“Free drinks for everyone in the house!” I yell out and pull a coin from my pouch, fumbling a bit, and then brandish it for everyone to see.
For some reason, I expected some sort of cheer from the masses but only one or two men make any acknowledgement. I hand the coin off to my server and all of the wenches start taking orders for extra drinks. Though not many cheered, the patrons of this business certainly take advantage of my generosity.
Needing to relieve myself terribly, my only options are the chamber pot in my room or the alley out back. Since I’m not likely to encounter kidnappers for this slave ring in my own room, the alley is my choice. Getting up, I make my way to the door and am stopped by my server.
“Sir, you forgot your pouch.”
I turn to answer her in whisper, “Take two coins, one more coin for you and one more to the man at the desk to pay for the room. When this is done return the pouch to my room. If I do not return tonight for it, I will be back to claim it later.”
Night has fallen and though torches and lanterns are lit up, it does little to actually illuminate properly. Stumbling, I head around the corner into a dark alley and make sure no one is around before relieving myself. When I’m finished, I turn back to the light coming from the street and as expected there is someone there waiting. I continue my drunk act and stumble toward the person, propping myself up against the wall a few times. They make no move toward me however.
“‘Scuse me! You are blocking my way,” I tell him, slightly slurring my words.
Before I reach him, everything goes black when a sack is thrown over my head from behind and pulled tight against my face. Caught off guard I struggle and grab at the opening of the sack that is cutting into my neck. While I knew I was going to be attacked, I wasn’t sure how and I defend myself as best I can while blinded.
Swinging an elbow back, I hit the guy behind me in the ribs, but quickly find that was a bad idea. I’m struck with something hard upside the head. My ears ring and I can feel myself getting dizzy, but I keep struggling as it becomes hard to breathe while the sack tightens more around my throat. I am hit in the stomach, which causes me to exhale the air I had managed to take in.
I get dizzy and collapse to a knee.
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My head hurts. It’s throbbing and when I reach up to scratch my head I can feel a knot where I was hit. The fact that the sun’s rays flicker on my face through the trees only causes the headache to get worse. My body jostles up and down rapidly and I hear the sound of wheels.
Where am I?
Peeling my eyelids open a little bit at a time I find that I’m in a wooden cage wagon being pulled by horses. All around me there are other people. Men, women and one female child, all very dirty looking and in shabby clothing, but none of them are Agatha unfortunately. My clothes have been replaced with simple, tattered and dirty ones as well, to match what an indentured servant might wear, with chain shackles tying us all together by the ankle. No one is talking and most have their heads down instead of looking about.
Were it not for my need to find Agatha, I’d find a way out of here and make them sorry for attacking me. I just hope they are holding her wherever they’re taking me.
Deep into the woods with no sign of a city around, we follow a dirt trail in an area that is unfamiliar. I attempt to turn around to get a good look of what is behind me but a whip cracks against the side of the cage.
“Sit down and do not move!” A deep raspy voice orders me.
I do as I’m told, but continue to look around at what’s in front of me in search of anything that might serve as a landmark that brings any sense of remembrance, but find nothing of the sort. Just trees and bushes and everything else woods usually have.
My head pulses with pain a little more and I close my eyes to try and relieve some of that. Trying to relax, I just listen to the clopping of the horses’ hooves against the dirt. My perception of time is skewed and it passes at an unknown rate as I sit here trying to focus on anything other than my head.
When I get out of this predicament, these slavers are going to wish they had chosen another path in life.
We come to a halt and I hear a few men talking. From the back of one horse, a broad-shouldered, burly man in a white and yellow striped shirt pulls a black folded piece of cloth and begins to unfold it and I recognize him from the bar. He was sitting at the corner stool on the left side of the bar and had barely ordered one drink before I was getting up to leave for the alley.
Did he slip out a back door into the alley? Is that how they got the jump on me?
The man from my side, whom I do not recognize, moves to help the first and they pull the black cloth taut over the cage causing everything to go dark within. The only reason I can think of that they might do this for is to keep us from seeing something or from being seen. While I can’t see, I can now freely move and test the limits of the chain. As I pull with my hand the man next to me protests.
“Hey!” He whispers. “You better not try anything funny. If you become more trouble than you are worth, they will kill you!”
“They can try,” I whisper back and test the lock around my ankle.
The wagon begins to move again and I take the opportunity to feel things out. A metal band about half an inch thick and split in two, wraps around my ankle. It has a hinge on one half and the other half has a hole for a key. There are solid loops where the chain links hook to the band and though I try as hard as I can, they seem to be put together quite well. Though I might have a chance to break the links if I had a tool to pry with, I know that I will not find one within here.
“Are all of you prisoners against your will?” I whisper.
“Listen kid. Shut up or you are going to get us all in trouble,” the man next to me scolds.
“Have you all been kidnapped?” I ignore him and whisper again.
“I…” a woman’s voice starts in but the man interrupts.
