Chapter 69 — The Slave Markets

Chapter 69: Chapter 69 — The Slave Markets

Chapter 69 — The Slave Markets

The first slave yard offered Godfrey forty men before he had crossed the gate.

They stood in four rows under a canvas roof, most of them in the same brown tunic. A few wore bruises around their collars, and one leaned all his weight onto his left leg.

"Field workers," the dealer said. "Young, strong and accustomed to orders. I can provide the whole lot today."

Godfrey scanned the rows. "Where did they work?"

"Several estates."

"Which estates?"

The dealer smiled without answering.

Godfrey left.

Ivo followed him into the crowded market road. "Too many injured?"

"Too many answers missing."

The capital market was really several connected yards near the eastern wall, each with its own trade. One handled household servants and craftsmen. Another took in debt slaves and prisoners shipped up from the middle kingdoms. The largest, by far, dealt in laborers, farming families and soldiers sold off after the war.

Godfrey had no reason to search for polished servants; Dragonwatch needed people who could endure cold, work fields and survive a long road north.

The second dealer walked them down a line of six farming families, all pulled from two estates that debt had ruined. Three of the families already knew each other; the rest had been folded in from separate sales. Thirty-one people in all, nine of them children, two of them parents too old now to really work a field.

Godfrey walked past each family while the dealer read the names. Most lowered their eyes. One older farmer met Godfrey’s gaze straight on, until a guard struck the ground beside his boot.

"Leave him," Godfrey said.

The guard stepped back.

Godfrey stopped before the farmer. His hands were thick with old work, and dirt remained beneath his nails despite several days in the yard.

"What did you grow?"

"Barley, beans and turnips, my lord. Some rye."

"Did your family keep animals?"

"Chickens. Two milk cows before they were taken."

Godfrey nodded and moved on. He asked each household one or two questions rather than holding a long examination, since farmers could lie and frightened people often answered badly even when telling the truth, but their hands, health and family records told him enough.

One woman had a fever. The dealer claimed it came from sleeping in the damp yard, so Godfrey sent for the physician who had treated Simon. The woman had a chest sickness but could travel after several days of medicine and warm food.

Godfrey bought all six families together.

"They remain in this yard until the physician clears her," he told the dealer. "They receive food from the grain I purchased yesterday."

"That will add to the holding cost."

Godfrey waited him out.

The dealer lowered the cost.

The six families filled only part of Christopher’s order. Godfrey still needed thirty-five young workers to farm, clear the old orchard, repair roads and help manage the beasts living around the Knight castle.

He found twenty-eight over the next four days. Seven came from a failed quarry, already knowing one another, old scars from stone chips marking their hands. Five were farm workers sold after their landlord lost a lawsuit, and four women had worked in a riverside orchard. The rest came in ones and twos from different yards.

Godfrey counted every person himself. He rejected a coughing man whose dealer swore he had only swallowed dust, and two boys listed as eighteen who could not have been older than fourteen. He bought a brother and sister together after learning another buyer intended to separate them.

Some of the workers knew one another. Most did not. They were not a company or a village, and their northern assignment meant little to them. Griffin City was warm, crowded and familiar. Dragonwatch was a name from old stories and recent war reports.

Godfrey let the moment speak for itself. Their collars made the truth plain enough.

The dealer asked whether Godfrey wanted the workers marked by trade. Ivo took the list before answering. Most entries contained only general labor, field work or domestic service, but a few claimed useful experience: orchard work, stone cutting, animal care and preserving food.

"The orchard workers cost more," the dealer said.

"They have hands and backs like the rest," Godfrey replied.

"Knowledge costs money."

Godfrey accepted a small increase for the four women who had worked among fruit trees, but refused to pay a craftsman’s price for a young man who had spent one season carrying stone at a quarry.

Ivo checked the names against the people twice. One name appeared on both the quarry list and the farm list. The dealer blamed a clerk, and Godfrey removed the duplicate before any coin changed hands.

The purchased families received grain from Godfrey’s warehouse and stew from the yard kitchen, and Godfrey paid for both, because thin people would not become stronger during a journey north.

The older farmer came up to the rail while Godfrey oversaw the evening meal.

"Is the land worked?" he asked.

"Some fields produced a harvest this year," Godfrey said. "More remain abandoned."

"How cold is the land?"

"Colder than Griffin City. The houses inside the wall have roofs, and Dragonwatch has firewood stored."

The farmer turned to his family. "Orcs?"

"Scouts watch the northern approaches."

The farmer understood. Scouts were the only promise any northern lord could give.

The farmer returned to his bowl.

The children kept their eyes on Godfrey after that. One small boy fixed on the silver badge at his cloak until his mother hauled him back by the shoulder, and Godfrey moved off from the rail to keep checking the yard.

