Comus used a great-sword, too, and was big, strong, and vicious. After slogging through a half-day with my earlier opponent, I wished this one preferred a lighter weapon, but eventually I managed to make him yield.
“This one again tomorrow when I’m fresh,” Comus said to the guard, pointing his sword at me.
Without heed to heat, hunger, thirst, sore feet, or the various scratches I had collected, I collapsed on the straw and fell instantly asleep. I had survived one day.
I trained with Comus every day, sometimes with padded practice weapons, sometimes with real blades. He was good, but I was just enough better to avoid serious injury. We worked on strikes and appropriate counters, defensive strategies appropriate to certain positions, timing and balance. He began to copy a few of my moves, and it made me wonder what in perdition I was doing. It was an argument I could not resolve. To fight the cursed Zhid-what slave could ask for more than a chance to injure or kill his captors? Yet I was teaching him to kill more of my own people.
But I could not refuse to fight or to follow their rules. In my first week with Comus, I was given a clear demonstration of the consequences of disobedience. During one of our rest periods, Comus laid a wager with another Zhid that his personal slave had more impressive private parts than did his friend’s slave. When Comus commanded his slave to strip to prove the bet, the kneeling man, who had not moved during the animated discussion, closed his eyes.
“… And arouse yourself,” said Comus, sniggering. “I do not like losing.”
The slave looked up at Comus in shock, then hardened his jaw and slowly shook his head.
Comus’s bullish face went livid, and he belted his slave across the mouth. “I could have invoked your compulsions,” he said, “but it was inconceivable that my slave would refuse a simple command.” Then, without taking a breath, Comus lopped off the head, not of his own slave, but that of his friend’s slave. “Now. I command you once more. Strip yourself and this dog meat, and we shall see how the cock of a live Dar’Nethi compares to that of a dead one.”
The horror-stricken slave did as he was commanded, and though I averted my eyes so as not to witness his shame, I could not help but be relieved at his compliance. There was no other slave nearby. My head would have been the price of another refusal.
The days may have been filled with enough combat and sweat to block out rational thought, but the nights were long, with plenty of time for guilt and self-loathing. I did as I was told. I had to live… I had things to do in my life… vital things… This conviction rumbled in my belly like war drums. Was this some Zhid compulsion laid on slaves along with our collars to prevent us doing away with ourselves?
After three weeks Comus wanted to move on to some other kind of training, and I was assigned to another warrior. He was a rapier man and very quick. From the beginning, he forbade me to withhold, insisting that I fight with every skill I possessed. He certainly withheld nothing. If his accuracy had been better, I might have taken more than a few punctures and a bloody cheek while I was adjusting to the different style of fighting. I worked with him for over a month, and then I killed him.
It was a lucky thrust at the end of a long day, and I think the sun got in his eyes. He had wanted to practice a new technique with unblunted tips and had not bothered to put on his sparring vest. Caught up in the exhilaration of combat, he had expanded the practice into a full-blown duel. When I realized what I had done, I immediately looked around to see who had witnessed it. My handler had not returned. The only other person present was the officer’s personal slave whose usual bleak expression brightened into a grin. He pressed a finger to his lips and motioned me away. He knew I had no binding compulsion to stay where I was.
Run… I had at most an hour before the handler would come. If I could get through the encampment without anyone noticing the mark of the sword on my collar, then perhaps I could make it as far as the cliffs by nightfall. Barefoot. Unarmed, for I dared not carry a weapon through the camp. One chance in a thousand I would make it to the hills. One in fifty thousand they wouldn’t find me. One in a million that I could make it across the Wastes to the Vales of Eidolon. I wasn’t certain even in what direction they lay. And yet, I would have tried except for the nagging conviction that I was not alone, that I had to listen and be ready… Oh, gods, be ready for what?
I had lived for eight weeks, each day tallied carefully with a length of straw placed in the bottom of my bread basket. Only two men had been in the stable longer. The rest of those who had been there when I arrived were dead, and new slaves had taken their places. I could no longer imagine the taste of any food but the dry, sour graybread, nor any drink but stale, tepid water. The remembrance of savory roast chicken or frostberries soaked in wine filled me with disgust. All such physical cravings had gone dead or turned into revulsion. Food, wine, women… even a touch would be unbearable. The faces of my friends had faded from my memory no matter how hard I worked at reconstructing them, and I cursed bitterly when I discovered I could not bring to my mind the winding lanes of Sen Ystar. Even the memories of the beauteous Vales had blurred. So why could I not run?
I shrugged my shoulders at the eager slave and sat down in the dust by the dead warrior to wait for the slavehandler. I had to live, but I was damned if I knew why.
When a slave killed a Zhid in training, it was not taken lightly. The slavemaster came in to lead an investigation. He interrogated Cinnegar to ensure the keeper hadn’t scheduled a mismatch, and the surgeon to determine the cause of death. Acquaintances of the deceased were questioned, as well as his servants and aides. The slave was placed under compulsions to discover if any person, Zhid, slave, or servant, had aided him in the match. Even when all was found to be proper, one more ritual was involved.
“Lest you forget your place,” said the slavemaster, touching my collar. He sneered in disgust at my retching spasms.
And so it went on. I made it past four months and saw seventeen men-the flower of Dar’Nethi manhood-perish in that wretched stable. For every one I whispered the Healer’s invocation, weeping in impotent fury at the lonely ignominy of their deaths. Only a few of them even heard the words, but I could think of nothing else to do for them. I hounded the guards and the surgeon as much as I dared, to care for their wounds more quickly, to preserve the Lords’ “investment” in experienced practice partners, but soon it was rare for a guard to answer my rattling of the bars or to permit me to speak when I begged it.
I killed another warrior and paid the price again, and then I took a wound in the shoulder that kept me out of action for a week. The surgeon said he had been given orders to make sure I was healed. “The Lords are interested in skill-even of your mundane sort.”
The week of idleness was almost unbearable. The demands in my head to live and to learn became so insistent that every voice made me start. I paced my cell, unable to rest and unable to eat. I forced down the graybread and water and commanded myself to sleep, for I dared not lose my edge. Yet when I dropped off, strange dreams plagued me, of rooms and faces I didn’t know, of horrors that made me wake up screaming, of words that made me weep though I couldn’t capture them on waking. The surgeon examined my wound and said it was healing as expected, but I had best get some sleep or all his work would go for nothing.
I slapped the back of my hand against my mouth. “Speak,” he said.