Tides of Battle: Chapter 2: Slavery
As always, I value your opinions, readers. I appreciate comments!
-Kain
http://www.sofurry.com/page/194407 Chapter 1: Genesis
http://www.sofurry.com/page/194464 Chapter 2: Slavery
http://www.sofurry.com/page/194476 Chapter 3: Arena
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TIDES OF BATTLE Chapter 2: Slavery
I woke up with my head throbbing, and my ribs screaming in agony. They felt broken, and every breath felt like I was inhaling knives. Fire burned through my chest and stomach, and my consciousness dribbled back to me in pieces. I heard voices, smelled metal and some strange pack animals I'd once heard mother call 'Myools', as they pulled a cart of spoils through our camp. As my vision focused on my situation I realized that I was bound, and in the back of a wagon. My paws were manacled together, and my feet were bound with rope. The knots were tight, and besides that, I couldn't have moved for all the pain I was in. The familiar smell of Gnoll rose to my nostrils, and I looked over to see Kyn, unconscious and whimpering in delirium, her shoulder still oozing blood under a shoddy bandaging job. She was bound as I was, and I almost felt envious that she couldn't understand where we were. The clattering of hooves was loud, and I realized we must be on one of the human's roads. Being bound, in a human wagon, on the move? The only conclusion I could think of was that they were going to kill us later, or keep us as slaves. It's what we'd have done to them.
I tried to stay awake in that wagon, on the long road to where they were taking us. I have few memories of that time, but I remember waking up twice more. Once to have one of the elves force some water into my maw and sneer at me as he poked about my ribcage, and then look over Kyn's wound, which had stopped bleeding but began to give off, at least to my nose, a sick smell. And another when we stopped in a town of little reknown for the adventuring party that captured us to rest. They left one of the humans in plate in the wagon, who proceeded to gibber at me in his man-speech. smirking, laughing and shaking his head periodically. He shook his heavy gauntlet in front of my face and pulled a knife from his belt. I snarled at him and made to bite his arm, but he swatted me in the nose and cut the bonds on my feet. I was too weak and thirsty to run, but he seemed to understand my discomfort, and snipped Kyn's bonds too. My paws were still manacled behind my back, as were hers. We left that town that night, and only a scant bit before dawn, we were pulled out of that wagon. I remember the walk, as clear as day. Kyn was groggy with fatigue and fever, but awake. I was weak with hunger and thirst, and they pushed us into that colossal grey stone building, and the sight of it I shall never forget. It stood taller then the hills that shaded my home, grey, forbidding stone as far as I could see out to either side. The walls tapered around, and I assumed it to be circular in shape, but I couldn't tell. It was just too huge. Windows lined the walls and near the top appeared to be a balcony, with raised columns all the way around. We were paraded past a thick, iron door that creaked shut behind us, bathing us in the scant light from the windows and the light from torch sconces in the wall. A small, hook-nosed human in somewhat nicer clothes than the adventurers beckoned them onwards, through another archway and into a large room stuffed with cages. A human female in a white robe met them at the doorway, squawking cheerfully in their tongue. The hook-nosed human and the other human in plate-mail squawked back and forth angrily for a little while, while the female in the white robe looked us over. She examined Kyn's arrow wound and made a face when she smelled the infection. She took some herbs from a belt pouch and chewed them together, spitting them into her odd little hands, and packing them into Kyn's wound after she'd daubed it clean with water. She wrapped the shoulder in new, clean linen bandages and then walked to me. She conversed with the hook-nosed man who looked at me shrewdly, and pointed to his chest. She nodded and proceeded to feel up my chest, taking her time to feel out where the bones were broken and shifted, and grimaced when I whined in pain. She took the oppurtunity during one of my louder yelps to jam a familiar tasting plant in my mouth, which I recognized the taste of, and chewed thoroughly before swallowing. It would reduce the pain a lot, and help avoid the agony of what she was about to do. She ran thick