The Usurper (39 page)

“You should have no difficulty,” said the man.

Cornhair was pleased to hear this.

“Good,” said Ortog.

“But I place you as a barbarian,” said the man.

“Perhaps,” said Ortog.

“So beware of Telnar,” said the man. “There are few river men and few barbarians in Telnar.”

“Perhaps, eventually,” said Ortog, “there will be more.”

“I have a friend, Orik,” said the man, “who has recently disembarked cargo, loaded more, and would welcome additional coin for an upstream voyage.”

“He would not object to carrying twenty-two slaves?”

“Not at all,” said the man. “They might take two or three days off the length of the voyage.”

“How so?” asked Ortog.

“They will do very nicely as tow beasts.”

“These are not draft slaves,” had said Ortog.

“But they are slaves,” had said the man.

“True,” had said Ortog. “Please be gracious enough to conduct me to your friend, Orik.”

“This way,” had said the man.

Cornhair, with the others, in the line, on the narrow trail, her feet sometimes slipping in the mud and gravel, pressed her body again against the hempen harness.

If only there had been a wind from the east, she thought, swelling the wide, matted sail!

“Rest!” called Orik, captain of the keel boat, from its deck, behind its blunt prow.

He had his right hand raised, shading his eyes, looking to the side, over the trees. There would be perhaps two more hours of daylight.

“Rest!” called the Harness Master.

Two men from the keel boat lowered themselves over the side and waded to shore, the water to their thighs, and tethered lines to two half-submerged, adjacent trees. The vessel pulled against these lines, turning slightly. The keel boat is seldom beached. This is less a matter of practicality and convenience, given its structure, weight, and size, than one of judicious precaution. The beached vessel is immobile and requires time to be thrust back into the water. It takes but a moment to cut mooring lines and free the vessel to the current. Similarly, it is seldom tethered snugly to shore. In this way a sudden rush of men would have difficulty in effecting a boarding, having to wade to the hull and then clamber over the gunwales, a most unpleasant prospect if men above them, behind the gunwales, should be moved to deny them entry.

Cornhair, with the others, still harnessed, crept to the side, and lay down in the shaded grass.

She lay on her belly, and dug her fingers into the grass.

She was covered with sweat, her legs were filthy. Her body ached, her feet and shoulders were sore.

She clutched at the grass.

She, as the others, in the lines, was naked. That was natural, and practical, given the heat, and misery and torment, of the work. Too, they were slaves. Too, nudity is, in a way, like the slave tunic, a bond. Not all slaves are naked, but one who is naked in public is likely to be a slave.

She was not chained.

That was commonly done at night, on the deck of the keel boat, or in one of the shore camps.

In the business at hand, chaining would have impaired the efficiency of the operation.

Chains keep women together. One whip, its leather admonitions poised, can master an entire chain. Many think of chains as being utilized to prevent escape. That is certainly true, of course, for they prevent escape with perfection; a chained slave knows herself helpless; but, too, there is another reason for chaining which is less commonly recognized, and that is to prevent theft. It is as difficult to steal a slave chained to a ring as it is, say, to steal any other property so secured. Similarly, where one might steal one shackled woman, carrying her away, gagged and struggling, into the night, it is not easy, at all, to steal a string of fifteen or twenty women shackled together. Surely that is a much greater challenge. Too, might that not call for several men, and bloodshed? Too, of course, it is easier to track a chain of twenty shackled properties than to pursue and recover one such property, just as it is easier to track a string of twenty horses or a herd of twenty pigs than a single horse or pig.

There are, of course, many aspects of chains which transcend simple matters of management, for example, matters mnemonic, aesthetic, stimulatory, psychological, and so on. Chains, as cords, ropes, straps, thongs, and such, have their effects on the female slave.

In any event, the slaves were not chained.

Cornhair was aware that she might slip the rope harness, but she, no more than the others, would not do so.

