I estimated that I had walked 300 kilometers, yet my destination was nowhere in sight. I had with me a rge leather backpack filled with trinkets meant to travel from one pce to another. The dry sand was crunching beneath my feet and the heat was scorching. I thought about stopping but I brushed that idea off. As far as I could see, the desert sands did not offer a centimeter of shade. Suddenly, I heard a faint rustling. I looked up and saw three figures on camels. I squinted to see them better. Each camel carried no luggage, and each figure held a long, curved sword in his hand. They seemed to be riding directly towards me. I quickly took off my backpack and drew a small makeshift pistol made of wood and metal, poured some bck powder into the barrell, and finally dropped in a round lead ball. My gun was ready to fire, but it would only fire one bullet. As I watched the three camels approaching, I rummaged through my trinket bag. I pulled out a slim kitchen knife which was the closest thing to a weapon that I could find. I threw my backpack back on and awaited the three men. As they got closer, one of them took the lead and began slowing down his camel.
“Are you Kajidef?” The leading man asked as a greeting.
“Who is asking?” I answered tentatively.
“I am.” Answered the man in a suspicious tone. “We are to find a goer named Kajidef to let him know that the trader has backed out of the deal.”
I looked at the man with resentment. “What do you mean backed out? Could he not have informed me earlier? I left Lor two days ago, he owes me…” I stopped to come up with a reasonable price. “Twenty golds… at least!”
The leading man smirked, he looked at his two partners with a knowing look and turned back to face me. “Twenty golds you say? That is not a bad price for a backpack of items.”
I quickly realized that basing my “reasonable price” on what I carried in my backpack may not have been the smartest move. “That is the price for the trip itself, no matter what junk I carry with me” I corrected, while still clutching my pistol.
The man did not seem convinced, he turned to his friends and nodded his head. The two approached me with their swords drawn and big grins drawn on their faces. Before giving them time to do anything, I drew my pistol and fired at the closer one of the two. I hit him just below the neck and he fell from his camel onto the scorching sand. The other jumped from his camel and threw himself at me. With my miserable kitchen knife I stood no chance and he quickly overpowered me. He yelled to the leader to throw him a cord and, after receiving it, he tied me up. The leader then also got off of his horse, and approached me.
“So you have tricks huh?” He stopped in front of my face and kicked me in the jaw.
I started to see blurry and by the second kick, I passed out.
I woke up in the darkness. I reached out my hand and was met with the coldness of metal. I reached out my other hand and realized that I was trapped in some sort of metal cage. I immediately assumed that I was put here as a prisoner by those desert bandits. I slowly sat up. My head was throbbing with the pain from the two, or maybe more, kicks. I looked down, and saw that I was practically naked. I wore a short, dirty, grayish drape instead of underwear, and my feet were shackled in some sort of metallic device with a thin keyhole. I tried standing up but the pain from my head radiated to the rest of my body and I decided to stay seated. I instead looked around. Despite the darkness, I could vaguely make out many cages simir to mine, containing shapes which I assumed to be sitting people. I thought about whispering something to one of them but the aching feeling inside my skull made me feel sluggish and I changed my mind. Instead, I id back down and lost consciousness once more.
This time, I was awoken by a bright light and sounds of men yelling. Now, with a better view, I saw dozens of cages with men inside them. At the end of the tight room, men with old rifles and pieces of paper, whom I assumed were guards of some sort, were making their way to each cage, letting the prisoners out, and yelling some words at them while looking at their papers.
“Number 18! Farming!” The guards yelled at the man they had just released.
Not wanting to be dragged out like some of the other prisoners, I stood up and got ready to be let out of the cage. Another guard came to me, opened my cage, and let me out.
“Number 23! Laundry!” The guard yelled with a big, cynical smile.
I was confused but I quickly followed the other prisoners out of the room. I blended into the mass and I gently poked the closest person to me.
“Hey, do you know what “Laundry” means?” I whispered.
The man looked at me with tired eyes. He was an older skinny man in his fifties with thin greasy hair, numerous wrinkles, and an overall defeated aura about him. I vaguely remembered him being called “Number 21” by the guards and being told the word “Crematorium”.
“It means you got a bit lucky with work today. Laundry is fairly easy. Follow the little white line on the wall there.” He answered slowly and quietly, making sure I was understanding everything.
