The night passed quietly after that, the remaining ten captives cold and huddled tight in the dark. The three youths eventually went to their rest, to be replaced by two older warriors. Quintillian and Asander were woken with the rest by the rough kicks of the nomads as the first faint glow of dawn threatened behind the distant eastern mountains. There was a brief argument among the warriors about the body of the carter with the broken neck, but in the end he was simply cut free and thrown into a ditch for carrion eaters. After a brief snack of hard cheese, flatbread and yogurt, they were hauled to their feet, fastened to the saddle of that same warrior, and off again across the seemingly endless sea of grass.
The second day was, if anything, worse than the first. Despite his level of fitness, Quintillian was not used to the strenuous and constant activity, and the night of sitting on the cold ground, motionless, had caused his muscles to seize up. Only as the sun approached its apex had his muscles all loosened up and his running eased into a mile-eating pace. The others achieved the same state with varying levels of difficulty. Quintillian marked a tall man with a hooked nose as the next to go, and sure enough, sometime during the afternoon, the man’s legs gave way and he fell with a cry. He was separated from the others with a swipe of the knife and dispatched with a spear like the two fallen the day before. The remaining nine captives, Quintillian decided, would likely make it the next few days unless they suffered some sort of accident. All the remaining slaves had found an easy pace. Five burly men and four athletic-looking girls ran on.
As they jogged, Quintillian wondered what use they could be as slaves. If this was the nomad life the clan lived, travelling during the day and camping at night, when would slaves be used for work? It seemed inconceivable. The clan must move from site to site and set up camp for extended periods, depending on the terrain and the season. Likely they were just moving fast at the moment to be far from the imperial border and the likelihood of reprisals.
The second night there was a shower of rain and against all expectations, the nomad who led them during the day had the nine captives moved inside one of the huge, heavy tents along with a dozen warriors who would keep watch on them. If Quintillian had hoped for a chance at freedom that night, he was disappointed. With the death of the carter the first night, a closer watch was now kept on them, and their bonds were checked every three or four hours.
The third day the captives had settled into more of a routine. The running became easier, their muscles becoming accustomed to the constant strain. With no further incidents, their captors seemed to treat them a little better, allowing them a pause for food at noon. And with the more troublesome among them now gone, the remaining nine were more comfortable in each other’s company. The third evening they began to talk quietly, to learn each other’s names and discover something about one another. The fourth and fifth day the routine was set and the run seemed much easier.
Then, as the sun slid slowly towards the horizon on the sixth day, shouting rose from the front of the clan somewhere. As the riders crested a rise and began the descent of the long, low slope, the captives found themselves with a view of something new. After days of endless green grass with the mountains framing the steppe at a great distance, this was a sight to behold. Quintillian’s eyes widened in surprise.
Here, the swathes of undulating grassland gave way to an enormous, shallow basin. The far side of the depression was pock-marked with craggy stones not unlike Gisalric’s ‘trolls’ on the hillside the day of the attack. In fact, the odd stone formations reached around like a horseshoe, covering perhaps two-thirds of the circumference. But it was not the basin itself or the surroundings that caused Quintillian’s sharp intake of breath.
The floor of the basin was of neat, short turf and at its centre stood a massive palisade of trunks probably 50 feet tall. The great wooden wall formed a circle over a mile across with a single gate at the northern edge, and fighting platforms seemed to have been constructed periodically around the circumference, for nomads stood at the parapet as if on guard. Inside the great fence, just visible from this angle, were more of the great circular tents than Quintillian could ever imagine being assembled in one place. He had counted 13 tents among the clan as they had travelled. There were hundreds in that great ring. How many clans were gathered here? Certainly there were millions of stock animals in pens around the depression, and enough horses to mount half the imperial army.
‘I thought the nomads had no permanent settlements?’
Asander shrugged with difficulty. ‘That’s what I thought too. In years of dealing with them I never heard of one. Maybe it’s just a seasonal meeting place? Like a market?’
But Quintillian didn’t think so. At the far side of the huge circle, opposite the gate, stood a great wooden house, two storeys tall, with a veranda and furs and carpets hanging from the windows. The sun glinted from glazed tiles on the roof. That structure was no seasonal market.
‘This is not a temporary camp, Asander. That looks more like a palace or a castle of timber. This place is their idea of a city, I reckon, but they’re not supposed to think like that. They don’t gather in groups often, according to our sources, because the clans are almost permanently at war. They certainly shouldn’t be congregating in that sort of number.’
Asander nodded. ‘Something odd is definitely going on. Well, at least we’re going to get a nice close look.’
The clan rode down the hill, their pace picking up slightly as they neared the enormous palisade gate. The prisoners, stumbling along exhausted on their rope, relished the moment of pause as they were stopped at the great portal while the nomads in charge of the gate questioned the new arrivals. The captives were too far back for Asander to hear what was said, but after a few minutes they were led on inside. The newly arrived clan were led to an area of open ground where they could pitch their own tents, lost amid the sea of similar homes. While the clan set about the usual evening routine of preparing camp, some of the warriors from the gate joined those from the raiders and led off the captured animals to find a place for them, and the chief’s brother dismounted and handed the rope of slaves to one of the others, who jerked the rope and led them off.
