The Brotherhood of Dwarves: Book 01 - The Brotherhood of Dwarves (17 page)

“When we reach the plantation,” Crushaw said to both of his companions as they watched their campfire dance and spark. “We will be outnumbered five to one, counting the overseers and the orcs in the big house.”

“Five to one?” Vishghu asked, her voice uncertain.

“At least. That’s why I’ve been teaching you so much. We’ll have to be fast and efficient.”

“We have surprise on our side,” Molgheon added. “They won’t be expecting an attack, not from such a small force anyway.”

“But let’s not forget,” Crushaw continued. “That first we have to find the broker in Koshlonsen, and then travel across the wilds and into orc territory. We may never see the plantation.”

“Were you always this positive, Red?” Molgheon asked with a slight chuckle.

“I’m just a realist. I know where we are headed.”

“You’re just like my husband. Up to the last, he considered every negative.”

With that, the three companions stretched out and went to sleep one by one. They were two days from Koshlonsen, and from this point forward, they would be surrounded by the enemy. Crushaw fell asleep last, his mind drifting back to his boyhood in the sugarcane. He had spent a lifetime trying to escape the orcs, and now, near the end of his life, he was marching back to them. He drifted off with memories of the food trough and the morning horn skittering through his head.

Chapter 10

An Evil Place

Roskin had lost track of time. On the trip to Koshlonsen and at the trading block, he had counted each sunrise, but on the trip to the plantation, he had mixed up the numbers. Now that he was there, he had forgotten to even try. Time meant little as every day was an extension of the one before. He was trapped in a place and a life that none of his education or training or adventures had prepared him for. When he had left Dorkhun for the year’s isolation, he had held a vague notion of the orcs and their system of slavery, but he had known nothing of the reality.

He had learned that the orcs had different kinds of slaves for different purposes. The weaker and more docile slaves were used inside the house as servants. The stronger, more unrefined slaves worked in the fields as manual labor, planting, growing, and harvesting sugarcane and cotton for export, and some of the more intelligent slaves performed skilled labor as carpenters and blacksmiths. Finally, there were the leisure slaves who were trained to fight in the sporting rings of orc cities.

Most of these slaves were Tredjards who had been captured in battle. In return for not having to work the fields daily, they trained relentlessly for battles against other plantations. The battles were hand-to-hand combat with no weaponry or armor; the combatants simply beat each other to death to entertain the howling orcs. To ensure that the slaves would fight, the orcs restricted food enough to make them extra-aggressive but not so much as to make them weak. Then, on fight days, fresh meats were promised to the winning team, and the dwarves, driven mad from captivity and constant hunger, would turn on each other as ferociously as they had once fought their slave masters.

Roskin had not yet been to a battle, but there was supposed to be one within a moon cycle. None of the slaves could say exactly when. But in training with the crazed Tredjards, Roskin had experienced a new level of viciousness. Even just in practice, they tried to rip each other apart, but because of his training as a boxer and a swordsman, he had been able to defend himself well enough not to have gotten seriously injured. His nose had been broken, and three of his back teeth had been knocked out, but compared to some of the other injuries he had seen, those were nothing.

The leisure slaves stayed in their own quarters isolated from the rest. Their section was fenced off by an iron cage that had razor blades and spikes along the top, and no grass grew inside the fence. The ground had been churned into a rutted field of baked clay that stank from rotten food, blood, and feces. The sleeping quarters was a plain, rectangular building of one floor, and the single room was devoid of furnishings. The slaves all slept on the ground and took their meager food at the fence, for no orc dared enter the cage to feed them.

The other slaves lived in buildings near the fields, and in the mornings when the horn would blow, Roskin would watch the still exhausted dwarves, elves, and humans trudge to the fields or the workrooms or the main house. Any who didn’t meet the horn’s call within five minutes was dragged from the building, tied to a post, and lashed for several minutes. The overseer who dealt the blows showed no mercy, and in fact, pleas, cries, and whimpers only seemed to fuel his rage. Roskin couldn’t watch those beatings.

The orcs themselves were divided into a strict hierarchy. Those at the top lived in the main house and handled the business end of selling goods and trading slaves. Beneath them were the warriors who guarded the main house and squelched any attempt at slave revolt. Then came the field overseers who directly supervised the slaves, and below them were the orcs who did manual labor with the slaves. The lowest orcs were the most vile and ignorant creatures Roskin had ever known. Few could read or write, and none seemed to have a notion of the world beyond the plantation. While Roskin didn’t much like the Tredjards stuck in the pen with him, he despised those orcs that made daily trips by the cage and jeered at the warriors.

Despite the grotesque ways of all orcs, the main house was a beautiful structure, and the juxtaposition of that beauty with the cruelty of the plantation was hard for the Kiredurk to reconcile. Still, he admired the craft of the house, which was built from oak imported from the forests of the Great Empire. It was three stories tall with a roof that sloped to a steep point, and the entire house, which was at least two hundred by one hundred feet, was surrounded by a railed porch. Thick pillars with ornate carvings supported the roof of the porch. The house was stained a walnut brown with dark trim, and the entire structure was surrounded by water oaks with thick moss hanging from the branches.

Behind the main house, the soldier’s barracks was much less elaborate, being more functional than anything. It was also much smaller, about fifty by fifty feet and two stories high. To the best of Roskin’s reckoning, there were roughly a hundred soldiers who guarded the plantation, and at any given time about a third were asleep inside the barracks. Another third were at the main house, and the rest were stationed at various points around the entire plantation.

Each day, Roskin studied the place for a chance to escape, and he was sure that if he could get out of the cage, he could get past the perimeter sentries. One evening, after the day’s fighting had ceased, he sat in the corner of the pen that he had made his own and counted the heartbeats it took for the sentries to make their rounds. On average, the field behind the pen was unwatched for thirty heartbeats every round the orcs patrolled. It was maybe a hundred yards across the bare field, and after that, the tall grasses of the savannah would be plenty of cover for him.

