“Sorry,” said Torc. “D’you want to use my hammock?” he added, to Arren. “You can have it if you want.”
“No, Torc,” said Nolan. “There’s a spare one at the end of the row. He can have that.”
“Thank you,” said Arren. “I mean, I—” He cringed at the pain in his back.
“Say no more, Taranis,” said Nolan. “Just eat that up and have something to drink afore you turn in; you need plenty of good rest if you’re gonna heal up. Try not to move too much; send Torc if you need anythin’. Stick close to me tomorrow, an’ I’ll try an’ help you keep goin’. Time like this, you needs all the help you can get.”
“I …” Arren trailed off, looking at Nolan. Nolan stared back guilelessly. Around him the other slaves were still watching, their expressions not hostile but curious and sympathetic. Even welcoming. And there was something about them, he realised, something about the way they looked at him and the way they spoke, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He felt frustrated that he couldn’t decide what it was, but his mind was in a haze and he couldn’t concentrate properly.
“Thank you,” he said at last.
12
Northerners
I
n spite of his pain, Arren was so weak and exhausted that he drifted off to sleep fairly quickly, but what sleep he got was uncomfortable and disturbed. He lay on his side in the hammock, covered only by his robe and a grubby woollen blanket, stuck in a horrible half-waking state in which time seemed to stand still. He kept dreaming that it was morning and he was getting up and talking to his new companions; it was the kind of vivid dreaming that felt frustratingly real. He lived the next day over and over again in his head, only to wake up in his hammock to find it was night-time, not quite certain if the events had actually happened or not.
After that, when deeper sleep came, he dreamt the falling dream again. But now, instead of Rannagon, it was Skade who confronted him. Feathers were sprouting from her hands and arms, spiking through the skin like daggers. Blood poured down them, turning the plumage red, and she screamed and grabbed at him, trying to hold on to him with fingers that kept twisting themselves into long talons. He tried to tell her she was hurting him, wanted to pull away from her but wasn’t able to, and then he was kissing her, but her lips were hard and sharp and tasted of blood. Then he was being dragged away from her, and he tried to hold on to her, desperate not to lose her again.
She stared at him, her great golden eyes filling the world.
Arren, what have you done?
her voice whispered from far away, and then he was falling, falling …
He woke up slowly and found himself lying in the gently swinging hammock and staring at the wooden wall directly in front of him. The night had ended, and the room was full of dull grey light filtering in through the cracks in the roof. Arren lay still, trying to think. At first, still befuddled by sleep, he thought he was back in his old home. The wood-plank wall and the hammock dragged his mind back there, and just for a moment he was filled with wild, impossible joy. But then the memory of the last few days returned to him, and all his fears and misery came rushing back. He was not home. He was not safe. He was in captivity, trapped in a slave-house with a pair of heavy irons clamped to his legs and whip marks all over his back. And they had branded him. Marked him as a slave.
And then, without warning, he heard a sound that he had been longing to hear ever since he had been captured: the screech of a griffin. It was faint, coming from somewhere outside, but the instant he heard it his heart leapt. He jerked upright in the hammock, which tipped sideways and dumped him onto the floor. He hit it hard, and almost instantly he cried out as pain spread all over his back. The lash marks, which had scabbed over during the night, tore open, and he felt fresh blood wet his skin.
He struggled to get up, moaning softly. Around him the others were climbing out of their own hammocks, woken up by the screech and by the thump of him hitting the floor.
Arren managed to lift himself into a sitting position. The skin on the back of his hand felt taut, as if it had shrunk, and when he moved his fingers it hurt unbelievably. He squinted muzzily at it. A single rune—the first one in the word “Herbstitt”—had been burned into his flesh. Most of it was black, but the skin around it was swollen and had turned an angry red. He would have a deep scar there once it healed. His back wouldn’t be much better.
There was the sound of footsteps, and Nolan appeared. “Morning. Did yer sleep well?”
