“Ready for the other one or do you need a break?” Hrarrh’s sudden concern for my well-being was more terrifying than his previous open sadism. He was going to restore me to health and then do it all over again.
He saw the doubt in my eyes and grinned wolfishly. “I’ll show you!” He signaled to the cat and a paw flashed. I flinched and then peered down at my foot. There was a single, faint red line on it, but the skin was unbroken. I looked up again at Hrarrh in bewilderment.
“You made her cut deep before?”
He nodded, still grinning. “She’s the best-trained pet in the mine. I showed them a thing or two about cats!”
“But…but why?”
“To make you bleed lots. You look much, much worse than you really are. You’d have needed a hundred times as many normal scratches to bleed like that. No one’s looked close, right?”
Again, hope squirmed very softly as I tried to believe.
“I had to do it this way, Knobil! They think I went mad in there.” He glowered. “This is costing me, too—I’m in big trouble for spoiling a good slave. I was only supposed to have a little fun with you, but you trailed blood all the way out to the paddock… Even my wife heard you, back in her kitchen.”
“That wasn’t what you said when you were doing it!”
“But you’re not nearly as bad as you look, as long as you don’t get fever in the cuts. You sounded real bad and you look real bad. What the traders will do with you, I don’t know. But certainly you’ve got a better chance of escaping from them than you have from us.”
At last the torment of the licking ended. Hrarrh glanced around at the hot bright paddock, littered now with sleeping slaves. Outside, in the main compound, ants were going about their business as usual, but the other shift’s barrow had not yet appeared.
“Right.” He grinned uneven teeth at me. “Let’s go!” Unwanted slaves not publicly executed just vanished inexplicably. Now I was about to do the same, and no one would know where I had gone.
My heart beat insanely as I reeled along behind him. At the gate he retrieved his package and pointed with it—pointed away from the mine, toward the road. The road to freedom? Keeping my legs stiff, quivering as violently as I had during the worst moments of his tortures, I stumbled forward, hearing his boots behind me, knowing that the panther was there also.
At the end of the long ridge of tailings stood a big shed, used to hold supplies. Hrarrh directed me in behind it, out of general view. Grinning again, he unrolled the bundle to reveal shabby old leather trousers and a pair of tattered boots.
“Traders don’t like damaged goods,” he said. “Try not to bleed any more until they’ve shaken hands on a price for you.”
The traders were real. Two of them stood with three ants, a short way down the road. That must be why I had never seen them before—they were not admitted to the main compound. But they were certainly the same sort of traders I had seen in my youth—smart little men in ornate leather garments, decorated with brightly colored beadwork and pipings and tassels. They had curved-brim hats and neatly trimmed mustaches and pointed beards. Traders!
This was real!
My brain seemed to fade away. I registered only vaguely that a team of horses nearby was being burdened with sacks, that bales were being loaded and unloaded and carried around. This was real—I was going to escape! Shaking uncontrollably, I stood with eyes downcast until one of the traders snapped, “Look at me, slave!
“Blue as blue,” he admitted. “What’s wrong with him, Minemaster? He seems healthy enough.”
“Lost his spirit,” one of the ants growled. “Used to be a good worker. What’s he doing now, Hrarrh?”
“Two short last shift, sir,” my benefactor mumbled. Then he whined, “I think I can scratch more sense into him, if you’ll give me another chance, sir.”
“One more chance and you’d kill him!”
The discussion wandered around, and so did my wits. I was going! Freedom! Or at least another form of slavery. Nothing could be worse than the mine—nothing!
“As Our Lady Sun is my witness,” the trader said. I remembered the words from my childhood, but this time it was me who had just been sold. The two men shook hands and one of them mentioned paper.
Hrarrh coughed deferentially. “Do you wish him hobbled, sir?”
The trader said, “What? Oh yes, please.” He went back to complaining about how difficult it was to find paper, because the only good paper came from Heaven, but he did happen to have…
Hrarrh gave me a shove and pointed farther down the road, toward the horses. I stumbled off ahead of him. I was leaving. My life could start again. Whatever use traders had for wetlanders, whatever value wetlanders had for traders, nothing could be worse than the mine. Never again need I crawl down into that cramped dark hell…
“Here!” Hrarrh barked behind me, pulling my fluttering mind back to reality. We were almost down to the vegetable fields, standing between the pony corral and the tannery outside a big shack they called the machine shed. It was issuing loud clanging noises, as always. This was where the smiths worked.
“Master?”
He laughed and suddenly clapped a hard hand on my shoulder. “I’m not your master any longer, Knobil!”
“You’re my friend!” I said, trying to suppress sudden tears.
“Yes, I’m your friend. And you were mine also, when I needed one.”
“Hrarrh!” My voice cracked. “My friend! Hrarrh—”
“Calm down! It was my pleasure, Knobil, truly! Now, there’s one last thing to do…”
I choked, suddenly wary. “What?”
He grinned at my nervousness. “Traders don’t have cats to guard their slaves. They use fetters.”
He gestured to his panther to sit by the door, while his strong damp grip on my shoulder eased me into the shed—loud and impossibly hot despite the dim shade. Three or four ants were apparently trying to make as much noise as possible with hammers and rasps, raising dust. A grotesquely thick youth was grinding a plowshare on a treadle just inside the entrance. His shoulders were remarkable even by ant standards, burying his bald head in muscle up to the ears, making his beard protrude straight out from the top of his chest. In any other race he would have been regarded as deformed.
“The traders just bought this,” Hrarrh told him. “They want it hobbled.”
The smith looked me over without expression, wiping his forehead with a bushy arm. He nodded his head to indicate direction. “Put it on the anvil.”
“Lie down,” he said, out of the smith’s earshot, “and put your ankles up here. Don’t look so worried, Knobil! I’m not going to hurt you, promise!”
Still alternating wildly between hope and distrust, I lowered myself gingerly to the floor and lifted my feet, wincing at the pain in my thighs and wondering if the movement would tip pools of blood from my boots.
Hrarrh went around to the side of the anvil and took a firm grip on my ankles, adjusting my calves across it. “Can you flatten out?” he asked. “Raise your knees?”
I had no choice, for he was levering hard and also pulling. I curled myself until my shins were level and my buttocks high off the floor. Something sharp dug into my neck and shoulders. I pushed down with my hands to relieve the stress on my abdomen. My thighs stung where the muscles flexed, and if Hrarrh thought he was not hurting my lacerated calves…
He looked content then, smiling down at me fondly. I did not like that sleepy smile.
“I didn’t tell you, did I, Knobil, that I’m a father now?”
“Congratulations…” If he was going to put fetters on me, then why was he not removing my boots?