A chill spread across Druz's shoulders and ran down her spine. She'd heard terrible stories about druids. Some sages maintained that the druids, including members of the Emerald Enclave, were good and honest men and women whose reverence for nature clouded their judgment and made them do things that didn't fit in with civilized thinking. Others proclaimed the druids as savages, capable of torture and brutal killing.
Most of the other people tied to the slaver chain slept. Druz counted twenty-seven men, women, and children other than herself and the druid. One woman held a small child to her breast. All of the slaves looked hard-used, as if they'd been on the chain for days, perhaps even as much as a tenday. Their skin was sunburned and their clothing, common and homespun at best, hung in rags.
"Where did these people come from?" Druz asked.
"A small village somewhere close by," Haarn answered.
"You don't know where?"
"Some of the outlying villages don't have names. They learn to be autonomous, trading only occasionally with passing merchants or each other. Many of them don't see the need to pay the taxes cities like Alagh?n levy on people who only try to survive." The druid turned to her and added, "Living in such conditions, paying faceless tax agents of Lord Herengar and the Assembly of Stars, isn't much better than living in the servitude they're bound for now."
Druz bridled at the comment. Though she didn't know Lord Herengar personally, she knew of him.
"Lord Herengar is a good man," she said, "a fair man."
"Before he was named as ruler of Turmish, acting on behalf of the Assembly of Stars," Haarn said, "he was a leader of a mercenary band called the Call of Arms. He acted in his own interests then, and he continues to do so now."
"Those taxes you speak out against help make the city safe," Druz insisted.
In the back of her mind, she knew she should be more concerned about escaping, but there was something about the druid that challenged her and made her want to make him see cities the way they really were-as homes and havens. Maybe it was the dismissive way he treated her, and maybe it was because she'd never been around a man so arrogant and confident as the druid. Even here in the midst of the slavers he spoke as if he'd trapped them instead of it being the other way around.
Haarn smiled and said, "So Herengar heads up a new mercenary band and demands tribute for his services-one that pays much better."
"Most people in the city wouldn't know how to fight to defend themselves," Druz argued.
"And they lose themselves because they are not taught to do that," Haarn said bluntly. "Take away a person's ability to protect himself, to know enough to survive on his own, and you only have a slave. A privileged slave, perhaps, but a slave nonetheless." He took up the padded chain. "Maybe you can't see the chains on those 'citizens,' Druz Talimsir, but they are there."
"Cities allow people to raise their children in peace." Druz disliked the way the druid seemed to look down on everything about her. "I've fought, defending towns and cities during time of war."
"Against others who felt certain that whatever it was they were after from the places you defended rightly belonged to them," Haarn stated angrily, "because they decided to own one section of a land or another."
"Territorial wars are the most common-" Druz started to go on, but the druid cut her off.
"The land isn't meant to be owned," Haarn said. "It's meant to be treasured and tended. The land will provide sustenance to creatures that understand its needs and its gifts. Cities are spawning grounds for maggots that reap what they will of the land and leave only a decaying husk behind."
The vehemence in the druid's voice surprised Druz enough that she stilled her tongue.
"Loggers fell trees from forests," Haarn continued, "and they never give thought to replenishing those trees. Miners dig in the land and create holes that fill with rainwater that become contaminated and poison other areas. Animal species are hunted nearly to extinction and cause other problems with overpopulation. The sheepherders overgraze the land and render it useless for years. Still other places have been polluted by magical fallout. What happened to the Whamite Isles is a clear example of that." He looked at Druz. "Your cities are toxic in other ways as well. They provide a means and an area for eaters to live and reproduce."
"Eaters?" The term was unfamiliar to Druz.
"Eaters," Haarn repeated. "Civilized man simply eats nature's bounty and puts nothing back into the land. If they had to live off the land, struggle through the four seasons and keep themselves healthy, most of them wouldn't be able to."
"I could live off the land. I've done it before," Druz argued hotly, feeling certain that the druid had lumped her in with the Eaters he spoke of.
