Dragonfly (29 page)

She cracked one man over the head as he lunged for her. He went down and did not get up again.

"Stay where you are!" Yelena warned the rest, holding the pole like a staff.

Two other house girls appeared

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at her shoulder, one carrying a hefty parasol, the other brandishing a copper pan.

A merchant barked an order to his bodyguard to force passage through, but Yelena poked the man in the ribs with the butt of her pole.

"Are you his slave?"

The bodyguard grunted a "yes," uncertain what to do.

"Then join us, brother. It's your chance to be free."

"Kill the slave filth!" screamed the merchant, thumping his guard on the back.

Yelena pouted, keeping eye contact with the man. "That's not very handsome of him."

"If you don't do your duty, I'll have you flogged!" the merchant spat.

With a roar, the bodyguard spun and knocked his master flat out. The other merchants yelled and scrambled to escape over the rail that had separated them from the common people, but Yelena and her girls brought the canopy down on their heads, trapping them beneath.

Ramil had disarmed a guard with his collar and now had a sword to fight with. Hampered by having to wield it with a loose chain and collar attached to his wrists, he still managed to defeat those swarming towards him. His feet slipped in the blood spilt on the cobbles but he fought on. Injured slaves and overseers groaned on the ground; bodies lay sprawled in the dust.

Ramil fought with desperate efficiency. He knew they had to bring this phase to a close before the regular soldiers arrived; bells were already tolling the alarm.

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His makeshift slave army would not stand a chance against a disciplined attack.

Finishing off his last assailant, Ramil shouted instructions: 'Gordoc, get some men and build barricades across the main roads into the market.

Melletin, release the other slaves from the pens! Yelena, put the hostages in the empty cages."

"My pleasure!" she replied, rapidly organizing the slave girls who had gravitated to her during the fight.

Ramil could not help smiling when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her pinch the cheek of her master and prod him over to the pen.

Keys were liberated from the fallen slavers and manacles undone. When the bodies had been piled up, twenty slaves had been killed and thirteen overseers. Saying a prayer for the fallen, Ramil wiped the sweat from his brow, knowing that they had got off lightly on this first attempt. Now the challenge was to keep what they had gained and build upon it. The market offered little in the way of defensive positions. The shed where the women had been housed would do for the wounded but he couldn't afford to get boxed in. He quickly reconnoitered their situation. Gordoc was making good progress with the barricades, piling up carts and crates across the entrance.

Weapons that had been in the hands of the oppressors now were distributed among the slaves.

For the slave army to survive, he would need discipline and organization.

Already he could see a broad-shouldered slave arguing with Melletin for preventing him from killing his old master.

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"My friends!" shouted Ramil, jumping back on the block and clanging his sword against a shield. "Listen to me! Fergox's soldiers will be here very soon and we must make preparations for our defense."

"Who put you in charge?" growled a stocky man, his face showing the sign of many strokes of the lash. "We're free. We should take what we can get and run for it!"

"If you do that, they'll hunt you down and you'll be standing back here next week or hanging at a crossroads!" Ramil replied. "They expect us to act like mindless slaves, weak because we act alone, scattering when we come up against opposition. I say we should act like free men and choose to fight shoulder to shoulder."

Yelena strode forward with a party of girls at her back.

"And free women, Prince," she shouted. "We're with you." She slapped the stocky man on the chest scornfully. "Are you lot so spineless that you'll flee at the first sign of a real fight?"

"You heard the ladies," said Ramil. "Fergox has soldiers, but they only fight because they're paid to do so. Every house in this city has slaves who'll fight for their freedom. We've more allies than we can count if we see what we've started through to the end." He held the gaze of the objector. "But I don't want people I can't trust at my back. If you're with me, good; if you're not, you'd better run because it's going to get very hot around here very soon."

Melletin jumped up on a barrel beside Ramil. "Brigardians, are you with the Dark Prince?"

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"Aye!" shouted his countrymen.

"What about you other men?" Ramil asked, looking across the crowd of faces drawn from all parts of the Empire.

