Alliances

by Stargate

  “Bitty bag?” said David.

  “You know,” said Rusha, mystified again. “Comb. Razor. Small things in a bag.”

  “Of course,” said Serena. “Thank you, Rusha. We’d appreciate that.”

  When they were given their bitty bags, and had inspected them to make sure all they needed was there, he ordered Rusha back to cutting the roughspun and led the new blood out of the workhouse, down the widest village road to his home. Inside it was cool and quiet. With Nona and her baby dead, with his other get dead as well, or culled, with only Mikah left, the house was always quiet. Or so it had been. Until the new blood’s own homes were built there would be noise again.

  How strange.

  “You’ll be here,” he said to Joseph and Serena, opening the door to the room that until that morning had been his.

  “It looks occupied,” said Serena. “Is this yours?”

  “It is the room with the mating bed,” he said. “I have no mate. The room is yours.”

  “Ah…” Joseph cleared his throat. “You know, Boaz. About this whole ‘mating’ thing. I was thinking maybe Serena and I could kind of wait on that for a while. You know. Since we only just met…”

  He stepped back and looked this Joseph up and down. “You are a stupid man,” he said, not hiding his contempt. “And if you are not plowed into the barley field before the moon grows fat I shall be most surprised.”

  Joseph’s eyes turned cold. “Stupid? Really? Gosh. Been a while since I was called that.”

  “I think what Boaz means,” said David, “is that since Lord Rebec decreed you and Serena should mate, then there’s not really any question of waiting.”

  “Ah. Yes,” said Joseph, his eyes still chilly. “Lord Rebec. Bless him.”

  “Look, s—Joseph,” said Serena, and laid her hand on her mate’s arm. “I know this is difficult but we are sworn to obey Lord Rebec, servant of Mighty and Everlasting Yu. And if we resist our fate we will only make things hard for Boaz, who has shown us nothing but kindness.”

  “Exactly,” said David. “So… you know. Just close your eyes, Joseph, and think of the Empire.”

  Watching them, Boaz again was struck by the feeling there were words being spoken that he couldn’t hear. Some strange communication passing from look to look as the three newcomers considered each other.

  Then Joseph sighed. “Yes. Of course. Boaz, I apologize. This is still all very new to us. Please… be patient.”

  “Put your clothes and bitty bags away,” he said. “As I show David where he is to sleep.”

  He gave David the room Mikah’s older brother had slept in. Tayt, his only other unculled get to survive the plague, had gone in the cull before last, brave and beautiful as Mikah was growing to be. He felt his heart pinch and turned his thoughts, swiftly. There was no profit in thinking of Tayt, or looking ahead to Mikah’s leaving.

  With the newcomers assigned their rooms, he took them outside again to show them the meeting hall where most slaves gathered for the morning and evening meals, the long bath-house where they washed the sweat and dirt of labor from their bodies, the fields and the crops, the livestock, the laundry, the kitchens, the smithies, the brick yard, the horse barns, the poultry runs, the threshing sheds, the silos. The holding barns where all those things created for the god Yu were stored as they waited for collection by his servants, every thin moon.

  Last of all he took them to the slaughter yard, where the air was rank with blood and death, and black flies clotted the landscape. A few nervous sheep huddled in a pen nearby. From inside the main slaughter shed came the sound of frightened cattle bellowing, and the hollow thudding of poleaxes against horned heads.

  “We eat nothing we have not grown or killed ourselves,” he said. “And all men here must serve their turn in providing meat for the table.” Reaching over the side of the sheep pen to the knife-box hanging there, he withdrew a sharp blade and tossed it at Joseph. “All men.”

  He expected Joseph to fumble the blade. Drop it, maybe even cut himself. But Joseph plucked the knife from the stinking air without looking to see where his fingers reached. Without speaking he rested his other hand on the pen’s top railing and vaulted over it, landing lightly on the balls of his feet.

  “Joseph?” said Serena. She sounded uncertain. Worried, even. David touched her briefly on the shoulder. Leaned close and whispered something.