Even had Quintillian considered the possibility of escape, which would clearly be insane right here and now, half a dozen new warriors joined the column, escorting them through the strange nomad settlement. The prince could see the grand wooden structure as they approached and for a moment wondered why they were being taken there. Then, at the last minute, as they emerged from the sea of tents into an open space that surrounded the great house, the warrior jerked the rope again and led them to the side. Another palisade, smaller but still powerful in its own right, stood within the open ground. Torches burned around it and nomads sat by them, chatting and playing games with stones on grids carved in the earth. A door was dragged open in the palisade as they approached and were thrust roughly inside.
As a warrior cut the leather bindings and freed them from the rope, Quintillian took in their new surroundings. This palisade was perhaps 50 feet across. One side had been turned into a rudimentary latrine with a stinking pit dug in the earth surrounded by a cloud of buzzing insects. The stench rolled over them even near the door, which boded badly for the possibility of any breathable air in the foreseeable future. The only shelter was afforded by a canvas roof held up by four poles at the far side, beneath which perhaps a hundred emaciated, broken humans cowered. Quintillian noted a distinct absence of females.
Slave quarters for the men.
‘You… talk… empire,’ said a heavyset man with a fish-like mouth beneath a curtain of black moustaches. ‘I talk empire. You slave. Man here. All man. You think?’
‘We think, all right,’ Asander grunted.
‘You sleep from ride. Sleep one dark. Then work. You think?’
‘We think perfectly,’ Quintillian nodded. One day.
A shriek made him turn to see that the warriors were busy tearing the clothes from the women. One
of the men made to stop them, but Asander held him fast. ‘Nothing you can do. You interfere and they’ll just beat you.’
Once the women were naked, they were trooped off out of the gate once more. A nomad with a sour face picked up the piles of clothing and, carrying them over, flung them into the latrine trench. Once he had returned to the entrance and left, just fish-mouth remained with a couple of lackeys.
‘Sleep. One dark.’
Then they too retreated and the door crashed shut, the sound of a heavy bar sliding into place on the far side their last sign of the outside world. The five men staggered over towards the huddled crowd.
‘Welcome to hell,’ grunted an old man with straggly grey hair.
Chapter IV
Of the Lives of Slaves
Quintillian felt muscles straining and screaming at him – muscles he was unused to exercising. He’d always assumed that between his daily exercise routine, weapon training and riding, he used more or less every muscle available. He’d been wrong. It was impressive, in fact, how such a simple task as forestry helped him discover new and untested muscles. The first day had nearly killed him. Now, on the fourth, he was starting to get used to it, but was in that unpleasant lull phase when the muscles are still torn and painful but have not yet begun to harden and acclimatize.
Gritting his teeth and trying hard to ignore the constant, insistent pains in his back, arms and shoulders, Quintillian swung the axe back and chopped again, biting deep into the hard timber, feeling the reverberation all the way up the axe’s shaft, through his arms and into his spine. Wrenching it out with some difficulty, he took that tiny moment for a breather as Asander swung and tore another chunk from the iron-hard wood, deepening the V-shaped hole.
Did they breed some kind of special tree out here? Surely wood wasn’t usually this hard? If this was normal, he was going to have to plan some recruitment drive one day to draw woodcutters into the military…
Asander stepped back and Quintillian sighed, spat on his hands and pulled the axe up and behind his head, swinging hard once more.
Swing. Wrench. Pause. Clench. Swing. Wrench. Pause. Clench.
The numbing routine had become natural, like breathing. As soon as the sun put in an appearance above the distant eastern mountains each morning, they were roped and marched off to the sparse wood that dotted the slope around the stone stacks on the northern crest of the basin. There they would cut timber until the sun was perhaps a half hour from the horizon, when they would pack up and return to their enclosure to lick their wounds. It seemed that somewhere along the line the felled, trimmed, and adzed tree trunks were taken away by nomads, presumably dragged behind horses just like slaves. Where they went, Quintillian couldn’t guess. They certainly didn’t seem to be put anywhere in the great circle. It was something of a mystery why a nomad clan, or collection thereof, might need so much timber. Maybe they were planning to expand this place, whose name, it transpired, was Ual-Aahbor, which Asander believed meant Place of Bones and Grass.
It had occurred to the pair of them that during timber felling would be an excellent time to attempt an escape, but the old grey-hair had warned them off it. The woods would be watched from every angle, and nomads on horseback could ride you down in heartbeats. Many had tried it. None had even managed to get out of sight of the trees. And attempted flight brought about appalling punishments. So Quintillian resigned himself to waiting. His father had been a believer in patience. Had not patience delivered him an empire, while o’er-hasty action had got his childhood friend killed? Sooner or later an opportunity would present itself, he was sure.
‘Have you noticed the increase in the clans?’
Quintillian quickly flashed his gaze this way and that. It was forbidden for the slaves to speak, and he had seen other new arrivals being beaten harshly for just exchanging a few words.
‘Be quiet,’ he hissed at Asander.
‘Oh, come on, Arse-hat has been gone half an hour. He’s sheltering somewhere cool.’
