I opened my eyes.
An aragorn drew his booted foot back ready to drive it into my ribs again. I rolled away, feeling a terrible pain in my gut, and tried to catch that wicked boot. I could not move my hands.
“Nulsh! On your feet!”
The kick landed. I got my feet under me. The pink-lit shadows of the Kregan night lay between the loom of trees, and I heard the susurration of the night wind. My hands were bound.
“You cramph,” I said. “I wanted to hear that story.”
My voice slurred horribly and I could feel the solid ground going up and down like the deck of a swordship in a gale off the Hoboling islands.
The aragorn brought his whiplike tail around and laid the flat of the curved blade against my head. That thick skull of mine rang as though all the bells in Beng-Kishi sounded off with maniacs at the clapper ropes.
“Get into line or I’ll flay your hide off!”
He was genuinely annoyed. The pink moonlight from She of the Veils flowed over his gold-on-iron helmet, scaled armor, and brave scarlet kilt. I could see the vague shadows of Lamnias all about and I could hear the harsh orders to move, and so I understood that no great time had elapsed since Notor Zan had taken me entire. The aragorn were taking the young Lamnias selected for them, and, shrewd in their way, the Lamnias of Podia had saved one of themselves and thrown me in as a prize specimen of a slave.
Under the conjoined forces of the tail-blow on the head and the surgings of the solid earth beneath my feet and the rumblings of my gut, I staggered half a dozen paces beneath the trees. They had had the forethought to bind my wrists with thongs and had carried me out and dumped me among the forty-nine sacrifices.
The thongs were not lesten hide.
I broke them with a single savage surge, twisted, got the aragorn around the throat, and, ducking my head beneath his instinctive slash of the tail-blade, started to choke a little respect into him. I had no desire to kill him. I was still ensnared in the repression of my savage and intemperate nature; but enough was enough. He garbled and choked trying to yell. Others of the slave-masters came running, and so I threw this specimen at them and turned to dash into the moon-shadowed trees. Oh, yes, I was perfectly resigned to leave them unharmed and to run away. I had some of the most important aspects of my life worked out now; as you would say today, I had my priorities almost right. Delia would not welcome a dead husband lying rotting beneath the mud of some putrid island of the Shrouded Sea.
But these aragorn were cunning in the ways of man-management. Twining iron links whirred through the air and snagged my arms and legs, brought me down with a crash. Once the thongs had proved useless to hold me, they merely clamped chains upon me. I tested the iron. It would take long and long — if ever
— for me to break the weakest link.
After that it was a question of being prodded along the track between the trees. The aragorn I had maltreated took some delight in prodding me with his stux. I clashed my chains at him, but he laughed evilly and avoided the swinging bight and struck me again.
“Leave off, you onker, Reterhan!” The leader strode up, and his anger made of his ugly face a devil’s mask very like the face of the Devil of the Ice-Wind who guards the north shore of Gundarlo.
“He attacked me, Notor!”
“When he is sold — when we have golden deldys for him — you may take your own payment, then, Reterhan. Until then, by the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable, you will care for the merchandise as you care for your tail!”
“I obey, Notor.” Reterhan shrank back from his lord’s anger.
We marched again through the forest, and I guessed we went to another village of the island where more people would be rounded up. I trudged on under the weight of the iron chains until gradually my senses returned and my gut stopped rumbling. I was now ready to pull a few tails.
“That was nobly done, Horter Prescot.”
The young Lamnia looked like them all, yellow furred, meek in appearance, slightly built. I could barely envisage him hurling javelins so well as to out-throw some of the other Lamnia youths of Podia.
“These aragorn,” I said. “They need to be cleansed.”
“Aye, Horter Prescot. But we of Podia are not destined for that great work. We are too few and too weak.”
The youngster said his name was Fanal and as we walked along he spoke to me softly, and I answered with a guiding grunt or question. I learned more, then, of the tangled politics of the Shrouded Sea, and of how these aragorn of Sorah wreaked their horrors upon the islands. They were of the race of diffs called Kataki, and they held their tails in especial esteem. I was not surprised at that. I saw the fashion of helmet they wore, close-fitting and smooth, without embellishment or ornament. They could whip their tails about over their shoulders and around their heads, lashing forward in lethal sweeps. They would make interesting antagonists. I wondered why I had not encountered any in the Jikhorkdun, the arena, of Huringa; but Fanal explained that the aragorn took good care that they themselves were not sold into slavery and thus avoided the fate of fighting in the arenas of Hyrklana or Hamal. The Katakis gave most of the islands a bad time. The Canops, of whom I have told you, had forged themselves into a fighting nation of soldiers to resist them. My estimation of the Canops changed once more. And now I understand a little more of the fear-filled lifestyle of the Lamnias of Podia. Forced to live as slave-fodder, they had worked out a modus vivendi with the Katakis of Sorah, and with their accustomed Lamnia shrewdness had agreed period by period to supply a stipulated number of slaves, both youths and maidens.
The games I had witnessed sorted out the strongest and fittest young men, and the most beautiful and graceful of the young maidens. But then — and I admit I ricked my lips up in what might have passed as the semblance of a grin — the Lamnias sent as slaves to the aragorn their failures, the least agile young men, the least graceful young women. All the winners, the best athletes, the most beautiful girls, were hidden away out of sight. This made so much sense that I marveled it had not occurred with more frequency, given that those willing to take the risks of fooling aragorn must be shrewd and smart and cunning bargainers.
“And what is to become of you, Fanal, once you are a slave?”
“I do not know.” He looked apprehensive, as well he might. “I pray the eye of Lomno-Niarton may never close over me, so that I am spared the Jikhorkdun or the Heavenly Mines.”
This Fanal had been a loser, one who had not been able to keep up with his fellows in the races, who had not hurled his javelin as far, had not jumped as agilely, with the consequence unfortunate for him that he had been packed off as slave. I did not envision him coming out well from his experiences as a coy in the arena; as an apprentice he would not, I judged, last long. His reference to the Heavenly Mines I then took to be an oblique way of talking about death. I was wrong in that, as you shall hear, dreadfully wrong, and the word
The gale that had wrought my original destruction had blown itself out and She of the Veils rode free of cloud wrack. The trees swayed gently and the night breeze blew cool. Very soon we were ordered to halt and to wait while the Kataki aragorn went about their business.
“The village of Shinnar,” Fanal told me bitterly. “Ochs live there, gentle enough and not overly bright in matters of trade. They supply fifty young people, as do we, every period.”
Shortly thereafter we marched on, and the slaves were now a hundred in number. The next village yielded up twenty strong Rapas. I felt a mild surprise, for the Rapas are renowned for — apart from their smell, to which I was by now becoming accustomed — their ferocity and viciousness. But the Kataki aragorn stood no nonsense. I sensed that these Rapas did not come with quite the same willingness as the Lamnias and the Ochs. Maybe there was capital to be gained there. . One of Kregen’s lesser moons swung low over the trees as we came out onto the shore where the waves glimmered pink in long, surging lines of foam and the wind blew free. Again I stared with hungry longing upon the waters, for with a vessel under me and goodly spread of canvas I would be as free as the breeze. But now, quite apart from the Star Lords and the Savanti, the Kataki prevented me from taking ship and departing this sorry little island. Its name was Shanpo, and it was one of a multitude of islands in the Lesser Sharangil Archipelago. It seemed to be more obvious now why the Canops had not settled themselves on some other island grouping when their own land of Canopdrin had been so disastrously destroyed. The Katakis were a people either to avoid or to destroy.
“What happens now, Fanal?”
