The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  “But I’m only a stupid old Kitchen slave, aren’t I?” said Catering with a sly smile. “And made without eyes, so I must feel my way about. Before I was a slave, I saw in all directions, like the sun. But now, by the wisdom of the masters, I’m only a poor blind slave.”

  Blind he may have been, but his hand found Lady Pirihine with no trouble and lingered on her.

  “You will remove your hand at once,” said Lady Pirihine. Catering obeyed, with pretended surprise. A second later his hand was on her again.

  “What’s giving me orders, in such a proud voice? It can’t be a mistress! They wouldn’t send one of their own down here, would they, where a low thing like me could play with her? Could a great lady really fall so far?”

  “Remove your hand,” said Lady Pirihine.

  “I obey! And now I touch you again. How smooth you are.”

  “Stop it!” said Grattur in agony. Gard, who had looked on in disgust, pitied him.

  “You fool!” said Engrattur.

  Catering raised his face in their direction and sneered. “What are you afraid of? Didn’t the masters send her down here as an example? Let her have a little taste of what we endure. We won’t be punished.”

  “Take your hand away and keep it away,” said Lady Pirihine.

  “What, this hand? Of course, Lady! A poor slave must obey your exact word.” Catering reached out the other hand and fondled her.

  “I shall remember that you stood by and did nothing,” said Lady Pirihine to Grattur and Engrattur.

  “Lady, we are only slaves,” they wept.

  White anger rose up in Gard. He stood in his seat and grabbed Catering’s hand, and wrenched the fingers backward so they broke. Catering screamed with pain, high and shrill as a mouse. He swung his other hand and caught Gard across the ribs, knocked him from his seat and very nearly into the great fire. Gard lay gasping, feeling his heart falter with the force of the blow. Catering clutched his broken hand, weaving his head to and fro, trying to pick up the scent of his enemy.

  “Cripple!” he shrieked. “Be glad you’ll never eat again!”

  He came at Gard, his cart rumbling after him, and Gard rolled aside and staggered to his feet. He ran from the fire’s edge. Catering swung around, sensing where he’d gone, and grabbed for him; but in doing so the cart swung into the fire and remained there. The demons began to roar, pounding their fists.

  Having snatched Gard’s shoulder, Catering clutched and pulled him close, gnashing broad yellow teeth.

  Gard writhed out of his grasp. I will kill him or he will kill me, he thought, and became strangely calm, in spite of all the uproar, untroubled as a stone. Shame, guilt, and fear all dropped away. Even his white anger dropped away. There was only the moment. There was only the question: Which of us will die?

  He leaped and got his arms around Catering’s long neck and gripped close. This was the way he had killed the white demon of the snows. The bear. He hadn’t known it was a bear. He hadn’t known much of anything, then. How long ago had that been? How many years had gone by, as he labored here under black rock?

  Catering choked and fought him, clawing at him with the unbroken hand, and now with a new urgency; for the cart was in flames. He lurched forward and swung the blazing cart from side to side, trying to shake it free. Water was flung out and hissed in the fire, sending up clouds of steam to the ceiling of the cavern. Grattur and Engrattur yelled in dismay and ran for armfuls of fuel lest the fire go out.

  Gard released his grip and dropped, catching Catering’s other hand as he fell. He twisted it and heard bone snapping. Catering screamed again and waved his arms in the air. “Filth in your drink! Filth in your food! Shit! Vomit! Piss!”

  The fire had eaten as far as the traces of the cart now, and Catering danced madly to try to throw it off. The water tank went flying, shattering on the cavern wall. Gard scrambled out of the way and grabbed a potsherd, sharp as a flint blade. Running in under Catering’s swung arm, he stabbed upward and cut across the throat.

  Catering jerked. He made a clutching motion at his neck. He stumbled and fell sidelong, still kicking at the remains of the cart. Gard grabbed a piece of the broken cart and clubbed him with it, once and twice and again until he stopped moving, and thought only regretfully, Now he is free.

