“Why what?”
Lakhoni fixed an angry look at the man. He couldn’t be that slow, could he? Staring at the man, he asked, “Why are we going to the brick fields?”
“Trade.”
Trade? For the first time, Lakhoni wondered what was in the wagons these oxen were hauling. “What are we trading?”
“Dye. Fer t’bricks.”
Lakhoni swore he heard a smile in the man’s voice. He got in front of him and turned to face him, walking backward. “Sorry, maybe I forgot to introduce myself.” The man was smiling. “I’m Lakhoni, your new cook.”
There was an obvious twinkle in the ox-tender’s eyes now. He smiled. “M’new soup-maker, yuh mean?”
“Fine. Your new soup-maker.”
“M’name’s Regg.” The man chuckled.
“Good to meet you,” Lakhoni said. “Hope you liked the soup.”
“Better than a spear in t’back, at least.”
“Well that’s good.”
“No, that’s middlin’. But it’s all right fer a change.”
Lakhoni waved away the good-humored insult. “Regg, would you mind telling me why we’re going to the brick fields?”
“Nope.”
What a frustrating man! Lakhoni opened his mouth to complain, but then realized what Regg had just said. “Will you please tell me, then?”
“Surely.”
Silence passed. Lakhoni was tired of glancing over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t going astray, so he turned and continued walking to Regg’s left. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” Lakhoni asked.
“Yep.”
“Kind of boring dealing with oxen all day, I guess.”
“Yep.”
Trying not to sigh too loudly, Lakhoni tried again. “Will you tell me, right now, why we’re going to the brick fields?” He hastened to add, “With some detail, please. I’m from a long way away and would like to understand how things work around here.”
Now Regg tossed a grin Lakhoni’s way. “Now you got ‘er.”
Lakhoni just waited. He didn’t have to wait long.
“Paztar and Zello, he’s the fat one, and Hezeron, the one with the chin—they’s all workin’ together t’get dye to the brick fields. At the fields, they’s gonna get a load of special bricks an’ sell ‘em in the city.”
Lakhoni needed a minute to process all of that. He didn’t really understand why it was comforting to know the names of the merchants, but he liked it. He considered a moment. “So we’re going to the brick fields to take dye there?”
“Yep.”
“What’s dye?”
Regg snorted a low laugh. “It’s color. Fer bricks.”
“Why would anyone want to color bricks?”
“Dunno.”
Lakhoni laughed softly. “Will you tell me the name of the other men in the caravan?”
“Yep. You know the merchants, but d’you know t’guards?”
“Three of them. Yed, Razo, and Febol.”
“T’other’s name is Zyron.”
Lakhoni’s shock must have been obvious because Regg continued, “No jokesin’. His mother must’a been outta her mind. We call him Lem.”
“Okay.”
“Then there’re the other tenders.” Regg waved toward the other side of the ox team. “My other half’s Jeno. On t’second wagon is Hani and Musco. On t’first is Cor and Shiz. Cor’s t’one with the arm. That’s everyone.”
Lakhoni had to search his memory of the ox-tenders on the first wagon. The one with the arm? He turned to look ahead, trying to make out the two men about thirty paces ahead of him.
“The arm?” he asked
“He’s got two, but only t’one works.”
“Oh.” Lakhoni resolved to figure out which one was Cor and see what Regg meant by only one working arm. “What about the oxen?”
Regg gave Lakhoni a penetrating look.
Lakhoni thought for a minute, remembering the way Regg’s voice had sounded so far. “T’oxen’s gotta have they own names. They’s more’n jest animals.” He thought he got Regg’s accent pretty accurately.
Regg’s hairless eyebrows rose. Lakhoni worried his joke might have gone too far.
The ox-tender nodded, the corners of his mouth moving up a little. “Not too bad, boy. Yer got an ear, you do.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, they don’t have names. You don’t name food,” Regg said.
“Oh.”
“But I call this ‘un Dara, ‘cause she’s tender-hearted like my cousin.”
“Dara.” Lakhoni moved back, walking behind Regg and putting a hand on the immense animal’s flank. A thick, sweet smell rose from the short haired beast.
