The Transall Saga (7 page)

chapter
23

Mark set Leeta down and let her walk for
a while. They were on a well-traveled road in the bottom of a beautiful red valley. The crimson grass was knee high and there were fruit trees and fields of bright orange flowers on either side.

The odor of manure and roasting meat wafted down the path toward them. From behind some rocks on the hillside came a long clear note from a hunting horn. It was answered by another horn farther down the valley.

A churning cloud of dust sped down the road toward the caravan. The animal that reined up in front of them was a golden color with a well-brushed coat. The rider was a girl with long black braids who was dressed in buckskins like the warriors. She wore beautiful tanned-leather moccasins that reached past her knees.

Dagon jumped off his mount and ran to greet her. He gave her a bear hug and swung her around. When he put her down she glanced back at the captives. Her eyes fell on Mark. She stared openly the way her father had done.

"Megaan ... Kakon," Dagon said in a low voice.

The girl raised her chin haughtily, turned back to her father and smiled. She said something Mark couldn’t make out, then climbed back on her mount and rode next to Dagon to lead the procession into the village.

From the outskirts Mark could see that the Tsook were far ahead of the arrow people in building design and construction. This was more than a small village, it was a bustling town. Their houses were made of logs that had been fitted together and chinked with mud. And they had high lookout towers at every corner so that they could easily spot approaching enemies in time to warn the people.

The manure smell had come from the large wooden pens a few hundred yards in front of the buildings. They contained a small herd of tame buffalo creatures.

A cheer went up as the warriors came closer. The Tsook people stood outside their houses and clapped and yelled as the group passed by.

The prisoners were led through the maze of fires, cooking pots and houses to the far side of town. The ropes that had held them together were removed and the warriors began pushing the prisoners over the edge of a deep pit.

Mark looked down. It was at least an eight-foot drop. One of the warriors shoved him forward. He shook the man’s hand off and glanced across the pit. Dagon was on the other side watching him. Mark set his jaw, stepped out and landed on the bottom with the others.

The arrow people were frightened and huddled together in the middle of the pit. A crowd of Tsook villagers gathered around the top and pointed and stared at the prisoners.

Mark found a corner and sat down. He was tired and his back ached from carrying Leeta. Yawning, he put his hands behind his head and leaned against the dirt wall. He knew he had done the right thing by staying. Leeta never would have made it without him. But it didn’t make what was happening now any more pleasant.

Leeta knelt beside him. "Mawk tkan tu."

"You don’t have to thank me. Anybody would have done the same."

Above them some sort of trading was going on. Voices were raised and there was arguing. Mark figured the Tsook were trying to decide how they were going to divide the slaves. It didn’t concern him. As soon as he had rested he would be gone. And they wouldn’t be able to catch him either. His plan was to move fast and stay in the brushy country where the mounted men couldn’t go.

The arguing and trading lasted for hours. Finally, late in the afternoon, everything was settled. Suitable terms had been reached and the new owners came for their property.

One by one the captives were hauled out of the pit and handed over to their Tsook masters. When it was Leeta’s turn she held on to Mark’s arm and had to be pried loose. The elderly woman who had purchased her prodded her with a sharp stick, forcing her to move away.

Mark was the only prisoner left in the pit. The crowd had thinned out and the warriors were dividing up the payment.

Apparently no one wanted him as a slave. That was just as well. Because in the morning they would have realized what a bad trade they’d made when they found him missing.

"Kakon." A sharp voice called to him from above.

He opened one eye. The girl with the long black braids was standing over him with her arms folded. She barked an order, and a rope circled his head and settled around his shoulders. Sarbo jerked Mark to his feet, and some of the warriors helped pull him out of the pit onto his stomach. One of them held him down while another quickly tied his hands together.

Sarbo got up on his mount and barely gave Mark time to stand before he dragged him through the village to a small outbuilding behind one of the larger log houses.

He shoved Mark inside the shed and bolted the door. The smell was awful, like an open sewer. It would have been pitch black in the tiny room except for a small semicircular opening near the bottom of the back wall. Mark crawled through the slime on the floor and looked through the hole.

There were fat, hairy piglike animals with long, pointed snouts rooting in a pen attached to the back of his cell. No wonder it smelled so bad. He was in some kind of pigsty.

