A Year Less Three Days, page 17
When Lias’ wife was kidnapped, all his skills as a woodsman couldn’t save her—or himself. Captured, sold repeatedly to different masters, Lias endures abuse, torture, and worse. By the time his latest master buys him, Lias is little more than an animal.
At times, Necromis, a knight of the Order of the White Bear, would like nothing more than to oblige his aggravating new charge, but one thing stays his deadly hand: Lias is his last hope. The day of reckoning is coming, and there’s only one way out of this bargain—capture the heart of a broken slave, or Necromis’ soul will forever belong to Bonecracker.
(This title was previously published but has been revised.)
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Arian Derwydd Books, LLC
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A Year Less Three Days
Copyright © 2024 by Alyx Jae Shaw
ISBN: 979-8-9898844-4-5
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.
DEDICATION
To Caz M, for my continued survival and her gifts of encouragement.
To Pointy, who says "Call me if you need to" and means it.
To Myc Cook, whom I once rescued from a herd of Aztec Battle-Sloths.
Chapter One
Eighteen months ago. It had only been eighteen months, but it had been whole centuries. Lias could still play the whole story over in his mind, like some brilliant fairy tale gone horribly wrong.
Once upon a time, there had been a woodsman, who lived in the forest with his beautiful wife Elyssa and three little daughters. They’d been poor, but they’d been happy. The woodsman would cut trees, and sometimes his daughters would follow him and pick berries and flowers and gather herbs and what fruit and roots they could find. In the evenings, they would return home to their cottage, and eat dinner, sing, tell stories, and laugh. Sometimes, his wife would play the harp—an extravagant instrument for a woodsman’s wife, but she had once been a lady in a manor house until she decided she far preferred the simple life in the woods near the stream, where the sun shone on the wildflowers outside her door. Her father had not been delighted with her choice, but he agreed to put her happiness over what was proper. And the woodsman knew that if ever he mistreated his beloved, he would be run down like a stag by a dozen hunters, her father leading the pack.
Then she died.
Lias was glad her father was visiting when she did, so that he could see her passing was not her husband’s fault. But as she died, Lias and her father Sir Blackmoore both had the strange feeling her passing was anything but natural. Sir Blackmoore brought in the best healers and scryers he could find to determine what had happened to her, but none could say. Or were afraid to say. Sir Blackmoore was a powerful man in this area and not without numerous enemies. A pointed finger could start a war.
Sir Blackmoore appointed his granddaughters a nanny, and life went on, still good, but not as happy. After a year had passed, Lias married the nanny, a woman by the name of Merdine. Then tragedy struck once more. Sir Blackmoore was killed when his horse panicked and ran off a bridge, plunging both of them into a shallow, stony river.
Life became harder without the assistance of the children’s grandfather, and it seemed the sun shone less bright on their tiny home in the woods. Then, one night, Lias came home out of the rain to find his children crying and terrified, his wife gone, and a man he only knew in passing standing in his small house. His name was Broadin, a man from the village a few miles away, and he looked as if he had been in a violent fight.
“What happened?” asked Lias, his three small daughters clutching him and weeping.
“Traders,” said Broadin. “Merdine bought a new kettle in town and asked me to bring it here for her as she had too much to carry already. By the time I arrived with the iron kettle, they had taken her.”
“Traders?” exclaimed Lias. “Would we have not heard of them coming up the rivers in their ships?”
“Sir Blackmoore manned the watch to keep the traders at bay. Since he died…”
Lias looked down at his crying children, then to Broadin. “Will you watch them for a while for me?”
Broadin’s jaw dropped. “Lias, you do not mean to go after these men!”
“I cannot simply allow them to take her and sell her like an animal! She is my wife! Even if she were not, I could not leave her to such a fate! I must try!”
“Lias, you’re mad,” said Broadin.
“Be that as it may. Will you mind my children?”
“I will, but what shall I tell them if you do not come back?”
Lias looked down at their small faces staring up at him, all dark with eyes of polished jade, like their mother.
“I will be back.”
* * *
Lias shook his head, abruptly waking from his half-sleep, hearing the quiet clank of his chains. Oh, he had been a fool; a heroic fool, but a fool nonetheless. He had been captured within moments of coming across their vessel. After all, these traders lived the roaming life of warriors, stealing and pillaging and selling to earn their way when there were no wars to fight. Lias was a woodsman, and while he was strong, trees rarely fought back. He’d been caught and chained and sold in under an hour, and the man who bought him had not been pleased with his purchase.
Lias had wanted nothing more than to find and save his wife, and the moment he was let off his chain, he was gone. He was recaptured, chained, and sold again, this time to a stonecutter who needed a strong back to help him in the quarry. Again, Lias ran. Again, Lias was caught. Again, he was sold. His price kept dropping, and his masters changed from tradesmen to men so depraved that Lias had no words to describe them.
Now, eighteen months later, he had been shackled, raped, beaten, tortured, used as a live moving target, bearbait, dogbait, and broken down into a man who no longer truly recalled what had ever made him leave home.
