The Nameless Slave

by Vitaly Zykov

  – Well, as soon as you were put here, anxiety and noise began. Fighting. Fighting spoils wares, which cost money. Do you hear me, kord?

  – Yes, – squeezed Yarik through the pain.

  – What did you say?!

  – Yes, master!

  – Remember this! For disrespect you are sentenced to the column!

  Cautious whisper, which swept through the rows of the slaves who began to recover, told Yarik that the punishment was very, very unpleasant. The guard already approaching the door turned and added:

  – Those three too!

  And he disappeared from sight, then two other guards entered and, with kicks, lifted Yarik and his opponents. Punishments were quick and inescapable here.

  Yarik with other slaves was stacking what used to be fabric walls of the tents into bales. The task turned out to be not an easy one. To fold the cloth so that it could be easily put in a wagon and in the way that it did not bristled and did not take a lot of space: this job needed a great skill!

  The sun was scorching unmercifully. Yarik who had tanned to black long ago, wearily wiped sweat.

  – Jurga take this heat! – Favis cursed nearby.

  It was the only man with whom Yarik forged sufficiently close acquaintance in the first month of his slavery. They met immediately after the memorable punishment for fighting. It was something! Few tortures could be compared with the punishment prepared for them.

  Yarik and his opponents were brought or rather kicked to the place behind the last tents. There gathered almost the whole tribe headed by Darg and Bosk. Yarik remembered then the look of Darg, his master. It was a hard, piercing look of a warrior, in which was a shade of respect. He slowly walked close to the slaves looked at the bloodstained big slaves and said to Yarik:

  – You are a very valuable kord, Savage. Therefore, we will not cut off your hand for damage of your master's property, but you will be punished! Well punished! So it would be a good lesson for you.

  Yarik said nothing, even lowered his eyes. He was not going to look for troubles in vain, demonstrating indomitable force of his will. Sturdy guards picked the kords up and dragged them to some columns dug into the ground. And tied them thoroughly. Their bodies were literally screwed to the columns, giving no opportunity to move even a muscle. Their mouths were gagged with smelly skin and tied up with special ribbon, so the kords could not spit out the gags. The shaman came up to each kord and cast the spells to stop bleeding and heal their wounds. Only Yarik was bypassed, as he had no external damages, except one bruise under his eye. But soon, within a few hours, this bruise would disappear too. Yarik knew it for sure.

  The poles with fastened slaves stood close to each other, at the distance of about four yards, forming a rectangle. Bodies of the tied people were turned to the center of this rectangle. Sun mercilessly heated the earth, and everything on it. Then a small wooden table with pieces of meat lying on it was brought. The table was put into the center of the rectangle. The shaman came to this table and took some rattle from the folds of his clothing, as Yarik called this stick with a bunch of bones tied to it. Shaking it gently and humming, the shaman began to dance on the spot. Yarik noticed threads of strange weaving forming over the pieces of meat. The leader of the thugs howled into the gag, straining in desperate attempt to break the ropes.

  The weaving was becoming thicker and thicker, covering the surface of the table like a cloud of some jelly. Then Bosk deciding that it was already enough, without stopping his dance and chants, began to dip the rattle into this jelly, like a brush into paint and made brushstrokes on the bodies of each tied man. Actually, not on bodies, but very close to them. The rattle did not touch skin. And incomprehensible haze stretched some threads from the table to each tied body. Having completed these steps, the shaman hid his magic tool, and cried an order in an authoritative voice. After that, he trotted off to the crowd of other spectators.

  At first nothing was happening. In magic vision, remaining after enslaving, the magical haze dissipated, leaving not even a weaving, but rather its hint. Yarik felt some unpleasant odor. Like the smell of carrion which had been lying under the sun for a few days. Straining his night vision, Yarik saw that the meat on the table was completely rotten and some small flies had already started gathering on it.

  «What do they want, even grinning with anticipation! Bastards!» – There was no fear even in his thoughts. After all hardships and pain he had suffered in the past six months (it seemed to him that he had been in this world for six months at least!), no torture could scare him!

