Robert Adams - Horseclans' Odyssey

“Even if I have to part with every ounce of metal in my belt… and one of the drafts besides… my profit on just one of the little darlings will more than reimburse me… or should. Hmmm… let’s see… perhaps… perhaps, if I sell the less pretty one… say, to a buyer in Kehnooryos Ehlas, and then present the prettier as an outright gift to Lord Tkoheeks Nikos, King Zenos’ principal adviser. Or should I gift the little bastard to the king himself? No, that’s right”—he sighed gustily and shook his head of oiled ringlets—“like his father before him—God grant that that old scumsucker is burning in the deepest pit of Hell!—the young king is said to care only for women. Must be the barbarian blood, for he seems a cultured, civilized man in all other respects, from what I’ve heard. But not to take a pretty little boy now and again? Remarkably uncouth, to say the least!

“So! Then the boy must go to Nikos of Sahpahntispolis, who is at least gentleman enough to appreciate—to properly appreciate—the rarity and value of the gift. Why, this pah-are the first Horseclans boys through these parts in years. “As I recall him, Thoheeks Nikos is—for all his other failings—a true Ehleen gentleman of the old school, and if he gives value due to value received… and he must! I… I’m dying in this barbarian pesthole!” Feeling tears starting to well up from his eyes, Urbahnos rumbled for a soft cloth and dabbed lightly at his eye corners, taking great care not to smudge the cosmetics on upper and lower lids or to disarrange his long, curling false eyelashes. Restowing the cloth, he took a long, burning pull at his flask before settling back again to his musings. “So, then, the prettier… probably the younger will be prettier… the prettier will go to Nikos, and he must be untried, too, for the tastes of so refined a gentleman, so I had best send him east with Nahseer. Yes, that’s perfect.” He smiled. “That Zahrtohgahn bastard will butcher anyone who even touches the little sweetling, and, lacking himself any man parts, there’ll be no chance of the guardian’s being tempted.”

Urbahnos had never had cause to regret his purchase of the hulking Nahseer, years before, when the Zahrtohgahn was placed upon the riverside slave block in Pahdookahport. It had been upon the first occasion that the huge man had saved his life and purse from a band of footpads—taking wounds in the process, since, prior to that time, his master had been loath to arm him—that the Ehleen had considered manumitting him… but he had yet to do so, for all that he frequently used the brown-skinned man to convey and guard especially valuable merchandise to the eastern coastal areas—furs, jewels, young and beautiful virgins and the like.

Now in his mid- to late-thirties, Nahseer claimed to have been of a high-caste family of the Kaliphate of Zahrtohgah, a mighty warrior of high rank in the armies of that land and possessed of wealth and power. His downfall, he went on to claim, was his intemperate lust for a girl who chanced to catch the eye of the kahleefah and be taken into his hahreenu Such had been Nahseer’s bemusement that he had plotted to take the girl from hahreem, palace and city by a combination of stealth, force and bribery and bear her off to his own faraway city—aware that once her flower was taken, the kahleefah would have no interest in her and would, eventually, forgive him, since, in his almost constant state of war, he had far more need of competent captains than of just one among his hundreds of women.

However, as the Fates would have it, someone had betrayed the bold scheme and Nahseer Had been set upon by a host of the kahleefah’s guardsmen the moment he dropped from the top of the inner wall to the springy turf of the hahreem garden. Knowing full well his fate if taken alive, the mighty man had drawn both yahtahgahn and long dagger and fought with awesome effect With strictest orders to take the intruder alive, the guardsmen had suffered terribly, taking crippling wounds and death thrusts and deliberately foregoing many opportunities to slay Nahseer in combat. Finally overcome by force of numbers and sheer exhaustion, Nahseer had been dragged before his ruler. In a foaming rage at the numbers of warriors the prisoner had cost him, as well as at the attempted violation of his hahreem, Kahleefah Yusuf had had Nahseer severely flogged, gelded and sold for a slave to a party of traders from Ohyoh.

Despite the loss of his manhood, Nahseer had proved most intractable. Few of his early masters had owned him long, and all had been glad to see him go, often selling at a hefty loss to speed his departure. Finally, having become infamous and unsellable in all the Kingdom of Ohyoh, a river trader had bought the mass of brown-skinned muscle and bone for a pitiful sum on the speculation that he might bring a decent price in Pahdookahport or Twocityport, where strong male slaves were usually in demand for the oar barges. Urbahnos surmised that the big man’s loyalty to him was the result of his boundless thanks at being spared the long, hideous, drawn-out death sentence that was the lot of slaves and felons doomed to the oar barges. Had anyone told him that in the heart buried within that massive chest the Zahrtohgahn slave to whom he regularly entrusted both life and property hated and despised him, Lord Urbahnos of Kostanispolis would have openly scoffed and forever after have considered that person an idiot and utter fool. “The lord thoheeks knows what I want, of course,” Urbahnos mused on within the swaying litter. “He knows what an injustice was done me by old Zenos, that barbarian-loving, moon-blood-lapping dog turd. After all, I only pinked the ahrkeethoheeks’ son. It wasn’t my fault he died of black rot, was it? Of course not! And to accuse me of using a poisoned blade…” Urbahnos almost always conveniently forgot how, on his way to that eleven-years-done duel, he had several times run the full length of his blade into the stinking, well-rotted carcass of a dead pig. “So, the sooner I get the boy slave to Karaleenos, the sooner I may expect a pardon and a royal recall to my lands and city. Let’s see… perhaps Pehtros will buy my house slaves; God knows he needs them. Why he’s not long since died of some loathsome disease living in that pigsty is more than I can fathom. I suppose that I really should free Nahseer, but I’ll surely need money to reestablish myself in the proper style, and if I can find a buyer willing to pay a really good price for him… but I won’t sell him to the barge owners… no, not unless the other slaves and the house bring less than they should.

“As for Lylah, I might as well not go back home if I drag along a barbarian wife; no true Ehleen would even spit at me were I to do so monstrous a thing. Besides, we’re not really married; barbarian rites aren’t legal in any civilized, Ehleen principality that I know of. I’d Sell her for a slave, her and the brats, too, if I thought I could get away with it. But she’s freeborn and her parents were citizens of one of those little southern counties, and if the duke found out…” He shuddered, seeing himself overtaken on the trip upriver by one of Duke Tcharlz’s fleet of sail-and-oar warships, dragged off the passenger barge and brought in chains back to Pahdookahport, where—his diplomatic immunity be damned—the old pirate would likely rob him of every thrah-kmeh he owned in fines, then send him to his death on the benches of a row-barge. No, it would be far better to forgo possible profit and simply throw Lylah—his once-pretty wife of seven years—and their six children out of the house once it and the furnishings and slaves were all sold and he was ready to start his journey back east to the land of culture and light.

Often Urbahnos wondered just why he had wedded the chit, for what with her producing a child a year and her bouts of moon sickness between brats, his manly needs drove him to spend about as much time and money at the bordellos as he had before he wed. Nor were his forays into the higher-class brothels in any way cheap. The girls were expensive enough, but such few as would even deign to cater to men of cultured tastes and provide boys were astronomical, especially when one took into account the fact that the proffered boys were invariably passive, spiritless and a bit older than he preferred… not to mention often ugly and whip-wealed.