The Conqueror (2 page)

“
Right lads. Help the man.”
Kann gave a sharp nod in Garvin’s direction and the troops, young
and old, big and small, shuffled over with relative
cheer.

You had to keep an eye on them and keep
a firm hand on the reins. Other than that, they were all
right.

Kann figured you could do
worse.

***

Upon dismounting, the County’s troopers
had divided themselves up almost without bidding from the Serjeants
at Arms, in command of this very detail.

“
Watch your mouth, Trooper
Bibbs.” Kann had glared at the offender, and the fellow turned with
flaming ears to attend to his mount.

Every so often Kann picked one and made
an example of him. This seemed to work well enough, and then after
a time, the effect wore off again. This was especially true of the
younger ones.

Taking their own reins in hand along
with those of their fellow-troopers, some of the junior men led the
horses off to be watered, unsaddled, and put into stalls or turned
out into the yard between the curtain walls, as suited their
condition or temperament.

The more senior troopers stood close as
the door to the tall cell on wheels was opened by the gaoler with
his bunch of jangling keys. One by one, with much talk, barked
orders, threats and promises from the soldiers, the prisoners were
brought down to be confined within proper stone walls for the
night. It would almost be a relief, for some of them had come a
long ways. They always took the women off first, especially the
ones with kids. The Crown wasn’t heartless, after all. Kann was
strolling around, pretending to ignore them, but the wiser heads
kept the juniors on the ball.

The job was easy, and it would be over
soon enough.

An officer of the guard, distinguished
by the red lining of his short grey cloak, more a mark of office
and a bit of a formality as the day was still middling warm, came
out of the Baillie’s office.

He was helmetless, which was
understandable but it had always bothered Kann to be commanded by
such men. When you took the metal hat off, you were just one of the
boys, he thought.

Kann patted Garvin on the shoulder
after coming up on the blind side, and then made off after a gaggle
of the men.

“
Hallo. Who goes
there?”

“
It is I, Garvin of Boeth,
in charge of prisoners of the Court and slaves for the auction.” He
had a leather folder with a sheaf of papers attesting to just such
a fact.

The other nodded, after a glance. The
official folder carried its own weight, and then there was the
man.

Garvin craned his neck, shaded his eyes
against the glare coming off the white wall behind the fellow and
looked at the tall, rather distinguished officer.

“
And your name,
sir?”

“
Nyron. Officer of the
Guard. It’s one penny a night for official prisoners. Two pence a
night for slaves and private prisoners. If they have money, they
can send out for their own food, assuming they can bribe one of my
men to do that for them.” Nyron grinned pleasantly at this
witticism. “Hopefully, we have enough space.”

He stopped, and his mouth hung there as
the last prisoner stepped to the door.

“
Absolutely.” Garvin
nodded, all of that was simple routine. “Some of them are being
bound over, and a few are going out again in the
morning.”

He’d been provided with enough cash for
the eventuality, and he was a bit of a stickler in his own
record-keeping.

“
Take a good look, er,
Captain Nyron.” He smiled at the older fellow, and the insignia on
the shoulder of his cloak was plain enough.

The officer’s eyebrows rose in
appreciation. This didn’t happen every day. Normally, it was the
very dregs of humanity, mostly the criminals, the unfortunates and
the fools that washed up here.

The barbarian prisoner had to bow his
head, reluctant captive as he was, with a pair of handlers tugging
on short lengths of chain attached to an iron ring around his neck.
The cell door was only about five feet high.

“
Dear me. Goodness,
gracious.” The man certainly had an impressive physique, all bulges
and ripples and pectoral muscles and things like that.

He was very good looking, and unusual
in that he was clean-shaven. His long brown hair swept back in
healthy waves, falling on his shoulders, giving an impression of
power and masculine grace.

He wasn’t wearing much
except a soiled green wool kilt around the middle, serviceable
sandals and a short cloak made of some animal skin. The tawny color
and white edges indicated that the skin came from a sizable feline
of the
puma
genus.

From what little Nyron knew of
barbarians, one had to earn the right to wear such a garment, and
there was really only one way to do that, now, wasn’t
there?

Holy. Shit.

The man was trying not to let his heels
slip on the short iron ladder at the front of the carriage, going
down frontwards and with his hands bound in front. Nyron wouldn’t
try telling these boys their business. A rough looking crew, the
two of them would hopefully be enough to handle him. Four of his
own troops stood idly by but close enough for any emergency. As far
as he was concerned they were there as a last resort. The Crown
could live without damage suits resulting from harm caused to the
human merchandise, at least on his watch. The same was true in
handling privately-owned animals, in a day and age when a good milk
cow was said to be worth its weight in copper.

While this wasn’t
strictly
true, some of
those little folk sayings had a kind of wisdom.

Men, women and children were being led
away on halters and chains, properly segregated as much as
possible. Queen Eleanora’s great-grandfather, Wlodimir the Great,
had decreed that infants would not be separated from their mothers.
In such circumstances, with Autumn Court only days away, facilities
were crowded and inevitably they must compromise. Efforts were made
not to break up families, even barbarian families. The professional
soldier could see the sense of that—it prevented plenty of
heartaches for all concerned and made handling the mob a little
easier sometimes.

Nyron did a quick head count:
forty-three souls plus another hundred or so already in custody. He
had a few empty cells, and most of the others, the really big ones,
were not too outrageously overcrowded. The problem was a nice
division of the sexes and ages, and just keeping trouble to a
minimum. It made sense to keep the private shipments together as
much as possible. This was not his favorite duty, but it had to be
done. It came with the job.

