Corpses. Strewn out by the mud-brick houses where they had once resided. Skin stretched out over the bones beneath, already more skeleton than human. Corpses with cuts or bludgeons, laying on pools of blood that gave the parched earth its first touch of morbid moisture. Yet, silence. Tears, grief, and sorrow were a luxury for when an escape from the daily torment that was survival made itself available. For now, silence.

Having no crops will do that to someone. A season so dry and hot that the earth itself became parched. Where the great Luzum sank so far down the riverbed was touched by the sun for the first time. Any plant that did grow would dry where it stood, burning from exposure, leaves singed with brown and yellow and black. A horrendous time for all along the Luzum, not just those in Ibandr, but Ibandr suffered all the same.

Huttl sat by the Luzum now, sun setting on his right. The patch of land he was sitting on rose above the bank, a rare spot of elevation among the flatness of Ibandr. His feet dangled, the edge carved by the Luzum’s constant flow, cooled by a steady river breeze. A shimmering cascade of light washed over the surface as the waves rippled along their journey to the outer world, sending a dazzling dance of rays, the river almost alive with a life of its own. He was picking apart a sorghum stalk he had been chewing as he walked here from his home, and now as he sat he absent-mindedly broke off pieces to toss into the river, watching them bob in the gentle water as if they were a Paroxl on their journey out to sea. Fish would swim around just underneath the surface, unsure whether the stalk was food or something else.

Yet all he saw were the corpses. Those of his two younger sons, no more than little babes blissfully unaware of the torment they’d escaped. His parents and grandparents, who refused even the meager portions they could find so that the younger could eat. His friends, killed in the early days before the Zivold took the grain, when Ibandr was on the verge of becoming a city of beasts. His own corpse, in his dreams, when he’d wake with a start and incredulous that he had the strength to wake at all. They were tough times indeed, but the Zivold had taken charge, and the grain had been taken, stolen, rationed.

Behind Huttl, footsteps. He turned and saw his brother Bartl coming up the way. The man sat next to Huttl, who grunted in acknowledgement and threw another bit of stalk into the river.

“Hail Huttl,” Bartl greeted, “such richness in the river today.” A handful of small fish came to nibble at the stalk. One slurped it, the stalk disappearing from view, before spitting it back out and swimming off in a dart, angry that it wasn’t the proper food.

“Hail Bartl. It seems the dark days are over dear brother. At the cost of many lives, but over all the same.” Not much time had passed since the worst of the drought, of the famine, of the death. Maybe three moon festivals had taken place since the river surged to life once more. Revival had come quickly, with Ibandr having swelled in size as others poured from the country side, the river surged and the channels flowed with water once again. Sorghum bloomed for the first time in months and there had been a handful of harvests already. The grain stores were on their way to being overfilled, a blessing of a problem to have. But the toll of that time weight heavy on Huttl. On everyone.

“Anakinr tests us always.” Bartl’s legs dangled over the edge. He leaned back, putting his weight on his arms as he turned his head to look at the setting sun. “I fear our city was also the price to pay for its survival.”

Another stalk went into the river. The fish seemed less interested this time. “He still refuses?”

“He still refuses. The Zivold says we have not quite recovered, that we cannot tell if Anakinr is still ensuring we are the strongest, that Pritm may be in charge instead and seeking mayhem.” Bartl sighed. “Hadr says the Paroxl have not offered him guidance on that particular question. The Zivold will never give it up. Those families who hang about with him, who he fancies with gifts and food and horses, they will never allow him and his to give that up.”

“From the jaws of one into the other,” Huttl mumbled.

“There’s nothing to be done unless we take it back, like we talked about.” He pulled a stone hanging at the end of a necklace around his neck and showed it to Huttl. It was a small, gray-black stone carved and bumped to show the form of a fish’s skeleton, so that when pressed into clay, the fish bones would appear. The symbol his family had used to show ownership for generations. “This is useless now. Once it may have shown our families contribution to the grain, our tools, our horses, now it’s a relic. Everything is stamped with his sun’s rays, the Zivold has taken it all.”

Huttl stuck the stalk in his mouth and chewed. “The city is too afraid to anger the spirits, the river, the Paroxl. The Zivold is smart, he’ll have them all afraid until he’s passed into the sea.” He shook his head, clicked his teeth. “We either move now to take it all back or we leave it all to the Zivold for the rest of time.”

