"Did he take it?" the forester asked, with a grin.
"Barely," Kaleb replied. "I'm going to have to change his medicine."
"He has a very strong will, hasn't he?" The forester yawned deeply.
"That in itself is doubtless good." Kaleb stretched. "We know how he survived and we know he'll heal. What's not good, is how fighting slows the healing process." Ensore sighed.
"What'll you do?"
"There's one way he can't fight me."
"He'll try." Kaleb looked speculatively at the forester.
"He won't succeed."
"I believe you, Kaleb. I've never doubted your talents as a most skilled healer. I'd hate to be as helpless as Sarehl." There was a smile in the forester's eyes as he looked back at the healer.
"Wise of you," approved Kaleb, stamping his feet. "It's such a long winter the further north you go. Will spring ever come?"
"We're used to the south's shorter cold seasons," teased Ensore. "Dase tells me the weather's warmed."
"He's young," was Kaleb's comment, as he shivered.
Ensore just laughed and went into the tent, kneeling down beside the pallet. Sarehl opened his eyes.
"The boy -."
"Is with me. You'll see him later as you usually do."
"The healer..." The voice slowed to a halt. The forester looked down at the wasted frame and felt he had to agree with Kaleb that Sarehl was by far too frail to expend energy on conversation. He spoke calmly.
"You must let Kaleb know best. He's a Yazd and one of the finest healers you'll find anywhere on Ambros. You must trust him." Ensore chuckled. "Give in to him. He'll always get his own way, you know. Healers do."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
When the attack came on Ortok, Bethel was just leaving the Aesthetics Academy. He saw the mass of warriors sweep down the avenue and stood paralysed with fright while swords swept in arcs and citizens fell. He felt himself caught in powerful arms and was thrust across a horse face down, so hard the breath was knocked from him. He lay still, conscious of a strong hand that held him prone.
When the horse was finally drawn to a halt, Bethel was tumbled from it to the ground where, when a boot found contact with his ribs he cringed, curling up defensively with an arm protectively about his head. He was hauled roughly to his feet, and, with many others, was pushed and shoved until he found his back to railings that held him steady. And there he stayed, trying to get his wind. He knew he cried with terror and shock, because he tried to brush the tears away with a hand that shook pitiably.
When he calmed a little, he realised he was crammed into a pen with many others, all so tightly pressed together they could scarcely move. A whip constantly cracked around them. The sobs that could be heard from first one prisoner, then another, made Bethel whimper, his head bent in his hands, and, by the afternoon he knew what the guards did with knives to man and boy. It terrified him. Cowering against the railings he hoped desperately the knives being used so deliberately wouldn't touch him. He watched, too, in mute horror, as prisoners were dragged out from pens all round him so they could be held spread-eagled on the ground and branded. The boy's body rippled with revulsion. He cringed back and behind others whenever one of the barkashads, the slave overseers, approached his pen. Bethel prayed no one would notice him. He mercifully avoided the ritual breaking with canes that was an integral part of reducing captives to slave status.
Having been early captured and penned, Bethel didn't witness the final sack of his home, though he saw enough rape and slaughter to make his mind reel. Over the next few days he was shifted from pen to pen, his life spared because he was considered of value as a slave. It would take only one warrior to notice him and he'd be taken to the caravan destined for the boy market in Churchik's premier slave city of Chika, and, even though so-called "pretty boys" had a less gruelling passage south, they suffered at the hands of the overseers. These men used the boys before they were finally sold to the popular boy harems where many a warrior passed a pleasurable hour, the life of a harem boy one of abject misery and degradation.
Bethel struggled to cope with the brutality he witnessed all around him, day after day. He didn't see any of his older brothers and realised, with a sudden surge of terror, that he'd have to try to survive on his own. To this end, and to block out the awful sights and sounds that assailed him, he began to practise the mental blocking skills Myme Chlo had taught him. He forced himself to do this, hour after hour.