He moved to the door and tried it. It wouldn’t budge. He pushed on the walls. They were solid, made of logs like the houses. That left the opening. He knelt by it again. It was so small he doubted he could get his head through, much less his body.

The floor. It was dirt. He would dig his way out. But first he had to get his hands loose. Feeling in the bottom of his boot, he found his knife and began to saw awkwardly on the rope. Minutes later it snapped off his wrists.

He dug at the base of the opening, using everything he could find—his knife, the toe of his boot, his fingers—until finally he had a hole big enough to fit his shoulders through. He wriggled into the pen.

He hadn’t really planned to escape until it was dark but he couldn’t take the chance they might discover the hole. Staying low behind the log fence, he crossed through the herd of pigs and peeked up over the side of the pen. There was no one in sight.

It was now or never. He took a deep breath and slid over the fence. He moved carefully from one building to the next until he had made his way to the edge of town.

Ducking behind some tall red plants in a garden, he took a quick look around. The road they had come in on was to his right. But taking it was out of the question. They would catch him if he stayed in the open. He looked to the mountains. They were steep and rocky but would have better places to hide.

Mark crawled along the rows of vegetables. There was only one more house to get past and then he would head for the rocks and brush on the hillside.

He raced to the back of the building and leaned against it to rest. The move nearly cost him his life.

A small furry animal—he hesitated to call it a dog but it had some of the same features—started up a scrawking sound. Mark knew there was no time to lose. He bolted for the closest ridge. Behind him he could hear shouting and the sounds of people running.

Something whizzed past his ear. An arrow hit the dirt in front of him. He dodged to the left and zigzagged up the mountain. He was nearly to the top of the ridge. If he could just make it to the brush they’d never catch him.

He felt something slam into his back. It ripped through his flesh like a hot iron. He fell to his knees. Twice he tried to get up but couldn’t. He clawed at the ground, then managed to get to his knees and pull himself behind an outcropping of rocks.

The voices were getting closer. Mark fought for air. Something was taking his breath away. With his last spark of consciousness, he felt around for something to use to defend himself. His fingers closed around a large rock. He tried to pick it up but he was too weak; it fell from his hand.

Then they were on him.

chapter
24

The heavy steel band around his ankle dug into his skin as he walked. The chain forged to the band held a heavy iron bar that made his movements slow and clumsy.

It had taken almost three months for him to heal from the arrow wound. And the moment he had been well enough to sit up, Dagon had had the village blacksmith build the ankle chain.

Dagon’s daughter, Megaan, had tended to him personally. She and her grandmother had removed the arrow and treated the deep laceration. And all the time he was healing she taught him the Tsook language, which he now spoke almost like a native.

He had been given an old pair of buckskin pants to wear and was allowed to sleep on the floor in a comer of the house. Dagon had issued orders that Mark was to be fed generous portions. He said he wanted him fully recovered so that he could do the hard work he had been purchased for.

Mark hadn’t seen Leeta since the day she had been brought in and sold. And he was too proud to ask Megaan about her. He could only hope she was being treated well.

"Kakon. Pay attention. I need your help with this." Megaan scowled at him and pointed to the buffalo hide they were dipping into a foul-smelling liquid to tan it. "I think if you don’t stop dreaming all the time I will have to tell my father how useless you are."

"And I think I would be far more useful if I had this chain off my leg and wasn’t forced to do women’s work."

Megaan raised an eyebrow. "You would run."

"I might." Mark helped her lift the heavy, wet hide. "I told you I have to get back to the dark jungle and look for the blue light."

"I’m not sure I believe you about this. Probably it is a wild story that you have concocted to fool us."

"Then how do you explain why I look so different? Have you ever seen anyone else in your world who looked like me?"

"Transall. I told you before, the Tsook word for the world is Transall."

"You didn’t answer my question "

"I think this one is finished. Help me hang it over the fence. We will work on it some more tomorrow."

It was always the same. Megaan avoided talking about the blue light and the possibility of his returning home.

She brushed the hair out of her eyes. "Now we will go to Tanta’s storehouse. We are almost out of pole flour."

Mark stared at her. "We? I am to come with you? I thought your father said—"

"My father said that I am in charge while he is away. And I need you to come with me to carry the sacks. Get the cart."

Megaan’s grandmother appeared at the door of the house. "Do you think it wise to take the savage manboy among the real people? He might embarrass you."

