He stopped and looked down at Alexander, who sat resting against the tree. “Looks like you got lucky today.”
“There are a lot of ways I might characterize today … lucky isn’t one of them.”
Udane chuckled. “Mount up with another soldier and try not to fall off this time. Hate to have to put you down because you broke your leg.”
Just before the sun slipped past the coastal range behind them, Alexander got his first look at the scope of the Lancers’ operation. Several hundred feet beyond the wood line, stretching as far as he could see in both directions, was a timber wall. Behind it was a large fortified camp divided into two sections, one with walls to keep the Lancers safe from attack and another with walls to ensure that their prisoners didn’t escape.
Despite the blatant immorality and inherent dishonor of the Lancers, they were a well-regulated and disciplined fighting force. Rank was obeyed and they carried themselves with pride. These were professional soldiers, and all the more dangerous because of it.
Alexander and Kalderson’s men were taken to the prison camp. While the soldiers certainly didn’t show them any respect, they were handled with the kind of care given to a valuable commodity as they were processed and assigned sleeping quarters.
Alexander soon found himself in a large tent with eleven other men, most of them Andalians. A soldier assigned him to his cot and informed him that the evening meal would be served shortly.
He lay down, ignoring the rest of the men in the tent and cleared his mind. Several moments later, he slipped free of his body into the boundless source of all creation and then just as quickly he slammed back into his body again, struggling to breathe, gasping for air, the collar around his neck relaxing its death grip a moment after he returned. He breathed deliberately, filling his lungs to capacity and exhaling slowly until his heart stopped racing.
The next man over was sitting on the edge of his cot looking at Alexander intently. “That shouldn’t have happened unless you’re a wizard … and then only if you’re dumb enough to try and cast a spell with that choker around your neck.”
Alexander sat up shaking his head, the implications of the man’s words sinking in even as he floundered for a plausible explanation. The last thing he needed was for anyone to figure out who he really was.
“Udane said he was going to punish me for trying to run,” he said, touching his neck tenderly.
“We all try to run.”
“Yeah, but I busted him in the mouth when he caught me.”
The man looked at him for several moments before a smile slowly spread across his face and he broke into laughter. He was a mousy little man, five and a half feet tall and just over a hundred pounds, but he had curiosity in his eyes and deep turmoil and loss swirling in his colors.
“I’m Hod,” he said, extending his hand.
Alexander took it and said, “I’m Alex.”
“You don’t look like you’re from Andalia, Alex.”
“I’m not. My sister and I booked passage out of Southport, bound for Baden in Tyr. The war is getting bad on Ruatha and we have kin on Baden. Unfortunately, we were attacked by pirates and our ship wrecked on the reef. We barely made it to shore.”
Hod nodded cynically. “Doesn’t surprise me. The Babachenko and Tyr have an arrangement. Any ship off our coast that’s not flying the Andalian flag is fair game for Tyr. He attacks them, runs them to ground and then lets the crew escape into the forest, while he strips their ship of anything worth taking. Then the Lancers round up the castaways and sell them at the slave market.”
“This place just keeps getting better. So who’s this Babachenko?”
“You really aren’t from around here,” Hod said. “He’s the Voice of the King, the real power behind the throne. The most important thing to know about him is that you don’t want him to know anything about you. Slaves who attract his attention have a bad habit of disappearing.”
“Good to know,” Alexander said, mentally adding a name to his list.
In the distance, a bell tolled three times and Hod stood, rubbing his hands together. “Time to eat,” he said eagerly. “As much as I hate the Lancers, I have to admit they do feed us well. Certainly a lot better than we’ve had since the sequestration started.”
“They feed cows and pigs pretty well, too, right before they take them to market,” Alexander said under his breath.
***
After dinner, the slaves returned to the tent, not because the Lancers required them to, but because they had nowhere else to go. Alexander got the impression that the Lancers were indifferent to the prisoners’ conditions. Their only real concerns were ensuring that their merchandise wasn’t damaged and didn’t escape.
Alexander noted that the women were being kept separately from the men, probably a wise precaution from the Lancers’ point of view, but it left him separated from Anja and he was worried about her. For all of her strength and fierceness, she was really just a child and she was very much out of her depth. More calculatingly, Alexander also had to admit that she posed the greatest risk of exposure for him and his identity. At the moment, the only thing they had going for them was anonymity. If anyone even suspected who he really was, things would get much worse very quickly.
He lay down on his cot and reached out for Chloe.
“Have you looked in on Anja?”
“Yes, My Love. She seems frightened and alone. I’m worried about her.”
“Me too. When you get a chance to talk to her without others noticing, let her know that I haven’t forgotten about her, but that we’re going to be here for a while and I need her to be strong, I need her to avoid calling attention to herself and I need her to play the role of the obedient slave.”
“I will tell her, My Love. Jack has retrieved your armor and he’s also discovered people resisting the Lancers in this area.”
“I saw them, too.”
“He wants to know if he should make contact with them.”
“No. As much as I’d like to help these people, we just aren’t in a position to do so right now and I can’t risk Jack being exposed or captured. Our objective here is the destruction of the Andalian government and especially the king and his precious Crown.”
“I will tell him, My Love.”
“One more thing, Little One. I can’t touch the firmament with this collar around my neck, so let him know that I’ll have to relay messages through you.”
“Yes, My Love. Stay safe,” she said in his mind.
And then he was alone with his thoughts. “You still awake, Hod?”
“Yeah, it takes me longer to fall asleep here. I guess I just don’t feel safe.”
“I know what you mean,” Alexander said. “Tell me more about Andalia.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Why the Lancers are starving out this province, for starters.”
“Well, that depends a lot on who you ask,” Hod said. “The government says it’s to protect the people from bandits and insurrectionists, but most of the people in the areas ruled off-limits say it’s to make it easier for the Lancers to collect taxes and dictate terms to the people.”
“Who are these insurrectionists?”
“Mostly it’s just people who didn’t leave their homes when they were told to. When they didn’t leave, the Lancers came in and cut off trade, so they turned to banditry to feed their families. The government points to the crime happening in the area as justification for the sequestration that caused the banditry in the first place.”
“So this province isn’t the first to be starved out?”
“No, this is the third,” Hod said. “It all started when Phane woke. The king decreed that all taxes would double to pay for the defense of Andalia against the pretender. The people living in the plains didn’t have much choice, but those of us living in more rugged areas mostly ignored the order. Lancers were sent to collect the taxes, but a lot of them never returned. The government responded by stirring up the people in the cities, telling them that the bandits were stealing children and other nonsense. When the people didn’t believe them, children started to actually go missing. It wasn’t long after that, that the people started demanding emergency measures to deal with the threat.