Page 149

PRISONERS

W INTROW WAS IN A LARGE SHED. It was open on one side and nothing impeded the flow of winter cold into it.

The roof was sound, but the walls were little more than rough slab wood cobbled over a beam framework.

The stall he was in opened onto a walkway.

It faced a long row of identical stalls.

The slat sides of it gave him only nominal privacy.

There was a scattering of straw on the floor for him to curl up on and a filthy bucket in one corner to contain his wastes.

The only thing that prevented him from simply walking away were the leg-irons on his ankles that were chained to a heavy metal staple driven deeply into an iron-hard beam.

He had worn most of the skin off his ankles determining that human strength was not going to budge the staple. It was his fourth day here.

In one more day, if no one came to redeem him, then he could be sold as a slave.

This had been carefully explained to him twice by a jovial keeper, on his first and second day of confinement.

The man came once a day with a basket of rolls.

He was followed by his half-wit son, who pulled a cart with a tub of water on it, and ladled out a cupful of it to every prisoner.

The first time he explained it, Wintrow had begged him to carry word of his plight to the priests in Sa’s temple.

Surely they would come to claim him. But the keeper had declined to waste his time.

The priests, he had explained, did not meddle in civil affairs any more.

The Satrap’s prisoners were a civil affair, nothing at all to do with Sa or his worship.

The Satrap’s prisoners, if not redeemed, became the Satrap’s slaves, to be sold off to benefit the royal treasury.

That would be a sad end to such a short life.

Had not the boy some family the keepet might contact?

The keeper’s wheedling tone clearly conveyed that he would be happy to convey any message, so long as there was a good chance of a bribe or reward.

Surely his mother must be worried about him by now?

Had he no brothers who would pay his fine and get him released?

Each time Wintrow had bitten his tongue.

He had time, he told himself, to work out his own solution to this problem.

Having the man send word to his father would only land him back in his original captivity.

That was no solution at all. Surely something else would occur to him if he simply thought hard enough.

And his situation was certainly conducive to thought.

There was little else to do. He could sit, stand, lie or squat in the straw.

Sleep held no rest. The noises of the stalls invaded his dreams, populating them with dragons and serpents that argued and pleaded with human tongues.

Awake, there was no one to talk to. One side of his enclosure was the outer wall of the shed.

In the stalls to either side of him, a succession of prisoners had come and gone: a disorderly drunk rescued by his weeping wife, a prostitute who had stabbed her customer and been branded in retribution, a horse-thief taken away to hang.

Justice, or at least punishment, was swift in the Satrap’s cells.

A straw-littered aisle fronted his cage.

Another row of similar stalls were on the opposite side of it.

Slaves were held in those ones. Unruly and undesirable slaves, map-faces with scarred backs came and went from the leg-irons.

They were sold cheaply and used hard, from what Wintrow could see.

They did not talk much, even to each other.

Wintrow judged they had little left to talk about.

Take all self-determination from a man’s life, and all that is left for him to do is complain.

This they did do, but in a dispirited way that indicated they expected no changes.

They reminded Wintrow of chained and barking dogs.

The sullen map-faces across the way would be good for heavy labour and crude work in fields and orchards, but little more than that.

This he had surmised from listening in on their talk.

Most of the men and women stabled across from him had been slaves for years, and fully expected to end their lives as slaves.

Despite Wintrow’s disgust with the concept of slavery, it was hard to feel sorry for some of them.

Some had obviously become little more than beasts of labour, decrying their hard lot but no longer having the will to struggle against it.

After watching them for a few days, he could understand why some worshippers of Sa could look at such slaves and believe they were so by Sa’s will.

It was truly hard to imagine them as free men and women with mates and children and homes and livelihoods.

He did not think they had been born without souls, predestined to be slaves.

But never before had he seen people so bereft of humanity’s spiritual spark.

Whenever he watched them, a cold slug of fear crawled slowly through his guts.

How long would it take for him to become just like them?

He had one day left in which to think of something.

Tomorrow, in the morning, they would come and take him to the tattooing block.

They’d chain his wrists and ankles to the heavy staples there, and force his head down into the leather-wrapped vice.

There they would put the small mark that designated him as the Satrap’s slave.

If the Satrap chose to keep him that would be the only tattoo he ever wore.

But the Satrap would not choose to keep him.

He had no special skills. He would be put up for immediate sale.

And when he was sold, a new mark, the sigil of some new owner, would be needled into his face.

He had teetered back and forth for several hours.

If he called for the keeper, and the man sent a runner down to the harbour, his father would come and get him.

Or send someone to fetch him. Then he would go back to the ship, and become once more a prisoner there.

But at least his face would be unscarred.

If he did not call for his father’s aid, he would be tattooed, and sold, and tattooed again.

Unless he either escaped or worked free of slavery, he would for ever remain someone else’s property, at least legally.

In either case, he would never become a priest of Sa.

As he was determined to fulfil his vocation to be a priest, determined to return home to his monastery, the whole question came down to which situation offered him the better chance of escape.

And on that fine conclusion, his thoughts halted and teetered. He simply didn’t know.

So he sat in the corner of his pen and idly watched the buyers who came to peruse the cheap and undesirable slaves across from him. He was hungry and cold and uncomfortable. But the worst sensation of all was his indecision. That was what kept him from curling up in a morose ball and sleeping.

He did not recognize Torg walking slowly along the fronts of the slave-stalls for several minutes.

Then, when he did, he was shocked when his heart gave a leap of near joy.

What it was, he realized, was relief. Torg would see him and tell his father.

He would not have to make what he had always suspected was a cowardly decision.

Torg would do it for him. And when his father came for him, he could not mock him that he had cried out for help from him.

Much insight into himself could have been gained from a contemplation of these things, but Wintrow reined his mind away from it.

Perhaps he did not want to know himself quite that well.

Instead he abruptly stood up. He moved to the corner of his pen to lounge defiantly against the wall.

He crossed his arms on his chest and waited.

It was surprisingly difficult to stand still and silent and wait for Torg to notice him.

Torg was making his way slowly down the opposite row, examining every slave, dickering with the keeper, and then either nodding or shaking his head.

The keeper had a tally-block he was marking as they came.

After a time, it puzzled Wintrow. Torg seemed to be buying a substantial number of slaves, but these were not the artisans and educated slaves that his father had spoken of acquiring.

He watched Torg swagger along, obviously impressed with his own importance as a buyer of human flesh.

He strutted for the keeper as if he were a man worth impressing, inspecting the slaves with fine disregard for their dignity or comfort.

The longer Wintrow watched him, the more he despised the man.

Here, then, was the counterpoint to the slaves’ loss of spirit and spark; a man whose self-importance fed on the humiliation and degradation of others.

And yet there was a horrible kernel of fear in Wintrow’s waiting, too.

What if Torg did not turn and notice him?

What then? Would Wintrow abase himself by calling out to the man?

Or let him pass by, and face a future full of dealing with other Torgs?

Just as Wintrow thought he would cry out, just as he bit down on his own tongue to keep it from betraying him, Torg glanced at him.

And away, and then back, as if he could not believe what his eyes had shown him.

His eyes widened, and then a grin split his face.

He immediately left his task to stride over to Wintrow.