“No time to fix you out as slaves.” They had incontinently thrown their gray slave breechclouts away when they’d donned the clothes I’d brought. “Unmok!” I bellowed. “In this show me the value of your friendship! Let me have the werstings and the slaves to run them.” I turned my face to Oby and Naghan. “You run the slaves running the werstings.”
Unmok hovered, pitched to a frenzy between despair and hope. I felt for him. Also, I feared — oh, how I feared! — for what might happen to golden-furred Tilly while we delayed.
I picked up the thraxter, for that had been dropped any old how in my spring after Oby. Froshak had not moved.
Unmok unwrapped himself, letting his middle left stump jerk up, his right upper lifting. His right middle joined his left upper, and then spread wide. He bowed.
“Very well, Jak the Shot. For our friendship — new and yet of great value to me. Take the werstings. Froshak also. And, Jak—” Here his little Och face screwed up into a fearsome grimace. “I shall come with you to make sure we get a good price from Vad Noran.”
There could be no further argument.
So, mounted up, urging our mounts on, we left that deserted camp. We followed the slaves who ran fleetly, dragged along by the werstings. The killer dogs howled and barked and ululated, racing ahead, straining in passion against their collars and the long leather leashes.
In the Recalcitrants House
“Obfaril!” said Naghan the Gnat. The sword smith spoke with a tone of sharp rebuke. We roared along after the slaves and the werstings, Huringa and a beautiful golden-furred Fristle fifi ahead. “Young Oby!” said Naghan. “The managers will not connect us that quickly. Yes, they will in time—”
“We have no time, Gnat!”
“Time. It will take them time to connect. Two mangy slaves run off — they’ll expect to recapture them very quickly. Only when they do not will they think to look deeper. Then the records will be hard to find — there will be time.” Naghan clenched his fists around the reins and lifted his head defiantly. “Dear Opaz! There has
got
to be time enough!”
The mention of Vad Noran’s name and the business that brought us to the city did not perhaps carry as much weight with the guards as the bright fangs and lolling tongues of the werstings. Their howls echoed under the arch of the city gate.
“They’ll have to be muzzled in the city.” The Deldar of the guard swelled his chest against his armor. He wore a scale-metal kax, and was no doubt proud of that. “You know the laws are strict—”
I was about to knock him over, not having time to argue about the matter, when Unmok said quickly, “Of course, Deldar. The slaves are doing it now.” I looked. They were. They did not have too much trouble fitting the bronze muzzles, and the dogs’ tongues still lolled, evilly. Unmok knew his business. Had he not accompanied us with the tame slaves...
We pressed on, striking directly toward Noran’s villa.
Noran loved ostentation. His villa, a palace in miniature, was equipped with all the paraphernalia for gracious living. He boasted his own swimming pool, his own ball courts and his own small private arena. The cadade happened to be in the courtyard into which we were ushered, talking to four or five of his men, and I heartily wished him and his men a million dwaburs away from here. Oby glanced at me, and Naghan licked his lips.
“The master will come at once, almost at once, I feel sure,” said the majordomo, dancing on pointed toes as he led us through. His retinue of slaves and fan-wavers and scroll-bearers, with a hefty Brokelsh to keep them in order, tagged on. Our slaves stayed with the werstings in the yard. My plan, if you wish to dignify the scheme by that name, was for us three to slip away and get into the slave quarters. We would pick up three slave breechclouts from the first three to walk by. It is easy enough to become a slave on Kregen, the trick — and it is often a damned difficult one — is to become free.
Oby nodded his head toward the cadade. The man was big and rugged, with a florid face. He was apim, like us, although some of his men were diffs, as was normal. He wore a splendid bronze kax, trimmed with silver, and his helmet bore a panache and plumes. He happened to be a Jiktar — well, a noble in Noran’s position would have to employ a reasonable rank as the captain of his household guards — and he looked useful. No doubt it was sure that Noran paid him far more than the cadade could earn by hiring out as a mercenary in the wars.
As we padded along I reflected that I could not understand the attitude of many of the nobility on that score. Mercenaries fighting a war are one thing, but they are not as important as the mercenaries you hire to protect your skin. No, sir! Not in many parts of Kregen!
