Demontech: Gulf Run (15 page)

Plotniko sighed, but said simply, “As you wish.”

Alyline looked at Spinner and Haft. “You may as well go back. Corporal Armana seems to have the Earl’s Guards well in hand, and I won’t need any help with these four lilies.” She looked down at the knife that angled across her belly. “Before you go, someone cut a sapling I can trim for a switch.”

Spinner and Haft exchanged a wide-eyed glance, suddenly glad the Golden Girl wanted them gone. Haft drew his axe and sliced down a four-foot-tall treeling. He handed it to her without stripping any of its branches. Spinner and Haft left the Bloody Axes following close behind.

Bel Yfir exulted. She’d known the gilded noblewoman held high rank in this company, but the height of her rank came as a surprise. The noblemen were in charge when they had to deal with the soldiers, but once that was done,
she
was the obvious leader. Now she would get matters straightened out properly, ranking lady to ranking lady. She gazed scornfully at Plotniko and wished there was someone else who could translate for them. Well, the gilded noblewoman knew Zobran, she could easily enough learn Dartmutter.

Not all of the concubines reacted the way bel Yfir did. Bel Kyssa and bel Kyn saw how deliberately the gilded lady trimmed the sapling with her gold-handled knife. They well knew how a switch was made and what one was used for.

Alyline sheathed her knife and said, “Come with me.” She gave her switch a flick and nodded in satisfaction at its spring. She went directly to bel Yfir’s wagon and stood a couple of yards from its back, looking expectantly at the trailing concubines in their thin, flowing gowns. She shook her head at their moonlight-dappled shoulders and thought how impractical the gowns were as travel garments, even covered by the travel cloaks they often wore over them during the day.

When the four reached her, she pointed the switch at the wagon and ordered, “Unload it.”

Three of the concubines immediately realized what she intended and gasped. Bal Yfir, on the other hand, was oblivious—that translator needed to be chastised, she thought, and she wasn’t going to listen to him until he was.

“Gilded noblewoman,” she began with another precisely measured dip, “as the ranking people present, we have much to discuss about the conduct of this caravan.”

Plotniko started to translate, but Alyline cut him off. “Don’t bother translating. I’m not interested in anything the chief bed toy has to say unless it’s an apology.” She pointed at the back of the wagon with her switch, and the other three concubines began hauling chests and bundles out of it.

Bel Yfir was so enrapt with what she was saying she didn’t notice for several seconds. When she did, she spun on them and screamed, “
Stop that!
That is
my
wagon,
my
property! You do not touch anything of mine without my leave!” And she shoved at them to make them reload the items they’d removed. She screamed again when fire lanced across the backs of her thighs. She spun about, looking for the source of the pain, and crouched to rub her injured thighs. The others, not wanting to be switched as well, began pulling things out of the wagon as fast as possible, with no concern for order or neatness.

“I told you to unload the wagon,” Alyline said coldly.

Bel Yfir drew herself up, ignoring the pain in her thighs, and began to protest. But only a scream came out of her mouth as Alyline flashed her switch again and struck the chief concubine on the side of her right thigh.

“But—” bel Yfir wailed, tears running down her face.

The switch flashed again, to the side of her left thigh, then Alyline pointed it at the back of the wagon.

“You can’t—”

Alyline grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. She swung her switch twice, once across bel Yfir’s buttocks, once across her back. Bel Yfir crumbled to the ground, bawling.

“Tell her,” Alyline said slowly to Plotniko, “that I despise men who beat women, but I truly hate women who do.” She waited for the translation, then said, “Tell her as long as she lays there, I will continue to switch her. As soon as she stands and begins unloading the wagon, I will stop.”

With cries and yelps of pain, bel Yfir scrambled to her feet and began to help the others.

After a moment, Alyline said, “Tell the others to stop, let her finish the unloading by herself.”

The other three stepped aside when Plotniko translated and stood fearfully watching Alyline and her switch. Bel Yfir’s commands for them to help ended abruptly when Alyline’s switch cut across the front of her thighs.

