn’t given up all hope yet. It was true
that he’d heard nothing about the Mikado or the princes being executed. The
Holy Sage still lived.
Hugo clenched his fists and breathed deeply, trying to calm
himself. The mysterious man was allied with Talsh. He shouldn’t be talking to
him.
“Talsh has conquered many nations during my lifetime,” the
man said. “There are a lot of people like you and me. Survivors. You look at
Talsh soldiers and see them as one homogenous group in lockstep with one
another, but that’s not the truth. Yogoese men have joined their ranks as
soldiers; so have men from Toram. They remember what happened to their cities
and their families. They’re less loyal and compliant than you might think.”
“Prove it,” Hugo muttered.
There was something sad in the man’s expression. He started
walking away.
Hugo blinked in surprise.
“I will prove it,” the man said over his shoulder. “Follow
me.”
Hugo walked at the man’s side, frowning. As he walked, he smelled
water. They were walking along the edge of the canal and the wind was blowing
off the water, but the scent of water seemed stronger than normal. Hugo
wondered if he was sensing the other world—the one Ryuan seemed to know so much
more about.
“Do you see the mark written on the wall of that warehouse?”
the man asked.
It wasn’t much past dawn, so the streets were lit by
torches. There was a line of warehouses along the street. Hugo looked at the
one the man had pointed to and could just make out a crudely drawn eagle
spreading its wings on the white wall. It looked like graffiti to him.
“That symbol means the warehouse belongs to Daguman. He’s a
sea trader. Do you know where he’s based out of?”
Hugo said nothing.
Orm,” the man said. “Orm is Yogo’s neighbor, I so assumed
you’d heard of him before. His merchant connections made him valuable. The
Talsh let him live to preserve his trade routes and wealth.”
Orm… Like Toram, Hugo had heard of Orm before and knew a
little about it. They were the most recent nation to fall victim to the Talsh,
aside from Yogo. Hugo didn’t know much about Orm’s war with Talsh, but he knew
that Orm hadn’t put up much of a fight. The Talsh had decided to conquer them
one day, and within the next few weeks, Orm belonged to the Talsh Empire.
Hugo hadn’t considered how trade routes on the continent
would be affected by warfare. It was shrewd of the Talsh to allow merchants to
live—Hugo suspected that killing them would make Yogo’s persistent problems
with famine and inflation even worse.
“Daguman trades with a lot of foreign nations, including
ones not on this continent,” the man said. “You don’t see it now, not yet, but
in a few years, Yogo will be bustling and prosperous again, thanks to trade.
Daguman’s not the only rich merchant Talsh is using, either. It takes time for
wealth to circulate.”
Hugo thought about what the man was saying. Why bother
explaining all of this about merchants? Was he trying to reassure Hugo by telling
him Talsh would take care of people’s economic welfare?
“The canal is twice as wide as it was two years ago. Have you
noticed?” the man asked.
Hugo nodded. Several canals in the city had been expanded. The
one behind Ryuan’s house was still small, but canals that led in and out of the
city were always being worked on these days.
“They’re making the canals big enough for large ships. That
will make trade much easier for everyone. Hoshiro is close to the ocean and
will benefit from these changes. Up until now, there was no way to ship a large
quantity of goods to and from Hoshiro without sending them over land—and that’s
heavy, and takes a long time. Daguman never traded with Hoshiro before, because
the expense of shipping wasn’t worth it. Did you know that?”
“No.” How would he even go about learning something like
that? Why did it matter?
“Do you know who paid to expand the canals?” the man asked.
When Hugo didn’t answer, he said, “Second Prince Raul of Talsh. He’s the one
who conquered Yogo.”
The man looked at the canal. “He’s an odd one, that prince. Everyone
knows how sharp he is—he’s not a man to be trifled with. He started taking over
other nations to increase Talsh’s wealth, but that’s not his only motivation.
