A Fortune for Kregen (10 page)

“Come back here! By Llunyush the Juice! I’ll have you!”

Fat Ringo, the master’s chief cook, pursued Hunch with a carving knife in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. Fat Ringo was uttering the most blood-curdling threats as he ran, fat and purple and perspiring.

The first moon of the night, She of the Veils, was just lifting over the flat grazing land to the east, and lighting in gold and rose the faces of the mountains ahead. The night blazed with the stars of Kregen.

Nodgen pulled his tattered rags out of the way of the hunt. His chains clanked. I rolled over and sat up and, seeing what was toward, gave a groan and started to jostle a calsany or two in the way.

Everybody on Kregen knows what calsanys do when they are upset or frightened. Hunch saw that swaying movement. He darted for the herd, shoving the animals this way and that, hurtling past with a quickly whispered, “My thanks, Jak!”

The calsanys started up.

Everywhere on the ground the slaves rolled over and sat up and a chorus of protestations and curses began — then the slaves were hauling their tattered rags around themselves and moving off as fast as they could.

“I’ll fritter your tripes and season with garlic and serve ’em up, you hulu!” shrieked Fat Ringo.

He danced around, purple, gasping, shaking the knife and the cleaver. But he made no attempt to push in among the calsanys.

With another groan — for I had been beaten mercilessly twice the day before — I lifted my aching bones and shuffled off out of the way.

The iron chains festooning my emaciated body hampered my movements. I dragged along like a half-crushed beetle. But no one was going to sleep near a bunch of calsanys in that condition.

This whole ludicrous scene was hilarious in a kind of skull and crossbones way. Once Hunch was off by himself he’d wolf the chicken down and scatter the bones, and then no one could say, for sure, that a chicken had ever existed. Fat Ringo knew that. He backed off from the calsanys, shaking his kitchen implements and foaming.

“I’ll have you — so help me Llunyush the Juice! — I’ll have you!”

Hunch was too sly to answer. He was beyond the calsanys and no doubt was well started on the first leg. He wouldn’t save any for me, and I did not fault him for that. The evidence had to be annihilated utterly — as Hunch would say.

The slaves were rolling up again and cursing rasts who disturbed their sleep. Sleep, to a slave, is the most precious of balms. Fat Ringo shook his cleaver, and breathed deeply, and started back to his fire.

He was an apim — almost all superior cooks are apim — and when he saw me he aimed a kick at my backside as he lumbered past.

“I know who it was!” he brayed.

I rolled away and found a comfortable depression in the ground and hauled my rags about me. “Yeah?

Well, try to prove it then.” And I closed my eyes and sought sleep.

On the morrow the caravan would start off again early and march most of the day, with a suitable pause for refreshment. In our case that would be a heel of bread and an onion, if we were lucky. In the evening we would each receive our bowl of porridge and four palines — three if Fat Ringo was in a bad mood.

Our lord and master would sit grandly in his tent, with all the appurtenances of gracious living brought with him on the expedition — folding table and chairs, folding washstand, chests and storage jars filled with the goodies that made his rich life the richer. Fat Ringo’s choicest delicacies would be brought on golden platters to the great man.

Strom Phrutius was his name, a damned strom from one of the mingled kingdoms of the Dawn Lands, immensely wealthy and yet only a strom, which is equivalent to an Earthly count, and covetously desirous of making himself a kov — or, at the least, a vad. I guessed the old buzzard would make himself a king if he had half a chance.

So that was why he was on the expedition.

He’d bought me and a gaggle of slaves to make his journey comfortable, and so here I was. Four separate attempts at escape I’d made, and four separate times I’d been caught and dragged back by the heels. They had been desperate, frenzied, chaotic bursts of ill planning and stupid execution. I’d reverted, in many ways, to the Dray Prescot who had first been brought to Kregen. But the lash and the chains had made me realize that I must retain my hold on the deeper — if only by a hairsbreadth deeper —

realization that there are other ways of gaining one’s end than by thumping a few skulls.

