by Carol Berg
And he must be. He defies you with his lack of fear. What will he do when you tell him to die for you? Will you have to tell him twice?
“Bind him,” I said. “Ten lashes. Five for making me say it twice, and five for thinking I wouldn’t notice that he shortened the time.”
Lak started to protest, but I raised my hand. “One word . . . one whimper . . . one cry, and there will be ten more . . . and ten more after that.”
I laid on the first two stripes myself, as a symbol of my authority, and then gave the whip to one of the other men who could do a better job of it. When it was done, I returned to my tent and had my slave bring water to wash off the blood and flesh that had spattered on me.
The Lords were pleased: It was necessary. . . . Not pleasant . . . Perhaps now he will live to serve you. . . . You learn the hardships of command. . . .
I did not go out the rest of that afternoon. That way the others could clean Lak’s wounds without me seeing it. It would bind them together in fear of me.
Well done . . .
For several months more I trained my nine soldiers long and hard, punishing them severely for the least imperfection. Lak and I no longer practiced together. On the day after I had him lashed, I made him get out and run with the others and do every exercise his comrades did. His hatred followed me about like the shadows of the desert afternoon.
Day after day we drilled in the broiling sun, fighting with lead-weighted cudgels to gain strength, striking at wooden posts to practice footwork and precision with swords and pikes, practicing with blindfolds to develop perception and with hobbled feet to develop balance. Finally I decided my troop was ready for testing. We brought in twenty-five practice slaves to fight us. It was a good day. Only one of my nine soldiers was wounded, while seven slaves were killed. On another day we sent fifty slaves into the cliffs. Each was given a skin of water and a supply of graybread. I allowed them a day’s start and told them that they could have their freedom if they could keep it. On the next morning we started hunting, using all our skills to track them down. Some had banded together to fight or to ambush us; some had gone their own way. Within three days we had them all back, except for three who had tried to bring down an avalanche on us and were themselves crushed by it. My men had no wounds.
It was my idea to leave the slave pen unlocked on the night we put the slaves back, thinking that their short taste of freedom might induce them to run again. I was right, and my troop and I chased them all down again on the next two days. I didn’t permit my men to sleep until every slave was retaken, and I had the slavekeeper lashed severely for leaving the pen unlocked. He didn’t know that I had done it. He believed he deserved the beating. It made a good lesson for the men.
On the morning after we recaptured the slaves, I came out of my tent and looked down the hill to see my troop and their tents, weapons, and horses gone. “Where are they?” I demanded.
Kovrack was stretching and drinking his cavet as usual. “Reassigned. I don’t know where, and you shall not.”
“On whose orders?” A stupid question. I knew whose orders. Why? We were working well. They were afraid of me. They would do anything I commanded.
Parven answered. You know very well why—because of who you are and what you will become. Your time in the camps is done.
When I returned to my house in Zhev’Na, Sefaro and the other slaves were gone, replaced by new ones with no names. I was not told where they had been taken. I assumed they were dead, and if not, then my asking would make it so. A new swordmaster met me in the fencing yard, and a new teacher of hand combat, and a new riding master. All of them had strange eyes and no smiles, and they taunted and ridiculed my incomplete skills until I hated them.
I was not to be comfortable. There were hard lessons to be learned. I tried to remember what I had been before I came to Zhev’Na, but I could not, except that I had been afraid all the time. I was no longer afraid. Fear had been stripped away along with my softness and weakness until I was as hard and bare and exposed as the red cliffs of the desert. Never again would I shed a tear into a pillow. I didn’t even remember how.
CHAPTER 31
V’Saro
My feet were the worst, blistered and cracked and raw. Every step was its own battle. First the stomach clenched in apprehension, and the spirit steeled itself for the violence to come. Next, the waves of blistering heat that poured off the oven of the desert sniped at the skin like the initial forays of the enemy. And last came the assault itself, as raw flesh met salt-crusted sand and wind-scoured rock, heated to broiling by the fireball of the sun.