  Gard dropped the club and staggered back, gulping painfully for breath. His fellow laborers were hooting, applauding, howling abuse at Catering. Lady Pirihine was watching him, rapt. Grattur came close and put a hand on his shoulder, as Engrattur stoked the fire.

  “Oh, little brother, this is a bad business,” Grattur said. “But it was well done.”

  “It was well done,” said Engrattur. “But he was a useful slave.”

  “What are you feeling? You never shouted, you never snarled.”

  “Your face was as calm as though you were dreaming, the whole time.”

  “You’ll be beaten for this, or worse.”

  “Still”—Engrattur leaned in close, dropping his voice, and jerked a thumb in the direction of Lady Pirihine—”that one will remember.”

  15th day 1st week 11th month in the 243rd year from the Ascent of the Mountain. This day, Slave 4372301 reassigned to Blood Amusements.

  “You must be mad,” scolded Triphammer. “Raise your arms and take a deep breath. No pain now? … Good. The ribs are almost mended, you heal uncommon fast. There you were with that nice safe job, all you had to do was keep your head down and work hard and no one would ever have noticed you. Might have lived for years. Look at you now! You’ll see a lot more of me, I can tell you that. Do you know what the life expectancy is, up here? It’s measured in months.”

  “It’s a nicer room,” said Gard mildly. He had a raised bed on a pallet and had been brought far better food during his convalescence than ever Catering had carried. The air was warmer, for the hypocaust at which he had labored so many years down below was now sending its benefits up to him. He had even been given clothing.

  “Nicer? Yes, of course it is, you fool. They want to keep you fit. Not much fun for them to watch a poor invalid stumbling about in the arena! Though to be truthful there are one or two who would … Well, it could be worse, I suppose. You might beat the odds. It’s been known to happen,” said Triphammer, unwinding bandages.

  He tapped Gard’s sides a few times, frowning. “Remarkable. Never have guessed they’d been broken at all. Magister Hoptriot would be interested to have a look at you, these days. You don’t want his attention back on you, though. No, no. He’d only open you up to see what makes you different.”

  “Who’s this Duke Silverpoint I’m to see, then?” said Gard. “Is he another of the masters?”

  “The duke? Bless you, no!” Triphammer grinned. “He’s one of my people. That is to say, we’re not kindred or anything—hai, he’s so far above me it makes my nose bleed even to think of it. Went into the mountains searching for an enemy of his noble family, I heard. Tracked the man for days to settle a blood debt, killed the bastard too, but then a blizzard came howling down and the masters found him.

  “Now he’s their weapons master. Quality just rises, you know. He’ll train you. We’re good at that, we Children of the Sun. You mind you pay attention to him! He’ll have something useful to teach you. Not like those fool demons!”

  Halfway along the corridor to the Training Hall, Triphammer looked over his shoulder, cleared his throat, and whispered to Gard, “You, er, should know that he isn’t properly called duke down here. The masters don’t like it. Took away his title, but they still can’t make him a slave like the rest of us, ha ha!”

  They emerged into a great hall. It was no raw stone cavern like the Pumping Station; the walls were dressed and finished stone, the ceiling a high barrel-vault. No fire pit, but three dozen oil lamps burned bright. Nor was the floor stone, but smoothed planks of wood, and a thick mat covered the center part of it.

  At the far end of the room a man sat, making marks on a scroll. That’s writing, thought Gard.
He was a learned man, then. Beside him, Triphammer seemed to shrink as they approached the table where the man worked. Triphammer’s smile grew ingratiating, he wrung his hands and bent low.

  “My lord,” he said. The man looked up. Though their skins were the same color Gard would not otherwise have known they were any kind of kindred, so little and wrinkled and grubby did Triphammer seem by comparison. “Here’s the big greenie that’s been sent up from downstairs, sir. Look at the arms on him, eh? You can do a lot with a promising fellow like this, I daresay. He’s a good sort too, minds his manners, not like the demons. You’ll like this one.”

  “Leave us, Triphammer,” said Silverpoint.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. And he heals fast, you’ll be pleased to know, sir.”

  “Out, Triphammer.”

