by Joseph Lallo
When the current bowl became tiresome, he would look out between the bars of the carriage. There were many unfamiliar sights. Until the horrible day that his mother was killed, the malthrope’s world had been little more than thin forests and the occasional sprint through the sandy fields between. The nearest he’d ever had to a house was a simple hut composed of twisted branches, mud, and thatch. It was a place he only dimly remembered, because they had been forced to abandon it one night and never returned. Now he saw homes built of wood or stone, and there were so many of them. Sometimes they were far enough apart that he could only see one of them from one horizon to the next. Other times they were close enough that they were nearly touching. The closer the houses, the more people there were, and the busier they seemed to be. The busier they were, the more they spoke.
To sharp ears honed to pick out the rustle of a single tuft of grass half a field away, the sound of so many different voices speaking was simultaneously the most terrible and the most wonderful thing he had ever heard. It was a chorus of complex sounds and unfamiliar voices. Sometimes he let the sounds blend together, washing over him. Other times he tried to single them out, scanning the crowds and attempting to match the mouths to the words. Some of the sounds had a familiar shape to them, things he had heard his mother say on one of the rare occasions that she spoke.
Once he tried to form some of the sounds himself. The high-pitched, squeaky attempt at speech must have caught the attention of some of the townsfolk, because eyes turned to him, voices raised, and he learned a few new words that stung him with their tone. From that time onward he huddled in the shadow of the bench and kept quiet when people were near. There were some words he knew he never wanted to hear again.
Chapter 3
The parched land and near-desert were long behind the carriage now, replaced by the lush green fields and rich brown soil of the heart of Tressor. The gray stone of the road traced a long, meandering line down the center of sprawling plantations on either side. Each was preparing for the long growing season ahead. The little malthrope tucked himself deeper into shadow as the sound of voices began to grow louder. It wasn't a city this time, but a crossroad. A noisy wagon loaded with hay, tools, and workers rattled by, taking the more worrying sounds with it. In the carriage ahead, he heard the man who always told the others what to do raise his voice above the rest. This caused his ears to perk up, as this was typically what happened right before one of the large men handed out food.
“Blast it. They still haven't fixed that road to the bounty office,” Jarrad spat angrily as he stepped from his carriage and eyed a rocky trail with at least three fallen trees across it. “I am not going to risk snapping another axle trying to get a carriage down there to cash in that malthrope.” He turned to one of his men. “You, fetch the beast and walk it down to the office to get our silver. Shouldn't take you more than an hour.”
The young creature spotted one of the servants headed his way and mischievously snatched the bowl up, ready for another round of keep-away. The lock on the barred door to the slave carriage was undone and the chain holding it shut was loosened, the servant's arm reaching inside. A quick yank pulled the bowl easily out of reach, but the man wasn't after it. Instead, he grabbed the beast's tail and hauled him out. Before he knew what was happening he was dangling from the servant's fist, yelping and flailing about as the man struggled to get a sack open to drop him inside.
“Hmph,” came a grunt. “I've been purchased by a fool.”
All eyes turned to the blind man. Aside from requesting food or one of the buckets, it was the first sound he'd made since they had loaded him into the carriage. The sharp looks he received from Jarrad and his men made it a pretty safe bet that it would be the last sound he'd be making for a while if they had anything to say about it.
The servant not currently grappling with an unruly rascal stepped menacingly toward the blind man, a stiff leather strap in his hand. Though it hadn't been put to use yet, there was little doubt that it was a favored disciplinary tool. He folded it over and gave it a vicious slap across his palm to give the sightless man a sense of what was about to come. Before he could reach the door to wrench it open, though, Jarrad stopped him with a hand to the shoulder.
“Blind man. Ben, is it? Your former master claimed you were a man of wisdom and experience. Talk like that suggests it was another of his lies. Explain yourself.”
“Are you a farmer?”
“I am.”
“And do you sell your seeds, or do you wait and harvest them when they are full grown?”
“What sort of a question is that?”
“An apt one. You're about to hand over a seedling.”
Jarrad looked to the creature just as it was finally wrestled into a sack. “You aren't suggesting I let that thing grow up?”
“I'm saying that a grown male malthrope's tail is worth a hell of a lot more than a brat like that. Certainly enough to make for a good return on a little bit of waiting and a few scraps of food.”
A look of disgust curled his lip again as the plantation owner looked to the struggling bag. It was a distasteful suggestion . . . but, then, such was so often the case in business these days. The last he'd heard, the bounty on an adult was at least two hundred entus, and it changed daily. Sometimes it climbed to over five hundred. Strictly speaking, it wasn't permissible to harbor a malthrope, but his land was tucked away at the tail-end of nowhere. The chances of the local watch ever finding out were pretty slim, and after the trouble they gave him when he was attempting to buy the new fields these men were to work, the thought of defying them a bit was enticing. Yes, he would have to feed it, but the skinny thing couldn't eat much more than one of his hunting hounds . . .
With a shrug, the little beast's life was spared—at least for a few years.
“Throw it back with the rest of them,” Jarrad instructed the servant with the sack.
