by Paula Guran
Panting, he ducked back of a boulder. His muddy hand pawed beneath the curls like scrap brass at his neck. The hinged iron was there; and locked tight—a droplet trickled under the metal. He swatted at his hip to find his sword: the hilt was still tacky under his palm where he had not had time to clean it. The gaze with which he took in the pile of stone was not a halt in his headlong dash so much as a continuation of it, the energy propelling arms and legs momentarily diverted into eyes, ears, and all inside and behind them; then it was back in his feet; his feet pounded the shaly slope so that each footfall, even on his calloused soles, was a constellation of small pains; it was back in his arms; his arms pumped by his flanks so that his fists, brushing his sides as he jogged, heated his knuckles by friction.
A balustrade rose, blotting stars.
There would be the unlocked door (as he ran, he clawed over memories of the seven castles he had already run up to; seven side doors, all unlocked . . . ); and the young barbarian, muddy to the knees and elbows, his hair at head and chest and groin matted with leaf-bits and worse, naked save the sword thonged around his hips and the slave collar locked about his neck, dashed across moonlit stubble and gravel into a tower’s shadow, toward the door . . . and slowed, pulling in cool breaths of autumn air that grew hot inside him and ran from his nostrils; more air ran in.
“Halt!” from under the brand that flared high in the doorframe.
Sarg, in one of those swipes at his hip, had moved the scabbard around behind his buttock; it was possible, if the guard had not really been looking at Sarg’s dash through the moonlight, for the boy to have seemed simply a naked slave. Sarg’s hand was ready to grab at the hilt.
“Who’s there?”
Small Sarg raised his chin, so that the iron would show. “I’ve come back,” and thought of seven castles. “I got lost from the others, this morning. When they were out.”
“Come now, say your name and rank.”
“It’s only Small Sarg, master—one of the slaves in the Suzeraine’s labor pen. I was lost this morning—”
“Likely story!”
“—and I’ve just found my way back.” With his chin high, Sarg walked slowly and thought: I am running, I am running . . .
“See here, boy—” The brand came forward, fifteen feet, ten, five, three . . .
I am running. And Small Sarg, looking like a filthy field slave with some thong at his waist, jerked his sword up from the scabbard (which bounced on his buttock) and with a grunt sank it into the abdomen of the guard a-glow beneath the high-held flare. The guard’s mouth opened. The flare fell, rolled in the mud so that it burned now only on one side. Small Sarg leaned on the hilt, twisting—somewhere inside the guard the blade sheered upward, parting diaphragm, belly, lungs. The guard closed his eyes, drooled blood, and toppled. Small Sarg almost fell on him—till the blade sucked free. And Sarg was running again, blade out for the second guard (in four castles before there had been a second guard), who was, it seemed as Sarg swung around the stone newel and into the stairwell where his own breath was a roaring echo, not there.
He hurried up and turned into a side corridor that would take him down to the labor pen. (Seven castles, now. Were all of them designed by one architect?) He ran through the low hall, guided by that glowing spot in his mind where memory was flush with desire; around a little curve, down the steps—
“What the—?”
—and jabbed his sword into the shoulder of the guard who’d started forward (already hearing the murmur behind the wooden slats), yanking it free of flesh, the motion carrying it up and across the throat of the second guard (here there was always a second guard) who had turned, surprised; the second guard released his sword (it had only been half drawn), which fell back into its scabbard. Small Sarg hacked at the first again (who was screaming): the man fell, and Small Sarg leaped over him, while the man gurgled and flopped. But Sarg was pulling at the boards, cutting at the rope. Behind the boards and under the screams, like murmuring flies, hands and faces rustled about one another. (Seven times now they had seemed like murmuring flies.) And rope was always harder hacking than flesh. The wood, in at least two other castles, had simply splintered under his hands (under his hands, wood splintered) so that, later, he had wondered if the slaughter and the terror was really necessary.
Rope fell away.
Sarg yanked again.
The splintered gate scraped out on stone.
