He stared up at her. “I don’t recognise you, lass, but it is as you say.”
“What are you doing here?”
“The same as all do that are prisoners. We work the fields, growing food for the friends of the Evil One.”
He sounded subdued, beaten. There was no vestige of hope in his face.
Drosh laughed. “You see what a piece of luck you had in meeting me, girl! Do as you’re told, or you too might end up in the compound.”
The horse moved forward, leaving Borrow to turn away and resume his place on the cold earth. A snarling sort of music started up somewhere, a twanging of strings and the harsh bellow of some crude reed instrument. Seeing Borrow had momentarily saddened Histrina. Pangs of guilt rose in her; the camp faded before her eyes, and involuntarily she found herself thinking again of Courhart and of her family.
Then she thrust the thoughts from her mind and let her senses bathe in what was around her. They arrived before a tent larger than the others, before which two men sat at a large trestle table eating bread and meat and drinking from flagons constantly refilled by ragged girl servants.
Drosh and Histrina dismounted and Drosh tied his horse to a hitching post. He saluted the larger of the men at the table, who glanced up carelessly as he wiped meat juices from his plate with a piece of bread.
“So you’re back, eh, Drosh? Well, what did you find?”
“Much as I hoped, master. Jong village is poorly defended. It’s been too long since they were set upon, and they’ve grown careless.”
“Good. We’ll teach them a lesson in vigilance, then, eh? And have plenty of sport doing it.” The man’ s eye fell on Histrina. “What have you here? Is she from Jong?”
“No, master. She’s from Courhart. I found her wandering. I sense she has a taste for our style of life.”
The man Drosh had called ‘master’ rose and walked round the table. Histrina smelled sour wine on his breath as he stroked her smudged cheek.
He was a large, powerful man whose personal aura made him seem even more frightening than Drosh.
Like everyone else in the camp he was flamboyantly garbed. She was dazzled by the gleaming-cloth-of-gold of his embroidered tunic.
“Courhart,” he murmured, frowning. “It’s right on the other side of Erspia—the furthermost of all the villages. Maybe we’ll crush Courhart soon, my dear, and you can enjoy yourself torturing any you dislike there.”
She shrank back, appalled by the thrill of anticipation the suggestion brought her. He caught hold of her by the throat, his huge hand squeezing her windpipe, and drew her close so that his face seemed to bulge.
“If you want to be one of us,” he hissed, “you must worship Ahriman with all your heart. If he tells you to subject those who have displeased you to indignity, torture and death, you must do it with delight. If he tells you to do the same to those you once held dear, you must enjoy that, too.”
He turned to the smaller man who still sat at the table, looking on expressionlessly. “Here, Laedo, you’ve proved uncommonly fastidious over our women so far. This one still seems to have scruples—maybe you’ll like her.”
He shoved Histrina forward. Drosh pursed his lips and caught the big man’s eye.
“Oh come, Drosh, let’s be generous. Give Laedo a little gift. I’ll pay you for the girl. Tell you what, when we take Jong you can have first pick of all the women; select the five prettiest little wenches for yourself, how about that, eh?”
Drosh nodded. The master put a familiar arm around his shoulders. “Come and see what I’ve got lined up for tonight. It will amuse you.”
The two wandered off. Histrina, her eyes demurely downcast, seated herself beside Laedo.
He was a sharp-faced man quite unlike any other she had ever seen. His nose was unusually thin, not flat and wide like most people’s. His skin, too, was very pale, and the cast of his eyes was odd.
Still, he was not unattractive; but he seemed dour and uncomfortable, as if he didn’t much like being where he was.
“I’m yours now,” she said softly when he did not speak. She was uneasy at the readiness with which Drosh had dropped her. She realized that she needed someone to look after her.
A scream came from somewhere, ending in a note of choking agony. Laedo shuddered, and gulped down more wine as if it could shut off the sound.
“You’re not mine,” he said. “You can do as you like. You’re free.”
Histrina’s face fell. She looked at the turmoil of the camp, wondering if she could make her way in it without being murdered or else consigned to the compound. Perhaps she would automatically be consigned there anyway, once she no longer had a protector.
“I don’t mind being yours,” she said in a small voice.
He grunted.
She said nothing for a while, and then an incident at the nearest campfire caught her attention. A fight had started up between two gaudily bedizened youths. A third joined in, quickly helping to subdue one of the others.
This unfortunate was then pushed towards the fire. His head was forced down to the flames and glowing embers. He shrieked as his hair and clothing caught fire and his flesh singed. Still they held him fast while his struggles grew ever more frantic and he was roasted alive.
No one around did anything to try to prevent it.
Histrina watched in fascination. Laedo groaned and staggered to his feet.
“I can’t watch this. I’m off.”
He loped swiftly round the tent and into the darkness. Histrina hesitated, then ran after him.
“Can’t I come with you?” she called.
“If you like.”
They were not far from the edge of the camp. The firelight grew dim and soon they were on untrodden turf. Still Laedo kept going, on into the night.
With difficulty she kept pace with him. He did nothing to acknowledge her, but neither, apparently, did he object to her presence.
“Where are we going?”
“To my ship.”
“Ship?” The word was strange to her. “What’s that?”
He didn’t answer.
“That man,” she said a few yards on, “why does Drosh call him master?”
“They all do. He is the High Priest of the Forces of Darkness.”
She was quick to catch the personal pronoun. “They? Don’t you, then?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t come from here. I’m from another world.”
“Another world?” She slowed down, puzzled. “I didn’t know there was another world.”
Laedo barked a harsh laugh. “Don’t you know what this place is, you little fool? This Erspia, as you call it? It isn’t a world at all, in the proper sense. It’s a planetoid, no more than thirty or forty miles in diameter, with a gravity generator in the centre. It’s a set-up.”
His words made no more sense to her than had Drosh’s explanation of the speeded-up days and nights.
But now some sort of hump-formed building loomed out of the darkness, and Laedo was making for it.
By the starlight she saw that it seemed to be made not of brick or timber, but of metal.
There was no ground-level door. Metal steps mounted about five feet, where there were the seams of a panel. Laedo mounted these steps and tugged open a door. A light, already burning within, sent a bright shaft into the darkness.
Histrina followed him. After the door came a short passage, and then the strangest room she had ever seen. In some ways it was like the priest’s confessional room, for there were no windows. The light, though… the lamp was a strip, set in the ceiling, and she couldn’t see how it worked. Also, since this lamp was already lit, she had imagined there would be people here, but the place was empty. There was a table set against the wall, but on it were not household utensils, but an array of odd-looking shapes, which seemed to be fastened down to it. Other odd-looking objects adorned the walls. There were also some chairs, but Laedo sank down on a low couch large enough to take two.