Rebels of Vulvar (Vulvarian Saga Book 2)

by J. K. Spenser

  “Nevertheless, my status as a free man is a distinction that no one on Vulvar, aside from the Goddess Queens, will recognize,” I said.

  “Now I am a degraded woman,” Emer said. “I wish only to be by your side if you will have me. I wish only your love, Tobias Hart. If they free us, I wish you to copulate with me.”

  “That’s a crime,” I laughed.

  Emer laughed merrily. I loved the sound of her laughter. It sounded like glad music to my ears. It excited my senses like drinking fine wine. Suddenly, my wounds no longer bothered me.

  “We could copulate here since they have left us together,” Emer said mischievously.

  “That would be foolish indeed, would it not?” I laughed. “When they saw the enormous smile on your face, they would know why and they would impale me.”

  Emer laughed again. “You seem quite confident of your skills, commander,” she said.

  I smiled at her. Then I kissed her.

  “I like that,” Emer said dreamily. She kissed me. When our lips parted, we were both breathless.

  “Love isn’t a crime, is it, commander?” Emer asked.

  “Only on Vulvar, it seems,” I said ruefully.

  With Emer snuggled close against me, we both fell asleep.

  23

  The Mines of Nisa

  The sun hurt my eyes. I blinked again and again, to lessen the torture of the glare. After withdrawing me from the dank, dark cell far below the Hall of Government, the guards thrust me out of the hall into the hot sunlight. I felt the sweat already forming beneath my tunic. While the guards had pulled me from the cell, they had left Emer behind. They had now separated us.

  Outside, in a cobblestone courtyard, the guards prodded me ahead with jabs from their spears toward a line of men wearing filthy tunics that were little more than rags. I took my place in the line and, at last, no longer felt the spear points against my back.

  The line of men shuffled slowly forward until finally, I reached the front. There a beefy, powerfully built man with short-clipped blond hair removed the shackles from my wrists. I presumed he was a metalsmith and fellow slave when he applied new steel shackles to both my wrists and ankles. There was a two-foot length of chain between both sets of shackles that permitted me to walk with a shuffling gait and gave some freedom of movement to my hands, now shackled at my front.

  Again prodding me with their spears, guards pressed me toward the back of a cart-mounted steel cage. There they roughly thrust me inside the cage through the open steel doors, and I took my place on a rough wooden bench beside my fellow prisoners. There were perhaps twenty other shackled wretches inside the rolling cage with me. A guard slammed the iron door shut and threw the bolt. I heard the cart driver cluck to the team of veovarks, the massive oxen-like beasts, hitched to the cart. The cart rumbled across the cobblestone courtyard and out a gate in the wall. I saw that a small column of warriors in their blue tunics bearing shields and spears marched along behind the slowly moving cart.

  An unkempt, strong-looking lad, with a mop of black hair, sat beside me.

  “Do you know where they are taking us, friend?” I asked him.

  He regarded me for a moment with his pale green eyes.

  “To the mines,” he said shortly.

  His words stunned me. “To the mines?” I said.

  “Yes, the copper mines outside the city, deep beneath the surface of Nisa,” the man said. “There, we will toil for the rest of our miserable lives.”

  “The Anax of Nisa did not sentence me thus,” I said in confusion. “When I appeared before her, she imprisoned me while deliberating my case.”

  The man roared with laughter. “Listen, stranger,” he said. “Any man expecting justice from Sola, Anax of Nisa, is a fool. After Dabar Cooke debauched her during the slave rebellion, she hates men even more passionately than before. To her, it fits us men for her to crush us beneath her heel.”

  “Our sentences have no end?” I said.

  “No man returns alive from the mines,” the man said glumly.

  “What is your crime?” I said.

  “Conspiracy against the throne,” the man said bitterly. “I was with Dabar Cooke.”

  “I am Tobias Hart of Thiva,” I said. “What is your name?”

  “Jumah,” he said.

  “Of what city?” I said.

