Richard Baker: Prince of Ravens

Zandria, Yu Wei, or Iphegor? Or the Knights of the Hawk? Or some hitherto unknown enemy? Someone was responsible for the fact that Jack now stood knee-deep in rothe dung, driven to exhaustion by vicious dark elves and their even more vicious slave overseers as he slowly starved to death, and the more he thought it over, the more the sheer injustice of the thing angered him.

The worst part of it was that his antagonist had likely been dead for decades. Even if he somehow managed to escape from his current thralldom, he could do little to set the matter straight other than perhaps dumping a bucket of rothe dung on the grave of his deceased enemy-a purely symbolic act, and not at all as satisfying a redressal as he might hope for. “It’s said that living well is the best revenge,” he finally resolved. “Fair enough; the course of my retribution is clear.” The sooner he could leave the fields of Chumavhraele behind him and enjoy life in some civilized place again, the better.

With a sigh, he picked up his shovel and attacked another pile of rothe dung.

One day (Jack had discovered that there was, in fact, a “day” of sorts in the dark elves’ fields and mines, marking mealtimes and rest periods) the tedium of his routine was broken by a commotion in the stockyard close under the battlements of Tower Chumavhraele. Jack was engaged in filling a cart with dung for transport back to the fields where the mushrooms that served as rothe fodder were grown when a gang of hobgoblins marched out of the great fungal forest, driving before them a score of human men and women. Most of the other field-slaves paused in their work to stare at the procession; Jack decided that it was safe to follow their lead and indulge his curiosity, so he lowered his shovel to watch.

“What is this?” he whispered to the slave working alongside him, a stoop-shouldered dwarf named Hargath, who had so far ignored him-a better treatment than Jack received from many who worked under Malmor’s supervision.

“New captives,” Hargath replied. “The slavers catch ’em up top and bring ’em down here to sell to the dark elves.”

The prisoners were a sorry sight, indeed. Some were injured, limping along or nursing bloody gashes and ugly bruises. Most were in their smallclothes, although a few had managed to keep a torn shirt or a ragged pair of breeches around their waists through the long march down from the surface. They bore their misfortune in a variety of manners, some stoic, some weeping and pleading, a few glaring about in anger. Jack’s eye was drawn by one fine-looking young woman with short-cropped hair of midnight black and a proud, defiant set to her shoulders. Her brocade dress suggested that she came of a well-to-do family, or at least had before falling into the slavers’ hands. She and her fellow prisoners were all bound with iron manacles, which in turn were fixed in staggered pairs to a great chain that all the captives together had to carry. The hobgoblins-no, actually, some of the slavers were human, Jack noted-jeered and cursed at their prisoners as they rearranged them into ragged lines to best display them for sale.

“What will become of them?” he asked the dwarf.

“Who cares?” Hargath muttered. “Some for the fields, some for the tower kitchens, most to the mines and tunnels, I guess.”

A small party of drow emerged from the castle and came out to meet the slavers. Jack recognized a few of the guards he’d seen patrolling the edges of the paddocks and fields, including Varys, the one who’d beat him for speaking on the day he first arrived. A priestess in the black and silver garb of the demon-queen Lolth led them. The priestess eyed the captives with a grudging nod, and then turned to one of the human slavers. “These seem better bred than the wretches you typically pawn off on us, Fetterfist,” she said. “I am impressed; they might actually last a tenday or two before keeling over.”

“My wares are largely a matter of chance, my lady, but sometimes opportunities arise,” the human slaver replied. He was a tall, bony man with a lantern jaw and long yellow hair that escaped from beneath a curious leather cowl obscuring the upper half of his face. “On most occasions I ply my trade in cheap winehouses and squalid slums, but yesterday I fell on a careless merchant caravan a few miles outside of town. There are no consumptive doxies or shiftless drunkards here; these are strong, healthy drivers and porters.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Of course, my expenses were higher than normal, and I must charge accordingly for these.”

“Your expenses are hardly my concern,” the drow priestess observed. She poked at the shoulder of a sturdy young man who stared down at the ground.

“Ah, well. If you will not make an accommodation for goods of exceptional quality, I suppose I’ll return to my customary methods,” Fetterfist the slaver replied. “There’s no point in paying for a large crew to bring you quality goods if I can’t make up the difference in costs at the time of the sale. I’ll be back in a few days with a lot of the typical quality, which I’ll be happy to sell you at the customary price.” He motioned to his men, who began to push and shove the captives back into marching order.

“Wait a moment,” the priestess objected. “Where do you think you’re taking these?”

“Back to the surface, of course. I know a pirate of the Inner Sea who would be happy to take them off my hands.”

Jack smiled at the slaver’s skillful shrug of resignation. The fellow knew a thing or two about bargaining, it seemed, which likely came in handy in his sinister vocation. He very much doubted that Fetterfist had any pirate acquaintance waiting to buy whatever the dark elves wouldn’t take, but the priestess had no way to know that. The suggestion brought a sour glare to her ebony countenance.

“I think not, Fetterfist,” she snapped. “The captives stay here. If you don’t care for that, you and your men can join them.”

The tall slaver smiled beneath his cowl. “Then who will bring new stock to your doorstep next month, or the month after?”

The dark elf scowled, but she, of course, had no answer to the slaver’s point. Instead she ignored Fetterfist for a moment, and continued her scrutiny of the wretched captives he’d brought her. “I see twenty-three here,” she observed. “That makes one hundred and fifteen pieces of gold at the normal price.”

“I couldn’t possibly sell these for less than eight pieces of gold each, my lady,” the slaver replied with such earnestness that Jack almost believed the fellow. He reached out and seized the pretty dark-haired girl by her bare arm, dragging her out of line. “And this one is quite special, indeed. I have here Seila, the daughter of Lord Norwood; I am sure that your marquise would find her a useful prize indeed.”

“Norwood’s daughter?” the priestess said. Her eyebrow rose, and she turned to study the dark-haired young woman, who squared her shoulders and glared back defiantly. “That might be worth something.”

“She is yours for five hundred gold crowns,” Fetterfist said.

The priestess snorted. “Ridiculous! I know very well that you would not dare to sell her anywhere in the surface world, slaver. Her father’s agents would pursue her, and you, to the ends of Faerun. However … the marquise may find her plight amusing. I might pay fifty gold crowns for her, I suppose.”

Jack nodded to himself. The Norwoods had been around during his days in Raven’s Bluff; he wasn’t surprised that the family had continued to flourish during the intervening century. If the girl was a Norwood, then she came of a well-to-do family, indeed; she must have an army of retainers and hired swords searching all over the Vast for her.