Shadow Blade by Chris Barili

Author:Chris Barili [Barili, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press

Chapter Twenty-Two

The last rays of sunlight smeared the sky over the western foothills like a bloodstain, red and orange and the black of scab, as if night had slashed the sky with a dagger, leaving its wound to fester.

Pachat followed the line of slaves chained in front of him like a giant snake of flesh and iron. Their breath steamed in front of their faces, and sweat froze into sparkling diamonds on their exposed skin. Behind him, Joppish trudged along, huffing and wheezing as phlegm clogged his chest and nose.

“Back to the tunnels at night?” he whined. “How much work do they think they can get from men who are already exhausted and sick? We spent twelve hours down there already today.”

A guard bellowed for them to stop talking, and Pachat shushed the younger man.

“We’ll find out when we get there,” he whispered. “Anyone who’s sick won’t have to work. The masters never go down with us anyway. Too dangerous for elite Pushtani soldiers like themselves.”

That drew a chuckle from the men around him, and in turn a crack of the whip from the nearest master.

When they reached the opening to the shaft, though, Cargil was waiting, his face only slightly lighter than the bleeding dusk sky behind him. He stood outside the shaft opening, hands on hips, feet wide. He wore a long sword at his belt, which Pachat had only seen one other time, and then for ceremonial reasons.

“Something’s wrong,” muttered Mishi, a younger man with a hunched back and a limp in his left knee. “Cargil never misses his evening wine and wenches.”

A nervous murmur filtered through their group as they drew to a stop in front of the master.

For a long, almost torturous moment, Cargil simply stood, staring at them. Or glaring, more accurately. Joppish started to shiver, his teeth chattering and his knees knocking. Cargil marched up to him and delivered a backhand to Joppish’s jaw that sent him reeling.

“Did I give you leave to move, Nishi’iti shit-pile?”

Joppish struggled to his feet, shaking his head. Cargil knocked him down again, this time with a cross to his temple.

“I didn’t give you permission to get back up, either!”

Pachat looked from Joppish to the other men, but all stood with eyes downcast. All but one—the Wanao Lai. He’d joined their work crew three days earlier, after an older man had passed away in the abandoned shaft. No one had noticed the old man’s death for an hour. The Wanao Lai—Jingsho was his name—had replaced him within the day, dressed in miner’s rags.

He hadn’t said more than a few words to Pachat since, all benign and work-related, as if their former conversation had never happened. Now he stood straight, staring at Cargil with hate boiling from his eyes. If Cargil noticed, he said nothing.

The slave master walked away from Joppish’s crumpled form and paced back and forth in front of their group. He stopped in front of Pachat, standing almost nose to nose with him. Pachat averted his eyes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.