  “Of Raue,” he said. “Dabar Cooke’s men freed me from a farm there. I joined them, and they trained me as a warrior.”

  “Were you captured in Nisa?”

  “Yes, I served in the garrison when Dabar Cooke advanced on Thiva,” Jumah said. “When the Thivans and their allies surrounded the city, they broke through a gate and overwhelmed us. We were too few to withstand them.”

  “At least they didn’t impale you on the city walls,” I said.

  “I wish they had,” Jumah said. “That would have been more merciful.”

  After an hour on a dusty road, the driver brought the cart to a halt. A guard unlatched the iron door and ordered my fellow prisoners and me out of the cage. They lined us up beside the road and then marched us to the entrance of the mine and prodded us at spear point inside.

  We entered a long, low, and narrow room that workers had hewn out of the solid rock. A short, swarthy, powerful man holding a whip stood before us. He was entirely bald with deep-set eyes blue like cold steel. We wore a copper earring in one ear. His other ear, at some time, had been torn from his head.

  “I am Udo,” the man said menacingly. “I am the Administrator of the Mines. Here you will work to pay your debts to Sola, Anax of Nisa. I assign every slave a daily quota of ore. Any man who cannot meet the quota will taste the lash of this whip.”

  After Udo’s brief speech, he turned us over to other slaves who he had appointed overseers within the mine. They led us down a rickety twisting wooden staircase, deeper beneath the surface. We entered a long, narrow, low passageway that was perhaps four feet by four feet where we all had to stoop to shuffle along beneath the low ceiling. Small, foul-smelling oil lamps set into the walls every few feet provided only dim lighting.

  The overseers shackled us all together with lengths of chain. Then they handed each of us a steel hand pick with a short wooden handle and a large leather pouch with a strap that they motioned for us to put over our heads and shoulders to carry the sacks we would fill with ore. We advanced along the stone corridor. The floors sloped downward, taking us deeper into the mine until we entered a massive cavern that was long and broad. But the stone ceiling was even lower, which forced us to move on hands and knees.

  Inside I saw about forty, emaciated-looking, dirt-covered men wearing tattered tunics hard at work picking ore out of the walls of the cavern. An overseer held up a chunk of ore so we might recognize it. The men in the line passed it from one to another, so we might all examine it. When the ore came to me, I saw that it was a rock with a thin black crust holding deposits of red to reddish-brown, soft, ductile, and malleable metal within it as seen in the dim reflected light of the oil lamps. The overseer then commanded us to start working. On hands and knees, we chipped the solid stone with our hand picks until we mined chunks of the black rock containing the reddish metal deposits, which we deposited in our leather pouches. I worked beside Jumah, the lad I’d sat beside on the cart.

  Deep below the Vulvarian surface where there was no sun made the passage of time meaningless. Thus, I knew not how long we toiled that first day, but presumed many hours had passed before an overseer blew a blast on a trumpet signaling the end of the workday. An overseer directed us from the great cavern into another corridor where the ceiling was higher. We could once again move along on our feet while stooping to avoid striking our heads against the rough stone ceiling. One by one, we handed our pouches of ore over to the men manning scales. They weighed our sacks and then dumped the ore from the leather sacks into small, sturdy wooden carts with iron wheels set upon a set of narrow gauge iron rails.

  While he weighed my sack, the man I’d han
ded it to told me we were not subject to the daily quota since we had not worked a full day. But he warned me that the administrator would expect us to meet the quota the following day and every day after that.

  Other men took our hand picks, which I presumed the overseers feared we might use as weapons against them. Then they herded us to the opening of a vertical shaft. Builders had constructed a crude wooden cage to which they had attached ropes that ran through a series of iron pulleys. The cage I discovered functioned as an elementary lift. The overseers directed six men at a time into the cage and then lowered them deeper into the bowels of the mine.

  I stepped into the cage with five others, and the overseers lowered us down the shaft. When they lift stopped, other overseers were waiting. They directed us to a door of iron bars. They opened it and ushered us inside. The chamber already held about twenty of our fellows when the overseers pushed us inside before closing and bolting the door.

