Shadows of Doom - Ed Greenwood [60]
The two Harpers sighed, looked at each other, half grinned, and sighed again.
"If we did," Belkram said ruefully, raising his still-bloody blade, "we wouldn't have to get this close to those who would kill us."
The old man looked at them both for a while, shaking his head slowly. "Well," he said at last, "without magic, how in the name of all the gods do you expect to stay alive long enough to reach the castle, let alone muster the dale against Longspear? He's got six wizards or more to back him up, Zhent Blackcloaks if I can still tell anything at all about folk I meet!"
"Well," Belkram said slowly. "We usually try to set things going-like we did here-then just get our swords out and run with what befalls."
"You wouldn't be Harpers, would you?" the old man asked quietly. He watched them exchange glances and said, "I thought so. That explains it, then. Some like to roll dice for coins, or trade goods, or even horses. Harpers and adventurers are the only folk who like to do it with their own lives."
Belkram chuckled as he wiped his steel on the sleeve of a fallen Wolf. The sound was meant to sound unconcerned and casual, but came out a trifle rueful.
* * * * *
Daera sighed and sucked her bleeding finger for perhaps the three hundredth time. Sewing flour sacks was something the gods just hadn't meant her to do.
She looked out the gap between two old, silvery wooden boards at the frowning mountain wall not so far away. It was probably about the three hundredth time she'd done that, too. Bright sunlight dazzled her; it was always dark in the mill.
Somewhere far below, Father was pushing a lever endlessly around and around, driving the grindstones. It was sheer cruelty. There was water enough-and mules or oxen, too-to do the task. No, Father was there as a reminder to the folk of the dale, as she was, set to work here as a drudge, cooking, cleaning, and sewing these bloody sacks.
Literally bloody, she thought grimly, pinching her smarting hands between her knees as she knelt on the coarse sacking. The dark spots of her spilled blood had traveled out of the dale on many a sack already. They'd seen a lot more of the Realms than ever she had, or was likely to.
Every morning, the jailers in their magical mantles of darkness came for her. They tied her hands behind her and crammed dirty cloth into her mouth, binding it there to keep her silent. Then they led her, helpless in their cloaking darkness, down the creaking stairs and uneven floors of the mill, down to the wheel where her father howled or gibbered in his chains.
That was her reminder. They untied her hands and led her outside in her soiled rags to load heavy flour sacks onto waiting carts, gasping and panting through her gag as hard-faced men in black armor stood guard around a group of silent folk of the dale-folk who had obviously been dragged from their doings and brought here to watch. If any tried to help or comfort her, they were clubbed senseless. It had been a long time since any of them had tried.
She was their reminder.
"Ylyndaera Mulmar," she told herself formally, "stop feeling sorry for yourself and get to work." On days when she didn't do what the jailers or mill maids thought was enough, her meal-leftovers from the evenfeast platters of the others at the mill, always cold-was smaller. Once, when she'd been too weak from sickness to work, she'd been given nothing at all to eat.
Daera sighed and picked up the needle again. She was alone here in the drafty mill loft-and cold, and bleeding all over her work again-but her father had it much worse, chained like a bull in the cellar below.
Time and again she'd prayed to the unheeding gods to deliver him, if not from his chains and the backbreaking work then at least from whatever magic they'd laid on his mind. His eyes were always cloudy. Even when she'd been able to make some noise-she always paid for that with brief but savage blows and whippings-and he'd looked up, he never saw her… or