Chapter Six
The world shuddered and dropped out from under her. Roanna’s eyes opened onto blackness the same instant her rump slammed against something hard.
“Mastad!” she swore against the pain, invoking the place of perdition.
Pounding hooves, the jingle of harnesses, and animals chomping on their bits, coupled with the rattle and rumble of the ox cart’s wheels, reminded her of her circumstance, but the panoply of stars overhead did little to illuminate her surroundings. Pressing her palms against the planking, Roanna straightened, twisted at the waist, and stretched to see where she was going. The restraints were too tight to permit significant rotation, but from the corner of her eye she could see a bonfire near the roadway, and its glow revealed several rows of tents. She tried to peer forward, but came up empty, without so much as a glimmer for her effort. When a sob welled in her throat, she swallowed hard and forced it back down. She needed to remain calm if she were to survive.
“Hee, hee, hee!” a profiteer chortled. “Armus won’t believe what we’re bringing him.”
“Naw! He won’t,” said his companion. “If he thought that last shipment was big, this one’ll set him on his bum.”
Over the next several minutes, Roanna watched and waited as the wagon’s team wound through the encampment. When, at last, the oxen halted in a circle of firelight, the wagon lurched as the pair leapt from the seat and landed somewhere in the darkness. Silhouetted forms arrived, backlit by fires, and surrounded the wagon.
“You boys have been busy!” exclaimed one.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked another.
A moment later, two hands grasped the railing and a head peered inside.
“Is that a woman?” he chortled.
She recoiled at the stench of someone who had not seen bath water for longer than she cared to imagine.
One of the profiteers—Roanna recognized the voice of the short one—asked, “Where’s Armus?”
“Is that you, Jaret?” a raspy voice asked. Another hand grasped the railing and the newcomer asked, “What did you boys bring me?”
“I hope your coffers are full tonight,” the tall profiteer said.
The newcomer’s head, sporting a full mane and ragged beard, peered in beside the unwashed one.
“You’re quite the beauty,” he observed as he looked at her.
Feeling caged, Roanna bit back her reply.
Someone else thrust a torch near her face and said, “She’s not as young as the last ’un you brought. Where’d you find her?”
The tall profiteer, sounding annoyed, said, “Aren’t you the least bit curious about what’s in the boxes?”
The bearded one withdrew his head and spat over his shoulder, then returned to study Roanna.
“She’s not from around here. Not with leathers like that. Where’d you boys get her?”
“She come from the sea,” the taller one grumbled. “Now about the boxes …”
“Untie her and bring her near the bonfire where I can get a better look,” said the bearded one, ignoring the profiteer’s obvious exasperation.
“Armus,” the taller one persisted. “About the boxes.”
“I said bring her to the bonfire! I’ll take a look at your boxes when I get around to it. Right now, I want to see the woman.”
He turned away, while the one with the torch and the man who had peered in first remained leering. Roanna’s heart pounded. Neither knowing where she was, nor where she might run if an opportunity miraculously appeared, the prospect of being sold into slavery loomed larger with each passing minute, not as a vision of things yet to come, but rather as something she intuited. She almost cried out when two men climbed in beside her, until they began severing her restraints. When they lifted her out and set her on the ground, she did indeed cry—not from fear, but rather something different.
“Wait!” she gasped, as they began leading her away. “My legs.”
Before she could explain about the pain caused by blood coursing through limbs that had not been used for hours, the men draped her arms across their shoulders. Then, with hardly a pause to allow her to adjust, they reached around her waist and lifted, carrying her towards the man they called Armus. When she arrived before him, the tingling in her legs had subsided to something almost tolerable, enough for her to change focus and study the man who so obviously was in charge of her destiny.
Roanna was not tall by anyone’s standard. She barely came to an average man’s shoulder, and this man was not as tall as she. Even so, he seemed big. While his biceps were the size of her thighs, he also appeared overly fond of food and drink. His barrel of a belly hung past his belt, and his chest had fattened into breasts. Although the glow of the fire undoubtedly helped exaggerate his color, his face appeared redder than those around him. Two porcine eyes peered between fatty lids above apple-shaped cheeks and a bulbous nose. The beard and moustache he sported did little to alter the circle of his face.
“Bring her close where I can see,” Armus ordered.
When her escort had brought her to within half a dozen paces, Armus cocked his head and perused her.
After a minute, he observed, “You’re not from these parts.”
“No,” she replied.
“What brings you here?” In a moment of unexpected candor, he added, “I’m asking because, one, Limast is at war and, two, this is the westernmost frontier. Trade routes don’t pass this way and the scythe grass keeps travelers from passing through.”
Hesitant to reveal everything, but experienced enough to know adhering close to the truth would avoid trapping her in a lie, she explained, “I was on a sailing ship and fell overboard. A piece of driftwood carried me ashore.”