#
Jarrad marched out before the assembled slaves, flanked as always by his burly servants. Neither had yet had his name spoken, but names weren't really necessary in their line of work. Their purpose was to be a force of nature, a physical weight applied to their master's words. They did their jobs very well. Each held a leather strap, wrist-width and arm-length, in one hand. The other hand held the harness of one of the master’s dogs.
Unlike the men who held them, the dogs were sleek and thin. They had the short hair and mottled coat shared by most of the hunting dogs of Tressor, and to the untrained eye they were not terribly threatening. To one who had been chased by one, the cold, measuring look in their eyes as they stood at the ready stirred chilling memories and caused old scars to ache.
Their owner turned and scanned his own gaze across the new workers, as a general might review a group of new recruits. When he'd determined whatever it was he'd been seeking to determine, he spoke. His voice was strong, and carried to the far reaches of his land with little effort.
“By now you've seen your quarters, and you've seen the land. It is paradise by no means, but you can be damn sure that there are worse places to be. There are farmers, many of them, who think the best way to get a day's work out of a slave is to beat it out of him. They think the best way to earn a pile of gold is to scrimp in the bowls of their workers. I'm not one of them. I know that if I want a hard day's labor done well, then I need my slaves healthy and strong. On this plantation, life will be as good as you allow me to make it. If you work hard today, the harvest will be strong, and there will be more than enough food to fill your bellies, and more than enough silver left to keep roofs over your heads and clothes on your backs tomorrow. Slack today and you will feel it tomorrow. Your meals will be meager, your clothes will be ragged, and the holes in your walls will not be patched, because you will not have given me the means to provide anything better. I don't punish you for a poor day's work—you do.
“Now, do not think for a moment that this means there will not be punishment if it is earned. You’ll notice my men
carry straps. Some of you have already felt their lash. I cannot abide disobedience or disrespect. If you attempt to steal from me, if you speak ill of myself or my family, or if you do not do as you are told, punishment will be swift and severe. Is that understood?”
There was a grudging murmur of acknowledgment.
“Is that understood!” he growled, the nameless enforcers advancing a step.
“Understood!” the slaves replied quickly.
“Good! Now, as your first week on my land and under my ownership, this is brand week. Many of you are familiar with what that entails, but for the rest, listen closely.”
Jarrad turned and motioned to one of his men, who paced toward a shed near the edge of the field.
“You are slaves in the kingdom of Tressor. That means that your right arm must bear two things. The first is your set of stripes. You will bear one, two, or three depending on how valuable you are. The strongest among you will receive a single stripe. This signifies that you are able to work the hardest and the longest. This also means that you will have the best food, the best quarters, and the most privileges. Those who cannot or will not work to that level will not receive the same level of treatment, and will bear two stripes. Men and women too weak or old, or otherwise useless in the fields, will be given three stripes and very little else. If you want a happy life, you will fight hard to avoid those extra stripes.”
As he finished this first speech, the man he’d sent away returned. Rather than the strap, his free hand now clutched a short iron shaft with a twist on its end. Even in the bright sun, it was clearly glowing cherry-red.
“Aside from the stripes, you will be branded with this mark, the letter J. It labels you as my property, and in the event you escape and someone tracks you down, it will tell them who you should be returned to. You should know that, to this day, no slave has ever been brought back to me. Most have never tried to escape. Those who have didn’t make it far before Keenock and Ebu here got their teeth into them.”
At the sound of their names, each dog perked up and turned to its master. He walked over and scratched each of them behind the ears.
“You try to run away more than once, and these little devils will make sure that the second time will be with a limp. Understood?”
“Understood!” the slaves hastily replied.
“You learn quickly. Good to see. Now, obviously I don’t know for certain how hard each of you can work, so most of you won’t get your stripes until one week from today. You have that much time to prove your worth, and I suggest you use it wisely. One of you, however, already bears his third stripe, and thus has nothing to prove. He is also the only one of you who has been foolish enough to speak to me improperly. Thus, he is the volunteer to show each of you what you’ve got to look forward to. Blind man, step forward and roll up your right sleeve.”
With the resigned sigh of a man who had done it too many times before, Ben took three steps toward the voice. Jarrad took the harnesses of his guard dogs as his men approached. One manhandled the old man's arm, steadying it while his partner raised the cooling brand. With a swift, efficient roll and a sickening sizzle, the tool was applied. Ben gritted his teeth, his legs deciding without his consent that they no longer wished to support his weight. He was lowered to the ground as he heroically resisted the urge to scream.
The plantation owner looked up, his face blank and unfeeling. “Let that be one final motivation to work hard this week. One less stripe is one less branding. Get him on his feet and take him to my personal workshop. I’m going to put the dogs back in their pen. The rest of you, line up. Today you get a brand and some rest. Tomorrow you start earning your keep.”
Chapter 4
“Inside,” growled Jarrad, forcing the sturdy wooden door of the workshop open.