Doli returned well before the wagon was empty; she gaped at bel Yfir for a moment before she noticed a fraying in the woman’s gown and realized that Alyline had struck her with the switch. Then her eyes narrowed and a thin smile crossed her face. She smiled briefly at the other three, spoke to Alyline quietly, then left to fetch torches. The wagon was almost empty by the time Doli returned with three burning brands. Alyline took one from her and had Plotniko take another.

“Open them,” Alyline commanded, waving her switch at the concubines. “Not you!” to bel Yfir. “You finish unloading.”

There were eight chests of various sizes, from small enough to sit atop a table and hold sheaves of documents to large enough for two people to sit comfortably atop, along with more than a dozen bundles wrapped in cloth bound with stout cord. The chests were made of rich woods, reinforced at their corners with bronze knuckles, and all but the smallest banded with bronze and iron. The smallest and the largest were closed with locks, the middle six with simple clasps. Two of the middle-size chests opened to reveal women’s clothing; mostly thin gowns, diaphanous robes, or other exotic wear, though there were more practical garments as well. The other four contained foodstuffs in bottles or otherwise preserved.

“How many of the women only have the clothes they wore when we left Eikby?” Alyline asked.

“Most of them, I think,” Doli replied.

Alyline nodded. “We’ll put these garments aside until we can work out a fair distribution.” Plotniko didn’t translate.

Doli nodded in agreement. “The same with the foodstuffs, I think.” She looked at the concubines—bel Yfir had dumped the last cloth-wrapped bundle and joined the other three concubines. The labor of unloading the wagon had caused her to sweat through her gown in places, and it was obvious she wore nothing underneath. Doli looked at Plotniko and hid a smile; he was obvious about not looking at the former chief concubine’s charms—and just as obviously wanted to.

“Unbind the bundles,” Alyline ordered. The four women fell to the task, fumbling at the knots; more than once one or another yelped and sucked on a fingertip after breaking a nail on a recalcitrant knot. The bundles, all but two of them three or four feet long and a foot in diameter, contained more clothing and preserved foods, and one opened to disclose a recurved bow, arrows, and bladed weapons. The two largest held tents.

“My my,” Alyline said to bel Kyn, who stepped briskly back from the weapons bundle after she opened it. “Who do you suppose those are for?” Plotniko rephrased the question in his translation.

Bel Kyn shook her head and stammered, “I don’t know, lady. This isn’t mine.”

Alyline nodded, then tapped the locked chests with her switch. “Unlock these.” The three all looked at bel Yfir, who hesitated, then came reluctantly forward and drew a chain from around her neck. She withdrew two keys from one of several lockets on the chain and used one to open the larger chest. It contained a man’s finery fit for a prince—or an earl. Alyline laughed with delight. “We have men who need clothing too.” She tapped the small chest with her switch.

Bel Yfir dropped to her knees and begged to not be made to open it.

Alyline tapped the small chest again, then lashed out and whacked bel Yfir on the shoulder. “Don’t snivel,” she ordered when the woman cried in pain. “I imagine you struck your handmaids even more quickly when they didn’t obey immediately, so you’re getting nothing you haven’t given many times already.”

Bel Yfir sobbed as she spoke. Alyline looked to Plotniko for a translation. “She says the earl will beat her, maybe kill her, when he joins us and discovers she opened that chest.”

“Only if he’s still alive, if he can find us, and if we allow him to,” Alyline said patiently. She waited for the translation, then added harshly, “And I don’t allow men to beat or kill women.”

When Alyline lifted the switch again, bel Yfir bent and unlocked the chest with trembling fingers.

“No wonder,” Alyline said, smiling at Doli once she saw the chest’s contents—jewelry too massive and heavy for a woman. “He sent his jewelry out with his women in case he had to leave too fast to bring it himself.” She looked back at bel Yfir. “Did the Earl’s Guards know you carried this?”

She shook her head.

Alyline nodded. “Too much temptation. He must have been afraid the soldiers would take the jewels and leave the women to their fates.”

“Or take the jewels
and
the women for themselves,” Doli added.

“All right,” Alyline said briskly. “Pile the women’s clothing here, the men’s clothing here, the food there. Bring the small chest, and we’ll see what the next wagon holds.

The other wagons, none quite as large as bel Yfir’s, held correspondingly fewer chests and bundles filled with clothing and foodstuffs. One bundle in each was half filled with bladed weapons and another a tent. Each wagon had a very small chest filled with gold coins. The Earl’s Guards didn’t know about the coins either.