“Shut up!” He yells and then becomes gravely silent.
The cart comes to a halt again and the back of the drape is pulled up. The door at the back of the cage is revealed and the man I’m now referring to as ‘Burly’, since that’s his only real defining feature and I have no actual name for him, appears again.
“Who is yelling back here?” he demands. The man next to me is staring down, looking nervous.
He pulls his keys out and unlocks the door. As he steps inside the weight of the cart shifts and he moves in looking at all the shadowy faces. Quickly he snatches up the little girl sitting across from me by her collar. She screams.
“Tell me who yelled, or I take the girl out and lash her with the whip!” He shakes her a few times one handedly.
“I did! I did! Please, spare my daughter!” The man next to me confesses.
The slaver drops the girl and she lets out a whimper. He turns his attention to the father, unshackles him and begins to drag him out. The man begins to plead for his life.
“Please! I promise I will be quiet. Please! Lana! Lana!” The man reaches out for his daughter who clings to the woman next to her.
“Daddy!” She jumps up and reaches for him.
The slaver backhands the little girl and she falls over, wailing. Anger rises in me and I find it building to rage. Their cruelty of hitting a little girl causes my fists to clench and I attempt to harness my inner power. Breathing heavily I focus myself.
I cannot sit idly by!
I jump up, though still shackled, and yell in rage extending my hands out. When I am unable to manifest a shockwave I grab the slaver by the hand he is dragging the father away with and attempt to pull him back into me. Finding I have no leverage within the small confines of the cage, I am forced to rip and claw at his fingers, but it does no good. When I release my grip I attempt to punch him and he grabs my arm with his free hand, twisting me around and pulling my arm behind my back. He kicks me in the knees, causing me to collapse, and then I feel a boot to the head. My fa
ce smashes into the floor and I am dazed. Even with the pain in my head and arm I struggle and he grinds my face into the hay. Unable to muster my power or enough strength at the moment to do anything, he overpowers me and I am forced to give up. He exits and the cage door shuts with a creak and slam. Light fades as the drape is pulled back down. I can hear the man.
“No, please! It was a mistake! I was trying to tell him to be quiet! I promise I will behave!”
I hear a weapon being drawn from its sheath.
“No! No!” he cries out.
The swish of a blade cuts through the air and silence follows. I grit my teeth and climb to my feet. Screaming in rage I charge the door and slam my shoulder into it, not caring that I am pulling at people’s legs with my shackles. The first hit does nothing but I ram again anyway causing the cage to rock. Putting my hands in front of me I try to bring out a shockwave to tear the cage apart, but nothing happens.
“Murderers!” I yell out. “Filthy, stinking scum!”
The drape is lifted once more and he is back. The man who I stand no chance of defeating right now has returned for me. Pulling his keys he unlocks the door again and enters. I back up a couple of steps and then take a running start at him. Trying to misdirect him I feign a left hook to his side, but instead throw my right fist toward his throat, hoping to connect with his windpipe and fell him. However, he catches me, taking both of my wrists into the palm of one of his hands and uses his free one to smash my face. My vision goes dark and I lose myself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I attempt to open my eyes I find my right one swollen shut. My head throbs and everything aches. With my one good eye I see that the cover is no longer on the cage and the light from the sun causes my already throbbing head to hurt even worse.
Laboring just to keep my eyes open I find that it’s difficult and give up, closing them to rest. A nightmare has fallen upon me and, try as I might, I know it’s not one I can wake from. The man who had sat next to me, the father of that little girl is dead and it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have said anything, but my desire to help others got him killed.
Why couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut? The girl is fatherless now because of me. How was I so powerless to stop his death? When I get free and find Agatha I will make them pay. I will make all of these slavers pay!
As I adapt to my pain I open my good eye again. No longer in the woods we are now on a much wider path next to them instead. On the other side of the cage are farmlands and an upcoming city. My vision is blurred so I can’t make out how large the city is, but it does look to have some larger buildings. Two, maybe three stories tall each.
We bump along and as we hit a hole in the dirt road the little girl whimpers. Everyone else is silent still until the slavers begin to speak. They mumble at first, but their voices quickly turn to a normal tone and volume. I can barely hear what they’re talking about but nothing seems to stand out as information I could use. My ears perk up however when I hear them talking about me.
“Is the profit we are going to make from him worth the profit we lost on the old man?”
“He better be. It was your idea to keep him alive. Let us hope that he can behave himself during the auction.”
“Just make sure we get our money as soon as possible. Once the sale is done we need to split.”
I could make their work harder for them. Do exactly as they don’t want me to do, but my hopes of finding Agatha and taking the slavers down would drop significantly. I will have to do as they say for the time being.
“Shh, we are almost there.”
More voices can be heard and my interest perks up. As I open my eyes I find that we’re moving into a populated area. Few of the people take notice of the slave cage passing them, but the ones that do look have a look of disgust in their eyes. They pass over me like I am nothing but dirt. This doesn’t bother me however because I know better.