He looked up at the chains that held him, scarcely able to lift his own head. He was shackled in a standing position, naked, the blood drying on his back from his latest whipping. His strength was gone. There would be no fleeing his next master. Lias was at the end of his life, and he knew it. He would hang in these chains until he was sold or he died. His reputation as a fighter and a runner had doomed him. At least as the slave of the stonecutter, there would have been some dignity, but it would not be a tradesman coming to purchase him now. At best, it would be a dog breeder, looking for cheap meat and bones to give to the hounds.
He wondered how his children were doing and if they were still in the house in the woods. Most likely, they were living with Broadin, learning to set the sand casts for the items he made. It would not be a bad life for them. The gods above knew there were far worse.
The door to his dark cell opened, and someone walked in to put a cloth sack over his head. That meant someone was coming to look at him, and they did not want him spitting at the customer. Lias managed a half-hearted growl.
“Mind your manners for once,” muttered the attendant.
Lias was doused with a bucket of cold water to clean off the worst of the mess, then left to hang a little while longer. Lias’ long, ragged, black hair hung in his face, dripping and stinking like the rest of him. Honestly, who would want him?
Then a scent entered his world of stink and pain, a fragrance like the sun on the flowers in Elyssa’s garden. He raised his head, sniffing. What ghost was this, coming to him in the darkness of his miserable cell? Was he dying? He heard the rustle of fine cloth, and he sniffed again. Surely, they were not bringing a lady into this pit. Then he heard the voice of the slave-trader.
“My lord, surely, there is nothing down here that will appeal to you.”
Good grief, was that swishing flower-smell a man? The sound of a quiet and definitely masculine voice confirmed his suspicion.
“Fine gems are often found in the mire.”
“My lord, he’s no treasure. He bites.”
The customer laughed quietly. “Does he, now? Could it have anything at all to do with the chains or the whippings? You’ve beaten him half to death. Look at these marks. This was once a perfectly serviceable man. You’ve turned him into hanging meat.”
“T’was not I, my lord. It was the eleven masters before me in the last few months who did it. I’ve handled slaves with the demons of the underworld in them before, but Bonecracker himself lives in that one.”
“Does he indeed?” The voice was soft, amused. Almost as if this man knew something that others did not.
Lias felt a hand on his shoulder, checking his bones, his muscles, feeling for any breaks or deformities that would keep him from working. A tradesman? Here? No, not with that much perfume on him. A merchant, then. Someone looking for a body to haul heavy items.
“He seems sound. I’ll take him.”
“My lord, please reconsider. I’ve some very pretty boys from the Seven Isles just in this…”
“If I wanted a pampered little snot who thinks he’s far better than he is simply because he is purpose-bred and can sing out his lineage on command, then I would have bought one. This man pleases me. Brats do not. Clean him up and deliver him by evening meal. Why does he have a bag over his head?”
“He spits, too, my lord.”
The man sighed. “Remove the bag. I wish to see his eyes.”
The merchant did, and Lias saw his new master for the first time. The image was rather daunting. Perfume and fine silks aside, this man was the tallest he had ever seen, with eyes the colour of green elven-fire. His shoulders were broad, and his bearing was that of one born to the ruling classes. Beneath his silken robes, which were embroidered with images of roaring bears, was chainmail, clinking with a faint, delicate sound. Across his back was a sword, and Lias knew what he was looking at was a knight of the kingdom to the north. What was it called? It had always seemed so far away from his little house in the woods, more like a fairy tale than a real place. Huh. A knight. He was going to belong to a knight.
Why would a knight want him?
Lias stared at the man with a sort of dull curiosity, too weary and broken to do much more. He’d never seen a knight. He wished his daughters were here. They would have been out of their minds with excitement to see a real knight.
No. Not here. Anywhere but here.
Ixander. That was the name of the kingdom. Ixander.
“His eyes are clear. Good.”
Lias felt a faint trace of his inner fire flare up as the tall man took his face between his hands. Perhaps Bonecracker did live within him. It was the only logical explanation for why he lunged and snapped at the man’s face. The knight shoved him back, and the trader popped the bag over Lias’ head once more.
“My lord, I did warn you.”
The man sighed. “Indeed, you did. But I stand by my decision. What is his price?”
“Three baenea, my lord.”
Three baenae? He really had come down in price. At the start of this adventure, he’d fetched two hundred reids. Gone from the price of a fine horse to the cost of a strawberry sweetie on a summer’s day. The knight made a quiet sound of amusement.
“So you do not charge extra for the biting.”
“We try to discourage that in the slaves we sell. If we could tame him, he would be worth far more, but he won’t respect the whip.”
“Just clean him up as well as you are able and send him to my house. I expect there will be a delivery charge since he cannot travel on his own, and if he could, he would simply head for the furthest land he could reach, in all likelihood.”
“The delivery fee will be waived in light of his behaviour. Indeed, I am glad to get him off my hands.”
“Very well then. Our business is done.”
The knight left. The slave-trader sighed heavily.
