“Not necessarily,” Gwen began. “It could be that you don’t approve of helping us city folk and you’re thinking of a way to wiggle out of it.”
“I beg your pardon?” Dareen said formally and politely, though somewhat shocked that the other woman knew of the trio’s proposal of escape from the night before. Dareen had thought the entire affair to be somewhat a secret. Her facial expression must have conveyed as much.
“You are excused,” Gwen said, nodding her way and pressing four forms in quick fashion before shoving them to the front of the table. “Now, don’t you go thinking there be any secrets in such close quarters, no matter what that old geezer tells you.”
“What geezer?” Dareen asked, glancing quickly to Theobald.
“Not him,” Gwen said. “Old man Walton. He’s gone stirring up trouble since day one. Can’t accept his place in life now.”
“Oh, that old geezer.” And Theobald looked over, giving them both a frown before resuming his work. “It seems we have a lot of old geezers around here.”
“Well, you can blame the Kesh for that. Done gone and killed or run off most our menfolk, they did. Hardly a man between fifteen and fifty here no more,” Gwen said, giving a motherly nod as if educating a child.
“So how did you know that the others want to escape?” Dareen asked in a hushed whisper.
Gwen waited for a long moment, and Dareen thought the woman was ignoring her till she felt a presence behind her. “Quit slacking and lay that brick,” a rough voice said from behind her, and Dareen realized that she had stopped working when she engaged in the conversation with Gwen. In fact, she never really resumed working from their lunch break, and she was just relieved there was no whip sounding behind her.
Dareen worked harder, but not so fast, and caught Theobald eyeing her sideways from his seat next to her a few feet away. He seemed to approve of her efforts, not too much, but just enough to alleviate the guard’s concerns, and the whip-wielding Kesh moved down the line toward the young Ulathan girl at the far end.
“Disgraceful, it is,” Gwen said, her voice hushed as she stole a peak down the line past Theobald.
“Perhaps the girl fears the whip?” Dareen offered, looking for a way to be sympathetic at the younger girl’s plight.
“We all fear the whip, and it is fine to comply with their rules and all, but no sense in fraternizing with them, not like she does.” Gwen scowled and looked back to her table, slapping forms together at a vigorous pace which elicited a scowl from Theobald in return.
Dareen wanted to get back to learning how Gwen knew about the escape. If she knew, then most likely everyone in the entire camp knew, and that was dangerous for the conspirators. Dareen brushed the back of her hand against the scar alongside her face and knew that the Kesh meant business. They would just as soon kill as capture, and only a higher authority seemed to understand the strategic need for slaves and kept the brigands from wholesale murder. Dareen shuddered at the thought.
“How did you know, Gwen?” Dareen asked, deciding to take a different tact now. If perceptions about her were this messed up, then she’d play them for all they were worth.
“Know what? About the escape?” Gwen asked, continuing her work without looking up.
“Yes,” Dareen said.
“It’s not important. All you need to know is that getting involved with that trio is dangerous and best to leave them be. Trust me on this one, young lady,” Gwen said, continuing her work.
Dareen made her bluff. “You tell me how you know, Gwen, or by all the gods of the abyss, I’ll turn your hands to stone and seal your lips together.”
Dareen looked down and focused on her forms, pushing the completed ones forward and grabbing empty ones from her right side and a large scoopful of mud from her left. The effect was near instantaneous on the other woman.
“You would hurt me for my kindness?” Gwen said, sounding pained and rejected for the first time in two days.
“I would, if you make me, and if you don’t tell me,” Dareen said, not bothering to look up and pressing her advantage.
“Why I never . . .” Gwen said, taking in a deep breath and slowing her work, seemingly at a loss of words for once. Finally the other woman decided she liked her hands being made of flesh and she relished her ability to speak, so speak she did. “Those fools spoke more than once while the camp spy was practically outside their door. It’s just a matter of time before the beans are eaten and the milk is spilled. Now take back your wicked pledge to harm me right this instant.”
Dareen was confused, not knowing what Gwen meant, but it sounded like the threat was considered real and had to be “taken back” verbally in order to calm the woman. Just a bit of further information was needed. “The spy?”
Gwen stopped working completely, which was most out of norms for the schoolmarm. Pouting like a teenage girl, she turned and looked past the tables toward the Kesh guard and the young lady who engaged him in conversation for the second day in a row. “It’s her. Vika’s the one who passes them our secrets. She should pay for this, but there’s no standing in the way.”
Dareen didn’t fully understand how the other woman spoke, but the glare at the young teenaged girl at the far end was clear enough. “Vika?”
“Yes, Victoria is the one,” Gwen said, sounding defeated. “Now take it back.”
“Fine,” Dareen said, looking at Gwen, and then on an impulse, Dareen waved her hands at Gwen in a silly manner. “Ala kasar, belie!” she finished.
“Is it done, then?” Gwen asked, expectation in her voice.
“Yes, you’ll have no problems with the spirits tonight,” Dareen said, trying hard not to laugh, and in fact, she had to look over at Theobald to keep Gwen from seeing her smile. Theobald, however, returned her look and gave her another long scowl before looking back to his table.