“You’re free!” Sarg hissed into the mumbling; mumblings silenced at the word. “Go on, get out of here now!” (How many faces above their collars were clearly barbarian like his own? Memory of other labor pens, rather than what shifted and murmured before him, told him most were.) He turned and leaped bodies, took stairs at double step—while memory told him that only a handful would flee at once; another handful would take three, four, or five minutes to talk themselves into fleeing; and another would simply sit, terrified in the foul straw, and would be sitting there when the siege was over.
He dashed up stairs in the dark. (Dark stairs fell down beneath dashing feet . . . ) He flung himself against the wooden door with the strip of light beneath and above it. (In two other castles the door had been locked.) It fell open. (In one castle the kitchen midden had been deserted, the fire dead.) He staggered in, blinking in firelight.
The big man in the stained apron stood up from over the cauldron, turned, frowning. Two women carrying pots stopped and stared. In the bunk beds along the midden’s far wall, a red-headed kitchen boy raised himself up on one arm, blinking. Small Sarg tried to see only the collars around each neck. But what he saw as well (he had seen it before . . . ) was that even here, in a lord’s kitchen, where slavery was already involved in the acquisition of the most rudimentary crafts and skills, most of the faces were darker, the hair was coarser, and only the shorter of the women was clearly a barbarian like himself.
“You are free . . . !” small Sarg said, drawing himself up, dirty, blood splattered. He took a gulping breath. “The guards are gone below. The labor pens have already been turned loose. You are free . . . !”
The big cook said: “What . . . ?” and a smile, with worry flickering through, slowly overtook his face. (This one’s mother, thought Small Sarg, was a barbarian: he had no doubt been gotten on her by some free northern dog.) “What are you talking about, boy? Better put that shoat-sticker down or you’ll get yourself in trouble.”
Small Sarg stepped forward, hands out from his sides. He glanced left at his sword. Blood trailed a line of drops on the stone below it.
Another slave with a big pot of peeled turnips in his hands strode into the room through the far archway, started for the fire rumbling behind the pot hooks, grilling spits, and chained pulleys. He glanced at Sarg, looked about at the others, stopped.
“Put it down now,” the big cook repeated, coaxingly. (The slave who’d just come in, wet from perspiration, with a puzzled look started to put his turnip pot down on the stones—then gulped and hefted it back against his chest.) “Come on—”
“What do you think, I’m some berserk madman, a slave gone off my head with the pressure of the iron at my neck?” With his free hand, Sarg thumbed toward his collar. “I’ve fought my way in here, freed the laborers below you; you have only to go now yourselves. You’re free, do you understand?”
“Now wait, boy,” said the cook, his smile wary. “Freedom is not so simple a thing as that. Even if you’re telling the truth, just what do you propose we’re free to do? Where do you expect us to go? If we leave here, what do you expect will happen to us? We’ll be taken by slavers before dawn tomorrow, more than likely. Do you want us to get lost in the swamps to the south? Or would you rather we starve to death in the mountains to the north? Put down your sword—just for a minute—and be reasonable.”
The barbarian woman said, with her eyes wide and no barbarian accent at all: “Are you well, boy? Are you hungry? We can give you food: you can lie down and sleep a while if you—”
“I d
on’t want sleep. I don’t want food. I want you to understand that you’re free and I want you to move. Fools, fools, don’t you know that to stay slaves is to stay fools?”
“Now that sword, boy—” The big slave moved.
Small Sarg raised his blade.
The big slave stopped. “Look, youth. Use your head. We can’t just—”
Footsteps; armor rattled in another room—clearly guards’ sounds. (How many times now—four out of seven?—had he heard those sounds?) What happened (again) was:
“Here, boy—!” from the woman who had till now not spoken. She shifted her bowl under one arm and pointed toward the bunks.
Small Sarg sprinted toward them, sprang—into the one below the kitchen boy’s. As he sprang, his sword point caught the wooden support beam, jarred his arm full hard; the sword fell clanking on the stone floor. As Sarg turned to see it, the kitchen boy in the bunk above flung down a blanket. Sarg collapsed in the straw, kicked rough cloth (it was stiff at one end as though something had spilled on it and dried) down over his leg, and pulled it up over his head at the same time. Just before the blanket edge cut away the firelit chamber, Sarg saw the big slave pull off his stained apron (underneath the man was naked as Sarg) to fling it across the floor to where it settled, like a stained sail, over Sarg’s fallen weapon. (And the other slave had somehow managed to set his turnip pot down directly over those blood drops.) Under the blanketing dark, he heard the guard rush in.