Two weeks passed slowly. They were torture for Bethel. Like the others, he became filthy and was hungry. Helpless, he crouched as hard up against the railings of whatever pen he found himself in, gnawing on bread and straining for any share of the rationed water. When they were sluiced down every second day, he fought anyone he could to touch some moisture but he was rarely especially successful. He'd been a slender boy. Now he looked so thin he appeared delicate. His eyes held a heart-wrenching desolation.
After two weeks, Bethel did see one of his brothers. Wounded captives who were to be dealt with, and Bethel now knew that meant execution, were dumped beside the slave pens. On this morning, Bethel peered through the slats to see the brother who'd been a father to him, Sarehl so still the boy thought he was dead. The wounds were so dreadful Bethel felt nausea threaten to choke him. He looked round for water, but there was none. He could only move so far because heavy chains held him. Though he tried to put a hand through the slats to touch Sarehl he was unable to reach him, instead calling gently and beseechingly to him. Sarehl was incapable of response. In agony, Bethel saw guards move along the line of wounded, bloodied knives flashing in the sunlight as they advanced. Occasionally a pallet was moved, but infrequently. Bethel suddenly sat, sickness overcoming him as he was squashed hard against the railings and watched the guards come closer. He felt dizzy relief when he saw two of them lift Sarehl's pallet and move away with it.
More days drifted by. There were fewer cries and screams as time passed. No one spoke in the pens and certainly no one had interest in a boy, especially since the men in the pens changed constantly. Bethel never knew when his turn would come. He crouched still, always in fear. Each group the guards took seemed to leave him behind, and that was in spite of the boy knowing slave caravans had been assembling for some days, one of which he guessed he'd be chained to very soon.
~~~
On this evening, as Bethel leaned against the railing unable to find room to sleep, two guards ambled past looking in disinterestedly. It was barely twilight, so the lantern they hooked to the pen wasn't necessary. Its feeble light, however, highlighted Bethel and one of the guards whistled.
"This one looks a likely boy," he commented.
"How'd we miss him before?" agreed the other, grinning. "The dirt barely disguises what'll be appreciated, eh?"
"Very pretty he is, isn't he?"
Bethel was unchained and hustled from the pen. The guards laughed heartily and gesticulated while he was handled, pushed from one to the other and hauled along between them. One spoke in the guttural language Bethel had learned to understand.
"He's filthy."
"We'll clean him a bit."
Bethel was pulled along for quite some distance beyond his pen, until abruptly he was yanked to a standstill. The method of cleaning him was very rough and the guards hurt him, but at least his face and upper body were no longer covered in a thick layer of grime. Naked from the waist up, he was taken to a smaller pen. Because it was now dark, Bethel couldn't see what was in there and stumbled over limbs that curled up to give him room. The two guards picked up a loose chain, locked the boy to the pen gate, and then, enormously pleased with themselves, sauntered away.
Bethel crept to the end of his chain and squatted, not daring to move for a while and conscious he now didn't even possess so much as a shirt. Then he realised he wasn't cramped as he'd been for so many weeks, and gingerly spread himself so that he was comfortable. Sobbing quietly, he finally drifted to sleep.
~~~
Late
that same evening, Lodestok took a leisurely stroll down to the youth pen. He was in the habit of looking in there before he retired and usually took one or two of the boys with him. Few of them lasted more than a night, at the most two; they either were marked for death or general slavery, or, most commonly, the warlord became so bored with them he handed them over to his warriors to do whatever they wished with them.
Where many southerners accepted relationships between males as commonplace, northerners didn't. No one in Lodestok's army thought his predilection for attractive boys at all odd, but what caused continuing speculation and awe was the brutality and cruelty with which he treated them. Every warrior knew Sarssen. Not one of them could pretend they hadn't seen the results of what his relationship with the warlord cost him.
On this particular evening, Bethel met his fate. The air was still warm and sultry without any sign of the drought, that had gripped Samar for weeks, breaking and giving relief. The warlord quickened his pace. He stopped at the youth pen without much interest. The boys were always in reasonable condition, if generally thin, chained certainly, but cleaned and fed. Lodestok unhooked the lantern that hung on the pen and casually held it over the five youths huddled there. He drew in his breath sharply. The lantern shook.
