For a week the three of us trained together every day, all day, under the watchful eye of Cinnegar or one of his deputies. The work was long, hard, and viciously hot, but we managed. Each day I grew a little stronger, my principal worry being my feet. Swollen and festering, they’d become so tender that even to stand still was agony.
At the end of the week, the slavemaster came to watch our practice. “Have you decided on placement?” he asked Cinnegar.
“This one should stay here.” The red-haired Zhid pointed to the older man. “He can join the battle exercise planned for next week. He is mediocre at best and is unlikely to survive more than one or two rounds. The youth has improved his stamina, but will always be unexceptional in his skills. However, he could serve us in a low-level training unit. Niemero’s unit lost a slave last week, and this one can replace him. This one”-his pale eyes fell on me-“is interesting. If he were to get his feet in better condition, he could possibly begin work with the command training unit. Sword training in particular. He might do very well.”
“I hear that your eye is excellent, Keeper Cinnegar. As I’m new to the post, I shall have to rely on it. All shall be done as you recommend.”
Cinnegar bowed to the slavemaster, and then returned us to the pen. The youth was taken that evening. He nodded to each of us as he was tethered and led out of the pen. Not long after that, one of Cinnegar’s slavehandlers came for me, linking my hands and feet and hooking a chain to the collar. The other man saluted me with his graybread one last time and sat alone in the pen as I was taken away.
The slavehandler marched me through the vast encampment to another “stable” of black bars-a long cage attached to one end of a brick building. “Here’s the new one to put away,” he said to a warrior who stood in an open doorway in the brick wall, drinking from a metal cup. “His first placing. Only a sevenday in.”
The guard, a wide-nosed fellow with deep weather creases across his brow, poured out the remaining contents of his cup, splattering damp globs of sand on my legs. After hooking his cup to his belt, he took my tether from the slavehandler and raked an insolent gaze over me from head to sandy toes. “Big fellow.” He coiled the tether chain around his hand until my face was only a handsbreadth from his own, his soulless gray eyes unblinking. His meaty finger traced a line across my shoulder. When his finger encountered my collar, I flinched. He grinned-a grotesque, unnerving expression on a damnable Zhid. But he just tapped on the metal surface without triggering the enchantment. “We’ll see how long he can stay alive.”
“I’ve got to fetch Gorag,” said the handler. “Keeper says we’re to see to his feet.” As my escort hurried into the night, the guard released the tether to its full length and dragged me through the door.
We stood in a small open space, sheltered by the brick wall behind and to the right of us and a brick enclosure to the left. The Zhid jerked his head to two doorways on the left. “Supply room and surgeon’s room. Over here”-he indicated the corner to our right where a rectangular stone sink stood half filled with nasty-looking water-“is where you will wash yourself before a match. Our commanders don’t like fighting with slaves who are filthy.”
Directly in front of us was a wall of the familiar narrowly spaced black bars. Taking the lantern that hung over the sink and unlocking a gate in the center of the wall, the guard led me down an aisle between the cells, some twleve of them in all. The lamp wasn’t bright enough for me to see more than indistinct shapes sitting or lying on the floor in each one. No one moved as we passed.
Halfway down the aisle was an open door, leading into a cell with a thick layer of straw over the dirt floor. The guard unhooked the tether chain and shoved me inside. “Water and graybread will be brought. Down there at the far end of the stable is a pile of clean straw. You’ll be permitted to change the straw once in a month, so you’ll want to have a care with your habits. Remember, slaves don’t speak without permission.” He grinned again as he slammed the door and locked it. “I like removing tongues.”
I sank onto the straw, grateful to get off my wretched feet. The cooling night breeze blew through the bars. As the guard’s footsteps receded, a dreadful quiet enveloped me. Whatever scraps of resilience I had left withered in the silence.
My cell was a cube a few paces on a side. The graybread basket and the waterskin were hung on the bars beside the door and center aisle, where they could be filled from outside the cage. Nothing but the vague dark outlines of buildings was visible past the outer bars, and though the cells on either side of me were occupied, I could neither see nor hear the occupants, only feel their human presence.
An hour later, as I huddled in the corner trying to persuade myself to sleep, the stable gate opened with a clang and the lamp moved down the aisle. The guard stopped outside my cell. “Up with you.”
Holding onto the bars, I dragged myself to my feet, unable even to speculate on what was coming. He led me to one of the rooms in the brick enclosure, shoved me onto a long wooden bench along one wall, and attached both my tether chain and my hands to an iron ring set into the wall above my head. Then he left me alone in the sputtering yellow light of an oil lamp.
The small room had wooden benches around every wall and more iron rings set into the walls and the floors. The room also sported a long table, a backless stool, and a small wheeled table holding a basin and pitcher. Surgeon’s room, the guard had told me.
Before very long, a Zhid hurried in, carrying a large leather case. He was a small, tidy man with a short beard trimmed close around his full lips. Tossing his case on the table, he yelled at someone outside the door to bring him cavet.
He dragged the stool over beside the bench and sat down. “Let me see your feet,” he said, slapping the stained wooden bench. “Here.”
I propped my throbbing feet on the bench, and the Zhid took one in hand and examined it, poking here and there with his thumbs, dusting off the caked sand. His face wrinkled in disgust, he dropped my foot and retrieved his case. After fetching one of the basins and filling it with water from the pitcher, he set to work-none too gently-cutting the dead skin away, and draining and cleaning the nastiest festerings. A boy brought the surgeon a tin cup filled with steaming dark liquid that smelled strongly of anise. He gulped the drink and went back to work, mumbling about the waste of his time and talent on slaves. Several times he made odd gestures with his fingers and I felt a painful burning and stretching deep in my foot. Some devilish enchantment, I guessed, but I could not detect such things any more. I tried to concentrate on anything else, but there wasn’t much to distract me.
As the surgeon covered the open wounds with ointments and bandages, and I was breathing a little easier, another slave was brought in and attached to the wall across the room. He was bleeding from a deep gash in his thigh and had a vicious swelling over one eye. I tried to engage the man’s attention, but he kept his eyes averted.
“This one has to fight again tomorrow, so patch him well,” said the guard. “Are you done with this lot?”