cloth bandages around my chest tight enough where I could barely breathe, but I felt the bones click back together, and my breath hurt less to take. The hook-nosed man nodded his approval and smiled snidely at the adventuring party before handing the Elf a bag full of coin and shooing them out the door. I heard the distant opening and closing of the iron door, and then the hook-nosed man came back. He barked something at me, and snapped his fingers in front of my face. I cocked my head as I listened to him squawk. He was beginning to irritate me, but I couldn't understand his tongue. I grumbled and chirred at him in what equates to a Flind whisper, but he shook his head. the man pointed at himself and said it with emphasis, placing his hand on his chest as he said it. " Master." He patted his chest again and repeated himself. " Master." Before shaking his hands at the female, shooing her away, now that my chest was bandaged. One large human and a squat one with a huge beard came through the doorway then, and grabbed me and Kyn by our manacles, and half-pushed, half-marched us down a hallway to a single cell, with a window the size of my spread paw, a small bed of straw on either side, and what looked to be a wooden trapdoor over a cathole in the corner. The squat man and the large human pushed us into the cell and slid the door shut behind us, before grabbing our manacles and wrenching us back against the bars, the click of the wrist restraints falling away almost gave me hope. I turned and swung out my paw for the human, but he batted my hand away and grasped my wrist so tight I thought it would break. "Not going to try that again." I thought. Rubbing my sore wrist and ribs I sat down on the sweet smelling straw and looked over at Kyn, who was now completely awake and seemed to be feeling a bit better. She still looked a little feverish, but mostly in command of her faculties. She looked at me a long moment, cocking her head to the side, as if sizing me up.
" You're a fething idiot. Why on earth did you do that? What in the hells would convince you that's a good idea? We were hidden, we were safe! We could have gotten away and warned the other camps! Do you have any idea what you've done?" She admonished me in barks and high pitched yelps. My ears flattened as I explained. " I.. couldn't think. Everyone died so fast I just thought.." She interrupted. " You DIDN'T think! You wanted to avenge those who died. Admirable enough, but now noone knows that all those kin are dead. We should have gotten away. We should have stayed hidden." My anger at being admonished by a flind barely older than me broke through. " I should let those murderers get away with killing our kin and Clan?! I should slink away in the woods while our brothers blood stains the earth?! I had to do something!" She looked at me and curled her lip. " Well, I couldn't let you die and flee by my damned self. It was a mighty foolish thing you did. Brave, but fething stupid. So I came sailing after you. Figured we might be able to take out one or two of them. No word from the camp and in a couple of days they'll know anyway. But for now.. We're stuck. We're prisoners now, Vekk. Cattle. We're nothing to them. Slaves. Whatever happens we need to stick together until we can get out of here." I nodded and sighed, leaning back in the straw. " So how do we get out?" I asked quietly. She shook her head. " I don't know." She huddled in the straw on her side of the cell and looked at me. " We're who knows how far from home and who knows how far from really being outside." She shivered and her ears flattened against her head. " I'm scared, Vekk." She whimpered quietly. I nodded and looked out of our little palm-sized window quietly. " I know Kyn. We'll figure something out."
The next few weeks passed quickly as our wounds healed. My ribs set well and gave me no more trouble, and the female human who introduced herself in a similar way as "Master." Called herself "Verity" and tended to us. About two weeks after we'd been there she unwrapped my ribs and stopped giving me the herbs for pain. She continued to apply poultices for Kyn's shoulder and gave her herbs to keep off sickness and keep her discomfort manageable. They brought us food twice a day and there was a small human boy who mucked out the cathole from the outside of the wall every few days. All in all it wasn't so bad. The healing and resting made me and Kyn restless, so we took to old flind stone games and riddles to pass the time. That and plotting our escape took up a lot of time. Until the day of the games.