As Roskin counted, a Tredjard who was especially vicious sat beside him and stared in the same direction. The dwarf’s cheeks were so sunken that he almost looked like a skeleton, and his eyes were far away. Roskin braced himself for an attack, but to his surprise, the dwarf spoke to him softly. It was the first time one of these dwarves had said anything to him outside of the training fights.

“You fight well, tall one. With you, we’ll win some meat.”

“We’ll see.” Roskin’s stomach burned for a full meal.

“Winter is coming. We’ll need it.”

“How long have you been here?”

“This is the third winter.” The Tredjard rubbed a scar above his left eye.

“How many battles have you seen?”

“Enough.”

“How did you end up here?”

“You ask a lot of questions. Do you answer any?”

Roskin shrugged.

“Are you counting their rounds?”

Roskin stared away, afraid to answer.

“We all did it. We all planned our escape. Some even tried, but you can’t make it.”

“Is that so?”

“Fight well and earn the meat. Fatten up.”

With that, the dwarf moved back to his own spot between two others. The three stared at Roskin and had a heated conversation, but Roskin paid them little attention. He was sure the dwarf was wrong. He could escape.

The evening horn blew, and the slaves began making their way back to their quarters. The field slaves sang as they walked, and on the surface, the songs sounded joyful that the day’s work was done, but to Roskin, a current of sadness flowed beneath that surface gaiety, and the sound was sadder than any song the masters of Dorkhun had ever sung. He listened to their songs and let the feeling wash over him.

Sadness had become a constant emotion for the heir, replacing the dark fear with its persistency. Even though he knew he would escape the cage and find his way home, he missed his family and friends. He even missed Molgheon. He longed for a warm bath and the sounds of his sisters giggling from their rooms. He missed the open road and green grass for a bed, the dark of the underground and the smell of mold.

But sadness wasn’t the only emotion he felt. Terror of the coming battle had been growing steadily. He was sure that even though he wasn’t completely green that kind of fight would overwhelm him. If the Tredjards who were supposed to be on his side were that vicious to each other, he didn’t want to know how gruesome the battle would get, and he steeled his resolve to escape before it.

He had felt terror before. At the trading block, he had been paralyzed by it. Koshlonsen had been a horror of a city, with slaves kept in large pens like cattle and the auctioneers parading them in front of customers with nonchalance. Roskin had seen children ripped from their mothers’ arms and entire families separated. He had seen rebellious ones beaten into submission with thick whips and staves. And the noises had been crushing: the cries and pleadings of the slaves, the pitches and bids of the auctioneers, the grumblings and laughter of the orcs browsing, the creaks of wagons coming and going, the clang of the hammers shackling chains to the slaves. The entire din was a cacophony of evil and sadness, and Roskin would never forget that sound.

Torkdohn had sold him to a broker as soon as they had arrived in town, and the broker put him up for auction the next day. He had been sold his first time on the block and had been transported along with five other slaves – two humans and three Tredjards – to this plantation. The others had been put in the fields, and Roskin caught glimpses of them from time to time. With each day their faces looked more gaunt and their shoulders more stooped.

The evening meal, a slice of cornbread and a half rotten tomato for each warrior, was delivered, and the orcs who brought it were from the lowest ranks. They made a point of dropping the food on the ground at the limit of the dwarves’ reach beyond the cage, and the slaves had to stretch and strain to get the meager meal. The orcs laughed and spat at them while they struggled. After getting his food inside, Roskin was finished eating within a few seconds, and he wanted nothing more than to be back on Kwarck’s farm with the meats and nuts and vegetables.

The sun had sunk to the horizon, and he had learned to get inside quickly. Otherwise, the mosquitoes would swarm him, and he would be left with a bad place on the floor to sleep. Inside, he found a decent corner and fought off two others who tried to take it from him. With nothing else to do, he fell asleep quickly and dreamed of a better place.

As usual, he awoke to the horn and went to the cage to wait for breakfast. The sun was still an hour from rising, and the morning air was crisp on his cheeks and nose. The work slaves filed out of their quarters and went to their labor, and Roskin longed even for their fate. Anything had to be better than being stuck behind those bars with those Tredjards. The enormity of the day came down on him at once, and he began to pace around the pen, searching in vain for some weakness in the cage. If he could just get over the razors and spikes, he could reach the field.

The lowly orcs brought breakfast and taunted the dwarves with the offering, but Roskin didn’t bother to eat. A plan had begun to form, and he didn’t want any distractions. He knew how to get over the wall and just needed the right opportunity, so he returned to his corner and watched the guards patrol in the darkness of pre-dawn. The lowly orcs had finished taunting and had returned to their labor, so the dwarves were alone. When the sentries reached the point where the field was not watched, Roskin sprang from his haunches and grabbed the nearest dwarf. The Kiredurk pressed the unsuspecting Tredjard above his head and tossed him onto the fence, impaling the poor dwarf in the spikes and razors. Then, Roskin used the dwarf’s writhing body to climb over the cage.

When his feet touched the other side, he sprinted for the tall grasses, not looking back at the howling Tredjards who were also trying to climb the dead dwarf’s body. The Tredjards were too short to reach his legs and couldn’t get over, but Roskin didn’t care about them. He only wanted to be as far away from the plantation as possible.

When he had first arrived, he and the other five had been taken to the blacksmith’s shop, where they were secured to a rail. Then, another slave branded each one on the hip, forever marking them as property of the Slithsythe Plantation. The smell of scorched flesh had made Roskin vomit before his turn, but when the metal seared his skin, the pain almost made him pass out.