As the morning moved toward mid-day, and the caravan started climbing more foothills, approaching the odd-looking mountain range ahead, a strange odor filled the air, getting heavier with the passing of time. Lakhoni scanned their surroundings as they walked, but couldn’t see anything that would cause such a stench.
“Regg,” he called, still behind the man. “What’s that stink?”
“You c’n smell that already?” Regg’s voice wafted over his dark-brown shoulder. “By’t’sor, ye gots a good sniffer on yer. That’s from t’brick fields.”
“So it’s not going away any time soon?”
“You’ll get used to it.”
Lakhoni doubted that. But his curiosity grew as the smell thickened. He was tempted to tie his extra shirt around his face, but nobody else in the caravan reacted to the stench. He didn’t want to stand out.
The odor strengthened as the sun rose higher in the sky and the caravan climbed gently curving switchbacks toward a break in the mountains ahead. The mountains were far different from those he could see from his village. They gave the impression of being wise old men, hunched and rounded with the weight of life and years. As they reached the top, cutting between two of the old mountains, he realized that he could actually see the air. It looked like faintly brown fog; its color and consistency matching the odor that had plagued them all morning.
“Regg,” Lakhoni said. “What is that?”
“Brick fields.”
“No, the air. Why is that fog brown?”
“Brick fields.”
“That’s not brick fields. It’s in the air. The fields are on the ground, right?” The stench didn’t stop at his nose. He tasted rotten meat and a flavor that reminded him of the drink Salno gave to people with chills, and something else that he could not identify.
“Jes’ wait an’ see.”
Lakhoni bit back a retort and focused on the road ahead. The caravan was entering the shadow of the first mountain, following the road as it curved between two large, stone outcroppings that literally looked like the feet of the mountains. Gnarled and covered in scraggly vegetation, the mountainsides sloped directly away from the road. There was no place to turn off the road, and if two wagons had been rolling abreast, they would have probably scraped the scrub-covered rock walls.
Two curves and about an hour later, the caravan emerged from the winding pass, but still found themselves in shadow. Lakhoni glanced up, seeing that the sun was now just behind the mountains. Looking ahead, he saw where the line of the mountain’s shadow ended. And just beyond that—
Lakhoni didn’t know he had stopped until Yed strode up behind him and shoved his shoulder. “Move, pup.”
Incredible waves of heat buffeted him. Before him sprawled an endless lake of yellowish-red mud. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people stood up to their knees in the thick muck. Backs bent, they filled large buckets with mud, using flat tools and even their hands in some cases. Noise filled the air above the lake, joining with the repulsive fog. Groans, shouts, and the crack of whips reached Lakhoni’s ears. Men who had the build of guards stood at the shores of the mud lake, shouting at the workers, their long whips snaking out to prod the slow ones.
As Lakhoni followed the caravan down the gradual switchbacks toward the va
lley floor, he saw that some of the workers had ropes looped around their waist, the other end of the ropes fastened to the buckets. He watched two workers lean away from a full bucket and start walking, obviously with some difficulty. The bucket resisted for a moment, then began moving across the surface of the mud. Looking closer, he saw two flat and wide boards attached to the bottom of the bucket. These allowed the bucket to slide across the surface of the muck.
The caravan continued down the road, finally arriving on flat land. Noise, stench, and a feeling of desperation filled Lakhoni’s senses. At the ox-tenders’ prodding, the wagons were pulled sharply away from the mud lake toward a series of broad, low buildings that were obviously made of the bricks formed from the lake. Tiles formed neat rows on the roofs of the buildings. Between the buildings and the lake sprouted what looked like hundreds of huge balls buried halfway in the baked earth.
Peering at the domes, Lakhoni watched three men pulling on taut ropes, slowly hauling something out of the wide, short door of one of the structures. It was a huge, flat piece of stone, rolling out of the dome on a series of round logs placed next to each other. On the flat stone sat a number of bricks. When the men had the brick-laden stone out of the door, Lakhoni bent to get a look inside. He saw the orange glow of coals. This, he decided, wiping sweat from his face, had to be the source of the heat. The ovens had to help the mud harden quicker.