Vika would receive a visit that evening, and Dareen started to formulate a plan.
The rest of the afternoon was uneventful, and the guards arrived as normal to escort the group back to the stockade. The group always consisted of three squads of spearmen who always took up positions closest to the slaves, one on each side and the third behind them, and a second group of crossbowmen, again divided into three, who marched in single file right behind the spearmen. While not a soldier, Dareen recognized easily the logic behind the formation. The spearmen would keep the group at bay while the bowmen shot them down. It made escape, at least by means of a riot, practically impossible.
Escape seemed to have been on the minds of most at least at one time, but with no strong men present in the group, either to lead or to fight, it rested on the shoulders of the women and the elderly to do something, if anything.
The brick-making operation was located to the east of Ulsthor by a good ten-minute walk; at least, that is what a few of the Ulathans had said when she had asked on the way back to the stockade. A select few were occasionally ordered on one task or errand to the town, and they had relayed this information. Most of the others appeared to have been in the brick pits the entire summer, and outside of their initial transport from Ulatha to Ulsthor, they hadn’t seen the town proper at all.
With a critical eye, Dareen began to assess the surroundings on her walk back instead of hanging her head and shuffling her feet. The brick pits lay at one end of a huge hollow that would take a man a long time to run across. At the west end was a trackway that cut across the pit from south to north. Here, the bricks that were cooling were stockpiled for loading onto the transport wagons by the first line of slaves.
Next were the ovens themselves. They were large round domes that were fed from side doors where wood and coal was shoveled in. The main doors consisted of an entry door on the east side where the forms were placed and an exit door on the west side, closest to the storage and trackway where the heated forms were taken out with large wooden spatulas. Over and over again the doors would open, brick forms were placed inside using the large wooden utensils, and then pulled back fr
om the other door once they were done. The first bricks were pushed further in every time another load arrived, about five to ten minutes apart.
The clear area between the ovens and the tables was where the laborers hauled the forms from the tables to the ovens. The slaves there walked back and forth, collecting the forms from the tables and depositing them on shelves near the oven.
The tables were spaced about twenty feet apart, and three tables served each oven. Dareen wasn’t sure why, but the Kesh seemed to do things in multiples of three. Her table was the middle table of oven number four, and there appeared to be nine ovens with twenty-seven tables.
Behind the tables were the barrows. Wheelbarrows brought the forms and laid them to the right of the tables, and other barrows brought the mortar that the bricks were made from and set them to the left side. Some of the stronger slaves were enlisted for barrow duty.
Behind the barrows were the mud pits. Here the mortar was dropped into shallow wooden boxes and water was added, as well as straw and large blades of hay to hold it together. The weaker of the slaves worked inside the boxes, stomping the muddy mixture together until a barrow worker shoveled the prepped mixture into a barrow for transport.
Finally, the last line in the production process was another trackway with stores of mortar, water barrels, and hay. Carts would arrive here first, offload their wares, and then loop around the north end of the lines and come back on the first roadway, stopping at one of the ready stations to load the prepared bricks for transport.
Walking back, Dareen marveled at the skill and efficiency of the slave line. The Kesh had been doing this for centuries, and they understood more than just the labor that was involved. They understood the intense psychological struggle that occurred within each slave individual, and how to not only break them, but to maintain control and to keep each slave at peak production. Perhaps the actual guards didn’t know this, but their masters certainly did.
It was a short walk from the second road back to the stockade, located a few stone throws east of the brick pits in the same hollow that had been dug out and widened. While the entire pit and hollow were not self-contained, meaning that a fit individual could climb any part of the steep slopes around the pit, the effort would be slow and a Kesh bowman could pick off an escapee with ease before they reached the summit of the pit. More than one Ulathan had tried to escape this way, and the results were always the same.
After entering, Dareen stopped to watch the others file in, and she looked around the area. The area in front of the gates were open and used for marshalling the group in the morning as well as for feeding them at night. A row of tables were set at either side of the gate entrance, and the food line would form from the outside in.
Guards would oversee the feeding and prevent pilfering or stealing of the provisions, ensuring everyone was fed. They did this not from an altruistic gesture, or an act of kindness, but rather from brute force efficiency. The weak and unfed would do less work than the stronger. The only exceptions to this was that the barrow workers had small red bands tied around their left wrist, and they received an extra portion of jerky and bread, and the oven workers had the same band around their right wrists and received extra water rations as they were often dehydrated due to their close proximity to the hot ovens.
Counting from one end of the row to the end, Dareen came up with nine shanties. She walked around the outer edge, coming up with another count of nine shanties. A quick calculation gave her eighty-one structures with nine slaves per structure, or about 729 slaves for the entire stockade. She bet that each row of nine would house enough slaves to cover one of the nine ovens.
Currently, the entire oven line was not running at peak capacity. There were barely over five hundred slaves in the stockade, and most of them took up quarters near the gates to the front. They did this for a good reason. At the very rear of the stockade was another small open area that had small wood dividers nine wide and only waist high. This was the latrine, and the nine pits flowed through a shallow stone culvert and out the back of the pit to who knew where. The entire area stunk to high heaven, especially in the heat of summer.
