WindBeliever (42 page)

Selective memory, he snorted, wasn’t all that bad. It took away what might have caused him real concern. What he did know, though, brought a worried scowl to his sweating face.

He was to be sold, that much he knew, and he wondered idly if the new master would be better than the old. The Commandant had been cruel, but had allowed him some freedom when he, himself, had been good.

“What’s your name, friend?”

Conar looked to his left and saw the eager, lonely face of the old man in the cage beside his own. Death hovered on that weak, frail countenance like a buzzard sitting atop a fence post, watching for road kill. The parchment-like skin of the elderly man was stretched thin across his prominent cheekbones. His fading eyes were sunken deep in their sockets and the cap of white fuzz about his lean face seemed to glow in the faint light from the candles about the room.

“How do you feel, Grandfather?” Conar asked and watched as the old man’s shrunken lips pulled back to reveal a toothless mouth with bleeding gums.

“I am not long for this burden, son,” the old man whispered. “My time on this plane of torment is nearly run out.”

“It is a better place to which you go,” Conar said and wondered how he knew that.

“You are Serenian,” the old man said, painfully moving his body so his bent and crippled fingers could poke through the mesh of his cage and touch Conar’s hand.

“How do you know?” He didn’t even know his own nationality, so how could this man tell?

“By your accent, son,” the old man informed him. “I have heard that slow drawl many times over the years.”

Conar moved his hand until his fingers closed around the old man’s arthritic claws, their hands clenched through the mesh. “I don’t know who I am, Grandfather,” he said. “And I don’t think it matters, now, do you?”

The old man shuddered and the light began to fade from his eyes. “It matters, son,” he said on a long sigh. “Never let anyone tell you no different.”

He held the old man’s hand until the fingers grew stiff and cold and the vacant stare that looked back at him through the links of the cage filmed over and seemed to sink back into the old man’s shrunken face.

“The Wind be at your back, Grandfather,” he whispered, wondering just what the hell that meant.

The physician was surprised that the blond man was still alive the next morning when he WINDBELIEVER

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came in to check on the slaves. That probing sapphire stare was even keener than it had been the evening before, more alert, move demanding, and when it had moved over the physician, the medical man had felt stripped by, evaluated more intimately than he had ever felt scrutinized before.

“This one is dead.”

Conar finally got a good look at the healer’s helper and didn’t like what he saw. The man looked mean, rabid dog mean, and the glance he shot at Conar said he would just as soon slit his throat as look at him. He’d seen that look on another man’s face, somewhere. The Labyrinth? It must have been.

“Then dispose of him, Habi,” the healer answered and Conar knew the deadly bastard’s name.

He had managed to push himself up in the cage until he was in a semi-seated position. With bland curiosity, he watched the healer’s helper unlock the cage next to his own and drag the old man outside it, letting the fragile body crash to the floor in a shameless exhibition of unconcern for the sanctity of death.

What did it matter, he asked himself? The old man was dead, gone on to a higher reward than this earthly plane where life held no measure beyond the amount of money spent to buy a warm body and strong back. The shell that had housed the old man’s gentle nature was nothing more than a casing. What had counted had been inside and now that precious commodity had flown.

“What are you looking at?” the helper snarled at Conar. A slow, slow smile from the blond slave became the answer to his question. “Bastard! I asked what you were looking at?”

Watching that sinister grin spread like molasses on a cold, cold day, the physician instinctively knew the man behind that slow smile was as deadly as they came. Even the dark sapphire stare seemed to take on a hardness that spoke volumes. The man was classically handsome, despite the wicked twin scars on his lean left cheek, but the look that had come over his face was lethal.

“Lower your eyes to me, scum!” Habi shouted, fairly quivering as the cold, cold look continued to attach itself to him.

That deadly expression changed, turned pit viper steady and the soft voice that spoke was just as intense.

“Fuck

you.”

Admiration lit the physician’s eyes. No slave had ever dared to speak so to a keeper, especially not to one such as Habi Al-Kanoor.

Scarlet red infused the keeper’s face and he growled, grabbing an iron bar to poke it through the mesh in the cage.