I longed for my boots. Who would expect that a man’s life could be reduced to the consideration of a single step and an unbridled lust for a ten-year-old pair of scuffed boots? They had been fine boots, coaxed into such softness and perfect shape that my foot settled into them like an egg in a nest. I had given B’Dallo’s pimpled son B’Isander three fencing lessons in exchange for them. It was a fine bargain for B’Dallo, as my fee was usually higher, but good bootmakers had become rarer than good swordmasters in the last years of the war.
The last years of the war . . . We’d thought it was over when Prince D’Natheil returned to Avonar after his victory at the Exiles’ Gate. Our troops—never truly an army, only sorcerers of every profession converted to soldiers—dispersed. We came out of hiding and believed we could take up where our families had left off hundreds of years ago. Fools like me said that those of us born in Sen Ystar could go back and rebuild a life in our long-abandoned village, lay down a path of beauty for our children to walk—or perhaps meet a fair Dar’Nethi woman with whom to lay down a path of beautiful children. But we learned our mistake, and so some hollow-eyed devil of a Zhid was wearing my magnificent boots, while I . . . I had to take another step.
We in Sen Ystar had heard nothing of renewed attacks by the Zhid and had gone about our business that day with hope and joy. Fen’Lyro, the miller, had called a Builder to reconstruct his wheel, and we had all been drawn to watch by the beauty of the Builder’s voice. He sang the spokes and shanks into place, completing the perfection of the wheel with a burst of melody that drew sighs from several village girls who knew the Builder had no wife. Girls did not swoon over swordmasters.
My art would die away with peace. Though I rejoiced with everyone else at the happy results of Prince D’Natheil’s journey, I’d not yet come to terms with that. I had thought of taking a mentor for smithing, but what I loved about swords was not the metal. I had no knack for smithing anyway. I couldn’t sharpen a nail without three files, nor once done, persuade it to stay that way. It was not even the art of swordsmanship I cared for—the grace and strength so smoothly joined—but more the logical puzzle of it. Move, countermove, thrust, parry. What were the myriad possibilities, and what was the remedy for each, all perceived and analyzed in a heartbeat. No formless metal could provide the challenge that did an opponent’s mind and body.
So what good had my art done me when the Seeking of the Zhid crept through the streets of Sen Ystar? The icy fingers of the Zhid took one of us and then another as we so blithely celebrated the beauty of Fen’Lyro’s mill wheel. The food and wine were probably still there, abandoned on the long tables set out on the snow-dusted grass. . . .
No, best not to think of food or wine. In a single day we captives were given one fist-sized lump of bread, gray and unhealthy-looking, and two cups of water, doled out two mouthfuls at a time. And how many of those days had there been? Six . . . seven . . . eight . . .
Few villagers were left by the time we were herded through the portal into the Wastes and chained to the dolorous column of captives. It was, perhaps, not a good day to be a proficient warrior. Surely the life of the dead in L’Tiere would be better than the endless desert, and with every painful step I envied those who had found their way beyond the Verges . . . so many that I knew. One of the last to fall was B’Isander, who had learned well from my three fencing lessons so many years ago.
&
nbsp; But no Dar’Nethi grieves for long. He takes in what is told by time and makes it part of him, and then goes on . . . another step along the Way, no matter how bitter. Aarrgh . . . The sand cuts like glass.
At least I had my mind still, no small matter when dealing with the Zhid. Luca the Singer, M’Aritze the Word Winder, and Bas’Tel the Smith—they were made Zhid—and they, and others who met the same fate, helped to round up the rest of us to be taken into the Wastes. No one knew for certain how the Zhid chose those who were to become like them, and those who would be only slaves. Some said it was the level of power one had attained. Perhaps that was true, for I was a slave, whereas the Builder had become Zhid and cut Fen’Lyro’s throat, for whom he had spent all day singing a wheel.
