hard — sacks of onions, a few rounds of cheese, and what was clearly a single vosk cut into portions and cooked. By the time Tulema and I reached the feeding cave all the vosk was claimed, the bread was vanishing, the onions were rolling about with frantic figures in pursuit of them, but there was plenty of dilse for those unable to secure the better food, those too weak and feeble to fight for it.
Now I understood why Tulema’s face showed a thinness her body did not reveal. That is the blight of dilse.
A large and somewhat ferocious Rapa was striding past me. He held a thick rasher of vosk, a piece of bread, and no less than four onions. He knocked an Och away, who attempted with one of his four arms to steal the vosk rasher. The Och tumbled against the wall, screeching. Tulema shrank back. I said to the Rapa: “I would be obliged if you would share that vosk rasher, and a piece of bread, and half the onions with this girl, here.”
The Rapas are notorious in their treatment of women. Once my Delia had been threatened with the horrible fate of being tossed naked into the Rapa court. The Rapa leered.
“You may go to the Ice Floes of Sicce,” he said, and went to push past. Well — maybe I was some kind of Prince Majister — but here and now I was slave in a slave pen. I knew slave manners. I hit the Rapa in the guts and took the vosk, the bread, and two of the onions. The other two rolled over the floor and were instantly pounced on by an old Fristle woman. The Rapa tried to straighten up, hissing, his beaked face vicious, his crest swelling. But I hit him again, with my free hand, and turned to Tulema.
“Eat.”
“But — you-”
“I am not hungry.”
That was true. Only moments ago I had risen from the campfire, replete with the finest delicacies Valka could offer.
She fell on the food ravenously.
If you were not strong and determined and ruthless here you would not die of starvation, for you could eat dilse, but you would slowly decline. Maybe, I thought even then, there was purpose in this. I had some inkling of slave-masters’ ways.
We walked away and I waited for Tulema to finish eating.
Then I said: “Tulema. Listen closely. I want to know the names and conditions of all the people who were with us in the cell when-” I hesitated. I could hardly say to her, “When I arrived,” for that would demand explanations I would not give, and if given, would not be believed. I finished: “When the slave-master was knocked down.”
The food inside her warmed her. She did not giggle — slaves only laugh and sing when something special happens, like the master falling down and breaking his neck — but she let me know she thought my remark highly apposite.
“I think I can remember. But why?”
Instinctively I had to quell my instant rush of bad language, my browbeating intolerance of any who would question an order. I said: “Does anyone escape from here, Tulema?”
“We believe so — we hope so — but I am frightened to go-”
That did make some kind of sense, but it was a tortuous thread. Tulema told me something of herself, and thereby something also of where we were. She came from a seaside town called Fellow, and she sounded sad when she told me of her home in Herrelldrin. She had every right to be sad. We were on the island of Faol, and she shivered as she told me. The island lay off the coast of Havilfar. Havilfar!
So far on Kregen I had trod the land of the continents of Segesthes and of Turismond. I had touched at Erthyrdrin, in the continent of Loh. But the continent of Havilfar was all new and unexplored by me, virgin territory. I fancied I was in for some wild adventures and some seething action in the future, and, as you shall hear, I was not wrong.
After the meal a sudden shrilling of a stentor’s horn made everyone jump and then rush madly for the exits. I stumbled along after Tulema, trying to keep her in sight in the frenzied rushing to and fro of slaves. Screams and cries rang out, people shouted for friends, and I saw the way the slaves kept darting frightened glances back, into the dimmer recesses of the caves.
We all pushed up against the lenk-wood bars.
I blinked against the glare of the twin suns and looked out. I knew we were in the southern hemisphere of Kregen now, and therefore the suns would cross the sky to the northward, but just where we were off Havilfar in relation to the equator I could not say. I guessed we were nearer that imaginary line than I had been in Vallia, nearer, even, than I had been in Pandahem. For the northern sweep of Havilfar rises out of the southern ocean east of southern Loh, below the rain forests of Chem. I fancied Inch’s Ng’groga would not be too far away, down to the southwest.
In the clearing cut from the jungle I saw guards strutting, banging their whips against gaitered legs, swaggering in their tunics of forest green. Among them a number of well-dressed men and women moved as though on a shopping expedition.
I say as though on a shopping expedition, but then I thought that was what they were doing — shopping for slaves. In that I was wrong.
A group advanced to the cage where we stood and Tulema shrank back. Other slaves with us pushed forward boldly. Tulema held my arm. Without any sense of rancor I guessed she saw in me a meal ticket and did not wish to lose me. My sentiments were not to lose her, for she could tell me of the people in the cell when I arrived.
In the mob of slaves pressing up against the bars one man stood out. He was dark-haired, and his hair was cropped. He looked lithe and bronzed and fit. He had about him an alertness, an air of competence, and I saw the way he stood, loosely and limberly. The people with him pressed against the lenk-wood bars.
“A very fine bunch at the moment, Notor,”[1]a guard was saying to one of the customers. The guard I categorized in a moment: hard, arrogant, whip-wielding, a true slave-master, toadying now to the highborn of the land.
The man he had addressed as “Notor” also merited little attention, being fleshy, bulkily built, with a dark beard and moustaches. His eyes were like those of a leem. He wore a fine tunic of some fancy pale lavender silk, and boots, and at his side swung a sword. He carried a kerchief drenched in perfume. The party with him, other nobles and their ladies, were likewise attired in silks and satins against the heat. They were a chattering, laughing, carefree group of people — and my heart hardened against them, for all I had been as happy and carefree in what, although it was but a bur or so ago, now seemed another world.
“Yes, Nalgre,” said the lord. “I think so. What do you advise for this season? A dozen? Would that be enough for us?” He sniggered. “We are passable shots, Nalgre.”
“The finest shots, Notor Renka,” quoth Nalgre the slave-master. “I believe, with all due deference, you could easily accommodate a full score.”
Tulema tugged me back again.
“Do not press against the bars so, Dray!” I had told her my name, Dray Prescot, without so much as a Koter for title. I had had my fill of titles for the moment.
I shook her hand off, for I wanted to learn as much as might be of the situation in which I had been placed, a problem to solve and someone to save — someone, I had no idea who. At that instant, when I was about to press forward and so join the mob, slightly separated from the others, clustered around the lithe dark-haired man, I saw beyond the bars a man I knew. He walked with the notables and laughed and glanced over the slaves, and waved a scented handkerchief airily. The man was Berran, Vadvar of Rifuji, a noble of Vallia who had been a secret member of the third party, and who had led his men to the aid of Naghan Furtway to fight at The Dragon’s Bones. I had thought him dead. Now he was here. I wondered how many others of the leaders of the abortive coup had fled to Havilfar.
Feeling it was prudent not to be recognized I stepped back away from the bars. I must have stepped smartly, for Tulema let out a squeal, and I realized I had trodden on her toes. I do not apologize, so I said: “Who is that man with the dark hair and handsome face? A slave who looks unlike a slave?”
She recovered quickly. From the corner of my eye I could see the Notor Renka and his party, and with them Berran, moving away with the slave-master, so that danger had passed.
“He is a guide. They are brave men — I wish-” She swallowed. Her face wore a drawn look of misery. “I am frightened to go with them. I can offer nothing — but everyone says they can save us.”