Since the stockade was square and not rectangular, the extra space that was used by the feeding tables and the latrine were also present on the north and south sides of the structure. Here, however, they were kept as open space in order to give the Kesh guards a clear line of sight to shoot any slave who tried to scale the wooden wall.
Walking once around the entire perimeter, Dareen completed another half circle to arrive at the middle structure at the very back. Its door faced west, away from the latrine, and she walked around the hut and opened it. No one was there, and there were no blankets or other items for comfort. Just the bunks built against the walls, and, indeed, they were partially holding the structure up.
Having a good layout of the facility, Dareen counted rows and columns, ending up at her structure where she bunked. She went inside, ignoring the others who had reclined on the bunks waiting for the meal call, and she gathered her belongings, which weren’t much. A dirty pillow consisting of burlap with softer hay inside of it. A blanket that she only used to sleep on as it was too hot to sleep under it. A comb made of wood with only three prongs, used to get tangles out but not much else, and a cup, bowl, and spoon, all made of wood.
Walking out, she returned to the last structure that she had entered before. Picking the bunk against the far wall, she laid her items out, placing the personal ones at the head of the bed where a plank that supported the bunk was used as a sort of shelf. It was easy to knock things off of it if one wasn’t careful, but that was their fate for now. The first part of her plan was complete.
“What in the abyss are you doing?” Margaret asked from the doorway, almost startling Dareen.
“Don’t do that to me,” Dareen said, placing a hand on her chest in mock shock.
“You can’t be serious . . . are you?” Margaret asked, sniffing with her nose and making a face.
“I am,” Dareen said, standing from where she had been stooped over when she had placed her belongings on the bunk. “Also, you are going to grab your bedding as well as Estelle and Walton’s and bring them here.”
Margaret shook her head. “I’ll do no such thing.”
Dareen smiled. She was about to play her part again to the hilt. “You will if you don’t want me to place a hex on you.”
“You wouldn’t!” Margaret exclaimed, panic in her voice.
“I would, and you will never rid yourself of the warts, especially the ones on your face,” Dareen said.
“Why, I never . . .” Margaret said, flummoxed and upset but finally shaking her head and then pointing a finger at Dareen. “Fine, but you stay right here and don’t do anything funny.”
Dareen nodded and then sat on the bunk, waiting for the others. That was twice now that her little ruse worked, and phase two of her plan was happening much quicker than she thought it would.
Within a few moments, the trio arrived, all with their belongings in their hands. They entered the structure and stood there looking around.
“You weren’t lying, were you?” Walton said, turning to Margaret and frowning.
“I told you so. The young wood-witch done lost her mind.” Margaret rolled her eyes.
Estelle looked at Dareen intently. “You really want us here?”
“If you want my help, then yes. We need a secure place to plan, so set your belongings where you will and let’s get down to business,” Dareen said, still sitting on her bunk.
Estelle took the bunk to the left of the door while Margaret and Walton took the first two to their right. They laid out their belongings and sat, looking intently at Dareen.
“Well?” Walton said sheepishly. “Why are we here?”
“Do you know Gwen?” Dareen asked.
“Gwendolyn?” Margaret asked.
“Yes, the school teacher from the noble’s court.” Dareen nodded.
“Oh, we know tha
t old hag,” Walton said, rolling his own eyes, and Margaret gave him an elbow in his ribs.
“Who you calling old?” Margaret asked. “She’s younger than me, you old windbag.”
“Do you two know each other?” Dareen asked hesitantly.
Margaret and Walton stopped with one another to look at Dareen. “Of course,” Margaret began,” we’re married, we are, but don’t tell the Kesh. They don’t know.”
Walton nodded and Dareen looked to Estelle.
“They don’t like relationships, and they seem to leave us alone when we don’t appear to have a close kinship with any other slave,” Estelle offered.
Dareen nodded. “I’m beginning to see . . .” she trailed off, looking back at two confused faces to her left.
“You going to tell us why we are back here near the poop pit?” Walton asked.
Another elbow went into the man’s ribcage. “Enough of your foul talk and let the wood lady speak.”
Dareen smiled as the term lady was used instead of witch. It appeared that Margaret was more worried about warts than initially was suspected. “Margaret—”
Margaret cut her off. “Call me Marge, dearie, and this lug you can call Wally.”
“Fine,” Dareen began, lowering her voice and sounding most conspiratorial. “You’ve been betrayed.”
All three of the others gasped, Estelle bringing a hand to her mouth much as Gwen had done earlier that day. “What in Agon are you saying?” Estelle asked. They all three looked to the door, expecting Kesh guards to storm their way in and grab them to take them to the dungeons.
“Gwen knew that you three were planning an escape, and she told me to give you no heed. I think she referred to you Wally as an ‘old geezer.’”
Walton didn’t have a chance to respond; his wife did it for him. “Well, that good-for-nothing, arrogant, rotten, egoistical . . .” She was quickly running out of adjectives to describe the other woman.
“What exactly did Gwen tell you?” Estelle asked in a calmer voice, one that conveyed an unusual seriousness.
Dead Druid: Claire-Agon Ranger Book 2 (Ranger Series) Page 14