  “Just going, sir.”

  Gard turned and stared to watch Triphammer backing out of Silverpoint’s presence, all the way down the hall. When Gard turned around again, Silverpoint was regarding him with a critical eye.

  His face was aquiline and stern, smooth as though carved from stone, his gaze cold and thoughtful. When he stood, Gard saw that he was easily a head taller than Triphammer.

  He came from behind the table and walked slowly around Gard, looking him over. “Raise your arms,” he said. Gard obliged him. He studied Gard’s chest a moment, nodding. He looked down at his legs. “These have been rebuilt. What happened to them?”

  “They froze,” said Gard, thinking that was an odd way to phrase it. “I was lame for a long time.”

  Silverpoint raised one eyebrow. “Any weakness now?”

  “No.”

  Silverpoint nodded again. He stood back a few paces and studied Gard from that distance, frowning. “What race are you?”

  Gard shrugged. “I was a foundling.”

  “Some mongrel, then. You heal like a demon, but you haven’t the look in your eyes. Among what people were you raised?”

  “… We lived in the forest.”

  “I see.”

  After a pause, Silverpoint walked toward him again. Without warning, he struck Gard full in the face. Gard had him by the wrist before he could draw his hand back. Their gazes locked. “Why did you strike me?”

  “To see what you’d do,” said Silverpoint. Gard released him. Silverpoint withdrew to the table again. Sitting down, he took up his pen. “I was told you killed another slave.”

  “I did.”

  “Tell me about it, if you please.”

  Gard described his fight with Catering. Silverpoint listened closely, only taking his eyes from Gard’s face now and then to note something down. When Gard had done, Silverpoint said, “I understand you killed a bear of the snows, also. Is this true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  Gard told what he could remember of killing the bear.

  “And was that the first time you had killed?”

  “No.”

  “Ah. Were you a great hunter among your people?” Silverpoint said with a degree of condescension as he wrote something down.

  Gard felt a prickle of irritation, but kept it out of his voice. “Not of beasts, no. I killed men.”

  “Did you, now?” Silverpoint looked up. “And how did you come to be killing men?”

  Gard drew a deep breath as he realized he hadn’t thought of the past in years and didn’t want to think of it now. But he told the story and did not leave out what he had done to Ranwyr. Silverpoint listened without writing, staring at him the whole while.

  Gard finished his story and fell silent.

  The silence dragged on a moment or two before Silverpoint leaned back in his chair. “Thank you.” He took his pen and wrote a little while. Without looking up, he asked, “What weapon did you use the most?”

  “My spear.”

  “What others?”

  “Knives. And nets, sometimes.”

  “No swords?”

  Gard blinked. The Translator showed him an image of the long knives he had seen the guards carrying. “No.”

  “Very well.” Silverpoint wrote something more and underscored it; then laid aside the pen and looked up at Gard. “Listen closely, slave.

  “Our masters are a mongrel pack drawn from the most degenerate races of the earth. They are cowardly and lazy—as mages tend to be—and, of late, somewhat inbred. Cruel, also. When not fighting amongst themselves for dominion over this wretched anthill, it amuses them to watch their slaves suffer death at one another’s hands in the arena.

  “Now, you would suppose that they would very shortly run out of slaves, living as they do in this remote spot. And so they would, if the majority of their slaves weren’t demons they have bodied and bound to their service.

  “A bound demon, cut to pieces, cannot escape its service; the masters merely summon its spirit back from the void and make it a new body. This diminishes the pleasure of the sport, as you might imagine, since a certain element of suspense is lacking.

  “The demons, therefore, are given rewards for which they compete: new bodies more powerful, more attractive, better equipped to enjoy physical existence. And so they roar insults at each other as they wade across the sand, and boast of the terrible things they will do, and hack away at each other with something approaching enthusiasm.

  “It is all depressingly theatrical and, on the whole, a disgusting way to live. But it is the only life they are permitted.

  “And even this palls on our masters, in time.