The slave who had challenged him took one look at Yelena, then raised his hand. "I'm in. It seems you might know what you're doing after all."

Ramil grinned. "I can't promise that--but I can promise that I'll buy you a drink if we're still alive by the end of tomorrow!"

This met with a cheer and a laugh.

"Now I can't talk to all of you. Form yourselves into your pen groups and appoint a leader. He or she will be your commander. Send them to me.

Melletin, can you and the Brigardians stand guard while we get this rabble sorted?"

"Aye, Captain." Melletin ran to the main barricade, swiftly organizing his men to defend all approaches to the market. Ramil was thankful he had such a seasoned resistance fighter on his side; Melletin knew exactly what to do.

Search parties were sent to clear any hostile forces from the buildings surrounding the square and a watch established on the upper floors to give warning of any attack.

Ramil was thinking fast. He now had a new advantage he hadn't anticipated, thanks to Yelena's swift action to take the merchants hostage. He

approached the pen where they were being held. His merchant-mistress spat at his feet. Ramil ignored her, looking for someone who showed more presence of mind.

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"Is anyone here fit to deal with me?" he asked in his most regal tone.

"Fit to deal with slave trash?" howled the old woman, her priceless silk dress now smeared with dirt. "I think not."

Ramil gave her a humorless smile. "Dark Prince, I think you'll find is a more accurate term, madam. But, ladies and gentlemen, I haven't got all day. Who shall speak on your behalf?"

The merchants exchanged a few shifty glances, then a man wearing the chain of a city guild leader stepped forward.

"I will treat with you," he said stiffly. "Know now, slave, that if you surrender, I will see that you are dealt a merciful death. Your allies will be spared but returned to their masters for punishment."

"That is very generous of you," Ramil replied with an ironic bow. "But I think you do not understand your position. I am the one offering you mercy. Send a message to your houses that we will accept a ransom of a hundred thousand heralds for each of you. If the city guard try to attack us, then sadly you will be executed before they can reach you."

"You would not dare!" exclaimed the guild leader.

"Me? No. I have no taste for taking lives. But if I see the troops coming for you, I will not stand between you and your old slaves. If you were merciful masters, then maybe you have nothing to fear; if not, then ..." He left the sentence hanging, letting them imagine what their people would do to them.

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The guild leader struggled with his outrage for a moment but then jerked his head in a nod. "We will send the message. But I cannot be answerable for the reply."

"And I cannot be answerable for the slaves you have nurtured in your households. We are well matched."

Ramil strutted away, pretending more confidence than he felt. He had no intention of allowing even these people to be cut down in cold blood.

However, he saw no advantage in letting the old masters know this; they deserved to sweat a little.

"Now, where are my commanders?" Ramil asked, rubbing his hands together in anticipation as he rejoined Gordoc. The big man was outside, surrounded by a dozen men and women, backs straight and eyes aglow with a combative light for the first time since they had been taken into slavery. It took Ramil a second to realize something: he was actually enjoying himself.

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Zeliph lost patience with his silent guest after two days. He was eager to settle the matter of the horse's ownership so he could claim it for himself.

Thunder was the kind of mount a rider in the Horse Followers would sell all he possessed to own. Ignoring his wife's protests that the girl was still unwell, he marched into her chamber and dragged Tashi from the bed. He brought her, still trailing her sheet, into the main part of the tent in front of a meeting of tribesmen. She was clad in one of the men's shirts, from which she had refused to be parted to put on more suitable women's robes, and her legs were visibly trembling with weakness.

"As headman, I ask the tribe to give me the blue roan as a prize," declared Zeliph. "This girl says the horse is not hers and she is clearly not fit to own it any more than the clothes she wears. Therefore the stallion should go to me as I caught him on our pastures and brought him here." He sat down as if the matter was done with. Silence fell for a moment, broken only by the swish 295

of fly whisks as the men brushed the buzzing nuisances away.

"But what of the pale girl: what will you do with her?" asked an old man seated near Tashi.