Lying there was a youthful adonis, no more than a boy, at most Lodestok calculated, ten or eleven cycles. The warlord had never sighted beauty to match this resting figure. The youngster's skin was flawless like creamed marble. Long jet curls, tangled now and lank, tumbled down around his shoulders and framed an oval, almost heart-shaped face that, in repose, the warlord saw was a classically moulded face of gentle beauty and innocence, though thin. His throat briefly constricted. The eyes, when open, were purple and hugely luminous; the mouth, sensuously full-lipped, curved upwards at the corners; and both neck and body were long and slender, even delicate, but as yet unformed and almost girlish. The eyelashes were preposterously long, thick and darkly curling, and when closed they splashed the soft cheeks, just as they did now. Long artistic fingers were relaxed. Lodestok was astonished to see such unsullied beauty lying there. His pulse raced.
He reached into the pen to the dozing boy, and, as he was thereafter to do, he rudely jerked up Bethel's head by grabbing his curls. The enormous velvety eyes opened directly into the warlord's and stared up, Lodestok barely able to restrain a gasp at the sight of them.
"What is your name, my beautiful little bud?" The boy didn't squirm, though the grip on his hair hurt.
"Bethel."
"Do you know who I am?"
"Yes."
"Yes 'my lord' is how you address me, little flower bud," purred Lodestok, punctuating this with a sharp tug on the boy's hair. He dropped a key at Bethel's feet. "Unlock your chains. You will come with me." Bethel obeyed immediately.
He was roughly hauled up and over the pen, to stand in front of the southern warlord. He was unable to see much of Lodestok because the warlord held the lantern over him, but what the boy did see, in outline, was a hugely muscular man, six feet seven inches tall in his bare feet, with a deep-barrelled chest and long blond hair that matched a very long and bushy red-gold beard and long silky moustache. From the figure surveying him, Bethel had a sense of overwhelming power, strength and authority. It made him feel very small and defenceless. The warlord looked long at the boy.
"Do you know why I want you?" Bethel nodded and then yelped when a large hand slapped him hard across a cheek. "What did you say, little bud?" Bethel put a hand to his smarting cheek.
"Yes, my lord."
"I doubt," was the contemptuous reply, "if you have any idea at all." Bethel quickly learned the value of discretion, stood respectfully still and made no answer. "You learn quickly, do you not, boy? That is very much better."
Lodestok pulled a fine gold chain from his breeches pocket, clipped it round Bethel's wrist and sauntered from the pen, tugging on the chain as he went. Bethel's heart hammered against his ribs. His mouth felt dry as he tried to keep up with this giant of a man, but the warlord's strides were such that he found it difficult. Every so often, Lodestok turned back and paused, waiting for the boy to come level with him, then gave Bethel an admonitory shove ahead of him. Bethel decided the only way to keep pace was to run, so he did. It kept him close to the warlord's heels. Lodestok glanced down and noticed this with some amusement, though he made no comment.
The dirt track stamped out to reach the slave pens gave way to cobbles and Bethel found himself trotting along the edge of the canals where only months earlier he'd argued here with his brothers over a catch, before all three indulged in a lazy fun-fight. The memory made him give a small sob. Then he decided, at that instant, that he wouldn't let the past affect the mind lessons Myme Chlo taught him. With a determination and maturity unusual in one so very young, he resolved to banish all thoughts of other than survival. He wasn't sure he would survive, because he'd heard enough of Lodestok to doubt he'd even see a new day. That brought a new dread and fear into his mind.
He suddenly stumbled and tripped on a broken paving stone. As he began to fall, he was held in an enormously powerful grip and swung round, in mid-air, to face the common that was several yards to his left. In the murky night gloom the boy could see silhouettes, some swinging gently from multiple gibbets and others hanging limply from crosses. Bethel felt gorge rise and quickly swallowed, deliberately staring without seeing. Abruptly, he was dropped to the ground. The contact jarred his teeth. He heard the soft, deep voice above him.
"Look and see what awaits you if you anger or displease me, little boy. Your life is worth very little, young bud. You should learn now what I can do to people and I want you to remember that I have chosen to own you." There was a long silence and then the warlord added, "As long as I want you."
