Songs of the Dancing Gods dg-4

by Jack L. Chalker

  “I’ll sell them on the street for more than that.” They went back and forth in traditional fashion, finally settling on seventeen gold pieces and the livery service. With the still uncounted booty from the thieves’ stash, he was beginning to take a certain liking to Valisandra in spite of its rottenness.

  “The military are near here?” he asked the liveryman.

  “Couple miles. Lots of train in’ and stuff, lots, of noise and marching and all that other soldier crap.”

  “All Valisandran?”

  He nodded. “All except some of the officers. I ain’t sure what they are. Might not even be human for all I know. There’s a Valisandran Volsan detachment, too. Big suckers.”

  “Volsan—they’re of the centaurs, right?”

  “Yep. Wouldn’t want to face any of them in a fight. Kinda all in one cavalry. Drink harder than a thievin’ barman, too. Mostly humans be in tonight, though. Full pack workday; won’t be many. You up here to sign up?”

  “I am up here to see if there is anything worth my while to sign up for,” he replied. “Any of the stores open? And how available is the hotel?”

  “Most of the stores’ll be open for a while yet, just in case the soldiers come in and want something. Used to have lots of folks here on their way to deal with the dwarf lords in the mountains. Even some tourists, believe it or not. Now, it’s just soldiers. If they hadn’t come back and stuck here, we’d ’a dried up and blowed away. Hotel’s always half or better empty because of it. The guv puts soldiers up.”

  Joe nodded and left the stables. Mia joined him. “Let’s get you your whatever it is,” he told her.

  “Hafiid, Master.”

  “Yeah, hafiid. Best to pick up what we need now.”

  The general store wasn’t exactly overflowing with hafiids. “Not much call for ’em down here, at least ’til fall,” the proprietor told him. “Still, got one or two.”

  The hafiid turned out to be a loose-fitting, pleated robelike garment of beige-colored wool that was essentially of a single piece, with a neat knitted hole in it and two sleeves. It was essentially a one-size-fits-all kind of thing that came down to her ankles. The loose, robelike sleeves were much too long, but could be trimmed to fit. The other part was a burnoose thing the same color, made out of stretch wool, and had a six-inch flap that hung down the back. Optional was any pair of boots, midcalf or lower, that were some shade of brown or tan. She tried out a few, clearly uncomfortable with any kind of footwear, but settled on a midcalf model that wasn’t that easy to get into or out of but, she said, provided the most support.

  “She will also need a neck collar,” the proprietor said. “Another of the new regulations, I’m afraid. The next thing you know, they’ll require them to have leashes. It really has gotten that odd.”

  She picked a bronze collar that pretty well matched the bracelets, anklets, and earrings she already had, but with evenly spaced oversized rivets that came to broad points spaced around it. In place of one rivet was a loop through which something, perhaps a chain, could be attached. Maybe the proprietor wasn’t far from the truth. The proprietor fitted it carefully, then put a protective leather patch in between it and the back of her neck and pulled a series of tiny seals. There was a hissing and some smoke rose from the collar, making her flinch, but none got through and he soon removed the patch. The collar was fused, as if welded.

  With the complete outfit on, Joe thought she looked like a slightly punk, tan-colored nun.

  “Used to be we saw no slaves down here, and the ones we saw were all Marquewood, and there was never any problem,” the storekeeper told him apologetically. “Now, though, you can be declared a slave for spitting on the boardwalk. It hasn’t happened yet, but the rumors are all these new slave regulations are in preparation for making just about all the lower classes slaves. The government denies it, but you can’t trust them these days to tell you much. Even many of the fairy races are being rounded up and forced into work gangs. It’s not like it used to be.”

  “I can see that,” Joe responded. He could see Sugasto’s grand social vision clearly and it made him sick. The masses would be enslaved to the state, fed, cheaply clothed, and housed en masse, forced to do all the menial labor at the end of a lash until they dropped. Otherwise, there would be soldiers, a trading class to supply the necessities and maintain trade and commerce, but a rather small one, and, of course, the top one percent who would control everything. It was an ugly picture, but it explained all the harsh slave measures.

  Only a small percentage of people could be truly of the slave class anywhere; he knew that. The Rules mandated it, and the ways you reached that status, and what sorts of labor were under it. If Sugasto and his cronies turned their domain into nothing more than a slave state, they wouldn’t really be within the Rules but rather outside of them. Since the masses wouldn’t be true slaves, bound by the Rules of slaves like Mia, they would always be a potential danger. You couldn’t really turn your back on them. Hence, the collars, the chainings, all the rest. The hairless rule was equally obvious; if any of those ersatz slaves had the opportunity, they might escape. Dressed in uniforms or some such or foreign clothing, they might well cause a lot of harm. If you were hairless, though, you kind of stood out in the crowd. Back in the earliest Colonial days in the US, he knew, blacks had often been treated the same as indentured servants. They became permanent slaves because their skin made it easy to spot them anywhere. The false justifications came later.

  This place felt on the verge of being the victim of a grandiose and evil experiment. Indeed, this might be regional, only one of many such, to test out what worked and what didn’t and sort of get the bugs out. The one that had the highest gain and least losses and problems would be the eventual fate of all Husaquahr.

