Staves Excerpt

At the onset of dusk, the caravan halted for the night. The soldiers---whom Wagner learned through his eavesdropping called themselves NuRacs---lit up scores of cressets, which they erected in strategic fashion about the perimeter of the temporary camp. Watch-fires were likewise established throughout the line in almost equidistant increments, ignited via flints and touchwood, and fuelled by the dead twigs and bark gathered by the same trusties who'd done the watering. A seeming extravagance of campfire, Wagner could only assume that their primary function was one of simple visibility, that the NuRacs might better keep tabs on their valuable human cargo. Indeed, once said fires reached ready blazes all around, the flames cast a fluctuant luminosity across the commutual disheartenment of Wagner's fellow unfortunates, enough to set him to wondering if the look on his own countenance filled out the flush of mumpish scowls.

Ergosians was what he'd heard the NuRacs call them---the people of Ergos. A title bandied about with an ample measure of sarcastic abandon, it no doubt served the soldiers as a means of inflicting some as yet uncomprehended but deprecatory hurt upon their captives without any immoderate damage to the commodity. Whatever the final fate of the prisoners, evidently they were to arrive at destination with as little physical maiming as the operation allowed, the obvious exception being Wagner---and perhaps anyone like him---who, in resisting capture, had quite nearly given as good as he'd gotten, and was therefore fair game for the occasional stray NuRac fist or boot.

The most severe sentiment, authored and sustained en route by an overweening snip of particularly infantile soldiers, had proved progressively difficult for their more temperate and inevitably susceptible comrades to ignore over the day's course. The fatigue and tedium wrought of any long campaign were like predilectory cobbles infixed along the path of even the most thoughtful soul's indiscretion; and though these inciters were few in count, with a little bit of plying they wheedled their more lapsable brethren down into the trench of their own asininity. Sounder judgement yielding to overtiredness, to unreleased aggression, to the base actions of the impudent---apparently such shortcomings were also universal, on Wagner's plane and here. In consequence, incivility had no wanting for voice along the entire day's journey, the most venomous lashings delivered not by flagellum but by tongue.

This order of psychological harrying both convenient and uncompromising, the soldiers had for the most part been concurrent in meting it. Given their rationale, most of them even felt justified in doing so. By what Wagner garnered from their taunts, they apparently construed a particular haughtiness in the prisoners' communal designation, which in turn netted NuRac animus above and beyond whatever other disputes the two factions may have had going. Ergos being at least one of the names by which this world was known, in calling themselves Ergosians these prisoners---according to the NuRacs---presumed themselves its namesakes, a pretension that the soldiers sought to undermine through the aforementioned humiliation. And whether a graver issue of race, or one of economics or geography, the indignities they dispensed were clearly intended as psychological ballast to buoy their own egocentrism. Yet, where their abrasiveness succeeded, Wagner sensed that it didn't impact the Ergosians nearly as much as the NuRacs were hoping, and indeed demonstrated more completely the soldiers' own inanity. Nevertheless, their ridiculing persisted in one incarnation or another for much of the journey, each occasion of it as juvenile, invidious, and bating as the preceding one, and all of it a cyclical perpetuation of intolerance that had no purpose other than the one they tried assigning it.

Despite long hours of close-quarter travelling, Wagner had yet to find a covert means for communicating with any of his fellow prisoners. As few had even chanced looking at him beyond his initial shackling, it seemed that his captors were as consistent in prohibiting fraternisation as they'd thus far been with everything else. Still, with his increasing familiarity with the NuRac idiom, he'd managed to piece together an exiguous and inexact history of the two races, at odds with each other for some thirty years. The NuRacs were the newcomers, the Huns of this region, who evidently felt entitled to expand their regime in any manner that even loosely befit the articles of their manifesto. The Ergosians, understandably less than thrilled by the prospect, had reputedly countered the encroachment with equal pugnacity---although one would not strictly have been able to infer this from the docility demonstrated within the slave train. Of course, hearing history as told only from the NuRac perspective (and not even by a proper NuRac historian), Wagner reckoned that a Texas-sized job of fact-sifting was in order. It was cliché that the NuRacs would view themselves as the vanquishing heroes of their nation, the delusory weave of a conqueror's own propaganda tending to obscure and overwrite the truth in the long run. From the other side of the chains, Wagner simply could not rustle up the unquestioning enthusiasm to oblige them their perspective.

The soldiers supped that evening on jerky and pickled meats, on hardtack and berries and dry cheeses, all chased by generous draughts from their bulging canteen skins. They sat and argued and debased one another as soldiers are wont to do, and it was here that Wagner came to find that equally as many of the NuRacs were female as were male, the subtle, biological differences now made obvious by the doffing of their headgear and by the opportunity to view them during the one welcomed respite of night's falling.

The females appeared slightly more pallid than the men, at least by firelight---their features, more austere yet boasting cleaner chiselling and bony detail. Chins pointed, noses sleek and narrow, facial structures leaning toward a decidedly triangular visage, they seemed suitable complements to their more broad-bodied but not dissimilar counterparts. The lot of them, however, a bevy of heartless militants, they almost assuredly represented a larger, like-minded populace somewhere far beyond that wooded expanse.

With the sun just departed, a dank chill crept like cadaverous fingers across the forest floor. Night would shortly envelop the entire camp. In an effort to combat the sudden chilling, the prisoners huddled themselves at the outskirts of the nearest campfire---largely inutile at three metres distant---and bided quietly and anticipatorily for the sustenance that had yet to be offered them. Wagner, easily the most bruised, the most baffled, certainly the coldest and most self-conscious of his bunch, sat in cross-legged fashion just a few chain links beyond the greater ruck. While unquestionably fagged-out, he exhibited only vague indication of any physical discomfort, his mind too busily at grips with the events of the day. Anxious thoughts surged and ebbed around atolls of speculation and inquiry. His perceptions about the NuRacs, the Ergosians, his physicality, his sanity---these and other perplexities drove him ever inwardly, into mindful debate over the veracity of that which he had little choice but to endure. It was still much beyond his ken to allege whether he'd become a prisoner to his phantasies or whether he'd traded one phantasy-based reality for one of even less desirable circumstances.