Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  But as she and her people were pushed and prodded and jeered at like slaves, she was not sure she would not rather be dead.

  19

  Captive

  Mara fell.

  The highlander who had shoved her into the line of march laughed as she landed on her knees on rough stones. He caught her arm, jerked her painfully back to her feet, and pushed her ahead again. She stumbled into Saric, who stood firm to support her, his horrified outrage barely kept under control.

  'My mistress, should at least be permitted to ride on the donkey,' he protested, knowing by his Lady's grim expression that she would not speak out of pride. He bit off each word as if it were a curse.

  'Be silent, Tsurani dog! The beast will be put to better use!' The highlander who appeared to be in charge beckoned and gave instructions to an underling.

  Mara held her chin high, trying not to look at Lujan's bleeding face. He had refused to raise his wrists to be bound, and although he had not fought, it had taken coarse handling to force his hands behind his back to lash them. His eyes were dark with rage as he saw to what 'better use' their small beast of burden would be put: Kamlio had caught the fancy of these barbarous Thuril. Her beauty was considered a prize, and it was she, not Mara, who was to ride.

  When Saric again dared to protest, he was struck in the face and shouted at in broken Tsurani. 'The dark-haired woman is nearer the end of her childbearing years. She is of little value.'

  Mara endured this additional shame, her cheeks burning. But as her kilted captors organised her party for the march, she ached inside with uncertainty. She had no clue what these Thuril might do with her and her men. But after what she knew of Tsurani treatment of highlander captives, she expected her fate would hardly be pleasant.

  The Thuril hurried their prisoners upward into the highlands. Mara slipped and stumbled on the slick shale and splashed through knee-deep becks that tumbled out of the heights. Her wet sandal straps stretched, and her soles wore to blisters. She bit her lip, holding back tears of discomfort. If she flagged, one of the highlanders would shove her on with an elbow, or the flat of his sword or ax. Her back bore unaccustomed bruises. Was this misery what Kevin and others of his countrymen might have felt while being driven in coffles to the Tsurani slave market? Mara had thought she understood when she had decided that slavery was a wrong against humanity. Now she gained firsthand insight into the suffering and the fear such unfortunate folk must feel, subject to the whim of others. And while her plight was perilous, she was still a free woman and would be again, if she survived, but what must it be to know that there is never a hope of escape? Kevin's deeply personal anger on the subject no longer mystified her.

  Kamlio sat on the donkey. The former courtesan's face was pale but her expression was impassive, a proper Tsurani's. But as the girl glanced her way more than once, Mara saw terror and concern behind her mask. Something in Kamlio had begun to awaken if she felt concern for the mistress who tripped and pressed forward on foot by the donkey's tail.

  The lowland hills became craggy as the day wore on, and the Thuril pressed their captives ever higher into the plateau country. Through the discomforts of sweat and exhaustion, Mara reminded herself of the higher purposes that had caused her unconditional surrender. But moral abstractions seemed to take on less importance as thirst dried her throat and her legs began to tremble with the exertion of a forced march. Again she tried to stiffen flagging resolve: she must discover the secret behind what the cho-ja and the lesser magician had named 'the forbidden.' A puzzle lay before her in this hostile land, all the more maddening in that the solution lay outside Tsurani experience. Mara had no hint of what to expect when and if she should gain the ear of someone in authority. She did not even know the Thuril language, far less what questions to ask. How arrogant she had been when she had boarded the Coalteca in the belief that she might journey to these alien shores and, through talk and force of personality, make a sufficient impression to be heard in courtesy by her people's enemies! Born to power, never in her life deprived of the privileges of her rank, Mara perceived how foolish her presumptions had been. As exalted Servant of the Empire, revered by her people, she had never once considered that foreigners might act differently. The lessons she had learned from Kevin of Zun should have warned of the differences between peoples. Would the gods ever forgive her stupidity?