“Thank you.” I answered. After a turn, our group of prisoners split into two but I was still with the old man so I continued: “I’m Kajidef.”
“I’m Abraham. Where are you from?” He asked.
“From Alerki, but I left right after the rebellion. What about you? Let me guess, Kosiji?” I smiled. The man had a darker complexion, so I had assumed he must have been from the South.
“Close.” The old man smiled back. His smile was warm and he reminded me of a grandfather. “Asido. Way south of here.”
I froze for a split second. “Asido? The real Asido? Wasn’t that pce destroyed after the war? That’s where all the greatest mercenaries used to come from!” A guard turned his head towards us and Abraham hushed me. “Sorry. It’s just that I used to love those Asido battle stories when I was a kid. Leo the Cursed, Johann the Alchemist, Lusinn the Avenger, and of course, Bram the Abandoned!” The old man hushed me again but no guards looked over this time. We were approaching a crossroads and I saw that the white line, which Abraham had indicated led to the Laundry, was turning right.
“I guess this is where we say goodbye. I will see you tonight when we’re back in the cages.” He whispered and he walked towards the left side.
I continued through some more hallways until I reached the end of the white line. There, I saw a rge undry room with dozens of basins of water with washboards. The air was heavy and humid. Piles of clothes y everywhere, and an overwhelming smell of chemicals hit my nose the moment I entered. I saw the other prisoners take up pces next to the basins and I began looking for an empty one. The only one I found had the rgest heap of clothes next to it, which I assumed represented the amount of work that awaited me. I sat down and began to scrape the dirty shirts and pants against the metallic washboard.
By the end of the day, only three people were left in the undry room. Everyone else had gone through their clothes piles and were told to head to the cafeteria to grab food. I was still furiously scraping some ragged, dirty pants against the washboard, cursing under my breath.
“Fairly easy ? I’ll show you “fairly easy” Abraham, just wait until I get back to our room.” I groaned through my teeth.
“What was that?” Asked a guard. He approached me with a forced smile and I recognized him as the same guard that opened my cage this morning. “I hope I didn’t hear you compining. I could’ve given you a job much worse than undry my friend.”
I kept washing without saying a word. The threat of a job worse than this was enough to make me grit my teeth and continue my bor. However, the guard did not seem pleased with my silence.
“You think undry is hard huh? You’re the goer from the East aren’t you? Kavidef, or something like that?” He taunted.
“Kajidef, sir.” I responded, assuming he wouldn’t have liked another silence for an answer.
“Well, Kajidef, I’ve got to tell you, you’re a long way from home.” He ughed maliciously, and suddenly appeared to come up with an idea. “You’re in Ghiori nds now and we do things a little… differently.”
The guard hesitated, turned to the heap of dirty clothes, unzipped his pants and began urinating. “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood today so I picked the dirty clothes, maybe next time I’ll pick the ones you just washed. I hope you enjoy the smell.” He ughed again and, after zipping his pants up again, he continued: “And you better hurry, you might miss dinner!”
The mention of food made my stomach growl. I got back to scraping the filthy, stinking clothes and hoped I’d make it for dinner.
I was the st one to leave the undry. The time for dinner was over a long time ago so I had to walk from my pce of work directly to the room with all of our cages. My fingers were bleeding from the ceaseless grazing against the metal. When I arrived, I entered my cage still upset about Abraham calling Laundry easy work. The guard who had escorted me left the room and smmed the door behind him. The moment the door closed, I started hearing murmurs and whispers coming from all around me. I pressed my ear against the metal bars and tried to make out what was being said.
“Yeah, pass it over here!” One voice whispered.
“Over here next!” Another one hissed.
In the dark, I couldn’t see anything that was happening. I assumed the prisoners were passing something to each other but what that could be, I could only guess. Suddenly, I saw a hand extend towards me from the neighbouring cage. The hand was holding a small metallic object that looked like a key.
“Use it on your shackles and then on your cage Kajidef!” The owner of the hand whispered. “The Ghiori are zy and stupid, they use the same keys on almost every lock.”
“Okay, thank you.” I whispered back. “Do I know you?”
“You don’t.” The man ughed from the darkness. “Abraham told us all about you at dinner.” He answered with a smile I couldn’t see but could hear in his voice.