Zeliph shrugged and gave a languid wave to the door. "She can come or go as she wishes. She is touched in the head and talks nothing but nonsense when she talks at all. She is of no account."

"But where am I to go if you take my horse?" Tashi asked, her voice so quiet it was barely audible.

The old man cupped his ear. "There, Zeliph, she's clever enough to understand that you're taking from her. Are you sure she's touched?"

"What does it matter? She's a stranger and a woman--she's nothing to us.

She can walk home if she must, unless one of you wants to offer her a place in your tent. I've had enough of her in mine."

"I'll offer her a place if your hospitality is so deficient," said a new voice in the entrance. The men looked up and hurriedly rose to their feet, bowing low.

Zeliph's face wrinkled in a worried frown as the newcomer swept in to take a seat next to him. The visitor was an old man with white curly hair and ebony skin, at least six feet, broad-shouldered and still strong despite his years. On his right index finger he wore a gold ring shaped like a running horse.

"Umni Zaradan, you are welcome to my tent," Zeliph said, bowing again.

"But this stranger is not," the man replied, his eyes fixed on Tashi, "even though she brings word of my

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grandson, Ramil ac Burinholt? Why did you not send for me when she first mentioned his name?"

"A wild claim, sir," blustered Zeliph. "How can this . . . this pale westerner know anything of him? She probably just heard the rumors and spun her story accordingly."

Tashi returned the gaze of the man who claimed to be Ramil's grandfather.

She had no need to be convinced of his identity because the family likeness was strong. He was much darker than his daughter's son, but they shared the same brown eyes and stubborn chin.

"Tell us how you know Ramil, child," the man said in a kindly tone, "and let us see if you are a liar as Zeliph claims."

Tashi wrapped the sheet around herself protectively. "I'm betrothed to your grandson, sir."

He raised an eyebrow sceptically.

"I am the Fourth Crown Princess of the Blue Crescent Islands. Ours was a marriage alliance but it... er .. . went rather off course." Tashi thought that this was probably an understatement. "We were abducted by Fergox

Spearthrower but managed to escape at Midwinter. We were travelling to my home with some companions but it all went wrong again." She stopped. The hostility in the room was palpable. She could not continue so painful a subject if they were just going to pour scorn on her, trampling on her already bruised feelings.

"I believe you are from the Crescent Islands--your hair at least says this is so," Zaradan said coldly. "But if you travelled with my grandson, where is he and why

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do you have his horse and"--he gestured to the shirt-- "what look to be his clothes?"

"Ramil and our friends were taken by slavers on the road near the river," she explained.

Zaradan's eyes narrowed. "But you escaped?"

She nodded, looking down. He had put his finger on the guilt she felt at having survived.

Zeliph sensed that Zaradan's suspicions were roused and hurried to widen the breach between the tribe and the stranger. "How can a defenseless girl escape when a fighter like Ramil ac Burinholt gets taken?" Zeliph asked the men. "I do not believe a word of it. More likely she betrayed them, then ran away with his horse."

"No!" Tashi said indignantly, curling her fists. "I do not know how the men of the Horse Followers behave, but I would never sell my friends! Yes, I ran, but only because we were outnumbered and I had no choice." Tashi turned to Zaradan. "Sir, if you love your grandson, please believe me when I say that I only left him because I had to. Ramil knew that it was my duty."

"Oh?" Zaradan asked guardedly, stroking the bridge of his nose. "And what duty was that?"

"I must return to my people in the Islands and ask them to declare war on Fergox." Tashi knew it sounded like a big claim for a young girl to make in this circle, but she continued, "If our fleet does not reach Gerfal in time, then King Lagan will be defeated. Ramil will have no kingdom to inherit. He would have wanted me to escape, I'm sure of that."

Zaradan arched his fingers together. "I had heard

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that Fergox lost two prisoners at Midwinter--the Dark Prince and the Fair Witch, they are calling them. I did not realize the prince in question was my grandson. That makes you the witch."

She nodded. "That was the kindest of the terms Fergox's people called me.