  Fear preyed increasingly on her mind as her captors drove her without rest through a high pass in the hills. The donkey plodded ahead, oblivious to human concerns and content to be what the gods had made it, a beast of burden. No less a burden do I carry, thought Mara, tripping again and feeling the wrench in her tied wrists as she fought to keep her balance. Lost in miserable thought, she did not note Saric's and Lujan's tortured looks of worry. The fate of more than her family rested upon her strength. Captivity taught her a painful lesson: no man or woman should live at the whim of another. But that was the only way to describe the wretched lives of Tsurani common folk. Their fate, and that of the lowest slaves, depended upon her as much as the fate of nobles. But reform in Tsuranuanni could not be begun, until the Assembly's omnipotence was broken.

  Bitter possibilities surfaced to harry Mara's brave resolve: that Kasuma might be her last child, that separation from Hokanu might last for the rest of her life, that she must leave unsettled his reluctance to name a daughter as his heir. Kevin's contrary nature had well taught her that loving a man did not guarantee peace with him; no time in her life had been more sorrowful for her, and few more regretted, than the moment the imperial decree had forced her to send the barbarian away. She feared that Hokanu might lose her in as abrupt a manner, leaving unsaid all that meant the most between them. Mara swallowed, fighting despair. If she could not reason with these Thuril, if they traded or sold her into bondage, then if Hokanu was to have a son, another woman must bear his child for him. That thought caused worse pain than any physical discomfort. Mara fought tears.

  Only belatedly did Mara realise that their march had slowed. Her captors paused in a vale between hills purpled with the shadows of late afternoon. Down the slopes ran a company of younger Thuril warriors. In a swirl of cloaks they brandished weapons and laughed boisterously. A jubilant rendezvous engulfed the party who shepherded the smaller band of prisoners. The newcomers viewed Kamlio with raised brows and hoots of appreciation. They fingered Mara's plain robe, loudly talking, until the Lady grew annoyed at being stared at.

  'What do they say?' she demanded sharply of Iayapa, who stood with his head hanging. He shrank still further at Mara's imperious address.

  'Lady,' admitted the herdsman, 'these are rough men.' Derisive shouts arose at his deferential manner, and someone said in gruff and broken Tsurani, 'We should call that one Answers-to-Women, eh?'

  Whoops and laughter arose, nearly drowning Mara's furious inquiries and Iayapa's desperate appeal: 'Lady, do not ask me to translate.' Behind her, one of the young men was gripping his crotch and rolling his eyes as if in pleasure. His companions found the remarks he uttered hilarious, for they clapped each other's shoulders and chuckled.

  Iayapa said over their din, 'You would be offended, great Lady.'

  'Tell me!' Mara demanded as Saric and Lujan shuffled closer and took their accustomed positions at her sides to shield her from the taunts of the foreigners.

  'Lady, I mean no disrespect.' Had his hands been free, Iayapa would have prostrated himself. Bound helpless, he could only look strained. 'You order me. The first one, the fellow with the green cloak, he asked our guide if he had taken you yet.'

  Mara said nothing, but nodded.

  Iayapa sweated, despite the cool highland air. 'The one who guides us says he is waiting for us to reach the village, for you are bony and he needs many cushions and furs.' Almost blushing, he blurted the rest. 'The third one who grabbed himself says that a man has answered to you. That might mean you are a witch. Does the one who guides us not take a risk, should he attempt to touch you, that you might rip off his . . . man
hood and feed it to him. The others think this is very funny indeed.'

  Mara wrenched in annoyance at the thongs that tied her wrists. How could she answer such lewdness with dignity, bound as she was like livestock? She considered for a moment, glancing at Lujan and Saric. Both men looked fit to murder, but they were as helpless as she. Yet nothing under heaven would cause her to endure such abuse from strangers without even token resistance! Left only her tongue, Mara raised the most scathing shout she could muster. These crude barbarians might not understand Tsurani, but by Turakamu, they could comprehend her intent by her tone.

  'You!' she snapped out, jerking her head in the direction of the highlander leader who had taken them. 'What is your name!'

  The crag-nosed man at the head of the troop stiffened, and, almost before thought, turned toward her. The younger man beside him left off clutching his crotch and stared at his elder in astonishment. He said something, to which his leader made a gesture of incomprehension. Instead, he addressed Iayapa in his own language, and the others laughed.

