Half a King. Джо Аберкромби

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      The damp hinges grated as the door at the top of the steps was opened, the slaves all cringing on instinct into a feeble huddle at the light, Yarvi along with them. He might have been new to slavery, but at cringing he had long experience. With many curses and blows of his stick the flesh-dealer dragged them into a wobbling, wheezing line, chains rattling out a miserable music.

      ‘Keep that hand out of sight,’ he hissed, and Yarvi twisted it up into the rags of his sleeve. All his ambition then was to be bought, and owned, and taken from this stinking hell into the sight of Mother Sun.

      The two customers picked their way down the steps. The first was balding and burly, with a whip coiled at his studded belt and a way of glaring from under knotted brows that proclaimed him a bad man to fool with. The second was much younger, long, lean and handsome with a sparse growth of beard and a bitter twist to his thin lips. Yarvi caught the gleam of a collar at his throat. A slave himself, then, though judging by his clothes a favoured one.

      The flesh-dealer bowed, and gestured with his stick towards the line. ‘My cheapest offerings.’ He did not bother to add a flourish. Fine words in that place would have been absurd.

      ‘These are some wretched leavings,’ said the slave, nose wrinkled against the stench.

      His thick-set companion was not deterred. He drew the slave into a huddle with one muscled arm, speaking softly to him in Haleen. ‘We want rowers, not kings.’ It was a language used in Sagenmark and among the islands, but Yarvi had trained as a minister, and knew most tongues spoken around the Shattered Sea.

      ‘The captain’s no fool, Trigg,’ the handsome slave was saying, fussing nervously with his collar. ‘What if she realizes we’ve duped her?’

      ‘We’ll say this was the best on offer.’ Trigg’s flat eyes scanned the dismal gathering. ‘Then you’ll give her a new bottle and she’ll forget all about it. Or don’t you need the silver, Ankran?’

      ‘You know I do.’ Ankran shrugged off Trigg’s arm, mouth further twisted with distaste. Scarcely bothering to look them over, he dragged slaves from the line. ‘This … this … this …’ His hand hovered near Yarvi, began to drift on—

      ‘I can row, sir.’ It was as big a lie as Yarvi had told in all his life. ‘I was a fisher’s apprentice.’

      In the end Ankran picked out nine. Among them were a blind Throvenlander who had been sold by his father instead of their cow, an old Islander with a crooked back, and a lame Vansterman who could barely restrain his coughing for long enough to be paid for.

      Oh, and Yarvi, rightful King of Gettland.

      The argument over price was poisonous, but in the end Trigg and Ankran reached an understanding with the flesh-dealer. A trickle of shining hacksilver went into the merchant’s hands, and a little back into the purse, and the greater share was split between the pockets of the buyers and, as far as Yarvi could tell, thereby stolen from their captain.

      By his calculation he was sold for less than the cost of a good sheep.

      He made no complaint at the price.

       ONE FAMILY

      The South Wind listed in its dock, looking like anything but a warm breeze.

      Compared to the swift, slender ships of Gettland it was a wallowing monster, low to the water and fat at the waist, green weed and barnacle coating its ill-tended timbers, with two stubby masts and two dozen great oars on a side, slit-windowed castles hunched at blunt prow and stern.

      ‘Welcome home,’ said Trigg, shoving Yarvi between a pair of frowning guards and towards the gangplank.

      A dark-skinned young woman sat on the roof of the aftcastle, one leg swinging as she watched the new slaves shuffle across. ‘This the best you could do?’ she asked with scarcely the hint of an accent, and sprang easily down. She had a thrall-collar of her own, but made from twisted wire, and her chain was loose and light, part coiled about her arm as though it was an ornament she had chosen to wear. A slave even more favoured than Ankran, then.

      She checked in the mouth of the coughing Vansterman and clicked her tongue, poked at the Shend’s crooked back and blew out her cheeks in disgust. ‘The captain won’t think much of these slops.’

      ‘And where is our illustrious leader?’ Ankran had the air of already knowing the answer.

      ‘Asleep.’

      ‘Asleep drunk?’

      She considered that, mouth moving faintly as though she was working at a sum. ‘Not sober.’

      ‘You worry about the course, Sumael,’ grunted Trigg, shoving Yarvi’s companions on again. ‘The rowers are my business.’

      Sumael narrowed her dark eyes at Yarvi as he shuffled past. She had a scar and a notch in her top lip where a little triangle of white tooth showed, and he found himself wondering what southern land she was born in and how she had come here, whether she was older or younger than him, hard to tell with her hair chopped short—

      She darted out a quick arm and caught his wrist, twisting it up so his hand came free of his torn sleeve.

      ‘This one has a crippled hand.’ No mockery, merely a statement of fact, as though she had found a lame cow in a herd. ‘There’s only one finger on it.’ Yarvi tried to pull free but she was stronger than she looked. ‘And that seems a poor one.’

      ‘That damn flesh-dealer!’ Ankran elbowed past to grab Yarvi’s wrist and twist it about to look. ‘You said you could row!’

      Yarvi could only shrug and mutter, ‘I didn’t say well.’

      ‘It’s almost as if you can’t trust anyone,’ said Sumael, one black eyebrow high. ‘How will he row with one hand?’

      ‘He’ll have to find a way,’ said Trigg, stepping up to her. ‘We’ve got nine spaces and nine slaves.’ He loomed over Sumael and spoke with his blunt nose no more than a finger’s width from her pointed one. ‘Unless you fancy a turn on the benches?’

      She licked at that notch in her lip, and eased carefully backward. ‘I’ll worry about the course, shall I?’

      ‘Good idea. Chain the cripple on Jaud’s oar.’

      They dragged Yarvi along a raised gangway down the middle of the deck, past benches on either side, three men to each huge oar, all shaven-headed, all lean, all collared, watching him with their own mixtures of pity, self-pity, boredom and contempt.

      A man was hunched on hands and knees, scrubbing at the deck-boards, face hidden by a shag of matted hair and colourless beard, so beggarly he made the most wretched of the oarsmen look like princes. One of the guards aimed the sort of careless kick at him you might at a stray dog and sent him crawling away, dragging a great weight of heavy chain after him. The ship did not seem well supplied in general but of chain there was no shortage.

      They flung Yarvi down with unnecessary violence between two other slaves, by no means an encouraging pair. At the end of the oar was a hulking southerner with a thick fold of muscle where his neck should have been, head tipped СКАЧАТЬ