Slaves of the Mastery Page 11

  ‘And what then?’ said Bowman.

  ‘What then? Freedom!’

  ‘It’s not enough.’

  Pinto came running up to them.

  ‘You’re to come,’ she said. ‘There’s a meeting.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Rufy Blesh bitterly. ‘The Manth solution to everything. Call a meeting.’

  Hanno and Ira Hath attended the meeting along with everyone else. The meeting had been called by Dr Greeth, one of the few high officials of old Aramanth who had survived the changes with dignity.

  ‘Jessel Greeth is a sound practical man,’ said Hanno to his wife, ‘but I don’t think he understands what’s happening to us, or why.’

  ‘Better to be a slave and live,’ said Ira Hath, ‘than to be free and die.’

  Hanno Hath turned to her in astonishment.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Ira, going a little pink. ‘Did I say something?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hanno looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Dr Greeth stood on a food wagon to address the gathering.

  ‘My friends,’ he said, ‘it’s time for us to face the truth of our situation. Our beloved home is destroyed. There is no going back. We are prisoners, slaves, exiles in an alien land. What are we to do? Are we to fight for our freedom, when we have no weapons? Are we to attempt escape, when we have nowhere to go?’

  ‘Cowards!’ cried out Rufy Blesh from the back. ‘Do you want to live and die as slaves?’

  Dr Greeth frowned. Hanno Hath realised he knew what he was going to say.

  ‘Better to be a slave and live,’ he said, ‘than to be free and die.’

  Hanno looked at his wife. Ira Hath blinked and shook her head.

  ‘Coward, coward, coward!’ cried Rufy Blesh.

  ‘Maybe I am a coward,’ said Dr Greeth evenly. ‘Maybe you’re a braver man than me. But look around you. Look at our people. Do you ask them all to choose death? For what?’

  ‘For the honour of the Manth people!’

  ‘You ask them to choose honour over life?’

  ‘Over a life of slavery, yes!’

  There were some scattered murmurs of approval.

  ‘Let’s not do anything in haste,’ said Jessel Greeth. ‘Winter is coming. We don’t yet know what our life here will be like. If it proves unbearable, we may all come to agree with our fiery young friend. That will then be the time to fight and die. For now, I propose that we wait and see. We have everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by waiting for the spring.’

  There was a silence. Then Miko Mimilith the tailor called out:

  ‘What does Hanno Hath say?’

  Hanno Hath had never been more than a librarian, but he was widely respected; and his wife, some said, had the true gift.

  ‘I must tell you,’ said Hanno in his quiet voice, ‘I believe we have less time than we think. Somewhere, not here, our homeland is waiting for us. I believe we must find it before it’s too late.’

  His words caused uproar.

  ‘Too late for what? What is to happen? Where is this homeland? How do you know?’

  Jessel Greeth put the question in its most unanswerable form.

  ‘You propose that we leave here, though we may die in the attempt, to seek a homeland, though you don’t know where, to escape some fate, though you don’t know what?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hanno.

  ‘I take it this revelation comes from your wife, our good prophetess?’ Jessel Greeth didn’t mean to make fun of Ira Hath, but there was a smile in his voice as he spoke.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hanno.

  ‘What exactly does she say?’

  Hanno hesitated, and met his son’s eyes. Bowman was looking at him steadily. ‘Tell them, pa,’ he said.

  ‘She says, the wind is rising.’

  At that, Jessel Greeth actually did laugh.

  ‘The wind is rising?’

  Ira Hath jumped up, goaded beyond endurance.

  ‘I am not your good prophetess!’ she cried. ‘I’m not any kind of prophetess! You can all do as you please. Nobody needs to listen to a word I say.’

  At this point, the gates to the marshalling yards swung open, and in came a troop of soldiers, escorting teams of clerks with ledgers under their arms. The meeting broke up. Ira Hath, wanting to hit somebody, hit her husband. She drove him backwards with a series of sharp pushes to his shoulders and chest.

  ‘Don’t do that! Never do that again!’