  Mia took charge of helping outfit him, suggesting a buckskin sort of outfit with dark brown fur trim and a droopy, broad-brimmed leather hat. Her eye was perfect; she unerringly seemed to choose only the things that fit him.

  Almost on impulse, he added a forked leather bullwhip. He used to be fair with one, but hadn’t bothered with it much. Somehow, though, it fit the image.

  They left for the hotel, Mia carrying her boots and, in fact, her slave outfit. She would wear them when she had to.

  “I want a room, directions to a decent meal, and arrangements for a bath,” he told the clerk.

  “Just the one night? Heading south, then?”

  “No. North.”

  The clerk stiffened. “Then you will be with us longer than that.”

  “Why? Problems?”

  “You don’t know! The zombie masters are gathering on the plains just north of here for the next three days and nights. I wouldn’t go a hundred yards north of this town for at least one day longer!”

  “Zombies, huh? Sounds like something’s up.”

  The clerk shrugged. “These days, sir—who knows?”

  He signed in and had Mia square things away in the room, then went over to the cafe. They were short on food, shorter on cuisine, but they remembered the days when wealthy Marquewood merchants would pass through on the way to the dwarf lords, there to negotiate for the exquisite craftsmanship only dwarf magic could create. They often brought their personal slaves along. There was no objection at all to Mia serving her master, and then eating anything he left on his plate. Of course, there war a slight hitch.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but everything’s rationed these days,” the waitress apologized. She was one of the typical cafe-types, short, fat, and brash. “We’ll soon be out of business if they don’t let us get some regular deliveries back. All the ranch produce has been pretty much taken by the army, and nobody makes deliveries from Marquewood no more.”

  He was sympathetic, and managed, with serrated hunting knife, to cut what was supposed to be a steak and get it down. They were doing the best they could. At least the strictly vegetarian Mia could have her fill; local gardens were deemed too minor for the authorities, and so the locals at lea
st had some vegetables for now, even pastries of beet sugar and bran, although they weren’t sure what would happen when winter came.

  If the steak was representative of the future, though, he might well go vegetarian himself, he thought, a sour taste in his throat.

  Marge was waiting for them when they got back.

  “It did look pretty hairy out there,” she admitted. “I’m really tempted to try and see what’s going on up there.”

  “You watch it!” he cautioned. “You don’t know what’s around here, including things that might fly and eat Kauris for dinner.”

  “I’ve always been able to take care of myself,” she replied confidently. “You worry about yourself. Still, I noticed this evening that this might not be a bad time for a few days’ break.”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “I’d say the moon will be completely full sometime tomorrow evening.”

  The curse! He’d been so preoccupied that, even though he was usually very good about it, he hadn’t given it much thought.

  He started thinking hard. “You know, it is tempting, in light of that, to see just what’s what. You keep away from the dangerous parts tonight, but maybe tomorrow night we’ll be able to work something out.”

  “What’re you thinkin’ of?”

  “Taking a few risks. The fight today made me realize that Gorodo was right: I have been soft, not in the body, but in the mind.”

  She shrugged. “Okay. It seems like we’re gettin’ nowhere fast doin’ what we been doin’, anyway.”

  She left, and he knew she’d not be nearly as cautious as he wanted her to be, but, as she said, she had proven herself capable before.

  There also had to be a way to speed this up, somehow; she was right about that. It would be possible to hug the river almost to the Golden Lakes district. The River of Dancing Gods wasn’t all that navigable that far north, with lots of falls and cataracts, but he actually considered something like a canoe, finally rejecting it as making him too vulnerable. And, of course, horses would be harder to come by the farther in they went. Still, there just had to be a way to make better time. They were barely inside enemy territory, and he was impatient, and there was still such a long way to go.

  He had to wonder, though: if this was the sorry state that Valisandra was reduced to, then what in hell must Hypboreya be like?

  CHAPTER 8

  ZOMBIE JAMBOREE

  All important matters of evil sorcery shall be done at midnight whenever possible.

  —The Books of Rules, XIX, 12(a)

  “Are you really a slave? A real slave?”

  Mia looked up at the young soldier who was gawking at her and thought, No, of course not. I’m naked and hairless and wearing this ring in my nose just to make a fashion statement. But, aloud, she replied, “Yes, my lord.”

  “My lord,” several of the young soldiers responded, giggling, and the boy said, “I ain’t never been called no ‘lord’ before.”

  “My lord, since all people are above me in status, you are as worthy of respect as a prince or king. There is no difference to a slave.”

  “You mean—you got to do what we say?”

  “My lord, all people are my superiors, but I have but one master.”

  These weren’t actually bad kids, she thought to herself, somewhat surprised. They were quite typical of the kind of young men you’d find anywhere in a city or an army. Young men from typical peasant and worker backgrounds who were probably away from home for the first time in their lives. It was in some ways a disturbing concept for her. You always thought of the “enemy” as something mean and nasty, an evil force composed of evil men. Instead, they were very much normal folks, just as on the “good” side, who were either in the service of evil or the tools of it, with no more choice in the matter than she had. Nothing more brought home what a waste wars truly were.

