“You’re all prisoners?” asked Luis, incredulity on his face.
“Ya, man,” said an ebony-skinned man from the Vale of Dreams named Jadow Shati. “Each man here took the fall in Bobby de Loungville’s little drama. Each of us looked the Death Goddess in the eye, or at least thought we were going to.” He grinned and Erik found himself smiling in return. The man’s smile had that impact, as if all the sunlight and happiness reflected off teeth made brilliant white by the contrast with his dark skin, the blackest Erik had ever seen. In the short time he had known Jadow, Erik had discovered he had the ability to find some humor in almost any situation. He also had a way of putting things so that Erik almost always ended up laughing.
Roo threw up his hands. “Then why were you such a bloody bunch of bastards when we first came to camp?”
They were all sitting around in the hold barracks. Over the last few days, after practicing with Sho Pi, the men had begun speaking with one another and the barrier between the six men Erik had come to think of as “us” and the other thirty he thought of as “them” had started to weaken.
Jadow spoke with the patois common to the Vale, a no-man’sland claimed at various times by the Empire of Great Kesh and the Kingdom, where languages, blood, and loyalties tended to be mixed. It was a musical sound, softer than the harsher King’s Tongue, but not as guttural as High Keshian. “Man, that was the drill, don’t you know? Each time a new group came, we were to give them bloody hell! Bobby’s orders. Not until he knew he wasn’t going to have to hang us did he treat us better than dirt on the sole of his boot, don’t you see? Then we got to take off the damn ropes, man. Then we began to think we might live a bit longer.”
Jerome Handy sat across from Erik, the biggest man in the group after Biggo and broader across the shoulders. “Jadow and me were among the first six. Four of our mates died. Two tried to go over the walls, and those Pathfinders picked them off with their long bows like quails on the wing.” He made a flying motion with his two hands, as if throwing shadow puppets on the wall, and made a funny flapping sound with his mouth. Then suddenly he turned his hands over and made a sign of a wounded bird falling. Erik had delighted in discovering that as rough and intimidating as Handy could be, he also could be very amusing given anything remotely like an audience. “One lost his temper and died in a sword drill. The other . . .” He glanced at Jadow.
“Ah, that was bad, man. Roger was his name,” supplied the Valeman.
“Right. Roger. He was hung when he killed a guard, trying to escape.”
“How long ago was that?” asked Erik.
“More than a year, man,” said Jadow. He ran a hand over his bald pate, which he kept free of hair by dry-shaving with a blade every morning. While most of it was naturally hairless, the little fringe around the ears was persistent enough that Erik winced each time he saw the man give himself a trim.
“A year!” asked Billy Goodwin. “You’ve been at that camp a year?”
Jadow grinned. “Man, consider the alternative, don’t you see?” He laughed, a deep-throated version of a child’s delight. “The food was sumptuous, and the company”—he cast a mock-baleful look at Jerome—“diverting, if nothing else. And the longer we were there . . .”
“What?” asked Roo.
It was Biggo who answered. “The longer they weren’t headed toward wherever it is de Loungville and the Eagle are taking us.”
“Exactly.”
“You’ve been playing soldier for a year, then?” asked Luis.
“More, and I don’t call it playing when men die,” said a man named Peter Bly.
Jerome nodded. “We thirty are what’s left of seventy-eight who were put through the false hanging over the last year and a bit.”
Sho Pi said, “Then this would explain why Corporal Foster and . . . what is Robert de Loungville’s real rank—when first I saw him, I took him for a noble-does anyone know?”
Jerome shook his head. “Sergeant is all I’ve ever heard. But I’ve seen him give orders to a Knight-Captain of the King’s own. He’s the second in command, after the elf.”
“Elf?” said Erik.
Luis said, “What some of the older guards call the Eagle. It’s no joke. They call him that, but there’s no disrespect in it. But they say he’s not human.”
“He does look a little odd,” said Roo.
Jerome laughed, and Jadow said, “Look whose talking about looking odd!”
All the gathered men laughed and Roo flushed with embarrassment, waving off the remark. “I mean, he doesn’t look like the rest of us.”
“No one looks like the rest of us,” said Sho Pi.