  Hanno Hath didn’t resist. He waited till she stopped hitting him, and then said,

  ‘You know it’s true.’

  ‘I don’t!’

  ‘You knew the exact words he’d say. You heard him speak them before he spoke them.’

  ‘I was guessing.’

  ‘No, you weren’t.’

  ‘What’s the use, Hanno? They won’t listen. Why tell them?’

  ‘Because it’s true.’

  She said nothing, but her eyes looked frightened.

  ‘It is, isn’t it? Something terrible is going to happen.’

  Slowly, she nodded her head.

  The clerks were moving among the captives, allocating them work according to their skills. One of them, ledger in hand, now stopped by Hanno Hath.

  ‘Slave number,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘On your wrist.’

  Hanno pulled up his sleeve and the clerk noted the number branded there.

  ‘Skill,’ he said.

  ‘Skill?’

  ‘What can you do?’

  ‘I’m a librarian.’

  ‘Librarian? That’s books, isn’t it? You can work in the depository. They’ve got books there. You!’

  ‘Me?’ said Ira Hath.

  ‘Number. Skill.’

  Ira met her husband’s eyes as she replied,

  ‘Prophetess.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said the clerk in surprise.

  ‘It’s someone who says things you don’t want to hear.’

  ‘What use is that?’

  ‘Very little.’

  ‘Can you do anything else?’

  ‘I can stare,’ said Ira, her nose beginning to twitch. ‘I can wave one hand slowly from side to side –’

  ‘She can sew,’ said Hanno hastily, seeing that matters were about to get out of hand. ‘She’s good with a needle.’

  ‘Sewing,’ said the clerk, writing in his ledger. ‘Basic repair work. Laundry.’

  He moved on.

  ‘I won’t,’ said Ira.

  ‘Just for now,’ said Hanno. ‘Please.’

  Scooch, who had made the best pastries in Aramanth, was assigned to work in one of the big bakeries. Miko Mimilith was sent to cut cloth at a dressmaker’s. Creoth, the former Emperor, was not so easy to place. He told the clerks that he had no skill of any kind.

  ‘What, nothing at all?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Don’t you find that time passes rather slowly?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Creoth. ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, you look healthy enough. You’d better work on the farms.’

  Mumpo told the clerk he wanted to be a manac. Pinto heard this with horror.

  ‘No, Mumpo! You can’t! You’ll be killed!’

  But Mumpo proved stubborn.

  ‘I can do it. I know I can.’

  ‘We’ve never had a new slave ask to be a manac before,’ said the clerk. ‘You know they only take the very best fighters?’

  ‘They’ll take me.’

  The clerks consulted with each other.

  ‘Well, I suppose there’s no harm in sending him for an assessment.’

  Bowman asked to be a night-watchman. His reason was simple. In the night, when everyone else was asleep, he could listen for Kestrel.

  ‘Night-watchman,’ wrote the clerk in his ledger.

  Once the lists were completed, the slaves were led out to start their new jobs. As they left the marshalling yards, armed
soldiers moved among them and picked out individuals from the groups of families and friends. Pinto was chosen from the Hath family group, and led off to one side.

  ‘Where are you taking her?’ said Ira Hath.

  The soldiers didn’t reply, but the answer came soon enough. On either side of the paved road stood long lines of monkey wagons, with their cage doors open, some already half full. Up to twenty people were herded into each cage. The space beneath the floor grids was stacked with bundles of firewood. Pinto shook violently as she was put in the cage. Hanno called out to her before he was led off.

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you, my darling. See you at the end of the day.’

  No explanations were given, no warnings. They had all seen the function of the iron cages. Bowman and Mumpo became very thoughtful. Now they knew that the walls that penned them in were unbreachable, unclimbable after all, even if they were invisible. Any attempt at escape, any disobedience at all, and their loved ones would be burned alive. They were to live from now on in the shadow of the monkey wagon.

  Hanno felt his wife’s anger seething within her.

  ‘Please, my dear,’ he begged her, ‘control yourself. Think of Pinto.’

