The Black Robe (The Sword and the Spell) (23 page)

He took the bowl of hot oats that Stanner passed him and went and sat on the bench next to his master, giving the room a careful scrutiny and working out how it could be defended if they were attacked. The room, which was long and narrow, had just two windows and a single door all on the same side. At one time it must have been a sleeping place for the miners as some of the wooden bunks were still fixed to the wall at the far end. Now it was used as both a sleeping room and a living room with mattresses on the floor and several tables and wooden benches taking up the rest of the space. One of the old troughs had been taken from the mine and converted into a crib. One baby, wrapped in a blanket, lay in the hay-filled trough whilst another fed greedily from its young mother. He had seen a very pregnant girl lying listlessly amongst the injured and sick children, and wondered if the baby, when it came, would survive long enough to join the other two in the makeshift crib.

When he’d finished his oats and meat, he handed the bowl back to Stanner and took the mug of herb tea she offered him. It was hot and strong and tasted as if a tiny bit of honey had been added to take away the bitterness. He looked expectantly at Callabris knowing that his master had something to say, but had been waiting until he had Allowyn’s full attention.

“Lady, I know this is painful, but would you be so kind as to tell my protector all that you have told me about your situation and what you plan to do about it? Allowyn has a far better understanding of how to attack places and the dangers that entails than I do, and I’m sure he will be able to offer expert advice.”

Stanner sighed and sat on the bench opposite clutching a mug of tea in her hand. She told Allowyn her story from the moment her village had been attacked and burnt by Vorgret’s tax collectors, to when Trad had returned to the mine carrying Allowyn’s weapons with the injured children being helped along behind him. She finished her story with how they had planned to attack one of the nearby working silver mines and free some of the men there.

Sometime towards the end of the story, Dozo had entered the room carrying the small girl he had injured and with Ennett still trailing behind him. When Ennett was settled on a wooden bench by the edge of the fire, he handed her the child and returned to stand by the door post. In all the years Allowyn had known Dozo, he had never seen him look so miserable.

“Well, Allowyn, what do you think to Mistress Stanner’s plan?”

Allowyn brought his attention back to Stanner who sat opposite him with a defiant look on her face. “Your plan won’t work. All it will do is get most of you killed and any who survived the attack would lead the guards back here to slaughter the rest of you. You would be much better off packing up your things and going to Vorglave and seeking whatever mercy and protection you can from the people there.”

Callabris looked surprised at Allowyn’s harsh assessment and Stanner looked as if she was about to explode. But Allowyn didn’t give her the chance. Whilst he had been speaking he had seen Dozo slip out of the door and he needed to follow him. He stood and bowed briefly to Callabris. “If you will excuse me I have an urgent matter to attend to.”

He didn’t wait for his master’s permission but stepped around the bench and strode out of the room before anyone had the chance to stop him. It was rude of course to leave his master like that, but Callabris would know that something was wrong and would deal with the situation. Outside it was completely dark apart from a faint light from a quarter moon partly covered by thick clouds. After the firelight and the glow of several tallow lamps it took him a few moments to adjust his vision. When he did, he could just make out the dark shadow of a man leaning against the corner of the building where the children slept. He walked across making just enough noise so that the man could walk away if he didn’t want to talk.

“Dozo?” Dozo looked up and Allowyn could see the wetness on his cheeks. “Would it help to talk about it?”

The Healer nodded but it was some time before he could speak. “I’ve killed her. The little one I rolled over when I fell from my horse.”

Allowyn was silent for a moment, choosing his words carefully and knowing whatever he said it would sound lame. “It was an accident, Dozo. There was nothing you could do about it.”

“Dozo shook his head. “No. If I had just given in and had not gone for my sword I would have missed her.”

“It wasn’t like that, Dozo. You were trying to protect Callabris and the children pulled you down on top of her.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m the one who’s killed her. Oh, Allowyn, she hasn’t even seen five summers and now her life is ending before it has started and it’s all my fault!”