Arren managed to stand up, hampered by the irons. “Not really. Nolan, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” said Nolan. “I heard you hittin’ the floor, no problem.” He grinned, showing a couple of missing teeth.
“No!” said Arren. “I meant that screech! Just now—did you hear it?”
Nolan peered at him. “You feelin’ all right there, Taranis?”
“It sounded like a griffin,” said Arren.
“Oh!” said Nolan. “I see. Yeah, course I heard it. Wakes us up every mornin’.”
Arren’s heart sank. “I didn’t know there were any griffins here.”
“There used t’be a few livin’ in the tower. Now there’s just the one over at the temple, see. Wakes us up in the morning.” Nolan gestured at him. “C’mon, no time to waste. Gotta get somethin’ t’eat before we goes out on the job.”
Arren followed him over to the fire, which was still burning. Someone must have added more fuel during the night. “Where did the griffiners go?”
“Bin called back to Canran, from what I heard,” said Nolan. “Eyrie Master probably wants to talk to ’em about what’s goin’ on right now with Eagleholm.”
There were bowls stacked near the fire. Arren took one and filled it with stew from the pot. “And what
is
going on?”
“Dunno much about it,” said Nolan. “Just what you picks up from listenin’ in on people. Eagleholm’s finished, though, that’s certain. Griffiners all leavin’. My guess is they’re gonna go in, try and take as much of the land as they can get.” He shrugged and dipped his spoon into his stew. “Griffiners’ business,” he said, as if that were the final word on the matter.
Arren started on his food. He hadn’t really thought about what would happen now that Eagleholm’s Eyrie and its Mistress had been destroyed, but it didn’t surprise him at all to learn that the neighbouring states were already preparing to start taking over its lands. Troops were probably moving in already, and as soon as the forces of two different states met, there would be fighting. Everyone would be grasping for a piece of Eagleholm’s land. His former state had been one of the largest and had included a lake and an enormous stretch of river, not to mention a great deal of fertile ground and several mines. Winning some of that would be more than worth the fighting for it.
Around him the others were getting ready to start the day, some partway through breakfast and others still lacing up their boots. They were talking among themselves in calm voices; they almost sounded like—well, like ordinary men preparing for a day’s work. He was surprised.
Eagleholm had no slaves, at least not during his lifetime. He had never actually seen a slave until the previous night, and until then his parents had been the only other Northerners he had ever known. Consequently he’d never seen the inside of a slave-house before and had no idea what to expect from one. But the picture his imagination had painted for him had been nothing like this. In his mind he’d seen rows of dank cells in which the slaves sat chained to benches, constantly watched over by guards, unable to move free or enjoy the comfort of proper bedding. But here he was seeing—well, the quarters were rough and the food was poor, but it was comfortable enough. He had seen poor people back in Eagleholm whose living conditions were far worse. The slaves weren’t even being guarded, at least not here.
And yet when he saw the collars, it was all the reminder he needed. These people still weren’t free men; they were property, and that was how they were treated. What they had here was enough to keep them strong and in reasonable health, and that was all.
Arren finished the stew and took a second helping; his stomach was aching with hunger. No-one said anything, but he noticed many of the others were making do with just one bowl, and he felt a twinge of guilt, as if he had just stolen something.
He was finishing the second bowlful when the call came for them to leave; there were shouts and a series of thumps from the corridor, and Arren saw Caedmon pause briefly in the doorway and smack the frame with his stick, shouting, “Up! Up! Get up, move out! Move! Move!”
Arren sighed and put the bowl back down with the others. Torc had appeared from somewhere with a tub of water and was already cleaning up, and the others formed themselves into a rough column and began to file out of the door in the manner of people who had done this a hundred times before.
Nolan nudged Arren in the side. “C’mon, Taranis. We’ll go at the back; you won’t be able to move too fast with them things on.”
Arren fell in behind him. “Why are you helping me?”