  Meanwhile, more and more flies were gathering there, now they covered the meat like a nasty wiggling carpet, one look at which caused retching. Filth! And flies were coming and coming. Some of them began to land on the bodies of the captives. They did not bite or sting or lay eggs, they were just crawling over the naked bodies. Only now did Yarik notice that their loincloths had been stripped from his enemies, and from him, leaving the slaves completely naked. The number of flies increased with every minute! They crept into noses, eyes and ears. Yarik could already see nothing, he was standing with his eyes closed, clenching his will into a fist. He could not even imagine such nightmare before. You cannot move a single muscle, while millions of tiny feet are stepping over your body, stimulating every nerve. He wanted to rush forward and roll, roll in the dust, wiping this dirt abomination! It was not pain, it was worse, much worse. These nasty insects drove consciousness to the very edge, a step behind which would push you into madness. And for some reason neither of Yarik's skills of controlling his body worked.

  He only held on his will, but he still did. He heard bellowing of the three voices around, and joyous laughter somewhere unimaginably far.

  «Beasts! Getting fun! Nonhumans, I hate you!» – The furious thoughts flowed somewhere beyond madness. And hatred became the anchor that was able to hold Yarik from falling over the brink of sanity. And so he stood there for the whole day: retaining stone motionlessness and silence.

  Yarik shrugged. It was disgusting to remember even now. They were untied the next evening. The three thugs became frightened cowards, trembling at the slightest mention of the poles. Master Darg got three obedient slaves. But Yarik only kept his head down. He did not tremble, but now he executed all orders unconditionally. Desire to flee, at first not yet clearly delineated due to the shock from his capture, transformed into a clear goal under the influence of the torture.

  «Run, run as soon as possible! – That was the only thought that settled firmly in his mind, becoming the meaning of his existence in present life. – But how? The collar will kill you immediately!»

  He had no answer to the last question. The kord could not invent a way to deceive the Dark collar. Yarik examined the weaving of alien magic again and again, which grew out from the collar and entwined all the channels of magical energy in his body. Only feeble flows of vital energy were available for him now. Evidently, they did not block them, only because it would kill his organism. But it was enough to make magic unavailable like the moon in the sky: close, but unreachable, it keeps slipping away.

  The weaving was breathtakingly complex. Yarik got headache only from staring at the structure of the alien artifact spell. The fact that it was not shaman's own magic, but the Force of unknown artifact, skillfully woven into the overall scheme, was understood by Yarik immediately. His knowledge and intuition sufficed for that. After some pondering, he decided that this artifact was the chain along the edges of the leather strap around his neck. He noticed that the collars of other slaves had no such chains, and leather of their collars was coarser and darker.

  Every free minute he would slide over the web of the alien spell with his Inner eye, trying to ease the invisible halter at least a little. But all was in vain. He did not succeed at all! But Yarik knew that he must not give up. Nowhere and never. If you can fight, then fight… And if you cannot, then fight, all the same! You might still get something.

  – Dreaming again? – Favis call
ed him.

  The young prisoner, captured six months ago in Arkhs's raid at a tiny tribe, found slavery quite bearable. An optimist, never losing heart, he was constantly working with his tongue, causing widespread irritation. But Yarik, who needed a source of information about the world, was a sheer gem for him. Favis came up to the new slave on that same day when Yarik was untied from the pole. Yarik was sitting in the corner of the slave's barracoon and trying to erase his filthy memories, he had a feeling that the hated flies were still running over his body in their mindless wandering. Other slaves shunned Yarik as if he was a plague, but Favis came up, sat beside him and began to speak. At that moment Yarik did not even quite understand what the slave was speaking about, but probably neither did Favis, for that matter. Sometimes it seemed that the young slave just loved his voice and was willing to listen to it for hours.

  The next day, Favis was near Yarik again, and Yarik did not drive him away, moreover, he began to ask questions. So it happened that Favis and Savage, as everyone called Yarik now, began to stick together.