"But you've never learned to be happy living with what nature has to offer," the druid accused. "Otherwise you'd never go back to those cities and its laws and its taxes."
"I like the idea of a home," Druz said. The thought occupied her mind a lot. Her parents hadn't had much, but they'd been generous with what they had. For the past nine years, Druz had lived a mercenary's life: traveling from engagement to engagement, praying to the gods that she didn't get killed or maimed, and living in a crude barracks. "I like taverns and eating a meal someone else has prepared. I like the marketplaces, and I like seeing things from other lands."
"We're not intended to have all the world. You should learn to live where you are," Haarn said, raking his dark gaze over the slavers.
A small group of men sitting at a cookfire still talked and drank from a bottle they passed around. They'd arrived back in the camp a while ago. No one else had shown up, nor did any more bands seem expected.
"You've never had a… wanderlust?" Druz asked.
"Of course I have," Haarn said, barely paying attention. "I've wandered all over Turmish."
"Did you ever go to a city?"
"No."
Druz couldn't believe that. "How can you talk so badly of Alagh?n and other cities if you've never seen one?"
Haarn looked at her. "Have you ever been bitten by a poisonous viper?"
"Yes."
"You know the poison will kill you if left untreated."
"Of course," Druz agreed as she worked at her own bonds.
She found no looseness in the leather ties. Her aggravation at the druid increased, but she knew it was a byproduct of her own helplessness. Railing at their slaver captors wouldn't be safe or satisfying, and the druid's chain of logic eluded her.
"If you didn't see the viper that bit you," Haarn asked, "do you believe that the poison would kill you just as certainly?"
"Yes."
"That's how I feel about the people I've met who come from cities. I don't have to see their cities to know that they're unacceptable."
"That isn't fair."
"I don't have to be fair," Haarn said, then he started chanting.
The guttural words sounded incredibly old and harsh to Druz, but she felt the magic in them. During her sojourn as a sellsword she'd had several occasions to work around combat mages. Once at a fair in Westgate a seer had told Druz that she carried a hint of magic about her. Druz had chosen not to pursue that possibility-she didn't much care for magic, and mage schools were expensive-but she'd always known when magic was working around her, if it was close or if it was strong.
She knew the magic Haarn used was powerful just by the way it prickled her skin and tightened the hair at the nape of her neck. He spoke a single word at the end of the chant and a sudden cold feeling stabbed into Druz's stomach.
Haarn's features started to melt, collapsing and flowing like a beeswax candle. Feathers took the place of flesh as the druid dwindled in on himself, becoming smaller and smaller. In a matter of heartbeats, a great horned owl stood on clawed feet where the druid had been sitting only an instant before. The leather fetters lay on the ground.
The owl unfurled its great wings and leaped up. Though the winged predator's weight prevented it from speedily gaining ascent, the owl flew nevertheless. The druid in owl form sped toward the five slavers gathered around the cookfire. Druz heard the wings beat the air as the owl sailed over the sleeping slavers.
One of the slavers noticed the owl's approach and cried out in alarm as he dragged at the sword sheathed at his side. Without hesitation, Haarn raked his owl's claws across the man's face, savaging his features into a bloody ruin and narrowly avoiding the sword blow that cleaved the air for him.
The slaver fell back, squealing in pain and fear. The other slavers grabbed for their weapons and shouted an alarm. Even as the rousing slavers struggled to come to their feet and react, the huge brown bear broke the tree line around the clearing and charged into the camp. The bear roared and the sound was deafening.
The slavers yelled in fear and called on their gods. In the next instant, the bear was among them, flailing and rending with its great claws and fangs. Men dropped away from the bear's attack, and many of them never moved again. The bear was as vicious as it was relentless.
Haarn, in owl form, attacked a man who had fitted a crossbow to his shoulder and was taking aim at the bear.
The slaver dropped his weapon and screamed, "My eyes! My eyes!"
He stumbled back and fell into one of the campfires. Smoldering embers rose into the night air along with the man's renewed screams of pain.