“On your feet, slave,” snarled a voice in my ear, and the inevitable lash followed, temporarily removing any thought of my feet. I wasn’t even aware I had fallen. I managed to get up before my neck-chain played out its length, no easy matter when one’s wrists are bound so tightly. I had seen two or three who had been dragged along so far by the slow-moving column that they were not recognizable as men by the time they were cut loose. I had always considered myself exceptionally strong and enduring, but after the fall I began to wonder if I, too, would be left for the vultures like so many of our number. We had started out a hundred and fifty, mostly men, a few sturdy women of middle years, but had lost at least eighteen. The women did better, a sobering thought for one who believed himself possessed of few “woman’s frailties.”
Another few hours and I could no longer summon a rational thought. On the horizon loomed a fortress, tall and severe and so very dark, even in the harsh desert glare. The mere sight of it engulfed my spirit in such sorrow and desolation that I groaned aloud. I didn’t notice the lash this time, for the unnamable pain inside was far, far worse.
Before too long the sun had settled onto the western horizon, and the column started to slow and the prisoners to draw close to each other to capture the heat before all of it was sucked into the frigid night. Our captors usually allowed us to do so, but not this time. “Spread out. Full speed. We’re due in the pens by midnight. No rests and no slowing.”
It was probably as well. I didn’t know whether or not I could survive another freezing night in the open, only to face another blistering sunrise.
Two more dead men were cut from the chain before we arrived at the top of a low rise and could look down upon the army of the Lords. Those of us who remained living and able to comprehend what our eyes rested on gazed with awe upon the magnitude of our enemies, a dark mass sprawled across the desert all the way to the horizon. For twenty years I had fought upon the walls of Avonar and complained with my fellows about the endless waves of the Zhid. But never had I considered my words to be the literal truth.
We were marched straight through the crowded encampment, the mass of tents and campfires and faces forming a blurred chain of light and dark, strung together with hatred. You could feel it from every side, colder than the night wind that billowed the canvas tents and swirled ashes and sand into our burning, crusted eyes. They gathered along the track as we passed, silent except for the low hiss that we who had fought the Zhid for so long knew as the sign of their contempt.
“Don’t listen. Don’t let it inside you,” I whispered, first to myself, and then to the youth chained beside me. Even under his sun-reddened skin he was pale, and his cracked and blistered lips quivered. It took a person years of seasoning to slough off the hiss of the Zhid. “Put one foot in front of the other.”
The end of our bitter road loomed before us, a fence of black iron rods, the upright bars spaced no more than two finger-widths apart—no, not a fence, but a cage, for the bars extended up and over the top. No doubt the crosspieces that glinted in the torchlight were the same silvery metal as our chains. Dolemar it was called, the sorcerer’s binding, for it prevented any use of magical power. Some said that if a man was bound by dolemar for too long he would go mad, just from the excess of power that built up in him, impossible to spend. A Dar’Nethi could no more stop taking in the experiences of life and building his power than he could stop taking in air, so perhaps it was true. Such was our Way.
As we approached the fence, a gate swung open. Each prisoner was detached from the column, then herded into the brightly lit enclosure that was just too low to allow a tall man to stand up straight. The cage would not be pleasant in the heat of desert daylight, but I supposed that “pleasant” would have to be banished from my vocabulary, or redefined to mean such sensations as sinking onto the straw-covered ground and letting burning, grit-filled eyelids shut out the horror.
Our respite did not last long. Torchlight and voices dragged me back to the cold night from wherever a moment’s dreams had taken me.
“Are they ready inside, then? We push to make the deadline, only to have them not even ready. Burns me, it does.” That was one of our guards, a squat Zhid with a narrow head.
“Shut up, and get this lot sorted. We’ve got to get ’em collared before the slavemaster comes.”
“He’ll be shiv’d when he sees the poor take. Only a few likelies for the practice pens. A few for house duty. The rest’ll be for the mines and the farms.”
“Just get them inside and secured. Makes me twitchy just having them caged and not collared.”
