Arsheesh

"I'll give you fifteen crescents for him." "Fifteen! Fifteen! For the prop of my old age and the delight of my eyes! Do not mock my grey beard, Tarkaan though you be. My price is seventy."

- Anradin and Arsheesh haggling the price of Shasta (Chapter one)

Arsheesh was a Calormene fisherman who lived by the sea in east-central Calormen during the Golden Age of Narnia. Though he never married, he took in and raised a boy called Shasta.

Biography
Arsheesh's early history is unknown, but he was born in Calormen, and was a fisherman for all of his known life.

He lived in a cottage on the seashore, and spent most of his days out in his boat, fishing, in the morning, and then took what he caught in his cart, which he harnessed to his donkey, to sell in the village, in the afternoon.

One night in NY 1000, Arsheesh, unable to sleep, went outside and found in the shallows a small boat carrying a soldier who had just died of starvation, and an infant boy. Although Arsheesh was not a compassionate man, he saw the child as an opportunity for free labor. He named the boy Shasta, took him in, and raised him for most of his childhood.

In 1014, a traveling Tarkaan named Anradin demanded hospitality from Arsheesh for himself and his horse. The fisherman sent Shasta out of the cottage for the night, while he and the nobleman talked. After dinner, Anradin offered to buy Shasta—whom he could see by the boy's skin color was not Arsheesh's natural son—as a slave. The two haggled over a price for several hours, and then went to bed. Shasta, however, had overheard their whole conversation, and ran away with Anradin's horse later that night.

Nothing else is know of Arsheesh after Shasta left.

Character
Arsheesh was an average Calormene peasant, poor and largely uneducated, but with a very practical mind, and a shrewd eye for profit. He often quoted the maxims and proverbs of "the poets," as did many Calormenes of all social classes. When he was in a bad mood he would take his anger out on Shasta both verbally and physically.

Appearances

 * The Horse and His Boy