“That’s a knight of Ixander, so you had better behave. If he wearies of your nonsense, you’ll be having warm fantasies about being back here hanging in chains.”
The chains were released, and Lias dropped to the floor in unspeakable pain. He was half carried, half dragged out of the cell and up a set of cold stone stairs into a small room. He suspected it was a place of torture, judging from some of the implements he saw hanging. It struck him as hilarious in a sick, dark way. Wasn’t being a slave torture enough?
He was put in a tub and scrubbed down like an animal, no consideration paid to his injuries. The bag was yanked off his head long enough to soak his head and wash his hair, then quickly replaced as he tried to sink his teeth into the trader’s face. Lias was uncertain when his habit of biting had begun; certainly not before he was taken from his home. Now, with his hands often shackled, it was his only way of lashing out.
“Here, behave, you,” said the trader as he finished rinsing the soap off Lias. “You could show a little gratitude, you know. I didn’t have to let him see you. I shouldn’t have anyway. With all your habits, you’ll be back in a week with ‘murderer’ emblazoned on your back, waiting to be thrown into the pits for the royal bears.”
Lias said nothing in response to the man. He had stopped speaking not long after he began biting. He saw no reason to behave like a man after all he had endured. His neck still pained him from when the slave traders caught him that dark night eighteen months ago. What a fool he had been. What an utter laughable fool. Had he really thought that he, a woodcutter, could do battle with and defeat twenty armed traders? Men who filled their bellies and fed their babes by murder and looting? He had been caught in moments, chained down, and when he refused to submit, one of the stinking hairy brutes raped him, just to teach him his place. It would not be the last time he had his body violated. Lias had felt anger before, but nothing like the raging black hatred that filled his brain now, constantly darkening his thoughts and turning his mind to vengeance. The first chance he got, he would kill, and he did not care who.
He was dragged from the bath and dried, then dressed in a clean tunic of cheap cloth. Since he was known to both bite and spit, a piece of heavy rope was forced between his jaws and fixed into place with wire. Some of his wild black hair got tangled into the wire, but there was no care given over that. His hands were bound, but as he was dragged from the large structure where the traders housed their slaves and loaded into the wagon to be delivered, he managed to catch the man in the face with his foot.
This amused one of the two other slaves in the wagon; one an enormous, bearded man who seemed downright jolly. He was in no way restrained and seemed to be looking forward to his destination. Lias had seen slaves like him before—men who had a craft and were highly prized. Often, they were sold repeatedly from one craftsman to the next, and while their lives were hardly settled, they were treated with care and respect, viewed as a valuable tool to share within the circle of craftsmen. He would be going to a familiar place, a hot meal, a warm bed, and an honest day’s work, which was more than Lias had.
The second slave was one of the so-called pretty boys from Seven Isles. Lias hated him on sight. He was cute and coiffed and clearly as arrogant as a god. He would have been raised from infancy to play instruments, write, read, sing, dance, to know the etiquette for all occasions, and to be a graceful and elegant pet for his mistress or master. Lias would have liked to force him to eat a mouthful of shit.
“Here, now,” said the bearded man. “Let me help you to sit up, there’s a grand fellow. Oh, I see they have a bit on you. Been naughty, have you? Let’s take this out and have a conversation.”
Lias thought the painted pretty boy was going to faint as the bit was removed. The large man set it aside while Lias worked his jaw and shook his head, trying to get the taste of the rope out of his mouth. It tasted the way a dirty horse smelled.
“There now, that’s better. What’s your name? I’m Carstairs, the glassmaker.”
No wonder this man was so highly prized—that was a rare talent to find in a slave.
“Now—why do they have you gagged?” asked Carstairs. “Let me guess—you’ve a terrible singing voice.”
Lias curled his lip slightly. He didn’t care what sort of master he got. He had wanted only to save his wife, not to damn himself and leave his children without parents. The ‘pretty boy’ rolled his eyes and made a ‘tsk!’ of derision.
“Why are you bothering to talk to that thing? It’s barely human. Put the gag back in its mouth, or if you won’t, I will.”
The young man picked up the gag and intended to shove it into Lias’ mouth. Lias lunged, catching the prized and valuable slave’s hand. He had managed to get the ball of the thumb, and he made full use of his own strength, biting down as hard as he was able, chewing and shaking his head. Carstairs tried to pull Lias off, but Lias would not release his hold. He simply kept chewing and shaking until he struck gristle and bone. The shrieks of pain from his victim caused the wagon driver to stop his horses and come to the back of the wagon to determine what the commotion was all about.
“Who took off his gag?” the driver demanded.
“I did, and believe me, I’ll never do such a fool thing again! He’s out of his mind!”
Something was forced into Lias’ mouth, and his teeth were made to release the young man’s hand.
“He’s ruined me!” shrieked the Seven Isles slave. “Look at this! Look at my hand! Get him away! He means to kill me!”
Lias growled as the gag was jammed so forcefully into his mouth, it was surprising his teeth did not break. It was fastened into place by Carstairs as the wagon driver tended to the Seven Isles slave.