  And so they parted, each to their place of work.

  Mumpo stood before the chief trainer of the manaxa school, waiting for him to speak. Lars Janus Hackel sat at his desk and stared at him, letting his eyes roam over Mumpo’s body.

  ‘Ha!’ he grunted, unimpressed.

  He got up and felt Mumpo with his huge hands. Once, in the days of his arena career, he had been a great mass of muscle. Now he was a great mass of fat. The scars that cross-hatched every visible part of his body had puckered and turned mauve, so that he looked like an uncooked sausage forced into a net.

  ‘You’re soft,’ he said. There was nothing about the boy, with his moon face and dangling limbs, that showed he had the makings of a manac. Hackel was not interested in romantic dreamers who got themselves chopped to pieces in their first bout. The manaxa was an art, not an execution. He turned aside, dismissing the boy.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘I can do it,’ said Mumpo.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘My body knows what to do.’

  ‘Go away.’ Hackel turned back. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘My body knows what to do.’

  Hackel stared at him. Long ago he had had just this feeling himself, and had spoken in just these words. For nine years he had been the undefeated champion. Was it possible this gawky lad had the true grace?

  He lowered himself back into his chair, grunting with the effort, and pondered.

  ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll take a look at you.’

  Hackel was a reasonable man. There was no call to kill the boy for having a foolish dream. He summoned one of his more recent recruits, a good solid fighter called Benz.

  ‘Put on your training guards. I want to try out a new lad.’

  Mumpo was stripped and fitted with leg and arm guards, but unlike the ones worn in the arena, in the place of blades on the knees and fists and helmet they had stubby metal knobs. He was led into a training ring, where a raised timber floor took the place of the sandy mound. His sparring partner gave him a friendly pat on one arm and said,

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.’

  ‘You won’t touch me,’ replied Mumpo.

  Mumpo’s confidence surprised the trainer. The boy was either very good or very stupid.

  For Mumpo himself, limbering up for the bout, it was all simple. He sensed he could fight well in the style of the manaxa, but more than this, he was burning to fight. Within him, driving him on, was an engine of fury that Hackel dimly perceived, though not its object. Mumpo meant to learn to be a manac, and then to turn his killing power on his masters.

  The trainer settled down on a ringside bench, and signalled to Benz that he could begin. Benz came out dancing, according to the custom of the manaxa. Mumpo followed him with his eyes and his limbs, dancing the same moves. Hackel grunted with approval. The boy moved nicely. Benz then curled in close, for a classic knee-fist-knee strike, but Mumpo seemed to know what was coming. He blocked each punch with clean fast moves, and all at once he was behind Benz, grazing his back with one arching fist. Hackel chuckled. A simple spin-and-lift, but nicely done.

  Benz realised he would have to try harder. Turning on Mumpo, he executed the attack called the pump hammer, a high-stepping flurry of blows that is meant to overwhelm the opposition’s defences. Mumpo knew instinctively how to respond: he leaned back, then drove forward with a single fist hit to the head. The blow landed short, but threw Benz off balance. Mumpo closed in with a series of punishing knee and fist strikes to the body, that battered his opponent to the floor.

  ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’

  Hackel was astonished by Mumpo’s ferocity.

  ‘No need to kill him!’

  Mumpo backed off, still jigging from foot to foot, so powered up with aggression that his fists went on striking the air before him. His opponent staggered to his feet, giddy and aching from the blows he had received. Hackel went to him and checked his face and chest.

  ‘Go and lie down.’

  Benz limped away. The trainer turned to Mumpo.

  ‘Well,’ he said slowly. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘I want to fight.’

  ‘So I see.’

  Hackel didn’t tell the boy how impressed he was. It didn’t do to let them get too high an opinion of themselves.

  ‘Will you teach me?’ said Mumpo.

  Hackel put his head on one side, pretending it was a difficult decision.

  ‘You punch like a baby,’ he said. ‘And you haven’t the first idea of how to build an attack. But I’ll make a manac of you yet.’