  Mara did not wait for translation. 'This swaggering fool with no more brains than the beast who carries my serving girl now claims he cannot understand me.' Her consonants sharpened with malice. 'Even after he exchanged words in Tsurani down the trail from here?'

  Several of the highlanders turned at this, some revealing surprise. So! Mara thought. There are others who can speak our tongue, albeit badly. She must make the most of this.

  Mara played along with the embarrassed highlander's charade and addressed Iayapa alone. 'Tell this buffoon, who forgets words as well as his mother forgot the name of his father, exactly what I say.' Mara paused, then added into shocked silence, 'Tell him he is a rude little boy. When we reach his village I shall ask that his chieftain beat him for inexcusable manners toward a guest. Inform him further that should I seek company for my bed, it would be with a man, not a child still longing for his mother's shriveled breast, and more, that should he touch me, I will laugh when his manhood fails to rise. He is as ignorant as a needra, and smells worse. He is uglier than my most disreputable dog and worth less - for my dog can hunt and has less vermin. Tell him his very existence brings shame upon his already honorless ancestors.'

  Suddenly inexplicably gleeful, Iayapa translated. Before he had finished the first sentence, the eyes of every Thuril warrior fixed upon the Lady of the Acoma. By the time the translation of her tirade was completed, their stony stillness frightened her. Her heart banged in her chest. They might easily kill her. Any Tsurani Lord so addressed by a captive would have had her strung up by her neck and kicking. But fate could hardly hold worse than to be dragged into slavery, Mara felt. Whether or not these men would hang her in total dishonor, she showed them nothing but the face of haughty contempt.

  Then the mood broke. All but the target of Mara's insults exploded into knee-slapping peals of mirth. 'The shrew has a tongue for words, did you hear?' someone cried to the insulted man in accented Tsurani. This confirmed that he spoke the language well enough to realise what had been said of him before Iayapa's translation. Several of his companions were laughing so hard they had to sit down, lest their knees buckle. The warrior Mara had berated studied her, then, as color rose into his cheeks, he nodded once.

  Lujan pressed closer to Mara's side as another of the Thuril warriors shouted, waving his bow at Mara in salutation. Made aware by the man's grin that she was not going to be summarily executed, Mara said, 'What did he say?'

  Iayapa shrugged. 'That you know how to insult like a man. It is something of an art among the Thuril, mistress. As I learned well at my mother's knee, they can be a most irritating people.'

  In time the pandemonium subsided. The younger troop banded together and took their leave to resume duty, some still chuckling as they took the outbound trail. Mara's captors, including their red-faced leader, hustled their Tsurani charges around the next bend toward home. Late sunlight slashed across a meadow. Beyond the open ground lay a wooden walled town of steeply peaked roofs.

  Curls of smoke rose from stone chimneys, and the spears of sentries could be seen on the wall walks. The town's position guarded another trail that wound into the hills.

  The highlander warriors quickened the pace, in a hurry to bring in their captive prizes.

  'Strange,' murmured Saric, his indefatigable curiosity still evident despite the rigor of their march and the uncertain fate awaiting him. Unlike any Tsurani, these Thuril seemed indifferent to chatter between their prisoners. 'While this grass offers good grazing for livestock, it is not eaten short, but only cut across by the paths of the flocks and herders.'

  At this comment, the Thuril leader glanced over his shoulder, his lip half curled in contempt. In blatant contradiction of his earlier claim of ignorance of the Tsurani tongue, he said in a mangled accent, 'You should be glad to have an escort through this meadow, Tsurani dog. Without us to show you which path to tread, you would be lost. For this ground is still trapped from the last visit your kind made to our hills!'

  Lujan answered thoughtfully, 'You mean your folk still maintain fortifications from the last war?'

  'But the fighting ceased more than a decade ago,' Saric objected. Lujan confided softly to his cousin, 'Long memories.' Behind his insouciant tones lay foreboding. That the Thuril kept their village guarded with lethal deadfalls after so much time revealed a resentment that would complicate any overtures toward negotiation; as soldier, Lujan had heard the tales told by veterans of the ill-conceived invasion into Thuril. A man was better dead than taken prisoner, to be turned over alive to the vengeful treatment of highlander women.