  “How’d you get this way?” one of them asked. Being from the poorer classes, they had never really seen a slave up close before. “You do something really bad?”

  “My lords, my crime was to have been born too poor and to have fallen into evil company. The only proper way to make a slave is if it actually makes things better for that one.”

  “That ain’t the way the Hypboreyans do it,” one of them remarked. “They breed “em.”

  She found that idea most unpleasant to think about.

  “So what d’ya do?” another one asked.

  “My lords, I attend to my master. I do all the little things so that he need not bother himself about them. Anything he wants or needs, I try and do.”

  “I got a want and need I could use somebody for,” one of the boys muttered to the chuckles of the others.

  “And,” she added, “I dance.”

  “Yeah? Will you dance for us?”

  “I would need my master’s permission. Wait, and I will ask him.”

  She ran up to the room, where Joe was lying down, feeling the effects of the day’s activities all of a sudden. “Master, some of the young soldiers wish me to dance for them. I should like to do so.”

  He looked at her. “I’m not gonna be there to bail you out this time.”

  “I feel I can take care of myself with those boys.”

  He didn’t like it, but Marge had predicted to him that, sooner or later, Mia would ask just such a thing, and had promised to watch out for the dancer if things got out of hand.

  “Okay, but if this goes bad and you come back all beat up, don’t expect sympathy.”

  “Oh, thank you, Master!” she cried, then hunted for and found her castanets and rushed back down again. It wasn’t just her need to dance, which was strong enough that it stopped just short of a compulsion, but also something she didn’t quite understand on a conscious level, but which Marge did.

  The liveryman had predicted that few soldiers would be in town, and he’d been right. There were only eight boys, the members of a squad that had escaped rigorous field training by drawing some kind of cleanup detail.

  They went to the edge of town, at the livery stable, where there was a fair amount of room and good torch lighting. Above, on a nearby roof, unseen to them, Marge landed and perched to watch and watch out for her companion. She understood well the real reason Mia wanted to dance for these strangers, the reason Mia wanted what heretofore she had shunned.

  The slave had examined herself in the bathhouse mirror, and had seen someone reflected back so different and strange-looking that she hardly recognized it. The shaving had chipped away a central core of her ego, as, of course, it was designed to do. Mia’s dancer’s body was lean and trim, but her breasts were quite small and rock hard; in spite of a perfect curve at the pelvis, she was very much of a neuter as those things went, particularly in a world where bare breasts were common. Shorn of her long hair, the neuter effect was reinforced, particularly in her eyes.

  Mia needed to know if she was still a woman in the eyes of others.

  . She started slow, but quickly picked up the pace, using the castanets to give not merely rhythm to her moves but emphasis to her major ones, and she held the onlookers spellbound. Marge too, was fascinated. That girl could dance!

  The whistles, claps and very male reactions from the small group of soldiers was just what Mia needed, and she reveled in it. Marge, reading the emotions of the group, understood Joe’s reluctance to allow this, but she also read Mia’s supercharged emotional state. The way she was dancing right into them, charging them up, made Marge realize that, this time, she didn’t want Joe to rescue her, nor Marge, either. She finished right at the entrance to the stables with a big finish and ducked inside. Easy enough to get away at that point when they ran after her, but she did not come out.

  All of the soldier boys would wind up being punished for being late checking back into their camp.

  Mia was in fact bruised and sore the next morning, but she didn’t seem to mind it a bit. Joe was somewhat concerned; but, apparently, however she’d come by them, it hadn’t been ag
ainst her will or her wishes. He could have forced her to tell him, of course, but he decided he’d rather not ask, not only to preserve what dignity she still had but also because he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

  In spite of some soreness and stiffness, Mia was in an extremely upbeat, confident mood, possibly as good as he’d ever seen her. And, why not? The previous day had been a banner one for her. She’d proved herself more than capable in the fight with the thieves, and, later on, she’d proven herself in the only other area that was important or even relevant to her. She had nothing left to prove to herself, and that made her spirit soar.

  “It’s a good thing we’re laying over, though,” Joe commented, looking at some of those bruises. “You wouldn’t be much good in a fight or on a horse at this point.”

  “I can do anything you demand of me, Master,” she responded. “You know, if you do not mind, I may remain like this even after we return. Not having to wash or fool with that hair makes things much easier.”

  He shrugged. “If you like it, great.” He wasn’t going to press her on it. “Uh—tonight is the first full moon, you know.”

  She stopped. “I had not thought of that, Master. What shall we do about it? We should not become each other. It would not be right, nor fair, at this time.”

  “Yeah. Disregarding the slave part, I don’t want those bruises. But, I have an idea if you don’t mind skipping some sleep tonight. I’ve done it before and it wasn’t so awful, and it might give us a way to find out what the hell is going on around here. This is too close to the border. I wouldn’t like to be stuck up north and discover that everything’s happening down here.”

  “What do you have in mind, Master?” He reached down and pulled a crumpled blanket away. Marge was asleep under it.

  “I’m going to give instructions that our room is not to be entered or touched today,” he told her. “That’ll keep Marge from having nasty interruptions.”