Nolan gave him an odd look. “What sort of question’s that, then?”
“I didn’t mean to offend you or anything,” Arren said hastily. “But we’ve only just met, and—I’m sorry, never mind.”
Nolan whistled. “Ye gods, where’d you learn to speak like that? Where’d you say y’came from again?”
“Oh. Er. Uh.” Arren cursed himself; he’d been too distracted to try and disguise his voice. Not that he would have been any good at it. “Withypool,” he said. It would do. Skade had told him enough about it that he could describe it fairly well. He should be able to bluff unless he met someone else who had come from there.
“Withypool, eh?” said Nolan. “Damn long way away. Never met anyone from there before; you got to tell me all about it.”
“Of course,” said Arren. They were out in the passageway now, in front of a long row of others who had emerged from the other dormitories. Up ahead, their own column was slowly filing out of the iron gateway, where a guard was giving each slave a quick going-over before letting him through. Arren looked over his shoulder and was surprised by how many men were behind him; the slave-house had looked large from the outside, but he hadn’t realised it had this many people in it. He estimated that there were at least a hundred slaves all told.
“Well,” said Nolan, as the guard turned out his pockets, “we’re both Wolf, ain’t we? You’re my clan. My dad always said, ‘We helps other Wolf as and when they needs it, because that’s our way.’ ” He glanced at Arren and grinned. “I’m sorta lyin’, of course. I’d be helpin’ you even if y’weren’t Wolf. Way I see it is that a man in our position only gets what the people around him will give him, and we needs all the help we can get.”
Arren flinched as the guard patted him down. “Thank you, Nolan. If there’s ever anything I can do …”
“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you if I needs anythin’ in return,” said Nolan, flashing another gap-toothed grin. “Now”—they had emerged into the open air—“we got work to do, eh?”
There were more guards waiting outside for them. Caedmon was there, too, and he gave the commands. The slaves split themselves into groups according to which room they slept in, and each group was then led off to its place of work. Arren saw two groups head off toward the quarry that lay just outside the town walls. Another one was sent to help carry back the stone blocks they would cut there, and the rest were taken to the wall itself. Arren’s group were directed to the spot where they must have been working the day before; there was a large gap in the wall where the mortar had crumbled away and the stones had come tumbling down. Some had been broken in the fall, and others looked to be missing, probably carried off to build houses.
Tools were being brought over by another group of slaves: buckets, sticks, ladders and large sacks of sand. Arren’s group obviously knew what it was doing; ladders were quickly set up at the edges of the gap, where fresh stones had been laid, and the buckets were set up in a long row beside the bags of sand. The group that had brought the tools returned again with more buckets, these full of water, and put those beside the rest.
“Right.” Caedmon strolled over. “Ye, runner,” he said, pointing at Arren, “yer in no state for carrying blocks, and ye can’t climb the ladders with them irons on, so ye can mix the mortar with Nolan and the rest. Think ye can manage that?”
It sounded fairly straightforward. “Yes, sir.”
Nolan looked pleased. “Looks like y’ve already done me a favour,” he said as they took up position by the buckets. “I’d’ve been set to haulin’ blocks most like if I weren’t with you. This is the easy job.”
“Thank gods for that,” said Arren. “How does it work, then?”
“Easy as fallin’ off a log,” said Nolan. “Only tricky part is gettin’ the balance right. Here, I’ll show you.”
Arren watched as the other man gave a quick demonstration, measuring out sand, water and lime, and stirring them with a heavy stick. It was simple enough, and before long Arren was working on his own bucket. Once the mortar was ready, another team hauled it off to the wall, and the mixers began again with fresh buckets. It was simple work, though fairly tedious, and Arren was glad. The stone blocks being used on the wall were enormous, and carrying even one of them would have been backbreaking. He was even half-glad that he was wearing the irons; the mere thought of having to climb one of the ladders made him feel dizzy.