Bradan could see the avarice in the auctioneer's eyes as he responded to the shouts and waves from the windows.
'You're fetching a rare price,' the auctioneer said. 'Oh, Shiva save us all.' He salaamed, suddenly obsequious as a man in ornate clothes climbed onto the platform. The yellow beast's head that roared from his flowing top was the mirror of the flag the pirate ships had worn. A file of female warriors followed, each woman with a pointed steel helmet on her head and a small, round shield on her left arm.
The auctioneer stopped the auction at once. 'That's it,' he said to Bradan. 'You have new owners. You're sold.'
'Who to?' Bradan looked around the crowd. The faces were wide-eyed, curious and without even a trace of sympathy for the plight of the slaves.
'You'll soon see. Get your clothes on and go with these soldiers.' He lowered his voice. 'And for the sake of Shiva, do as you're told.'
The squad of warriors formed around Bradan and Melcorka and marched them from the platform, with thousands of eyes following these exotic strangers. The warriors hurried to the palace and filed through a broad, pointed doorway. Two spearmen stood on guard at the door, faces immobile.
'Where are we going?' Melcorka asked.
'I don't know, Mel,' Bradan said. 'But I know that on the first opportunity, we're going to escape.'
'Are they taking us to my sword?' Melcorka gave an unnervingly high-pitched giggle.
'No,' Bradan said. 'They're not taking us to your sword.'
The warriors hustled them through a walled garden, where fountains splashed amidst close-cropped lawns and trees hung heavy with fruit. The atmosphere was of decadence and luxury, as brightly coloured birds hopped and chirped on the trees and a bevy of servants waited for orders. Two more female warriors stood in a corner, hands on the hilts of long, curved swords.
In the centre of the garden was an open, circular building with a pointed roof and walls of delicately carved stonework. Within this arbour, a man and a woman sat on cushioned swings. Both wore identical blue robes, with the man wearing a yellow turban set with a large pearl and the woman wearing an ornate headdress of smaller pearls.
The warriors stepped back, fingering their swords.
For a long moment, the man and woman within the arbour stared at Melcorka and Bradan, with their swings swishing slowly back and forth. The woman spoke first.
'I understand you speak Latin.' Her voice was clear and low as her dark eyes swept over them from head to foot and back.
'I do,' Bradan said.
'How strange to find education in a man who travels in rags.' The woman left her swing and stepped forward to run her finger down Bradan's face. 'You are very pale, and your skin is rough, like leather.'
'It is the colour of all the people where we come from,' Bradan said. 'And I have been outdoors in all sorts of weather.'
'I've never seen anybody your colour before.' The woman turned her face sideways. 'Are you pale all the way?' She arched her eyebrows and ran her gaze down Bradan's lean body. 'I could not see properly when you were on the slave block.'
'Yes,' Bradan said. 'I am pale all the way.'
'We shall see. Do you have names where you come from? I am Dhraji.' The woman opened up Bradan's travel-stained and much-patched leine and examined his chest. 'Dhraji means whirlwind.' She looked up and smiled. 'So I am a whirlwind. What are you?'
'I am Bradan the Wanderer,' Bradan said.
'A wandering man. How strange. Were you a warrior before you became my slave?' Sunlight caught the pearls on Dhraji's headdress, reflecting in a hundred different colours. The man remained on his swing, watching dispassionately.
'I was never a warrior,' Bradan said. And I won't be a slave for long, he thought, as Dhraji pulled open his leine and examined him minutely, making small noises that might have been approval or disapproval.
'You are not built any differently to the men here,' Dhraji said. 'You have the same appendages, yet you are taller and paler.' Raising her voice, Dhraji snapped an order. Two muscular servants immediately ran from the corner of the garden. 'Don't get alarmed, slave Bradan. These men are going to wash the slave-stink from your body and make you presentable.'
'Presentable for what?' Bradan asked.
'For me, of course,' Dhraji said. 'You are my slave, while this woman,' she jerked a thumb at Melcorka, 'belongs to Bhim, if he ever gets off his lazy, fat backside to even look at her.'
Bhim and Dhraji, the two people the Chola shipmaster warned us to avoid. We have fallen among thieves indeed. Pretend ignorance.
'Her name is Melcorka.' Bradan spoke rapidly, trying to protect Melcorka before Bhim got his hands on her. 'She is not herself at present.'
'Oh?' Dhraji looked supremely disinterested as she snapped instructions to the two servants.
'Just be careful, Mel!' Bradan shouted to Melcorka, as the servants led him away. He looked over his shoulder to see Bhim lift his considerable bulk from the swing and saunter across to Melcorka. 'Don't you hurt her, Bhim!'
The servants hurried Bradan out of the garden and into an airy chamber with a stone floor and two large urns of clear water. All the time, the men were talking, with Bradan unable to understand a word. They removed his leine and while one held him, the other emptied one of the urns over him. Unsmiling, they scrubbed him from head to feet with handfuls of dry white sand that made his skin tingle.
'Careful down there,' he snarled, as the men began to work on his groin.
'Oh, let them carry on.' Bradan had not known that Dhraji was present until she spoke. 'If they damage you, I will have them kissing an elephant's foot.'
What in the name of God does that mean?
The two