  But he concealed his fears from Mara as they were herded past the deadly meadow, and on, over a wooden bridge that spanned a moat, fed by a swift-running river. The water rushed over rock snags and whirled in black eddies through pools too swift for a swimmer to cross. As Lujan's eyes measured the possibility of escape across the current, the leader of the highlanders noticed.

  He waved a leather-gauntleted arm at the rock pools. 'Many Tsurani warriors drowned there, sword captain! More broke their necks on the stone, trying in vain to build a rope bridge.' He shrugged, and his grin returned. 'Your commanders are not stupid men, just stubborn. In time, they threw platforms across there' - his cloak fringes danced as he pointed to a ledge by the lowered bridge - 'and there.' He indicated another outcrop farther down. Then, as if warriors from the past still screamed battle cries into the dusk-grey air, he glanced up at the looming wall of the palisade. 'It was a near thing.'

  Mara had pushed through her fatigue to follow the conversation. 'You must have been a very small boy in those times. How do you remember?'

  Distracted by vivid recall, the highlander leader forgot that he answered a woman, 'I was up on the battlement, bringing water to my father and uncles. I helped carry the dead and wounded.' His face twisted into long-nurtured bitterness. 'I remember.'

  He jabbed Lujan forward with a blow and led across the bridge. The looming shadow of the gateway cut off all view of sky and fortifications. The leader answered to a challenge from an unseen sentry then hustled the Tsurani captives through. Lujan took note of the log battlements, faced on the outside with smooth boards, but left unfinished inside, with bark and stubs of branches still left on the trunks, as if the defense works had been erected in haste. 'It must have been a fierce battle.'

  The leader laughed. 'Not that fierce, Tsurani. We were up in the hills by the time the third attack came and your soldiers seized the palisades. Our leaders aren't stupid, either. If your people wanted the village so much, we would let you have it. Taking a place is one thing; holding it is another.' With a sneer of contempt, he added, 'We wouldn't let you have the hills, Tsurani.' He waved broadly toward the peaks that notched the sky above the wall. 'There is our true home. In these valleys, we might build halls and houses to meet, and trade, and celebrate, but our families are raised in the high country. That is where your soldiers died, Tsurani, as we attacked your foragers and pa
trols. Hundreds perished in our raids, until your kind tired of the highlands and went home.'

  By now past the fortifications, and into the avenue of commerce, the party of prisoners attracted notice. Women beating their laundry clean with stones in a wide public basin paused in their work to point and stare. Urchins in colored plaids screamed and ran to look, or stared wide-eyed from behind mothers who carried cloth-wrapped loaves of bread from the baker's. Some of the dirtier, wilder children capered about the bound strangers, shouting; afraid some might fling stones, Lujan jerked his head at his warriors, who jostled closely around their mistress to give what protection they could.

  But no hostilities were offered, beyond glares from middle-aged women, who perhaps had lost sons or husbands to imperial warriors in battle. The donkey bearing Kamlio caused the most furor, as children swooped close with excited chatter. The highlanders fended them off with mock gruffness. Still the little ones shouted. 'It has only four legs!'

  'Why doesn't it fall down?' cried another about the age of Ayaki before he died.

  The soldier who led the beast took the din in good stride, giving the children outrageous answers that made them squeal and scream with laughter.

  After a studied silence, Mara observed, 'If these noisy barbarians intended to kill us, surely the mothers would not let their little ones mingle, but would be hustling them away home.'

  Lujan crowded nearer to his mistress. 'Gods grant you are right, my Lady.' But his thoughts remained apprehensive. He could see the covetous glances Kamlio attracted from the men who passed on the street. The women who bundled up their washing looked sharp-faced and unfriendly, and a groom carrying a water pannikin spat in their direction in contempt. The Thuril were a fierce race, the veterans who had returned alive from fighting in these hills had insisted. Their young were toughened at the knees of mothers who were awarded as battle prizes, or carried off by force in raids.