8th Bell - 17th Day of Winter, 515AV - Seven Days West of Sunberth
Fangor knew better than to let the punishment wait.
In his experience, disciplining slaves was the same as with dogs: leave it too long between infraction and punishment, and the dumb beasts might forget what it is they've done wrong. Better to be prompt with the lash, and public about it. Not just a penalty, which effected one or maybe two, but an example to all.
He knew it and he'd stood by it for years and so that was half the reason he was cursing himself that morning. By the time all the excitement had died down yesterday, he'd lost a sellsword and a slave and another one of his guard was injured. They got back the other two runners and a dead wolf for the pot but still, by the time they were ready to move again, Syna was dipping low and the light was fading. He should have taken steps then, but-
No, he thought to himself as he dragged the struggling, spitting chattel along with him. No "but". No excuses. You knew what had to be done, and when it it had to be done, and you slacked off on it. Time to put it right before we head off.
Konrad was helping Three Eyes pack up their small tent when he glimpsed the burly caravan boss go about his business. The steady, serious gait of the man wasn't what caught his eye, so much as the frantic scrambling of the man he was dragging along by a chain. As he loaded his backpack, he saw Fangor finally whirl on her with a snarl and slap and punch downward over and over, curses raining with every blow.
The Sunberth boys were in no mood to be piteous. They usually weren't, anyway, but that was the wild cunt who'd tried to run on them the previous day. Three Eyes snorted and started to tie the rope around their tent.
"Dumb fuck. Fuck did he think would happen?"
"Guessin' he thought he'd die free."
"Aye, free to get eaten by those wolves."
Konrad just shrugged at that. Eyes was right, after all, but some people didn't care about the consequences, just that they were allowed to choose them. Personally, he understood... but that didn't mean he sympathized. They were slaves, after all. No rights, no possessions, no coin. Where the fuck did he that mad bastard think him and his friends were fleeing to? The promised land? Their families? Their homes?
They'd have been dead in a day. Shoulda' waited until we got to where we're goin'.
"What's e' gonna do?"
"Pretty obvious, ain't it?"
As the two of them watched, Three Eyes was proven right. As the sellswords packed up their tents and goods, doused their fires, prepared their horses and loaded the carts, the drivers were doing much the same. Fangor's closest men were packing the slaves back into their wobbling wooden cart-prisons, but that morning, the side facing Fangor and the slave were all stripped of their thick hemp coverings.
Every slave in the caravan could see what would happen through the bars, and Konrad didn't need a mage to tell him what that was.
"Don't reckon I'll stick around for this," Three Eyes said with a sniff, cleaning his nails with a dagger as Fangor punched the slave down to the ground and started chaining him to the side of a cart, arms spread wide. "He'll just whip 'm bloody then cut his throat and have 'im drag in front a' the slave wagons until he's nothin' but meat."
"Kill 'im? Lad's a cunt but he's strong. Fetch a good place."
"Nah-nah-nah," Three Eyes said with a shake of his head, trying to sound worldy-wise as he held up a finger. "S'the principle, aye? He didn't just run, he raised his hands to us. Tried to hit you with that branch. Shows to much spirit. Keep that cunt around, he'll try it again or 'spire the others t'do it-"
"Spire? Y'mean inspire?"
"You know wud'I mean! Anyway, to much trouble to keep around."
An idea formed in Konrad's head as he slipped on his coat and then rested his new crossbow over his shoulder. The thick bandage across his hand was the only obvious reminder of the beast he'd killed the previous day; that and the tightness he felt whenever he breathed in too deep. Fucking thing had weighed a ton.
His finger tapped on the carved, scarred wood of the mechanical killing machine as he watched Fangor move down to the man's legs, spreading them nearly as wide as his legs and chaining them to the cartwheels. Still he struggled, and spat, and cursed, calling on gods Konrad didn't even recognize to smite Fangor and all his seed.
The slaves watched with dull, empty eyes. A few moaned and sobbed, those that knew the brave, stupid slave. Some shushed their children and turned their faces, wanting to spare them the horror of a slave's punishment for at least a little while longer. Konrad chewed on the end of the twig in his mouth and thought how long the boy would last...
"Got an idea."
"What? Hey, Kon-?!"
He started t walk over, snatched up his bag of crossbow bolts as he went. Fangor was looking over at the slaves and launching into his preamble, voice the perfect pitch of bass and menace. The tones of a god pronouncing judgement, not just a man maligned.
"When you run, you are whipped! You are caught, and you are broken, and these things will happen! But if you raise your hands, it will not be a swift death! Not a merciful death! Not even a clean death!"
He raised the whip in his hand high over his head... then let it fall loose from its curls... so the sparse Winter Synalight could glint and twinkle off the razors embedded in the leather.
"You will suffer! By the gods, you will suffer! This man ran from his masters and raised his hands against-"
The man who was suddenly at his side, as a matter of fact. Fangor stared in mild shock as his flow was totally demolished, looking into that scared face and growling in irritation.
"What the hells is it, man?"
"Got a favor t'ask. Might serve both our purposes."
"Venger, isn't it?"
"Aye."
"Venger, good job yesterday, but I'm in the middle of something. Don't interrupt!"
Konrad knew an order from an irritable man when he saw it, but he couldn't pass up the opportunity. He let the crossbow swing forwards into both hands and nodded at it.
"Lemme practice on the boy," he said, low enough for just Fangor and he to hear. "I need it, believe me. Barely hit the fuckin' wolf from ten feet away. Boy's dead, anyway, right?"
"Can't you wait until after?"
"We're on the move after, yeah? Besides, I ain't gonna be shootin' at corpses when the time comes, am I? Nah, this is the real thing."
The wrathful god morphed briefly back into a henpecked employer, and he massaged his tired eyes with the hand not holding a bladed whip.
"Venger, we have targets somewhere, I'm sure. Or just use a tree!"
"Aye, could do botha' those," Konrad said, leaning forward a touch and letting his natural sadism seep into that thing he called a smile. "But it serves us both, don't it? I get some practice, and you get these rats seein' their boy turned into a fuckin' pincushion. Gimme a bell, s'all I ask. End of it, I'll finish him, if'n I haven't already. Even fasten him onto the cart, like you do when they're dead."
Fngor blinked, surprised that this Sunberth savage who'd never worked the roads with him before would know about how he set his examples. But he mulled it over, pondered it. He was planning to take a bell to take the boy apart; left him free to other things if Venger took over. Like breakfast, and inventory, and-
"A'right," he muttered, then glanced at the slaves watching them idly. "But make it good in a moment, eh?"
"What do you-"
"Youse don't taste the whip today, boy!" Fangor went from whispering to booming so fast that Konrad nearly fired the fucking crossbow out of surprise. He directed that shout at the chained, helpless slave spread across the side of the cart, then back to the others. "But the man who beat you to the dirt yesterday says he wants to have some more fun with you! Am I right?"
Bugger.
Konrad was not a sodding mummer, and he wasn't used to the stage. But intimidation and terror were hardly unknown to him. He wet his lips and fed of the surprise in those slave eyes, flourishing the crossbow in the air and resting the butt of it against his hip.
"Aye! Not t'worry, boss. Hardly any sport yesterday, was it? Today'll be different. Thanks t'ye for getting my target ready." He patted the crossbow and grinned, no mummer's farce but true delight, as he heard the livestock's horror in a gasp. "I'll take it from 'ere..."
