The Warrior Returns - Anteros 04 (23 page)

Then she flung them off and stalked forward, her strides long and slow. She stopped in front of me.

"To think I believed I needed you," she said.

I didn't answer. I couldn't have if I'd wanted to.

Novari touched the wound on her cheek. Her eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away. Then she said, "You went for my eyes."

In the silence that followed I saw a flicker as she made some sort of a decision.

Novari hissed at me, "Bitch!"

Then she turned to the guards. 'Take her to the mines," she said. "They'll find useful work for her there." The guards started to drag me away.

"Oh, yes, one more thing," she said. The guards stopped. Waiting.

And Novari said, "Bring me back one of her eyes." Again she touched her right cheek where I'd cut her. "Bring me the right one," she commanded, voice hoarse with rage. "Make certain of that. Only the right eye will do."

I
can't say
much about what happened next. The days and weeks that followed were a blur of constant shock and pain. It was all a mad chariot ride through a nightmare that had no beginning or end.

I don't remember how and when they took my eye. I only remember through a thick haze my first awareness that it was gone.

It was like floating up from the bottom of a muddy lake of misery. I emerged gasping and choking in hot sooty air that seared my lungs. I found myself stooped at the head of a line of creatures dressed in filthy rags. I felt stiff scratchiness on my own skin and knew I was dressed the same.

I heard fire roar and bellows pump and I tried to turn my head to look.

The world spun and I lurched into someone. That someone cursed me and I felt a hard tug and heard the clatter of chains. I muttered an apology and became dimly aware that I had a steel band about my waist and that I was linked together with the rest of the group by a heavy chain that ran from belt to belt. My feet and arms, however, were free.

I heard the iron slap of a hammer against an anvil—a slow, steady measure. I tried to look again. Everything seemed strange, distorted and flat-dimensioned, making it

difficult to make out the edges of things or how far or near they might be.

I tentatively touched my face. A bandage was looped across my forehead, covering the right side. Beneath the bandage I felt the throb of a hollow socket where my eye had been. Just below was the stinging sensation of a healing wound.

My thoughts were a dim-witted babble: "My eye? That's right Novari has it She ordered it taken out."

I had no feelings about the mutilation, other than dull interest I was too numb. Too much in shock from hard treatment.

Someone bellowed. A heavy hand struck my shoulder. I shuffled forward on aching legs. The others followed me, chains rattling.

Another blow brought me up short Someone stumbled into me. I automatically snarled a curse, and got a muttered apology in reply. Why I knew to do this, I couldn't say. But it came to me that I'd been in these circumstances for some time. Somehow I'd learned what to do in order to survive.

I was streaming sweat and it was hard to breathe. My mouth was dry from dehydration. I tilted my head and cautiously peered about with my good eye.

I was in a large blacksmith shop. The walls were covered with hunks of iron and chain and racks of implements in various stages of repair or construction. I heard the hiss of metal being plunged into a tempering bucket and smelled steamy oil.

The bellows resumed their pumping and I located the forge. A blacksmith with a fire-scarred apron covering his bare torso manned the bellows. To one side of the forge was his anvil. On the other was another man dressed in clean expensive robes. He stood before a small table with a few medical devices on it and a pile of dirty rags folded like bandages. A Healer of some sort. I didn't think that when I saw him. I was too fuzzy to make even such a simple guess. I just
knew
it somehow.

Someone had told me. I didn't recall when or who.

A guard with a piggish face unlocked my chain, freeing me from the others. He shoved me forward and I tottered up to the forge. I was dragged to a stop in front of the Healer.

"Let's see your arm," he said, bored.

I didn't have to ask which one. I automatically lifted my left.

I gaped. The arm stopped short at my wrist A ball of rags stained with blood was tied about the end. The Healer peeled off the rags, unwinding them swiftly and with no thought for the pain he was causing as he ripped them away.

I found myself staring at a pink stump where my left hand used to be. There were two metal bolts driven through the stump with threaded ends protruding on either side.

The Healer held my arm by the bolts, turning it this way and that so he could get a good look. He sniffed at the flesh, smelled no corruption, and nodded in satisfaction.

"This one looks ready," he said to the blacksmith. "I did a pretty good job, even if I do say so myself."

The blacksmith sneered at him. 'Takes no talent to whack 'em off," he said. "Any butcher can do that. The real work's makin' 'em new again."