“All right, you! A horde of bandits—probably escaped slaves—have stormed the lower floors. They’ve already taken the labor pen—turned loose every cursed dog in them.” (Small Sarg shivered and grinned: how many times now, three, or seven, or seventeen, had he watched slaves suddenly think with one mind, move together like the leaves on a branch before a single breeze!) More footsteps. Beneath the blanket, Small Sarg envisioned a second guard running in to collide with the first, shouting (over the first’s shoulder?): “Any of you kitchen scum caught aiding and abetting these invading lizards will be hung up by the heels and whipped till the flesh falls from your backs—and you know we mean it. There must be fifty of them or more to have gotten in like that! And don’t think they won’t slaughter you as soon as they would us!”
The pair of footsteps retreated; there was silence for a drawn breath.
Then bare feet were rushing quickly toward his bunk.
Small Sarg pushed back the blanket. The big slave was just snatching up his apron. The woman picked up the sword and thrust it at Sarg.
“All right,” said the big slave, “we’re running.”
“Take your sword,” the woman said. “And good luck to you, boy.”
They ran—the redheaded kitchen boy dropped down before Small Sarg’s bunk and took off around the kitchen table after them. Sarg vaulted now, and landed (running), his feet continuing the dash that had brought him into the castle. The slaves crowded out the wooden door through which Small Sarg had entered. Small Sarg ran out through the arch by which the guards had most probably left.
Three guards stood in the anteroom, conferring. One looked around and said, “Hey, what are—”
A second one who turned and just happened to be a little nearer took Small Sarg’s sword in his belly; it tore loose out his side, so that the guard, surprised, fell in the pile of his splatting innards. Sarg struck another’s bare thigh—cutting deep—and then the arm of still another (his blade grated bone). The other ran, trailing a bass howl: “They’ve come! They’re coming in here, now! Help! They’re breaking in—” breaking to tenor in some other corridor.
Small Sarg ran, and a woman, starting into the hallway from the right, saw him and darted back. But there was a stairwell to his left; he ran up it. He ran, up the cleanly hewn stone, thinking of a tower with spiral steps, that went on and on and on, opening on some high, moonlit parapet. After one turn, the stairs stopped. Light glimmered from dozens of lamps, some on ornate stands, some hanging from intricate chains.
A thick, patterned carpet cushioned the one muddy foot he had put across the sill. Sarg crouched, his sword out from his hip, and brought his other foot away from the cool stone behind.
The man at the great table looked up, frowned—a slave, but his collar was covered by a wide neckpiece of heavy white cloth sewn about with chunks of tourmaline and jade. He was very thin, very lined, and bald. (In how many castles had Sarg seen slaves who wore their collars covered so? Six, now? All seven?) “What are you doing here, boy . . . ?” The slave pushed his chair back, the metal balls on the forelegs furrowing the rug.
Small Sarg said: “You’re free . . . ”
Another slave in a similar collar-cover turned on the ladder where she was placing piles of parchment on a high shelf stuffed with manuscripts. She took a step down the ladder, halted. Another youth (same covered collar), with double pointers against a great globe in the corner, looked perfectly terrified—and was probably the younger brother of the kitchen boy, from his bright hair. (See only the collars, Small Sarg thought. But with jeweled and damasked neckpieces, it was hard, very hard.) The bald slave at the table, with the look of a tired man, said: “You don’t belong here, you know. And you are in great danger.” The slave, a wrinkled forty, had the fallen pectorals of the quickly aging.
“You’re free!” Small Sarg croaked.