I didn’t want Vallia to go down that road.
We walked past a clump of gregarian bushes and Unmok said in a throaty whisper, “Leave the talking to me.”
“With the greatest pleasure,” I said. “But, Unmok, we will not be with you. When we vanish you need not mention us. If asked, you say we must have returned to the werstings.”
He cocked his face up at me. “But, Jak—”
“Around that column with the statue of Mahgoh of the Two smiling at the top. There we will leave you.”
“What will—”
“You must, if necessary, deny me. Say the truth, that we have only recently become partners. Froshak will bear witness. Talk your way out of it, if necessary, man of the nets.”
“But —
Jak—
!”
The statue of Mahgoh of the Two cast a large shadow. We entered the shadow from the left side and as the others walked on into the mingled rays of the suns shine we three skipped away around the corner and vanished from their sight.
The vanishing trick was, if I may say so, neatly done.
The urgency began to bite into us. Not one of us liked the idea that the cadade had been in the outer court. Perhaps news of the runaway slaves had already been received? Perhaps the guards from the Jikhorkdun were even now closeted with Noran, telling him, hatching a plan?
No immediate signs of the household being aroused alarmed us. Slaves came and went with the usual hurried slave shuffle. The shadows rested on the walls and paths, tinged with green and red, and the muted surf roar of the villa continued. In ten murs or so we had three slave breechclouts, and three slaves slumbered under the hedge. Poor devils, that was probably their first decent rest in months.
We carried our weapons and gear bundled up, acting the part of slaves carrying a burden for the master. Then we plunged boldly into the slave warrens.
Our very first question had elicited the reply, gasped out with a fist around throat, that, yes, the golden-furred Fristle fifi was here, quartered in the Recalcitrants House.
Not a one of us liked the sound of that, by Vox!
Outside the Recalcitrants House a hefty Rapa, stripped to the waist, was flogging a Xaffer. I stopped.
The walls lofted here, with spiked tops, and the house itself was pierced only with small windows, high up, barred. The courtyard echoed with the Xaffers shrieks.
With his nervous laugh, Naghan said, “It is no business of ours.”
“No.” I forced myself to walk on. “But what kind of insensitive offal orders a Xaffer flogged?”
Xaffers are diffs of a strange remote race, vague, used when slaves as stylors and in other like capacities. They never — or practically never — give trouble. We passed the wooden triangle and I saw the dark bloodstains fouling the wood. The Rapa went on lashing, and a stylor in a blue tunic at the side chalked down the strokes on his slate.
The door of the Recalcitrants House was narrow. A Rapa guard held his post there. I took Naghan by the ear and ran him up to the guard.
“Here’s another one — and I’ll get an extra portion of palines for bringing him in.” Naghan was squirming most realistically. Oby chipped in and gripped his flailing arm.
The Rapa hawked and spat. His feathers quivered.
“You scum — sell your own mothers for a bowl of porridge.”
“Yes,” I said, approaching fast. I let go Naghan, who spun away in Oby’s grip, kicked the guard betwixt wind and water, and caught him as he fell. We all bundled inside. Oby had the guard’s spear out and pointing along the corridor. It was deserted and all the doors were shut.
“So far, so good.” I picked the Rapa up by his wattled neck. His eyes were unfocused, and spittle ran out of his vulturine beak. “Tell me where the golden-furred Fristle fifi is chained up, and you may live.”
He gabbled.
I shook him.
His eyes popped. He slobbered. Then: “Cell eleven.”
“Cell eleven,” I said to Oby.
Naghan rubbed his ear with his left hand and lifted the key ring from the guard’s belt with the other. Then he and Oby padded off along the corridor.
“I see you wear a red favor, so do I,” I said to the guard, trying to make refined conversation. “I hope our fortunes improve soon.”
He boggled away, and then he spat out, “You are mad.”
“Oh, aye. And my friends. Believe it.”
The clitter-clatter of keys followed by the wheeze of a heavy door drew my attention. Oby and Naghan went into cell eleven. Presently they came out. Between them walked Tilly. I own to a throb of thankfulness — she could walk. She looked dazed. She was trying to rub her wrists, and wincing. Much of that glorious golden fur had been rubbed away, the skin raw. Oby and Naghan supported her.
