36
Stone City, Kin Basin, Sajamistan Empire
I stand in Stone City, carved into the mountains as if it floats by the Divine’s will, for that is what the natives claim. The jinn-folk cut into the mountains as if they were clay, arranging them into ridges and quarters. Rose palaces are seamed by strips of bedrock connecting individual townships inside the hallow caverns.
‘Do you think it is true, Overseer?’ I ask.
‘That’s “Captain” to you during wartime,’ Yabghu reminds me, glancing up from carrying a corpse. ‘And is what true?’ The dams have broken their bounds and swollen bodies flow downwards, soft scalps bobbing.
‘The humans who live here have never touched the ground?’ I gesture at the metropolis floating into the mountainsides around us. Stone City, north of Kin Basin, is cool, its interior in enclosed mountains surrounding the steppes. Whatever Heavenly punishment occurred centuries ago against the civilisation, irrevocably changed its geography.
‘Perhaps,’ he says, as listless as the bodies. Sweat droplets bead down his temple, saturating his ochre tunic. ‘Stone City was once a wicked civilisation after Prophet Nuh’s time. The Divine commanded the arrogant to be wiped out by angels, who caused a clay-quake.’
A pattern in mankind where eras end in the form of a disaster. To distract myself from the corpses of the reconquered township, I ask, ‘What did they do that invoked the Divine’s wrath?’
‘When revelation was sent to this city, its chieftains ordered the slaughter of any pious worshipper. Stone City was stubborn in their shaman traditions, worshipping jinn-folk of the sky under their deityEçe. Its inhabitants were the wealthiest traders, for their harvested agriculture was unique, grown in altitudes this high.’ I follow his gaze to gardens, their crops that crawl sideways above us to creep closer to the sun. ‘The tribes lived long, long wealthy lives in the arms of the sky and the fingers of the clouds; it was as if they were embraced in the limbs of their deities. The Creator sent angels as a warning of calamity, to stop their magick and their tyranny on the surrounding villages, but none heeded. So, angels squashed the metropolis under their feet and used their wings to send great winds. In one night, Stone City was nearly annihilated. All we have are the engravings of the proto-city on its walls to remind us of humanity’s errors.’
Fear grips me. It was their comfort of divinity that made them so arrogant, only for the true divinity to turn against them.
Yabghu continues, ‘Now the clans here are superstitious; priests screech to remember their ancestors who paid for their ignorance. They hide above humanity in this city, believing they will be safe from mankind’s sins.’
‘Hid, not hide,’ I correct him, glancing in sorrow at the harvest of corpses littering the residential quarters, a warning from Emperor Akashun for refusing to surrender. Each day brings me more westward, and with less time to figure out a way to kill him.
‘They have everything to fear now. From their pathetic defences and battle rams, they hadn’t been to the ground in centuries.’ Yabghu shakes his head. ‘Why bother when everything you need is in the sky, closer to the Heavens?’
I wonder how such a thing is possible? For beings to live suspended like flax rope between the ground and open air, stretched taut, neither grounded nor in flight. Would the children born above find the concept of living on the ground as unimaginable as I find living in the air? Or was their refusal to live within the natural order a mistake? Because, looking around us, Stone City is a floating cemetery, like a mirror of its past.
And they are only one of many. Our squadron arrived in early morn, to reconquer Stone City from the Azadnian Kataqul Militia, who were granted passage to it by the bordering qaghanate of Zayguk, on the north-east Camel Road.
In wartime, the Alif warriors are divided amongst the regiments as generals. Alif Adel, the general of our tagmata, crosses through the brassgates of the rose-hued sandstone citadel and nods at our squadron. ‘Finish refortifying the southern trails. We’ve been summoned to Khor as reinforcements. We leave at sundown, using the night as cover,’ he orders us.
Captain Yabghu and Lieutenant Negar lead the squadron in sweeping trails through the mountain, re-digging thin moats around the gates and clearing transportation channels that connect to the delta as boats carry rations in and out of Stone City. Beside Katayoun and Cemil, I silently collect corpses along the poisoned streams, stinking with carrion. Above, the Heavens rumble in anger, the moon a forlorn eye fixated on humanity’s sins.
Azadniabad aims to conquer Sajamistan’s northern territories, including Yalon province, by invading via the Camel Road. Stone City is one township along in the long campaign for Sajamistan to reconquer the central pastures toward Khor. As a strategic wartime capital, the Kin Basin – overlapping Al-Haut province – is a commercial web of silk and steppe-camels. Its trade nodes are not only protectorates for caravans but also exporters to Sajamistan.
As Azadniabad successfully leverages the Mitra trade to the Zayguk Qaghanate, compromising Kin, while simultaneously invading through the Black Mountains to Khor, Sajamistan faces a two-front invasion, forced to stretch a massive commitment of battalions from the homeland. Khor is the buffer for Sajamistan proper’s water channels – cutting it off is Azadniabad’s fastest way to a conclusive victory.
During our six-week campaign to reconsolidate the protectorates of the Camel Road, Yabghu explained our defensive tactics. Sajamistani soldiers are rotated between tagmatas, to prevent mutiny against their commanders. To offset their numerical inferiority, the Za’skar battalion’s squadrons, smaller than in a normal army, but efficient, are dispersed as elite forces in larger troop units, for outflanking manoeuvres in battle and for the greater strategy, a war of movement. The stratagem requires swift communication lines and choosing mountainous positions that are offensive in nature, so the enemy’s defences remain off-kilter, pillaging the psychological balance of the battlefield.
Our mobile squadrons had been designated for disruption tactics; we target the enemy’s rear, we scorch their supply routes, we bait and trap with the fastest retreats, and we ambush in the night. Strategies birthed by steppe-warriors.
With Azadniabad’s new alliances and Mitra’s existence, a part of me is impatient, as though our actions are only slowing, rather than stopping, the poison seeping through the red soil.
What war created for Akashun was a push and lever. It was so easy for him to unify the tribe-fractured prefectures into an empire, glued together by the throes of the Camel Road and emboldened by the possibilities of Mitra. Akashun was waiting for war. And any governor who resisted was made an example of. Stone City was merely one of many massacres.
But I’ve no intention of witnessing a land doomed to subjugation. When an empire’s valour is personified by one man, the weakness is obvious: killing their Great Father would leave the children orphaned. Grieving and hopeless, the empire would devolve into unmoored herds retreating into their cavities of prefects and tribes. Only with Akashun’s death will Mitra end.
Under the guise of Sajamistan’s battalion, each step takes me west – takes me closer to Azadniabad, to find Akashun and kill him.
That night, in the citadel barracks, I awake to shouts. I yank on my uniform, shivering as I make my way into the dry chill. In the middle of the palace courtyards, I see Yabghu rubbing his eyes. The troops are to depart before sunrise for Khor.
A commotion snatches away my exhaustion. Throngs of the city’s survivors and priests rush out; others are praying and prostrate in the open. The eerie sight of worship in the dead of night sends confusion through me. Many shout to prepare the mules for departure. Some stand with satchels, trailing towards Stone City’s brass gates.
‘Where are they fleeing? And why are priests leading prayer so late?’ I could understand a few in worship, but before me, I count hundreds.
Katayoun turns and I baulk at the fear in her eyes. ‘This place is cursed,’ she mutters.
‘What happened?’