“And you are a very naïve and presumptuous little barbarian. How many times have I had this conversation—four? Five? At least six? You are here to free us of the iron collars.” The man dug a forefinger beneath the silk and stones to drag up, on his bony neck, the iron band beneath. “Just so you’ll see it’s there. Did you know that our collars are much heavier than yours?” He released the iron; the same brown forefinger hooked up the jeweled neckpiece—almost a bib—which sagged and wrinkled up, once pulled from its carefully arranged position. “These add far more weight to the neck than the circle of iron they cover.” (Small Sarg thought: Though I stand here, still as stone, I am running, running . . . ) “We make this castle function, boy—at a level of efficiency that, believe me, is felt in the labor pens as much as in the audience chambers where our lord and owner entertains fellow nobles. You think you are rampaging through the castle, effecting your own eleemosynary manumissions. What you are doing is killing free men and making the lives of slaves more miserable than, of necessity, they already are. If slavery is a disease and a rash on the flesh of Nevèrÿon—” (I am running, like an eagle caught up in the wind, like a snake sliding down a gravel slope . . . ) “—your own actions turn an ugly eruption into a fatal infection. You free the labor pens into a world where, at least in the cities and the larger towns, a wage-earning populace, many of them, is worse off than here. And an urban merchant class can only absorb a fraction of the skills of the middle level slaves you turn loose from the middens and smithies. The Child Empress herself has many times declared that she is opposed to the institution of indenture, and the natural drift of our nation is away from slave labor anyway—so that all your efforts do is cause restrictions to become tighter in those areas where the institution would naturally die out of its own accord in a decade or so. Have you considered: your efforts may even be prolonging the institution you would abolish.” (Running, Small Sarg thought, rushing, fleeing, dashing . . . ) “But the simple truth is that the particular skills we—the ones who must cover our collars in jewels—master to run such a complex house as an aristocrat’s castle are just not needed by the growing urban class. Come around here, boy, and look for yourself.” The bald slave pushed his chair back even further and gestured for Small Sarg to approach. “Yes. Come, see.”
Small Sarg stepped, slowly and carefully, across the carpet. (I am running, he thought; flesh tingled at the backs of his knees, the small of his back. Every muscle, in its attenuated motion, was geared to some coherent end that, in the pursuit of it, had become almost invisible within its own glare and nimbus.) Sarg walked around the table’s edge.
From a series of holes in the downward lip hung a num
ber of heavy cords, each with a metal loop at the end. (Small Sarg thought: In one castle they had simple handles of wood tied to them; in another the handles were cast from bright metal set with red and green gems, more ornate than the jeweled collars of the slaves who worked them.) “From this room,” explained the slave, “we can control the entire castle—really, it represents far more control, even, than that of the Suzeraine who owns all you see, including us. If I pulled this cord here, a bell would ring in the linen room and summon the slave working there; if I pulled it twice, that slave would come with linen for his lordship’s chamber, which we would then inspect before sending it on to be spread. Three rings, and the slave would come bearing sheets for our own use—and they are every bit as elegant, believe me, as the ones for his lordship. One tug on this cord here and wine and food would be brought for his lordship . . . at least if the kitchen staff is still functioning. Three rings, and a feast can be brought for us, here in these very rooms, that would rival any indulged by his lordship. A bright lad like you, I’m sure, could learn the strings to pull very easily. Here, watch out for your blade and come stand beside me. That’s right. Now give that cord there a quick, firm tug and just see what happens. No, don’t be afraid. Just reach out and pull it. Once, mind you—not twice or three times. That means something else entirely. Go ahead . . . ”
Sarg moved his hand out slowly, looking at his muddy, bloody fingers. (Small Sarg thought: Though it may be a different cord in each castle, it is always a single tug! My hand, with each airy inch, feels like it is running, running to hook the ring . . . )
“ . . . with only a little training,” went on the bald slave, smiling, “a smart and ambitious boy like you could easily become one of us. From here, you would wield more power within these walls than the Suzeraine himself. And such power as that is not to be—”
Then Small Sarg whirled (no, he had never released his sword)—to shove his steel into the loose belly. The man half-stood, with open mouth, then fell back, gargling. Blood spurted, hit the table, ran down the cords. “You fool . . . !” the bald man managed, trying now to grasp one handle.
