Crimson and Steel
by Ric Bern
Breathless Press
Calgary, Alberta
www.breathlesspress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Crimson and Steel
Copyright© 2011 Ric Bern
ISBN: 978-1-77101-011-5
Cover Artist: Victoria Miller
Editor: Jackie Moore
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in reviews.
Breathless Press
www.breathlesspress.com
Crimson and Steel
by Ric Bern
Chapter One
Noricum, c. 200 AD
It was a hectic day in the forum. Vendors had set up stalls and kiosks all along the edges of the broad plaza. With colorfully striped awnings and a myriad of offerings, the agora surged with a multitude of shoppers. Hawkers with pushcarts dotted the vast expanse, as did all manner of entertainers, poets, and philosophers. These men and women of letters stood at lecterns, at podiums, or on simple boxes, and argued passionately in hopes that passersby would pause in their shopping to favor them with a coin or two.
Looming over all of this was the forum market: a semicircular, two-story affair with an arcaded front. Built into the side of a hill, the forum market was the abode of the permanent stores and boutiques that offered manufactured and exotic goods to those of the patrician class. Rich and poor, young and old milled about the piazza. Children ran in packs, roasted meats were served on flat bread, and the scent of exotic perfumes wafted on the air along with the cacophony of a dozen arguments.
It was to this place that Asmin the pleasure slave was brought for sale. Her owner led her and a train of fellow slaves into the forum. Riding on a gray mule and swaddled in orange robes, Javad smiled and nodded to all those who cast their eyes his way. The thick chain that tethered the slave girls together rested easily in his pudgy palm. He gave it a sharp tug now and again to force the line of supplicants into a shuddering lurch. At this he would laugh, his many jowls shaking. The corpulent slaver would bellow a joyous cackle and slap his belly, his golden earrings tinkling. Riding at the rear of the train was a Scythian guard who donned a spired iron helm that was held in place with a tightly wound turban. His mount was an enormous black destrier, and he sported a tulwar tucked into the sash of his caftan. He often leered at the captives with his coal-black eyes. An old scar ran along his right cheek, and it was so taut his visage was locked in a permanent sneer.
“Papaios, we are here,” Javad called to his bodyguard and slave wrangler. “Ready them.”
With a heave and a grunt, the saffron-festooned slaver dismounted and climbed the few steps of a low, wooden stage set up before a tall column. The towering edifice had been erected by the emperor responsible for building the forum, and it bore friezes that spiraled all along its length depicting said imperator defeating his enemies. With the conqueror long dead and nearly forgotten, the tower was now known as the Tower of Slaves, as this was the appointed spot in the forum for traders in flesh to auction their wares.
“Come gather ‘round, you fine men of the Empire,” Javad cried out, cupping his hands around his hairy lips. “You have not seen beauties as fine as these in a great long while, nor will you see them again once I have left. Come see exotic faces from faraway lands, learned in the ways of pleasing men. Why rut with your cook when you may lie with a dusky-skinned girl plucked from the seraglio of a sultan from the East? Come, you fine gentlemen! Does your washerwoman’s hand caress you like a scouring pad? Suffer her no
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