The oxen complained as their tenders bade them stop. They probably didn’t like the heat either. A party of men emerged from the nearest building, their clothes in much better repair than the rags on many of the workers. Lakhoni moved to stand next to Regg. He couldn’t imagine spending an hour in the sticky mud, much less calling such a miserable existence home. How could a man spend more than a day here without the stench driving him mad? No wonder Mibli had talked about sending Lakhoni here.
“Why would somebody ever work here?” Lakhoni asked.
Regg gave him a surprised look. “Nobody with their head right’d want to work here. This’s where crim’nals go. Murderers, thieves . . . This here’s their home.”
Of course. “So it’s a prison,” Lakhoni said. The men with whips should have been enough for him to figure it out.
Regg shook his head, his expression serious. “Prison’d be paradise compared to this.” He waved his hand toward the lake. “This’s the brick fields.”
Chapter 34
The Brick Fields
Lakhoni tried to avoid the eyes of the many guards that wandered the fields, lashing out at workers who displeased them in some way. This was not the kind of place where he wanted to get attention. Instead, he watched the exchange between the three merchants of the caravan and the men who had come out of the building.
Zello gestured at one of his ox-tenders, saying something Lakhoni couldn’t make out. The ox-tender, this was Cor, went to the back of Zello’s wagon and removed the pins that held the hinged backboard up. He did this with his left hand, his right hand hanging loose. That’s what Regg meant about the arm. Lowering the board, Cor reached into the wagon and pulled out something that looked like a cross between a brick and a loaf of bread.
Cor carried the darkly colored thing carefully, holding it out for the men from the building to see. One man produced a knife and quickly cut a corner off the thing, which obviously wasn’t a brick.
“What is that?” Lakhoni asked Regg, his voice soft.
“Toldja. It’s dye.”
“That’s what dye looks like?”
“A cake of die, yep.”
Now Zello lead the group of men to the back of his wagon and nodded at Shiz, his other ox-tender, to pull the heavy-woven cloth off the top of the load. Dye cakes filled the wagon up to just under the tops of the side boards. Next, Hezeron strode to the back of his wagon, also signaling his ox-tenders as he went.
Finally, Paztar signaled Regg and Jeno to open his wagon for the men to see. Lakhoni stepped back a few paces, not wanting to get in the way. The men inspected the dye cakes closely again, ignoring the casks of water and other supplies that filled half of Paztar’s cart. Then the three merchants and the men from the brick fields walked together toward the building the men had come from. They disappeared into the darkness.
Lakhoni looked questioningly at Regg.
“Now we wait. They’s gonna have a meal and hash out t’price. Then we unload dye and load bricks. Then we go.”
Pleased at the prospect of getting away from the sickening miasma of the fields, as well as leaving the sight of so many men in total misery behind, Lakhoni nodded.
To the fires with it, he decided and reached into his bag. He pulled his extra shirt out and doubled it over itself several times, then knotted it around his mouth and nose. Much better.
“Won’t last long,” Regg said. “Can’t keep this smell away for long, no matter whatcha do.”
Lakhoni shrugged, not caring. If it provided ten seconds of relief, that would be worth it. With the stench and cloying taste of the air gone for the moment, Lakhoni looked closer at the bricks being produced by the prisoners of the brick fields. They were all the same size, about a half-hand wide and two hands long. But some were smooth and unbroken, while others were hollowed out somewhat in the middle. Still others had intricate patterns scratched into them.
Lakhoni counted the bricks sitting on the cooling slab of stone that had come out of the oven nearest him. Fifty. They stood in neat rows, with three hollow cylinders cut out of the middle of each one.
He estimated the number of ovens to be at least a couple hundred. If each oven only did one set of bricks a day, that would be . . . he tried to remember the figuring his father had taught him. Two fives in ten. Two fifties in a hundred. That meant twenty ovens could make a thousand bricks. Two hundred ovens—that meant ten thousand bricks! Fathers, I could never use half of those bricks in a lifetime.
