Iamerge blinked, dazzled by the brightness of the day as he walked out of the inn.  He cursed himself for a fool, looking at where he’d nearly been run down in the street and Jim Cooper had hauled him out of danger.  Were his street skills so impossibly rusted as all that?  If the self-styled Mayor of Rat Town had meant him ill he’d have dispatched Iamerge without breaking a sweat.

Despite the warm sunshine Iamerge shivered.  What madness, what trouble, what had come of all his plans?  The world had conspired to relieve him of his worldly possessions, true he’d done the better part of that by turning his back on his accumulated wealth and all its restrictive constraints by dying one of his convenient deaths, but he’d had hopes for the little boat and what little he’d taken on her, now smashed to pieces on Gospels’ skellig and scattered on the floor of the sea.  And now, coming to gather his well hid seed money, he’d nearly been trampled by the man he meant to find.  And there was another ill turn the world had thrown him, it wasn’t the man he’d hoped, but his son. 

Iamerge took more care as he entered  street again, this time he had more company and less scrutiny, there was no Jim Cooper and everyone else seemed intent on their own business.  Iamerge blended into the human stream and walked into town toward what he guessed would be a town square. 

He walked, carefully now, and he observed.  Iamerge had nothing at all in the world that he could call his own, but he’d risen to rule empires again and again.   It shouldn’t matter.  But when had the world been so against him?

Iamerge laughed, Stop your mopeing old Smoke.  You saw worse when you lost your first boat to pirates and avoided slavery only by merest good fortune.  That time you’d never survived and thrived half a dozen times, but that first time you did like all the rest.  Iamerge grinned, “What could be better for a life grown stale then a little adventure?” He said and winked at the old woman who looked at him questioning, perhaps his sanity, him talking to himself or the air and all.  Iamerge walked on whistling a tune and looking for opportunity.

So we rose up and killed the task masters.  We fled their spears and their chariouts to the south lands, over the Freedom River, thru the great swamp, deep in the dark jungles, beyond the desert waste, to our lands, to our forested hills, to our high plains and tall mountains.

We traded with the Bedouin and the Corn Kings, but we do not allow them to live on our lands.  The sea lords anchor in our harbors but they do not go beyond the quay, these are our lands.  We were equal, but they enslaved us, we were wise in the old knowledge, but they stole our knowledge and sent us to the fields.  Never again will they have power over us.

This is why we kill our enemies.  This is why we do not sell our brothers and sisters to our neighbors.  This is why we do not take slaves or buy slaves or trade with any who do.  For one man to own another is abhorant to us.  We live apart and do not mix our blood with others.  We remember the years of our enslavement and it will never happen again.

Our land is free land.  Our people are free.  So it will ever be.