The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [147]
“So much for that.” Faharn had come up behind Laz during the questioning. “Ah, this must be the fellow with the book.”
The freed slave turned dead-pale and began to tremble.
“Here!” Laz said to him. “You must understand the Gel da’Thae language.”
“Yes, I do.” The scribe stood a little straighter and glared at him. His voice, however, was as high as a young boy’s despite the fierce edge he gave it. “I take it I’m still a slave.”
“No, you’re not. I’m an outcast from the cities, myself, a scribe and loremaster, and this is my apprentice, Faharn. My name is Laz Moj.”
“I’m truly free?” His voice squeaked on the word “free.”
“You’re truly free, and if you go back with the prince, he’ll find a way to return you to your true people out in the Westlands. What’s your name?”
“Pol, just Pol will do. What do you mean, true people? Horsekin raiders destroyed my village when I was a child.”
“Village?” Laz blinked at him. “The Westfolk are wandering nomads.”
“Then, alas, they’re not my people.”
“But—wait!” Laz remembered old legends about those who’d fled the Great Burning. “Do your folk live near the sea?”
“Yes, between the mountains and the Western Ocean, or up in the foothills, where it’s easier to hide from the raiders.”
“Then I’ve got somewhat of great interest to tell you, Pol, and you’ll have a tale and a half for the Westfolk when you finally meet them. Come with us. If naught else, you deserve a decent meal, and I see that Faharn has snagged us a chicken.”
Faharn held the fresh-killed brown hen up by its yellow feet and grinned, all fangs.
The entire army ate well that afternoon, except for the prisoners. Faharn drew the hen, then encased her in wet clay from the streambed, and roasted her whole in their campfire. He also collected grain from the servants and made a porridge of sorts, which they ate while waiting for the chicken to cook. Once the clay covering had baked as hard as pottery, Faharn pulled the ball out of the embers and broke off the clay. The feathers came with it, and they divided up the meat.
Between bites Pol told Laz about his people—refugees from the Great Burning who’d fled west rather than east out to the grasslands. There were, he thought, perhaps two thousand of them at most, scattered in little villages and farms, living always in fear of the Horsekin. Pol’s clan had been fishermen, and their exposed village on the coast far enough south for them to feel safe—until the ships came.
“We didn’t know that the Horsekin had boats,” he finished up. “But these did, just a raiding party, yet there were enough of them. They came when the men were out fishing and slew the village elders before they took the rest of us as slaves.”
“Bastards!” Faharn remarked.
“Just so,” Laz said, “and cowards as well.”
“I thought my ancestors were the only survivors from the old days,” Pol said, “but now you tell me there are others.”
“A great many others, actually,” Laz said. “They live as Westfolk out in the grasslands, and then I was told that there are towns in the Southern Isles, far away across the Southern Sea, and that the People from there are slowly returning to the plains.”
Pol digested this information along with his share of the hen while Laz considered the problem of the dragon book. He’d not rescued this unfortunate man only to steal from him, though admittedly he’d stolen plenty of other property in his day. Those days are over, he told himself. And that was a matter of survival. He considered any number of plans before the obvious occurred to him. He could simply ask.
“The book with the dragon on the cover,” Laz said. “Is that a great treasure to you?”
“Not any longer,” Pol said. “I knew that the writing had to be in the language of my ancestors, even though I couldn’t read it. It was a connection to my lost home and clan, well, of a sort, and the only one I had. I saved it when one of the servant girls back at the dun was going to use the pages to light fires.”
Laz nearly choked on his mouthful of chicken. “I’m cursed glad you did,” he said when he’d stopped coughing.