Now the ghosts of those battles were no longer hovering over the land, as they had been each time Anborn had returned to Ghant since then. The port was busier than he had ever seen it; he could tell even at a great distance as he and Gwydion Navarne came over the rocky hills above it, looking down at the inner harbor from the trans-Sorbold passage, the main thoroughfare over which the goods were carted to places north and east in Sorbold. He grimaced as he reined his mount to a halt, remembering that his own soldiers had once built this road.
Gwydion Navarne, whose thoughts were not haunted by a history he knew little about, stared out at the harbor in amazement.
“They’re doing a fair business, aren’t they?” he mused, watching the scores of ships that lined the piers of the inner harbor being systematically offloaded by tiny shapes that more resembled ants than longshoremen.
The Lord Marshal nodded, his face grim.
“But in what?” he asked. He looked farther out to sea, past the inner harbor’s sluice to the outer harbor, and took in a ragged breath.
From one end of the outer harbor to the other docks had been constructed, each housing a score of warships. Anborn counted a dozen of those docks, with more beyond the rim of the point.
“Dear All-God,” he muttered.
Gwydion Navarne turned in his saddle. He had been enjoying the taste of the distant sea air, the bustle of the port below, after so many days’ ride in the wastelands of the southern steppes, and therefore was taken aback at the sight of the Cymrian hero’s face, which was now as hard as he had ever seen it.
“What is wrong, Lord Marshal?” he asked, feeling a new chill in the wind coming off the sea.
Anborn dragged the reins to his right, positioning himself for a better view. He stared down at the harbor, crawling with activity, for a long moment, then looked around him at the hillsides from which they had come.
“At the time of the Cymrian War, this was a major military center, the central port of my sea forces’ offensive,” he said finally. “We had a fleet that, in its time, was responsible for the destruction of much of western Tyrian, and the decimation of the coastal areas of Avonderre north to Gwynwood. I led my father’s armies against my mother’s forces with great success on land because of the sheer advantage of numbers and superior weaponry; that is not surprising. But until Llauron abandoned Anwyn and fled to sea, he was a formidable naval foe that would have been insurmountable; he would have destroyed my fleet if it had not been for our control of Ghant, and the size of our armada stationed here.” The Lord Marshal shielded his eyes, stinging now from the glare of the sun.
“And in those days, there were far fewer warships than stand in port now.”
Gwydion swallowed, but said nothing. The taste of the desert air had gone suddenly drier, clogging in his throat and burning like fiery sand.
Anborn shifted awkwardly in his saddle, straining to see behind him.
“There was a sheltered point up a ways, if I recall,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at a convoy of horse-drawn wagons accompanied by soldiers in the articulated leather armor of the mountain columns, units of the Sorbold army that defended the mountain passes hundreds of miles away near the capital of Jierna’sid. The caravan was making its way up the incline toward them on the ancient thoroughfare. “I think we should take cover there now, lest we be seen. My guess is that our presence is unwelcome here.”
The two spurred their horses into a loping trot over the rocky outcropping, climbing into the rough lands perched above the harbor, and took shelter behind the guardian rocks. When the horses were out of sight, Anborn gestured impatiently to Gwydion.
“Help me from this bloody saddle,” he grunted, unstrapping the bindings.
Gwydion dismounted quickly, then hurried to the General’s side, assisting him down from the horse. Once down, Anborn shoved him away, and lowered his body, with the strength of his arms and chest, onto the ground, then crawled to the edge of the outcropping. He signaled to Gwydion, who crouched down and lay on his belly beside him on the sandswept cliff.
Silently they watched, heedless of the time that passed, transfixed by the sight below them.
In a little less than an hour’s time they noted more than two dozen ships approaching the outer harbor, merchant vessels bound for the inner docks, running the gauntlet of warships. Those ships were boarded, checked, and sent onward with military precision; once in the harbor, their cargo was immediately off-loaded and packed into wagons, unlike the harbor at Port Fallon, in Avonderre, where goods were separated into merchant orders, then debarked by longshoremen from the individual merchants who had come to claim the cargo.
“What does that tell you?” the Lord Marshal asked softly, in the tone of voice he used when instructing the young duke in matters of import.
Gwydion stared down at the barrels and crates being systematically moved into a line of standing wagons.
“All the cargo is either going to the same place, or owned by the same entity?” he guessed.
Anborn nodded. “Undoubtedly the Crown. And to some extent that is not terribly surprising; the new regent emperor, Talquist, was the hierarch of the guilds that controlled these western shipping lanes prior to his ascension to the Sun Throne. But it’s not the destination of the cargo that concerns me.”
“Then what does?”
Anborn pointed down the road beyond the rocky outcroppings.
“The cargo itself. Look.”
Gwydion followed Anborn’s finger away from the starboard hold of the closest ship on the jetty, where the barrels and crates were being off-loaded into wagons, to the port side of the same ship. He could see two lines of people, so distant as to be almost indistinguishable from the mass of others working the docks, disembarking from the vessel. The first line emerged from a higher gangplank; they were few in number, and ambulated at their leisure off the ship, where they dispersed into the crowds lining the docks. Gwydion presumed these were passengers.
The second line emerged from a lower gangplank, directly from the ship’s hold. At first he assumed it was the crew, but on closer examination saw that the line was herded forward to a column of wagons, much like the cargo wagons, into which the human figures were then loaded. Gwydion counted more than one hundred from a single ship, stumbling and shading their eyes from the brightness of the morning sun. He shook his head as if to clear it, or escape a buzzing hornet, as a terrible realization took an insistent hold. When he could not escape it, the word fell out of his mouth.
“Slaves,” he murmured. “He’s trafficking in slaves.”
Anborn nodded. He pointed slowly and deliberately to each of the two dozen ships that had docked within the time they had been watching, each of which was unloading human cargo from its starboard hold, packing the hostages into wagons, which were then disbursed in different directions along the trans-Sorbold passage.
“Slavery is not new to Sorbold,” he said in a low voice. “Leitha was empress for three-quarters of a century, an impressive longevity for someone not of Cymrian blood. In her time it was practiced quietly, with criminals and debtors, or war prisoners, mostly in the gladiatorial arenas. It was generational; a slave family remained captive until a male member of it could purchase freedom for his progeny, usually through prowess as a gladiator. But it was considered an ugly, if not particularly well disguised, secret. The number of arenas was fewer than one per city-state; that’s less than two dozen in total.” He cast a quick glance behind him at the horses, then returned his gaze to the port below.
“In the past hour we’ve seen enough human cargo off-loaded to populate that entire gladiatorial structure. There are still a hundred merchants’ ships outside the inner harbor, awaiting passage. And that’s only today.”