The Bleeding of Carthage

3. The Throne Room

"Drop the urns, any of you," growled the overseer, "and I'll take the weight of them out of your worthless hides."

Enoch paid the braggart little mind, but shifted his grip on the urns of crystal clear water under both arms just in case. The last thing he wanted was attention at the moment. The long line of water-carriers, an urn under each arm, had just entered the Inner Keep of Carthage. The overseer patrolled the line like a master-at-arms inspecting the raw recruits. Enoch joined their group in the guise of a traveller to Carthage, the victim of a roadside robbery who needed money to leave the city once more. The water-carriers weren't slaves but they were only the next rung up, little more than indentured servants. He just needed to get inside the keep, and water-carriers were one of the few groups able to enter with little or no restriction every second day to restock the largely ornamental well near the centre of the Palace Courtyard. Cracks opening at the base of the well had dried it up decades earlier, but it was still a popular city landmark. By royal decree, it was kept filled by the water-carriers whenever it drained dry.

A soiled strip of rag was wrapped turbin-like around Enoch's head, one end of it falling down and obscuring half his face. Weapons hidden beneath the folds of his voluminous robe, obscuring everything. Enoch kept his gaze to the ground and silently followed the procession. The overseer's barks of command became a monotonous drone as they walked past the Royal Slave Compound just inside the gates of the Inner Keep. A long low stone building with a roof of terracotta tiles, the Compound hugged the Keep's inner wall; where the vampire-elites and merchant-princes could peruse at their leasure the newly arrived human stock chained within. The first stop of all slaves to Carthage, the choicest and healthiest were sold as soon as possible. The old or sickly were quickly bundled off to the Feeding Pens deep below ground.

The sound of the breaking clay urn was loud in the quietening streets. A water-carrier a few men in front of Enoch had slipped and dropped his load. The overseer's face turned crimson. He lifted the crop at his belt and with a gleam in his eye, began whipping the unfortunate boy. "Stupid dung-eater! Your wages aren't enough to pay for that," he snarled. The boy cowered beneath raised arms and whimpered apologies, but the overseer didn't hear, or chose not to, the crop rising and falling, the sound of it hitting flesh like a strip of leather on a side of beef.

The other water-carriers looked away from the punishment, perhaps fearful of receiving the same treatment. Enoch silently moved back from them, unseen by overseer and gang alike. He slipped behind a wide stone pillar and placed the urns he carried quietly on the ground. Careful to remain unseen, he kept to the lengthening shadows and moved around the outer verandas of the Inner Keep until he found stairs leading down from a small open doorway. Entering, he descended quietly and checked his weapons.

Down and down he went, one level after another, but stopped five floors below ground level. He'd caught a whiff of something pungent. The accumulated smell of sweat and fear and shit. He knew about the Feeding Pens from his youth growing up in Carthage, but had never seen them. Few mortal humans had. Carthaginian mothers warned their children to keep them in line: "Behave, or they'll take you to the Feeding Pens." He turned a corner and saw them. Huddled together in one long stall along the back wall of a large dimly lit room, the slaves were soulless creatures who knew their lives were over. Once taken to the Feeding Pens, there was no escape, save as sustenance to the vampire-elite. Enoch did not linger, but he could not help but compare these emaciated pathetic creatures with the plump and healthy slaves above ground in the Royal Slave Compound. Once a slave was brought to Carthage, it was only a matter of time until they found themselves down in the Pens.

Making sure none of the lost souls or their disinterested guards saw him, Enoch quietly padded down another corridor till he saw a wide staircase leading down. He knew from city gossip that the Throne Room was six levels down, as far from the burning sun as they could make it. After one more flight of stairs he heard muffled voices and moved toward them. He found himself staring at two huge doors carved from interlocked pieces of jade. Carved into them was a picture of proud Fallen Angels standing triumphantly on a mountaintop, presumably claiming the earth. He stayed out of sight when he saw the guards to either side of the doors, sharp and weary. Enoch sat back and waited, looking for a pattern he could exploit. It soon presented itself.