The smell of massive amounts of humans, their foetid sweat and boiling excitement woke up Kyn first, and myself shortly after. The smell poured in from our little window, along with the noise of a crowd. Almost like the din of battle, it roared into our windows at sunup. The human who brought us our food seemed more excited then usual, and began to babble. I was beginning to pick up the sounds of human speech, but it still sounded like so much noise. Kyn poked her nose out of our little window and looked out into the hard packed field of earth with the gray walls surrounding. There were an abysmal number of humans. Thousands. I couldn't count high enough to tell you how many were in attendance. They lined the stands from bottom to top, packed deep, all mumbling or ranting, or cheering in their tongue. Kyn and I ate our food quickly, and poked our noses back out of the tiny window, trying to get a better look. A small man on a raised dais in the center of the field would point a small wooden stick at his throat, and his voice would boom across the stadium, almost loud enough to hurt my ears. Something was paraded by our cell, by three heavily armed handlers in a cage on wheels. I couldn't quite place the smell, but it smelled unpleasant. Reptilian almost, and unhappy. The gate on the other side of the field rose, and out strode a man. He wasn't well armored, and carried only an Axe and a shield. He wore boots, a pair of ripped trousers and no shirt. He was thickly muscled, and his oak colored beard flowed from his chin in an elegant braid. He raised his axe to the sky and shook it, and the crowd's intensity increased tenfold. Kyn and I stood transfixed, as the announcer on the dais gestured towards our side of the field, and I heard the other gate open. A roar of reptile ferocity spewed forth from just out of our sight, and the lumbering footsteps could be felt in the ground. Then we saw it. The thick legged creature that had been cooped up in the cage that had gone past our tent but a scant few minutes ago. It stood twice my height, and must have been at least 10 feet long. The oak-bearded warrior visibly blanched when his challenge was brought forth, but he hid it well, bellowing his challenge at the creature, spittle flying from his mouth. "He looks almost as dumb and brave as you." Kyn remarked. " He's going to die if he doesn't get out of there. How did that creature get in there?" She asked, looking at me. "I think.. I think they arranged this so that human would have to fight that thing." I stammered, suddenly realizing the implication. As the human ran bellowing towards the thick limbed reptilian creature, dodging it's huge jaws and swinging for a deathblow, I realized what had happened. We were going to be pitted against opponents, for these people's benefit. Kyn was still watching in awe, but all I felt was despair. " We're going to be killed for these damned humans entertainment.." I whimpered. A loud thwacking sound, repeating itself every second or two, followed by a roar of upwards scaled intensity from the crowd confirmed it. Kyn looked at me in excitement. " That human killed it! He killed that thing! That was incredible!" She yelped, almost bubbly, her tail wagging furiously as she watched the violence unfold. "Kyn." I said, grabbing her by the shoulder. " They're going to kill us just like they killed that thing." I said, suddenly terrified by just where we'd ended up. Her ears flattened and her eyes opened wide, her tail going limp. " Wha..What?" She asked, suddenly realizing it too. " This is one of those Arenas." She said, her voice suddenly very tired and small. I held onto her shoulder until she started shaking, her violently sad barks and yelps punctuated by the tear stains tracking through her face. I pulled her away from the window and squeezed her tight, as much to quell my own fear as hers. Dying in battle with a foe on even grounds would have been fine. Being slaughtered like an animal.. That was just too much for my mind to bear. I growled, suddenly furious with our situation. " Listen, Kyn. They want to fight us? They want to kill us? They want to treat us like animals at the slaughter? Then they'd better bring a lot more than one human. We are Bloodtooth. We will not dishonor the ancestors. We will kill everything they put against us, until we can get out of here. Until we find a way." I dug my claws into her arms, staring into her eyes as she began to feed off my anger, fuelign it with her own. she snarled and bared her teeth. " That's right. We will tear them apart and eat their bones! We will tear out their throats and drink their blood!" She barked savagely and walked away, curling in her own bed of straw, shivering with excitement. "Let them come for us, Vekk. And we will show them willing participants in these 'games'. As I looked back out the window, I could do nothing but smile and flex my paws. My claws itched, and I would not be sated until I had buried them in the flesh of one of these humans.