But the things on another cooling slab of stone weren’t bricks. He walked closer, careful to stay out of the guards’ and workers’ way.
“Lakhoni, you wanna be careful there,” Regg called.
Holding up a hand and nodding to show he had heard Regg, he bent closer. Those had to be roof tiles, but they were a deep red color and had a different shape. They looked like the scales of fish.
Lakhoni walked back to the caravan, his head spinning. Hundreds of prisoners making thousands of tiles and bricks. And whoever was in charge of the operation had to be incredibly rich! Zyron. It has to be, if this is where criminals go. Anger built in him like the fires in the brick ovens. More misery and pain, all to make him richer. More reason for justice.
When he arrived back at the caravan, Lakhoni pitched in as ox-tenders began to unload the food casks from Paztar’s wagon. Taking his signal from Yed, who appeared to be the leader of the unit of guards with the merchant wagons, Lakhoni dug through the food available, turning up some wrapped, cured meat, some aging cheese, and a bag of wizened apples. He set things out on the lids of boxes, and realized that, despite the horrible stench that was now seeping through his cloth mask, he was hungry.
“Why does it smell so bad?” Lakhoni asked nobody in particular around a bite of meat and cheese. The useless shirt-mask was back in its home in his bag.
A minute passed where the grouped tenders and guards simply focused on their meal. Sighing loudly, Regg finally responded. “It’s t’bog.”
“Bog? What’s a bog?” Lakhoni said.
Razo scoffed loudly. “The pup knows nothing!” The other guards and a few of the ox-tenders erupted into laughter.
Lakhoni held back a retort, knowing he shouldn’t antagonize these men. He was so close now; he had to be careful.
“That’s a bog,” Yed said, his voice garbled by a mouthful of lunch. He indicated the mud lake behind Lakhoni.
Fearing his lack of knowledge would add fuel to the teasing of Razo, but curious to understand better, Lakhoni hesitated. Maybe it would just be better to wait and ask Regg for more details when the others weren’t around. Things
like how the bog worked and why it smelled so bad. He glanced around at the constant activity. So many guards prodding and yelling at so many men created a nearly unbroken tumult of shouts and cries. It was as if the bog itself were groaning. As Lakhoni watched a pair of workers haul a bucket of mud, he thought he saw a bubble roll up to the surface of the bog and release a small cloud of thick, awful-looking air.
Another team of two men stood at each station where the buckets of fresh mud had been left. These men hauled out armfuls of the mud and dumped it onto what Lakhoni first thought were simple wooden frames. Upon closer look, he realized that the bottom of the wooden frames was made of very tightly woven reeds or something similar. Dark water seeped out the bottom of what Lakhoni decided to call the mud filters. The men at each frame/filter squeezed and worked the mud, with some of the teams intermittently bending down to break pieces off of dye cakes. Some filter stations had a large stack of dye cakes near it. This was where the roof tiles got their color!
Finally, at some point, the men apparently decided that the mud had lost enough water. And in the cases where dye was used, they made sure it was mixed well into the mud. Next, Lakhoni watched two men shape a pile of colored mud into a roof tile shape, using wood forms and packing the mud tightly. They scraped the shape clean and moved to the next one, leaving their shaped tile to be baked in the hot domes.
Several guards patrolled the bog’s edge, bellowing at the men harvesting mud to move faster. Other guards walked up and down the long, curving row of mud-shaping teams with their filters and platforms, making liberal use of their whips to prod the men along. The same thing happened with the teams of men working on moving the platforms up the gradual slope, always on paths of rounded logs, and into the dome ovens.
“Never seen not’in like it, didja?”
Lakhoni tore his eyes from the sight of so many men desperately working to avoid the lash. Regg had moved closer and now sat on a medium-sized rock to Lakhoni’s right.
“It’s amazing,” Lakhoni said. The approach to and scale of the work was undeniably impressive. But the sheer misery of making the bricks and clay roofing tiles under the obviously cruel lash of the king’s guards infuriated him. Zyron’s cruelty obviously knew no bounds. Lakhoni suddenly hungered for his moment with the king.
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