  – Hey! Are you frozen? Jurga forbid, if anyone free notices, you can say farewell t' your dinner. Or maybe, you don't want t' dine? Then give it t' me, I'll eat it. I really want t' have a dinner. Yarik's fellow in misery continued chatting.

  – Hey, you, calm down! You only like eating. Snapped Yarik and bent down to the rope wriggling on the ground. – Just tell me, where are we all going?

  – Well, not all of us, but masters. Kords are not people, they are things. Things couldn't going anywhere, – Favis began to chatter.

  – Where? – Snapped Yarik winding the rope up.

  – You're evil. Savage is the right word! – Favis snorted. – And why do you care, what's it t' you?

  Yarik even stopped in indignation:

  – What do you mean what's it to you? Does it really mean nothing to you?! They may send us to a slave market, or sell to mines, if it's really so, we are all dead men.

  – You're an ignorant man, Savage. – Favis clapped his companion's shoulder. – Well, who would sell us on the market? Who would send us there? Everyone knows that we will be taken to Steward and what be then he will decide. And you certainly must know that!

  – But why?

  – Well, you're the first among those who will be presented just like a gift in order t' establish a good trade. Every slave knows that.

  – But what's the reason?! – Yarik wondered.

  – Well, a man came from wild goblins, killed a Water Demon, escaped from trolls. And even his collar is special, said Favis.

  – Damn the collar, – squeezed Yarik, touching the leather strip on his neck.

  – Hey, you, stinks! – Slaves, relaxed at the wrong time, heard a menacing voice of the chief slave-driver. – Are you shirk from work? In other time I would think up a suitable punishment for you, but now you get off cheap: you are both left without dinner!

  – I told you… – whined Favis under his breath. – I told you so.

  – And you, – the slave-driver's whip pointed at Yarik – you'll be master Darg's personal slave. Therefore, run t' his tent now.

  Yarik, who had not yet acquired the reflex of immediate unconditional execution of any orders, opened his mouth and… sharply exhaled in pain. The slave-driver noticed a slight sign of disobedience and heartily treated the slave with his whip. The whip with lead weights on each of its seven tails, drew parallel stripes on broken skin across the whole chest. Without waiting for repetition, Yarik darted in the pointed direction. He wiped trickles of blood running over his belly already in motion.

  CHAPTER 19

  Yarik was heavily moving his feet broken to blood over the cracked earth. Dry gray dust was covering his entire body. Yarik could hardly believe that he was a chosen one, as Favis had told him. Such valuable commodity could not be kept in these conditions! His skin, darkened and coarsened back in the Forest, acquired dark, almost black color from the sun. His hair finally faded and grown below his shoulders. Dirty and messy, fortunately without lice, they turned Yarik into a true savage.

  Calluses on the soles of his feet became even thicker: he was not given any shoes, and of course, it was not allowed for slaves to ride in wagons. So he trudged beside his master Darg's wagon. The damn collar was enchanted now to kill Yarik, if he went further than ten yards from the wagon. So he had to wander without stopping, holding upon some protruding bar of the wagon. The only good thing was that the chief's wagon was in the head of their caravan and the dust raised by wheels and animals was not so thick. This was particularly evident from strained cough behind. It was clear that those coughing were slaves. Charioteers' faces were wrapped, women and children were hiding inside the wagons. Soldiers were prancing on their tirrs[33] apart from the wagons, guarding the caravan. Judging by the noise followed by weak flashes of magic, they were attacked several times, but there was nothing good for attackers, of course. Darg was known as an experienced leader and had good soldiers.

