Even the chief scrutator looked shocked, though not, Nish thought, displeased.
Jal-Nish turned away, struggling to contain himself, but after a few steps he doubled over and vomited into the grass. Shortly he returned, pulling the mask back into place. A single tear glistened in the corner of his eye, then the iron control was back.
'It is done,' Jal-Nish said to the Council. Take Slave Nish to his doom!'
'You have proven your worth over the past year Scrutator Jal-Nish,' Ghorr said softly. 'Should you save our clankers, and defeat the lyrinx in battle, a place on the Council will be yours. We have need of men such as you.' Taking Jal-Nish's arm, Ghorr led him up the hill.
A pair of white-faced soldiers stepped in beside Nish. 'I won't resist,' he said numbly, but they seized him anyway. One went through his pockets and removed everything of value. The other patted him down for weapons. Finding none, they lifted him between them and carried him away.
As Nish looked back, the crowd dispersed, except for two people. Tirior, who had been watching the proceedings from behind, walked slowly back to the Aachim lines. The other person was the one-handed man, Merryl, who had helped Tiaan. He stared after Nish, then began to trudge around the curve of the hill, away from the command post.
After a sleepless night in a solitary slave pen, Nish was hurled into the bloody slush of the battlefield. A clanker stood just a few steps away, its thick metal legs half-buried in mud. Wooden skids had been fitted underneath. To his left a group of people, slaves like him, were being harnessed together. They looked as despairing as he felt. Behind them were other slave teams, as well as teams of horses, oxen, donkeys and buffalo, soldiers and camp followers, women and even children. Every kind of beast had been harnessed to the impossible, heart-bursting task.
Nish was numb with horror. His own father had cursed him, had sentenced him to a bestial death. Even in this war, which had produced mountains of corpses, in which the whole fabric of human society had been torn apart, that was impossible to comprehend.
Crack' Pain flowered in Nish's ear. He put a filthy hand up and brought it back covered in blood. It felt as if something had bitten a piece out of his earlobe.
Crack! The other ear exploded with agony. Scrambling to his feet, Nish saw a grinning overseer coiling his whip, a good ten paces away.
'What the hell do you -?' Nish roared, driven careless by despair.
The whip lashed out again, catching him on the chest through the gape of his shirt. Muffling a cry, Nish looked around frantically. What was the brute trying to tell him?
He scrambled towards the head of the team, slipping and sliding in the muck, and every time he went to his knees the lash fell on his back or buttocks, or coiled around his waist to nip at his belly. The overseer was a monster, a sadist, and he, Slave Nish, the lowest worm in all of Santhenar, could do nothing about it.
Fumbling with the straps of the harness, Nish took several more lashes before he was fixed in place like a beast of burden. Go away! he prayed. Go and flog someone else.
Eventually the overseer did, the cries and wails of the whipped echoing down the line. Nish could feel no pity for them, though some of their groans were soul-wrenching. All that mattered was that the lash fall on another.
The man beside him at the head of the team, on his knees in the muck, was a scrawny old fellow whose back and meagre legs were crisscrossed with scars. He must have been a slave for a long time. It did not look as though he had much life in him.
'Just what I need,' Nish said to himself. 'Useless old coot will never pull his weight. He'll die in the muck and I'll be whipped for that too.'
The slave turned his emaciated, mud-coated head. Nish did not recognise him, nor even recall Jal-Nish's words, until the man spoke.
'How quickly they forget,' said Xervish Flydd, looking him in the eye.
'Scrutator! Surr!' Nish gasped. 'I'm sorry. I did not recognise -'
'You're just doing what you must, to survive,' said Flydd. 'Don't call me scrutator. Nish. That honour has been taken from me and, gossip tells me, given to your lather I'm Slave Flydd now. What brings you here?'
Nish told Flydd of his latest failing, in the smallest number of words he could. It hurt nearly as much as the lash. All his dreams were dead. He must face up to what he was, a worthless human being.
'We all make mistakes,' Flydd said out of the corner of his mouth. 'Get ready to pull.'
Nish looked around to see the overseer advancing, whip at the ready. The fellow caught Nish's eye, grinned and flicked the lash at him. It caught him on the nipple so painfully that Nish screamed. It felt as if his breast had been torn open.
'No talking!' rapped the overseer, lashing him again. 'Pull! Pull until your hearts shudder and your bowels groan or, by the powers, I'll make you suffer'.'
Nish threw his weight against the harness. Flydd did the same. The leather creaked; the rows of slaves behind them groaned. The whip cracked again and again, but the clanker did not budge.
'Pull!' roared the overseer.
Nish strained until his boots skidded in the mud, to no more effect than before. The overseer stormed back and forth, lashing and cursing them. Nish strained again until his heart felt about to explode in his chest. It made no difference. The clanker was irretrievably bogged.
If Nish had hoped for a respite, he was disappointed. While a bullock team was being brought up, they had to pull as hard as ever, and once it was harnessed in place the slave team was put beside the beasts. For every lash that fell on the haunches of the animals, the slaves felt three or four. All across the battlefield the scene was repeated: with soldiers, with other teams of slaves, with all the peasants and camp followers Jal-Nish had been able to round up, and with beasts of every description.
After hours of the most brutal labour Nish had ever experienced, the clanker began to creak and groan out of the mud wallow, though before it had gone a hundred paces it ended up in another, and many more lay ahead before it could be dragged to solid ground.
By that time it was well after dark. Each of the slaves was given a gourd full of sour water, a slab of black bread as hard as a brick and a mug of something which, with the most charitable will in the world, could only be described as slops. It had a sweet, off taste, as if it had begun to rot in the summer heat.
Nish took one sip and spat it into the grass. It was far worse than the food he had eaten in the refugee camp in Almadin in the spring. He was about to heave the mug of slops after it when Flydd said quietly, 'I'd advise you to eat every mouthful, and lick out the mug afterwards.' 'It's disgusting!'
'Aye, but you can't work without food. If you can't pull, the overseer will whip you into jelly and drag the clanker over you.'
'If this is my life, then the sooner it's over the better,' Nish muttered.
Flydd shrugged and sat down, jerking at the harness in a futile attempt to find a comfortable position. He ignored Nish, eating his slops slowly, as if savouring every morsel, and carefully wiping the mug out with lumps of bread. 'If you're not going to eat that, pass it over here.' Wordlessly Nish handed him the mug. Had it been the finest food in the land, he could not have eaten a mouthful. His stomach was throbbing with despair.
'Better get some rest,' said Flydd. 'They'll be calling us out again in a few hours.' 'But it's dark.' 'It'll be light enough when they start to burn the bodies.'
A few hours later it started again, but this time it was worse. The battlefield was dotted with pyres, blazing piles of human and lyrinx dead. They provided enough light for the overseer to pick his targets, though not enough for him to be accurate. A blow aimed tor Xervish Flydd's back came coiling around Nish's bent head, the hard tip of the lash catching him on the eyebrow with such force that he screamed.