I took the key, entered it into the hole on the shackles that bound my feet, turned it, and my feet immediately felt light as feathers. I did the same to my cage and slowly opened the hatch that served as a door. I was still in the darkness, but in the middle of the room, I could see a faint light that was growing bigger and bigger. Most of the prisoners had gathered around and lit a small fire. I started hearing hushed conversations, ughter, and even singing. All of a sudden, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw a face. I could barely make it out but I was sure it belonged to the friend I had made earlier in the day.
“Come with me, I want you to meet someone” said Abraham with a smile.
I forgot about the bitterness I felt towards him about the undry and followed him towards the fire. I could see everything much better now. Abraham stopped in front of a short skinny man. He had oversized front teeth, which he kept smiling with, small dark eyes, and he wore the same gray drape as every other prisoner I had seen so far.
“Adoth, I present to you Kajidef.” Said Abraham to the man. “He’s the one from Alerki.”
The man approached me with an even bigger smile and extended his open hand towards me.
“Nice to meet you mister… uh I mean sir. I am also from Alerki so when I heard from Abraham that you were from there as well, I had to say hi.” The man seemed nervous, like it had been a long time since he’d seen someone from his hometown.
“Nice to meet you too Adoth” I responded kindly. “Could you tell me where we are exactly? What is this pce?”
The second question was directed to Abraham as well. I wanted to know how I travelled from around Nidfabway, near the eastern coast, to Ghiori territory which was on the west fringes of the Kingdom.
“Well we’re in Ghiori nd. From what we know, this pce is one of the west-most pces of the Kingdom. The closest city we know of is Nefi and we heard of prisoners escaping and staying there but none of them survived. Most of the people here are from the Kingdom but almost all were captured outside of it. Apparently some Ghiori rulers signed a treaty with the King which allows them to own and sell sves in exchange for submitting to the Kingdom.” expined Abraham while Adoth nodded.
“Okay that makes sense.” I added. I had known that the King wanted the Ghiori to himself but I had never heard of a treaty that actually made them submit. “But hold on! I was caught between Nidfabway and Lor! That’s Kingdom territory! And you said that they catch sves from outside and bring them in!” I said, offended.
This time, Adoth expined.
“Well, you know the Ghiori, they don’t really like to follow the rules. Their thugs usually ride outside of the Kingdom but if I had to guess, they got a tip that you’d be travelling alone and that you weren’t important enough for your disappearance to cause a scene.” Adoth must have realized he sounded cruel so he added: “Sorry, you know what I mean…”
“Yeah, I get it…” I pondered. “Have you guys never thought of escaping? I mean you have the keys and all, would it be that hard?” I asked, this time not only to my two new friends but to the group around the fire in general.
“And where would we go?” Answered a tall, nky man with a thick mustache. “The only pce we could go is Nefi but there, we’d either be killed or resold into svery.”
I thought about it. Escaping this pce would not be difficult, but surviving out there, in the desert, would be impossible without a friendly city to hide in.
“Rex for now.” said Adoth and he tugged on my arm to show me something. In his hand, he held a small package wrapped in paper. “You know, us Alerkians gotta stick together.”
Adoth winked at me. I took the package and began to unwrap it. Inside, I found two pieces of bread, a slice of stale ham and three cubes of dried, fried cactus.
“That’s as much as my connection here would allow me to get.” Adoth expined smiling from ear to ear, the fire reflecting in his rge teeth. I realized that he was much smarter than he let on.
“Thank you, I really appreciate it.” I said. “But how did you manage to get connections here of all pces?”
At first, he didn’t answer. He gestured to the food and brought his finger to his mouth, implying that I should eat it before others found out what he sneaked out of the cafeteria. Then, as I started eating, he whispered: “It’s a secret.”
Adoth smiled again and walked back to his cage. I saw some of the others do the same. A couple of prisoners stayed around the fire, some others pyed cards, some others kept signing. I wanted to talk to Abraham but I realized he had also gone back to his cage to sleep. I decided to also head to sleep since the undry work had left me exhausted. It took me some time to make my way back to the pce where I woke up this morning, but I ended up finding it and closing both the door, and the shackles on my feet so as to not raise any suspicion in the guards when they came in the morning. I yed down on the cold, hard metal and began thinking of how I’d survive in this pce. The thoughts of Abraham, Adoth, and my new situation kept swirling in my mind until I finally succumbed to the drowsiness and fell into a deep slumber.
