«I cannot forget,» she whispered one night. «I will not forget. I do not want to forget until I have killed Cha-Chern with my own hands. After that I may forget. For now, I will do anything you say must be done.»
Blade kissed her gently and held her for a moment in silence. That was all he could do without the guards noticing and Cha-Chern making lewd jokes. In that case Blade didn't completely trust himself to keep his own hands off Cha-Chern's throat.
Cha-Chern not only made lewd jokes, he caressed Meera and struck Blade whenever he thought Ho-Marn wasn't looking. That wasn't too often, as Ho-Marn was the kind of officer who seemed to be in about six places at once. When Cha-Chern did get his opportunities, the other soldiers who saw him said nothing. Cha-Chern was an officer of the Protector's Guard, whatever that was, and this seemed to make everybody but Ho-Marn afraid of him.
From overhearing the talk of the soldiers, Blade was able to reconstruct the events leading up to Meera's and his capture. The soldiers were part of a raiding expedition coming up the Fak'si River from a temporary base at the point where the Yellow River flowed into the Great River. They'd been stopping to repair some leaky canoes when they heard the sound of the fight against the Treemen in the distance.
In the hope of capturing the survivors of the fight, the soldiers promptly set off in the direction of the noise. They arrived just in time to capture Blade and Meera. The bodies lying around and the fight Blade put up convinced them that a large party of Forest People was close at hand. There would be no slaves to be taken along this stretch of the Fak'si River this time, at least not without a savage fight. So the raiders were now on their way home, almost empty-handed.
Blade got a grim laugh out of this story. If he and Meera hadn't stayed around to arrange the bodies naturally, they would have been gone before the Sons of Hapanu arrived. On the other hand, by arranging the bodies they'd prevented the Sons of Hapanu from carrying out a slave raid and perhaps killing or carrying off many of the Forest People. Blade and Meera's bad luck had been good luck for others.
As far as Blade could tell, none of the soldiers had noticed the new laminated bows. Hopefully these were still a secret. If Blade or Meera could escape, they might still be an unpleasant surprise to the Sons of Hapanu.
The raiders paddled down the Fak'si River and then the Yellow for six days before reaching their base camp. Meera's face set into a grim mask when she saw the camp. It had the look of an American frontier fort, with log walls, solid huts and barracks, and a fleet of canoes and small sailing ships.
«The Sons of Hapanu grow bold, and think we in the Forest grow weak. They have never built so strongly this far upriver. The raids we have seen before now will be nothing to what we shall see when they raid from this place.» If looks could have started fires; Meera's expression would have burned the enemy camp to the ground.
As the canoes approached the camp, Ho-Marn squatted down beside Blade for a few private words. «It would be best that you and your woman do as the other slaves do now. Otherwise, you will attract the notice of the Protector's men. Here I can no longer guard you from them.»
«It shall be as you wish.» He still wanted to know who the Protector was, but this wasn't the time to ask. If most of the Protector's men were like Cha-Chern, it was certainly best to play things safe.
«Good. If I do not have to risk myself against the Protector's men, I can do much for you later. I can see that you go at once to the Games. I can also see that your woman goes to a Happy House where there are women of the Forest like her.»
Again Blade nodded. Sending Meera to a brothel would be an unpleasant business at best, but if she went to one where some of the other women were Forest People, she would at least find it easier to stay alive and sane.
There might be a catch, of course. For a slave there usually was. He didn't know why Ho-Marn was offering this protection, or whether the man could be trusted. He did know that without Ho-Marn's protection he and Meera would be very badly off indeed, so they had practically nothing to lose by trusting the officer, at least for now.
When they reached the camp, Blade and Meera were separated. Meera was led off to what seemed to be the camp kitchen, while Blade was taken to a low-ceilinged, reeking barracks and chained to the wall. He stayed there for ten days, except for two hours each day when he was taken outside for a meal and exercise. He kept his eyes and ears open while he was out, and he also spent a good deal of time watching and listening at the chinks in the wall of the barracks.
There were about three hundred men in the camp. Raiding parties went upriver and convoys with captured slaves or men returning to Gerhaa went downriver at regular intervals. Otherwise the men seldom left the camp, and most of them drank, gambled, or quarreled to fight off boredom.
Many of the quarrels were between what appeared to be the regular soldiers such as Ho-Marn and the Protector's Guards such as Cha-Chern. The Protector's Guard seemed to be an elite military force under the direct orders of the Protector of Gerhaa. Their officers all wore leather outfits like Cha-Chern's, and even the common soldiers had enameled mail shirts and swords with gilded hilts.
In spite of their privileges and fancy equipment, Blade wasn't impressed by the «Protector's Pets.» Their weapons were dirty, their discipline was poor, many of their officers were usually drunk, and the rest seemed to spend half their time perfuming their hair and applying cosmetics. Blade heard it said that the best way to become an officer in the Guard was by sleeping with the Protector.
The hostility between the Guardsmen and the regulars was as thick in the camp as the smell of the river. Blade realized that here was a weakness in the apparently invincible Stone Village of the Sons of Hapanu. So far the two factions of the city's defenders had been willing to stand together against the Forest People. Could that be changed?
Perhaps. And even if it couldn't, the rivalry might increase Blade's and Meera's chances for survival and escape. Ho-Marn had been willing to let Blade and Meera be together simply to annoy Cha-Chern. Other regular officers might be willing to do even more.
On the eleventh day, Blade and Meera were chained with forty other slaves and loaded aboard a small sailing ship. It had two masts with lateen sails, a long bowsprit, a high castle on the stern, and twelve long sweeps on each side.
Amidships was a stinking black hold, and in that hold Blade and Meera sailed down the Great River to Gerhaa, the Stone Village of the Sons of Hapanu.
Chapter 15
Blade expected that the Forest People's tales exaggerated Gerhaa's size and strength. After all, they weren't used to cities, fortresses, or stone walls. He found that they hadn't exaggerated very much. The city was at least a mile on a side, its gray stone walls studded with towers and each tower mounting a huge catapult. On the land side, the walls rose thirty feet above a twenty-foot ditch. On the river side the walls were only half as high, but below them rocky cliffs dropped almost vertically fifty feet to the river. There were cranes and pulleys on the walls for hauling up heavy cargo from the quays along the river, and in three places winding wooden stairs. Otherwise there was no way up the cliffs.
The slave ship furled her sails at the entrance to the harbor and came in under her sweeps. The harbor lay along the city's southern side, between the bank of the Great River and a long narrow island. The island was not only narrow, it was so low that at high tide or during the spring floods it was hardly more than a chain of sandbanks. Most of the time it protected the harbor from both the current of the Great River and storms coming up from the sea. Three stone forts, perched on the highest points of the island, kept the Forest People's canoes from slipping in through the channels at high water and raiding shipping in the harbor.