“Is there no hope for her?”

Dozo shook his head again “No. Her chest is crushed and she won’t last the night. I’ve left her with Ennett, they came from the same village and were friends. And then there are the others I cannot do anything for; the boy with poisoned blood from an untended wound and the girl who fell from a boulder and has brain fever. Then there’s the pregnant one who prays that her bastard baby will be born dead, which it probably will be, and will almost certainly take her with it to the grave as well. I’m meant to be a healer but I cannot do anything for them except to watch them die.”

“Dozo, their deaths are not your fault. If you want to blame anyone then blame those bastards who killed their parents, raped young, innocent girls and left helpless children to starve. They are the ones who deserve to be punished, Dozo, not you.”

The healer wiped his wet cheeks and eyes on the back of his hand. “And how are we going to do that, Master Allowyn? Because if we don’t do something they aren’t going to be the only children who are going to die”

Allowyn nodded. “You’re right Dozo, we do need to do something and we will, but not quite like Stanner has suggested.”

He gave Dozo an encouraging smile, turned on his heel and walked back to where his master was waiting for him.

~    ~    ~    ~   

CHAPTER TEN

Freedom Fighters

It wasn’t a good plan but it was better than a crowd of women and children with three battered swords and half a dozen knives charging the entrance of a well guarded mine. There was no way they were going to overpower the heavily armed guards there and make it through in one piece to where their men were being held. Stanner’s plan would have been suicidal whereas this was just likely to get them all killed. At least they had horses so they had been able to study the approach to the mine beforehand without blindly going in and hoping for the best. The information they had gained, as sparse as it was, had allowed them to put a plan together. Now they crouched in a small hollow between an outcrop of rock and a mound of fallen boulders whilst they made their final preparations.

For Stanner, her friend who had volunteered to play the part of a whore and Pedron, with his broken arm, there wasn’t much preparation to do. They all looked tired and shabby as if they had walked a long way and Pedron, with his arm in a make-shift sling looked like he had been in a recent battle. If the guards checked and found that the break was nearly a moon cycle old it might cause problems, but that was a chance they had to take. They were already tied together by a leather strap around their necks attached to the person in front and their hands were bound in front of them.

Leaving the camp at the disused mine had been easy enough for Pedron and the woman who was playing the part of a whore. Neither of them had family members at the shelter, but for Stanner the parting from her two children had been difficult and she wondered if she would ever see them again. Allowyn’s parting from Callabris had also been difficult. It had taken him a long time to persuade Callabris that it was the right thing to do to stay and help these people instead of hurrying on to the maze at Wallmore. The problem was not that Callabris didn’t want to help but that the Goddess had given him a task to do and the pull of Callistare’s tomb at the centre of the maze grew stronger ever day.

In the end it was Dozo who had persuaded him to delay their journey by a moon cycle, not by the words he asked but by the look of despair and guilt on his face after they buried the child he had accidently crushed. The other reason the parting had been so difficult was that he had refused to allow Callabris to accompany them. Long years of service had taught him that Callabris wouldn’t be persuaded to go underground and, as the white robe couldn’t use his magic to kill, there was not much he could do to help. Apart from that he had enough to think about without being worried about his master’s safety.

He held out his hands and Dozo tied them being careful to make sure that the knot would look convincing but would slip undone when Allowyn wanted it to. Somehow Allowyn looked so vulnerable without his array of weapons that Dozo almost said something but of course he wasn’t helpless at all. Allowyn didn’t need weapons to defend himself. However Dozo did wonder if the thin stiletto knife he had strapped to the inside of his thigh would be sufficient to get him out of a tight spot if he needed to. The thought of him worrying about Allowyn and if he could get out of a tight spot made him smile to himself.