“Quite a piece of luck,” he observed as he ran his fingers through his beard.
Roanna nodded.
All at once, Armus laughed. “That’s too unlikely to be a lie and it’s the only explanation I can think of that holds water. Jaret and Bexta deal in strumpets and idiots, and you don’t carry yourself like either. You’d likely only cause trouble if I were to sell you, and that would come back to bite me,” he said. Then, half to himself, he mused, “Can’t have that. The thing now is what do I do with you?”
He glanced at a man standing to Roanna’s left and asked, “Is Maryam still packing to go home?”
“She was this afternoon.”
“Let’s hope she hasn’t finished.” Turning back to Roanna, he said, “I can’t keep you here. My soldiers would have their way with you before sunrise. I’m going to send you to my wife. She needs a new hand servant. You won’t be bound to a lifetime of slavery, but you will be in her service until she decides to let you go.”
Roanna’s face must have reflected her dismay, because he looked at her squarely and cautioned, “Don’t look at me that way. War may have made me the man I am today, but I still recognize a lady when I see one.”
Roanna looked down at her oreth leathers and brushed several strands of hair from her face.
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” Armus said. “I can see you’re a mess, but I also see how you carry yourself. You know who you are, and it shows.”
She did not know how to react. While, on one hand, this man seemed perceptive and said he did not intend to sell her, on the other hand, he would still be placing her into servitude with an indeterminate way out.
Unable to contain herself any longer, she blurted, “I have to find my daughter!”
“That’s not my concern.”
“But …”
“In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a war going on. By first light, we will be staring at the pointy ends of weapons from Meden. You’re lucky I’m sending you to Maryam and not selling you to the slavers.”
The distinction was not lost on her, and she softened her tone.
“Why are you helping me?” she asked.
“Slavery’s an ugly trade,” Armus said. “And I’m getting tired of all the ugliness. There’s only so much about war a man can tolerate.”
Roanna nodded her understanding. She might be bound to his wife for a long time to come, but with luck, not until Maryam’s or Armus’s death, or so she hoped.
“Thank you,” she said.
Armus studied her and appeared on the verge of acknowledging, when he spat on the ground and told her escort, “Get her out of here.”
When Roanna and her escort arrived at Armus’s residence, the scene was a melee. By the torches outside, she saw two ox carts and half a dozen mules already laden, while another cart and as many more mules stood waiting. Servants ran to and from the house, carrying bundles. A rotund woman in long flowing robes was barking orders, while two men Roanna suspected were overseers called back in response. The squawks of chickens and geese peering from cages added to the uproar.
“Can’t you see that mule is already overloaded?” the woman shouted to the man who was attempting to secure one more box. “It will break down before we’re halfway home.”
Then, as a servant emerged from the house with yet another package, she cried, “Who tied that bundle together? It’s going to fall into pieces before we get out of the valley. It’s already coming apart at one corner. Put that thing down and tie it again.”
The servant lowered her head in deference as she set it on the ground, then knelt beside it and wrestled with the cords.
The guards brought Roanna closer and caught the woman’s attention. After a brief glance and a wave of her hand acknowledging she had seen them, she paused to call to one man, “We need another mule, Simo. I want to be out of here within the hour,” then turned to regard Roanna and her escort, cocking her head as they approached.
“Voreth’s horns, Sergeant! What in the name of all things holy is that?” she asked, pointing at Roanna.
“Pardon, Ma’am,” one of the escorts responded. “Armus asked us to bring her here. She’s supposed to replace Ana.”
“Is she now? And when did that husband of mine think I am going to have time to break in a newcomer?”
“I don’t know, Ma’am. He just said …”
The woman raised a hand to halt his explanation and shook her head.
“That’s all right,” she said, sighing deeply.
She looked Roanna up and down, scowling as if this were the worst piece of news she had been given all day.
“What’s your name, girl?”
Roanna straightened and looked her in the eyes.
“I’m no girl. My name is Roanna.”
“Are you talking back to me?” the woman demanded, glowering from beneath bushy brows.
“No. It’s just that …”
“You’d better not be. The war’s coming down on us and I need to pack and get my things out of here before those bastards from Limast make leaving impossible. Now, either you step quickly and make yourself useful, or I’ll have the sergeant here take you straight back to my husband. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” said Roanna. “I believe it is.”
“You sure don’t look like much,” the woman muttered, half to herself. “Simo!” she called.
The man dressed in the satins of an overseer turned to look.
“Yes, Maryam.”
“Show this …” she scowled at Roanna “… girl what needs to be done.”
“Yes, Maryam,” Simo replied.
The woman turned back to Roanna and said, “Don’t stretch my patience. You go with Simo and do what he says. If you do a good job, I’ll figure out what to do with you in the morning.”