It was a sinister rider that Bethel understood very well. He shivered, even though the night was very warm.
The campsite Bethel was led through was vaster than he could comprehend, with fires stretching into the distance as far as his night vision let him see, the noise and movement overwhelming for the boy because he'd adjusted to weeks of isolation and being cramped in a pen. He was confused and disoriented. When he was thrust through the entrance of a pavilion, the sudden lantern lights blinded him and again he stumbled, stood still uncertainly and blinked rapidly.
His eyes slowly focused. They fixed on the figure of another giant, blond man, whom he noticed was considerably younger than the warlord. This warrior stepped forward immediately, bending his head respectfully.
"My lord," he greeted the older man.
Lodestok unlocked the chain from Bethel's wrist, saying, "Witness what has just been found, young Sarssen."
Sarssen looked down with an expression of cynical curiosity. When Bethel looked shyly back at him, instantly Sarssen's expression changed and he deliberately moved so he wasn't in Bethel's immediate line of vision. Bethel didn't look at him again. He stared at the ground. The warlord lounged over to a deep and comfortable chair, sank into it and stretched.
"A pretty little fellow, is he not?" he asked affably.
"Certainly out of the common way," agreed Sarssen.
"Face me, boy." Bethel turned obediently. "Yes," mused Lodestok, stroking his whiskers, "A remarkably pretty young bud. You should clean quite well." He sat in the chair for some minutes and eyed Bethel. There was a noticeably feral and lascivious look in the warlord's pale eyes as he did so and his glance from the boy's head to his feet made Bethel feel naked. He blushed. "Ah, the child is modest as well. How delightful and refreshingly unusual. It will add piquancy to a relief of tedium that has made me feel somewhat jaded." Lodestok chuckled, but it didn't sound like the laughter Bethel had grown up with. "Now who would have thought it?" continued the amused voice. "Sarssen, you will have him prepared - one hour should suffice. And Sarssen, make it clearly understood he is for me. I will let it be known if he is to be made available in a general way."
"Certainly, my lord."
Lodestok
got to his feet and left the pavilion without a backward glance. Sarssen was left facing the boy.
Bethel stood motionless, but as soon as Sarssen made a move towards him, the boy retreated as far as he could. His eyes were wide and his lips trembled. Sarssen waited for the tears that invariably followed, but they didn't come. Instead Bethel lifted his head and swallowed hard, daring a quick look up at Sarssen from under his long lashes. He thought he saw a glint in the older man's eyes that looked like compassion, but it passed so quickly Bethel could never be sure he'd seen anything at all. Sarssen strode across to him and not unkindly tossed him easily over one shoulder.
The next hour surprised, embarrassed, and astonished Bethel. He was quickly stripped of filthy, torn rags and lifted into a large wooden tub, where his body was expertly washed by many hands and his hair cleaned by two slaves. After being quickly dried, he was made to stand still for body oil. He blushed deeply. The oil was highly scented and made him want to gag.
His nails, on both hands and feet, were manicured and painted. His ankles were linked with a comparatively short but fine, gold chain that was very strong. He tried surreptitiously to break the chain. It stayed firm. His ears were painfully pierced, twice on each lobe. It wasn't gently done and it made his eyes water. What surprised Bethel most was to see a slave produce heavy, ornate, two-inch long, filigree earrings that another slave took and hung from the boy's ears. The earrings were so heavy they pulled Bethel's head forward. His fingers were adorned with rings of precious stones and gold bracelets of various design ringed his arms up to his elbows.
His curly mane was roughly dried, brushed vigorously, and then powdered with a gold-flecked powder even more highly scented than the oil. Bethel wrinkled his nose distastefully then sneezed. His long curls were tightly plaited, before being wound round his head. This pulled on his neck and was most uncomfortable. Worse was to come when a slave torc, emblazoned with Lodestok's mark, was snapped about his neck. Bethel felt he'd find it impossible to move. The torc was wide. He knew what it signified and that he'd always wear it, because with chains it was simply another step into slavery.