Here he was, dressed in the uniform of a dead guard, about to walk into a stingers nest and all the protection he had was a piss poor story about being attacked and only just managing to escape with the four prisoners. At least the blood on the uniform was authentic, along with the fleas, and he just hoped that the guards at the mine were so bored that they didn’t ask him too many questions. His concerns were not for himself, he probably deserved to die for killing the child, but Allowyn was his friend as well as his master and in the last seven day, as they prepared, he had become fonder of Stanner than any woman he had ever known.

Dozo put that thought out of his mind and concentrated on attaching Pedron’s rope to the collar around Allowyn’s neck. Now they were ready, the sun was starting to dip towards the horizon and it was time to go and act out their little charade. They had practiced walking tied together back at the camp but that had been on flat ground, not clambering over boulders, so by the time they approached the outer ring of guards the prisoners really did look to be a weary and dejected bunch and Dozo wasn’t much better. He stopped at the first challenge, explained who they were and what had happened and were allowed to pass on. They passed another two guards where the cart track narrowed, repeated the process, then walked into the large clearing in front of the mine’s entrance.

This mine was far newer than the one where the women and children had been sheltering and was not what they expected. For a start they had assumed there would be a secondary tunnel but there was only the one entrance, so their plan of breaking into that and escaping around the guards in the mine was not going to work. The other problem was that there didn’t appear to be a pathway leading away from the mine to where the miners lived. Instead there were four small, stone buildings, one of which was heavily barred and had two guards stationed outside its single door.

There were benches outside two of the other buildings and half a dozen guards sat around playing stones or drinking ale in the fading, evening sunlight. As they approached one of the guards stood and knocked on the door of the building behind him and moments later a man wearing the double braids of a squad leader stepped out with another guard beside him. Dozo tried not to scowl. That made a dozen guards, not counting the ones in the mine, and they had guessed at a dozen altogether, which was going to make things even more difficult. He came to attention and bowed as the squad leader looked him up and down and gave the prisoners a cursory glance.

“Where are you from, guardsman, and what have you got here for me?”

“Guardsman Dozorin reporting, Squad Leader, and these prisoners are from the villages of Camblin and Grotsmere. They’re the ones who refused to pay their taxes and levies for the army so we ‘ung the leaders, ‘elped ourselves to the girls and brought the rest ‘ere. Only we were attacked on the way by these ‘ere freedom fighters and the rest of the lads were killed and their prisoners freed.”

The squad leader scowled in disbelief and took a closer look at the prisoners. They looked to be sullen and battered and their guard did appear as if he had been on the road for some time. “How come you escaped and the others didn’t?”

Dozo gave the squad leader a sly grin. “I was exercising my manhood on that whore there. You know what it is, you don’t want to be doin’ it in front of the others so I took my lot out of the way. I’d got 'er legs open and was inside ‘er when they attacked and by the time I’d got myself out and covered up it was all over. I got a couple of stragglers though, but the rest of the men in my lot got cropped. This lot aint worth much but the one at the front is strong and I can guarantee that the whore’s good. A good night’s sleep and they’ll be fit for owt.”

The squad leader still looked suspicious. “We weren’t expecting any more slaves.”

“Well no. See, these weren’t meant for you but without my squaddie I got lost. If you give me a map and supplies I’ll be ‘appy to take them somewhere else.”

“That won’t be necessary. We can always use extra men and the lads haven’t had a whore since the last one slit her own throat. An extra guard won’t go amiss either so you can stay until the next shipment goes out.” He raised his hand and waved two guards over. “Take the men to the workings and get them started and put the women into the store shed until later.”

The guards hurried forward and started to untie the ropes but Dozo interrupted them. “Aint you goin’ to put them in the miners’ ‘uts and give them a chance to rest? They’ve been walking for three days”

The squad leader laughed. “This is his majesty’s most productive silver mine and the reason we dig more silver than anyone else is that we don’t coddle our slaves. Once they go into the mine they work there, eat there, shit there and die there. Now, unless you want to join them, you’ll hand them over to my guards. Wallin will show you where to eat and bunk.”