The caravan consisted of a vast quantity of animals, many wagons and coaches, lines of folk trudging on foot, and our aim was to be through the passes of the mountains before the snow choked them. Once over that massif, we would be fair set for our goal. Well, the goal of the masters, not of the slaves. Their goal was food and sleep.

Being chained up and confined to the animals with Strom Phrutius, I was totally unaware of the names and quality of the other great ones who undertook this expedition. Every now and then a gaily attired party would ride past, their zorcas pretty and cavorting in the suns’ light, their every action indicating the joy of the hunt and of life.

I’d go back to the curry comb, and ponder — had Pompino and Drogo seized the airboat and were they safe? Was Yasuri still alive? And — was Vallia still afloat?

All that had to wait — all that was part of another life. I was slave. I ministered to the animals. I was slave.

Day by day as we marched the mountains neared. We trudged across the high pass before the snow trapped us. On we went over a barren land where men thirsted. The dust powdered us and the grit beneath our feet lacerated our flesh.

Hunch was not fettered. Many of the slaves were not chained. Nodgen the Brokelsh, surly, marched in nik-fetters.

I was chained.

Me they regarded as a wild leem, a monstrous beast of savagery and malice.

And I worked. The animals looked sleek and cared for and I knew every one in the remuda, every one who hauled a cart. The six krahniks who pulled Strom Phrutius’s coach were strong, dedicated animals, and I knew each one, and called it by its name.

And my chains remained, and I was slave.

Five-handed Eos Bakchi, the Vallian spirit of good luck, had turned away from me. Equally, his counterpart in Havilfar, Himindur the Three-eyed, had closed each and every eyeball against me.

Those mountains were a relatively small and local grouping and the passes led onto a land that, while it was not true desert, was, all the same, highly unpleasant to travelers short of water and food. We were supplied with ample quantities of both. By the time we reached streams and fields of green grass and pretty stands of trees we had traveled a goodly distance and we had passed no habitations, seen no people, had appeared to travel through an empty land.

A slave, unless he particularly cares, does not see much of the way or know a great deal of what is going on. In order to save my skin I had buckled down to the task of caring for the animals. One calculation —

the distance we had traveled — was either easy to make or impossible, depending on whose estimates of speeds, progress made and time spent the slaves accepted.

We measured time by the passage of the suns, by the water dole and by the time of sleeping. If I say the desert was not real desert and we had plenty of water, and yet say also that men thirsted — these statements are not incompatible.

Everyone, including the animals, drank before us slaves.

So that when we reached the first stream, tinkling away between crumbly banks under letha trees, we slaves broke in ragged stumbling runs, tripped by our chains, our mouths furnaces of fire, fell full length to gulp the water. Oh, yes, we were whipped back by the slave masters. But we drank, by Krun!

Hunch licked his lips. “That cramph Fat Ringo taunted me, said we are to be sold off in the city. Us expendables.”

“An expensive way of utilizing manpower—”

“No. Phrutius needed insurance across the mountains and desert. If I wasn’t so scared...” He was a Tryfant, and you know I am neutral concerning them. But he was usually a cheerful sort, not much over four foot six tall, and with a lopsided expression that conveyed all the guile of a six-year old scenting ice cream in the offing. “I escaped once — and when I was caught—” He did not go on. There was no need to go on. He told me he came from the little kovnate of Covinglee in the Dawn Lands and his father had been a brass founder but had fallen on evil times. “He was overly fond of playing Vajikry and spent all his time and money on the game. We were turned out penniless and I ended up slave.”

Next to Jikaida, the supreme board game of Kregen, stand Jikalla and Vajikry. Hunch had turned to the Game of Moons out of desperate resentment.

The next day when a city came into sight along a straight ride between trees we knew our fate loomed close. We all wore dirty gray breechclouts, were filthy and covered with sores and wounds, and our hair swirled like bargain-priced Medusae. We were refuse of humanity.

“Perhaps here is where we make a run for it, Hunch.”

“As Tryflor is my witness! My legs are too tired to run, dom.”

The city, whose name none of us knew, possessed a number of fine bagnios, all stone walls and iron bars and whipping posts, and in one of these we were quartered for the night. We were given no food or water and we all had a whipping, gratis and for nothing. Guards in jerkins of leather and brass patrolled with barbed spears, their whiskered faces sullen, and the watch fires burned in the towers.

