Songweaver's Awakening

Chapter 7 - Anestan

Farahd had always had a flair for the theatrical.  Anestan watched him as he dismounted his mare, a beautiful bay creature with thicker bones than most of the desert variety.  Farahd was not particularly tall, but he carried a good deal of his weight in his broad chest and shoulders.  The heavy leather armor he insisted on wearing more often than Anestan would have liked added to the burden his mare had to carry.  He wore it now, the cracked and scratched leather bearing testimony to its use.

He strode with purposeful steps toward the hangman's noose.  The sun, high in the sky, shone off his black hair, kissing it with golden fire.  The jheranun, in their colorful silks and satins, looked nervously at the First Seat as they fanned their sweating faces.  They looked like wilting flowers next to the robust figure of Farahd, resplendent in colors of the desert: black, brown, white, and gold.  It was likely the exact effect Farahd had intended, Anestan thought to herself with a small smile.  The prisoners in the barred wagon next to the platform, their clothes in rags and their faces covered in dirt and grime, watched as he approached.  Anestan’s horse, a small chestnut filly, danced beneath her at the noise.  She pulled in the reins and the filly quieted.

Anestan idly recalled, years ago, when Farahd had returned from the skirmishes at the northern border.  He had marched into the First Seat's Hall, boots still crusted with mud.  His hair had been dirty and tousled, matted at the forehead with blood from an open wound.  He had been limping, the front of his armor torn as if by massive claws.  Her father and mother had not said a word to chastise his abrupt, unannounced presence, such had been their astonishment.  From within a heavy burlap sack at his side, Farahd had pulled a severed head.  It had been an awful sight, a grotesque mix of wolf and man, lips pulled back to bare sharp white teeth and glassy yellow eyes still fixed in a terrible stare.  No one had said a word.  He had opened his hand around the long, silver hair and let the head fall to the marble floor with a heavy thud.

“I need more men,” was all he'd said.

What else could the First Seat have done, with the eyes of his jheranun watching?  Farahd had received his men, and he had pushed back the raiding savages of the North to the very foothills of the Dachanas Mountains.  These lands, wet every spring from the mountain runoff, had become a valuable asset to Hajinn.  Anestan doubted very much that Farahd's appearance in the throne room that night had been entirely spontaneous.  He was deliberate and cautious when planning battles, it would be like him to be the same way when planning other actions.  Except when he fought.  She’d heard stories of what he was like in battle; the way he, with his broad figure, cut through the enemy with the air of a farmer taking a scythe to his crops.

 “What crime has this man committed?”

Farahd's voice brought Anestan back to the present.  He stood on the hangman’s platform, next to the prisoner with the noose about his neck.  The executioner, face swathed in white cloth, took a step back, his posture confused.  The people in the square—jheranun, wealthy merchants, and some multa—fell silent at Farahd’s voice.

A man in a deep red tunic, a golden desert rose embroidered on its front, broke away from the guards at the wagon.  He rested his fingers on the handle of his sword, and his thick black mustache twitched as he licked his lips.   “He was caught stealing, Raj.”

Anestan stifled a laugh.  The man who stood at the noose did not look like a thief.  The clothes that hung about his body had remnants of rich embroidery and the hint of color beneath the dirt.  He had his head thrown back, black hair falling to the nape of his neck.  He looked furious.  There were subtle hints for the reason behind his hanging in his face.  With his thick brows, short neck, and wide jaw, he bore a striking resemblance to Jahn, a man well-known for the horses he bred.  Anestan searched her memories.  Jahn had two sons.  The eldest was only twenty years of age, far younger than the man who stood at the noose.  The eldest son stood to inherit, provided that Jahn did not choose another heir in his place.