“Don’t even think of it, Al-Kanoor,” someone warned from further back in the warehouse and the keeper spun around.

“He’s asking for it, Harim!” Habi complained. He turned to the physician. “Isn’t he?”

“He has spunk, eh, Kahlil?” the newcomer drawled.

The physician watched as the blond slave’s head whipped around, his deadly stare searching for the owner of the new voice that had intruded. There was a look now on the slave’s face that was hard to describe. For just a moment, there had been shocked surprise, then intense fear, then immediate fury. As those dark orbs had settled on Harim, the man’s full lips had drawn back in a snarl and a low, menacing growl had hummed through the silence. His fingers jabbed through the mesh, gripping the steel links.

“The bastard’s no better than an animal,” Habi spat, wanting to reach out and rattle the WINDBELIEVER

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slave’s cage, but not daring to. The look on that furious face was enough to make him back down the ladder in an urgent desire to put distance between him and the blond man.

“He doesn’t look all that dangerous to me,” Harim quipped, staring up at the slave.

“Try

me.”

Harim’s left eyebrow shot upward into the curls of his thick black hair. He smiled. The slave’s fingers were threaded through the mesh, clutching it with a mindless fury that had turned the knuckles white. Weak though the man might be, there was still a tenseness, a willingness to vault like a bloodthirsty lion from that cage should the door just happen to spring open.

“Has he been fed?” Harim asked, looking away from that deadly stare to the physician.

“Not

yet.”

“Then feed him,” Harim ordered. “He’ll bring a fair price.” He turned to go.

“I’m not hungry, you motherless prick!”

Harim looked back and found that hot glare impaling him. Well versed in the ways of the human race, there was no doubt in the slave warden’s mind that the man glowering at him would gladly crush his windpipe if given the chance. Harim had no intention of giving him that chance.

“You can be force fed,” Harim suggested. “Is that what you want?”

“I want you to shove it up your ass, you goddamned pog.”

Harim shrugged. “I’m afraid that isn’t one of your options, my friend.”

“If he won’t eat, what do you want me to do with him, Harim?” the physician asked.

“How about letting him go?” the blond slave spat.

An amused grin pulled at Harim’s lips. “You may not be worth much, slave, but you are worth something.” He chuckled. “Whatever we get for you will go toward paying the physician for your medical care.”

“You’d better make it a fucking fortune you get for me, pog, because I swear I’ll come back here and find you bastards.” He pulled furiously on the mesh. “And I’ll wipe that condescending smirk off your ugly face!”

“He’s trouble, Harim. There’s no one who will give you a brass Kopi for this one.”

Harim sighed. “You may be right, Habi. Since he is intent on giving us trouble, sedate him.

When he is unconscious, place him in one of the holding cells. I want him manacled hand and foot, yoked so that he can not move. Gag him if you need to, it won’t matter.” A vicious grin stretched Harim’s lips. “As a matter of fact, I think it would be best if you did.”

Conar’s gut was cramping with fury, with his urgent need to kill the man looking up at him with such jeering contempt. Even though he tried to keep himself from doing it, hating himself for his lack of self-restraint, he jerked at the mesh of his cage, rattling it like a beast, growling like one, and was infuriated even further by the laugh that came from the object of his rage.

“You’ll not last long here, Blue Eyes,” Harim chuckled. “Some master will lop that pretty head from that sexy body of yours.”

Immediate shock stilled Conar’s hands on the mesh and he felt a quiver of true terror run through him. The man’s chilling words as he made to leave cut deep and left him with an intense urge to vomit.

“And don’t bother clothing him.” Harim grinned. “If he wants to act like an animal, we’ll treat him like one. Besides, there may be a bidder in the audience who wants a bed partner he can beat into submission!”

“You motherfucker!” Conar yelled, rattling his cage mindlessly, impervious to the hurried movements of the physician below him. “Let me out of here and I’ll show you what kind of animal I can be!!!”

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So enraged was he, he barely felt the dart that was blown through the hollow reed into his naked thigh. He plucked the offending missile out and flung it away, wrapping his fingers through the mesh once more to pull at the cage. His fury was no less diminished when the second dart hit him and he slapped at it, breaking the needle off in his arm. As the drug coursed through his system, a system already pumping adrenalin, his eyes glazed, his lids began to droop, but he continued to jerk on the mesh of the cage until he shuddered and his head dropped to the cage door. He tried to shake off the drug, but it began to shut down his mind.