The old woman always called him the savage. Many times Mark had heard her go on and on about how the Tsook were the original people. They were specially made by the Creator of Life to rule Transall. Everyone else had been provided to serve the Tsook and to be used however the people wished.

"What can he do?" Megaan asked. "Besides, I need pole flour and Barow is too small to help me carry it."

"I am not too small." A little boy with curly black hair was standing near the door. He stuck his head outside and pouted. "I am a brave warrior like my father, the great Dagon."

Megaan smiled indulgently. "Someday, my little Barow. Someday."

"Take one of the field hands," the old woman said sharply. "They can move about more easily than this one. I’ve never understood what your father sees in this giant savage. Why in the name of Transall does he let him stay in the house and feed him good Tsook food like a pet? He should sleep in the fields with the others."

"I have made my decision." Megaan watched Mark pushing the small two-wheeled cart toward them. "If he misbehaves will have him whipped. He knows this."

Mark brought the cart to the front of the house and waited for instructions. He towered over Megaan and they both knew that the only thing that kept him in the village was the heavy iron shackle clamped around his leg. He did what he was told in order to get along. For whatever reason, Dagon treated him better than most of the other slaves, and Mark wanted no trouble until he could find a way to escape.

He followed Megaan down the narrow path leading from her house to the central road through the large village. So far he’d never been allowed to leave Dagon’s property. His chores consisted of feeding the stock, working in the house garden, chopping wood and carrying water to the field hands and herders. The main section of town had been off-limits until now.

It was hard for him to keep up with her. Not only did he have to push the unwieldy wooden cart but he had to cope with the iron bar on its short chain as it dragged along behind him.

They passed several women sitting outside their houses sewing. Megaan waved and called each of them by name. Mark felt them stanng at him as if he had two heads.

Not only was he unusually tall, with strange disfigured eyes and feet, but he was a slave who had tried to escape and yet was allowed to live. This was a feat unheard of among the Tsook.

The village was presently inhabited mainly by women and children. Dagon had taken most of the men out on a raid. Only those thought essential to keep things running smoothly had been left: the blacksmith and the slave overseers with their deadly crossbows. A few elderly men sat around doing nothing but chewing a smelly kind of tobacco.

Mark had overheard Dagon planning his next attack with Sarbo and some others. Across the high mountains to the east lived a group of savage people known as the Rawhaz, cannibals who had slaughtered a party of Tsook from another village. Dagon and his warriors had joined forces with them and gone out to find and destroy the man-eaters.

Mark had been waiting for a time like this to make a run for it. With the warriors gone there would be no one to come after him. But first he had to find some way to get rid of the chain and bar.

He heard the clanging sound of metal hitting metal and stopped to stare at the fiery forge in the blacksmith’s lean-to. Fire. If he had a tool and could get the chain hot enough ...

"Kakon. Must I always yell to get your attention?"

"Huh? What did you say?" Mark rolled the cart up to Megaan.

"I said... Oh, what is the use? You will never make a good worker. I do not know what ever possessed my father to think that you and the Merkon could possibly..." Megaan’s eyes widened and her hand went to her mouth. "What I meant to say was that you should quit dawdling."

That was the second time Mark had heard that name. Why was it such a secret? He tried to walk faster.

"So who is this Merkon, anyway?"

"Here is the storehouse. You wait outside while I go in and barter with Tanta." Megaan walked to the large building without looking back.

Mark sat on the ground. Megaan infuriated him. She always had her nose in the air and never answered any of his questions. One of these days ...

"Mawk." Mark heard a familiar voice calling to him from across the street. It was Leeta. She was walking behind an old woman and carrying two heavy baskets.

"Leeta." Mark jumped up. "How are you? Are they treating you all right? Ksee tyaak tu?"

The old woman glared at him. "No talking, slave. It is not permitted." She poked Leeta with a stick and they moved on down the road. Leeta looked back but didn’t say anything.

Mark watched to see which house she went into. It was a square one with a thatched roof at the end of the street.

"Kakon. What are you staring at? Quit gawking at that stupid slave girl and come get these sacks." Megaan stood in the door of the warehouse, frowning. "My grandmother was right. She said you would embarrass me."

Mark turned slowly. His jaw tightened and he spoke carelessly. "Leeta is smart. You will not speak of her like that."

Color flooded Megaan’s cheeks. "I told you to come and get the sacks. Don’t make me tell you again."