Firebrand

He looked up. The woman had a Rhovan accent, and was as covered in dirt and rock dust as everyone else. He had not distinguished her from the others at first because everyone had looked pretty much the same.

She handed him a tin of ale. “My name is Lorilie.”

“Dav,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Thank you.” He sipped the ale. It was flat as piss, but it helped return moisture to his parched mouth.

“Looks like you’ve had a hard day,” Lorilie said.

Much more than a day, he thought. How long since the aureas slee had snatched him from the castle?

“Do the best you can,” she continued, “and they won’t beat on you. Trying to fight them is not worth it. Trust me, I know.”

She left him then, to take her own bowl and cup to sit elsewhere in the passage. He watched after her as she limped away. It was hard to tell much about her, except for her Rhovan accent. He felt as though he were missing something, something that he should know, but he’d been so beaten his mind was not working well. He would worry about it later. He forced himself to eat.

Lorilie had been correct. There was still a lot of day left to move rocks. Even if he had not been in such terrible condition, it would have been backbreaking work. He tried to get through it by counting his steps back and forth, then by counting the rocks he loaded into his basket. When that palled, he thought about swordfighting forms, imagining each movement in his mind. Perhaps this was how the other workers got through their day, by immersing their minds in something other than their current reality.

After dusk, they were herded into a rough-hewn building with a firepit in its center, the smoke spiraling up through a hole in the roof. The packed dirt floor was strewn with old rushes.

One of the thralls doled out stew from a cookpot over the fire. There was some pushing and shoving among the workers, now suddenly come to life. Zachary was too tired to fight, and so he ended up at the rear of the line with some of the older workers. There was barely any left for them.

He could hardly hold his bowl in his bruised and bleeding hands, but once he found a place to sit, he ate his pittance, scooping it out with a piece of greasy pan bread. At least he was keeping his food down.

Lorilie, he noticed, sat across the room in a circle with others as though holding court. No one else paid him any mind, and he figured it was just as well. He almost fell asleep with his face in his bowl, when someone came to collect it. Others were wrapped in blankets or cloaks and lay down to sleep. Several lay close to one another for warmth. Zachary blessed Varius for the gift of the cloak and fell into the slumber of the grave.

• • •

Sometime during the night, he dreamed he was a stag crowned with branching antlers, but he was not free. He was surrounded by snarling wolves. Karigan entered the vision though not the Karigan he had hunted and slain with an arrow, nor was she Karigan the Green Rider. Rather, she was clad in strange armor that gleamed with the light of stars. Unknown symbols crawled across the surface of it changing shape and form. Somehow he knew the armor to be made of star steel, a substance of legend. She wore a winged helm upon her head and carried a lance. Upon her shield, the device of the crescent moon shone with ethereal luminescence. She was not herself, but more a supernatural being filled with the power of the heavens. She casually swept away a few of the wolves by merely pointing her lance at them.

“Think,” she commanded him in a voice that was more than her own. She flicked more of the wolves away as if they were nothing. “Observe.” The rest of the wolves fled before her and she stood above him. “Protect.”

Then she left, astride a great black steed.

When Zachary awakened at dawn, he remembered only a sensation of the dream, as if he’d been under some spell. It ebbed away in the reality of a body barely able to move for all the pain, and a day ahead of hard physical labor and deprivation.

THINK, OBSERVE, PROTECT

The work was again mind-numbing. An older man fell, and his basket of rocks spilled across the passage floor. He curled up where he lay and would not move. The other workers just walked around or stepped over him. Zachary glanced over his shoulder. The guards, deep in some conversation, had not yet reacted. He knelt beside the man.

“Are you sick?” Zachary asked. “Hurt?”

“I am so tired,” the man murmured.

Another worker paused beside them. It was Lorilie. “Get up, Binning, or they will beat you.”

“They can drag me off into the woods and kill me,” the man said. “I can’t take it anymore.”

“Let me help,” Zachary said. He started refilling Binning’s basket.

“Hurry,” Lorilie said. “They’re coming.” She left them, carrying away her own burden.

“Let me help you stand,” Zachary whispered.

“Leave me be,” Binning said. “I’m too tired.”

“What’s this?” asked Cole, slapping his rod against the palm of his hand. The guard with the spiked cudgel stood square beside him. “Are we going to have to make you move?”

“He tripped and fell,” Zachary said. “He’ll be up in a moment.”

“A moment too long.” Down came the rod.

Protect.

Zachary shifted to shield Binning, and the rod lashed across his shoulders. Before he could be struck again, he grabbed Binning’s arm and raised him to his feet.

“We are working,” Zachary said fiercely.

“Then get on about it.”