…Once upon a time that area had been home to a mighty civilization, which left behind nothing but stepped pyramids overgrown with lush tropical greenery and roads paved with basalt plates leading nowhere. The modern history of Harad began less than a hundred years ago, when a young and energetic chief of a tribe of cattlemen from the interior named Fasimba swore to destroy the slave trade, and succeeded. It must be noted parenthetically that the countries of the South and the East had slave trade since time immemorial, but not on any serious scale; it was limited to selling beauties to harems, plus other exotica that had no economic underpinnings. The situation changed drastically when the Khand Caliphate ‘industrialized’ the business, establishing a thriving trade in black slaves throughout Middle Earth.
A well-fortified Khandian colony candidly named Slaveport arose on the shore of a deep bay at the mouth of the Kuvango, the main river artery of Eastern Harad. Its inhabitants first tried hunting for slaves themselves, but quickly realized that this was a grueling and dangerous task; as one of them put it, “much like shaving a pig: lots of squealing, little hair.” Rather than abandon the enterprise, they have established profitable alliances with chiefs of the coastal tribes; one Mdikva became their main trading partner. From that point on, the live merchandise was in steady supply in Khand’s markets, in exchange for beads, mirrors, and poorly distilled rum.
Many people had pointed out both to the inhabitants of Slaveport and their respectable agents in Khand that their method for making a living was dirtier than dirt. To that they responded philosophically that business was business and as long as there was demand it was going to be satisfied by one supplier or another (this line of reasoning is by now universally known, so there is no need to cite it in full). Be that as it may, Slaveport boomed and its businessmen got rich quickly, with the side benefit of being able to satisfy their most exotic sexual fantasies thanks to the unlimited supply of young black girls (and boys) in their temporary possession. Such was the situation when Fasimba successfully poisoned six neighboring chiefs at a friendly party (actually he was the one supposed to have been poisoned, but he skillfully struck first, as was his style), joined their domains to his own and declared himself Emperor. After assembling the warriors of all seven chiefdoms into a single army and instituting both a unified command and capital punishment for any expression of tribalism, the young chief invited military advisors from Mordor, which jumped at the chance to establish a counterweight to its Khand neighbor. The Mordorians fairly quickly taught the black warriors, who knew neither fear nor discipline, how to function together in closed ranks, and the result exceeded all expectations. In addition, Fasimba was the first to fully appreciate the true battle potential of the múmakil; of course, they have been used in war since time immemorial, but he was the one to standardize and streamline the taming of calves in large numbers, thus essentially creating a new army service. The effect was similar to that of tanks in our day and age: one war machine attached to an infantry battalion is a useful thing to have, but no more than that, whereas fifty tanks gathered into a single armored fist is a force that drastically changes the nature of war.
Three years after Fasimba’s military reform he declared a war of total destruction on the coastal chiefs that were involved in slave-raiding and crushed them all in less than six months; finally, Mdikva’s turn came. Spirits were low in Slaveport when a messenger of the coastal kinglet came with good news: Mdikva’s warriors have met Fasimba’s vaunted army in a decisive battle and triumphed completely, and soon the town will receive a large shipment of good strong slaves. The Khandians breathed a sigh of relief and complained to the messenger that slave prices at the metropolis markets were down sharply (which was a total lie). The man was not overly displeased: there were so many prisoners that there would be enough rum to last half a year.
The slave caravan, personally led by Mdikva, arrived at the appointed time – a hundred eighty men and twenty women. Despite the messenger’s boasts, the chained men had a poor appearance: worn-out, covered in bruises, their wounds haphazardly bandaged with banana leaves. However, the women, paraded totally naked at the head of the column, were of such qualities that the entire garrison crowded around them, salivating and unwilling to look at anything else. This proved their undoing, for the chains were fake, the blood was paint, and the slaves themselves were the Emperor’s personal guard. The banana leaf bandages concealed star-shaped throwing knives lethal up to fifteen yards, but the guardsmen could have done without any weapons: every one of them could outrun a horse in a short sprint, dodge a flying arrow, and break eight stacked tiles with a bare fist. The city gates were captured in mere seconds, and Slaveport fell. Fasimba commanded the whole operation himself: it was he who led the ‘slave caravan’ dressed in Mdikva’s leopard-skin cape, well- known to the entire coast; the Emperor knew well that the members of the master race have never bothered to learn to tell ‘all these blackies’ apart. Mdikva himself had no further need of the cape; by that time, the ferocious fire ants in whose path he had been staked (this was now the punishment for slave-raiding) had already turned the coastal ruler into a well- cleaned skeleton.
Two weeks later a slave ship from Khand tied up at Slaveport. The captain, somewhat surprised by the deserted piers, went into town. He came back escorted by three armed Haradrim and in a voice shaky with fear told the crew to come ashore and help load the cargo. To be fair, the nature of the cargo they were to take on would have shaken anyone.
It was 1,427 tanned human skins: the entire population of Slaveport, save seven infants whom Fasimba spared for some unknown reason. Each skin bore an inscription made by the town’s clerk (who was paid honestly by being killed last with a relatively easy death) – the owner’s name and a detailed description of the tortures he had to endure before being skinned alive. The women’s skins bore a notation of exactly how many black warriors have thoroughly appreciated their qualities; the town women were few and the warriors were many, so the numbers varied but were invariably impressive. Only a few inhabitants of Slaveport were lucky enough to merit a brief note ‘died in battle.’ The top of the bill was a stuffed effigy of the governor, a relative of the Caliph himself. Professional taxidermists probably would not have approved of the material used as stuffing – the very beads the Khandians used to pay for slaves – but the Emperor had had his reasons.
Some will say that such monstrous cruelty has no justification; the chief of the Haradrim must have simply passed off his personal sadistic tendencies as revenge on the oppressors. Others will talk of ‘historical retribution’ and blame the ‘excesses’ on what the Haradrim, who were no angels, have suffered over the previous years. Such a discussion seems senseless on its merits, and is in any event irrelevant in this case. What Fasimba did to the inhabitants of the ill-fated town was neither a spontaneous expression of the chief’s cruelty nor revenge for ancestral suffering; rather, it was an important element of an fine strategic plan, conceived and carried out with a totally cool head.
Chapter 33
The Caliph of Khand, having received a gift of his subjects’ skins and a stuffed relative, reacted in precisely the way the Emperor was counting on. He had the captain and crew beheaded (choose your cargo better next time!), publicly swore to have Fasimba stuffed in the same manner, and ordered his army to Harad. His advisors, forewarned by the sailors’ sad fate, did not speak against this dumb idea; they did not dare to even insist on some scouting first. Rather than supervise preparations for the expedition, the Caliph indulged in devising the tortures he was going to inflict on Fasimba once he had him.