Plunder by Kari Gregg

Author:Kari Gregg [Gregg, Kari]
Language: nld
Format: epub
Published: 2012-09-10T18:44:32+00:00

Herra’s supporters would live longer than I, even if I survived to see the profit I hadn’t earned or deserved.

Starvation is ugly, but it takes longer to kil than it does to torture. I couldn’t count, but I knew that.

My death would be swift. And excruciating.

Abandoning the men to their incomprehensible discussions, I distracted myself by examining the rows of waist-high grain. Bees buzzed, dancing among the slender stalks drooping heavily with heads of grain. The field was ready for harvest. “Barak’s is a late-maturing variety that produces a higher yield. Your land is planted with it too,” my master said, folowing beside me when I wandered. He halted me with a hand at my arm. “What do I know of farming? I know livestock, but if I can learn about planting and reaping, you can too, my lord.”

My nose wrinkled at the honorific on his lips.

I didn’t feel like a prince anymore. I felt like a useless waste and a fool.

“Don’t give up, little one. Don’t.” His hand squeezed my skinny bicep. “Xerxes didn’t destroy you with slavery. Don’t alow him to wreck you with freedom.”

I yanked away and sneered at him. What did my master know of devastation and ruin? How could any of them know? Fury, bitter and hopeless, soured my empty stomach, and I thanked whatever humorless god created me that I was too holow and weak to generate another quake because my anger was that sharp.

Fuming, I pivoted on my heel and strode back to the farmhouse, tugging angrily at the sily robes Neera had found for me. I shoved the cowl from my head. If I was a dead man—and I was—I would meet my fate proudly. I wouldn’t cower, hiding my yelow hair as though shamed. I hated them for expecting that of me.

“Micah!”

My brother’s cal, as ripe with concern as the grain was for threshing, infuriated me. Why did he care?

Why did any of them? I was useless as a slave, useless as a master, useless as a son, as a man…and I would not be their witch!

I marched to the house and veered to the side, toward the end where the livestock were kept, away from the soldiers who had accompanied Barak home and the flurry of servants—and slaves!—that scrambled with the final preparations of our feast, narrow tables already burdened with food I would not eat, served by chattel of which I had recently belonged.

I hated them al.

I waved an enraged hand at Neera when she cried out to me and slipped into the cooler darkness of the stable. A servant worked here too, a boy mucking the area surrounding a post where horses would be tied.

The child was shorter than me, but bigger, rounder, with fat cheeks and a tubby bely. His hair fel past his shoulders, curling between shoulder blades hidden under a tunic streaked with dirt, so he must have been a freeman, but he was definitely a child. An adored one, judging by the girth of his stomach.

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