Douglas Niles - The Kinslayer Wars

“As near as we can tell—” Parnigar started to answer, but Kith-Kanan’s former teacher cut him off.

“There’s one addition they’ve had, it shames me to admit!” Kencathedrus barked. Parnigar nodded sorrowfully as the captain of the Silvanesti continued.

“Elves! From the woods! It seems they’re content to serve an army of human invaders, caring naught that they wage war against their own kingdom!” The elf, born and bred amid the towers of Silvanost, couldn’t understand such base treachery.

“I have heard this, to my surprise. Why are they party to this?” Kith-Kanan asked Parnigar.

The Wildrunner shrugged. “Some of them resent the taxes levied upon them by a far-off capital, with the debtors taken for servitude in the Clan Oakleaf mines. Others feel that trade with the humans is a good thing and opens opportunities for their children that they didn’t have before. There are thousands of elves who feel little if any loyalty to the throne.”

“Nevertheless, it is gravely disturbing,” Kith-Kanan sighed. The problem vexed him, but he saw no solution at the present.

“You’ll need some rest,” noted Kencathedrus. “In the meantime, we’ll tend to the details.”

“Of course!” Parnigar echoed.

“I knew that I could count on you!” Kith-Kanan declared, feeling overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude. “May the future bring us the victory and the freedom that we have worked so hard for!”

He took the officers up on their offer of a private bunk and enjoyed the feel of a mattress beneath his body for the first time in several weeks. There was little more he could do at the moment, and he fell into a luxurious slumber that lasted for more than twelve hours.

The mouth of the coal mine gaped like the maw of some insatiable beast, hungry for the bodies of the soot-blackened miners who trudged wearily between the shoring timbers to disappear into the darkness within. They marched in a long file, more than a hundred of them, guarded by a dozen whip-wielding overseers.

Sithas and Lord Quimant stood atop the steep slope that led down into the quarry. The noise from below pounded their ears. Immediately below them, a slave-powered conveyor belt carried chunks of crushed ore from a pit, where other slaves smashed the rock with picks and hammers, to the bellowing ovens of the smelting plant. There more laborers shoveled coal from huge black piles into the roaring heat of the furnaces. Beyond the smelting sheds rose the smoke-spewing stacks of the weapon smiths, where raw, hot steel was pounded into razor-edged armaments.

Some of the prisoners wore chain shackles at their ankles. “Those are the ones who have tried to escape,” Lord Quimant explained. Most simply marched along, not needing any physical restraint, for they had been broken as slaves in a deeper, more permanent sense. Each of these trudged, eyes cast downward, almost tripping over the one ahead of him in the line.

“Most of them become quite docile,” the lord continued, “after a year or two of labor. The guards encourage this. A slave who cooperates and works hard is generally left alone, while those who show rebelliousness or a reluctance to work are ... disciplined.”

One of the overseers cracked his whip against the back of a slave about to enter the mines. This fellow had lagged behind, opening a gap between himself and the worker in front of him. At the flick of the lash, he cried out in pain and stumbled forward. Even from his height, Sithas saw the red welt spread across the slave’s back.

In his haste, the slave stumbled, then crawled pathetically to his feet under another flurry of lashes from the guard.

“Watch now. The rest of them will step quite lively.” Indeed, the other slaves did hasten into the black abyss, but Sithas didn’t think such cruelty was warranted.

“Is he a human or an elf?” wondered the Speaker.

“Who-oh, the tardy one?” Quimant shrugged. “They get so covered with dust that I can’t really tell. Not that it makes much difference. We treat everybody the same here.”

“Is that wise?” Sithas was more disturbed than he thought he would be about the brutality he saw here.

Lord Quimant had attempted to dissuade Sithas from visiting the Clan Oakleaf estates and mines, yet the Speaker had been determined to take the three-day coach ride to Quimant’s family’s holdings. Now he began to wonder if perhaps Lord Quimant had been right to want to spare him the sight. He had too many disturbing reservations about the Oakleaf mines. Yet at the same time, he had to admit he needed the steel that came from these mines and the blades that were cast by the nearby smithies.

“Actually, it’s the humans who give us the most trouble. After all, the elves are here for ten or twenty years, whatever the sentence happens to be for their crime. They know they must suffer that time, and then they’ll be free.” Indeed, the Speaker of the Stars had sentenced a number of citizens of Silvanost to such labor—for failure to pay taxes, violence or theft against a fellow elf, smuggling, and other serious transgressions. The whole issue had seemed a good deal simpler in the city, when he could simply dismiss the offending elf and rarely, if ever, think of him again.

“So this is their miserable fate,” he said quietly. Quimant continued. “The humans, you know, are here for life—of course, a foreshortened life, in any event. And you know how reckless they are anyway. Yes, indeed, humans are the ones who give us the most problems. The elves, if anything, help to keep them in line. We encourage their little acts of spying on one another.”

“Where do all the humans come from?” inquired Sithas. “Surely they haven’t all been sentenced by elven courts.”

“Oh, of course not! These are mostly brigands and villains, nomads who live to the north. They trouble the elves and kender of the settled lands, so we capture them and set them to work here.”

Quimant shook his head, thinking before he continued. “Imagine—a paltry four or five decades to grow up, experience romance, try to make a success of your life, and leave children behind you! It’s amazing they do so well, when you consider what little time they have to work with!”

“Let’s go back to the manor,” said Sithas, suddenly very weary of the harsh spectacle before him. Quimant had arranged for a splendid banquet after dark, and if they remained here any longer, Sithas was certain that he would lose his appetite.

The ride back to Silvanost seemed to Sithas to take much longer than the trip into the country. Still, he felt relieved to leave the Oakleaf estates behind.

The banquet had been a festive affair. Hermathya, the pride of Oakleaf, and her son Vanesti had been the stars of the evening. The affair lasted far into the night, yet Quimant and Sithas made an early start for the city on the following morning. Hermathya and the boy remained behind, intending to visit the clanhold for a month or two.

The first two days of the trip had seemed to drag on forever, and now they had reached the third and final day of the excursion. Sithas and Quimant traveled in the luxurious royal coach. Huge padded couches provided them with room to recline and stretch. Velvet draperies could be closed to block off dust and weather ... or intrusive ears and eyes. Each of the huge wheels rested on its own spring mechanism, smoothing the potholes of the crushed gravel trail. Eight magnificent horses, all large palominos, trotted at the head of the vehicle, their white manes and long fetlocks smoothly combed. Metal trim of pure gold outlined the shape of the enclosed cabin, which was large enough to hold eight passengers.

The two lords traveled with an escort of one hundred elven riders. Four archers, in addition to their driver, rode atop the cabin, out of sight and hearing of the pair of elves within.