A thaptor is as large as a stallion, with an arched neck and four legs, but there its dim resemblance to the equine species terminates. For the creatures have clawed feet, spurred like roosters, and a stiff ruff of feathers around the base of their skulls, not unlike the ruff of a vulture. They have sharp, curved, yellow, parrotlike beaks, glaring eyes with black irises and brilliant orange pupils. In the wild, they are savage predators―even man-eaters, on occasion. Broken with great difficulty to bit and saddle, they never lose their innate ferocity and never become completely tamed, no matter with what harsh discipline they are abused.
The thaptor to whose harness I was roped was a particularly vicious brute. It did not like having a strange man running along at its heels and did everything it could think of to discourage my following in its tracks, kicking up dust in my face and frequently spurting ahead so that it could make me fall and be dragged a bit, until heavy blows from the wooden rod borne by the caravan master beat it back into line.
What with having fallen several score yards into an ice-cold sea, having swum ashore half-unconscious, weighed down with heavy gear, swallowing about half of the waters of the Corund Laj en route, and now being forced to run several miles behind a thaptor or suffer a broken neck, I was in sorry shape by the time we reached the gates of Narouk.
My water-soaked leather tunic was now thickly coated with white road dust. My bare feet, gashed by innumerable stony shards from running over the gravel road, left tracks of blood as I limped through the city gates at the tail of the caravan. I was winded and more than half-strangled from the rope loop, tied in a hangman’s knot, which Gamel had thrown around my neck. Considering all of this, it is perhaps understandable that I recall but little of my first close-up look of a Perushtarian city and nothing whatsoever of the outer walls, grounds, and gardens of the villa of Cham, my master.
I began to recover my senses in the slave pens. An old man with a worn, lined, kindly face and hands as gentle as a woman’s was tenderly bathing my bloody feet and applying a soothing ointment of some kind. I remember it had the sharp, spicy, pungent odor of spruce-gum.
Someone else, a woman naked to the waist, her long black hair tied back at the nape of her neck in what I later came to recognize as a slave knot, was washing the road dust from my face and hair. With a moistened cloth, she very gently cleansed the grit from my nostrils, inner mouth, eyes, and ears. From time to time she lifted to my lips a clay pot filled with strong red wine, almost as fierce and potent as raw brandy.
I never drank anything more delicious in my life.
My tunic was in sorry shape by this time. Prolonged immersion in water had cracked and split the supple leather, and being dragged from time to time over the flinty path, when I happened to trip and fall, had not improved it, either. They stripped it from me, and the ragged, muddy loincloth as well. I don’t recall whether the woman left the room during these intimate ministrations or not, nor does it matter. I was past caring, and false modesty is a luxury in a life as adventure-filled as mine.
At any rate, now that I was a slave, I no longer was entitled to a warrior’s tunic, and, my bedraggled garments removed, I donned the short cotton smock of a domestic slave.
The old man, whose name was Kanelon, as I later learned, and the woman, whose name was Imarra, having completed their ministrations, fed me a hot, spicy meat-broth with chewy chunks of tough black bread swimming in it and let me stretch out on a straw pallet to sleep.
Before slumber overcame my senses, however, while I lay there deliciously at ease, wine and hot broth making me drowsy, I vaguely became aware of the two slaves discussing me.
The woman was saying something about me. I strained to make out her words, which were spoken in low tones.
“Never have I seen a man with hair and eyes of such unusual color,” she was saying. “An outlander, obviously, but from what land or city?”
The old man shrugged. “I don’t know. The slave master says Gamel called him a Zanadarian.”
“He does not look like any Zanadarian I have ever seen,” the woman commented, eyeing me dubiously.
“Perhaps he was only a Zanadarian slave. According to Gamel, he fell overboard into the sea from one of the Zanadarian flying machines. He is lucky to be alive, if that is so.”
“Lucky?” the woman asked, incredulously. “Perhaps he is fortunate that he did not drown in his fall. But he is certainly not lucky to have been fished out by the lord Cham―this month of all months!”
The woman’s peculiar remark attracted my interest, and, feigning slumber, I lay there, listening intently.
Kanelon grunted, “Aye, ‘tis true. Unless he has some needed skill, ‘tis certain the lord Chain will render him up for the Tribute. Poor fellow! Should that be the case, he may wish he had drowned in the waves of the Corund Laj after all.”
The woman grunted.
“You pretend to knowledge no one claims for sure,” she said. “After all, no one knows what happens to those poor men sent out as part of the Tribute. Mayhap they are not so badly treated.”
Kanelon laughed shortly.
“No one knows what happens to Tribute slaves, because in all these years not one of them has ever come back here!” he said. “I say they are slain horribly, and my guess is as good as any―dispute me if you will, woman!”
Imarra sighed dispiritedly.
“Anyway, is it not a pity the poor man was not seized by the lords Ashulok or Farzemum, or one of the others, for upon the lord Chain this month alone falls the burden of supplying one hundred slaves to go forth from here to face an unknown doom!”
If they exchanged further words, I know it not, for weariness had whelmed my curiosity, and I fell asleep.
Chapter 6
SLAVERY IN NAROUK
During the next two days I remained a slave in the villa of the lord Chain.
I was not mistreated, but neither was I coddled. Slaves are a valuable commodity in the Bright Empire, for it is their labor that supports the landed aristocracy of the merchant princes of Perushtar. My lacerated feet healed with miraculous swiftness, due to the excellent medicinal properties in the salve with which Kanelon had anointed my cuts and bruises.
From this garrulous, trusted house slave, Kanelon, I learned much during the idleness enforced upon me by my injuries. The old man had been born into slavery and knew no other life: slavery was a natural condition, as far as he was concerned, and he had no particular desire for freedom. This may seem remarkable to my reader. It certainly seemed remarkable to me; either the poor old fellow had been so broken by his degraded status, or he was of a servile, cringing sort. I talked at length with him and discovered to my considerable surprise that neither was the case.
When I asked him why he did not desire to be free, he replied that if he were free he would have no one to feed or house or care for him. As a slave, he was an item of property in the possession of the great House of Iskelion, and it was the responsibility of the House of Iskelion to feed him, clothe him, and supply him with a place to sleep. As a free man, no one would care whether he lived or died, and no one would mind whether or not he starved to death in a cold alley some night―as would most likely be his fate, were he ever foolish enough to accept the dubious gift of freedom.
I learned from the talkative old man that the Perushtarians were an oligarchy, pure and simple. There were thirty or forty great merchant princes who held all or most of the wealth of the Bright Empire. My owner, Chain, was a younger third nephew of the fabulously wealthy and powerful Iskelion family, whose ancient wealth was primarily built upon ocean trade, import and export, and slave-raising.