  Joseph ignored her. Moving swiftly, surely, he separated one sheep from the rest. Snared it in a single movement, lifting and twisting so it landed on its rump between his waiting knees, which clamped like a vice against its agitated ribs. His empty hand cupped the sheep’s jaw, cutting off its distressed bleating, stretching the neck taut and blinding the beast against his belly. His other hand drew the sharp knife blade across the sheep’s throat, slicing deep and sure through windpipe, veins and artery. Scarlet blood sprayed in a pumping arc. The sheep convulsed once, thin legs shuddering, and died.

  Joseph wiped the bloody knife clean on the sheep’s fleece, slid the blade through his belt, and hoisted the carcass over one shoulder. Blood dripped down his back. Keeping the carcass neatly balanced, he let himself out of the pen through its gate, and took the dead sheep over to the dressing-bench on the far side of the slaughter yard. There he pierced its hocks with the awl, strung it up over the wooden gut pail, and eviscerated it. As the carcass’s remaining blood drained out of the severed neck vessels, he finished the job by skinning it.

  When he was done he tossed the bloody sheep-hide onto the nearest empty rack, sluiced his face and hands clean under the waiting pump, then rejoined them. With very great care, he put the knife back in its box on the fence. His work clothes were soaked scarlet in many places.

  Beneath its light brown tan, David’s face was shocked. “Ah—Joseph? Where the hell did you learn to do that?”

  Joseph’s eyes were colder than ever. “Does it matter?”

  Boaz didn’t like the man, but he could respect him. “It was well done.”

  “I don’t—I’ve never—Boaz, do you want me to do that?” said David. He sounded horrified.

  “This is a big farm,” said Joseph. “I’d say Boaz could think of twenty jobs off the top of his head you could do that don’t include butchery.”

  It was true. He’d lied, before. Wanting to test Joseph. Or punish him. Or both. Not every male slave took a turn in the slaughter yard. Not every male slave could stomach the work. Like David, they turned sickly at the sight of blood, at the stench of death. All they could kill with comfort were cobs of corn, and rows of wheat and barley.

  Joseph was a strange, wrong man. His face had blazed defiance as Hol’c prepared to use the fire-brand. Though it burned, and burned, he did not scream. He killed the sheep as though killing was his service. He held himself like a god.

  Boaz felt a worm of fear twist in the pit of his belly. What was this human doing here? Why had he been sent? Surely Yu must know this man was different? Dangerous?

  Serena said, “Boaz? Am I expected to slaughter sheep?”

  He shook his head, tore his gaze away from Joseph and found some ease in her beautiful face. “No. Women weave and sew, tend children and the fields. Husband the livestock. They mend clothes and clean them in the laundry. They cook. Can you cook?”

  “Yes, Boaz,” she said. Her taut expression relaxed in a smile. “I’m a very good cook.”

  “I can cook too,” said David. “In fact, I can cook better than Serena.”

  He frowned. “Men do not cook.”

  “Really? No. No, of course they don’t,” said David. “What was I thinking. Well, okay, then give me another job. Anything. So long as it’s not…” He gestured at the butchered sheep. “That.” He brightened. “I like horses. Can I help look after the horses? Or the goats, maybe? I get on well with goats.”

  “Since it takes one to know one…” said Joseph, under his breath.

  As Serena swallowed a laugh Boaz said, “You can start with the goats.”

&nb
sp; “And don’t we have to build ourselves houses?” said Joseph.

  “In time,” he said. “When men can be spared from the fields. House-building is a job for many hands. You have my home as shelter, for the time being.”

  “Yes,” said Joseph. “And your bed to sleep in. How could I forget?”

  Ignoring that, Boaz crossed to the big bell that hung by the slaughter shed door and dinged it until a man came out. His leather apron was slicked wet crimson, and he had a clotted cleaver in one hand.

  “Yes, Boaz?”

  He pointed. “Here is a butchered sheep, Dayn. Take it to the smokehouse, send a boy out to dress the hide, and another to wheel the guts to the fertiliser pit.”

  Dayn’s gaze flicked to the sheep, the hide, the newcomers and back again. “Yes, Boaz.”

  “New blood,” he said, answering Dayn’s unasked question. “You may spread the word.”

