Richard Baker: Prince of Ravens

“My lady, you wound me, you truly do,” Fetterfist protested. At that point the slaver and the priestess fell to dickering over the price, arguing back and forth, but Jack noticed that Hargath had suddenly lowered his head and started to shovel again. With one more glance for the dark-haired girl in the fine dress, Jack followed suit, throwing heaping shovelfuls into the stinking cart.

“What’s this? Shirking again?” Malmor roared from behind Jack. The fat bugbear was remarkably light of step when he put his mind to it, and Jack couldn’t count the times the overseer had managed to sneak up on him. Naturally, Malmor had come upon the scene in the moment after Hargath had resumed work and before Jack had done the same. The bugbear snatched one of the slave-beating sticks-actually a specially preserved tentacle from a grell, Jack had learned-and gave Jack a terrific smack across the shoulders. The blow would have been bad enough, but the tiny stingers in the treated tentacle added a blaze of fiery agony to the overseer’s switching. The unfortunate rogue cried out and folded to the ground in pain, overcome by Malmor’s savage blow.

“You work, you eat,” Malmor snarled. “Work not, eat not, no, no. If you hope to eat tomorrow, you had better not let me catch you shirking again.” The bugbear kicked dung into Jack’s face while Jack was groveling on the ground, and then he strutted away, evidently satisfied that he’d put Jack in his place once again.

“If you won’t be eating at the end of the shift, could I have your portion?” Hargath asked.

“But of course,” Jack mumbled in reply. “I am nothing if not generous toward my friends. Although I would like to point out that next time you notice Malmor approaching, you might offer a small cough or low whistle to put me on my guard.” He slowly climbed back to his feet and looked back toward the new slaves. It seemed that Fetterfist had concluded his dealings with the priestess; the slaver gang was busy turning their captives over to the dark elves. The dark-haired girl was looking right at Jack, wincing; he realized that the commotion Malmor had caused by beating him must have attracted her attention.

“Well, that’s one way to catch the eye of a pretty girl,” he reflected. With as much grace as he could muster given the splattering of rothe dung he wore and the agonizing burning in his back, he gave her a rueful smile and a small bow before picking up his shovel and returning to work. The drow quickly sorted through their new slaves, breaking them up into several different groups. One group was marched back down the road through the mushroom-forest toward the lakeshore excavations, and another toward the mines and tunnels. The girl and a few others were led to the tower that overlooked the fields and shore, while the remainder was assigned to the rothe paddocks to work under Malmor. The bugbear welcomed his new drudges with blistering oaths and frequent clouts to heads and shoulders.

Jack watched the dark-haired girl vanish into the shadows beneath the castle’s walls. He liked to think he’d made an impression on her. With his back and shoulders burning from the grell-stings, he returned to his work.

With the arrival of new captives, Jack was surprised to discover that conditions in the fields improved somewhat. His days were still full of dull, filthy toil, but the presence of fresh workers in the paddocks meant that there were more hands sharing the labor. The bullies and malcontents among the old slaves turned their attentions to the task of putting the new slaves in their proper place in the paddocks’ pecking order. More important, Malmor had more workers to keep track of than before, and his eye was not fixed constantly on one prisoner. Jack found more opportunities to carefully survey the bounds of his world, taking note of the obstacles surrounding the paddocks and the frequent patrols that deterred any would-be runaways. He spoke with the newcomers about the route they’d taken down from the surface and what they’d seen in their march through House Chumavh’s territories. He even found more time to quietly experiment with his spells, trying to determine what exactly was wrong with his magic. He was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that he would have to make his escape with his native stealth and guile, but he’d be much more likely to reach the surface alive if he could take on the shape of a dark elf or simply turn invisible and walk off. Unfortunately his spells still eluded him; the magical Weave was dull and dark, and the unseen strands of magic that should have responded to his words and gestures refused to answer him.

A few days after the arrival of Fetterfist’s slaves, Jack was roused early to go up to the tower kitchens to draw breakfast for the field-workers. At first he bitterly resented the loss of a half-hour’s additional rest, but he realized that the chore at least offered him the chance to see a part of his surroundings he hadn’t yet-and perhaps catch a rare and precious glimpse of a female with fewer than four legs. With three other field slaves, he pushed the oxcart-like trolley with its empty tin pails over a road that circled beneath the battlements of Tower Chumavhraele. Strange, soft-glowing globes of purple and green magelight drifted along the crenellations or hovered above the dark gates, casting an eerie eldritch light over the castle’s spires. Orc, bugbear, and the occasional ogre or minotaur slave warriors stood their posts vigilantly, supervised by drow sergeants and officers. None took any special notice of the field-slaves and their creaking cart as they followed the path to a small side-gate leading in to the kitchens.

The kitchens were huge, a vast maze occupied by scores of cooks, dishwashers, and scullery servants. The field-slaves’ porridge bubbled thickly in a large cauldron by the door, under the supervision of a middle-aged half-orc woman who carried an overseer’s stinging-rod at her broad waistband. Jack and his fellows brought in the pails, filled them, and loaded them back on the cart. “Hurry up, you stupid clods,” the overseer bellowed. “Now my kitchen stinks of rothe crap. I should flog the lot of you!”

Jack decided on the spot that he had no more use for the chore of fetching porridge, but then he caught sight of the dark-haired Seila Norwood. She was toiling as a laundress, stirring sheets and spreads in a huge vat of steaming water. The girl happened to look up as he walked past, arms full of tin pails, and their eyes met for an instant before she turned away to tend another vat. Jack could see the exhaustion and despair in her eyes, but there was something else there, too, a small spark of defiance that hadn’t quite faded; he hoped that his own eyes still held that spark, too.

From that day forward, Jack made it his mission to be chosen for meal-fetching as often as possible. The trick, of course, was that one couldn’t very well ask to do it or else Malmor out of pure spite would simply say no. The bugbear assumed that if anyone wanted one job over another it was because they’d found a way to shirk or malinger. Jack tried to arrange his dung-shoveling and slop-hauling in such a way that he’d be in easy sight of the push-cart they took up to the castle kitchens when mealtime drew near, and that was partially successful; the bugbear and the other overseers were in the habit of ordering the first person they caught sight of to do whatever needed doing next. But after a day or two Jack realized the real trick was to act as if he didn’t want to push the heavy cart up to the castle, after which Malmor naturally picked him first at every opportunity. Sometimes it worked, and he saw the girl; sometimes it didn’t, and he missed her in the kitchens.

A couple of tendays after he’d seen her in the castle kitchens, Jack finally found a chance to speak to the captive noblewoman. The rothe were brought in from the paddocks for shearing, because the drow made a thick, oily wool from their shaggy coats-nothing a dark elf would wear personally, but useful enough in the sort of places where surface folk might use canvas or heavy burlap. It was a difficult and dangerous job. The rothe didn’t care to be sheared and were only too happy to gore anybody associated with the task, but in time it was done, and the dirty rothe clippings were gathered in huge bales and brought up to vats set up outside the castle kitchens to be boiled clean.