He walked back toward the iron gates. His boots left prints in the blood. His guards parted and the black guards melted back into the shadows. The crowd did not move nor did they speak. Just watched him go.
The gates of the slave yard opened and he passed through.
The iron bars clanged behind him.
He stopped for a moment, letting his eyes adjust. The air on this side of the yard was thicker.
The slave yard stretched out in front of him. A long rectangle of packed earth, the color of old rust. The ground was hard, beaten down by thousands of bare feet over decades. The soil was so compacted that water pooled in shallow craters after rain and stayed there until the sun baked it dry. Now the sun was low, bleeding orange and red across the horizon, and the shadows were long and crooked.