  When Darg took Yarik to himself, the slave's life changed for the better. Other slaves, of course, looked awry and whispered angrily, but did not pick at him anymore. Yarik slept on a ragged mat under the master's wagon (master – what a nasty word!). His duties were the same: caring for animals, setting the tent for his master, preparing the hookah at the right time and other little errands, but in the evening he wanted to fall onto the ground and not to get up. The chief had surprisingly few servants, if more precisely, Yarik was the only one. He used to have two slaves, the slaves in second generation, but they had been killed a month before Yarik appeared, in a border skirmish with trolls (as they called Tarks here). Around that time the shaman brought his servant to death too. Therefore, the young leader, and the old shaman used the servants of their tribesmen. Eventually, Darg got bothered with that and took Yarik to himself, using the fact that he was a slave for sale, and in addition Darg's personal prisoner. Besides that, Darg was very impressed by Yarik's savage appearance. Some evenings, when the caravan stopped for the night, the master ordered to already tired Yarik to tell stories about his life among goblins. The shaman was interested in all sorts of inconsistencies in the story of the young prisoner, but Darg inhaled the aroma of belonging to a mystery, to that forbidden and terrible what was present in the stories of a native from the heart of Zaarr'h'dorr. At these moments, he became similar to a boy, who was sitting next to his grandfather and asking to talk about war. And Yarik was telling stories. Despite the fact that Darg sitting in front of him, had captured him, gave him to the shaman for experiments, and then made him a slave, the offworlder did not feel hatred.

  The leader was not inclined to senseless cruelty. All his actions were conformed concepts of utility and necessity for the good of his tribe. Of course he was not a follower of liberal human values, present in the culture of most people on the Earth. He was a child of his world and his culture: ruthless to enemies, he did not hesitate to use torture to prisoners (as Yarik had heard from other people's conversations), but he was different from the shaman. The shaman, in spite of his great knowledge, got real pleasure from torture and mockery over defenseless creatures. If he got a chance, Yarik would kill the shaman without a slightest doubt, but he would kill Darg only if necessary. Well, he had captured and enslaved him, but this was the only way to survive in the world: giving way to the strong and trampling on the weak: the law of jungle in its purest form… Although Yarik himself would never do that.

  There was one pleasing fact, Darg had no family, except Dukan – a distant relative, whether a fifth son of the second sister of Darg's father's first wife, or a great-nephew of Sohog's sister, Yarik did not understand that. Dukan was a charioteer of the wagon belonging to master Darg. He was a lover of smoke of garlun[34] grass, and permanently got scolded for that by Darg. Each time Dukan swore to give up, suffered a week, and started all over again. Several times Darg even beat him, but it all was in vain…

  A nasty voice of this Dukan, who began an endless song, interrupted th
oughts of the wearily wandering slave. This song Yarik heard a countless number of times in days of their long campaign. The song was telling about how it's good to be a proud man of the Plaguelands, to raise sixpaws[35], to fight against trolls – the enemies of human race, to beat despicable men from other tribes and to hunt spawns wandering to the human land. And most importantly, to wait, wait for an hour when god-brothers will awaken and call their children to arms. That will be the day when they will show their bravery. This short synopsis gives a very remote representation of the song. Simple words in it were mixed up with nightmarish number of swearing, describing the various features of life and lifestyle of all the enemies of the tribe and stretching the song in two hundred verses. Apparently, when an anonymous author did not have enough words to rhyme, he used words borrowed from foreign languages. And all the borrowed words were swearwords!

  Some of the words were from the goblins language, but much more – from trolls'. Now that was a language, the language of all languages! Yarik had not heard such terrible, inexpressible and hard to translate curses before. Dukan lucidly explained their meaning, other tribesmen did not like Dukan and he educated the stupid savage, he considered Yarik to be, with great pleasure.

  The song was broken off with coughing and vicious swearing, which already was not the song. Judging by the sounds, some insect had flown into the singer's mouth. Dukan did not sing any more, he did not want to risk.

  «Thank God!» – Yarik thought with relief.

  Meanwhile, mountains of the Border appeared ahead. As Yarik understood, their caravan headed to the tunnel cut through these mountains. It seemed to be the only way through. There were no detours or secret trails there. However, Yarik hardly believed in that, he was sure every mountains was obliged to have goat trails! Only one thing confused him: the talks about some Masters of the Border. If he were on the Earth, Yarik would regard it a sort of figure of speech, but in this world it everything was different. He ascertained that many times on his own experience.