The blond and redheaded men who spoke Dumnorix's language understood what was going on. The rest of the road gang needed a little longer to figure it out, but not much. They'd all been around fights and the things that led up to fights. People started to gather around Jacques and Dumnorix. The guards gathered to watch, too. The men with the muskets didn't mind if slaves fought, as long as they didn't damage each other too badly. Sometimes the guards bet on who would win. It was fun for them. Why not? They weren't getting hit.
Dumnorix let his pick fall, too. But he didn't wade into Jacques. He was smaller, but had broad shoulders and thick arms. Scars on those arms said he'd done his share of fighting, maybe more than his share.
He waited to see if Jacques would charge him once they'd both put down the tools that could turn a fight into a killing match in a hurry. When Jacques didn't, Dumnorix nodded to himself. "No, I do not say you are a liar," he answered. "Maybe you don't know enough words. I said that, too. All right?" His posture said they would fight if it wasn't all right.
But Jacques also nodded. "Good enough." He held out his hand. Dumnorix didn't clasp it the way a man from the Kingdom of Versailles would have. Instead, his hand closed on Jacques' wrist. Jacques' hand took the redhead's wrist the same way. They let go of each other and stepped back.
The rest of the slaves returned to work. The guards drifted away. One of them snapped his fingers. Jacques had seen they sometimes did that when they were disappointed. If they'd wanted a fight so badly, they could have got one. If they'd shouted, Cowards! . . . Jacques didn't see how he and Dumnorix could have done anything but go at each other. Neither would have been able to hold up his head if they hadn't.
Guards in the Kingdom of Versailles would have done that. Jacques might have done it himself if he were a guard. The men who carried muskets were strange. It was as if they had to remember how to be mean, and weren't always good at it. Maybe Khadija knew why that was so. Jacques knew he didn't.
"Get back to work! Show's over!" one of the guards yelled in Arabic. He shouted in the language that sounded a little like it, in the sneezing tongue, and in Dumnorix's language. The guards had no trouble giving the slaves plenty of work. If they'd been more practiced at nastiness, though, they would have kept them hungry and thirsty, too.
Why didn't they? Jacques might have, if he were a master. Food cost money. But the guards and the man who told them what to do didn't worry about money. They just did what they pleased—they bossed the manor and the slaves who worked on it. Sometimes the bossing seemed to matter more to them than what the slaves actually did.
Khadija had said they were criminals. By the way she said it, having slaves was enough to make them criminals all by itself. Jacques didn't understand that. He didn't like being a slave— who did like getting the dirty end of the stick? But somebody had to do the work. Some work was hard enough or nasty enough that you couldn't pay people to do it. That didn't mean it didn't need doing. So what were you supposed to do? You made people take care of it, one way or another.
In the Kingdom of Versailles, peasants had to work on the roads in their lord's domain so many days a year. They didn't get paid for doing it, either. That wasn't slavery, not quite—nobody could buy and sell them. But it wasn't more than a long step away, either.
And real slaves, slaves of the king, worked in mines and rowed galleys. Few free men would grub for iron and lead and coal under the ground. It used them up too fast. But the kingdom couldn't get along without iron and lead and coal. So ... slaves.
Jesus had never preached against slavery. Neither had Henri. It was part of the way things worked. It always had been. Jacques had believed it always would be. If not for some of the things Khadija said, he still would. Even now, a lot of him still did.
A lot of him—but not all of him, not any more. Whatever strange place Khadija came from had transposition chambers. It had lights that shone without smoke or flame. It had muskets that fired bullet after bullet without reloading. What other marvels did it have, marvels Jacques hadn't seen yet? Things with clockwork and gears that could do the work of slaves? He wouldn't have been surprised.
In that case, though, why would anybody there want ordinary slaves at all? Jacques scratched his head. Not everything Khadija said made sense to him. He started to decide that that meant she didn't always make sense, period. He started to, yes, but then he remembered he couldn't explain gunpowder to Dum-norix, either.
He was very thoughtful the rest of the day.
Gunfire in the night woke Annette a couple of times. She wondered if the locals were trying to attack the manor. If they were, a lot of them would get killed and they wouldn't break in. The guards here were murderous thugs, but they knew their business.
Annette didn't stay awake more than five minutes either time. No matter what was happening to the poor natives, she was exhausted. She didn't think the crack of doom could have kept her awake for long. Gunfire? Gunfire wasn't anything much, not when she was this tired.
More gunfire rang out as she went to the refectory for breakfast. The guards on the outer wall were yelling in several languages. "Goats?" Emishtar said. "They shout about goats?"
"I think so," Annette answered. "Why are they getting all excited about them, though?"
Emishtar looked sly. "Olive trees—small. Almond trees— small, too. Goats eat shoots. Goats eat everything."
"Oh!" Suddenly, Annette grinned. Maybe the locals had found a way to fight back without getting shot themselves. If their goats ate up the slavers' crops, they could say it was an accident.
The first thing the guards did was send some cooks' helpers to bring in the dead goats. That probably meant goat stew for the next few days. Annette didn't mind—it would be something different. She'd eaten goat in the home timeline, at Mexican and Korean restaurants. It wasn't bad, as long as you cooked it long enough to take away the toughness and gaminess.
But the guards didn't stop there. They didn't think the goats had visited by accident, any more than Annette or Emishtar did.
Had the manor really depended on those growing groves, it would have been badly hurt. Annette knew it didn't, but she couldn't expect the locals to.
A troop of mounted guards larger than the one that had ridden out the last time left the manor before noon. Annette wouldn't have wanted to get in the horsemen's way. She especially wouldn't have wanted to get in their way if she could only fight back with bow and arrow.
Some of the women who spoke the sneezing language that might have been related to Basque began to wail and keen. That only made Annette more certain they were enslaved locals. They knew what the guards could do to their kinsfolk—and they knew the guards were going out to do it.
Emishtar also saw that. "Too bad for them," she said.
"Too bad for everyone," Annette said. Emishtar nodded. After a moment, Annette realized it wasn't necessarily so. It wasn't too bad for the guards. They would have a happy time shooting at people who couldn't shoot back.
"I like goat stew," Emishtar said—she'd been watching the cooks' helpers, too, then.
"So do I," Annette said. "But when I eat goat now, I'll think of dead men, not just dead animals."
"Pray for the dead men's spirits, then eat the goat." Emishtar was superstitious and practical at the same time.
"Work!" a guard shouted in one language after another. Not all the men with assault rifles had gone off to punish the locals. Enough stayed close to the manor to make sure the slaves didn't get out of line. The guard walked over to Birigida and yelled at her in particular. Again, Annette didn't know exactly what he was saying, but she could make a pretty good guess.