Using elbows and my bound hands, I forced my aching bones to sit up and lean against the bars, and immediately wished I hadn’t. The bars were cold, and my back was so raw from sunburn and lashing that it felt like being speared with icicles. My expletive woke the youth who had been chained beside me for eight days and had seen fit to curl up to sleep on my legs.
“What’s happening?” said the boy, who must have been somewhere near sixteen, though I was sure he’d aged a lifetime in the past days.
“No idea. They’ve uses for us. If we’re not dead and have half a mind left, then there’s hope.”
The boy shivered and shook his head. I wasn’t sure I believed it either.
“Wake, pigs,” screamed a guard. “If you want to feed your worthless faces or wet your foul tongues, then you need to line up by the door in the far wall. One at a time.”
In the early days of our march I had witnessed struggles to get free, desperate attempts to muster power enough to break the bindings, to sharpen a stick for a weapon, to lure a stone into a hand. Once, on the first night, I had believed that someone was trying to speak in my mind with images of such beauty and hope that I lay awake, awaiting the rescuers that I was sure would fall upon our captors. Two days in the desert had ended all such futile endeavors and empty visions. Then came pleas for help, for Healers, for water, and prayers begging courage and strength. Two more days had silenced us all.
As we dragged ourselves to the back wall of the cage where a steel door opened into a dark, low building, the only sounds were the clank of chains and the soft weeping of those who could not rise. We tried to help them, but at the door any who couldn’t walk on their own were shoved back into the cage. My youthful comrade was among those left behind. He huddled in the corner. Shivering. Terrified.
I called back to him. “It is a wonder, is it not?” It was the tag end of an old Dar’Nethi joke. We who tried to see wonder in everything—sometimes even we were confounded by the paths of life.
Slowly a grin suffused the boy’s face, banishing fear and revealing a luminous spirit. “All of it,” he croaked, through his cracked and bleeding lips. “I’ll see you beyond the Verges.”
Several of the others left behind took up the refrain. “A wonder . . . beyond the Verges . . .” I saw handclasps and a few kisses and even heard laughter gracing the grim night.
Ah, holy Vasrin, I thought. From what marvelous matter have you shaped us?
The steel door gaped in front of me, and I was pulled through in my turn. While one guard checked the bonds on my wrists and hooked a short chain to my neck ring, a second man hobbled my ankles with a length of rope. The state of my feet
would have prevented me running far, but I had contemplated a few of my favorite leg-holds when I glimpsed only two guards. Too bad.
As they led me stumbling through the dark passage toward a faint yellow light and the sound of splashing water, from somewhere deep in the dark place came a cry that chilled whatever mote of resilience still lurked in my soul. What, in the name of all that lives, could cause a man to make that sound?
Turn inward for protection . . . stay deep . . . let it pass. Nauseated, horrified, I didn’t even understand my own thoughts.
The passage made a sharp bend. Torches burned beyond an open doorway. As I was still squinting from the brightness, my guard led me to a wooden bench facing a bare stone wall. “Sit here and don’t move.”
Sitting still was not so simple a matter, as someone standing behind me took a knife to my head and began hacking off my hair in great chunks. But I did my best. When an unfriendly someone has a knife that close to eyes and ears and such appendages, it’s best to behave.
“Ready for the next one!” The call came from beyond another door.
“This one’s proper nasty,” said the guard, dragging me off the bench by the neck-chain. My hobbled ankles almost had me on my face in the piles of hair on the floor. “Going to dance for us, Dar’Nethi?”
A retort bubbled to my lips. No. Turn inward . . . stay deep . . . whatever you would say would only be an excuse for something you’d rather not experience. Save the wit for someone who’ll appreciate it.
The next bare room, small and square, had damp walls and a stone floor that sloped into a drain trench. The guards hitched my hands to an iron hook above my head. Then, they ripped off what was left of my clothes and a fair portion of skin where blood had dried and stuck them to me. Though I half expected it, I could not keep silent when a pail of icy water was thrown over me from behind. “Vasrin’s hand!”