"Don't be stupid," the Healer snorted. "She wouldn't be any use to you if her stump was rotted, would she, now?"

He let go of the stump. I held it there for a while, squinting with my single eye to see it better. All emotion was at great distance. My only wonderment was that I thought I could still feel my hand. Absently, I tried to wiggle my fingers. But there was no sensation other than a burning at the stump.

The blacksmith grabbed it roughly and pulled me to him. It hurt and I tried to pull back. The guard slapped me on the back of the head.

"Stay still, bitch," he said. "He's not done with you yet." I did as I was told.

The blacksmith looked the stump over, paying more attention to the bolts than to my flesh. He daubed the threads with an oil mop, then shouted over his shoulder to his apprentice.

"Size seven ought to do it," he said.

I watched a fat young man waddle to a rack. On it I saw scores of black metal hands. The fat apprentice searched among them until he found one he thought would satisfy his master. He fetched it to the blacksmith, who burred and polished the fittings with a round file, then directed the apprentice to hold my stump.

"Steady, now," he said to the apprentice. "Last time you flinched and ruined a perfectly good stump." He gestured, indicating me. "Don't mind if it pains her," he advised the apprentice. "She ain't nothin' more'n an animal. Got no feelings we need to think on."

The apprentice got a good grip, and the smithy greased the interior of the metal hand, then forced it on the stump, twisting back and forth to do so. The pain was incredible. I think I moaned. I'm not certain.

"Good rough fit," the smithy said approvingly. "Won't need much touching up."

He yanked hard and the metal hand came off. I nearly fainted from the pain. I must've staggered, because the guard slapped the back of my head again and snarled for me to straighten up.

The smithy clamped the hand in tongs and thrust it into the fire, heaving at the bellows until the fire roared white-hot. When the metal hand got good and red, he withdrew it, laid it against the anvil, and used a small hammer to tap here and there—making adjustments, he told the apprentice.

When he was satisfied, he plunged the hand into a tempering bucket Steam and oil fumes hissed up in a greasy cloud. He withdrew the hand; it was glistening and dark.

Once again the apprentice held my stump while the blacksmith twisted the metal into place. It was still hot from the forge, and through the pain I was dimly aware of the smell of my burning flesh. I heard the Healer say something about there being little chance for infection now.

The threaded bolts in my stump jutted through openings in the metal hand. A drilled band was placed over the bolts and heavy nuts were cinched into place with a wrench, then welded so they couldn't be removed.

I fainted while they were doing the welding.

I suppose I eventually came to. But I'd returned to that hazy world of misery, drifting about as if heavily drugged.

The next time I became even vaguely aware of the world about me, I was working beside a short, heavyset woman. I was helping her pull a solid gold rod from an extrusion machine. It was smoking hot, still soft and nearly ten feet long. We were using our metal hands to hold the rod, and I was amazed when I realized that I was clutching the object as if the hand were real instead of artificial. It felt like someone else's hand, acting out my wishes from a great distance.

The woman and I lugged the rod across a wide room that seemed to have been carved out of rock. The walls and floors and jagged ceiling were grimed with grease and oil and soot. The room was hot, hotter than anyplace I'd ever been. And there was a constant thunder of heavy machinery at work. I saw other slaves, both men and women, shuffling about the room, going from one strange machine to another, barely moving out of the way when a furnace unexpectedly belched steam or fire.

AH of them had metal hands like mine.

The heavyset woman and I dropped the rod on a large pile. We stopped, panting for breath.

I looked at my iron hand. I moved the fingers in and out, bent the thumb across my palm. It performed all these tasks slowly but very smoothly on greased bearings in the knuckles and joints. I could feel a small ball of warmth in the palm and knew it was magic.

Soon as I caught the scent of the spell, my senses widened—although only slightly—and I could smell the ozone stench of powerful magic at work. The machines reeked of it; the stone in the walls and floors were slippery with it The very scorched air I sucked into my heaving lungs had the foul tang of demon's breath.

Somewhere a heavy gong echoed and the machines went silent. My fellow slaves began lumbering into long lines that stretched across the immense chamber to massive barred doors. I became confused. I didn't know what to do.

"We have to go, Rali," the woman said, taking my arm.

Suddenly she seemed familiar to me. Her name popped into my head without effort. I nodded and went with her, saying, "Where to, Zalia?"