  “Accordingly, they reserve a special stable of fighters. Slaves, such as yourself, whom they did not body and have not bound to their service. Slaves for whom there is no return to life, if they die in the arena. These have a greater incentive to fight well.

  “You have heard all this and haven’t so much as turned pale. What are you thinking, slave? Are you afraid?”

  Gard thought about it. “No.”

  “Why not, slave?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you wish for death, then? Perhaps for bringing such a death on your brother?”

  Gard thought about that too. “No,” he said at last. “I never meant to kill him. And if I die, I can never atone. I would rather live to get out of this place.”

  Silverpoint nodded. “I can train you. Yes, I think I can.”

  Training was as monotonous as working the gears in the Pumping Station, very similar really; Gard found he was expected to hold a weighted stick straight out at arm’s length, and lunge, and retreat, in any one of several postures endlessly recited by Duke Silverpoint. Silverpoint sounded bored, almost sleepy the whole time, and no wonder; for the exercises dragged on for hours without change. Gard endured them.

  He liked better the times when he was given a spear and permitted to attack a dummy stuffed with dead leaves, though it seemed a little silly. Silverpoint watched him closely at these times, saying little. After a month or so of observation Silverpoint began to request a particular angle of attack, or objective.

  “How would you strike to disembowel your enemy? How to blind him? How to kill instantly? How to bring him to his knees in humiliation, but spare his life?”

  Gard would oblige, and Silverpoint would nod and look thoughtful. Next he attached colored rags to various vital spots on the dummy and intoned for hour upon weary hour, “Red-green-yellow. Red-yellow. Red-yellow-red-green.”

  And Gard struck, and struck, and endured, though the dummy died a thousand deaths in a week. He thought of it as a Rider.

  Sometimes other men would come into the great hall to practice, or to lounge and watch Gard as he strove with the dummy.

  “Why are you wasting your time on this mongrel?” one of them said to Duke Silverpoint one afternoon. Gard did not turn from his task, which was to bound from a standing start and, vaulting over the dummy, strike down through its shoulder to its heart. As he landed, however, he swung on his heel to regard the speaker.

  It was a man of the same race as Silverpoint and Triphammer,
bigger and younger than either. Gard had seen him a few times, practicing with a blade or staff.

  “He shows promise,” said Silverpoint. “You couldn’t do so much, when you’d been six months in this hall.”

  “Is that so?” The fighter grinned at Gard. “But what is he? Some demon of the mountains jumped his mother, eh? I’ve never seen a greenie in clothes before. Looks damned funny. What, Greenie, you don’t like my tone?”

  Gard shrugged. He turned and killed the dummy three times in quick succession: through the heart, across the throat, through the kidneys.

  “He reasons like a man,” said Silverpoint. “And understands you, Quickfire.”

  “Really? Doesn’t look intelligent. I suppose he’s a Repeater?”

  “No.”

  “A demon, and no Repeater? Hey, Greenie, are you a onetimer?”

  “Am I permitted to talk?” Gard asked of Silverpoint.

  Silverpoint nodded. “This is only a fighter, no higher in rank than you are.”

  “I take exception to that,” said Quickfire.

  “Then, Greenie, I don’t like your tone,” said Gard.

  Quickfire blinked at him. “No, no—you’re the greenie. You can’t call me one. It isn’t a generic insult, it’s an ethnic one. If I call you a knuckle-dragging, sister-fucking, leaf-wearing branch-swinger, does that get the message across any more clearly?”

  “He is trying to provoke you into fighting with him,” said Silverpoint.

  “Thank you, I had understood that,” said Gard. “May I fight with him?”

  “If you wish,” said Silverpoint. “But you may not kill him.”

  Quickfire shouted with laughter at that. He went to a blade rack and selected two sabers and tossed one to Gard. Gard caught it and hefted it; it was an old practice blade. It balanced badly in the hand. A ragged edge on the guard was all too likely to open his knuckles. He shook his head and returned the saber to its place, selecting a better one.

  “He has taken your measure, Quickfire,” said Silverpoint with only a trace of amusement.

  “What? I grabbed it up purely by chance,” said Quickfire.