The makeshift town of Trigozon, infamous

for its cooking pots and funerary urns

made from the Atrigo river’s oily mud,

has been completely razed. Marauders

from the Southern Deserts are suspected.

The surviving townspeople – the usual

motley of foreigners with their jabbering,

their ailments, their wretched chattels,

and their incessant, wordy liturgies –

are slowly moving here to the walled

and timeless city of Marazon.

Meanwhile beyond the fast flowing Atagorsh

in the north, there are rumours of hostiles

massing on the Sparse Plains, with their goatskin tents,

and their restless herds of ragged horses.

Our Rulers have decreed that only

native-born citizens of Marazon

will cross the Atagorsh, and that migrants

from the south will be kept outside the walls,

though it is rumoured some are already here

cunningly disguised as denizens.

‘The Gods are angry,’ the High Priestess warns,

‘Before peace there will be havoc.’ The death squads

are on stand-by in their barracks.