“Shoot him again!” Habi barked, not wanting to climb the ladder to get the blond man until he was sure the bastard was out cold.

Once more the physician blew a dart into the slave, hitting him in the belly, just above the wound that had nearly cost the man his life.

“They’ll never be able to even get a bid for him like this,” Habi grumbled, dragging the ladder over to the upper cage. “They’ll have to keep the bastard in restraints even on the auction block.”

“That’s their concern, not ours,” the physician answered.

“I say they’d be better off slitting his throat,” Habi complained. He stuck the key to the padlock in and twisted, warily eying the unconscious man as if anticipating him leaping up and attacking.

“Just get him down, Habi,” the physician ordered.

It took longer that Habi would have liked to get the slave into one of the holding cells, but once he did, it didn’t take long to manacle him and stretch his well-muscled arms into the restriction of the yoke, an apparatus that had been designed to teach troublemakers a hard and uncomfortable lesson.

Constructed of a thick piece of sturdy oak, the yoke’s six foot span was heavy and cumbersome. Somewhat resembling the contrivance used to harness oxen, this particular symbol of subjection served a two-fold purpose--it kept a prisoner from being able to use his arms and when drawn up with the pulley inside the holding cell to the cross beam overhead, it became a formidable form of excruciating punishment resembling crucifixion.

“You aren’t going to give anyone any trouble, now, are you, pretty boy?” Habi sneered. He clamped the wrist restraints as tight as he could get them.

“Leave him alone,” the physician growled.

“Let me have him for just ten minutes,” Habi growled as he securely tied a thick gag over the slave’s mouth. He reached down to press his fingers against the bandage covering the man’s stomach wound. He laughed when there was a faint groan.

“Get out of there, I told you!” the physician yelled. “They may not get much for him, but Lord Khan won’t like it if he’s been damaged!”

Habi snorted his displeasure and then reached for the rope that would hoist the prisoner up from the floor. When the slave was dangling helplessly from the overhead beam, his feet off the floor, the physician’s assistant slipped ankle irons around his feet and secured them to hooks cemented to the floor.

“It’ll be a miracle if hanging like that doesn’t pull his stitches lose and he bleeds to death,”

the physician grumbled.

“Harim won’t care and I doubt Lord Khan will,” Habi sneered.

“Just go find out when they intend on selling him,” the medical man ordered. “I want him here no longer than is absolutely necessary.” He stared at the man in the cage and shuddered. “If he survives this, he can survive anything and I don’t want to be anywhere near him if he should WINDBELIEVER

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ever get free!”

“There is another blond haired man in the warehouse,” Kharis told his mistress.

“Ionarian?” Sabrina asked as she spoonfed the man she had named Sirocco. She picked up her napkin and wiped his mouth.

“Serenian, I believe.” Kharis felt sorry for the handsome young man Sabrina was caring so diligently for. As yet, he had not spoken to them, to tell them anything of his past or what he had thought his future would hold.

His vacant stare was pitiful and he flinched whenever loud sounds occurred. Docile, and totally vulnerable, he followed Sabrina with his thankful gaze wherever she happened to go.

And he slept in the black woman’s bed, curled against her like a child would its mother.

“Has he touched you, Sabrina?” Kharis had asked only once, but his mistress had shaken her head sadly.

“It will take time, Kharis,” she said. “He is like a music box that has been dropped and broken. The music is still there, trapped inside, but the mechanism which runs the music box is damaged.”

“Shall I bid for this other one?” Kharis asked.

Sabrina lifted a cup of wine to her bedmate’s lips. “Do you think he is worth buying?”

Kharis shrugged eloquently. “I am told he is handsome. Blond, blue eyes the color of dark sapphires, well-built. Who knows?” He frowned. “His face has been scarred on one side and he has been beaten rather badly. His back is covered in ....” He stopped, seeing Sabrina staring at him with her mouth open. “Is something wrong?”