  Pinto’s day passed slowly in the monkey wagon. The first terrors soon wore off, as she saw how the others in the lines of cages complained more of the boredom than the danger. One group two cages down sang songs for a while, until their neighbours complained. Mostly the prisoners either gossiped or dozed. Titbits of news were passed from cage to cage and eagerly discussed, while the guards yawned and speculated on what would be for lunch. Pinto stayed very quiet, afraid that if she attracted attention in any way they would all be burned. To occupy herself, she thought about Mumpo, and how when she was fifteen and old enough to be married, he would be twenty-three, and much more grown-up, but not really different at all.

  Hanno Hath appeared briefly, just before lunch-time, to see how she was managing. She held his hands through the bars, and smiled for him so he wouldn’t worry about her.

  ‘It’s not hard at all,’ she told him. ‘It’s just boring.’

  ‘It’ll be over soon, my darling,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all bad will happen to you.’

  ‘I wonder what they do when it rains.’

  ‘You get wet, I suppose.’

  ‘I mean, they wouldn’t be able to light their fires.’

  Her father gazed at her with pride.

  ‘You’re the bravest girl in the world,’ he said.

  Hanno Hath himself had been assigned to a huge warehouse, which was crammed with every kind of object imaginable. Part junk-store, part treasure-trove, here were heaped the spoils of numberless raids, including the most recent attack on Aramanth. The wagons carrying the plunder had not been unloaded yet, and he found books from his own library, tipped loose between the piles of furniture, as packing material.

  The warehouse manager gazed wearily on the wagons from Aramanth.

  ‘Why do they bring back all this rubbish? Slaves I don’t mind, they can move themselves about. But who’s going to move all this? Yours truly, that’s who.’

  ‘What would you like me to do?’ asked Hanno.

  ‘Let’s see.’ He studied Hanno’s docket. ‘So you’re a librarian. You’d better do books.’

  ‘What am I to do with them?’

  ‘Move them about. Make a pile. That’s what we do here. Chairs
go with chairs. Pictures go with pictures. Books go with books. You’ll pick it up.’

  ‘What happens to the piles?’

  ‘What happens to anything? They decay and die.’ He swept one arm round the great crowded space in which they stood. ‘Think of this depository as the world. What do we all do here? We move about a bit, and then we die.’

  Hanno found that he was to be left alone. For a while he stacked books as he had been told. When he realised the manager was not returning to inspect his progress, he set about retrieving the more valuable books plundered from his own library.

  The books had been pulled in haste from the shelves, and thrown higgledy-piggledy into the raiding wagons, and many had fallen open, and been crushed. Hanno couldn’t bear to see a book with its spine cracked and its pages crumpled. He took each one and gently set it right, smoothing out the thick creamy pages until their edges were aligned once more. In doing this, he glanced over the texts here and there, and so, inevitably, began to read.

  He was so deeply immersed in one of the early Manth chronicles that he never heard the approaching footsteps.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  The question was barked at him in a huge and terrible voice. The owner of the voice, however, was a very small man wearing a hat with a very broad brim.

  Hanno jumped to his feet.

  ‘Just a short rest –’

  ‘Give, give!’

  The little man held out an imperious hand. Hanno gave him the book, cursing himself, terrified that Pinto would come to harm because of his lack of vigilance. The warehouse manager came bustling up.

  ‘Professor Fortz! I had no idea!’

  ‘Of course you had no idea. You’re a witless buffoon. When did you last have an idea?’ To Hanno he said accusingly, ‘This book is written in old Manth. Nobody can read old Manth.’

  ‘I can,’ said Hanno.

  ‘Is that so?’ The little professor looked at him with interest. He swung round to the warehouse manager. ‘You don’t need him, do you? You do nothing whatsoever here, so it doesn’t take two to do it.’

  ‘Well, Professor, I do find –’

  ‘Don’t. Just do as you’re told, there’s a good fellow.’ He turned back to examine Hanno. ‘I take it you’re a Manth yourself.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Interesting people. Interesting history. All over now, of course. Aramanth burned, was it?’