It was not, interestingly, simply that there was no escape for them, given their lack of garmenture, their marks, their collars, the enclosing society, the lack of anywhere to escape to, and such, but that they now, or at least Cornhair, understood themselves as quite other than free women. They now understood themselves as something radically, fundamentally different, as properties which might be bought and sold, as slaves.

Cornhair closed her eyes, put her head down, and felt the grass against her cheek.

She and the others, obviously, were not draft slaves. One would be a fool to buy such as they for haulage. Clearly such as they would be purchased for other purposes.

Yet, they, the twenty-two of them, had been put to haulage.

Did this not seem madness? How had Gundlicht, lieutenant to Ortog, with several others, delegated to dispose of the slaves in Telnar markets, permitted this? Would he bring fresh, rested slaves, hoping to be well purchased, to the shelves and blocks, or exhausted, strained, worn, sore, and weary slaves, pathetic beasts unlikely to be sought after otherwise than as bargains, purchased with an eye to the future?

What Cornhair, in her misery, did not realize was the attention and solicitude with which she and the others were being handled and treated. The Masters realized full well they were dealing with prize stock and had no intention of diminishing its value. They had not been driven and hastened as hauling slaves are often driven and hastened. They were well fed and frequently watered. The rope harness was cushioned at the shoulder. Their towing time was less than six hours per day. Rest periods were frequent. Men assisted at the poles. The whip had scarcely touched them. In Telnar, with a day or two's rest, they would be put up for sale in a condition calculated to display them to their vender's best advantage.

Cornhair opened her eyes, and looked back to the keel boat, a few feet from shore, on its mooring lines, and looked back, aft, to the deck cabin.

Who, she wondered, were the strangers who remained so much in that cabin.

Certainly they were not the two fellows who had had unpleasant, if not altogether untypical, experiences in the delta village, not the one who had returned bloody from a brawl, a handful of tavern cup dice in his grasp, nor the fellow severally slashed in some dispute about the charms of a slave. Men speculated that the luck of the first fellow might now change. Orik had advised him not to gamble with his crew mates. The second fellow had, at least, on foot, made it back to the keel boat. His antagonist, it was said, was likely to recover, as the blade had missed the heart.

In the delta village, on the evening the keel boat, hired by the barbarian, Ortog, was readied for the river, cargo lashed in place, to depart at dawn, one of the girls on the wharf, not yet boarded, had cried out and pointed to a streak in the sky. It seemed, at first, to be one of those familiar meteorological phenomena which some understood as the fiery passage of the vessel of Orak, king and father of the gods, or the cast, burning spear of Kragon, god of war, but others, doubtless more sophisticated, as merely the dislodgment and plummeting of a star. To be sure, those in the imperial navy, and, we suspect, some barbarians, would be likely to understand such things differently, as marking the flight of sky stones, often partly metal, which might occasionally, and sometimes, like a fierce rain, imperil ships, the far-ranging ships, those traversing the airless, lonely, nigh-vacant deserts between worlds. The passage of such stones through atmospheres, abraded by friction, would be marked by a debris of flaming particles. Indeed, occasionally, despite so tortuous a passage, the residue of such a stone would impact a surface.

But, in this case, such interpretations would have proved erroneous.

Several of the girls screamed and covered their ears, and shrank down in their chains, and large, rough men, startled, cried out in alarm.

It seemed a roaring projectile was now hurtling toward them, from over the sea, beyond the delta, and then it was passing overhead, taking its way past the village, northwest. The dusk was blasted with the sudden light of its brief, linear passage, and the air tore at them, affrighted with noise and heat, and then the object disappeared, descending into the marshes.

Cornhair lay in the darkness, her two hands on the chain, padlocked about her neck, which fastened her to the others.

Some yards away there was a small fire, and some boatmen, four or five, gathered about it, drinking.

From where she lay, she could hear the soft sounds of the river, the flowing, the rippling and stirring, the pressing amongst the reeds, the eddying about trees, lower trunks under the water. Interestingly, she had never noticed such sounds during the day. But at night, it was different. There was, too, the smell of rich, rotting detritus at its borders.