Every nation he controls winds up better for it. He’s improving the canal
system, yes, but also the roads, and he’s spreading an irrigation method to the
farmers outside the city so that they can grow more food with less water.”
Hugo looked at the man.
“First Prince Hazar is different. He enjoys conquest. He
lets the people he rules suffer until they capitulate of their own accord. He
likes the power that conquering nations affords him, and doesn’t think much
about governing afterward. He captures the old leadership and gets them to do
the work for him. I suppose it’s not a bad system, in its way—it certainly
keeps people in line—but Prince Hazar’s conquered territories don’t prosper. He
takes away their human rights, and taxes them into oblivion to pay for his next
war.”
The man smiled again. “Prince Raul isn’t the sort of man to leave
his governing to other people. He makes his subjugated provinces prosperous
because he can use them better that way—not because he’s any more compassionate
than his brother. Once the nation’s back on its feet after conquest, he starts
increasing taxes bit by bit. But he doesn’t bleed his provinces dry. If rumors
are to be believed, Prince Raul genuinely believes that the continent would fare
best under Talsh rule.”
Hugo returned his gaze to the canal. He hadn’t known any of
this before. The goings-on of princes and emperors in foreign lands had no bearing
on his day-to-day life. He still didn’t consider Yogo to be part of Talsh.
Maybe he never would… but Talsh did have power in this city, and what they did
with it mattered. Prince Raul was responsible for the Talsh conquest of his
city and his nation. His family was dead because of Prince Raul.
“People don’t revolt in Prince Raul’s conquered states
because things improve for them—until they don’t. Nations that have been under
Talsh rule for a long time suffer, of course, and nations that have recently
been conquered always foster some discontent. I’m here to keep watch—to discover
the seeds of discontent before they sprout.”
Hugo glared at the man.
“I joined Prince Raul’s side because I wanted the survivors of
the war to prosper. I didn’t join Talsh for my own benefit.” He frowned. “There
are better and worse Talsh. Prince Raul’s lot aren’t all bad, but Prince Hazar’s
are, mostly. Toram was conquered by Hazar. I helped Prince Raul take it from
him so that he could govern it instead. His prime minister’s a piece of work—I understand
he was involved in Yogo’s war, too—but that can’t be helped. War’s messy
business. All we can do is try to limit the damage afterward.”
The man smiled again. It wasn’t unkind, but the smile didn’t
reach his eyes. “Well, now. I suppose I have to decide what to do with you—the
son of one of the Mikado’s Shields. You have no reason to trust me; you
probably think I’m a traitor to my own nation. I can tell you how loyal I am
all day long, but why should you believe me?” He considered for a moment. “Well,
you don’t have to believe me, I guess. I don’t need to trust someone to use
them.”
Hugo flinched.
“If you swear loyalty to me right now, I won’t kill you,”
the man said. “Not to Talsh; I know that would be impossible for you. But to
me.”
Hugo didn’t say anything.
“The life you’re living now is pointless. You’ll be stuck in
the lower city forever and never accomplish anything. For what it’s worth, I
think killing you would be a waste, but leaving you alive and unsupervised isn’t
an option, either. Using you benefits us both. Don’t you want to create a better
future for Yogo?”
Hugo looked down at the polished stone of the street
gleaming in the early morning sunlight. Then he looked up again. “Are you telling
me to join the Talsh army?” he asked.
The man nodded. “Yes, for a start. You’ll be serving with
other Yogoese men; everyone under my command comes from a conquered nation. They’re
all in the same boat as you and me.”
“I don’t want to work for Talsh.”
“Of course you don’t. You have no choice.” The man folded
his arms. “I’ll give you ten days. I’m staying at the eastern gate for the next
few weeks, so meet me there. I can’t guarantee your safety during that time,
but if you come to me on or before that day, I’ll make sure you see a brighter future
for your homeland.
“My name is Oru Zan. The name means ‘desert mouse’ in Toram’s
language. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Oru Zan spun on his heel and left without saying another
world.
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