Once everything was separated for distribution, Alyline had the four sweaty women line up facing her. She smiled at Plotniko’s profile; the temptation of four women clad in thin, wet garments was too strong, and he was openly gazing at them. They blushed at his attention.

“We have many people, women, children, oldsters, who have been walking since Eikby. Some have walked even farther. Tomorrow, as many of them as can will ride in your wagons. You may spend the rest of the night sleeping in your wagons, but tomorrow you will walk. Now turn around.”

The four women moaned, knowing what must be coming, but meekly turned anyway. Alyline lashed each of them across the back of the shoulders, above the tops of their gowns—except for bel Yfir, who she left trembling in anticipation of a blow that didn’t come. She saw Doli flinch with each blow that landed, so she told her softly, “I haven’t hit anyone hard enough to break the skin, just hard enough to get their attention … and leave a mark for a day or two.” Then to the concubines, “Now get some sleep, you have a long walk tomorrow.”

When she and Doli left, Plotniko followed closely, but let space grow between them as soon as they were away from the concubines, until he completely angled away to find his own campsite. On the morrow, he resolved, he would find other people who spoke the Dartmutt dialect so he wouldn’t have to be the only translator.

CHAPTER

NINE

Braving the hazards of the dark, a few dozen or so stragglers from the rape of Dartmutt stumbled across the caravan overnight and were taken in. None of them were soldiers, and only two were men who could be trained to arms—if there ever was time to stop and train them.

It was dangerous for the wagon train to stay on the meandering north-south road, they needed to get off it as soon as they could. But before the caravan set out, there was a piece of unfinished business from the previous evening that had to be dealt with.

What to do about Captain bal Ofursti.

“We can’t trust him,” Haft insisted. Nobody disagreed, yet …

“We can’t take him with us as a prisoner either,” Spinner insisted, just as firmly. “We have to send him away.”

Haft shook his head. “Have you forgotten Captain Dumant?” They’d encountered Dumant and a squad of Skraglander Bloody Swords in the forest in the southeast corner of the Princedon Peninsula before they reached Eikby. In fact, Haft and some Zobran Border Warders broke up a bandit ambush the Bloody Swords were walking into. Dumant had refused to join them in any capacity other than commander. They’d let him go—though his men elected to remain with the Frangerians and their larger party. Dumant later returned as a leader of the Rockhold bandits.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Spinner said. “But have you actually
looked
at bal Ofursti?”

“Of course I’ve looked at that arrogant popinjay!” Haft said scornfully. “I think he’s worthless as a soldier.”

“And those Earl’s Guards of his?”

“They’re Corporal Armana’s now,” Fletcher reminded him.

“Yes, Corporal Armana’s. Have you?”

Haft snorted. “A bunch of tavern bully boys. They’ll fight anybody smaller than themselves, anybody unarmed, and anybody too drunk to fight back. Armana told me they were ceremonial troops.” He snorted “He’s got his work cut out for him, trying to turn
them
into a proper platoon of fighting men.”

Spinner nodded. “That’s why we can turn Captain bal Ofursti loose, banish him from the caravan. Captain Dumant was a real soldier, even if he was too proud of his rank. This one is a courtier. Like you said, he got his commission because of
who
he knows, not
what
he knows. If he runs into bandits, he won’t take over, he’ll get killed.”

“So you’re saying instead of us hanging him, we let him go for bandits to kill?”

Spinner flinched. “Maybe he’ll manage to evade bandits and get to someplace safe. There’s always that chance.”

“Right,” Haft said dryly. “Someplace safe from bandits. And where’s that?” He snorted again. “Someplace where the Jokapcul are, that’s where. They’ll take him prisoner and either kill him or turn him into a slave. Either way, he’ll suffer less if we hang him now.”

“I’m not going to hang him.”

“You’re firm about that, aren’t you?”

Spinner nodded.

Haft looked at the others. Fletcher and Alyline were clearly aligned with Spinner. So was Zweepee.

Silent did his best to look neutral. Among the Tangonine, his tribe, someone like bal Ofursti would be slathered with honey and staked out over an anthill.