A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

had ever been able to best Georgios in the training circle, but this lame Northman had made of him – well – dog food.

All the same, too many of the general’s household had witnessed this upstart slave’s insubordination and Silanos had conceded that the godless barbarian should be taught a lesson. So it was agreed that he should be slung into the ‘hole’ and, according to the general’s wishes, he would remain there until he had learned that he was indeed a slave and would remain a slave, probably for the rest of his days.

So Erlan was led down into the cellars where he was lowered into a pitch-black hole which must once have served as a well but had long since fallen into disuse.

There, Erlan languished for four days, soaked in mud and slime and his own filth. All the while small creatures slithered around him and over him unseen in the ooze and the stink. He heard them though, and felt them, sitting alone in darkness as black as a raven’s wing, waiting. Enduring.

If they thought they could break him with an empty stomach and a few days’ discomfort, they were wrong. He was steel tempered over fire. That had been Vargalf’s gift to him. He would not break.

Day and night passed but he knew not the hour of their coming and going. Now and then a sound reached him from above. The first time he heard it, he had looked up and the shock of cold water hit him full in the face. Thirstily he licked up what droplets he could, off his filthy hands and face, sucking greedily at the thread of his stinking breeks, although he baulked at licking the slimy stones. For now.

He wasted no time on thoughts of regret or self-pity. Vargalf’s fire had burned all that out of him. If you still have breath in your lungs, you’re alive, he told himself. That was something. Better to wait in the shit and the silence and see what the morrow would bring.

Even so, while he waited, his mind would pick at the words Vassili had spoken like a raven picking at the bones of the slain. Unless you drink the blood of the king of kings, you shall be a slave to that other. . . Only the blood of the king of kings will set you free. It remained obscure, an image in a muddied mirror. He had found the city of the king of kings, had he not? But what had that profited him? Here he was, a slave, imprisoned in this dank hole. And what strange charge was this? ‘Drink his blood.’ He knew not what to make of it, and the thought troubled him. Though many times the answer to the riddle seemed plain. So plain it came like a voice in his head. ‘Kill him.’ How else could he drink another man’s blood, after all?

‘You still with us, Northman?’ The words startled him. He recognized Silanos’s voice, and peering up he saw a flame flicker high above him.

‘Still with you, Greek,’ he muttered back.

‘The general says you’re to stay down there another week.’ Erlan’s heart sank at this. ‘He thinks by then you’ll accept your position. . . I told him you never would.’

‘What is it then?’ growled Erlan. ‘Another month?’

‘Not exactly. I have other plans for you.’ Then the steward addressed someone else up there. ‘Go ahead then. Pull him up.’

It was the dead of night. The air outside the hole tasted fresh as falling snow. Erlan gulped it down hungrily.

At first Silanos offered no other explanation. Instead he had his servants sluice Erlan down, the grimy foulness running off him in rivers into the little gullies in the cellar floor. Then they marched him through the palace, while all the household still slept, to another kind of bathhouse made of big blocks of white stone. There, he was steamed and scrubbed red-raw. Afterwards Silanos summoned a slave-boy and sat Erlan on a stool while the lad shaved him. The boy would have been better employed in a butcher’s yard, but Silanos stood by, overseeing all with an approving eye. Then they cut his hair and it fell to the ground in thick, tangled knots. As for his breeks, they burned them. In their place he was given a long tunic that came to his knees, and nothing else. They let him keep his belt, now the last object that connected him with that other life in the north.

Satisfied, Silanos led him through the shadowy courtyards, then up and up, floor after floor, to a winding staircase which ended in a metal grille gate. Erlan was surprised to recognize Marcellos there. ‘What is this place?’

Silanos pushed him through the gate. ‘This is where we keep slaves who need a little. . . shall we say, encouragement?’

‘Encouragement. For what?’

‘Loyalty, of course!’ The steward grinned. ‘Some slaves do have a habit of wandering off. But I think you’ll find this arrangement more to your liking.’

Marcellos led them to the end of a cramped landing, past the doors of half a dozen cells. At the last, he pulled open the door and shoved Erlan inside. Awaiting him was a length of chain bolted to the wall and two manacles which Marcellos took great pleasure in snapping over his wrists and securing.

‘I’ll send a physician tomorrow,’ said Silanos, when his clumsy minion had finished. ‘He’ll look you over.’

‘Why are you doing this for me?’

‘For you?’ Silanos laughed, and shook his head. ‘It’s not for you, fool. Lord Arbasdos engages me to oversee his investments. Unless I miss my guess, you’re one investment worth looking after. Sleep well. Slave.’

The door closed, a bolt snapped, a key turned. A faint glimmer of moonlight had somehow inveigled its way through a high grilled window into this dingy little nook under the roof. Erlan shifted, feeling the weight of his new chain, testing its strength in the wall. Solid as rock. He sat on the