The chances that we were bound for a bloody altar, to be slaughtered as offering to some savage god, was, therefore, highly unlikely. What was far more reasonable an explanation for the term “the Tribute” was that we were hostages en route to some warlike or savage tribe on the borders of the Bright Empire―a ransom paid in human lives for the safety of those borders. I knew little or nothing about the political situation in this distant corner of the world, but the explanation seemed likely. That meant, therefore, that with every step I was traveling further and further away from any chance at partaking in the raid on Zanadar and the rescue from captivity of the woman I loved.
Every two hours we were given a rest halt. We had a chance to relieve nature by the side of the road and to restore our energy, for the guardsmen passed around oiled skins of sour-tasting but gloriously welcome water. Twice that long, endless day we were given food―slices of dried meat and huge chunks of coarse black bread, moistened with a little resinous wine. It was not the custom of the Perushtarians to starve or mistreat their slaves; we were, after all, worth money.
By nightfall we had penetrated very far into the hill country north of Ganatol and were now among the foothills of the White Mountains themselves. We made camp under the brilliant moons in a vast valley. The Perushtarian guardsmen had obviously made this journey before, and knew exactly what to do. Bonfires were lit in a huge circle. Stakes were driven deep into the soil in the center of this circle, and we slaves lay down on the earth to sleep, while the guards unrolled their pallets and took up guard stations about the bright-lit perimeter of the circle of fires. There was no opportunity to escape, and, in all candor, I was so exhausted from the all-day overland march that I fell asleep the instant I stretched out. We must have covered forty miles that day, and I have never walked so much in all my life.
The next day was an exact duplicate of the first, with the slight exception that it was even harder going. Every muscle in my body throbbed with agony and the effort to keep limping along took all of the manhood I could muster. Many of the slaves chained to us and bound for the Tribute could not keep up the pace. These were the old, the ill, the crippled, and a few surly types, doubtlessly discarded to join the Tribute because they were malingerers or troublemakers. Those who could not keep going were bundled on the pack-thaptors and rode in the rear. They received no food that night, and on the third day of the march, had learned to limp along somehow.
I began to think about my chances of escaping. Thus far we had been traveling more or less in the direction I secretly wanted to go, which was toward Zanadar. But surely at any time now we would be heading off in some other direction, and at that point I would want to make my attempt. On the third day of the march I began to keep my eyes open for an opportunity to get away. I watched the guards covertly, trying not to attract their attention. They were bored and rode along on their restive steeds, chatting and joking idly among themselves, not paying very much attention to we slaves.
Before long, I noticed that another man in the chain gang was doing much the same as I. Trudging along, his head down as if dispirited, he was sneaking covert glances to right and left, noting the bored and inattentive guards. He was a Perushtarian, with the bright, tomato-red skin of his people, and the bald head, but whereas most Perushtarians tend to run to fat, he was powerfully built, without an ounce of superfluous weight.
Although no taller than myself―he came up to my chin, in fact―the fellow had broad, sloping shoulders, sheathed in massive thews, powerful hands, and bowed but sturdy legs. He looked like a dwarfed Hercules, and his features, when I got a good look at them, appealed to me. For while he was a remarkably ugly man, with a broad, lipless slash of a mouth, a thick neck, and heavy, scowling brows, his eyes were quick and bright with intelligence, and there was an untamed truculence in the set of his grim jaw. In short, he looked like a good comrade to have on your side in a fight.
That night I contrived to get myself chained next to him. This was a simple matter. We were unchained to relieve ourselves and receive rations, and were chained again for sleeping in whatever sequence we had fallen into. I jostled my way next to him when the time came for the guards to snap the night chains on our slave collars. And I was correct in my guess as to the squat, powerful, ugly little man’s intelligence. For he noticed what I did and shot me a thoughtful, searching glance from under scowling brows. I grinned frankly and openly back at him, as if to say “That’s right―I did it deliberately.”
While the guardsmen got us settled down for the night I let him look me over. He could see that I was healthy and fit and alert enough, and from my demeanor he could doubtless ascertain that I was not one of the many whose fighting manhood has been drained from them by the condition of servitude. Once the guards were bedded down, at some distance away, I spoke to him in a low tone, without moving my lips.
“You look strong. Are you strong enough to break these chains?”
“Maybe,” he growled back. “You look like a man with some guts still left in you. Got enough to make a break for it, if we get a chance?”
I nodded. “My name is Darjan,” I said.
“Mine is Ergon,” he replied. “Where did you get that yellow hair?”
“From my mother,” I said; then, with a glance at his bald bullet-head―`Where did you get yours’?”
He grinned, and with that grin I liked the man. For his ugly froglike face, which normally wore a sullen and truculent expression, lightened when he smiled, and humor sparkled in his eyes. I wondered who he was, and how he had kept his courage and humor and self-esteem during a lifetime of slavery. I longed to learn lids story, but just then one of the guards yelled at us to stop talking, and we exchanged one silent grin, rolled over, and slept.
The next day we were chained together and managed to converse in low tones during the long march, while the inattentive guards were not near.
I discovered that Ergon had, as I had first surmised, been born to slavery, but had been raised in an indulgent household by a master considerably more kind and humane than the normal run of slave-keepers in the Bright Empire.
He was not a native of Narouk at all, it seemed, but had been born in the capital of the Bright Empire itself, the city of Glorious Perusht, as they call it, on the island of the same name, amid the waters of the Corund Laj. The kindly master in whose household he had grown up was named Idolon. He must have been a curious oddity among the greedy, gold-hungry oligarchs of Perushtar, for he was more philosopher than merchant, and, although a remarkably wealthy man, more interested in adding to his superb collection of rare books than to the coins in his coffers.
This lord Idolon, it seemed, regarded the institution of slavery as a barbarity unworthy of a genuine civilization. In that opinion he must have been truly alone among his fellow merchant princes. At any rate, while he did not quite dare risk offending against caste and tradition by freeing his slaves, he encouraged them to consider themselves as the equals of free men, and to resist the spirit-sapping and dehumanizing degradations of their sorry state.
He did not last very long, it seems. A coalition of Perushtarian merchant lords ruined him, and drove him into bankruptcy, whereupon his possessions―including his slaves―went on the auction block. But Ergon, then a youth, remembered lord Idolon and did not take well to being resold. He escaped and, before being recaptured, managed to assassinate three of the five conspirators who had destroyed his master. Only his value as human merchandise prevented his captors from executing him. He was resold into Narouk, became the property of the House of Ildth, and underwent training as a public gladiator, due to his remarkable strength. But he proved sullen and unruly, and was sent many times to the whipping post for his infractions against the rules of his servitude. On the last such occasion he turned on his tormentor, broke his chains―and the neck of the man who wielded the whip. Since the Tribute had fallen on lord Cham that month, his owners, unwilling to tolerate such a dangerous man in the midst of their generally spineless collection of human cattle, sold him off at a low price to the Iskelions.