The nomad they had affectionately named Arse-hat for the strangely dual-buttock-shaped headgear he wore had been gone for some time, and he often disappeared for well over an hour. Probably for a snooze.
‘Well, at least stick to a whisper,’ he said quietly, and took another swing at the tree, grunting with the effort.
‘But have you noticed?’ Asander prompted again.
‘There does seem to have been something of an influx,’ Quintillian conceded, waiting for his friend’s swing and then preparing for his own.
‘The clans are still gathering. I reckon there’s thirty thousand people at Ual-Aahbor now.’
‘Maybe it’s a festival? Or a market? Maybe there’s a wedding on or something, and the bride’s father has offered a dowry of a thousand tree trunks?’
Asander snorted and swung again. There was an ominous creaking noise. ‘She’s going to go with the next swing or two.’
Quintillian nodded. ‘An hour or so and we’ll be herded back. I wonder what slop’s on the table tonight? Horse or horse or horse?’
The former scout laughed. ‘It may all be made of horse, but it tastes more like horseshit. Sometimes the meals smell worse than the latrines.’
‘You could always stop eating.’
They both fell silent, thinking about Domenicus, the old priest who had been captured a week or two before them and had already been worked close to death. In the end, he had decided to make an end of it on his own rather than going on hoping that there would be a light at the end of this dark passageway of life. He had stopped eating two days ago and already the effects were dreadful. He had lost the ability to stand and simply soiled himself in the corner of the covered area. His ribs stood out like a scroll rack and his face was stretched and taut. He had a day or two left, at most. Perhaps he was lucky? Despite their forced levity, both Quintillian and Asander knew that when they looked at Domenicus, they were seeing their own future, for one way or another they would die here, emaciated and broken. At least two slaves a day expired, to be replaced by fresh meat brought in by the latest arrivals.
Quintillian broke the mood with another swing, and as his blade thunked into the wood, there was another heavy groan.
‘It’s going.’
The two men stepped away to one side and watched as the monstrous bole began to lean and groan more and more. Then there was a snap and the whole thing came down with a sound like the sea crashing against a cliff. The woods seemed oddly silent in the aftermath, but gradually bird life returned and the two men paused for a few moments, waiting for Arse-hat to return and check on them. When nothing happened, they turned their attention to stripping the branches from the great tree with the long, two-man saw.
‘You were going to tell me who you were when we had some privacy. I think this is the most privacy we’re going to get this side of the grave.’
Quintillian looked around again, but they were practically alone. If he concentrated he could hear the sound of other pairs working on other trees, but with whispered conversation, they were more or less secluded.
‘You won’t believe me.’
‘Try me.’
Quintillian let go of the saw and straightened. ‘You are aware, I presume, of the emperor.’
‘Well.’ Asander chuckled. ‘I am alive and awake, so yes.’
‘He’s my brother.’
‘You’re a lying sack of horse vomit.’
‘Told you you wouldn’t believe me.’
‘You’re not Quintillian. I’ve seen him on coins. He’s got a big nose and a stronger chin than you. And I saw him in person once. During the campaign down near Margdis, when some lord thought he could secede and take a whole chunk of border territory with him. Marshal Quintillian gave a rousing speech. He was taller than you.’
‘I was standing on a dais, you fool. And it wasn’t much of a rousing speech. I’d got blind drunk with Titus the night before and I could hardly see during that address. I kept getting my words wrong.’
Asander frowned at him.
‘One of the captains shouted something. I didn’t hear what, but it made the marshal laugh.’
‘Now you’re lying, Asander. Everyone in the army heard him. He joked that we were only moving on Lord Vaelis’s lands because he had the best vintage wines in the east and we couldn’t afford to lose his vineyards. Given how much of it Titus and I drank the night before, he was probably quite justified in his comment!’
Asander whistled gently through his teeth. ‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what brings you into this stupid situation then, Prince Quintillian? ’Cause it’s damn sure no unrequited love thing.’
Quintillian stood silent for a moment, his eyes downcast.
‘It is? This is over the empress? Seven sacred shits in a wooden cup! And you ran away? Like a boy who falls out with his parents? I mean, begging your pardon, Highness, for a lack of appropriate etiquette, but what kind of arsehole are you?’
Quintillian floundered, feeling the colour rising in his cheeks. No one since his mother had been able to provoke that reaction.
‘I had to get out. She… she felt the same. It’s dangerous. You can’t have that sort of thing happen in the court. It could be damaging for the empire.’
‘Arsehole,’ snapped Asander again. ‘Instead you get yourself lost in the wilds. And no one in the capital knows where you are? The army’s effectively lost its leader. The emperor will be going out of his mind with worry. And for what? So you don’t disturb the harmony of the court? You’re an idiot, Your Highness.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Bollocks. I’m here because I killed a good man. It was an accident, but the authorities don’t know that. I had to get away or I’d be dancing the jig in a tree by now. I had to hide. You? You ran away from making kissy faces? Empires are more robust than that! The empire survived a twenty-year civil war because of men like your father and your grandfather. It can survive a bit of misplaced rumpy.’
Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4) Page 6