“
I make it forty-three
prisoners in all.”

“
That’s right, sir,
forty-three. Yes, sir.”

Nyron accepted a bill of lading listing
names and descriptions, running a quick eye over it.

He’d been a slave for five or six years
himself, before buying his freedom from an indulgent master who
needed money. The master wanted to pick up a few extra acres for
his youngest son’s death-portion. It was a common occurrence, when
the better class of owner began feeling their age and sensing the
cold hand of mortality. Fairly well read, Nyron considered himself
a bit of a philosopher. He was also luckier than most. The Army had
been the making of him, and now he wouldn’t trade it for
anything.

It was better not to take things too
personally sometimes.

He wondered if the man would risk a
fight.

The big prisoner stood at ground level.
After his long confinement, he gratefully stretched his spine,
seemingly growing in front of their eyes, and they could almost
hear it crack at hip-level. It was more a thing of the imagination.
The cage wasn’t very big, only about four and half feet wide and
about ten feet long. Nyron doubted if it was a full six feet high
inside. With nine or ten people in there for several days, plus the
honey-bucket, sleeping accommodations left much to be desired. It
was a very good reason to stay out of trouble. It was better than
slogging along on foot, chained to a dozen other people, all of
them of different size and gait. That’s how Nyron had always
thought of it. You never really forgot. Nyron nodded at the driver,
his boy standing patiently beside the team. The kid hit the nearest
horse on the flank with a willow switch. The tall wagon trundled
and lurched forwards in anticipation of being turned around and
left outside the second gate where the big draft animals could
graze and rest if they didn’t need other attention. There simply
wasn’t enough space in the inner yard for all the big
wagons.

“
Holy.” The prisoner
dwarfed his handlers, who were often not the most prepossessing of
men. “Mother of Nutshepshat.”

Each according to his needs, each
according to his abilities, thought Nyron. What irony—a man who
should have been a general, being dragged around by the likes of
them.

“
Yes. Lowren, ah, that’s
his name, is the really, really big one that didn’t quite get away.
Our prize, and one that shall bring my master much
profit.”

Nyron examined the lean, strong
features and formidable physique of the prisoner. He’d had to bend
double to get out of the cage. Loaded with chains and shackles,
whose weight he seemed to ignore, head held high as he stretched
his legs in unconscious yet urgent manner, the prisoner looked
around at his new, albeit temporary home.

“
Oh, he’s one of yours? How
much, if I might so inquire?”

“
Ah, a connoisseur. Good
fellow. Well. I reckon we’ll start the bidding at---” As if not
already familiar with Lowren’s statistics, he took another
appreciative look. “A hundred gold pieces…”

“
A hundred!”

“
Yeah. Don’t forget I have
to answer to the Count. Some sort of northern prince-ling, if his
story is to be believed.” The barbarian’s head came around, and his
eyes hardened and the gaoler’s look sobered. “He wasn’t too happy
to be taken, I can tell you that much. His manners are good and
they say he can read and such like that. He’s not like the others.
His spirit hasn’t been broken, not yet anyways, and in my opinion
his next owner had better take that into account.”

Lowren was an exceedingly healthy
looking specimen, Nyron thought. He might not understand a word of
it, but he knows what a gaoler is. He met the eyes for a moment,
strangely uncomfortable with it. He doesn’t like me very much, does
he?

“
Yes, but a hundred
pieces?” That was outrageous, the average farm hand not worth a
tenth of that.

Not even a twentieth.

Barbarians, tall and strong as they
might be, weren’t good for much else. They had no trades, no skills
to speak of except war and plunder—they were pretty good at
drinking and fighting and carousing in general of course, and once
that was taken care of, that really only left subsistence farming
and grazing the herds.

“
Really. He is a king, you
know. That’s the last of them.”

The second wagon had finally moved off
and the slavers were pulling their people into line with the
occasional kicks, slaps for the younger or weaker ones, and a good
measure of cursing as well.

“
A bloody king. Hah.” Well,
serve him right then!

Looks good on
you.

Nyron nodded sourly. Too rich for his
blood, and it probably wouldn’t be worth it anyways.

Keeping a certain type of man or woman
docile and subservient was extremely difficult. They were expensive
to feed, clothe and house. He’d heard some real horror stories, not
the least of which was how they would sicken and die for no real
reason sometimes, and just when the owners were growing quite fond
of them.

A thought struck him.

“
How, in the names of the
gods, did you ever take him?” There had to be a good story
here.

Barbarian kings didn’t travel or camp
without followers and hordes of armed men with naked swords and
those horrid little re-curved bows. Bags and bags of arrows, as it
was said, and the women were almost worse. In a defeat, barbarians
had been turned back upon the enemy by their own wives and mothers
more than once.

It was no legend—it was
truth.

“
Ah. Trade secret—I wasn’t
actually
there,
you
understand. But there may have been a female companion involved—and
maybe a little ale as well.” Garvin cracked a grin, grabbing
Nyron’s upper arm in familiarity. “It’s possible she, ah, might
have slipped him the old knock-out drops, eh?
Heh-heh-heh.”

He let go, and turned to look
again.

The prisoner’s startling blue eyes
impaled Garvin and the smile disappeared. Garvin, cold in the face
now, made an overhand motion with his free hand. The prisoner
looked away, feigning indifference. Apparently the prisoner had
been bonked on the head when he was in his cups…those eyes were
definitely forbidding, thought Nyron as his own grin
faded.