There was, too, the sound of some insects.

She suddenly became aware of a movement in the darkness, near her. It was a small party of men, three men, apparently those who had boarded the keel boat four days ago, before dawn, at the delta village. Shortly after their arrival the keel boat's matted sail was raised, and the boat was poled from the wharf, to essay the long journey upstream to Telnar. She had not really seen the newcomers as she, with the other slaves, now chained to one another by the neck, were forward, behind a leaning canvas sheet fixed on poles, which might, if it were wished, be raised, and adjusted, to shield the girls from the sun, or, if it were thought judicious to conceal cargo, be drawn over them. Doubtless one of the main motivations for this arrangement, having the girls forward and behind the canvas wall, was to conceal the slaves from the sight of the crew. River men, no matter how unruly and rowdy they might be ashore, are commonly reliable and disciplined while doing the business of the boat. On the other hand, Orik, the captain of the keel boat, presumably saw little point in subjecting discipline, at least unnecessarily, to what might prove to be excessive stress.

Cornhair lay very quietly.

She again felt the chain on her neck. It would hold her well in place, as it did the others. The chain had been taken about a large tree, and then closed. The girls were thus held to one another by the chain, and, by the chain, to the tree itself.

“How helpless we are,” thought Cornhair to herself. “They do with us what they want.” She twisted a little in the grass. “But why not?” she asked herself. “It is fitting; we are their animals, the animals of men. I am a slave. I want a Master. I need a Master! How free I am, that I am now a slave. I am now free to belong to a Master, to be owned. I hope that I am beautiful enough to be pleasing to a Master. I do not want to be whipped.”

The three men were now close to her.

They had avoided the fire.

They spoke softly.

It seemed clear they did not wish to be overheard.

They had remained muchly in the deck cabin, during the day.

Then, suddenly, they ceased speaking.

A lantern was approaching, from the side of the river, moving inshore.

“Greetings,” said a voice, that of Gundlicht, to the three men. Gundlicht, and several others, of the men of Ortog, were accompanying the slaves west. Ortog himself, Cornhair gathered, had remained behind in the village with the larger set of slaves, presumably waiting until the blockade might be lifted, and he, with his ships, some four, she gathered, might make their departure. Indeed, for all Cornhair knew, the blockade might have been lifted already, and Ortog might have taken his leave. Indeed, perhaps even now the ships of the barbarian, Abrogastes, had been destroyed, or had fled, fearing the arrival of imperial fleets.

“Greetings,” said one of the three men to Gundlicht.

Cornhair feared, suddenly, she had heard the voice before.

“Do not lift your lantern to our faces,” said another.

“It matters not,” said Gundlicht, “I do not know you.”

“You might remember us,” said another voice.

“Very well,” said Gundlicht, turning away with the lantern. “I am doing slave check.”

He then began to make his way about the chain.

“Have I heard that voice before?” Cornhair asked herself. “Perhaps long ago, perhaps when I was free. If only he would speak more, so that I might rid myself of this apprehension, that I might recognize the foolishness of my uneasiness. I could not have heard that voice before. It is impossible.”

The lantern was then beside Cornhair, who turned her face away, frightened, away from the light.

She did not wish any of the three men, there in the darkness, to see her features. What if one of them was he whom she feared it might be?

“Oh!” she sobbed, for Gundlicht had seized her head by the hair, and turned it toward him, holding it helplessly before him, its features exposed, in the full illumination of the lantern.

“A slave is to be looked upon as men please,” said Gundlicht, holding her head still, in the light.

“Yes, Master,” whispered Cornhair. “Forgive me, Master!”

Then Gundlicht released her, and she put her head down, away from the light.

The lantern moved away.

The three men, in converse to one side, seemed preoccupied. It was not likely they had noticed the discomfiture and fear of a slave.

Too, what would it matter? Slaves are unimportant.

Supposedly Telnar was to be reached tomorrow, in the afternoon. She and the others would then, she supposed, be housed ashore and, within two or three days, sold, individually or as a lot.