PreCursive
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Chapter 3 - Haggling Before the Gates
🕑 Added 2023-07-30 20:06:54 +0000 UTCActually, farm didn’t do it justice. It was more of a plantation.
Stretching out in vast fields in front of me were crops, as far as my eye could see. From a cursory look, it didn’t appear to be a mono-crop being grown. Ordered in neat plots, I couldn’t quite tell what was being grown from my position. From a distance, I could see a great many different people working in those fields. However, those same people gave me a sinking feeling in my chest, even exhausted as I was.
They were obviously slaves.
All of them were wearing threadbare clothing, with what appeared to be dull black metal collars clamped around their neck. None of them appeared to be in amazing shape, with sunken cheeks and emaciated forms. Toiling away in the fields before me, they were to a fault, as silent as they could be.
Each plot had what could only be an overseer or perhaps a guard, to keep an eye on the ‘property’. These were slaves as well if not slaves in better shape. The overseers were dressed in slightly better clothing and were obviously better fed. These guards also carried a truncheon at their belt, while trotting around upon the back of a horse in order to keep a better eye out. They still had the collars on, though.
They were, all of them, human. Even the overseers.
Several of those overseers were sitting on horseback in a group not too far away from us, eyeing the raiders uneasily. They didn’t seem to care overmuch for those of us that had been dumped in the dirt.
Tearing my eyes away from the overseers before me, I noticed the dirt road snaking its way in between two different types of crop fields. In the distance, I could see a cloud of dirt making its way in our direction rapidly. As the cloud got closer to us, I was able to make out the vague shape of what was coming our way. It looked to be a horse-drawn carriage.
After perhaps five minutes of waiting, I was finally able to get a better look at the carriage as it stopped not far from us. It was, in a word, gaudy. Painted a dark green color, it was covered in gold ornamentation. Even the horses seemed more expensive than the simple workhorses that the caravan and the guards were using. No, these were pure white despite all the dust they had kicked up, with an almost disdainful bearing to them. What caught my attention the most, however, were the two people sitting on the carriage’s driver’s bench.
I think they were dwarves.
One was obviously a servant of some kind, based upon his almost comically stereotypical butler uniform. With short-cropped brown hair and clean-shaven cheeks, he didn’t at all match my mental image of a fantasy dwarf. The second one must have been a guard of some kind, based on his gear. He was wearing, of all things, a full suit of shining silver and gold ornamented plate armor. His breastplate was covered by a green and gold cloth tabard cinched at his waist, with an image of a bull mid-rear painted across it. He had a gaudy-looking longsword belted at his hip, with golden bull horns functioning as a cross guard, and a kite shield slung across his back. I couldn’t make out any features under his helm.
Both dwarves hopped down from the seat of the carriage. The servant hurried to the door of the carriage, while the presumed guard leisurely hopped down and ambled over to stand next to it. The armored dwarf stood to the side of the door, with a visibly bored posture, while the servant went to open the door. With a bang, the door opened before he could, sending the servant dwarf flinching back.
Striding down the steps of the carriage was a dwarf that was equally as gaudy as the carriage he had rode in on. Pale-skinned, he wore rich forest green silk robes with a shining golden cape secured to his shoulders with a golden chain. He had much longer hair than the servant dwarf, pitch black in color falling to well below his shoulders. He also had a voluminous beard, reaching mid-chest length that had several braids in it, capped with golden rings. In fact, gold seemed to be a theme with him. He had golden rings on each of his fingers, several golden chains around his neck, multiple golden earrings, and he even had golden ornamentation on his belt. Even his shiny black leather boots had golden clasps on them.
Catching a glimpse of his eyes, I could see that they were a bright gold as well, with a slight glow to them. Striding in our direction, he had a walking stick painted as green as the carriage, equally as decorated.
Stopping perhaps twenty feet away from us, the lead dwarf made a show of looking at the lineup of caravan survivors arrayed in the dirt. As he looked over us, I caught his eye briefly. Despite their warm color, they were anything but friendly. He looked at me like I was a bug he had crushed underfoot, with a slight curl of disgust to his lip.
Finished with his inspection, the leader of the dwarves spoke into the crowd of raiders that had arrayed themselves behind us. Hearing boot steps behind me, I saw the leader of the raiders that I hadn’t seen in days step out.
He said something back to the dwarven leader before they seemed to enter into some kind of back-and-forth exchange. Whatever it was that the elven leader was saying didn’t seem to make the dwarven one very happy, as he raised his voice briefly, making the armored dwarf lay a hand on his sword. This didn’t seem to sit well with the raiders, as I heard some shuffling and mumbling behind me, which only stopped when the leader raised his hand without looking backward.