Ben placed his hand on the door frame, then slid it to the door and glided his fingers along its surface to guide himself inside. Were he able to see, Ben would likely have been very concerned indeed by the contents of the room. Woodworking tools of every type hung from pegs on the walls: axes, hammers, saws, and a dozen more implements with red-brown stains that could be rust, or could be something else. Most of the walls were wood, and most of the floor earth, but at the far side of the room was a stone slab and brick wall. The slab was scrupulously clean. At its center was an anvil and assorted smithing tools. Against the wall was a furnace, its door open and the fire inside slowly dying. There were many, many things that could be put to torturous use if punishment was the aim of this visit.
Even without his sight, the old man was able to learn more than enough to make him nervous. From the feel of the door, it was a rough, thick construction; heavy enough to withstand an awful lot of punishment . . . and dense enough to keep virtually any noise from filtering through. From the crunch beneath his sandals, the floor was nothing but dirt and sawdust, the kind of floor that didn’t show stains when blood was spilled. When he was far enough inside to no longer feel the sun beating on his back, Ben’s new owner stepped inside and slammed the door, bolting it behind him. A rough grip on the blind man’s shoulder maneuvered him forward a few steps, then aside.
“Sit,” growled Jarrad.
After feeling around behind him to be certain there was a bench waiting, Ben obeyed. A creak signaled his master doing the same. After he sat, Jarrad released a long, meaningful sigh. It was the sort of sound one makes after placing down a heavy load, the body’s expression of bone-weariness. He mopped his face and threw down the strap on a work table, silently staring into the middle distance.
“I want to ask you some questions, blind man,” Jarrad said with weariness in his voice.
“Do you? I’d imagined you’d brought me here to put one of those straps you kept talking about to good use,” Ben remarked.
Jarrad looked to the loop of leather, then to Ben. “In my experience, when a man reaches your age, he’s set enough in his ways that a few lashes aren’t going to change anything.”
“There’s truth to that.”
“The slavers tell me you are a man of many skills.”
“There’s truth to that as well. Through six different owners, I’ve put my hand to just about any task that might need to be done. I’ve spent time in a mine, I’ve pumped bellows, plowed fields, worked a loom . . .”
“Fine, fine. We grow rakka here. Familiar with it?”
“Tricky stuff.”
Calling it tricky was an understatement. Known variously as rakka berry, rakka fruit, red-seed fruit, and long-life fruit, rakka was infamously finicky. It would only grow in certain types of soil, needed a very specific climate, and couldn’t survive without just the right amount of water. It grew in dense bushes with cruel thorns, and didn’t even have the decency to ripen the way other fruits and vegetables did. The berries grew in clusters of a few dozen, and in a single cluster there could be fruits at every level of ripeness, from green to nearly fermented. Worst of all, the plant sapped the life from the soil. If you were foolish enough to grow it for more than a season or two on the same field, the land would be barren for years.
It was a crop that had ruined more than its share of farmers, but if you had the dedication and resources to cultivate it properly and seek out properly ripened berries day after day throughout the growing season, it was bar none the most valuable thing a farmer could produce. Properly dried and roasted, the seeds from within the berries could last for years without spoiling. Ground and boiled, they produced a tea that was the only known treatment for a withering disease that the locals called bone-rot. Soaked and mixed into soup, porridge, or stew, they fortified even the most meager ration enough to keep a man alive for days. Indeed, they were largely responsible for the Tresson army’s well-earned reputation of having seemingly endless stamina. The berries themselves had all of the usual uses one might have for a sour fruit, the vines made for decent rope, and even the thorns had their uses. Growing it was a gamble, but one with a tremendous reward when it could be coaxed to pay out.
> “How much experience have you had with it?”
“Two owners ago I worked on a rakka plantation on the east coast. I was there for six years.”
“So you know how to process it?”
“I do.”
“Explain.”
“Well, every day you go out and track down the ripe berries . . .”
“Describe a ripe berry.”
Ben raised one hand and touched his thumb to his ring finger, then pinched the meat of his thumb with the other hand. “That ripe.”
“You do it by feel?”
“I don’t have many other options, master. Though I’ve heard you pick them when they are as pink as the inside of your cheek.”
“Right, go on.”
“You squeeze the seeds out, then set aside the fruit for wine or preserves or whatnot. The seeds get a soak in oak ashes mixed with water for a few days, three at least. Then they get dried in trays, then roasted until they smell right . . .”
“And how long is that?”
“Until they smell right,” Ben repeated with irritation, “I know it when I smell it. You set me down in the roasting house and I’ll tell you when.”
Jarrad grinned in satisfaction. “Continue.”
“Then you cool it, dump it into a sack, and sell it.”
The owner leaned back in his chair and breathed another sigh. “Well, Grahl wasn’t lying about you, at least. You’ll be helping to train the others. From the sound of it, you can teach my existing workers a thing or two as well. The question is, what do I do with you after you’re through teaching them?”
“The slavers had me fixing their equipment.”
“What sort of equipment?”
“Whatever they gave me.”
Jarrad grunted. “We’ll see what you can do in that area later. Tell me. What motivated you to speak up about the malthrope?”