“But—” she was saying, half laughing and half crying. “But — dear Oby — dear Naghan—”
This was all going splendidly.
With Tilly safe, why, what was there that would stop us now?
The Rapa guard gave a twitch and I shook him, just to remind him. Tilly saw the guard, and she saw me.
“Hush, Tilly,” I said. “I am Chaadur the Iarvin.”
“Yes,” she said. “They told me. But it is all so, so—” Then she broke open those inner springs that men are not supposed to have and that they do have, witness the feelings they try to hide. “I have been chained,
master,
and not in silver chains, and not by you.”
By the disgusting diseased liver and lights of Makki Grodno! But that took us back, Tilly and me, and her flirty golden tail, and our talk of silver chains for impudent fifis!
I swallowed.
“You’re going to be all right now. You’re safe. All we have to do is find a voller — and we’re free and flying.”
“Yes, master.”
She knows I detest her calling me that.
“Let us clear off, then,” said Naghan. He looked about as though the shadows would leap on him.
Tilly held onto Oby and Naghan. “There is a Fristle — he has tried to be kind to me here. I am new here. He is called Fordan. He is locked in one of these cells.”
“Open them all,” I said. “But step lively. I do not think these slaves will break for their freedom, being cowed. But it will add a complication.” The Rapa in my fist had swooned away so I dropped him. “Start at the far end and warn ’em all to silence. Not that they will.”
The doors opened one by one. A motley collection staggered out when the chains were unfettered. Some refused to budge, aware they had no hope of extended liberty and fearful of the flogging at the end. We could not take them all. The corridor turned with a dog leg at the end, and there were more cells, some holding more than one inmate. We opened them all.
Fordan turned out to be a strong-bodied Fristle, his cat’s face bewhiskered splendidly, his fur a lustrous ginger with gold and black patterns. I liked the cut of his jib, even though his face was swollen from beatings. My dealings with Fristle men had often been ambivalent at best, and downright hostile at worst. Probably, I considered as we went along opening doors, probably Tilly’s quick and instinctive gesture of pleasure at seeing Fordan, and her little squeal of horror at the state of his face, predisposed me in his favor. “I thank you, notor—” he began.
“Thank Tilly,” I said. And then, with meaning, I added, “My friends and I will gladly kill anyone who hurts Tilly.”
And Fordan, quickly, on a breath said, “And I, too!”
“Then stand just inside the doorway and keep watch.”
“At once, notor.” He went off, limping, making nothing of the pains he must be suffering from his swollen face.
I said to Tilly, “A likely lad.”
Her little chin went up. “Well — I like him!”
A small crowd gathered in the corridor, bemused, wondering what to do for the best. I threw open a door and said to the golden-furred numim who attempted to strike me down, “Steady, steady, dom! We’re letting you out — no noise.”
The lion man let his clenched fist drop. He reached the end of his chain. Quickly I unlocked him. He looked savage, fierce, with such anger in him as boded ill for those who had chained him and abused him.
“Letting us out — where to?”
“That is for you to decide. I have no love for Noran, nor have you, as I judge it. If we can break free, then you are free. If not, then you are slave again.”
“I shall not be slave again!”
His lion face expressed absolute determination. He must have put up a fight before they chained him. He flexed his muscles, no sign of the pain reflected on his features, and pushed past to the door.
“Perhaps you would like to stand at the outer door, and—”
“Aye.”
He went along to stand with Fordan. Fristle and numim stood side by side, concealed, looking out. I fancied if a guard walked unwarily by he would face two formidable opponents in these two. They did not speak to each other, and I guessed they were strangers.
Only a few doors were left.
The crowd grew restless. And who can blame them? If they were going to break free, they wanted to start
now.
For every one who stayed miserably in his cell, too frightened to venture forth to certain punishment, there were two who came out filled with vigorous determination to run for it and never be caught again.
There were only two doors left.
“Let them go,” I called to Fordan. He nodded and stepped aside and the crowd ran out. Pretty soon their uproar would attract the guards. We would be well away by then, taking our own chances. Most of the slaves made up their own minds what they would do; it was every man for himself,
sauve qui peut,
and to the devil with the hindmost.