Out of the Darkness

To his surprise, the caravan car to which the Unkerlanter guards steered his lot of captives was one made for carrying passengers. He’d expected to go aboard one that had borne freight, or perhaps animals. To be able to sit down in an actual compartment and watch the landscape go by ... That didn’t sound so bad.

It also wasn’t what happened. A compartment was made to hold four people. The Unkerlanters shoehorned a couple of dozen into that space. “You fit!” one of them shouted in bad Algarvian. “You make selfs fit! You no do, we do.”

Men squeezed onto the seats, onto the floor, and up onto the baggage racks above the barred windows. Ceorl saw at once that those racks offered more room to stretch out than anywhere else in the compartment. He swarmed up onto one. An Algarvian had the same idea at almost the same time. Ceorl’s elbow got him in the pit of the stomach. He dropped back into the seething crowd below.

Ceorl hauled Sudaku out of the crowd and up onto the rack with him. “Thanks,” the blond said in Algarvian. “Why did you do that?”

Before Ceorl could answer, the redhead he’d elbowed and a pal rose again like a couple of spouting leviathans and tried to haul him down. Ceorl’s boot got one of them in the face. “Oh no you don’t, you son of a whore!” he said. Meanwhile, Sudaku had driven off the other Algarvian. “That’s why,” Ceorl said. “Everybody’s got to have somebody to watch his back for him.”

“Ah.” The Kaunian nodded. “I see it. We are like too many wolves in too small a cage.”

“I don’t know anything about wolves,” Ceorl said. “All I know about is gaols, but I know them good. Either you eat meat or you are

meat. Powers below eat all those other bastards. Nobody’s going to eat me.”

He leaned down from the baggage rack to kick an Algarvian who was wrestling with a man from Plegmund’s Brigade for a space on one of the seats. The Algarvian crumpled. The Forthwegian shoved him aside and waved to Ceorl. Ceorl grinned back. He’d had plenty of practice at this kind of dirty fighting. It was different from soldiering. Here, everyone except a few chums was an enemy. Have to remind the chums who they are, he thought.

By the time things in the compartment sorted themselves out, he had a good line on who was strong and who was weak. The weak, the friendless, and the stupid were jammed into the space on the floor between the seats. Some of them were nothing more than footrests for the stronger captives.

Yells from the compartment down the corridor said the Unkerlanters were filling it the same way. Once the car was full, a door slammed. The ley-line caravan still didn’t move. Plenty of other cars remained to be filled.

Up in his aerie, Ceorl was comfortable enough. He didn’t want to think about what the poor whoresons folded in on themselves down below were going through. He didn’t want to, and so he didn’t. They hadn’t had the brains or the ballocks to take care of themselves. Nobody else would do it for them.

After what seemed like forever, the ley-line caravan glided out of the depot. From where he was, Ceorl couldn’t see a great deal, but he did know they were heading west. He shrugged. He’d already got the upper hand on things, and expected he’d be able to keep it no matter where he ended up.

Rations were hard bread and salted fish that set up a raging thirst in whoever ate them. He got a good-sized chunk of bread and one of the biggest fish. He also got first pull at the cup from the water bucket the Unkerlanters grudgingly allowed their captives.

When he and his comrades were herded into the compartment, he hadn’t expected to stay there for three days. One man died on the trip. No one noticed till he wouldn’t take his piece of bread. Even after the captives shoved his corpse out into the corridor, the compartment seemed just as crowded as it had before.

On the morning of the third day, the ley-line caravan finally stopped. “Out!” the guards shouted in Unkerlanter and Algarvian. “Out!”

A lot of the captives had trouble moving. Not Ceorl, whose fettle was about as fine as it could be. He sprang down from the caravan car and looked around. Not far away stood ramshackle wooden barracks. Low, rolling hills dotted the countryside. The air smelled of wood smoke and something else, something with a harsh, mineral tang to it.

“Where in blazes are we?” he said.

“These are the Mamming Hills.” A guard pointed to a black hole. “Cinnabar mine. We’ll work you till you die, you whoreson.” He threw back his head and laughed. “It won’t take long.”