Toward morning we were roused by kicks and blows and we shuffled out to stand in dazed lines. Fires burned in open hearths. We were all male slaves, and of many races. We waited as patient slaves always wait, forcing themselves to be incurious about what is going on for fear of the knowledge and the horror it will bring too early, before the horror arrives. Buckets of water were produced and we were instructed to get to work sluicing the water over ourselves and cleaning the muck off. Guards in jerkins produced sharp knives.

Some of us started to yell, then, at the horror here; but—

“Quiet down, you onkers! Quiet!” The slave masters bellowed. They shoved and pushed keeping us in line; they did not hit us with their whips or bludgeons.

And the sharp knives were used to slice off great handfuls of our hair, to trim our beards, to make us look less like fearsome monsters of the jungle.

Then we ate. We ate mergem — which is one of the marvels of Kregen, being a leguminous plant which, dried, will last for years and may then be reconstituted and is fortifying and nourishing — and it was mixed with milk and not water, and spiced with orange honey. We ate to stupefaction.

Our bodies were smeared with oil. Some of us were corked. Our sores were treated and many were painted over, although that practice should not fool even a purblind slave buyer.

Then we were herded out to be auctioned off.

If I do not go into the business it is because I find it degrading — degrading to the sellers and the buyers, not to the slaves. In this they stand apart as mere things, and this does not demean them but removes them from the orbit of creatures who buy and sell slaves.

The slave block built of dusty brick rose head high over the wide courtyard where trees drooped in the heat. Men and women filled this space, most with attendants to minister to their wants. The auctioneers took it turn by turn to shout the wares and display the good points of the merchandise before they sloped off to slake their thirsts. We waited in line. We were all numbered and the personal ownership of Strom Phrutius was attested on the chip of painted wood we carried. Lose that, slave, and you have an ear off!

Other groups with their chips of wood bearing their owners’ titles waited in line.

Hunch said, “We are not all here.”

“No. The masters are bound to keep some slaves — those they had before they bought us. You told me, we were bought for the journey. Expendable. How many of us died on the way?”

“A lot, by Tryflor, a lot!”

Those slaves who had survived Execution Jikaida with me formed a small grouping of our own. But we would all be sold off.

Looking back at the pathetic and brutal scene, I suppose I should not wonder that there was trouble.

After all, although I was slave, I was also Dray Prescot.

And he, as you know, is an onker of onkers, thick skulled as a vosk.

Nodgen, surly and red-eyed, Hunch, apprehensive, and I stood together. We had struck up a companionship in our sufferings.

To speed sales up we were being sold in lots. The auctioneer waiting for us, rivulets of sweat running over his fat cheeks, the brilliance of his clothes stained with dust, bellowed out: “Grak! Grak! You bunch of useless rasts.”

He snatched Hunch’s wood chip and read off the details.

“Zorcahandlers. Experts at the management of animals. What am I bid for this prime purchase of skilled men?” He lifted Hunch’s arm and half-turned him. “Not a mark on him, in his prime—” He looked at me.

“C’mere, slave!” He grabbed.

The slave handlers started to run onto the auction block from the sides. People in the cleared area began to yell. The auctioneer lay on the dusty ground with a bloody nose. I looked about, dazed — it had been quick, by Vox!

What would have happened then is anybody’s guess. I do not think they would have killed me straight away. Rather, they would have netted me, chained me up, and then wreaked their vengeance.

A voice, a penetrating, bull voice smashed from the crowd.

“Hold!”

A man stepped front and center. I saw him clearly and yet he meant nothing. He wore black clothes and he did not sweat. His weapons glittered. He stood, tall, straight-backed, dominating. He bellowed again, and he made a bid. It was a good bid. The auctioneer, holding his streaming nose, scuttled back to the block and, business as ever sustaining him, started to raise the price by those famous auctioneers’ tricks.

He took two bids off the wall before the tall fellow in black shouted menacingly, and then he knocked us down to him.

I will not tell you the price. The gold was paid. The man in the black armor took up the end of the chain binding us.