Empire in Black and Gold

‘Where are you taking her?’ Salma demanded.

The energy blazed up in the man’s hand, and Che cried out, ‘I’m going with them. It’s all right. Don’t hurt him.’ It was anything but all right, but Salma was leashed to the pen and they would have been able to kill him at their leisure. ‘Please, I’m going.’

The soldier severed her leather with the spurs on his hands, and the two of them virtually dragged her from the pen, not giving her time to get her feet underneath her.

‘What have I done?’ she asked, but they just dragged her out through the palisade and let other slavers reset the stakes.

She repeated the question and one of the soldiers raised a hand to strike her again. She quailed away, tried to hide her face, but they had her arms secure. The man gave a guttural laugh.

‘Full of questions, this one,’ he said.

‘Shouldn’t be asking ’em,’ said his companion. ‘She won’t like the answers.’

And they dragged her off into the dark. She had one last glimpse of Salma’s agonized face before the pen was way behind her, and she was being hauled alongside the looming bulk of one of the automotives. She had a brief glimpse of a Wasp-kinden artificer tinkering with it, glancing at her with disinterest and then returning to his work.

‘What’s this?’ She recognized the gruff tones even as her escorts slowed and stopped. The broad-shouldered figure of Brutan the slavemaster had intercepted them. ‘What’s going on, lads?’

‘Orders, Sarge,’ said one of them.

‘You take my orders, lads,’ said Brutan. He took Che’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, yanked her head up. She could see almost nothing of him within his helm. ‘Someone got a taste for Beetle flesh, is it? I don’t recall giving you any orders, lads, so who’s been meddling in my operation.’

‘Captain Thalric, sir,’ said the other slaver awkwardly.

‘Well Captain Thalric can kiss my arse,’ Brutan declared. ‘If he wants a whore he can speak to the pimp.’

‘I don’t know, sir-’ began one of the slavers.

‘Mind you,’ Brutan said, ignoring him completely, ‘it’s a poor pimp that hasn’t dipped his wick in all the bottles.’ The blank mask of his helm was very close to Che’s face, and there was nowhere she could pull away to. ‘Not exactly a prizewinner, is she? But I’m not feeling choosy so bring her over here.’

He strode off, but the two slavers had not moved. ‘Sarge,’ said one unhappily.

Brutan rounded on them. ‘Did I or did I not give you an order?’

‘But it’s Captain Thalric, sir.’

‘You don’t seem to know who’s holding your chain in their hands,’ said Brutan, coming back with hands open, fingers splayed.

‘They say he’s Rekef, sir.’

Brutan stopped. ‘So what if they do?’ he asked, but there was a slight change in his tone. ‘Think I’m scared of that? Think I’m scared of him?’

The silence of the slavers suggested that they were, but they were also scared of their leader. When Brutan barked ‘Bring her!’ they did.

She was pulled off to a secluded dip beyond the main camp, slammed onto the ground on her back hard enough to put the breath out of her. Until that moment she had not quite appreciated what he intended.

‘You can’t- You’re not going to-’

‘Shut her up,’ said Brutan, sounding bored. He was undoing his belt with practised fingers.

Che screamed, and when a slaver put a hand over her mouth she bit him savagely. He cuffed her and her head rang with it, and the other was already stuffing a rag or somesuch into her mouth. She fought and fought, and it took the both of them to hold her down as Brutan dragged at her breeches.

‘Do you really think-?’ one of the slavers was saying.

‘Yes, I think,’ Brutan snapped at him. ‘You just do as I say.’

‘But if he is. .’ the other whined, casting a look back towards the camp. Che’s frantic struggles and muffled cries might not have been going on at all for all the notice they took of them.

‘Shut up, the pair of you.’ Brutan had begun to sound harried. Now he lurched across Che. She felt his bare flesh on hers. Then there was a pause. It was such a pause that she stopped fighting, trying to work out what was going on. Brutan was still suspended above her on his hands and knees. She could see only darkness within the helm that he had not even taken off.

She glanced down and saw more than she wanted to of the man, but saw, moreover, that he was going limp.

‘Sergeant?’ one of the slavers asked nervously. After a moment Brutan rolled off her and cursed.

‘Pox-rotten Rekef bastards.’

There was another pause. Given this small opportunity, Che pulled up her breeches and did her best to tie them with the broken cords left to her, still not quite believing what was happening.

‘Sergeant?’ asked the slaver again.

‘You’d better take her to him,’ Brutan muttered, sounding furious with them, with her, with Thalric, and with himself.

The big automotives obviously transported more than slaves. Thalric had a tent now, pitched out of sight of the slave pens. When she was hustled inside, the man was sitting before a folding desk, looking for all the world as though he were in his study somewhere civilized. A hissing white-flamed salt-lamp gave an unhealthy pallor to his skin.

He looked up, at her and at the two slavers. He must have heard her screaming just moments before but his face admitted nothing of it.

‘You may go,’ he told her escorts, and they left gratefully. There were two of his soldiers at the door so she knew that this did not offer an escape attempt. It remained to be found out just what it did mean.

‘Sit, if you want,’ he told her. She regarded him curiously. It was impossible to place his age, save that he was neither young nor old. He was regular of feature, without being striking in any way. He would have been equally fitting as a College registrar or at the winch of a rack. In fact his bland features could have placed him anywhere.

‘Why did you send the slavers to fetch me, if you don’t like them?’ she asked him, watching for a reaction.

‘Because it’s their job,’ he replied simply. ‘You’re a slave. They’re slavers.’ After a moment he relented. ‘It’s no secret that the regular army doesn’t get on with the Slave Corps. The army doesn’t like them because taking slaves is no true profession for a man of the Empire, and I don’t like them because they’re greedy and self- interested.’

‘Do you. . do you know what. .?’

‘I can guess.’ His face was without guilt or pity. ‘Our Brutan is a lusty fellow, or so they say.’

‘And are you going to punish him?’

‘Why should I? What has he done wrong?’

She gaped at him. ‘I don’t think you know what that word means!’

‘Miss Maker.’ Abruptly he was stern, standing. She flinched back from him. In that instant response she realized that she really was a slave.

‘Miss Maker,’ he said again, ‘it remains to be seen whether you will enjoy any protection from Brutan and his like, and before you say a word, his like includes plenty who wear the chains, as well as those who wield the whips. I can have you separated from your Commonwealer friend in an instant, and after that you’ll be just one more victim’s victim.’

She tried to face up to him boldly but the crawling horror of the thought was overtaking her, as he knew it would.

‘We are going to Asta,’ he told her. ‘It’s a little outpost of ours but it has sufficient facilities for my purposes, which are to learn what you and your fellow know.’

‘You mean torture.’

‘Do I? Well, let that be what I mean then. However, it is possible for you and I to keep our questioning artificers idle for an hour or so. Sit and talk to me.’