“Good,” Bartl grunted. “I’ve been speaking to the Sinnamit. I asked him whether the coming harvest would be favorable, whether the floods would come, and if our crops would survive through the harvests. He cut the dog and the inside was beautiful, pristine, ripe and red and healthy, the liver big and meaty. We cut hands on our oath that the Zivold would give us back the stores, give the stores back to the people that grow them, the horses back to the people that ride them. Hadr is an older Sinnamit but he’s a good one. He walked into the Upper World while I was with him, and he saw only good omens for the future of Ibandr.”

“Did you ask him to see about our plot?”

Bartl scratched at his temple. “Yes… but he said no one told him about that, only about the life of the city.”

Huttl didn’t like that, but only grunted. “Not great, not terrible.”

“Not great, not terrible,” Bartl agreed.

Huttl and Bartl watched the sun set, the sky turning into an orange haze and then varying shades of blue as time went on. They spoke of the visitors from Alendr, the circle of birds that had landed on the Zivold’s storehouse, the nomads that had come to the city looking for food the other day. Idle chatter for Huttl to dance around what Bartl wanted to know. What his brother had come to ask. They sat and watched the darkness chase the sun behind the horizon. The sorghum stalk was a stringy, chewed up mess and Huttl spit it into the river. Bobbing in the water, the current dragged it out to sea.

“I’ve spoken to many others in the city Huttl, you and the Sinnamit Hadr and many more. It’s time we make a pact of blood. All of us.” He paused. “Outside the city in three days, the moon will be hidden and we will meet by Shahadr’s Point in the north. Will you be there?”

Huttl watched the small, pinpoint black shape, far along the river now, that had been his chewing stalk. All he saw were the corpses that were seemingly painted on the backs of his eyelids. But now, they were corpses of him and his brother. Of Hadr the Sinnamit. Of Adr and his wife Toltollen, the sickle-maker Godr and the jar craftswoman Alea. Is that what would become of them if the Zivold found them? Is that what would become of them even if he didn’t?

Slowly, Huttl shook his head. “Brother, this will make corpses of us all.”

Bartl spit on the ground between them. “If you don’t do anything to stop him, you’re a walking one. You’ll be a shell of a man, giving up on everything our father, mother, grandmother did to get us to where we are. Giving up everything our ancestors have ever owned. You’ll be shamed in all three worlds and relegated to misery, not wandering through the Lower World until a Sinnamit finds you but drowning in the Outer. You’ll be one of the few who’s life after death is known, and it will be punishment.” He sighed. “Think of Barnam. What will you be able to give him? What will you be able to give your only child? A life under the will of a man other than himself? I ask you again, Huttl. Will you be there?”

Huttl looked at his brother, the blaze of roaring fury shone in his eyes more than the sun had just hours ago. His firm, creased face had filled up since the starving times, and he looked healthy and strong once again. The city was healthy and strong again. Strong enough to return to what it had been, to remove the thief the Zivold had become, to bring Ibandr back to what it was meant to be. But Huttl was unaffected by that. He looked at Bartl and thought of his own son, Barnum. How his face had filled and fattened, how the gaunt boy’s cheeks had life brought back in them, full of health and color and life. That life was not given back to his only son just for him to live under another. “Fine, brother. For you, for my sons, for our parents, and for all who may have died in vain. For my boy. I’ll be at Shahadr in three days. When we go, I will bring my blackshine to make the cuts.”

“A blessed omen, then.” Bartl smiled. “I will go meet with the others,” he said, clapping his brother’s back and getting to his feet. “Three days, brother.” The man turned and walked back into the city without another word.

Feet still dangling, Huttl’s mind went to his wife and Barnam. It was time he went back to them. Bartl was right, in a way. What would he leave for his son but a life of servitude for the pompous Zivold, to give the fruits of all his and his family’s labor to those who would not even give these gifts the proper respect. He shook his head. He needed to get back. For too long he had been wasting time here, watching the river flow over and over again. His wife and Barnam were what he needed to do this for. He may not have much time left with them anyway.

Context: A great drought plagued the Luzum around the year 250. Hortens settlements along the river, strictly reliant on the river water for their new intensive irrigation for their crops, are devastated by the poor harvest for that season. Smaller settlements are removed from the map as their populations either die from famine or migrate to larger settlements with better stores. Ibandr, suffering disproportionately at the beginning, sees its central stores taken over by the Zivold to better appropriate resources and ration food. The people of the city saw no problem with this, as the other option was to starve to death as they had been, but now the river regenerates, water flows once more throughout the irrigation networks, the city is bigger than ever due to the influx of immigration, and the Zivold maintains his hold on the grain supply. Some profit from this, gaining preferential treatment for their early and continued support. Others build resentment, seeing the profits of their labor under the thumb of someone else.