  Dayn nodded. “A fine woman.”

  “She’s spoken to the silver-head,” he said curtly. “Joseph. Be about your business, Dayn.”

  Dayn stepped back inside, and he returned to the new blood. “Come,” he said. “We are almost finished. All that remains is the babyhouse. I will take you there now, but first Joseph must change and his bloody clothes be put to the laundry.”

  “Babyhouse?” said Serena. “I don’t know what—”

  “You will see,” he said, and chivvied them back into the road. “Quickly, no more idle chatter. The light fades, and we must be done before the evening meal.”

  Without giving them a chance to question further he hurried on, and they fell into step behind him.

  Chapter Eleven

  The god Yu decreed that human children could be useful once they had reached their fifth sunseason. All the get five sunseasons and older, like Mikah, were put to work with the other slaves, assigned tasks that did not overtax their childish minds and bodies. But the get still younger than five stayed their days in the babyhouse. It was the largest building in the village, with rooms for eating and rooms for sleeping and rooms where the older children could play. A large fenced enclosure at the back meant there was sunshine and fresh air in safety, too. Some women worked all their time in the babyhouse, as caretakers and birthseers, but there was also an ever-changing list of women and girls who worked there a shorter time to learn about babies and their birthing, the most sacred work a human could perform for the god Yu.

  Boaz led the new blood into the enormous hall where the babies cooed and cried and kicked and crawled after woven hay balls rolled across the wooden floor by giggling nursemaids. Some lay in arms, nursing at the breast. Some wriggled on padded mats, inspecting their tiny toes. Some laughed, and some slept. The air was ripe with the sounds and smells of babies.

  “Oh my God,” said Serena softly. “Look at them all…”

  Boaz nodded, full of pride. “Our current crop of get stands at two hundred and eighty. Almost half of them you see here, for they are not yet walking. When the last ripened woman gives birth our number will swell to over three hundred.”

  “And that’s good, is it?” said Joseph. His voice sounded strange. Tight and small and trapped in his throat.

  He nodded. “It is very good. Lord Choulai says there is no breeding farm to match us for beauty and vitality of get. For the last three sunseasons we have lost only two in every ten babies. Lord Choulai says we serve the god Yu better than any other farm. He says he is proud of our service to the god.”

  “Well hey,” said Joseph, still in that odd little voice. “Let’s hear it for Lord Choulai.”

  “Joseph,” said David. His tone was a warning. “We live to serve our god.”

  “Boaz, do any of your children live here?” said Serena.

  “No,” he said, after a difficult moment. “My youngest get died. Of the living, only Mikah remains unculled.”

  Her hand rested on his arm, briefly. “I’m so sorry. And you have no mate?”

  Memory tormented him with an image of Marise, copper-haired and supple in her beauty. “She died. So did the one assigned to me after her. I must wait now, for Lord Choulai to find me another woman of breeding age.”

  “I’m sorry,” said David. “That must be very difficult.”

  There was genuine feeling in the man David’s voice. In his eyes, too. A memory of pain. “It is the way of things,” he said, making his own voice rough. Softness was a danger, here. “Best you get used to it, quickly. Leave behind the worlds you came from. You are on a farm now, and all that matters is this.” He nodded at the babies, and the women tending them, then looked at Serena. “You like children?”

  A shadow of sadness flitted over her face. “Very much.”

  “Good. That is a good and proper thing,” he said, nodding. “How many have you birthed already?”

  “What?” She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Birthed? Ah—none. Not yet.”

  “None?” he echoed, astonished, then lowered his voice to a fierce whisper. “Are you not fertile, Serena? If you are not fertile Hol’c will put you down!”

  “Kill me, you mean?”

  “Yes! Why have you not delivered babies unto the god Yu? That is a woman slave’s first duty!”

  She looked at Joseph, then David, then cast her gaze to the floor. Her cheeks were pink with discomfort. “My lord did not permit me. He said I was not comely enough to breed.”

  “Oh,” he said, and swallowed. It was unthinkable to criticise one of the mighty god Yu’s servants, but… “I am surprised.” He looked at Joseph. “And you? Have you sired get for our great god?”