As we near the city I notice that there are no walls like there were around Asta or its castle. The buildings are as I had thought, two or three stories high, varying quite a bit with no set pattern, but they are close together, leaving hardly any walking room between.
We find our way onto a cobblestone street and beside our wagon people from all walks of life make their way about. Though they are all dressed quite nicely, you can tell who is a servant, who is commoner and who is of importance. Tunics and breeches seem to be the common theme among males and long, puffy dresses for the females. The women servants and commoners seem to keep their hair simple, with braids or ponytails while those of status have their hair elaborately done up with loops and small braids, or neat, tight buns, or all of the above.
Entering the largest walkway I can see, the cart turns down a street and begins heading toward an open area filled with grass and a few trees, where in the center a wood platform sits. A red curtain is being used as a backdrop on the platform and there are already people up on it. More slaves. Surrounding the stage people are already gathering for the auction mentioned by my captors, but it appears that it hasn’t started yet.
The cart pulls up alongside the platform and Burly comes around to the door, jingling his key ring. When he unlocks the door my mind argues with my plan. It tells me to jump up, hit him and cause a scene, but the will to carry out my plan wins over my impulses. I stay silent.
He grabs the chains that lock all of us together and tugs on them, pulling on the legs of the first two people in the cart. They stand up and the rest of us follow their lead. There is enough slack in the chains that he is able to turn them around and throw them over his shoulder and not trip the first person in line. He leads us out and down one by one to the ground and then right back up a set of stairs on the platform, moving us all the way to the end.
It’s not long before things begin to really heat up as the crowd grows and a few more groups of slaves show up and are led up to the platform. My eyes hurt and I still can’t get one hundred percent vision in my damaged eye, but I do my best to scan the slaves for Agatha. There is no sign of her.
I am going to be rather irritated if she wasn’t kidnapped at all. Maybe this was all just a setup to capture me and sell me as a slave instead.
Looking back I can see it all fitting together now.
What a cleverly concocted story to lure me in! How could I have been so dumb? That’s it. As soon as my shackles are loosed these slavers are going to feel my wrath.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to get under way! The debt of each servant here has been collected! Their service times vary based on the debt! See the clerk upon winning an auction for their certificate!” A man yells out.
I bide my time as the auction starts. There are rows of chairs down from the stage, all full, and beyond that, a large crowd forms like a swarm around them, leading me to the conclusion that slaves are either very big in this city or people come from other cities to this one to purchase. It would make sense since I didn’t see anything like this in the brief time I was in Asta.
One by one, shackled people are sold by a man with a speaking trumpet. When the man calls the end of the bidding the slave’s leg is unshackled, then new shackles are placed on their wrists to be led down to the winner. Some slaves sell for as little as a couple copper pieces, which makes me sick to my stomach.
How can a person’s life be valued that little?
When the auctioneer gets to our lot I’m first to be sold by Burly. It’s as they said, they want their money for me now and I am all right with that. I could care less about being sold, as the moment my shackle is removed I plan to kick Burly’s teeth in and make a break for it, hoping that I can just push through the pain to complete that plan.
“Next up we have a lad just acquired! He is fit, he is young and he has spirit! His debt term is long! Now who will take the first bid at, we will say, fifty silver pieces?!” The auctioneer hollers into his trumpet excitedly.
Immediately, I see a paddle go up with the number ‘five hund
red seventy four’ on it and I squint to see who is interested but due to the distance and my eye it’s difficult to make out the figure too well, but I can tell it’s a woman and she is dressed well.
“Fifty silver pieces! Do I hear seventy-five?”
The woman is outbid by a man in the front and a war ensues. Flurries of arms begin to fly up while the auctioneer continues to raise the price each time. Some holler from the crowd indicating bids while others wave their paddles furiously for theirs.
Are young men in such short supply that people would want one so much as a slave?
Several people bid on me over and over until the price is outrageous, though the same woman, the first one, comes out on top each time. The auctioneer’s mouth moves a mile a minute as he garbles his words and only spits out numbers. The bidding slows and eventually it’s between ‘five hundred seventy four’ and the man in front. The woman has the leading bid and the auctioneer is calling out for last bids.
“Sir, do you want to go to fifteen gold and twenty five silver pieces?”
He hesitates.
“Going once!”
I can see him deciding.
Hurry up so I can be unshackled!
“Going twice!”
He shakes his head to the auctioneer, indicating he won’t go any further up.
“Sold to number five hundred and seventy four! Please have your gold ready upon collection of your servant!”
Burly moves over to me, his keys jingling while he walks. I do my best to stand still, but the urge to act is growing within me. My body wants to make him pay for what he did earlier, to make him pay for everything that is going on here. Rage builds inside of me and I clench my fists down tight to the point I can feel my fingernails digging into my palms. He kneels down to unlock the chains and I can feel my opportunity almost upon me.
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