  The room was dank, moldy, and unpleasant, repelling the senses. There were pools of water here and there on the floor. The walls were damp, and in places, water dripped from the ceiling. The builders had inadequately ventilated the chamber with circular holes in the wall covered by circular iron apertures. The air was stale and oppressive.

  I leaned back against the damp, solid stone that formed the sides of the room. When we had stepped off the lift, the overseers had again shackled us together. They had chained me to five other men, including Jumah.

  Two of the mine overseers unbolted the door and entered the cell with a large wooden tub. From it, they dumped a mixture of moldy brown bread and rotting vegetables into a wooden trough affixed to the wall. Once the overseers departed and locked the door, men rushed upon the trough like animals, pushing, jostling, shouting, and cursing. Each tried to thrust his hands into the trough to carry away as much food as he could before it was gone.

  Jumah said to me, “For those who are not fond of life, this place offers many attractions.”

  “To be sure,” I agreed.

  Revolted, none of the men of my chain had approached the melee at the trough, perhaps because we were newly arrived and not starving. The food smelled like garbage and was unpalatable to us. I slid my back down the wall and sat upon the damp floor of the cell with my legs stretched out in front of me.

  Six men of another chain approached us with bread and vegetables in their hands and sat down with their backs against the wall. The man at the end of the other chain sat beside me and ate greedily. He turned and regarded me. I looked at him. His tunic was in rags and revealed his gaunt body. The man’s shockingly red hair and beard were long and straggly. Suddenly he gave me a toothy grin, and I recognized him.

  “Greyson!” I cried. “By the Goddess Queens, you live.”

  “After a fashion, brother,” Greyson said. He leaned toward me and whispered, “I dare not call your name. There or those who would slay you even inside this chamber.”

  Greyson thrust an onion and a crust of moldy bread into my hands. “Take this, eat,” he said. “You will learn to scramble with the rest of us.”

  “Thanks, brother,” I said. I took them and chewed the food. I knew as Greyson had said, I would learn to compete at the food trough, for I had no wish to die of starvation. I would not presume to continue living on his charity.

  “Are there others of Cooke’s former warriors here?” I said.

  Greyson nodded as he chewed. “Almost all of us,” he said. “Finally, you have come back to us, it seems.” He gave a short laugh.

  “My business detained me after I departed the training cohort,” I said.

  “I heard of your exploits,” Greyson said. “That’s why others here who are also aware of your story would slay you if they knew your identity.”

  “But not you?” I asked.

  Greyson shrugged. “Are we not all already dead men here?” he said. “The past is the past.”

  “What happened when I failed to return to the cohort?” I said.

  “The officers were unaware I helped you depart the training area that day,” Greyson said. He grinned broadly. “But, they whipped me for not reporting your absence since I was your barracks mate.”

  “I’m sorry for bringing grief upon you,” I said.

  “Forget it,” Greyson said. “It wasn’t my first whipping. I’m sure it won’t be the last.”

  “We must think of escape,” I said to Greyson. “With many former warriors here, and using the picks as weapons, surely we might overcome the overseers of this hellish place.”

  “Be quiet, fool,” Greyson hissed. “Beneath this chamber is an enormous cavern filled with water. The overseers must continually pump the water from the cavern, or it would soon rise through the lift shaft and flood the mine, drowning us all. Others who have been here longer than I told me that years ago there was an uprising in the mine. The administrator shut down the pumps and flooded the entire mine to quell it. It took weeks to pump out the water and clear the mine of the bodies. If anyone hears you breathe a word about revolt, either they will strangle you with their chains or inform on you to the overseers.”

  I smiled, wondering why my fellow prisoners here and I were so determined to cling to life even in this infernal place. Why was it that men still chose life over death under such harsh conditions? Perhaps it was a foolish question, but it did not seem so in the mines of Nisa.

  “What more can you tell me about this place?” I said.

