The Pilgrims

44

They were already days behind their expected arrival in Elvury. Anfen led them south-west at a harder pace than they’d managed before, through shrouds of wood and plain fields. It was nice country, that way, picturesque, good soil and farm land, though the farms there were now the castle’s. They passed them every so often, covered in huge glass-like domes, azure blue shells reflecting the world around them and hiding what went on inside. People of the cities never saw that, only ever (if they were lucky) the corn and maize and bread that were run underground on wagon trains like the one Kiown and Sharfy had robbed.

Sharfy had done a year-long spell on the slave farms, and never even found out what his original crime had been. Right under those impenetrable glassy domes people were being worked to death that very second. Not many escaped.

Sharfy remained silent until the domes passed behind the horizon. Every minute of his time there, the whole year of it, was imprinted on him like a tattoo. His own slave farm had been further east, its food bound for Ankin, the very place Vous’s ascent had begun. But the farms were all much the same.

Like Anfen, Sharfy had been a proud servant of the castle’s army. Like Anfen, he was still proud he’d chosen that honourable path, even if for the wrong lord. It wouldn’t be honourable for long. Already signs showed these things had begun to change as the new generations were told to ignore Valour, that Vous was their Spirit of courage and honour now, that his values were of a superior kind. The battlefield wounded were no longer slain quickly, with respect and regret.

He remembered the endless raking, digging, hauling under that glassy blue dome, eighteen daily hours of it, sticks and whips randomly lashing down around the slaves as they went. He remembered hauling out the dead who’d dropped, starved and exhausted, and searching their pockets for handkerchiefs, forks, anything that could be traded for morsels of food. He remembered soup in the mess hall, funny stories traded in the barracks, untreated sickness, and hunger. Real hunger. The way starvation made a man entirely willing to kill his friend for literally a mouthful of gruel. He remembered bored overseers throwing two random slaves a kitchen knife each, ordering a fight to the death, whooping and yelling as they watched. Sharfy was sometimes picked for this, the ex-army slaves known for a good entertaining scrap. He never lost those duels.

He remembered the day’s work done early and the commanders assigning pointless tasks to fill the time rather than allowing the slaves to rest in their shit-stinking, overstuffed cells. He recalled spotting his chance in the underground while loading a wagon with grain bound for one of the cities. He’d had to be quick. Was he good at hand-to-hand? Two overseers who’d made the mistake of relaxing on the job might have said so, if not for the pieces of nose bone lodged in their brains.

Such were Sharfy’s thoughts as he stayed quiet on the way past the farms. He did not turn to look at them, and hoped never to see them again, but someone would, whether or not it was him, so what was the difference?