Chapter 1 : Breaking Horizons

Melda scanned the horizon wishfully. She half expected some daskan general with a charging host to attack her captors, who are now leading her and her friends in misfortune to their frontier city kelmel, in the huge kingdom of Samalk. There were 152 women as well as a few very timid boys and men who had surrendered to their enemy; and casting aside all shame, became active collaborators. These traitors avoided looking at their own women, naked and hands bound behind their backs; and kept flattering the enforcer-general. This officer was in charge of keeping discipline in the troops and prevent any theft of the spoils of war.

Melda hated all of them. Whenever any of the traitors made eye contact with her, they could see the intense contempt with which she looked at them. As for the enemy soldiers and commanders, Melda had tried this on them too, but two smacks of the red-hot iron hunter made her realize her situation. She kept her eyes downcast. The daughter of one of the biggest feudal lords of Daskan was very afraid, but tried to give a brave look.

As she walked along the stony path, characteristic of most paths in Daskan, she occasionally felt the pain of the two smacks she had got for displaying courage. The samalkan soldier had flogged her beautiful round buttocks, and surely left scars on them. At first she was alarmed and believed she will die on the road, a thought which even in her present predicament did not appeal to her subconscious mind. She thought the cruel samalkans would go on flogging her tender skin with red-hot iron, electrocute her like they did to the tall, bubbly woman with a motherly face; or pluck her hairs with the strange wheel-like machine. This they did to Hekka; a woman who had given them too much trouble and even injured one soldier with a stone. However, the samalkans did not torture their prisoners unnecessarily. These things were done in the first few hours of their capture, and only to those women who had been so bold, that they either tried to escape; or did not accept their new predicament, and exasperated the samalkans by hurling insults and obscenities. Virtually everyone growing up in daskan had known these insults. As for the other women, the samalkans gave them only a quick flogging with leather hunters when they were refusing to cooperate i.e. not undressing as their captors had demanded.

The road that this army took was not too different from Daskan lands. It was semi-arid but with occasional ponds and greenery, something seen less in Dask. During the black war, almost two centuries ago, this land had seen much cruelty. Now, much of it, at least in the land of Dask, was an infertile wasteland.

Since Melda was walking with downcast eyes, it was sometime before she noticed that some of the prisoners were anxiously looking at something on their right. When Melda looked, she saw, at a stone's throw from the procession, a large blackish tower. It was not wider than a mid-sized room, and had a broken stair hugging its body. The top of the tower was broken, and the top had a faint greenish hue. Around this now broken tower, there were some debris and broken houses. These houses must have been fair at some point, judging from the beautiful, ornate, but now broken pillars. The land around the houses and the tower was uneven.

To the miserable prisoners, this was simply another dreary sight. They talked in hushed voices about these omens. Some said the Samalkans sacrificed children to their unholy gods at this place. Others said it must have belonged to people who had suffered at the hands of Samalkans just like them, but probably even worse. This is what Hekka said, and she did not try to lower her voice.

While Hekka was going through fresh punishments for her behaviour, Melda became thoughtful. The feudal lord's daughter at once knew what the broken tower was. Though she had never seen it before, she had heard about it; from her grandparents when they had talked about the black war. They also only heard about it, but it was named the Emerald Spires of joy. It was once the main attraction of a beautiful garden, if garden could be the right word for such a dreamland! But during the black war, the Samalkans had built two ramparts with the tower in the middle. The Daskans were able to overcome them, in which Melda's great grand Uncle distinguished himself. The fact that the Samalkans did not repair the Emerald Spires, even though it was one of their most cherished sites, struck as very strange to Melda.

But she did not get a long time to ponder over this. The sun was a deep yellow with reddish-grey clouds hanging over it. The soldiers before the prisoners straightened up, as the sound of armored bikes was heard, followed by a dust of smoke. Melda looked up, half in expectation, half in fear. Other prisoners were also animated. But the soldiers did not show any excitement. Soon Melda's secret hope was dashed again, as the cavalry turned out to be Samalkan. As the cheering men came closer, they were greeted with an eerie silence. The prisoners kept quiet, while the Samalkan soldiers leading them also maintained composure.