"Where we go every night, dear," she said, her voice gentle, as if she were speaking to a child. "To our cells."

"That's right," I said, vaguely remembering.

I got into line with her. Orders were barked. We all shuffled forward—hundreds of us—and whips cracked and slaves cried out.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"I've told you before, dear," Zalia said. "But I'll tell you again. We're in the mines of Koronos."

Emotion boiled through the haze that enveloped me. I felt tears well up and I thought, The gods help me, I'll never get out of here.

I must have sobbed, because Zalia patted my shoulder to comfort me. Then all manner of what seemed like new sights and sounds and sensation pummeled me as I was led at a dogtrot through the mines.

It was a bewildering warren of horrors. Hammers cracked at rocks, molten gold spurted from pipes into big vats, machines ground and clanked and spewed fire, and everywhere I looked laborers moaned in pain. Sometimes we had to wait as other columns of slaves passed. Other times big ore cars blocked our way, with slaves hitched up like oxen to drag them along wooden rails.

At last we came to a corridor with barred cells on either side. Zalia guided me into a cell, and I slumped on a stone bench.

She went to a bucket of water and wet a rag. She returned to sit beside me and gently lifted the bandage that covered my empty socket. She sponged around the wound.

Although I remembered nothing, not even meeting her, the tender routine had a familiar feel to it. I felt I could trust her.

Somehow she had become my companion and possibly a friend.

When she was done she tucked the bandage back into place, saying, 'There you are, dear." She went to the bucket to clean herself up.

I studied her as she lifted her ragged tunic to scrub soot from her legs. Awareness was trickling slowly back and I examined her closely. I
knew
this woman. But until that moment, it seemed to me, she'd only been a tender voice emanating from the shadows.

Zalia was squat, with calves the size of my waist. Her hair was a butchered auburn mop and her face was large and round, but with a small nose and bowed lips that looked out of place. There was also an odd aura about her that aroused me further from the dullness.

I tried to slip out a probe to test the edges of her aura. I was alarmed when nothing happened.

I tried again. I felt resistance, then whatever was holding my magic back began to give.

I pressed harder, felt something like fabric rip, and I tasted just a whiff of sorcery—and then pain suddenly gripped me. It shot up from my metal hand, wracked my elbow like it was struck by a sledge, and then my shoulder and neck and back were seized with such agony that my stomach heaved.

I vomited on the floor.

Zalia was suddenly beside me, holding my head and rubbing my back as I spewed my guts on the cell floor.

"Poor thing," she said, "poor thing."

Then the pain and sick feeling were gone. She pushed me back on the stone bed. She cleaned me up, put a cold wet rag on my forehead, and then mopped up the mess I'd made.

I lay there silently, and the only pain remaining was the throbbing of my eye socket. I closed my good eye.

Sparks and glowing shapes drifted through blackness.

1 slept.

There was a clack of wood against metal. I awoke to see

Zalia carrying a pail of food through the cell door. A large wooden spoon with a hooked handle bumped against the side.

I was suddenly very hungry. I sat up, licking my lips as she scooped up a thick yellowish gruel and dumped it into a wooden bowl. Odd bits, colored the greenish gray of spoiled meat, floated up as she stirred the bowl's contents with a tin spoon.

The gruel smelled delicious. My mouth watered, and I got up to find my own bowl.

"You can't eat this, dear," she said. "I've told you that before." She was dipping up some for herself as she said this.

"Why not?" I asked.

"It's not good for you, Rali dear," she answered.

"You're
eating it," I accused, trembling like a child being unfairly denied something everyone else was enjoying.

"It'll make you fat and ugly," she said. "Like me."

"I don't care," I said. "I'm hungry."

"Just be patient,
Rali
," she said. "I'll feed you tonight. Just like I always do."

I struggled for some memory of this but no images came. I went back to my bench and sat.

I felt petulant, pouty, and full of resentment. As I became aware of these feelings I became unhappy with myself. And I thought, What's wrong? This isn't like me.

The haze lifted further and I became more certain of my surroundings. The door to the cell I was in was open. From where I sat I could see down the corridor outside. The other cell doors were also open and I could see lumps of humanity going about their slave's business. They were eating or quarreling or playing games with bits of rock and bone. I saw a man and woman coupling in full view of others, rutting and grunting like dogs.