Page 8 of Ironhold, Trial One

They force me to walk, stumbling and chained. Each time I slow, they yank the chain connected to my manacles, forcing me forward. Soon, I see the space they are heading for, and the sight of it only fills me with more fear.

There are soldiers waiting there, a whole squadron of them, dressed in dark iron and leather, ready to take on any threat. Illusions flicker between a couple of them, reminding me that they have magic as well. They are guarding everything the official has taken so far: money, goods, livestock… people.

A whole crowd of men and women stands in chains, guarded by the soldiers, looking as if they do not know what will happen to them next.Each wears an iron collar around their neck, marking their status as something owned by Aetheria.

The soldiers drag me to an anvil, taking such a collar and setting it around my throat even as I try to pull back. Another soldier puts his hands against the metal, and I feel a flash of heat, the pain of it sudden and excruciating as the metal seals together. He uses magic easily, a reminder of just how common it is meant to be in the empire.

“She's a pretty one,” he says, as he pushes me back to the others. “Pity they’re all off limits until we get them back to Ironhold. What’s her talent?”

“Beast speech,” the soldier who catches me says.

“Justspeech?” the one at the anvil asks, looking briefly worried.

“You think we’d have brought her if she had more?”

The one at the anvil scoffs. “Then it’s hardly even a talent. She won’t make anything there other than a plaything for some gladiator.”

Fresh fear fills me at the thought of what he's implying. At the fate I'm being dragged to. The soldiers take me to a line of others, connecting my manacles to a chain along with the rest, which is in turn attached to a cart.

“We've been here too long,” the official in charge declares. “We have enough. It's time to head back to the city.”

The soldiers seem happy about that. My guess is that they don't like being out in the lands beyond the city of Aetheria, out in the wider empire it claims. I don't know what to think about it. I'm still stunned by the speed with which all this could happen, that I could be taken from my home simply on the say-so of some official from the capital. It's obvious from the others around me that doing so was the point of his visit.

I am chained next to a young woman perhaps my own age. She has dark hair, shaved on one side and sweeping to her shoulder on the other. Her dark eyes stare out fearfully, her slender frame making her seem far too fragile for this.

“I’m Lyra,” I whisper to her.

“Naia,” she replies.

“Where did they take you from?” I ask.

“I was traveling with my family when we ran into the soldiers. I was healing my father's leg after he broke it, and-”

“Quiet there!” A soldier snaps a whip near us. “Time to get moving, all of you. You should be happy. Most of you scum would never get to see the wonders of Aetheria if it weren’t for us.”

He makes it sound as if he's doing us a favor by capturing us like this. Does he actually believe that? How could anyone believe that Aetheria is so wonderful that even being taken there in chains is better than living elsewhere?

The cart in front of us rumbles into motion so that now we must march or be pulled from our feet. I fall into step with the others, tears still running from my eyes.

“Try not to cry,” Naia whispers to me. “The guards target the ones who are weakest.”

“You said before you were healing your father's leg,” I say. “You've trained as a healer?”

Naia shakes her head, though. “I just have a talent for it, for healing wounds. Vitomancy, the Aetherians call it.”

Someone else with magical potential, snatched by the soldiers. I wonder if we all have such talents. They say such things are more common in the Aetherian empire than in other parts of the world, power flowing outwards from the city, even as the empire Aetheria has built conquers more and more.

“Be quiet, I said!” the soldier snarls, and now the whip runs across my shoulders in a burning agony that makes me bite back a cry of pain.

I trudge forward with the others, knowing I have no other choice. The whole convoy of taken things rumbles forward, carts holding goods and valuables, livestock driven forward by the soldiers, captives like me forced to follow. The hot sun beats down on the plains, but there is no respite. We must keep walking.

I think about the possibility that everyone here has some kind of talent. Doesn’t that make us strong? Doesn’t that give us the chance to break free? I can see the problem with that, though. I’ve already seen that the soldiers have magic of their own, and they are the ones with weapons. Meanwhile, we are the ones in chains. We have no choice but to do as they command and march.

I know only a little of the landscape beyond the village. In twenty years, I have left it just a few times for fairs and markets at larger villages nearby. The sea provides everything in Seatide, so we stay close to it. I have traveled further on water than on land, but that knowledge does not help me now.

The landscape around us is wild and bleak, punctuated here and there by farmsteads and walled villages, but mostly empty. The track beneath my feet is mud and stone, and since my feet are bare, I am quickly covered in dirt, my feet hurting from the hardness of the rocks. I am not sure how long I can walk like this. If I fall, will they simply whip me until I rise again, or will they just drag me, not even stopping?

It seems like forever before we come to a brief halt. The soldiers pass around water, but do not give us food. The grey-robed official is sitting on one of the carts, drinking from a wineskin and eating roasted meats. He does not even look at us. We are not important to him now that he has claimed us.

---