[Queen of Orcs 01] - King's Property Read Online Free PDF Page B

life?”
    “That’s how you must live it.”

 
    Five

    After Loral banked the embers in the cooking pit, she led Dar to the women’s tent. Its floor was covered with straw and bodies. Although it was only a little past dusk, all the women there were asleep. Loral and Dar carefully picked their way through the crowded gloom to a space large enough to lie down. Though Dar’s cloak was still damp from washing and covered with muddy footprints, she was too exhausted to care. She wrapped it around her and sank down on the trampled straw.
    Loral touched her shoulder. “Share my cloak,” she whispered. “Yours is wet.”
    Dar cast her damp cloak aside to be enveloped by Loral’s dry one. She felt Loral’s bulging belly briefly press against her back and recalled lying next to her pregnant mother. It was the last of her happy memories. After Dar’s older brothers died in an avalanche, her father had become obsessed with replacing his male heirs. Only when Dar’s mother conceived again had peace returned. Yet what came afterward convinced Dar that her mother hadn’t swelled with life, but with death instead. Dar shuddered, reliving the bloody night it had burst forth. She pressed her back against Loral, wishing her a better fortune.

    It was still dark when Neffa entered the tent. “Up!” she shouted. “Up! Up! Where’s Memni? Is Memni here?”
    “She’s with Faus,” answered a sleepy voice.
    “Taren, then,” said Neffa. “I doubt she’s tupping. Taren!”
    “Here,” answered a voice.
    “Show the new girl how to make porridge,” said Neffa. “Rise, girls. The Queen’s Man is back. The men will be up early.”
    The women slept in their clothes, so dressing consisted of little more than slipping on shoes. Lacking these, Dar was one of the first out of the tent. A woman emerged soon afterward, spotted Dar, and stopped. “Scabhead, you know how to make porridge?”
    “Of course,” said Dar.
    “Have you made it for a hundred?”
    “Only for five.”
    “Well, there’s a big difference,” said the woman, who Dar assumed was Taren. Her appearance was the opposite of Loral’s; she was bony, with a sharp, pockmarked face, and long dirty-blond hair, which was plaited into a single, greasy braid. She bore the same worn and hardened look as Neffa, which made it difficult for Dar to judge her age. “Come on, scabby,” she said. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”
    “My name’s Dar.”
    “So? You’re still a scabhead.”
    Taren led Dar over to the fire pit. “First, you roast the grain over embers. You know how to do that?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then light a fire. I’ll get the grain.”
    By the time Dar had a fire going, Taren appeared, struggling with a heavy sack of grain. Dar went over to help her. “Do we always rise before dawn?”
    “When you tup a soldier, you get to sleep in.”
    “Neffa allows that?”
    “She has no choice. If she stuck her nose in a man’s tent, he’d whack it off.”
    “Well, I’m used to rising early,” said Dar.
    “You’ll get to sleep in,” said Taren. “Men will choose you.”
    The bitterness in Taren’s voice surprised Dar. Then she regarded the woman’s ragged clothes and shoeless feet. They made her recall Loral’s remark about needing men’s generosity. Taren’s seen little of that .
    When Dar’s fire burned down to embers, she and Taren placed a large kettle upon it. Roasting grain for a hundred turned out to be little different from doing it for five, except it was harder work. The mass of kernels had to be stirred constantly to keep from scorching. As she had in the dark highland hut, Dar judged when the roasting was done by smell rather than sight. When the grain had a toasted aroma, she pulled the kettle from the embers and Taren gave her a large wooden pestle to pound the grain in preparation for making porridge.
    By then, the sky had lightened. Disheveled, sleepy-eyed women left the soldiers’ tents and went straight to work. Memni