Ivo joined him near the gate. "The sick woman ate."

"The physician returns tomorrow."

"The dealer wants the yard cleared as soon as she can stand."

"The dealer was paid for the space. He can endure looking at the people he sold."

They left two sacks of grain with the kitchen and posted one of the apprentices near the purchased families’ section — not to question the people there, but to mind the guards, the food, and anyone who tried changing the list after the coin had already changed hands.

The search for a beastmaster was more difficult. Three men claimed the title. The first had cared for ordinary horses. The second knew how to train hunting dogs and nothing about magical beasts. The third recognized a drawing of a frost elk but advised breaking its antlers before training it.

Godfrey left all three behind.

On the sixth morning, an animal dealer sent word about a collared handler held in a private yard. Aldous Beckett had served a ruined eastern noble whose men raised magical mounts for scouts and messengers.

Aldous was a lean man in his forties with grey at his temples. A scar crossed one forearm. He looked at Godfrey’s armor first and his face second.

"The dealer says you handled magical beasts," Godfrey said.

"I handled several kinds."

"Which beasts did you handle?"

"Wind deer, ash hounds and two young stonehorns. I worked with ordinary horses before that."

Godfrey described a young rhinoceros without naming where it lived. Aldous asked about its size, herd and the strength of its essence, wanting to know whether its mother remained nearby and whether the young beast had already attacked a handler.

"How would you capture one?" Godfrey asked.

"I would watch the herd first. If the adults never leave it alone, taking it will cost men. If several young males already range apart, those are easier."

"And armored warthogs?"

"Feed them from outside a stone enclosure. Never stand where they can pin you against a wall."

Godfrey bought him.

Aldous touched the collar once. "Where?"

"You are going to Dragonwatch."

Something shut behind his eyes. He had heard the name before.

"You will care for ordinary livestock on the road," Godfrey said. "Your other work begins after we arrive."

Aldous accepted the answer and asked nothing further.

Godfrey took him to the animal yard that afternoon. Six northern horses waited in separate stalls: sturdy animals with thick coats, chosen for hauling and hard roads rather than speed. Aldous checked their hooves, teeth and legs, rejected one mare with swelling around the knee, and chose another from a different stable.

The chickens and ducks required less judgment, though Aldous still moved their cages away from the lamp oil and made the seller replace a broken water tray.

Four young hounds occupied the last pen. Two barked when Godfrey approached. One hid behind its littermate. The fourth simply took him in, silent.

"Estate dogs," the seller said. "Good blood."

Aldous entered the pen and waited. The silent hound smelled his hand first, and the others followed after it.

"Young enough to train," Aldous said. "None are ruined."

Godfrey bought all four.

Aldous checked the poultry cages afterward. The chickens were ordinary birds bred for eggs and cold weather, and the ducks came from farms along the river. Cheap did not mean they would survive a careless trip north — it just meant they had been easy to buy.

"Separate feed from drinking water," Aldous told the seller. "If the water spills into the grain, they will foul both before the next stop."

The seller started in about how his cages had always been arranged, some custom handed down from his father probably. Godfrey ordered new trays anyway. That ended the argument.

Bram visited the animal yard with Ivo that evening. The largest hound pushed its nose between the slats of the travel cage, and Bram crouched until they were level.

"It likes me," he said.

"It smells the meat from your supper," Ivo replied.

Bram considered that and offered an empty hand. The hound licked his fingers anyway.

By the end of the week, Godfrey had six farming families, Aldous, the animals and twenty-eight of the thirty-five young workers. Food continued arriving at the guarded warehouse: grain filled one side, and barrels of flour, beans, oil and salted meat occupied the other.

The order was growing faster than the convoy meant to carry it.

Ivo spread the current count across a table inside the warehouse, tracing a finger down the tally as he worked through it. The six families needed passenger space for the children and the elderly, and most of the young workers could walk on good roads but would need wagons in bad weather or sickness. Grain and flour required covered freight beds, while poultry needed air and distance from the lamp oil.

"We will need more guards than we brought," Ivo said.

"The caravan lodge will provide them."

"The lodge will charge for the destination."

"Then we pay for the destination."

The capital road remained safer than the northern road, but Martin had died before they even reached Griffin City, and Godfrey would not protect a long convoy with six men merely because those men included ranked Knights.

Godfrey found a caravan lodge master waiting near the eastern gate, word of the buying having apparently travelled faster than Godfrey had. He laid out what he had purchased so far — people, animals, supplies — and told the man more names would be added before they left.

"Dragonwatch?" the lodge master asked.

"The road is Dragonwatch’s road."

The man rubbed his jaw. "That road costs more."

"Give me the price when you know how many wagons and guards it needs."

Godfrey returned to the market the next morning.

Seven workers remained on Christopher’s list. The former soldiers had not yet been chosen at all.