Vendurro offered me his saddle to lean against while I worked. I thanked him, asking why he wouldn’t need it.
He rolled up his sleeves and gave his toothy grin. “Worse jobs than oiling harness.” Then he disappeared into the wagon and returned holding a shovel, a smaller spade, and a large sack, full of something. Vendurro tried handing the spade and sack to Glesswik, who argued that he should have the shovel and no sack instead. The pair moved off several feet into the short grass, bickering.
I leaned back against Vendurro’s saddle and dipped a rag into the oil and began working it into the leather.
Hewspear was leaning against his saddle, carving away at a flute. Mulldoos was working his falchion across a whetstone in deliberate strokes, oiling as he went. Braylar was replacing some scales on his cuirass that had been damaged during the wagon attack in the Green Sea. He worked a large needle and sinew through the brass scales, connecting them to the other scales in the row and also to the leather backing.
While Glesswik and Vendurro didn’t seem to know how to do anything without running commentary about how big an ass the other was, the other Syldoon went about their tasks in relative silence, with only Hewspear humming quietly. Figuring this was as good a time as any to try to get some more information, I said, “You might’ve guessed by now, but I’m not Anjurian. So I’ve never had direct dealings with your kind before, and-”
“What kind is that?” Mulldoos asked, swiping his thick blade across the whetstone. “Can’t wait to hear this.”
I rubbed the oil into the leather a little harder. “The Syldoon, I mean. I don’t know much about you. I’ve only heard stories really.”
“About how we eat virgins? And babies?” Mulldoos laughed, clearly enjoying my discomfort.
Vendurro stopped bickering long enough to hear the exchange and added, “Or at least our mothers. Heard that a time or two.” He jammed his shovel into the ground and pushed it in deeper with his heel.
I tried again, “Well, I know you’re slave soldiers, but-”
“Then you know horseshit, scribbler.” Mulldoos shook his head, the blade running along the stone again with an unnerving “skiiiiit.”
“I thought-”
“We all been freed,” Glesswik called over, his smaller spade plunging into the earth. “Rite of manumission. Every Syldoon goes through it.”
“They make it that far, they do.” Mulldoos said.
Braylar added, “Agreed. It’s a rough tenyear indeed.”
I looked at the wrinkled leather straps, wondering if they would ever be properly saturated. “So, how does it work exactly? You were taken as slaves, and then what? What happened during the tenyear?”
Mulldoos pressed a thumb against one side of his nose and blew snot out the other. It didn’t miss me by much. “Weren’t taken. Given.” I raised an eyebrow and he continued, “Our people gave us to them, when we were children. Been a couple of centuries since the Syldoon needed to raid for slaves.”
I asked, “Why would your people do that? And what people were those exactly?”
Hewspear held his flute up to his eye and looked down its length. He shook his head, not satisfied with his work. “The hinterlands, my young friend. We all hailed from lands far from the center of the empire.”
Mulldoos laughed. “Oh gods. You wanted a history lesson, scribbler, you got the right windmill for the job. This ought to be good.”
Hewspear set the flute in his lap and ran his hand through his black and gray beard. “Before the Syldoon were the Syldoon, there was a king, hundreds of years ago, named Hulsinn, who ruled over lands far to the west of here, a country called Oliad. Oliad was surrounded by hostile, barbaric people. On all sides, sporadic warfare and trembling borders. But Hulsinn was clever-he knew attrition wouldn’t favor Oliad-every time he turned his attention to one border, another one was overrun. So, being a far-thinker, he devised a far-reaching plan. He began raiding the camps of his enemies, stealing their children in the middle of the night, and-”
“Didn’t eat any, though.” Vendurro kept digging.
“-enslaving them. But he didn’t waste them in the fields or in construction of gaudy monuments, as is often the case with slaves. No. He trained them. A decade of intense military instruction, a tenyear of constant propaganda. Brought in as boys from barbarian tribes-prideful, ill-mannered, already proficient in weapons and familiar with warfare, they were transformed into disciplined, merciless men who knew how to kill even more efficiently as part of a unit. And they were taught to hate their homeland. Each year Hulsinn enslaved more. And a decade later, when he deemed the first group battle-ready, he set them loose against his enemies, against their old families, their old people. Their enemies now. Hulsinn led them into battle himself. They fought like mad dogs. And his borders trembled no more.”
“Riveting.” Skiiiiiiiiiiit.
I considered everything Hewspear said, and then asked, “But Mulldoos said you were given as slaves. Raiding wasn’t necessary any more. I still don’t understand why parents would give up their children to their overlords so willingly.”
“Like I said,” skiiiiiiiiiit, “you know horseshit. Where you from, boy? By the coloring, I’d say Vulmyria. Maybe Urvace, am I right?”
I had no idea what my father looked like, but I’d clearly inherited the fair skin and hair from my mother anyway, which did little enough to disguise blushes of any kind. “I was born in a road inn, if you must know, but it was on the border of Vulmyria, yes.”
He stopped sharpening and laughed. “Bastard boy, I’m guessing.” I colored up worse as he continued. “Got nothing against bastards-no worse or better than most, on the whole-but uppity provincial bastards who think they know something when they know shit all… well, that’s altogether different, ain’t it? So I’m curious, where do you get off telling us what we’re about when you got no experience on the subject?”
Braylar pricked his finger and sucked at the blood before saying, “In fairness, Lieutenant, our good scholar was asking questions, not making proclamations.” He turned to me. “To a parent in the hinterlands, plagued by constant warfare with other tribes or clans, often scraping and scrapping to simply survive another day, this was an opportunity that would never occur otherwise. They hoped their sons and daughters would become rich or powerful after they were freed. And as time passed, they began to see it as an honor if their children were chosen when the recruiters made their annual visit, and from this uneasy understanding, established the tradition of holding Choosings.
“Make no mistake, the children still enter slavery of a sort-they’ll have no choices for the next ten years, and their days will be spent in obedience. But they’re also not slaves in the typical sense of the word. In many parts of this world, a slave is a creature who is choiceless, but futureless as well. They tend a field, or mine the earth, or pull the galley oar, and that is what they’ll die doing. Even the best-off of them, they clean their master’s teeth and ears, wash the dirt and shit from their smallclothes, perhaps serve as objects of pleasure, and they’ll die doing that as well. There’s no movement for a slave. They begin and end their lives in the exact same spot.
“But Syldoon slaves are different creatures. For the ten years after they’re chosen, they have neither voice nor choice, but they don’t do the same thing endlessly. Oh, they do their fair share of physical labor, mucking stables, scrubbing pots, butchering hogs, carrying wood and stone-”
“Cleaning latrines, shining officer’s boot, digging holes, always digging more holes…” Vendurro offered as he leveraged a large chunk of earth out of the ground and moved it to the side.