  Joseph’s face went very still, very hard. Then it relaxed. “A son.”

  Only one? That was not good. “He is beautiful?”

  “He was.”

  “He is dead?” Boaz clenched his hands. “A defect?”

  “An accident.”

  He didn’t know whether to feel relieved, or sorry. “No more than one?”

  Joseph looked at him. “After his death I served a different lord. He decreed me too ugly for breeding.”

  That was not surprising. He turned to David. “And you?”

  “Ah—I was a scribe, Boaz,” said David. “My lord believed that breeding would overtax my strength and weaken my mind.”

  “A scribe?”

  “Yes. I worked with words. Does no-one here read or write?”

  “We have numbers,” he said dismissively. “We have no use for reading or writing. That is a Jaffa secret. Serena—”

  “Yes?” she said, her fine skin pale again, her embarrassment past.

  “I have changed my mind. You will not cook. You will work here, in the babyhouse, and learn all of babies and birthing you need to know before your time. Joseph must quicken you soon, and after that the days will fly.”

  Serena lowered her head. “I serve the great god Yu,” she murmured. “Whatever task you assign me I will perform to the best of my ability.”

  Boaz ached to touch her, but here stood Joseph, her mate, and he was the head man and the women were watching, despite the babies. “I know you will,” he said, smiling. He looked at the men, and let his smile vanish. “You all will. For if you don’t I must tell Hol’c, who will tell Lord Choulai, and if you are very lucky you will be punished to blood and weeping.”

  From outside the babyhouse came the loud clang-clang-clang of the meeting hall bell. As one, Serena, Joseph and David spun about to face the room’s large double doors. They were alert, poised for some kind of swift action.

  “It is the signal for day’s end,” he explained, and watched as their faces lost their tension, and their hands came to rest by their sides. “Now everyone ceases their labor, cleans their body in the bath-house, and at the next bell gathers in the meeting hall. That is where I will take you now. There is always much work to be done to prepare for nightmeal. You can help the others until it’s time to eat. I must mingle with the returning workers.”

  Joseph had turned back, and was once more staring at the babie
s. “Yeah,” he said. “Whatever. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  Boaz didn’t really need to mingle. He learned what he needed to learn of every day’s work at the end of nightmeal, when the chosen group leaders stood to make him their reports. But he liked to snatch a moment with Mikah whenever he could, under pretence of head man’s business. Leaving the new blood at the meeting hall, in the care of the cooks and servers, he hurried down to the shucking house where the children and the men tasked to guide and guard them streamed out into the dusking street.

  “Papa!” his son cried, face lighting with his glorious smile. “I shucked three bushels all myself, Papa! Even though I had to water the workers in the fields! And look!” He held out his hands. “Not a single cut from the shucking knife!”

  Boaz caught Mikah to him in a fierce embrace. “So it should be.”

  “I spread word of the newcomers, Papa,” Mikah confided, as they joined the flow of workers heading to the bath-house. “Will I see them again at nightmeal? There were so many questions I could not answer. What are they like? Which lords did they serve before coming here? Did they know any of our culled get? Are you sorry Lord Rebec put the woman to the old man? He is an old man, Papa. His hair is all silver! Have I seen a man with silver hair before, Papa? I can’t remember a man with silver hair.”

  “Hush, Mikah. You talk too much,” he scolded, half his attention on the passing men and women who heard Mikah’s prattle and slowed a little, to hear him answer. He hurried them on with a lowering look. “It is not for me to question Lord Rebec’s choice. Never speak of it again. As for Joseph, yes. His hair is silver. He has more years than most men here. But he is strong and he will work, as we work, for the glory of the god.”

  “Do you know where they came from, Papa?” said Mikah, as they reached the bath-house and took their places in line to wait their turn for a stall. “Their clothes were almost as fine as a Goa’uld’s.”

  “Their clothes mean nothing, Mikah. They are humans. Slaves. No better than we are, even if they did serve great Goa’uld lords. That was far away, and nothing to do with us. They are breeders and farmers for the god Yu, now, just like us. Like us they will wear roughspun and their fine clothes will sit in the storehouse gathering dust.”