  “If we do not meet the daily quota, the overseers do not feed us that night,” Greyson said. “If we fail to meet the quota for three consecutive days, the overseers will whip us all.”

  “So, the quota is collective rather than individual?” I said.

  “Yes,” Greyson agreed. “Mostly. However, others here say that when the overseers identify slaves who are lazy or who fall ill and consistently cannot meet the production quota, they deal with them individually. The overseers take them below to the cavern I spoke of and cast them into the water to drown.”

  After we had eaten, with a rattle of chains, Greyson and I stretched ourselves out on the damp stone floor as best we could in the cramped quarters. Within a minute or two, Greyson’s heavy breathing told me he was asleep. But sleep escaped me as my mind whirled, seeking a plan by which I might extricate myself from my intolerable circumstances. There was little conversation in the chamber. Men whose bodies were worn from the cruel labors of many days had little to say. I lay with my back on the damp, hard floor, listening to the sounds of their sleep.

  I was far from Mount Volz, far from the Goddess Queens of Vulvar, with whom I wished to lodge complaints. I had failed my beloved Idril and my friend Emer. It seemed I would never solve the riddle of the Goddess Queens, their pitiless, impenetrable wills. They would keep their secrets. I would die, eventually, either whipped or starved in the bowels of the mines of Nisa.

  24

  The Uprising

  Most of the mine tunnels we worked in did not allow a man to stand upright in them. The builders had inadequately braced many of them to save on the cost of lumber. Collapses that killed slaves were all too common. As we worked in the tunnels, freeing the copper ore from the sides of mine with our picks, we crawled on hands and knees. Our knees bleed at first, as we scraped off the skin on the rough stone floors. But gradually, we developed thick calluses. Around our necks hung the leather bags in which we placed the ore and later carried to the scales. Our only light to work by, the small foul-smelling lamps provided.

  The working day was fifteen hours, though we of the mines of Nisa had no way to track the passage of time. The overseers never took us back to the surface, and once plunged into the cold darkness of the mines, we never again saw the sun.

  Others had told me the only relief to our pitiful existence came once a year. On the birthday of the Anax, the overseers distributed portions of savory meat, fresh brown bread, and a pot of trog to each slave. One fellow on another chain boasted that he had drunk trog three times during his time in th
e mine. Most were not so fortunate. The life expectancy of a mine slave, given the hard labor and poor diet, was usually between six to eighteen months.

  After many days in the mines, I found myself unable to concentrate on anything other than escape.

  Each morning, the overseers woke us with their shouts and curses. The term morning was mostly irrelevant to us since we lived in the continuous foreboding darkness of the mines. Two overseers would then unlock the door and dump a tub of the foul-smelling grub into the feeding trough. After they had filled the trough, the slaves edged toward it. But we could not fall on the trough and get food until the overseers exited the cell and locked the door. Only after an overseer outside the door shouted, “Feed,” could we approach and take the food from the trough. If any slaves dared to violate the rules, the overseers would open the door, enter the cell, and drive them back with their whips.

  On this particular morning, the overseer in charge was a man who enjoyed his modest power a little too much. It was his habit to stand outside the door for several minutes before giving the command to feed. He knew we were eager to eat our morning rations because the overseers gave us only limited time after they had filled the trough. Often, they forced us out of the chamber to begin the workday before we had finished eating.

  The slaves tensed, their eyes fixed on the feeding trough, yet the overseer stood outside the door, grinning and refusing to give the order to feed. He was a petty tyrant who enjoyed persecuting us. Though like us, a slave who would never again see the light of the sun, as overseer, he was Dabar in this dreadful dungeon. I saw in his beady eyes the pleasure he took in cruelly tormenting ragged, starving slaves. It was too much to bear.

  Dragging those of my chain with me, I approached the feed trough.

  “Get back!” the overseer cried as he hurriedly unlocked the cell door.

  Closest to the trough, I inched forward even as he and his companion entered the chamber with whips raised. He approached me. Six times he struck me with the whip. I did not flinch. Again he raised the whip.