He said something again to the dwarven leader, which seemed to calm him down. Not taking his narrowed eyes off the leader of the raiders, the richly dressed dwarf held a hand out to the servant dwarf to his right behind him. The servant stepped up briefly, took a small bag off his belt before handing it to his master, and stepped backward with a bow. Looking down finally, the dwarven leader opened the bag and spilled its contents in his hand revealing a pile of gold coins. Taking some away, he deposited exactly fourteen gold coins back into the bag.
Exactly the number of survivors arrayed before him.
As the lead dwarf tossed the bag of coins to the elven raid leader, I closed my eyes briefly in despair. I suppose I knew now why we had been spared in the ambush upon the caravan.
We were meant to be sold as slaves.
Opening my eyes again, I risked a quick glance at the other survivors to my left. The numb look on their faces told me that they already knew that this had been the fate that awaited them.
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After that, the elven raiders left, taking the caravans that they had stolen along with them without a backward glance at the people they had sold into slavery.
As they left, the servant dwarf hurried around to the back of the carriage before unlocking something. From behind it, I heard the servant bark a command at the slave overseers that had been standing off to the side during the entire exchange. They hurried to obey, moving over to where he was. I could hear the clank of chains as something was unloaded.
From behind the carriage, the overseers carried out lengths of chains with manacles and collars attached to them. As they got closer to us, a few of the other overseers unsheathed their truncheons before moving in to hover over us with fearsome scowls on their faces as if to intimidate us. They needn’t have bothered, as we were all too weak from hunger and dehydration to even consider resisting them.
One by one, the overseers began to truss us up in shackles and chains. When it came to be my turn, all I could do was limply let them do what they wanted. Even if I hadn’t been weak from neglect, I had never been very physically inclined in my life, before I’d been dropped in this hellhole. I was placed at the very back of the line.
Yanking us to our feet, we were just in time to see the richly dressed dwarf from earlier climbing back into the wagon and slam the door behind him. Hurrying back to the carriage from where he had been directing the overseers, the servant dwarf climbed into the driver’s seat, while the armored one sat next to him. Shouting a command back down to the overseers, the servant dwarf gestured back down the dirt road in the direction that he had come from. The overseers bowed to him before performing some kind of salute, thumping their right closed fist over their hearts.
The servant dwarf reared the horses and the carriage around, before setting off at a breakneck speed down the dirt road back the way they had arrived. Watching them fade into the distance with unfocused eyes, I was nonetheless startled when the chain attached to my neck was yanked on. Jerking my head to my right, I saw the dirty face of one of the overseers shouting at me. He pushed me forward with the truncheon as the procession of chained slaves started to move.
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The overseers marched us for miles in the heat, weighed down with chains, collars, and manacles. No matter how much they shouted, they seemed to catch on that we were too weak to move any faster.
As we proceeded down the dirt road, I could see that we were surrounded by crops. I didn’t personally know much about farming, but there seemed to be a larger variety of goods being grown here than I would expect. I only recognized some of them, but wheat, corn, and cotton were among the crops I was able to discern. Something about the huge variety of crops that I could see didn’t seem right to me, but I was too exhausted to think about it.
After perhaps an hour of continuous shuffling at our slow pace, buildings began to come into sight in the distance. These were ramshackle things, that looked like they were made from driftwood than any kind of sound material. From those ramshackle buildings, I could see dirty faces peering out at us. Primarily women and the elderly, I could see some elderly men as well. All of them wore threadbare rags. All of them also wore those same black collars the overseers were wearing. The overseers yelled something at them, and the other slaves disappeared.
I suppose these were the slave bunks.
As we moved further up the road, I began to see what appeared to be a wall in the distance. Made of carved wooden logs with points at the top, the wall had a gate in front of us that had two guards manning either side of it. These guards were also in full plate with the same tabard as the armored dwarf from earlier, but far less decorated and without a helmet. These dwarves were also carrying spears instead of a sword and shield. Strangely, they were clean-shaven to a fault as well.
When our procession reached the gate, one of the overseers stepped up to speak to the guard. With lowered eyes and a deferential bearing, they tried to speak to the guard. The guard cut him off with a wave of his hand before moving off to the side and opening a smaller door rather than opening the gates. Gesturing at us in an impatient manner, the dwarf began to wave us in.
I couldn’t muster up the energy to be surprised when the other side of the wall contained a full-blown dwarven settlement.
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