Shunned

by David Pilling

part 2 of 4

The poison was a slow-acting one, slow enough to give Hasan enough time to be escorted back to the city and dumped at the gates without a word of thanks. Slow enough for him to make it back to his squalid quarters in the ghetto before the Baron and his doomed guest began to complain of stomach cramps.

The Baron knew what had happened to him and that nothing could rescue him from Shunned poison. He tearfully ordered his steward to be flogged to death for negligence, but the man’s shrieks were small comfort to him as poison wracked and ruptured his body.

His rival, a petty lord with whom he had been engaged in a dispute over territory, suffered the same fate but in a much more confused state of mind. Their followers accused each other of treachery, swords were drawn and blows exchanged, and the two lords died in agony amid bloodshed and chaos and the ruin of both their houses.

The news of their deaths quickly spread to the city, and it wasn’t long before the rumours reached Hasan’s ghetto. The Archpriest who ruled the ghetto gravely digested the news and then summoned Halakka, the private court that was one of the few Shunned privileges and allowed them to judge their own without outside interference.

Hasan was ordered to attend and speak in his own defence. He entered the crumbling hall that served as a courtroom wearing the black and crimson robes of his caste, along with his curved dagger and tulwar. Shunned society was divided into strict castes that defined a person’s role in life. Hasan was one of the few Shunned left alive who had been born into the Warrior caste.

The men assembled to judge him were not such an impressive sight. There were thirty of them, including the Archpriest and his two sub-priests, and they represented the men of the Shunned community. Hasan thought they looked a shabby broken-down crew, prematurely aged by the constant terror of persecution and anxiety over where their family’s next meal was coming from.

The Archpriest himself, a fragile white-bearded figure wrapped in fraying black robes of office, held up a thin hand for silence. The low murmur of conversation stopped and his wavering voice filled the silence.

“Two men have died. Important men,” he announced. “If the rumours can be trusted, they were both poisoned. I have summoned Hasan al-Asim here to answer for his guilt in their deaths.”

“Why am I suspected?” Hasan demanded.

One of the sub-priests stepped forward. “You were observed meeting and accepting money from a group of strangers. You did not report this to any of us and you were not in your quarters last night. Finally, members of your caste are known to have knowledge of poisons and skill in administering them.”

Hasan spread his hands. “Am I spied upon, then?”

The Archpriest sighed. “We are obliged to watch you,” he said. “We know that you hate the life you are forced to endure in the ghetto, and hate the treatment we are forced to endure from Southerners. As a Warrior your natural reaction is to fight back any way you can.”

“Very well, then,” Hasan shrugged. “I admit it. Why not? I accepted money from one lord to poison another, but gave the poison to both. The world is better off without them.”

“And did you think what the harvest would be? The Shunned are the first to be blamed for anything. We are an easy and popular target. Whenever there is a war or a failed harvest or a plague, we are blamed. If it should emerge that one of us has deliberately murdered two Southern noblemen, the people of this city will tear us to pieces.”

“Let the bastards come.” snarled Hasan, tapping the hilt of his tulwar.

“Don’t be a fool. Do you mean to fight the entire city?”

One of the watching jury, a worried-looking tradesman, spoke up. “I will not see my family butchered just because of this idiot’s pride,” he cried. “Let us give him up to the city authorities. Then they might leave us alone.”

This met with murmurs of agreement, but the Archpriest shook his head. “I will not throw one of my own people to the wolves.” he said. “Besides, the city governors would almost certainly execute him. The sight of Shunned blood on the scaffold might give the mob a taste for more.”

“What is to be done with me, then?” asked Hasan.

The Archpriest coughed and looked directly at him. “You cannot stay here,” he said, “so it must be exile. You are banished from our community and must leave before nightfall.”

Hasan had guessed that this would be the sentence, but even so it filled him with horror. For the Shunned, exile meant being cast out into a hostile world, cut off from friends and kin. The jury was silent. Few of them sympathised with Hasan, but the sentence was a terrible one and there was room for a little pity.

The Warrior caste demanded that its members never show any fear, and so Hasan channelled his into contempt. “Cowards,” he spat. “All of you. You deserve to be treated like slaves, for that’s what you are.”

Still no one spoke, and now only the Archpriest looked upon him with any kindness. Hasan wanted none of it and stalked out of the room.

He did not wait until nightfall to leave but was gone within an hour of the sentence being passed. He had few possessions and no living family and left without a word of farewell.

Shortly after he was gone a troop of heavily armed horsemen thundered into the ghetto. They were led by an enormous knight with the image of a red dragon sewn onto his green jupon. He wore full mail and carried a sword and shield as though riding to war, and his fleshy face was red with perspiration and anger.

“Where is he?” he roared. “Bring him out, you filth, bring him out if you value your lives.”

The people of the ghetto hid inside their miserable tenements, and only the aged Archpriest had the courage to go out and face the newcomers.

“My lord,” he quavered, bowing his head, “who is it that you seek?”

“My name is Brasco, you decrepit worm. I want the one who murdered my master — Hasan, he called himself.”

“I’m sorry, but we have no one of that name living here. Perhaps I can offer you some refreshment?”

The knight responded by smashing his mailed fist into the Archpriest’s face. Cries of horror and alarm arose from the surrounding tenements and some of the Shunned rushed out to help the old man, who had dropped lifeless to the ground. The knight ignored them and turned to his followers.

“Tear down this pigsty and kill everyone in it,” he ordered. “A gold sovereign goes to the man who brings me the head of the one named Hasan.”

He stared grimly into the distance as his men eagerly set about their bloody work. The Baron had been Brasco’s cousin as well as his master, and he had sworn an oath upon his cousin’s body to find and kill Hasan or die in the attempt.

* * *

Proceed to part 3...