It was sheer chance that Erak came striding back through the gates at the very moment that Will was stumbling, shovel in hand, to clear the walkways of the deep snow that had fallen overnight.
For a moment, Erak didn't recognize the emaciated, shambling figure. But there was something familiar about the shock of brown hair, matted and dirty as it was. Erak stopped for a closer look.
"Gods of darkness, boy!" he muttered. "Is that you?"
The boy turned to look at him, the expression blank and incurious.
He was reacting only to the sound of a voice. There was no sign that he recognized the speaker. His eyes were red-rimmed and dull as he regarded the burly Skandian. Erak felt a deep sadness come over him.
He knew the signs of warmweed addiction, of course, knew that it was used to control the yard slaves. And he'd seen many of them die from the combined effects of cold, malnutrition and the general lack of will to live that resulted from addiction to the drug. Warmweed addicts looked forward to nothing, planned for nothing. Consequently, they had no hope to bolster their spirits. It was that, as much as anything, that killed them in the long run.
It hurt him to see this boy brought so low. To see those eyes, once so full of courage and determination, reflecting nothing but the dull emptiness of an addict's lack of hope or expectation.
Will waited a few seconds, expecting to be given an order. Deep inside him, a faint memory stirred for a second or two. A memory of the face before him and the voice he had heard. Then, the effort of remembering became too great, the fog of addiction too thick, and with the slightest of shrugs, he turned away and shambled to the gateway to begin shoveling the snow. Within a few minutes, he would be soaked with sweat from the heavy work. Then the moisture would freeze on his body and the cold would eat deep into him again. He knew the cold now.
It was his constant companion. And with the thought of the cold, there came the longing for his next supply of the weed. His next few moments of comfort.
Erak watched Will as he bent slowly and clumsily to his task. He swore softly to himself and turned away. Other yard slaves were already at work on the paddles at the freshwater well, smashing the thick ice that had formed during the freezing night.
He passed them by quickly, with barely a glance. He was no longer whistling.
Two days later, late in the evening, Evanlyn was summoned to Jarl Erak's quarters.
She had managed to claim a sleeping space for herself that was close enough to the great ovens to be warm through the night, but not so close that she roasted.
Now, at the end of a long day, she spread her blanket out on the hard rushes and sank gratefully onto it, rolling it around herself.
Her pillow was a small log from the firewood pile, padded with an old shirt. She lay back on it now, listening to the noises of those around her-the occasional thick, chesty coughs that were the inevitable result of living in the snow and ice of Skandia at this time of year, and the low muttering of conversation. This was one of the few times that the slaves were free to talk among themselves. Usually, Evanlyn was too tired to take advantage of it.
She became conscious of the fact that someone was calling her name and she sat up with a small groan. A chamber slave was moving through the rows of prone forms, occasionally stooping to shake a shoulder and ask if anyone knew where she would find the Araluen slave called Evanlyn. For the most part, she received blank stares and disinterested shrugs. Life among the slaves was not conducive to forming new friendships.
"Over here!" Evanlyn called, and the chamber slave looked to see where the voice had come from, then picked her way carefully across the bodies to her.
"You're to come with me," she said, a pompous tone in her voice.
Chamber slaves, who looked after the living quarters in the Lodge, saw themselves as beings superior to mere kitchen slaves-a breed of people who lived in a world of grease and spilled wine and food.
"Where?" Evanlyn asked, and the girl sniffed disdainfully at her.
"Where you're told," she replied. Then, as Evanlyn made no move to rise, she was forced to add: "Jarl Erak says." After all, she had no personal authority over kitchen slaves, even though she might think herself above them. The Skandians recognized no such differentiation.
A slave was a slave, and apart from the gang bosses in the yard, they were all the same as one another.
There was a small stir of interest from the others sitting and lying nearby. It was not unknown for the senior Skandian officers to recruit their personal slaves from the ranks of the more attractive young girls.
Wondering what this was all about, Evanlyn rose and carefully folded her blanket, leaving it to mark her space. Then, gesturing for the other girl to lead the way, she followed her out of the kitchen.
Ragnak's lodge was, in effect, a veritable rabbit warren of passageways and rooms leading from the central, high-ceilinged Great Hall where meals were served and official business conducted. The girl led Evanlyn now through a series of low, dimly lit passageways, until they reached what appeared to be a dead end. There was a door set into the end of the wall and the chamber slave indicated it to her.
"In there," she said briefly, then added, "You'd better knock first." And she turned away, hurrying back down the dim corridor.
Evanlyn hesitated a moment, not sure what this was all about, then rapped with her knuckles on the hard oak of the door.
"Come in." She recognized the voice that answered her knock.
Erak's vocal cords were trained to carry to his men over the gales of the Stormwhite Sea. He never seemed to lessen the volume. There was a latch on the outside of the door. She raised it and went inside.
Erak's chambers were simple. Inevitably constructed from pine logs, there was a sitting room and, screened by a woven wool curtain, a bedchamber to one side. The sitting room had a small log fire burning at one end, giving the room a comfortable warmth, and several carved oak chairs. A very expensive and, she recognized, foreign tapestry covered the rush floor. She guessed it was the result of one of Erak's raids to Gallica. In her years at Castle Araluen, she had seen many similar pieces. Woven by the artists of the Tierre Valley over a period of years that often spanned one or two decades, the rugs usually changed hands for a small fortune. Somehow, she didn't think Erak had paid cash for his. The Jarl was sitting by the fire, leaning back in one of the comfortable-looking carved chairs. He motioned her in and indicated a bottle and glasses on a low table in the center of the room.
"Come in, girl. Pour us some wine and sit down. We have some talking to do."
Uncertainly, she crossed the room and poured the red wine into two glasses. Then, handing one to the Skandian, she sat on the other armchair. Unlike Erak, however, she didn't sprawl comfortably back.
She perched nervously on the edge, as if poised for flight. The Jarl studied her with what appeared to be a hint of sadness in his look, then he waved a hand at her.
"Relax, girl. Nobody's going to harm you-least of all me. Drink your wine."
Tentatively, she took a sip and found it good. Erak was watching her and he saw the involuntary expression of surprise on her face.
"You know good wine, then?" he asked her. "I took a hogshead of this out of a Florentine ship in the last raiding season. Not bad, is it?"