The castle reared to my left. The name of the castle is the Castle of Hanitcha the Harrower, but the folk of Ruathytu call it simply the Hanitchik.
I’ve known a few dungeons in my time. I heard then of the dungeons of the Hanitchik and determined they were not going to hear me yelling my head off in there, chained to the slimy walls. By the time I had crossed the Bridge of Swords and passed swiftly beneath the shadow of the Great Temple of Havil the Green, I could remove my mask. Enveloped in the swathes of my old gray cloak I strode along, heading south into the sacred quarter, past the expensive villas in their own grounds and the colonnaded squares and the wide boulevards. There were people still about in these open spaces, but I pushed on into the festering warrens of the taverns and dopa dens and infamous palaces of all delights, past the stables where zorcas snorted softly in their sleep, past the flyer perching towers, and so back to my inn with my mind firmly made up.
The very next day I set about the inquiries that led me at last to a Horter — although he bore the title Horter, he was no gentleman — who employed guls and hired them out at a fat fee and pocketed a good sixty percent of it for himself. The guls had to consent to be plucked, or resign themselves to not having work. This system could only work, I thought, in a city. The labor exchange systems operated for the clums — the great mass of free men in even worse case — were even more diabolical, where they existed.
This Horter, one Larghos ti Frahthur, looked me up and down as I stood before him clad in a decent gul costume of brown shirt and trousers: patched and darned, but clean. I just hoped his beady eyes would not penetrate the cosmetics on my ugly old face that disguised what I know to be the face of a devil. We stood in an outer room of his house. There were desks and shelves, and various files by which he kept track of his villainous proceedings.
“And you say, Chaadur, you have experience with vollers?”
“Yes, Horter Larghos. I seek a place in Zhyan’s Pinions.”
“Do you now? Well, it is true we have need of more vollers than anyone could have dreamed before the war.” He grunted and stuffed a wad of cham in his mouth, chewed somewhat discontentedly, staring at me. “You look strong. Why do you not join the army?”
“I would join the air service, but my experience here-”
“All right, all right! By Hanitcha the Harrower! I have my job to do, Havil knows.” He wrote something on a scrap of paper, folded it, sealed it with his ring and a dollop of wax (so it was important enough for him not to use a wafer and so risk my managing to open it), and half flung it at me. “See Deldar Ramit. Now, be off with you!”
And away he went back to his house and his luxuries, secure in the comforting knowledge that I would work and he would pocket sixty percent of what I earned.
It might be interesting to upend him and shake him, in the presence of some guls, and let them take what fell out.
Instead I trudged off and found Deldar Ramit in the echoing corridor surrounding Zhyan’s Pinions. The twin suns shot a brave emerald-and-ruby fire across the flagstones. The corridor was patrolled ceaselessly by parties of soldiers. The swods — that is, the common soldiers — looked seasoned tough men, and I guessed they were pulling this duty as a rest from the front. Their officers, too, looked efficient.
This kind of essential but boring guard duty can wear down a soldier. The swods at the Heavenly Mines had been — were, still — real right cramphs. These men of Hamal reminded me sharply, as I followed Deldar Ramit to the work area, reminded me with a pang of those soldiers of Canopdrin with whom I had talked around a campfire after a battle — and not so long ago, either. Well, these were the men who were the enemies of my people.
No matter that I could feel for them as one fighting-man for another. They were the foe. And, as the foe, they must be slain.
How dreadfully simple are the black calculations of war!
I studied these soldiers of Hamal as I followed Deldar Ramit, grumbling away to himself, a rolled list under his arm and his sash of office dangling loose around his fat belly. A Deldar, as you know, is the lowest of the four chief ranks of officer on Kregen. An ob-Deldar is the lowest one can get, as any swod will tell you, but here in Hamal, as, occasionally, elsewhere, they employed an intermediary rank below Deldar. In Hamal they called a man who had been given a little petty authority, and a green badge, and the right to boss the swods about, a Matoc. I was given into the charge of Matoc Ganning, a miserable fellow with tufty eyebrows, a lantern jaw, and an itch in his guts he could not control. In Hamal, military ranks are given to workers in the government-controlled voller manufactories.
“Chaadur? Well, get hold of that broom, and sweep up the mess here!” Matoc Ganning bellowed, and held his guts, which rumbled like the volcano of Muruaa.
So began a period in which I did all the dirty jobs. When I thought that I was actually sweeping up the droppings of the minerals that powered vollers, I swear the broom trembled in my fists. Getting anywhere near the guarded rooms where the mix was made was impossible for a mere sweeper. I complained to the Hikdar of the Floor, and with many dirty looks from Matoc Canning, I was put on to humping loads from the leather-lined wooden boxes into the troughs feeding into the inner rooms. I kept my eyes open. The proportions of the mix must be established. I did not think that even Vallia, my home country, possessed men capable of analyzing the minerals and their mix. The guls might go home to their miserable row-houses to sleep at night, or, as many did, to sleep in the barracks in the grounds around Zhyan’s Pinions. I chose to sleep in. I put in a few nights’ good shut-eye, and then I went prowling. I had to break the necks of only two guards.
I could not get into the iron-bound lenken doors; they remained obstinately shut. I returned to the barracks in so evil a frame of mind, I would have jumped on the first person to say boo. Some uproar followed the discovery of the guards. I had to banish the specters. These people were busily engaged in building machines with which they would invade my country, slaughter my people, destroy everything I loved in Vallia and Valka. Twice more I tried, and on the last occasion, a borrowed thraxter in my fist, I had to fight like a demon to win clear and back to the barracks. It was so close a shave I knew my chances here had to be considered finished.
Once again, I had failed.
The idiocy of employing a gul to do work that might ordinarily be done by slaves was simply another pointer to the fanaticism with which the Hamalians protected their secrets. Slaves were used mercilessly outside, on heavy work. Inside Zhyan’s Pinions, guls — and on occasion clums — who could be trusted to be loyal to Hamal were employed. I would not get near the amphorae as they were filled in the normal course of promotion for a very long time.